Weigh In and Willow

So, I did well last week! When I tell my weight, it'll look like I didn't lose much from my last weigh-in, but after a month of more cheat days than good days, I had gained some. So...

On Monday, March 7th I weighed 219.5. (I told you I was bad for the last month.)

On Sunday, March 13th I weighed 213.75. Woo! I lost almost six pounds in a week. THAT'S how good I did this last week. :)

Of course, I'm still way behind where I should be, but I'll catch up over the next couple of months. And I'll be back next week with another weigh in.

Oh, and I was going to post some pictures of Willow, but I seem to have left the cable for my camera at work. :( So I'll have to wait to show those to you later (I'm on vacation this week). But just know she's doing well. I'm giving her pain medicine three times a day, and she's doing very well wearing the cone. Jim and I are very impressed with her. I'll take her later this week to get the bandage on her tail changed, and we'll see then how it's doing. Hopefully it'll be healing well.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Weeks keep going by, and so far I keep kicking butt. I'm down two pounds this week, woo! My total so far is 12.25 pounds lost, and it's been just five weeks, so I'm right on course. Yay!

I've been pretty good at making wise choices lately, too. Yesterday we went to Denny's for a late breakfast/early lunch. Instead of getting my favorite cheeseburger and seasoned fries (yum), I got two scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast and two pieces of bacon. The bacon sounds bad, but just two slices fit into my day's calories easily. Then we went to the hockey game at work last night, and of course there aren't really any wise choices there - just bad ones and not so bad ones. So I chose a not so bad one and got two slices of pizza. I ate one and a half slices, and gave the other half to Jim. And it fit into my day's calories, so again - the wisest choice I could have made, from a menu that was either pizza or fried foods and not much else.

I love that I've been staying so motivated, too. I guess I just needed to have that wedding deadline looming larger with every passing week! The idea of that coming, and there not being any time to goof around anymore, has pushed me to do well every week, so far. And I'm going to make sure that continues!

Great Weigh In News!

I'm giving you an early Saturday morning post to share some great news! I peed rivers for two days in a row, getting rid of the water weight from my period, and I counted my calories and stopped myself from snacking and stuck to between 1300 and 1400 calories most days (even last night when Jim wasn't home and I wanted to snack SO BADLY), and it paid off.

This morning I stepped on the scale, and I'm down 10.25 pounds in just under four weeks! Yay!!! I now weigh 217.25. Woo!!

Celebrate with me, won't you? I'm VERY excited about this, people. It means I'm doing it! I'm doing what I have to do to get to a healthy weight by my wedding! Yay! It all seems so possible now!

I'm down another pound this week! I wanted it to be more, but my period started and I always gain water weight with it, and I know I did this time, too. I weighed myself on Wednesday and I was already down to 220.25, and today I was 221, and I didn't eat badly enough to gain any weight.

Anyway, in a week when that's happening, I'm happy with a pound loss!

Also, I'm coming down with a head cold, and it's time to take some Nyquil and go to bed, so this is a short entry tonight. But yay, I'm down 6.5 pounds in three weeks! Woo!

Second Week Challenges

So, I didn't do the best last week. Of the seven days, I only really counted my calories and made a point of staying in my range on two of them. It was a hard week! I don't know why, but it was.

Part of the problem was Jim working nights three days in a row. I don't know why, but being alone at home at night makes me want to eat to fill the emptiness. Obviously food isn't really going to replace Jim when he's not there, but it's what I want to do, and something I obviously need to keep working on. He was gone three nights, I was only good one of those nights. I need to work on making it all three, eventually.

I did have some good points to the week. We went to Applebee's for lunch on Saturday, to use a gift card Jim had gotten for Christmas. I looked at the menu online before we went,and saw that the sliders I like to get were over 1200 calories. Whoa! So I decided I should get the sirloin steak and baked potato, which would be a much more reasonable 690 (not a huge difference, but more manageable). When we were there, I almost caved and got the sliders, but I got the steak instead, and when I counted up my calories for the day, even though I thought I hadn't done well at all the rest of the day, I was only over my calories by about 100! So that was good.

Anyway, it was a tough week, and I never stepped on the scale during the week at all, so I was a little afraid when I got on this morning. But the news was good! I weighed 222 exactly this morning, meaning I lose 1.25 pounds! And in a week when I thought I did really badly, so I was happy.

Two weeks in, and 5.5 pounds have been lost! Woo!

And yes, I'm planning on doing better this week! :)

Week One Recap

I had a very good first week! There were ups and downs, there were challenges, their were failures, their were triumphs. I guess every week will have all of those things, but for this week, at least, there was more good than bad.

Some challenges I faced this week:
*A day and a half at a conference, where food was provided for us (not being able to plan ahead)
*Temptations in the form of cookies, dessert, high fat chips, high calorie bagels
*The gym being closed one day - not being able to go another day because of the conference
*Trying to be good on Sunday, when it felt so wrong! We've always cheated on weekends, so it was very hard to not overeat. Having a weigh-in looming over me for the next morning helped, though.

Things I did wrong:
*Not working out at home on either Wednesday (when the gym was closed) or Thursday (when I was at the conference all day, but home by 6:00)
*Stopping to buy a chocolate frosted doughnut from Dunkin for breakfast on the way to the conference
*Eating dessert with my lunch on Thursday at the conference
*Eating a chocolate chip cookie as a snack on Thursday at the conference
*Overeating on Thursday by eating those two things above, and then eating some junk they had in our "goodie" bag that we got when we registered
*Gobbling a bag of Lay's potato chips and two chocolate chip cookies when leaving the conference on Friday, because I was STARVING (I'm used to eating lunch at 11:30 - we left the conference and got lunches to go at about 12:45)

Things I did well:
*Working out Monday, Tuesday and Friday at the gym, doing about 2/3 of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred DVD on Saturday (so hard - she kicked my ASS in just 2/3 of the workout, and I was hobbling around the rest of that day AND all of Sunday)
*Deciding on Friday to push myself in my work out. I was at my usual 136-141 heart rate, and decided to see how hard I had to work to get it to the upper portion of my target heart zone. I pushed and got it to 149-153, and kept it there for the last 13 minutes of my time on the elliptical, woo!
*Eating half a sandwich and a lower calorie chip choice for lunch on Thursday (mostly because I knew I was having chocolate cake for dessert, but still)
*Choosing to take some strawberries for a snack at the conference Friday morning, instead of the blue and orange frosted half-moon cookie (done in SU colors)
*Keeping to my calorie limit six out of the seven days, woo!
*Not overindulging this weekend at all, even though they've always been "cheat days" for me in the past.

So, a lot of good things this week! And here's the best thing. I weighed myself this morning, and I'm down 4.25 pounds, woo! I now weigh 223.25. Yay!

Weighing In Once Again!

I weighed myself this morning, and I lost a tiny bit more, yay! I'm at 220.5 today. :) That's only a 3/4 pound loss since the last time I weighed in (on October 29th), but it's a 1 1/2 pound loss since Monday, so I'm still happy with myself. November seems to have been a total waste, though. I can't do that with anymore months! Time is running out.

Anyway, I'm happy with this loss. I hope to be down to about 218 by next Friday, which by the way happens to be the 10th - exactly nine months before my wedding! If I'm at 218 on Friday, I'll have nine months left to lose either 83 or 78 pounds, depending on what final weight I end up settling on (135 or 140). It's definitely something that can be done, but there isn't any wiggle room for lost months anymore!

This afternoon I go to get the halter monitor on. I have to get it at 2:30, and I'll be wearing it for 24 hours. Then hopefully next week I'll have some answers as to what the heck is going on!

Weighing in with Pictures!

I'm just not feeling like myself today. Three of my friends from work seem to feel the say way. I can't quite pin down why - can you?



Hee. :) I've never dressed up this much for Halloween - not as an adult, anyway. It's fun!

Anyway. I weighed in today! My period isn't quite done screwing with me, but I lost a little bit. Today I weighed 221.25, half a pound smaller than I was two weeks ago. It's not much, but I'll take it. If the water weight is still lurking on me the way I think it is, I might show a bigger difference next week. We'll see.

But at least it's progress, so woo!

Accountability Works!

I weighed in this morning at 221.75 - three pounds less than last week! Woo! Look at that, being accountable actually works. :)

Confession time, though: I was really only good on Wednesday and Thursday. I spent the weekend (a three day weekend) with Jim, not caring to be good when I was spending time with him and eating delicious burgers two days in a row. And I spent Tuesday eating bad at lunch and then at home after work. But I cleaned it up the last two days, and my body did the rest. And actually, those last two days, the thought of having to report in here is all that kept me from being bad again. Thanks for being out there to watch over me, all four or five of you. Next week I'm shooting to be good at least four out of the seven days. (I'll work up to a whole week of being good, I swear.)

But hey, three pounds down, and I'll take it. My goal for next week is to lose another two or three pounds. I'll let you know if it happens!

Reinstating Weigh-Ins

So, I have come to a conclusion, and I think it's one I've reached on this site before, but sometimes I have to learn things twice (or even more often than that).

I need accountability.

What does this mean? It means I need to start weighing in with someone. And since I'm not going to Weight Watchers or Nutri-System or any paid weight loss program, I'm going to weigh in to you. You can be my watchers, the people I need to not let down every week - the people holding me accountable.

Why have I decided this? Because I've been going to the gym for about two months now. I've felt myself getting a little bit stronger every time. I can feel my muscles tightening up in my abs and my thighs. I have one pair of work pants that feel noticeably looser right under my butt (which feels like a weird place to notice a difference, but I assume it's from doing the elliptical three times a week). But my weight? Hasn't changed nearly enough.

When I started at the gym, my trainer there weighed me at 230 pounds. That was in the afternoon, dressed in gym clothes, so my at home, in the morning, naked weight was probably about 228 or so. That's what I'll figure. My weight this morning? 224 3/4.

A 3 1/4 pound weight loss in two months is NOT ACCEPTABLE! I started this thing with 13 months to go until my wedding BBQ picnic, and now there are only 11 months. Time is slipping by, and I'm not doing the work I need to do to get into those size 8 Levi's (what I want to wear when I get married). So the work (well, the food work) starts now.

I hereby pledge to be here every Friday morning, weighing in. If I don't lose, I'll be honest and tell you if I haven't done well on food. You can feel free to chastise me, and I'll do better the next week. My wedding day is 11 months from Sunday. I can do it, and you can keep me honest and help me get there! :)

Gah! Effing Winter Anyway

Okay, first for my weigh-in. I told you not to expect big things this week, and I wasn't exaggerating. I spent what, a week and a half eating too much? Something like that. And I'm a champion weight gainer, so after four days of being good again, I'm only at 210 - 3/4 of a pound more than I was two weeks ago. I expected that, though, so I'm not upset. You misbehave, and you pay the price. It's simple.

But I've been really good this week, sticking to my calories every day and riding that exercise bike every night. I'll tell you right now, though, that I'm giving myself a pass on that bike tonight. Why? Here's why.

I don't know if I've mentioned in here before or not that I've been giving a woman from work a ride every day since the beginning of the semester, because she fell and broke her ankle. It was her left ankle, and she drives an automatic, so really she should have been fine to drive herself, but she's older (62) and a nervous person, and she didn't feel comfortable driving herself. Which is fine. I was fine picking her up every morning and dropping her off every night. We've had no problems at all the whole time. Until this morning.

It's snowy here this morning. The roads were covered in it, and so are the driveways. Her plow guy, for some reason, doesn't like to come plow her driveway unless she calls him. She has a driveway that goes uphill, and lives in a very windy area, so as you can imagine, her driveway gets pretty bad.

So, I get there, and look up the driveway, wondering if it's a good idea to pull up it, but I do anyway. I get to the top without any problems, and she asks if she can ride with me (she went to the doctor on Wednesday, and got the all clear to put her weight on her foot, so she actually drove herself yesterday, and I just stopped to make sure she got down her stairs and into her car okay - that was the plan for today, too). But this morning the car was covered with ice, and she panicked and didn't want to be standing around the car scraping it off - she was afraid of falling. Of course, if she had just gone out 20 minutes earlier and started the car and turned on the defrosters, there wouldn't have been any scraping to do, but whatever.

Of course I said fine, you can ride with me. And I tried to turn around to get closer to her, and also to get the car aimed nose first down the driveway. And I got stuck.

Fuck! I got out and used her shovel to clear the snow away from the tires, and actually got free. I couldn't get the car to drive back straight up, so I tried to back all the way down. Only I couldn't see where the driveway ended and the lawn began (that's a problem when the driveway HASN'T BEEN PLOWED), and I got stuck AGAIN. And this time no matter how much I shoveled, I couldn't get my car free. We had to leave it there, stuck in the snow. The poor thing.

I walked back up the driveway, hot and sweaty and tired, and we started her car, finally, and scraped off the ice, and I called work to say we were going to be late, and we managed to get her car out and get to work.

She's calling AAA to tow my car out of the snowbank, and her stupid fucking plow guy came and cleared the driveway (after we were at work), so I'll be able to drive home from her house.

But I definitely got my workout this morning, and if I don't feel up to riding that bike when I get home, I don't have to. Also, is it time to go home yet? Better yet, can it magically be later than that, so I'll just already be home, with my little red car in the garage, my pajamas on? Because that sounds amazing right now.

Sigh.

Anyway, back to the diet - I'm going to continue sticking to my calorie limit, and I'm going to continue to exercise every day, and we'll see what next Friday brings. I'm hoping for about 208.

Oh, also! I did so good last night! Jim called me on his way home and said he was at McDonald's, and he knew I was being good, but did I just want a small bag of fries or something? And I said no. I turned down McDonald's! Wow. I was proud of myself. (Also, I may have to have a double cheeseburger and fries on my next cheat day.)

Okay, that's all from me for now. I'm going to go wait for my feet, socks and pants to dry out. Have a good weekend!

I lied, I have more to say. While I was reading over all of the above, the woman whose driveway my poor car is stuck in came in to say that AAA won't come to tow the car without someone being there, so she told them to come at about 4:40 - after we've left work and gotten back to her house. But of course there's no guarantee they'll come right at 4:40, so I could be sitting at her house for a little while.

I really need my weekend now, please. Thanks.

New Weight

Today is weigh-in day, yay! This morning I stepped on the scale and weighed 209.25. That's three and a half pounds less than last week, but you have to remember that the scale was adjusted after last week's weigh-in, so I have no idea how much I actually lost for sure. It was somewhere in the range of two pounds, though, so it's normal. Yay!

I'm giving myself a cheat day on Sunday, because it's Super Bowl Sunday, I'm going to be alone all day, and I've been wanting some chocolate chip cookie dough/cookies, so I'm giving it to myself that day. :) I'll try to stick to my calorie limit tomorrow, though.

One more week down!

January 29 Weigh In

I had to open up my blog this morning to find out how much I weighed last week, because I couldn't remember, so I didn't know how well I had done this week. Well, good news! Last week I weighed 214.75, and this week I weighed in at 212.75! Yay!

(Of course, in my head I'm adding that I weighed 212.75, but really it's about 209.75 because our scale is wrong.)

Anyway, yay! And I know I should be taking this week by week, day by day, and I really am, but I can't help thinking that in 5 short weeks I could finally be under that 200 number again! Technically, I was there last summer, but I didn't know my scale was weighing in heavy at the time, so when I got to 200.5 and started freaking out for some stupid reason that only my subconscious knows, I was actually about 197.5. But I didn't know the scale was wrong then, so whatever - it doesn't count. So I'm looking forward to getting there for real in the beginning of March.

There is other progress, too. When my two months of eating whatever I want ended, I no longer needed a belt with most of my pants, and the two pair that did require one only needed the belt in the first hole (or last hole, depending on your perspective, I guess - I mean it was at its largest, obviously.). This week I started pulling that belt in one more hole. :)

It feels good to be going back down instead of up.

Woo! Two more pounds gone!

Weigh-In

Today is weigh-in day! I'm going to talk about last night first, though.

So, I was alone again last night - Jim was at work. I wanted to snack so bad! I had my salmon for dinner, but I didn't feel like making the potatoes (which is truly a sign of my laziness about cooking when Jim isn't home, because they're instant potatoes - making them really couldn't be much easier), so I had a glass of milk, a small box of yogurt raisins, a 100 calorie pack of Cheese Nips and a granola bar for dinner. Weird, yes? :D Oh well, it worked.

When I was done with all of that, I of course wasn't hungry, and yet I wanted to snack! I was home alone, snacking is what I've always done in that situation. I eventually gave in a little, but only by eating five strawberry Mini Wheats, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I haven't done the math, but that's not many calories over my upper limit. And then I stopped and just watched TV and relaxed until bedtime, snacking jones gone. Thankfully.

And then this morning I got up and weighed in, and the scale told me I had lost 2.5 pounds since I started trying again on the 5th! Woo! I am now 215.5. I was very happy to see a loss.

I'm shooting for losing two pounds a week, so here's hoping 213.5 shows on that scale a week from today. :)

"Scaling" Back My Resolution

Okay, I can't handle it anymore - I'm caving. Not on the diet, not on going 30 days without a cheat day; those things aren't bothering me at all, yet. I cannot, however, go a whole month without weighing myself.

I'm going nuts! And I must confess, I've stepped on the scale a few times this week, just to make sure I was weighing less than I did on the day I started. I don't know exactly what I weigh, but I could probably guess within a pound.

So. If I'm not going to be able to make it a month without weighing myself, then maybe I can manage to just weigh myself once a week.

I'll weigh in on Monday (since this challenge ends on a Monday, it seems to make sense), and the three Mondays after that. I don't think I'll be posting my actual weight here yet - I'm not quite that brave - but I'll post how much I lose each week, as well as a total of how much I've lost during the challenge, and a total of how much I've lost overall (actually, I think I'll add that to the sidebar).

I admit it, I'm weak. Somehow, though, I don't think I'm the only scale addict out there. :)