Together We Can Prove Them Wrong

Trust

2011-07-14T17:30:00.001-05:00

It's funny how once you start trusting yourself all things are possible. Things just 'magically' start falling into place exactly how they should.

It's all in my head.

I've learned this over the past month or so. Since January I've done Weight Watchers and counted calories. While these both worked somewhat (I've lost 12 pounds) I knew what I had to do to really see the pounds come off.

I need to trust myself.

Before I got pregnant, I worked out 4-5 times a week, ate healthier/less and weighed myself once a week. Doing this I lost between 1.5-5 pounds a week, about 40 pounds in 4 months. I decided that it's time to trust myself again.

I'm done writing down every calorie I consume.
I'm done not working out.
I'm done weighing myself everyday.

I wrote up an exercise plan working out 7 days a week doing a hybrid of P90X and TurboFire. I'm eating healthier/less and I've quit my obsession with the scale.

Last week I was down 1.4 (even after a family filled, food filled weekend) and I'm looking forward to another loss this week.
:-)

Why am I fat?

2011-07-01T08:27:00.000-05:00

I saw an article online about digging deep to find the root of your weight problem. It posed four questions to be thoughtfully answered. I found it to be quite powerful for me.

---------------------

Why do I have a weight problem?

I have a weight problem because I don’t have the will power to say no. Food is a comfort. It always has been. Food tastes good and therefore makes me feel good. Growing up I never felt good enough for anyone. My parents always treated like I could never do anything right. Or maybe that’s just how I perceived it; either way, it’s how I felt. It’s how I still feel from time to time and I believe it’s a sub conscious excuse that I use for a lot of problems that I have and/or decisions that I make. Food tends to bring people together, at least in my family. Food is always used as a celebration tool. I feel closer to my family and feel more accepted and bonded with friends and family when we are eating together. I think that’s why I enjoy going out to eat so much. The food isn’t really that much better than something I could make at home and it’s much more expensive. When food is always used as a celebration tool you start to associate it with happiness; therefore, when you’re feeling sad or lonely or bored and want happiness where do you turn to? Food.

Why am I holding on to this extra weight?

Because I can hold on to the extra weight and it gives me an excuse. It gives me an excuse to not do everything I want to do. As weird as that sounds it almost acts like a comfort. I doubt myself and sometimes instead of facing my fears and self doubt, I have an excuse to not even attempt to try and possibly fail at things. It prevents me from failing when in all actuality I’m failing myself by staying this way. I can do more and become such a wonderful person but the thought that I might not get there as easily as I would like scares me. I try to please people. I try to make others happy. I try to impress others. Again, it goes back to not feeling good enough. I want people to look at me and think that I am smart and I can do anything. Staying the same is easy. Change is scary and can sometimes come with failure. I tend to like sticking to what I know and not taking risks. I usually go to the same gas station because I know exactly how the pumps work. I go to the same stores because I know how they are set up and where everything is. I don’t want to look stupid. What if I try to lose weight and I can’t? I’m afraid to look stupid.

How does the weight serve me?

It’s my own personal coat of armor. My shield. My protection. My excuse. It allows me to put up walls ‘because I’m fat’. It allows me to not take risks in fear of failing. It allows me an excuse to sit on the couch and watch tv. I can’t fail if I don’t try.

When can I move on and fully commit to action?

Now. I can’t wait any longer. Every wasted day is just that, wasted. I’m not truly living. I’m not truly loving. My laughs aren’t always sincere and my smiles often hide more than they show. This life isn’t fun and nothing tastes as good as the feeling after you see a loss on the scale.

But it's so easy!

2011-06-16T18:01:00.001-05:00

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to transform your life and become healthy? If you break it down to what it really is, it's quite simple.

Eat less, eat healthier, move your body everyday.

It's so easy!

Stop drinking soda and juices.
Load up on water.
Eat more fruits and veggies.
Limit your sweets and extra sugar.
Move your body at least 30 minutes a day.

Easy peasy!

But it's not.
It's not easy.
Or am I just making it harder than it needs to be?

Have you ever known someone that makes it look so easy? They are 30 pounds overweight, wake up one day, decide to start exercising and eating healthy and boom 3 months later the extra 30 pounds is gone forever. Or someone that loses 100 pounds in a year.

Of course these people had struggles and slip ups along the way but they picked themselves up and kept on the EASY, healthy path.

I told myself when I got to 244 pounds that I would never see the 250's again. This morning I stepped on the scale at 250.6

I've become so obsessed with food and soda that I forgot how much better the feeling of losing weight is than the taste of the food and soda.

Time for me to hop back on the easy path.

Makeover

2011-06-03T16:10:00.000-05:00

The time has come. My blog needs a makeover. BAD!

If you've followed me for a while, you know that I have a tendency to write a few blog posts and then kind of disappear for a while. Not intentionally of course, but I usually just let life get in the way.

I truly will not let that happen anymore.

I need to get back into blogging because quite frankly I've missed it and I've missed the support that I got from this wonderful community.

So, please allow me to reintroduce myself.

My name is Jennifer and I am 22 (soon to be 23) years old. I live in Madison, WI and I embarked on my healthiness journey on August 13th, 2009. Between then and the end of December 2009 I lost 40 pounds. I did this through exercise and eating less.

The day after Christmas that year I found out that I was 2 months pregnant with my first child. Not only was I blessed with a beautiful baby girl on July 31st, 2010 but I also added 55 pounds on to my body throughout my pregnancy.

Here is a picture of her a few months ago. She is my entire world and the reason why I'm still fighting the battle of the bulge. At her birth I weighed 285 pounds. I am now down to 249 and fighting for every single ounce.

Right now I am counting my calories and doing a combination of Turbo Fire (a kickboxing workout) and P90X. These workouts are AMAZING and definitely make it a little easier to work out each day. My goal is to be down between 130-140 pounds. That's a little over 100 pounds to lose.

I will soon be updating my pictures on my pictures page because they are out of date.

I'm very excited to be back and excited to pick up where I left off on encouraging each and every one of you.

:-)

17 Days

2011-05-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I embark on a new chapter in my weight loss journey. I'm going to be starting the 17 day diet with my mom.

Honestly, I don't like that it's called a diet. Technically, by definition it is a diet but when I think of the word 'diet', I think of something negative. I think of the Atkins Diet that eliminates carbs, I think of the yogurt diet where you can only have yogurt or how about the egg diet? You get my point. The 17 day diet is different. Yes there is some restrictions on food but they aren't long term restrictions.

That is what I love about this 'diet'.

The first 17 days you are only allowed to eat lean protein (egg, chicken, turkey and fish), cleansing vegetables (almost every vegetable is on this list) and low sugar fruits (apples, berries, grapefuit, oranges, peaches, pears, plums, prunes and red grapes). You are also supposed to have two servings of probiotics a day; this includes yogurt, kefir, acidophilus milk, yakult, Breakstone Live Active cottage cheese, reduced salt miso, tempeh, sauerkraut and kimchi.

As far as drinks go you are supposed to have 3 cups of green tea a day and at least 8 cups of water. I will be adding in a cup of low fat milk because I'm a milkaholic.

There are 3 cycles after the first one, each 17 days long (duh!) and each cycle introduces more and more foods back into your life so that by the time you are to Cycle 4 you can eat pretty much whatever you want.

I like that you are taught what to eat, when to eat it and still have the opportunity to make decisions that fit your body. I think of it more of a roadmap instead of a diet.

I plan to write everyday to update on my weight loss and how it's going.

Hope you are all doing well and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in cyberspace :-)

I've Been Here Before

2011-04-01T07:43:00.000-05:00

Hello is anyone out there!?

Did you all miss me? Do you even remember who I am? :-) Of course you do! Because I'm just that wonderful...right? right?!

Haha anyways I'm back and boy does it feel good! I don't know why I ever left; life happened I guess. And yes, life is still happenening but I think I've finally managed to actually figure out how to handle it all. Right now I currently have an 8 month old (WOW time flies!!), I'm working (kinda sorta), going to school and starting up two businesses (hopefully). I've been very very busy. Amongst all that I have going on right now did you notice what wasn't included?

Living Healthy
Exercising
Eating Right

I'm not going to lie. I'm struggling. Big time.

I'm currently sitting at about 257 pounds. At the beginning of January I started WW and I absolutely love it! Between January 11th and the beginning of March, I went from 264 pounds down to 250. Great right? Well, yes if I would have stuck with it. As you can see, since stopping I've gained 7 pounds back. I haven't yet mastered the art of fitting in a workout and I can eat healthy all day everyday but eventually I do get bored.

But I know I'm worth it.

I know my daughter's worth it.

I know my family is worth it.

Monday I am starting a P90X/TurboFire hybrid. I am now a Beachbody coach as well (thought it might give me some motivation haha) so if anyone is ever interested in buying any Beachbody products or become a coach with me just let me know! I can hook you up :-)

Alright, well my baby needs me, I think she's feeling neglected haha.

Until next time!

P90X/Brazilian Butt Lift: COMING SOON!

2010-10-14T10:20:00.001-05:00

Hey guys! I've finally ordered P90X and Brazilian Butt Lift and they came in the mail yesterday. Never have I been so excited over a dvd in my life! :-) I ordered a new scale and a set of resistance bands from Amazon.com and they are expected to arrive today so I'll be all set and ready to go. I've decided to wait to start until Monday for a few reasons.

1. I know I should have the, "why wait, I'm going to start today" mentality but with how crazy my schedule is right now with a newborn, school and work it's easier to just ride out the rest of this week as I usually do and focus on figuring out a new weekly schedule from here on out.

2. Sunday is my birthday (woot woot!) and I think it would be fun to restart my healthiness journey the day after my birthday. A nice fresh start if you will.

3. I'm nearly out of groceries for the week and the only time I'm really ever able to fit in grocery shopping in Sunday night.

I'm going to be doing a P90X/BBL hybrid that I still have to draw out. I'm not sure if I will be doing the scheduled workouts every day from both programs or if I'll switch off. We'll see what I come up with. I'll also take before and after measurements and photos to post on here. Quick question for everyone. I've never done measurements before so how do I make sure I'm taking the before and after measurements from the same spot? Do you just do a rough estimate?

Thanks in advance :-)

Powerful

2010-09-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

Do you ever feel powerful?

Like you can just conquer the world?

I've been pretty stressed lately. Going back to work has really made it hard to keep up with school and I've fallen slightly behind. It's nothing a little hard work can't fix but it's stressful. I wanted to call in sick today because, well I am sick and just super tired. I knew that if I called in sick I would probably lose my job so I had to just tough it out and come to work today.

For some reason as I was walking to my car I felt powerful. My heels were clicking against the ground, I had my brand new purse over my shoulder and I had my healthy breakfast smoothie in my hand. I felt good, I felt great, I felt powerful. I have no idea why but I plan to capture that feeling as I start again on this journey.

I need to have the power to overcome.

To persevere.

To know I can do it.

To know I am worth it.

To know my daughter is worth it.

I invite you to all join me in finding your inner power. Because you all are worth it too!

Day 1

2010-09-27T12:25:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

I'm happy to say that today starts day 1 of my healthiness journey part 2. If you've been following me for a while you know that I officially started my healthiness journey on August 13th of last year. Between that day and the end of December I lost exactly 40 pounds, going from 270lbs to 230lbs. Between the end of December and the end of July, I gained back 55lbs. But not without help ;-) I found out the day after Christmas that I was 7wks pregnant with my first child. She was born on July 31st, 2010. Now that she is here, my world has changed. She is now my world and I wouldn’t have it any other way but now I have to get back into the swing of things so I can be around a long time to see her and her children and maybe a few of her children's children grow up :-)

Today is a new day. Food will be on point from here on out. For breakfast I had a bowl of apples and cinnamon instant oatmeal. I plan to have an avocado-raspberry protein smoothie for breakfast so I can bring it to work but the avocadoes I bought yesterday weren't quite ready for eating this morning. Bummer. Lunch was a turkey burger with cheese and a little ketchup, a few deep fried eggplant slices (not great I know! But oh so delicious!), a bowl of corn, green beans, broccoli and spinach and a can of low sodium V8. Morning snack was some almonds and afternoon snack will be a cottage double (cottage cheese and fruit mixed up, yum!) Not sure what dinner will be yet, still have to figure that one out. Oh yea, the best part about my lunch? I only live 2miles away from work so I get to go home and enjoy my lunch with my daughter :-) How wonderful is that?

Exercise. Dun Dun Dun! I've officially decided that I will be getting AND completing P90X! I will also be adding in some walking and strength training with these cool kinetic bands I got. I'll have to show them to you guys later, they're pretty cool! Overall, I'm excited about this fresh start! I would love to be down 30lbs by Christmas. That's my official goal. Once I take my starting weight I'll let you guys know what that is. And before P90X I will take measurements to see the progress I make.

Anyways, I should skidattle!

Have a lovely Monday my dears!

P90X?

2010-09-23T19:22:00.001-05:00

So Monday ends my 8 week maternity leave and I've decided to restart my healthiness journey on that day as well. I don't really have the time to go to the gym because although my mom would love to watch Kaliya while I go to the gym I would feel guilty leaving for a couple hours when I only have a few hours with her after work before she goes to bed. So I've decided I want to find something I can do at home. Enter P90x...

I've seen this infomercial more times than I can count but have never even considered buying it. The reason I'm starting to consider it is because it looks like a very intense workout that yields impressive results.

My question to you guys...what do ya think? Have you used it or know someone that has? Opinions? Anything would be greatly appreciated :-)

Let Our Stomachs Decide

2010-09-13T18:31:00.000-05:00

I've always been a person that will eat until I'm uncomfortably full just because I think I can eat everything on my plate instead of simply listening to my stomach.

Recently for one of my science classes I read an article about an experiment that was done in Berlin. The study had two groups of people eat the same two course meal: one group in complete darkness and one in the light. After both groups ate their meals they were taken to a lighted portion of the restaurant to have dessert. The study showed that those who could see their food ate dessert that coincided with the portion size they ate. Thus, those with large portions ate less dessert than those that were served a small portion. The study also showed that those that ate in complete darkness and could not see and did not know what size portion they got, ate the same amount of dessert whether they had a large portion of food or a small one. The study proved the scientists' theory that our judgement of how hungry we are is based largely on what we know and see that we ate vs what hunger cues our stomach is sending us. If we cannot see how much we ate it's hard for us to gauge how hungry we are.

I know I'm guilty of this. Many times I've said something to the affect of "I only ate half my burger, I definitely have room for dessert" or "I ate my burger and my fries, theres no way I could fit dessert too". Well, what if half of a burger was enough to keep me full and content or what if after a burger and fries I was still hungry. Just because I saw that I ate a certain amount of food doesn't mean a thing in terms of my hunger. My stomach is the only thing that can truly tell me 100% whether or not I'm hungry but honestly I often don't have the 'patience' to wait the 20 or so minutes they say it takes for your stomach to let your brain know it's full.

I honestly believe that this is part of the reason I am overweight. I'm sure there are many others that can say the same thing. I'm restarting my healthiness journey now and I've decided to make a promise to myself to actually listen to my stomach. It's such a wonderful and powerful tool that we have so why not let it do what it was made to do.

Is anyone with me?

Introducing Kaliya Aria Kleckley!

2010-09-10T16:51:00.000-05:00

Hellooooo Blogger world! Hope you are all doing well! I'm just checking in to introduce you all to my lovely daughter Kaliya Aria Kleckley. She was born on July 31st, 2010 at 9:02pm. Ironically enough she was born only a day after my last post where I explained that I was having a c-section on the 10th of August. Well, she decided it was time to make her debut earlier. My water broke around noon on Saturday July 31st and because she was still breech they went ahead with the c-section plans. Everything went really well and my recovery has been quite good.

I was off all pain meds only 2 weeks after I had her and was driving around that time as well. I just had my 6 week check-up and the doctor said everything looks good so I've been cleared to start exercising again! I've lost 35 of the 55 pounds that I gained during the pregnancy, so my first goal is to focus on those last 20 pounds. Woo hoo! I never thought I'd actually be excited to start exercising again haha but I've been craving it for the longest! And not just walking or biking, I can't wait to start lifting weights again so I can reshape this lovely body I have. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things as far as planning out my meals and what exercise will be but I expect to start up full force within the next week or so.

Things have been quite crazy as you could imagine. I have a 6wk old baby, working full time and going to school part time. Wowza, I never thought I could juggle it all but it's actually not that bad. So once I get back into the swing of things you guys will be seeing a lot more of me and you're going to like it ;-) I'll leave you with some pictures of my baby...Enjoy!

It's Been A Looooong Time

2010-07-30T12:26:00.000-05:00

Hey guys! It's been about 2 months since I've posted, EEK! Thanks to those of you that still follow me, I see that I've lost a few followers and I don't really blame people lol.

Things are going okay here. I am about 37 1/2 weeks and I'm getting very excited to meet my little princess. I'm not sure if I updated you guys or not but we found out we're having a little girl! :-) Here name is going to be Kaliya (kuh-lee-uh) and the middle name will be Aria (are-e-uh). The first name we chose just because it's a name we both love and we chose Aria for a middle name because it means 'song or music' in Italian and I'm Italian and my boyfriend is working hard to make a name for himself in the music industry so we thought it fit perfectly. :-) We wanted at least one part of her name to mean something. Here are a couple pictures we got of her from a 3D ultrasound we did about 6wks ago.

A very happy baby :-)

With her arm over her head, hiding

Sucking on her thumb, maybe?

I'm totally in love with her already and can't wait to meet her. We have a c-section scheduled for August 10th because this little stinker is still breech, which means she is head up, feet down. I'm currently on bedrest, however, because my blood pressure is high and won't go down. I have to meet with my doctor again on Monday and if my blood pressure is still high they will bump up the c-section to next week. I'm very excited! But very nervous at the same time. Hopefully everything will go well and the next time I post, I may have some pictures of my new love :-) It seems like you are all doing well, as I still read all of your posts daily.

Can't wait to be back in the action with you all!

New Friends?

2010-05-17T16:26:00.001-05:00

Thanks everyone for your kind words. I love having the blogging community to fall back on for constant support. You guys are awesome :-)

Anyways, tomorrow I am 27wks pregnant. That means I will be starting my third trimester. How crazy is that?! Time is absolutely flying. I will post a picture soon of my growing belly. I got my blood glucose results and everything came back normal so no gestational diabetes for me. Woo hoo! I am slightly anemic though so I have to start taking an iron supplement daily. I'm hoping this might help with my constant hunger problem. We'll see.

I also wanted to know if anyone had any weightloss/fitness blogs that they enjoy reading that you think I might enjoy as well. I'm looking to add some blogs to my reader for more inspiration. If you have any suggestions that would be great!

Hope you are all having a wonderful Monday!

Pregnancy Vent

2010-05-16T21:29:00.001-05:00

I feel the need to vent and since this is my blog I guess I have the right to do it here.

Lately all these pregnancy hormones have really been getting to me. I'm happy one minute and the next minute I'm bawling for no reason. The worst part is that it's so hard to make yourself stop when there's really no reason that you started. Today I went for a drive to clear my head and all it really did was make me think about every emotion I'm feeling.

Sometimes I feel lonely. I don't know why because I live with 4 other people, I have great friends at work and my weekends usually consist of spending a lot of time with my friends. I think a lot of it right now has to do with the fact that I'm pregnant and I only get to see my boyfriend once a week. It's hard having a bond like a child and wanting to share every moment of my pregnancy with him and I can't. And on top of that he is so busy working right now to save for the baby that it's really hard to talk to him a lot on the days we aren't together.

Another thing that has just been getting to me a lot is not feeling needed. A lot of things in my past have caused me to lose a lot of my ability to trust. I have a hard time trusting that people aren't going to just up and leave me especially when times get hard. I can't wait until my daughter is born because I know that she will need me and love me just as much as I love her.

Right now I'm just taking it day by day. My life is very good and i don't want this to seem like a woe me post I just needed to get some things off of my chest.

Thanks for listening or reading I should say. Hope you guys all had a great weekend. I think I need to get some rest.

Poached Eggs?

2010-05-14T22:19:00.001-05:00

Hey guys! Happy super duper Friday!! I love that I can lay in bed and blog. How fun =)

Anyways I was wondering if anyone has had poached eggs before. Are they any good? Are they worth the extra cook time? I'm trying to find some creative meals that might help me stay fuller longer and I was thinking maybe poached eggs and a bowl of fruit for breakfast.

What do you guys think? Any other suggestions for some good breakfast foods?

Have a wonderful weekend!! I'm counting down the days until I can rejoin the weight loss/fitness world =)

Testing 123...

2010-05-13T18:40:00.001-05:00

Hey guys! I bought myself an iPhone! Very excited about that especially since it will be much easier for me to post and put comments on all of your guys' blogs. Woo hoo! Anyways this is just a post to make sure the app I got works lol

Hope you are all having a wonderful day, tomorrows Friday!!

Wow Really?

2010-05-08T14:01:00.000-05:00

Wow, I can't belive I haven't posted since March. Time sure flies!! I decided since I'm not doing anything on this gloomy Saturday that I'll take some time to update my blog and all of you guys on what's been going on. I'm updating my 'weight' column on the side of my blog because I have gained weight. I know that it's obviously because of my pregnancy but that doesn't mean I won't have to lose it again once the baby comes so I'm including it in that column. I will also take some photos of my blossoming belly for you all to see!

I will be 26 weeks pregnant on Tuesday and I can't belive that my little peanut will be here in a little over 3 months! It's craaaaazy to think about. We found out that we're having a little girl! :-) We're both very excited about that even though my boyfriend wanted a boy at first. Of course he is fine with either one as long as she's healthy. The name we have picked out is Kaliya (kuh-lee-uh) but that could change by August.

As crazy as it sounds I'm really really ready to get back into exercising. I walk on a daily basis and we're doing a wellness challenge at work to see how many steps you can walk daily. My average so far is about 6500 steps. Although walking is a great way to exercise, especially for me right now, I really want to get back in the gym and lift weights and bike hard intervals on the exercise bike. I also have been reading about people who do "stair climbing". Basically they have events around the country similar to 5K's and half marathons and triathalons except instead of running or walking you climb flights of stairs in tall buildings. I don't know why but something about this really intrigues me. Maybe because I know it's such a tough thing to do and I'm ready for a good challenge to get me into shape. Anyways, I'm excited to have this baby and start exercising again.

I hope you are all doing wonderful! And Happy Mother's Day (tomorrow) to all the mothers out there :-)

Feed Me!

2010-03-04T17:45:00.001-06:00

Hey guys! How goes it? Things are good here, same old same old.

I've been finding lately (basically since I got pregnant) that I am starving ALL the time! I know it's because I'm pregnant but jeez I'm really getting sick of it. They say when you're pregnant to only eat 200 extra calories a day but I'm sorry I think I need more than that. I don't know maybe I'm not eating enough? Here's what my current eating looks like:

6am-1 piece of toast with Smart Balance spray "butter"
9am-1/2 PB & Apple Butter sandwich, Clementine
11:15am-Turkey, Boca Burger or Chicken Breast, grapes, V8, Clementine, small salad with just lettuce and tomatoes topped with low fat bleu cheese dressing
1:30pm-1/2 PB & Apple Butter sandwich, apple sauce
2:30 pm-1/2 PB & Apple Butter sandwich
After 3:30 when I get home I snack and snack and snack until I feel full. Usually on cheese and ice cream :-) Then at about 6 I eat dinner.

I think I'm going to try to get heartier snacks for the afternoon and start eating more often. I'm also making a breakfast casserole for the morning. Here's what I'm going to try to make my eating plan look like.

6am-toast, hard boiled egg white
8:30am-breakfast casserole, fruit
11am-lunch
1pm-snack
3pm-snack
6pm-dinner

I'm trying unsalted pretzels dipped in low sodium refried beans, mashed potatoes and a brown rice/corn/salsa/avocado concoction for afternoon snacks. Do you guys have any other suggestions for some snacks that might work? I looked online for ideas and a lot of people said popcorn (doesn't keep me full, too much salt), carrots in hummus (yuck and yuck), fruit and pb (I have a lot of fruit already, sick of pb), yogurt (doesn't keep me full), cottage cheese with fruit (LOVE this but holy moly does it have a lot of salt in it.) Can you guys think of anything else that might work? Sorry I know I'm being picky!

Have a wonderful Thursday!

Alive!

2010-03-02T16:47:00.002-06:00

I'm alive!! No, really I am! Sorry I haven't been blogging regularly or even semi-regularly. I am still reading your blogs via the wonderful Google reader everyday but of course I haven't been commenting much. Again, sorry! This will get better I promise!

Things have been kind of nutty in my life. I'm still pregnant (woo hoo!) As of today I am 16 weeks along. I have another appointment in 2 weeks and then another 2 weeks after that I have my 20wk ultrasound and I'll find out what I'm having!! Crazy! I can't believe the time is flying by so quickly. I am still pretty sick. It seems to be easing up a bit, I'm not throwing up everyday more like every other ;-) I still have lots of food aversions like Subway. Oh how I miss you Subway! But currently even looking at the sign makes me gag. TMI? Sorry! Also many vegetables and pasta look pretty gross, so needless to say I am currently getting most of my veggie servings from the lovely V8 and salad. Basically lettuce and tomatoes are the only veggies I can stand the sight of. Oh and corn but umm is corn a vegetable? I heard it was a "starch". Anywho I'm trying to keep my eating just as good as it was before I got pregnant mostly for the health of the baby but also because I'm concerned about my blood pressure. It was slightly elevated before I got pregnant and I know if it gets too high it can be dangerous to both me and the baby. Right now it's pretty good. This week I'm finally finding enough energy to start exercising so I will either be walking or biking 1hr everyday starting tonight! Fun fun :-) Too bad I couldn't just use this pregnancy to vedge out and be lazy huh? Such is life..

School is going okay. Pretty crazy but I'm hanging in there. The end :-)

A new reader of mine (hey new reader!!) posted a question asking how I feel about being pregnant and gaining back some of the weight I lost. Do I feel discouraged? Well, that's a very good question. Luckily enough I have only gained about 3 pounds so far but we'll see what the scale says at my next doctor's appointment ;-) At first I was a little discouraged because I've only lost 40 pounds so far and some women have been known to gain that much during pregnancy so honestly I knew it would be possible for me to as well. Aaand ironically enough my due date is only 4 days after what would have been my 1 year anniversary on this healthiness journey. But after thinking about it and getting used to the idea of being pregnant, my outlook on it has changed. I know many people who aren't able to have children of their own so honestly I feel blessed that I am. Am I going to gain some of my weight back? Yes, I am. But just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I'll revert back to how I used to eat and how lazy I used to be; if anything I'm eating healthier than I did before. To me this journey has been about getting healthy and yes, losing weight has been nice but my health is more important than what the scale says. If me and my baby are healthy come August then that's all that matters to me. I also look at this as kind of a challenge. I can't wait to knock people's socks off when I get into the best shape of my life AFTER my baby is born. Everyone knows the dreaded "have a baby, ruin your body" issue but for me it'll be the exact opposite. I can't wait to get down to my goal wait within the first year of my baby's life. I can't wait to take walks with my baby in it's stroller and attach a carrier to the back of a bike. I can't wait to join walking clubs with other mom's in the area and take that opportunity to meet new people. And most of all I can't wait to teach my child how to be healthy so that they don't have to go through a "healthiness journey". It will just be part of their life.

Sorry it was so lengthy but I hope it answered your question :-)

It's About Time

2010-01-22T06:37:00.002-06:00

So. I suppose I start informing you guys about what's going on in my life huh? Well, first I'd like to apologize for being on hiatus for so long. How long has it been? Like 2 months? I don't know but to all my loyal readers I apologize.

Anyways. Around the last time I posted I was feeling blah and tired. I had no energy to go to the gym and when I did I could barely make it through a workout. My eating was getting a little off balance as well. I had no desire to eat anything. I felt bloated and gross and absolutely nothing, healthy or unhealthy, seemed appealing. I ended up gaining about 2 pounds back and I knew that I had to get back on track but I was feeling so shitty I really didn't care about going to the gym or eating healthy.

Christmas was great, very busy but absolutely wonderful. I ate okay, probably more than I should have but I didn't overstuff myself. The day after Christmas I was putting some Christmas presents together and rearranging my room. My friend Tyler, Erin, my brother and I were going to go to the mall so I decided after an hour of procrastinating that I should probably start getting ready. I headed to the bathroom, got my makeup out and suddenly felt sick. I threw up everything I had eaten that morning. (Luckily it wasn't much) That night I decided to take a pregnancy test and found out that I was 7 weeks pregnant!

Honestly, I was speechless. I still kind of am. My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years but a pregnancy was the furthest thing from our minds. Luckily he is very excited and very supportive. I am now finishing up my 10th week and I had my first doctor's appointment last Tuesday. Everything went well, I've actually lost about 3 pounds since I last weighed myself which surprised me considering the way I've been eating. They tried to hear the heartbeat but they were unable to. My doctor didn't seem too concerned as she said most people don't hear it at 10 weeks but they try anyways. We have another appointment this coming up Tuesday to try again. If they still can't hear it they will schedule an ultrasound.

This pregnancy has basically kicked the shit out of me. I'm nauseous 24/7, I throw up every morning and come 6 o'clock I'm ready for bed. I've been eating horribly as you can imagine but I'm trying to slowly reel it in. I also have not been working out at all, basically because I'm so tired I have no energy to do anything.

I was hesitant to tell you all the big news which is why I waited so long. Basically I wanted to wait until I was out of the first trimester before I said anything just incase I had a miscarriage but I decided that I would rather have a support system than not if something like that were to happen. Positive thoughts :-)

Aaaand just so you all know I have been keeping up with you guys and I'm sorry I haven't been commenting!! Can I use being exhausted as an excuse again?! Please? Anyways you guys are doing wonderfully, all of you! Keep up the great work :-)

Medium Me

2009-12-09T16:18:00.000-06:00

So I feel the need to inform you all that as I'm writing this I'm sitting at my kitchen table in a sweatshirt, pj pants and a blanket. Why am I not at work you ask? Oh, ya know because we got 18 inches of snow last night! We were under a blizzard watch and the governor called a state of emergency for the entire state of Wisconsin. Holy guacamole you should see the snow! I work for a company that is contracted with the State of Wisconsin so the only way we get snow days is if the state closes down. Well, in 30 years they've only closed once and today makes it twice. Maybe that'll give you a better idea of how crazy it is out there!

My mom, my brother and I went out earlier to clear out the end of our driveway from what the snowplow lovingly pushed there. It took us 1hr 30min and boy oh boy was it quite the workout.

We also went outside last night in our tshirts, pants and socks as it was beginning to snow and made snow angels. We do it every year in honor of our "snow angels": my mom's friend Dave that died from cancer about 4 years ago in January and my mom's cousin Terry that also died from cancer about 3 years ago in November. It's so much fun to just run out there, make a snow angel and then run inside quick before we catch pneumonia haha. It's a great tradition we started to make sure that we remember them always and to let them know that they're always in our hearts. RIP DH, TG we miss you both!!

A picture from last year that we did.

So back track to Saturday (I know it was quite awhile ago!!) my step-mom, my dad, my brother and I went out to dinner at Qdoba and then to see "The Blind Side". I decided that I wanted to look nice so I tried on a dress shirt that my grandma got me last year for my birthday that I could only (barely) wear once because I was too big for it. And guess what? It fit! Not only did it fit but it fit really well! It felt so amazing :-)

And now if you rewind a little, not as far back, to Monday, I went shopping for Christmas with my Grandma. It's a tradition every year for her to take us shopping for Christmas since she wants to know that we will like what she gets us. We almost always go to Kohl's to get some clothes. I picked out two tops that are absolutely gorgeous. Here are pictures from the Kohl's website of them:

I decided that I wanted to buy the shirts a little on the small side so that by the time January/February comes around they will fit perfectly. Well, I decided to grab mediums in both and try them on just to make sure that I liked how they would look once I could fit into them. I was very suprised that they were both only "slightly" too small. Me fit into a medium shirt? Serious? How crazy is that?! I'm so excited to be able to slip these on and wear them out knowing that I, formerly weighing in at 270 pounds am wearing a medium shirt. :-) My sweet Grandma, bless her heart, asked me probably 3 or 4 times if I was sure that a medium would fit. I just smiled and nodded knowing that she must think I'm absolutely nuts.

I hope you all are staying warm!! I know I am :-)

Snow! Pizza!

2009-12-04T21:46:00.000-06:00

Happy happy Friday!! Gosh I am sooo happy to finally see Friday, especially since we got our first official snowfall yesterday. It makes me want to go curl up on the couch and laze around but I am here at work instead. Poo.

I am the type of person that HATES snow, with a passion. Not because of the actual snow per se, more because of how it affects roads and driving. I'm a big driver. I'm always driving and quite frankly I love driving. My gym is 20 minutes away, my boyfriend is an hour away the mall is 15 minutes away etc etc. (luckily work is only 5 minutes away!) Hopefully this winter won't be as horrible as last winter but I guess we'll see. Since I live in Wisconsin and I'm stuck here for at least another year (then hopefully California!) I decided that maybe this year should be the year I try to kinda sorta enjoy the snow. Crazy I know! That is why I'm going to try to get into snowshoeing. I figure that maybe if I can get in some good exercise outside during the winter it'll be more enjoyable to have snow around. We shall see, we shall see.

Last night I made a pizza! Now don't freak out, this was a healthy pizza! Yes, there is such a thing :-) Let me walk you through the wonderful steps.

I used a Flatout Flatbread Light Italian Herb crust. These things are sooo good, if you haven't tried them please do you will not be disappointed!

Here are my toppings. A nice Hunt's all natural pizza sauce with no salt added which is great because I believe that one serving of the sauce only about 20mg of sodium. Score! Some Pennsylvania Dutchman canned mushrooms. Also with low sodium! And some Black Pearls canned black olives. Once again, low sodium. I'm a big low sodium person. If I can get the same item with half or more less sodium, why not? I don't need all that extra salt especially since I still have slightly elevated blood pressure.

On top of everything else I put on half Sargento reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese and half Crystal Farms reduced fat mozzarella cheese.

Here I started to add the sauce. I was making one for my mom too and decided to have a little fun.

Here are the pizzas all cooked up! The "meat" on there is a cut up vegan Boca patty. I used one patty for both of our pizzas and it added great flavor. I cooked these on a cookie sheet for about 10 minutes at 325*.

If I calculated correctly, this whole pizza came out to about 350 calories. Sweet! Aaand it was delicious! Like honestly I don't have to eat regular pizza again now that I've done this. I was very happy that I made the last minute decision to do that last night. This will definitely be a regular on the menu!

I'm going to try to push myself to do the Pilates classes tomorrow morning and Sunday morning at the gym. I'm still a little nervous but I just need to suck it up and do it and everything will be a-ok.

I hope you all have a fun and safe weekend! And stay warm to everyone running the 5k tomorrow!!

Apparently My Body Could Care Less...

2009-12-03T16:56:00.001-06:00

...that I haven't worked out for a week because I lost 4.6 pounds this week. The scale read 229.2 pounds. That's great, that’s wonderful, I met my goal for Christmas (I'll be re-doing that goal shortly) and I have officially lost 40 pounds in 4 months but I have mixed feelings about it. Call me crazy but I do. I am the type of person that over thinks EVERYTHING. So I will share my thought process with you. Ready?

Here goes nothing, hope I don't gain too much.

Wait that says 229.2. The scale is obviously broken, let's try that again.

Nope still says 229.2. Hmm.

Well now I have to redo my Christmas goal.

Woo hoo!

Wait, I didn't do anything this past week.

Can I really lose 4.6 pounds by doing nothing?

Maybe my body just needed to be caught off guard.

Caught off guard? You're not an athlete, you work out 4 times a week, it wouldn't shake it up that much. Would it?

I hope that was all fat and not muscle.

Do I even have 4.6 pounds of muscle on my body?

I should probably start reading more.

There is a glimpse into the wonderful head of mine. Fun isn't it? That was all within about a minute of seeing that number. I'm obviously new to this whole weight loss thing so some of you more experienced peeps can chime in if you want. Is it possible that by only working out twice in two weeks that I lost some muscle? Is it possible that I lost 4.6 pounds of muscle or do you think some of that was fat? Could it be that my body is just responding well to the food I'm eating and the fact that even though I didn't work out much I did work out? I have at least 70 more pounds to lose so I know that maybe it's just fat that was ready to come off? Ahh, I hate when I do this to myself haha.

Anyways any advice would be greatly appreciated :-)

And I hope you all are well on your way to healthy happy lifestyles.

P.S - Does anyone know anything about snowshoeing? I would love to try it and know nearly nothing about it.

Maybe I Should Gain...

2009-12-01T22:13:00.001-06:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was great. My family traveled about 1hr 45 minutes south of here to Elgin, IL for my mom's side of the family's celebration. I ate pretty darn well. I had a little bit of turkey, a lot of salad and fruit, a little bit of this amazing corn casserole thingy and a small piece of pumpkin pie. When we got home I snacked on a cookie and 2 pieces of this taco roll up thingy my mom makes. I made sure to fill up on lots of water (about 3L) and overall I think I did pretty darn good.

Food has always been the easy part for me. If I try hard enough I can easily eat healthy, eat less and stay away from junk. It's the exercise that kicks my butt and boy oh boy has it been whopping me lately.

The last time I worked out was exactly a week ago today. And I'm angry. Absolutely infuriated with myself. I had the chance to go Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night and last night but did I? No, I didn't. Why didn't I go? I don't know, throw out an excuse I'm sure I've used it. The worst part is that I know better than that. I know that I will not get results even close to what I want by exercising once a week or even twice or three times a week. My body needs exercise 4-6 times a week for me to make any progress.

Maybe I will gain this week. Maybe I should gain. Maybe it would do me some good. Snap me back into reality. Maybe it's about time I did what I need to do. Exercise is not an option, so why do I act like it is?

I know we all struggle and that I will have many more struggles before I've even made a dent in my journey. I guess I need to just get up, brush myself off and move forward. That's the only way I can go, right?

Is It Worth It?

2009-11-30T17:06:00.000-06:00

Hello all, this post has nothing really to do with my weight loss or anything of the sort it's just something I felt the need to write about. I will be back to regular blogging tomorrow :-)

I found out today that a co-worker of mine passed away last night from lung cancer. I wasn't close to this co-worker but I saw her around a lot and I knew who she was. Two of her daughters also work where I do. One is in her late 20's and the other is 16.

For some reason I was very affected when I heard the news of her passing. I think it was because she worked up until last Friday, 2 days before she died. I'm sure she had some idea that her time here was getting shorter and shorter but I'm guessing she had no idea that Sunday would be her last day to see her daughters or her grandchildren. She had no idea that Friday would be the last time she was at work.

I got irritated with my boyfriend earlier because he has a habit of rescheduling the nights that we see each other. I thought about how I was feeling and asked myself, "is it worth it"?

You never know what will happen. You never know when the last time will be that you hug a parent or close friend. I don't mean to sound morbid but it's the truth.

No one is perfect. I am not and neither are you. There will be plenty of times in my life that I will fight with someone or have an argument. I will say things I don't mean and apologize more than I should have to. You will do that same.

From now on I am going to do my best to pick my battles. Decide what is worth fighting over and what is not. I will do my best to "agree to disagree" without hurting the feelings of someone I love.

I ask you to do the same.

I care about each and every one of you.

I don't want any of you or me to have any regrets when the inevitable happens and we lose a loved one.

Ask yourself if it's worth it. If you really should be angry about whatever you're angry about or if it would just be easier to let it go. I know that for me 9 times out of 10 it's not worth it.

I don't tell my loved ones enough that I love them, that I care deeply about them and that I appreciate everything, big and small, that they do.

Eloise,

I hope you are watching over your daughters and giving them some comfort in this terribly hard time in their lives. They love you dearly and so do many other people. You will be missed, I hope you are resting in peace.

Turkey Eve

2009-11-25T16:25:00.002-06:00

Happy Turkey Eve!! I am so excited to spend a lot of quality time with my family tomorrow and maybe be a crazy person and go shopping Friday? Haha, we'll see.

Yesterday was a really good day. Did anyone see Biggest Loser? I won't give anything away in case you didn't but I was sad to see the person that went home go home. They were one of my favorites but oh well I guess everyone has to go home at some point and that person looks awesome now! I'm soo excited to see the "Where Are They Now" special episode tonight! I hope the person that Bob goes and talks to is Eric because I heard he gained all his weight back and I always loved him so I'd like to see him try again and succeed this time.

Food was pretty normal yesterday. More Boca burgers! Haha. My dad made chili for dinner which was suuuper good! I had a little fettuccini alfredo for breakfast with grapes and a glass of milk. I think the fettuccini was a bad idea, I felt horrible after eating it. It's crazy how my body reacts to food like that, now that I don't eat it anymore. Won't do that again any time soon. I have to go cash my check at lunch so I'm going to swing by Subway on my way back to work.

I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike at my dads and then headed to the gym after BL. It was soooo nice to be back! It felt like "going home" in a way which makes me feel good. I love it there, I'm comfortable there and I love the people there, especially the staff. That's probably part of the reason I've been successful in the 3 1/2 months I've belonged to that gym. Last night the focus was abs with light bicep/back and inner/outer thighs.

I weighed in last night at 233.8 pounds. That's a .4 pound loss. I'll take it! =) I didn't work out at all last week and still lost almost a half of a pound. The scale is moving in the right direction and I'm excited to kick my own butt next week and see a great number! I can definitely see my Christmas goal of 230 in plain sight. That would be 40 pounds lost! I'm very excited for that day, I've never lost more than 20 pounds before when I was trying to lose weight. To lose twice that will be amazing and when I get to the 50 pound mark I think this will all start to become real. I still feel like I'm slightly in a daze surrounding this whole weight loss thing. I've lost 36 pounds but I don't think it has completely sunk in yet. I don’t think I truly realize yet that one day soon I will be at my goal weight. In less than 35 pounds I will be out of the 200's. Forever. I'm very excited about all of that =)

I'm in the process of making an appointment for a private Pilates lesson at my gym. It costs $60/hr so I will probably only do this one lesson but I felt like I wanted to have more one on one time before I did a group class. I'm thinking of doing it on Monday and scheduling it right before the intro to cycling class starts so that I can do the palates and then go straight to that class. We'll see how I feel come Monday. I'm still nervous about doing a group class alone. Have you guys ever taken a group exercise class alone? Were you nervous about it?

Anyways I hope you all have a FUN and SAFE Thanksgiving!! Remember to just relax and enjoy yourself. Don't let your food thoughts consume you. Make smart choices and be CONFIDENT in those choices. We will all be just fine =)

Wall of America

2009-11-24T16:50:00.000-06:00

Are you surprised that it's been so long since I've posted? No? Me neither. I know I say that ALL THE TIME but I WILL start posting more. Promise.

I'll try to catch you up on what's been going on this past week but I think I'll start with Friday because that's when the fun started.

Friday was my friend Kim's 21st birthday party. We started out with dinner at P.F Chang's. I got 4 steamed pork dumplings (also known as pot stickers) and water to drink. I was very proud of myself because let me tell you, Chinese food is a BIG weakness of mine. Everyone else got some sort of fried rice and one person got sweet and sour chicken which is my FAVORITE. It was hard to resist but I was glad I did =) After dinner we headed back to her apartment for drinks, dancing and girl talk. I didn’t have any drinks because it was too many empty calories that I wasn't in the mood to work off. I didn’t get home until 11pm so needless to say, I did not make it to the gym.

Saturday, my fun, crazy weekend started. I began the day with an hour long "Introduction to Pilates" class. It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to start taking mat classes regularly. After class I zoomed home and made myself a late breakfast/lunch. I had a Boca burger topped with fat free shredded cheddar cheese. On the side I had a bowl of steamed green beans, asparagus and mushrooms and a handful of grapes. I also had a glass of 1% milk to drink. At about 2:30 my brother, his friend Tyler and I headed to Winona, Minnesota to visit my brother's girlfriend at college. We got there at about 5 and headed to a restaurant called Bubs (pronounced boobs oddly enough haha). I got the Hawaiian Chicken Sandwich with a side salad. I ate the whole sandwich (the menu said the chicken breast was about 5oz) without the bun. The sandwich was topped with guacamole and a pineapple slice and was absolutely divine! I drizzled a little bleu cheese dressing on the side salad and ate all of that as well. I had water to drink of course. After dinner we headed back to her dorm for about an hour then said our goodbye's and headed about 1hr 30min north the Red Wing to spend the night in a hotel.

Sunday morning we woke up and got a free breakfast at the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised with the food that they had there. I ended up getting a low fat blueberry yogurt, 1/4 bagel topped with a little butter and honey, 2 hard boiled eggs and a carton of 1% milk. It was very satisfying and filling. After breakfast we said goodbye to Tyler, he headed home and my brother and I headed an hour north to Minneapolis for the VIKING GAME!!! We were sooo excited to go to this game. I've been to 2 games before and he's been to 1 but this one was special because we had 4th ROW TICKETS on the 35 YD LINE!! It was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the players! Here are a few pictures that I got during the game of the players.

Jared Allen (my new boyfriend haha) During The National Anthem

The Quarterbacks Talking

Our Amazing Defensive Line, "The Wall of America"

Vikings Score!!

Brett Favre Looking At Us, He Kept Waving To Our Section

And to make things better, the Vikings won of course! =)

After the game we headed to the Mall of America for a bit before heading home. We didn't end up getting home until about 11pm so, again, no work out. Poo. I must say, any of you that live in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, I commend you. I could not handle driving on the highway there everyday, it's nuts! I'm used to driving in Madison and Milwaukee which are pretty decent size cities but there were so many highways criss crossing and exits here and there my head was spinning haha. It was fun though despite the crazy traffic.

Yesterday was back to normal with food but still…no exercise. I went to visit my boyfriend last night and didn't get home until 11pm. Hmm seems to be a pattern this past week.

Tonight will be my first and only night exercising since my last weigh in. Because of that I think I might see a gain on the scale. I ate fine and I did do that Pilates class on Saturday but only one day of exercising won't help me lose weight. I guess sometimes life throws crazy times at you and you just have to deal with it and move on. If I see a gain, I won't lie, I will be disappointed; however, it's expected and I know I can only improve next week. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. Not only because I get to spend time with family but so I can prove to myself and everyone else that I can make it through without throwing my new lifestyle off track.

It's just another day, so what's all the fuss about? I will eat normal, get in a workout and continue on as I have. It's one day out of 365. Bring it on Thanksgiving, bring it on.

Shocked, Speechless and On Top of The World

2009-11-18T17:24:00.001-06:00

So, first things first I NEED to start blogging more. I know I say this a lot but I really do. I love when people blog daily and I need to start doing it as well. Honestly, I know it may sound crazy but I look forward to my Google reader telling me I have a new post waiting to be read. It's one of the many highlights of my day. :-)

Now with that said, I realized last night that I never updated my weight loss from last week, November 10th. Oops! Sorry. Well, last week I weighed in at 238.8. That was a 1.5 pound loss for the week and I was officially under 240. Yippee! I was very happy with that and decided that if I could keep up a 1.5 pound loss per week until the end of the year I would be a very happy camper.

Fast forward to last night, another weigh in. I don’t know about all of you but stepping on the scale is the scariest thing for me. I always take a deep breath and just do it. In the 5 seconds that it takes for the number to pop up every decision, every bite of food, every ounce of energy I put into exercise comes into my head. Did I eat okay, did I exercise enough, did those little pieces of chocolate affect what I'm about to see? In my head I told myself I would be happy with at least 237.3 because that would be right on target with the 1.5 pound loss per week. Well, last night the number finally popped up after what seemed to be years of waiting (haha) and it said 234.2. Um, what?! Wait, does that say 234? I stepped off and on probably 4 times before I believed it. I lost 4.6 pounds this week! And to make things better I passed my Christmas goal weight! I think that is why I was so shocked. I wasn't expecting to see that number for at least another 2 weeks. My goal for Christmas was 235 and I just passed that. Woo hoo! After seeing that I decided that I was going to be ambitious and dropped my goal to 230. I think in the 5 weeks until Christmas that I can squeeze out another 4.2 pounds. I don’t think it will be easy but I think I can do it.

I realized yesterday how reserved I used to be about getting excited for something. I would never get excited about weight loss or anything like that because I always knew eventually I would trip, fall and land back where I started. I think that mentality is part of the reason I would trip. It's fun to get excited about success. It's fun to know that I will never see 235 again. It is fun to know that I am less than 35 pounds away from onederland. And if for some reason I do slip and fall and have a gain next week or the week after or 5 months down the road its not a tragedy. I will be okay, it's not the end of the world.

I want to say thank you to all of you. Everyone's blogs that I read, everyone that leaves comments, everyone that reads my blog: thank you. I know I don’t blog as often as I should and I may not be as interesting as the next person but without you I would not have made it this far. It's true that a support system is soo important. I have great fans in my friends and family but it's nice to constantly be surrounded by people who are going through the same exact thing. You are all my heroes.

:-)

Lifelong Goal

2009-11-13T17:13:00.001-06:00

Happy Friday! I know I'm very happy to see the weekend, how about you?

I know I've struggled with my weight my entire life. I've always been bigger than all my friends but I was also always taller. In 5th grade I was already 5'8". I was basically a gentle giant until the rest of my friends caught up. Some never did haha. Looking back I didn't think that my weight really ever crossed my mind when I was younger.

But I was wrong.

I found an old journal I used to write in when I was younger and read a little bit of it. I found a passage from the month before my mom and step-dad got married. My goal was to get down to 175 pounds from the 190's before their wedding.

That was 9 years ago, I was twelve years old.

I've always been a person that could say I really don't know what it's like to be thin because I never have been. Until reading that, I never realized how true it was.

I have never been thin.

I don’t know what it's like.

I don’t know what it feels like.

But I will.

Reading that passage lit a fire inside of me. I've read a lot of blogs lately about having fear. Fear of reaching a goal, fear of the unknown. I too have that fear. I have that fear because I've never been thin. It's a fear of the unknown but it's also a fear of failing. Inside I ask myself, if I have never been able to control my weight what makes me think I can do it now? What makes me think I can succeed? What makes me think this time will be different?

I don't think I can do it now.

I don't think I will succeed this time.

I don’t think this time will be different.

I KNOW it.

Why?

Because I have the tools to succeed. I have the knowledge to succeed. I have the drive to succeed. And as I'm writing this, I just happened to look at the calendar and see the date. Yes, it's Friday the 13th. The 13th of November. Exactly 3 months since I started on this journey. Do you know how long I lasted last time I tried this? 2 months. 2 months and 20 pounds.

Now, it has been 3 months, 30 pounds and I'm still loving every second of it.

This time, change will happen. It has been my lifelong goal, literally, to lose weight and be healthy. It's about time I take my life back.

I ::Heart::: Biggest Loser

2009-11-10T16:43:00.001-06:00

Happy Tuesday! Two post in a row?! Crazy, I know! (a little Dr. Seuss action for you guys)

This post will probably be just as boring as yesterday. Bear with me my life will get more exciting soon…

I hope :-)

Yesterday's food was good. I had veggie burgers for both breakfast and lunch, lots of grapes, V8 etc. Basically the same old same old food. One new thing I am obsessed with though is my first afternoon snack. I take 3 Breton whole wheat crackers, spread 1 wedge of garlic and onion laughing cow cheese on them (split the wedge between the 3 crackers not 1 wedge per cracker) and top it with salsa. Yummmmmmy! I also have a hard boiled egg white on the side for a little belly filling power. Last night I cooked up some chicken so that will be lunch for the rest of the week.

My leg was not in any kind of shape to be doing much of anything last night so I switched it up and made last night an arms night with some light upper ab/oblique/back work. I followed that with 1 hr of intervals on the stationary bike. The bike felt wonderful for my leg and I think it REALLY loosened it up because today my leg feels great. Still a little sore but good enough to attempt a legs night tonight. We'll see how it goes!

I'm very excited for Biggest Loser tonight! Anyone else? But 2 people are going home?! I hate having less and less people to choose from because I like most of the people left. Oh well, I guess that's life at the BL Ranch.

I have something fun to share with you guys tomorrow. (Well, I think it's fun anyways) Stay tuned :-)

Wonderfully Wonderful Weekend

2009-11-09T16:45:00.000-06:00

It's crazy how Monday comes so fast isn't it? Oh well, another day another dollar right?

This weekend was pretty satisfying. My exercise was wonderful, my eating was pretty darn good and I'm excited to (hopefully) be out of the 240's come tomorrow night's weigh in.

Friday we went out to eat at the Nitty Gritty for my step-dad's birthday. I had water to drink and to eat I had a vegetable burger with tomatoes and lettuce on top. I took off the bun and didn’t eat any of it. I also had a side of steamed veggies. (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots)

Saturday, my mom, my friend Chelsea, her mom and I went out for dinner and drinks. We went to this amazing Italian restaurant called Angelo's. I had the giant portabella mushroom ravioli with a side salad and water to drink. I ate half of the ravioli and all of the side salad with some minimal bleu cheese dressing. After dinner we went to this cute little bar called Jade Monkey. I had a grasshopper ice cream drink and 1 "key lime pie" shot.

Sunday for breakfast I had an orange smoothie from Smoothie King. Then, for lunch I had the other half of my ravioli from Saturday night with a glass of milk to drink. Dinner was a MorningStar veggie burger that I topped with 1/2 cup fat free shredded cheddar cheese and about 1 tbsp salsa. I had a glass of milk to drink with this as well.

Exercise this weekend was pretty darn good! Friday I didn’t end up making it to the gym, I was NOT in a good mood and I know that I never have a good workout when I'm like that so I skipped it.

Saturday morning my mom and I were supposed to do the Intro to Pilates class at my gym. Well, apparently this weekend was "wellness weekend" so they weren't holding any of their normal classes. I was pretty disappointed because next Saturday I'm going to a baby shower for my cousin's wife so it will be 2 weeks before I can try again. Oh well. Saturday night after dinner I headed to the gym to try to work off some of that ravioli and drinks. Focus was arms with light hamstrings, upper abs and oblique's. I finished it off with an hour of intervals on the stationary bike.

Sunday, me and my crazy friend Erin decided to take a little stroll. It was nice to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather before winter comes. Oh wait, did I mention that the stroll took place at 7am and that we walked around Lake Monona? (10 miles) It was quite the walk to say the least but it was fun. We finished the walk in about 3 hours and 30 minutes. For some reason, even though I stretched, my left hamstring behind my knee is very very sore and tight so it kind of hampered my gym time last night. I still went and did my ab work with light biceps, back and inner/outer thighs. Instead of my normal hour long cardio I did about 20 minutes on the stationary bike at a steady resistance of 8. It felt good to move my leg around but I knew I couldn’t push it much further than I did. Tonight is supposed to be a legs day but I might have to change that depending on how I feel.

Overall this weekend was pretty good and probably pretty boring to read about haha. The thing I REALLY REALLY need to work on is getting in my water on the weekends. I want to say between Saturday and Sunday I probably got in 40 oz of water. NOT GOOD. Next weekend I WILL get in my 64 oz per day, it won't be an option.

Craving Chicken

2009-11-06T16:28:00.000-06:00

Hello my lovelies! Happy Friday!! Sorry it has been soo long since my last post, I really need to try HARD to post at least every other day.

So I had my weigh in Tuesday night. The scale read 240.3. I'll take that :-) as it's a 1.5 pound loss from the previous week. I know my weight loss will eventually slow down so I don’t expect to see a 2-3 pound loss every week. I think 1.5 is exactly where I need to be and considering I only got in 3 workouts last week I think a 1.5 pound loss is all the effort I put in. I would have liked to be out of the 240's but hey that's what next week is for right?

Food has been good. I need to stay away from this cheese that my mom gets from her friend's cheese shop. It's called wonder bar and it's too die for!! Buuut I'm sure it's LOADED with fat. If you've never had cheese from Wisconsin I promise it will change your life! I'm trying to decide what my lunch will be for next week, I think I'm craving chicken :-)

Exercise has been pretty much nothing since I last talked to you because Wednesday's and Thursday's are my days off. My plan is to hit the gym tonight through Tuesday. I'm even bringing my workout clothes to a restaurant we're going to tonight to celebrate my step-dad's birthday so I can zip over there right after dinner. Boy have I changed haha. Tomorrow morning me and my mom are going to take a Pilates class together at my gym. I'm very excited about this! After the class she plans on heading home and I'm going to finish my regular routine at the gym before heading home. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will be regular gym days. Maybe I'll get the courage to take a cycling class Monday? I guess we'll see.

In non-weight loss related news I think I will be getting back in school in January! I know this might not seem that exciting but I'm thrilled!! I NEED and WANT so badly to be back in school earning my degree. I'm going to be doing online classes to get my bachelor's in computer science. Aaaaand I get 2 paychecks next Friday so I can buy a new laptop!! My pay schedule at work is that we're getting paid for what we worked 2 weeks ago, like normally Friday I would be getting paid for the time I put in October 15th - October 31st. The new company that bought the place I work wants us to be getting paid for the 2 weeks we just worked so in order to get us caught up I will be getting paid for October 15th - November 15th. Honestly this couldn’t have come at a better time! That will help a lot with Christmas shopping so it'll take some stress off of it money wise.

I hope you all have a fun and safe weekend! The new season of Ghost Adventures starts tonight! Definitely check it out on the travel channel if you like stuff like that. It's amazing!

Lopsided?

2009-11-03T18:11:00.002-06:00

Happy Tuesday! One day closer to Friday :-) AND Biggest Loser tonight! Woo Hoo!

So tonight I do my weekly weigh in. Not sure what to expect but it would be really awesome to get out of the 240's. That would mean at least a 1.9 pound loss. Do you think I did it? Hmm I guess we'll see.

Food has been pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself. The weekend was, of course, full of eating out but I think I made some pretty good decisions. Saturday for lunch I had a stuffed tomato and a glass of milk. Dinner was Fragrant Chicken at this Chinese Restaurant called "Imperial Garden". It was chicken and veggies in some kind of spicy sauce, served with white rice on the side. I ate about half of the chicken/veggie concoction and only a little bit of the rice. I'm more of a brown rice type of girl. I also had water to drink of course.

Sunday I ate at a place called "The Silver Eagle" with my mom and step-dad. I ordered the chicken tenders with a side salad and water. I ate the entire salad with a little bit of bleu cheese dressing and about half of the chicken tenders. I took the other half home and ate those for dinner Sunday night.

Sunday night after the Vikings beat the Packers (big smiles!!) I whipped up 6 turkey burgers. I made 3 "cheesy horseradish" burgers and 3 "salsa stuffed" burgers. I followed both recipes using half the ingredients (since I was only making 3 of each instead of 6) and subbed low fat mayo instead of regular mayo in the salsa one and fat free shredded cheddar cheese instead of regular fat cheese in both recipes. I also added 1tbsp of my favorite horseradish to the cheesy burgers to add some flavor. I had one of the salsa ones yesterday for lunch and it was AMAZING! I spread a little avocado on top with some sautéed portabella mushrooms and a few tomato slices. TO.DIE.FOR. I had one of the cheesy burgers last night with the same toppings. That burger was delish too but next time I would probably cut the worsterschier sauce in 1/2 because I thought it was a little overpowering.

Exercise has been good I guess, I just need to get in more of it. For some reason that is still a problem for me. I went to the gym Sunday night, last night and I'll be going again tonight. I need to start making Friday and Saturday mandatory if I'm going to take off Wednesday and Thursday. Last night was abs night which is now my new favorite night because I.LOVE.THE.BOSU.BALL more than I can even express :-)

So…weird question for all you bloggers out there! Does anyone else have/had in the past a slightly lopsided body? Now let me explain what I mean by that. If you've taken a peek at my progress pictures you know I have plenty of rolls to go around. I was looking at myself in the mirror this morning admiring my rolls getting smaller and noticed that the rolls on the left side of my body seem to be slightly smaller than the rolls on my right side. Now I don’t know if that side of my body started smaller because I know fat doesn’t just sit evenly on your body but I also don’t want the cause to be that I'm unpurposely working one side harder. What are your thoughts? Do you think everything will even out eventually or do you think it's something that I'm doing causing this?

Anyways, there's some fun stuff going on in blogger world that you should definitely check out if you haven't.

1. Doug is starting a challenge for the month of November. Definitely head over to his page and check it out, it's going to be fun! And God knows we all need some extra help over the holidays.

2. Speaking of extra help Jen, a priorfatgirl and MizFit have decided to team up to pair people with others in need of motivation. Check out Jen's page to see how you can be a part of this.

Well that's all for today folks, just remember the weekend is almost here! (haha)

Changes

2009-10-30T16:41:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday! I'm sooo excited that the weekend is finally here! How about you?

Wednesday was my weigh in day. I weighed in at 241.8 lbs. That's a 0.7 pound loss, which I am surprisingly satisfied with. I know that may sound weird because I was pretty disappointed with my 1 pound and 1.8 pound losses but I feel like I didn't put in more than a 0.7 pound loss effort this week. I was actually expecting to stay the same or even gain so I was happy I lost anything. I only went to the gym once and worked out once at home, that was it. I ate out many times, had a few "drinks" and even had a large slice of ice cream cake. So absolutely, I am satisfied with ANY loss I was surprisingly able to pull off this week.

Last night I had a mini eating-at-a-restaurant crisis. It was completely emotional and it shouldn't have happened but it did. I went out to eat with my mom, brother and my mom's friend as a mini birthday celebration for me since her friend was unable to make my actual birthday party. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings and I got the Honey BBQ Chicken Tender's Wrap which comes with tortilla chips and salsa. I ate the whole wrap and all the chips. The wrap wasn't huge but I definitely could have easily stopped with just half and no chips. I also had a fruity mixed drink called "Bahama Mama" and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream with Butterscotch. I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought but I think the worst part was that I was constantly saying to myself to stop eating but I didn't. I didn't care at that point. I was mad, sad and concerned. Why you ask? Well let me tell you...

My cousin text me earlier that night saying that her and her boyfriend are done for good. They have been together for 4 years and lived together for about 3. They had some issues at the beginning with him cheating but they resolved all those and moved forward with complete trust in one another. Their relationship was very strong, they were always together and always seemed "happy". They talked about marriage and kids and everyone in our family loved him. Well apparently last night he told her that he never intended to marry her or have kids with her and that he never stopped cheating she just thought he did. I was very taken aback when she told me this. A wall of emotions hit me. I was pissed off because of how he treated her, I was sad because I can't imagine what she's going through and I immediately started to question my own relationship with my boyfriend. I know that it really makes no sense to start questioning my relationship but I did because it reminded me how easily people can lie and manipulate their way to get just about anything they want. It's scary to see such a "good" couple break up. It took me all night but I eventually pushed those thoughts of doubt out of my head because my boyfriend is sooo different and it's not fair to him to start thinking he could be using me like her boyfriend was using her. Even though I'm feeling better now I know that all those emotions absolutely triggered my carelessness toward my food choices at the restaurant.

I know that if I plan to meet my goal of 235 by Christmas I need to step it up. I need to get weekends under control, start working out a MINIMUM of 4 days a week and try some new classes. I'm starting all three of those changes NOW. This weekend will not be a free for all. I will work out Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I am signing up for a Pilates class tomorrow and hopefully a spinning class on Monday.

I know that some changes are good and others are bad. Some are scary and can knock the wind out of us. My cousin will have to learn to pick up the pieces from a relationship she thought she would be in for the rest of her life. The leaves are changing colors and dropping from the trees. The clocks will change back on Sunday morning so that now waking up and leaving work will both be met by darkness. I will soon be down to 235 pounds. I will never again live a sedentary unhealthy life. I know that this change I'm making is the funnest yet; the best decision of my entire life.

"Day to day nothing changes but when you look back you realize that nothing is the same"

It's My Time

2009-10-28T16:32:00.001-05:00

Hello! It's been a loooong time. Eek! I have A LOT to update on and I'm not sure where to start...

So I'll start with the weekend. Saturday morning me and my mom got up early and did a 2 mile walk benefitting the Gilda's House of Madison. For those of you that don't know what Gilda's House is, it's a place that serves as basically a home away from home for families that are dealing with cancer. They have rooms to stay in and they coordinate activities so these families can get away from the craziness and sadness that comes with dealing with cancer. One of my mom's friends has a 14 year old daughter currently battling cancer of the optic nerve and they go there a lot so we felt the need to participate in that walk.

Saturday night I went shopping and out to eat with my friend Erin. We ate at TGI Friday's and I had a Shanghai Salad with water and an alcoholic beverage. I was kind of mad at myself for drinking because I didn't NEED it but I only had one and I made sure to drink LOTSS of water. I ate half the salad and had the other half for breakfast/lunch on Sunday.

Sunday was a lounge/football day. I didn't eat much beside the leftovers from Saturday. I always find that I'm NEVER hungry on Sunday's and I'm not sure why. It's very weird.

Exercise was, ehh okay this weekend. Friday I did the "Workout" DVD at home. That DVD ALWAYS kicks my butt! Saturday I didn't go to the gym (pooey) but I did on Sunday. It was an abs day which I now love because of my new BOSU ball obsession :-).

Monday I went about 2 hours away to Oshkosh with my friend's family to have a surprise 21st birthday dinner for her. It was a lot of fun and even better that she truly was surprised and had no idea that any of us would be there. We ate at Rob Robin. I had a "Lettuce Wrap Your Burger" which was a beef patty with tomatoes and onions wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun. It was served with a side salad and vinagrette dressing. For some reason I felt the need to eat the whole burger, not sure why, but I did. I also had water to drink and an "adult beverage" to celebrate with my friend. Aaaand to top it off, I had a piece of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake. It made me feel like blahhhh. Needless to say I did not make it to the gym that night.

Yesterday I was laid up with a baaaad headache so I didn't really have much to eat. Maybe 500 calories max. No gym.

My plan is to hit the gym tonight through next Tuesday with the exception of Friday. I really need to get this exercise thing down pat asap!

Sooooo....

Once in awhile I come across a song that I can completely relate to in terms of what I'm going through at that exact moment. There's been a couple of decisions that I've made in the past 4 or so days that I regret (see above) and I've been seeing this a lot in other people's blogs. I always try to tell them to just move forward and that you can't undo any of those decisions. Sometimes I wish I could tell that to myself instead of going over and over those decisions in my head wishing I didn't make them. Last week I came across a song that I've fallen in love with. I listen to rap/hip hop music and I'm not sure if anyone else here does so I'm not sure if you've heard this song but it's called "It's My Time" by Fabulous. The chorus is the part I love the most, here it is:

"Go hard today, Can't worry bout' the past cause' that was yesterday. I'ma put it on the line cause' it's my time"

That's exactly what we all need to do. I don't care if you had an all out binge yesterday or if had some dessert with your already fattening dinner. Forget yesterday, go all out today to make up for any damage you may have done. Drink an extra couple glasses of water, do an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill and FORGET yesterday. Now I don't mean completely throw it out of your head because you need to realize that you CAN'T keeping doing that if you want results but you need to stop worrying about what you can't change and put your effort forward into things you can. Put your whole heart out there, put it all on the line because this is your time to shine, this is your time to kick ass.

It's your time.

It's MY time.

New Favorites

2009-10-24T11:37:00.000-05:00

Hello all! Not much new here, just trying to continue to eat well and get in my exercise. I've made some new discoveries in the past couple weeks that I'd like to share with you all. Please excuse me if I'm way behind the times and you guys already know and love some of these things :-)

1. The bosu ball. I've known about the bosu ball for quite some time but I've always been scared to use it. I think I was more scared of popping it haha. When I saw it used on the Biggest Loser, particularly when Daniel was doing squats on it with the round side down, I decided to give it a try. After all, if it can hold someone over 300 pounds I thought it could probably hold me. Well let me tell you I LOVE this! I now do all my ab exercises on the bosu and have started doing squats and lunges on it as well. It's crazy how hard it is and how much it beats up your muscles. I love KNOWING that I'm doing something rather then just THINKING I am.

2. Amy's organic vegetable burgers. I've tried the Texas Burger which has a barbeque flavor and the Chicago Burger which was recently renamed the Cheddar Burger. Both are out of this world!! They have such a great flavor and they are healthy for you which makes them even yummier. My favorite thing to do is to spread a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese on the burger and top it off with some sautéed mushrooms, which brings me to my next item....

3. Sautéing vegetables in chicken broth! I read that sautéing vegetables in oil (even Extra Virgin Olive Oil) isn't very healthy (duh!). Not only because it is oil but also because apparently hot oil strips some of the nutrients out of vegetables. I read that using chicken broth is a much healthier option so I tried it. DE-LI-COUS!!! I don't know if I just picked out some really tasty vegetables but I honestly think that the chicken broth brought out sooo much flavor. Needless to say I will NEVER be sautéing veggies in oil again. :-)

4. Synergy Organic and Raw Kombucha. Here is what it says on the bottle, "KOMBUCHA (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) is a handmade Chinese tea that is delicately cultured for 30 days. During this time, essential nutrients form like: Active Enzymes, Viable Probiotics, Amino Acids, Antioxidants and Polyphenols. All of these combine to create an elixir that immediately works with the body to restore balance and vitality." I have heard a lot about this drink in the blogging world and people just love it, so when I saw it at the grocery store last night I caved and decided to get 2. I got the Raspberry Rush and Strawberry Sensation. I was hesitant at first for two reasons. One, Kombucha is a type of tea and I am a HUGE tea HATER. Yuck Yuck Yuck. Second, it had the steep price of 2/$6. Basically, I put my faith in my taste buds and hoped my hard earned $6 went to good use. Well, happily they did. This drink is delicious!! It seems to have the same bubbliness as wine or champagne and the flavor is very strong so I would definitely advise you to start out sipping this drink and to not take a huge gulp right away. The bottle also states that it helps support "Digestion, Metabolism, Immune System, Appetite Control, Weight Control, Liver Function, Body Alkalinity, Anti-Aging, Cell Integrity and Healthy Skin & Hair." Wow, this little guy packs quite the healthy punch. I'm very interested to see if I notice any improvement in any of those areas over time. Oh AND if you try this and have never had it before beware there are little floating "cultures" in it that kind of look like brains. Haha bet you want to try it now huh?

Alright well that was a shorter list than I thought it would be. Maybe I was just so excited about all those I thought I had a HUGE list! Haha anyways have a wonderful weekend everyone!!

Early

2009-10-20T16:37:00.003-05:00

Happy Happy Tuesday! Biggest Loser tonight! Woo Hoo!

So yesterday I was having some mixed feelings about the weekend. I was torn on my food decision Saturday night and about consuming all those drinks. Part of me wanted to justify it saying that you only have one 21st birthday and that you need to enjoy it and have fun. Another part of me knew I can't do that. I can have fun without eating chicken tenders and french fries. I can have fun without having 7 drinks over the course of 7 hours. It's those "it's my birthday" or "it's the holidays" excuses that helped me get to be 270 pounds. I need to stop using the weekends as my free for all and finally buckle down so that I don't need to be worried about the damage when Monday rolls around.

With all my anticipation about the damage I did over the weekend building up, I decided to weigh in last night. I know I should have waited but the suspense was eating me alive so I caved. Last night I weighed in at 242.5 pounds. That's a 4.6 pound loss for the week! Yippy Skippy Lemon Dippy! Finally a week worth celebrating! For some reason my body has been holding on to those pounds for the past 2 weeks and I'm not sure why but I'm glad they are gone for good. I will soon say goodbye to the 240's and hello to the 230's. Very excited about that. My goal of 235 by Christmas is getting closer and closer!

So on a random note does it bother anyone else that Jillian Michaels is now selling weight loss supplements? I haven't really looked into any of them so maybe they are more like vitamins than anything else but it bugs me. I really like Jillian but part of me feels like if they really are some kind of weight loss pill that she is taking the fact that overweight people look up to her and running with it; taking advantage of her fame almost. Isn't she supposed to be promoting healthy weight loss the good old fashioned way? Exercise more, eat less, get your veggies etc etc. I don't know maybe I'm way out of line for thinking that but I had to voice my opinion.

Until next time my friends, keep your head up and keep on keeping on.

Toodles!

Weekend Update

2009-10-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

Hello all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! My weekend was really good and my birthday was fabulous.

Friday night I went to dinner and a movie with my friends Erin and Kim. We had dinner at Red Robin. I had a Chicken Carbona Burger. It was a grilled chicken breast with fresh mozzarella slices, lettuce, tomatoes and some kind of sauce that I don't really remember much about. I just ate the chicken breast, cheese and veggies. I didn't have the bun and scraped off as much of the sauce as I could, they were just empty calories I didn't need. I also only had 2 fries just to satisfy my craving but not go overboard. Water was my drink of choice. After dinner we went to the movie "Stepfather" which was amazing! Both of my friends got candy and a drink but I opted out even after they tried to persuade me into doing so. Didn't make it to the gym like I planned. Blah.

Saturday was my 21st birthday. I got up at 7:30am so I could hit the gym before the day began. Yup, you read that right, 7:30am! If you would have told me a month or two ago that I would be getting up at 7:30am on my birthday (which also happened to be a Saturday) to go to the gym I would have told you that you were absolutely nuts. I was very impressed with myself and it started the day off very well. I got to the gym and it was PACKED! Like honestly I think the whole state of Wisconsin was there (haha not really). I decided to turn around and go home and instead do one of my workout DVD's. I did 3 segments of the abs, buns and thighs 10 minute solutions DVD for a total of 30 minutes. WOW did that workout kick my butt! After that I took the dog on a mile walk and then hopped in the shower.

I needed to go the Kohl's to get an outfit for the night and my brothers and mom decided we needed to stop and get some lunch so we headed to this little restaurant called "Green Forest". I had something called the "Low Cal Pal". It was a grilled chicken breast, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, a hard boiled egg and cottage cheese on the side. I ate about 1/3 of the chicken breast because even though it was grilled there was some type of breading on it so I'm not sure how "healthy" it actually was. I ate everything else except I only had about 1/2 of the cottage cheese. It was a very satisfying lunch.

After we went shopping we headed home to get ready for the night. We went to the Nitty Gritty at about 5:30. A bunch of my relatives were able to go (there were 16 of us total) so that made the night a a lot better. Drinks for the night were 3 Miller Lights, 2 UV Blue and Sprite, 1 shot of Tequila Rose, 1 Chocolate Martini and 1 Key Lime Pie Martini. I drank more than I should have and I'm sure there are more calories in those drinks than I'd like to admit but I had fun. Dinner was chicken strips and fries. That dinner also could have been better but I kind of didn't care at that point. (Not good I know!)

Yesterday was my day to make up for the damage I did on Saturday. I drank LOTS of water, about 70oz. I also only ate once. This wasn't on purpose I just really wasn't hungry but I knew I had to eat something so I had 5 of my turkey meatballs, about 1/4 cup cottage cheese, some grapes and a glass of milk. I went grocery shopping in the evening and picked up some essentials for the week. I got some Bear Naked Triple Berry Granola to add to my Greek yogurt, I'm very excited to see how it is. I also got some ingredients to make an egg white frittata for breakfast for the week. I had some this morning and it was good but next time I will leave out the green peppers I put in there. I guess I just can't make myself like them. Oh well.

I made it to the gym last night with a focus on legs. I also did light triceps/shoulder and lower abs/oblique's. I tried doing some lower abs on the BOSU ball and they were HARD. I liked it though so I think from now on my ab work will be done on the BOSU ball.

Alright well this post is getting long so I shall say goodbye. Until we meet again I shall leave you with some pictures from the weekend.

Enjoy! :-)

Me and My Friend Erin

Me and My Sister Kyrston

Me and My Mom's Friend Kara

Me and Erin Again With A Few In Us

The Cute Little Strawberry Man That Was On Erin's Drink

Some Of Us Taking A Shot

Happy Monday!

None For Me, Thanks.

2009-10-14T10:20:00.000-05:00

Happy hump day! Every minute we are closer to the weekend! I'm kind of nervous about the weekend though, more on that in a minute.

Last night was weigh in night. I weighed in at 247.1 which means I lost another 1.8 pounds. I'm satisfied with that, as I'll take every pound I can get but I still feel as though I can do better. I guess 1.8 pounds is pretty good considering I only made it to the gym 3 times last week and I had a very hearty Italian meal on Friday night. This week my plan is to hit the gym Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I think 4-5 days a week is what I need to stick to and anything below that really isn't acceptable anymore. Yesterday was exactly 2 months since I started this and I can definitely afford to make exercise more routine than casual.

Eating had been pretty good lately. I do need to cut back on the snacking even more and stop letting the weekends ruin me. That'll help a lot. This week I'm finishing up my spaghetti squash so next week I'll be back to chicken breasts for lunch. I think I'm going to make an egg white frittata with spinach, green peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes and brocolli for breakfast for the week. I'm also revamping my afternoon eating because for some reason that's when I'm the hungriest. I'm splitting my afternoon into 2 snacks. My first one at 1:30 will be 4 scrambled egg whites with a wedge of light french onion laughing cow cheese. I tried this yesterday and it is sooooo good! My second snack at about 4 - 4:30 will be a cup of greek yogurt (either blueberry or honey) with some granola. I've heard that adding granola really ups the "full longer" factor. I'm hoping it works because for some reason I'm always starving in the afternoon. I wonder if it's because of all the water I drink? Anyways, 2 of my cousins birthday parties were on Monday night and I'm very happy to report that I did very minimal snacking and when presented with cake and ice cream I said, "None for me, thanks." I was very impressed with myself that I was able to do that and I'm actually looking forward to eating well during the holidays.

On to the weekend we go. So Saturday is my official 21st birthday even though my party was last Friday. Me and any of my friends and family that want to come are going to this place called "The Nitty Gritty" for dinner. The Nitty is dubbed the "Birthday Bar" because if it's your birthday you get a free mug and either get free beer or soda all night long. It's basically where everyone goes on their 21st. After dinner we are probably going to bar hop a little for the rest of the night. I'm not worried about dinner because quite frankly, eating out isn't as fun and exciting as it used to be (thank god). What I'm worried about is the drinks. I'm not a big drinker to begin with so I don't plan on having a TON of drinks but I know even a few drinks is going to be calorie overload. I want to enjoy my birthday but I don't want to ruin some of the work I've done. This is a lifestyle for me now and my birthday or even holidays are not a free pass anymore. I'm kind of torn on how to handle it but I think the best thing I can do is play it by ear and no matter what have fun. We'll see how it goes :-)

That's all I have for you folks. Have an amazing Wednesday!

Party Pics

2009-10-11T17:11:00.000-05:00

Hello all, hope you're having a wonderful weekend! Sorry I've been MIA, I had my birthday party on Friday and I've been sooo tired since. Food has been pretty good just trying to learn to survive during the weekends. I will be heading to the gym tonight and adding a little extra cardio because I didn't make it last night as I was still exhausted. This post is mainly going to be pictures from my birthday party that I want to share with you all. It was a ton of fun and almost all of my closest friends were able to make it. Can't get much better than that! Enjoy!

The Limo

Me and My Friend Chelsea (Chester)

Up Close of Us

Part of the Limo Group Minus 5 People

2 of My Favorite Girls Kylie and Jessi

My Crazy Sister Kyrston

Having Lots of Fun

Kyrston Josh Ashley Kim Kylie and Jessi

The 5 That Were Missing, 2 Are Hiding In The Back

Ashley Q Leanne Erin and Kim

Another Group Picture

My Cousin Leanne and Her Boyfriend Q

Me and My Boyfriend Cordero

Me and Leanne After The Limo About To Eat

My Boyfriend Cordero and Q

Me and Cordero At The House

Me and My Fellow Birthday Girl Erin

I'll have more of an update tomorrow. Have a wonderful Sunday!!

Reflection

2009-10-07T16:33:00.000-05:00

Hey guys happy hump day! I have Friday off because of my birthday party so it's almost like Thursday for me. Yay!

So last night was my weekly weigh in. I weighed in at 248.9 which means I lost another pound. Am I happy about it? Ehh, yea sure. It's one pound I had last week that I don't now and it's better than nothing. Am I ecstatic about it? Ha far from it. The funny part is I was actually feeling pretty light yesterday and thinking maybe I pulled off another 3 pound week. Guess not. I've thought about it a lot and I feel the need to use this post as a reflection on what I did this past week that was good and what was bad. What I need to do more of and what I need to stop now. I'm not throwing a self pity party I'm just trying to figure out what happened so I can move forward with a killer week next week. So here goes. Let's start with the good.

Good:

- Breakfast, lunch and dinner during the week have been pretty darn flawless

- No soda except for sips of Pepsi Max when I visit the boyfriend once a week

- Water has been 64oz + for the past week.

- I was offered a gyro on Monday night and an ice cream sundae last night and said "no thanks" to both

- I worked out Saturday, Sunday and Yesterday. Saturday I went out of my comfort zone and went to the gym during the day with lots of people instead of at night. I also took the dog on a 1 mile walk when I got home from the gym.

Bad:

- Two words: Weekend food. I only ate half of my meal when I went out to eat Friday night but I can only imagine how many calories were in that half. I also had 2 pieces of bread with lots of garlic butter. Saturday at the movies me and my friend shared a small popcorn but there was lots of butter on it so that didn't help this weigh in either.

-For some reason I've started snacking a lot lately. It's always in small quantities and healthy for the most part but a snack here and a snack there does add up over time and I know that. This includes having a glass of high sugar juice that I know I need to stay away from but since it's in "small quantities" I feel its ok.

- I didn't work out Monday. I know it doesn't seem like a huge deal but I definitely feel like working out 3 days instead of 4 can and will make a difference.

- Monday night and last night I ate TOO much for dinner. I wasn't stuffed but I know that I could have eaten much less. Monday we had burgers and I could have easily taken off the bun and half the cream cheese that my dad slathered on top. Last night we had tacos. All 4 of us had 4 hard shells apiece and I could have easily stopped at 1 or 2 but why deny it if it's right there right? WRONG.

Lame excuses I know I shouldn't use but I'm going to anyway:

- Last week I weighed in on a different scale then I usually do because the locker room where my scale is was closed for cleaning. I know this excuse is lame and it may have made no difference but it may have made some difference as well. Every scale weighs differently and I knew that was a chance I was taking by using a different scale instead of just waiting an extra week to weigh in.

-TOM is here. Since about February when I was in the process of gaining 50 pounds in 8-10 months TOM has been pretty MIA which is extremely weird for me. I'm the type of person that can tell you the exact day almost to the hour that TOM would arrive that's how "regular" he was. Since February he has shown himself twice, right now being one of those times. I'm not sure if my body trying to balance everything out again would have an effect on the scale this week or not but anything to make me feel better huh? Haha

Things I need To Work On:

- I need to get in my 100 oz of water a day. I do awesome at work and get in the full 64oz that I need but the second I get home I drink no more water and almost no water on the weekends either.

- I need to get a handle on my weekend eating. I eat out about once a weekend, which I'm fine with, I just need to make healthier choices when I do go out.

-Snacking is stopping now. I'm not talking about cutting out my planned snacks because that's not something I could do but getting up and grabbing something out of the fridge quick and then doing so again in 30 minutes is not something I can afford to make a habit again. The thing is I'm not hungry when I'm doing this, I'm just bored and I know that making this a habit can go very bad very quickly.

- I need to get more exercise. I'm not talking about heading to the gym more because I basically go every night that I'm able to. I could add in Friday nights on most weeks though so I'm going to do that. I also will be adding in 20 minutes of morning exercise during the week with my 10 minute solutions DVD's. Other things I am thinking of doing is hooking up my pedometer to try to get in 10,000 steps a day and joining a few classes at the gym. I would like to take spinning, Pilates and yoga classes once a week. They have classes on the days I'm usually there so it would work out pretty well.

Sorry for such a long post I just needed to reflect on my actions and decisions this past week to see what's been going on. This next week will be good I'm sure of it. :-)

Monday Night Football

2009-10-05T16:40:00.001-05:00

Hello my lovelies! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. My weekend was very relaxing and very successful. I'm learning more about my self everyday and I'm loving it.

Friday I went out to eat and shopping with my friend Erin. We ate at this Italian restaurant called Bucatini. I had the Paglia e Fieno Boscaiola. Here's the description: Fresh house made spinach and white fettuccine mixed together and sautéed with sweet onions, olive oil, ham and mushrooms finished in a light Pinot Grigio cream sauce. It was very very good but I only ate about half of it and gave the other half to my mom when I got home. I had water to drink and a piece of bread with garlic butter. While we were out and about I bought the 10 Minute Solutions DVD for Buns, Thighs and Abs. I haven't done it yet but I watched 3 toning segments of it and I think I'll like it. The other 2 segments are cardio and I've never been a huge fan of cardio workouts on DVD. They always seem so jumpy and all over the place and I can't do a lot of jumpy stuff because of my knees so I usually skip over those segments since I do cardio on my own anyways. I'll be incorporating 2 of these workouts everyday into a quick morning routine before work. I figure I can handle a quick 20 minutes in the morning.

Saturday I was awoken by the sound of my phone playing the FOX NFL Theme Song (my text message alert sound). My friend wanted to see if I wanted to go to the special 3D Double Feature of Toy Story/Toy Story 2 that night with her. I loved those movies growing up so I thought why not? We agreed to go to the 7:30 showing and my first thought was 'darn I guess I'm not going to make it to the gym tonight.' I quickly stopped myself by realizing that the clock said 11:00am and she wasn't picking me up until 6pm. That's 7 hours to go to the gym and I wasn't going to let the fact that I wouldn't be able to go at my normal time be an excuse to not go at all. So, I hopped my lazy butt out of bed and headed to the gym around noon. Focus was legs with light triceps/shoulders and lower abs/obliques. I then did the usual 45 minutes on the bike. The gym was a lot busier than I'm used to seeing it but it was a refreshing change. When I got home from the gym I was feeling energized so I decided to take our boxer Cassius on a quick 1 mile walk so we could both get outside a little. I love the feeling of wanting to exercise versus needing to exercise. It feels really good :-)

Yesterday was relaxing and mellow. I did some grocery shopping and cooking. I cooked up some spaghetti squash and turkey meatballs. I threw on 1/2 of a cup of Prego mushroom spaghetti sauce and had 4 of the meatballs with the squash. It was very very good and I will be eating this regularly! The turkey meatballs were to die for as well! Yummy!!

Tonight is the Viking Packer game at the Metrodome! I'm suuuuper excited!! Anyone else?!?!?! Since the game starts at 7:30 and I have to clean the bathrooms after work I won't be able to make it to the gym but I will be doing my "Workout" DVD tonight before the game instead. I also think I will be getting my pedometer hooked up and seeing if I can walk 10,000 steps a day. We'll see how it goes.

Have a wonderful Monday everyone!!

Friday Couldn't Come Soon Enough!

2009-10-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

FRIDAY!!! FRIDAY!!! FRIDAY!!! Sooo happy Friday is here! How about you?!

Food and exercise have been good lately. Tried to cook some spaghetti squash last night but needless to say I bought the wrong kind of squash. Darn! I will try again this weekend.

Tonight I'm getting together with my friend Erin to do a little shopping and probably get a bite to eat. I like that with every meal I eat at a restaurant, I'm slowly getting more confident in choosing the healthiest option possible. It doesn't scare me nearly as much as it used to. I'm making "lifestyle changes" and it feels good. I think I'm going to buy 2 of the 10 Minute Solution DVD's tonight as well so I'll let you know how they are once I give them a try.

I posted my progress pictures on my pictures page (link on the right hand side) last night. It was very scary to actually post them and I almost backed out last minute but I'm glad I didn't. I was thinking that I might put the pictures into the paint program to make it look a little nicer and then repost them but for now they are up there. I could tell there are some slight changes, nothing major yet since it's only been 20 pounds. I think the change I saw the most is that it seems a lot of my rolls seem to be slowly "smoothing" out haha. I don't know if I see any change in my arms or legs yet. Maybe a little? I'm just glad to know that I will never be at either of those points again and it will only get better from here.

Oh aaand I am in LOVE with my new water bottles! I don't think 100 oz a day will even be a problem with this one. It has really helped that it holds 64oz at once. A lot of times when I get done with one of my 28 oz bottles it takes me hours before I get my butt up to refill it again. With this one I won't have to refill it once throughout the day which will really help. I'm really glad I got these!

Well, that's all I have for today. I hope your Friday is fabulous and so is your weekend!

Happy October

2009-10-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

October 1st!! Can you believe it? Where in the heck did September go? Anyone know? Well all I can say is 8 days until my bday party! And 16 days until my birthday!! Woot woot!

So I'm not sure if you noticed or not but at the top of my screen that little bike seemed to have moved a smidge to the right again….

Because I lost another 3.7 pounds!! It's official, I have lost 20.1 pounds since I started this on August 13th! I made my goal with a week to spare. I was so excited I kind of just sat there and stared at the scale in disbelief haha. My next goal will be to get down to 235 by Christmas. That's another 15 pounds and I'm excited because I think I can do it. I lost 20 pounds in 7 weeks and theres 12 weeks until Christmas so now that I think about it I may up that goal a little to make it more of a challenge. I know that the more I lose the harder it will be to lose weight but I'm not going to let that stop me.

I'm thinking of buying a few of the "10 minute solutions" workout DVD's. Has anyone used these before? I've heard great things about them and I want to try the abs and pilates ones. I think these will come in handy for a quick workout in the morning and on days that I don't go to the gym I can still do a little something at home. I would really like the abs one because I feel totally lost when it comes to ab exercises so I NEED HELP! Haha.

I've noticed on numerous blogs that A LOT of people are making goals for the month of October so I thought I would join in on the fun! My goal is to drink at least 100 oz of water a day. Now this goal isn't only for the month of October because I plan on continuing this after October is done. I need to use October to get used to it so I can continue with it as part of my everday life. My main problem is that after I leave work I don't drink any water. I've been trying to cram 100 oz of water in during work and it just isn't happening. I know that it will be a lot easier if I use the hours after work to get this amount in as well. I went to Kohl's and picked up 2 new water bottles to make this feat easier.

I saw these on Erin's blog and instantly fell in love with the bottle. They were half off so how could you resist? These new water bottles hold 64 oz of water, they have a handle and a straw! You all know that I NEED a straw or I won't drink that much water. I plan to keep one at work and one at home. My goal is to drink a whole one at work everyday and a whole one at home every night making it about 130 oz of water. I love my old water bottle and don't want to get rid of it so that water bottle will be my gym buddy. I currently don't bring water to the gym (I know, I know NOT good) so I figured this little guy would be a perfect companion.

Oh aaaannnd I almost forgot! Since I'm down 20 pounds I took some progress pictures and will be posting them very shortly to my pictures blog. There's a link on the right hand side if you want to check them out.

*Disclaimer* These pictures were taken in my sports bra and shorts so that I can really see the changes in my body. You will see stretch marks and the fact that I currently have more rolls then a bakery. I've made a lot of progress and I'm slowly trying to be comfortable with posting these pictures on here but quite frankly I'm not yet. Be patient with me and if you don't like it, don't look at it.

And with that I want to say happy Thursday! One day closer to the weekend!

Proud

2009-09-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Mine was very quiet and relaxing.

Friday, my mom and I went shopping. When we got home we ordered subs from Milio's. They have the most amazing subs!! I always get the "Californian" which has turkey, cheese, sprouts, lettuce, guacamole and tomatoes. It is soooo good but it's about 750 calories for the entire 8inch sub. Don't worry I didn't eat the whole sub in one sitting! I cut it into 3 equal parts and had one for dinner, one for lunch Saturday and one for dinner Saturday. I also paired this with super yummy strawberries and cucumbers.

Saturday was pretty lazy. Got up around noon to an empty house and after eating another third of my sandwich from the previous night (with strawberries and cucumbers of course) I decided to take our dog Cassius on a walk. We walked a little over a mile in 25 minutes. It wasn't a fast walk I just had the urge to get outside and enjoy the fall weather. I lazed around for the rest of the day until about 6 and then I headed to the gym and after that rented the movie "I love you man" with my cousin. This is an amazing movie that you should definitely see if you haven't!! We ate some popcorn, drank some water and just had a fun time.

Sunday was more of the same. Did some laundry, cleaned the bathrooms and watched football. Did everyone see that amazing finish to the Vikings game? :-) I then went grocery shopping and back home for some family time before the gym. About 7:30 we heard a super loud banging on the outside of our house so we looked outside and hail was falling! Yea, that's right hail and it isn't even October yet! Ugh I'm not looking forward to winter!!

Last night at the gym I was sitting on the oblique machine taking a quick breather between sets when I looked to my right and saw a man that had just gotten done using the shoulder press machine and was writing on his paper his sets/reps. This man had to weigh close to 400 pounds. I looked to my left and saw a woman walking on the treadmill who probably weighs as much as I do and on the treadmill behind her was an athletic looking man running. On an ab machine in front of me there was an elderly man doing crunches. A smile immediately came to my face because I felt proud. I was proud of the heavy-set man because at 9 o'clock on a Sunday night he was at the gym instead of at home sitting on the couch. I was proud of the other two for the same reason. The elderly man just blew me away with the amount of crunches he was doing. He could easily use his age as an excuse to sit on his butt; however, he was slamming out those crunches like nobody's business. The gym inspires me because every time I go there I know I am surrounded by people who made the same decision as me get up off the couch, put down the chips and be healthy. Whether they've never been overweight or they've been overweight their whole life they all made the decision to put their health first. I'm proud to say that I am now part of this "group".

Are You Ready For Some Football?

2009-09-25T20:01:00.001-05:00

Happy Happy Friday! This Friday is just turning out to be wonderful! More on that in a minute :-)

Yesterday was very nice and relaxing after work. Did a little blogging, grocery shopping, caught up on other people's blogs since I can read them at work but when I try to leave a comment my work computer freaks out (not sure why?) and watched some of my Friends DVD's. I was craving something different for dinner so I whipped up 2 little zucchini pancakes and some chicken salad. If I remember correctly the zucchini pancakes were like 70 calories apiece with about 2.5g of fat apiece? There were small about twice the size of a 50 cent piece but boy were they yummy! I whipped up some chicken salad for me and my mom with 1 can chunk chicken (5 servings in 1 can), 5 tbsp of low fat mayo, chopped up grapes and a sprinkle of celery salt since we didn’t have any fresh celery. It was yummy! I had one serving and I think my mom had one as well. Didn't make it to the gym last night (wasn't planning on it anyways I needed a little break) but I did take a 20 minute walk with my mom and our 2 dogs. My mom walks our Boxer Cassius but I have to carry our Chihuahua Emmy because she's blind. Haha I got in a good arm workout as well since she's about 8-9 pounds.

The grocery shopping trip was quick but very successful! I got some new marinade for my chicken, a 6 pack of Pepsi Max and a 12 pack of mini sour cream and onion Pringles. I usually use Mrs. Dash salt free Roasted Garlic and Herb marinade (which is absolutely divine!!) but I decided to try out the Mrs. Dash salt free sweet teriyaki marinade. I'm hoping it's delicious, I'm sure it will be!!

Every time I go visit my boyfriend (about once a week) I stop at the local gas station and pick up a Pepsi max and a mini container of Pringles just to keep me alert on the hour long drive home. I drink about half the Pepsi and eat about half the Pringles each time and this is the only time I allow myself to have either of the 2. It costs me about $3 every week to get these which isn't bad at all but I got the 12pack of Pringles for $4 and the 6pack of Pepsi Max for $3 at the grocery store. That's only $7 for 4 months worth of Pringles and 1 1/2 months worth of Pepsi. I was very excited about that :-). It's the little things I swear.

So on the subject of the tattoo, I've decided to wait to get it. I will probably get it for my birthday next year but I'm slightly undecided if that's what I want and I'm not going to put something permanent on my body until I'm for sure that it's what I want to do. I also think that waiting until I have lost a more significant amount of weight will make it more meaningful. I plan to be at or near my goal weight at this time next year so maybe it will be my gift to myself for reaching that? Another reason I decided to wait is because me and my brother took the plunge and made a major amazing purchase last night! We bought Viking tickets on the 35-40yd line only 4 rows up! It's for the Seahawks game on November 22nd. I'm soooo soooo excited!! I've been to 2 Viking games before both of which were in the upper deck seats that cost about $80 apiece. To be honest with you there's really not a bad seat in the Metrodome but to be so close is going to be amazing! The tickets were $198 apiece (it came out to about $230 apiece with tax) but it will be WELL worth it. That'll eat up most, if not all of the money I will be getting for my birthday so even if I was ready to get the tattoo it's not in the cards money wise at this point.

I'll leave you with a picture of my yummy lunch. Not sure why I took this but I guess I was in a picture mood today.

Have a wonderful weekend!!

VIII XIII MMIX

2009-09-24T17:16:00.000-05:00

Hey guys long time no post! Sorry about that, I've been super busy and sick as well.

Tuesday was my weigh in day. I ended up working out on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so I was pretty confident about stepping on the scale. Well, apparently I had every reason to be confident because the scale read 253.6! Another 3.3 pound loss! Woo Hoo! Looks like I'm back on track compared to the week before and crazy enough only 3.6 pounds away from having lost 20 pounds so far! Ahh I can't believe it but I am sooo ecstatic.

Food has been good. I've been good about eating correct portions if I'm going to have something that isn't the healthiest. I'm doing my best to really try to incorporate real life into this and know that I'm not going to be able to eat chicken and veggies all day everyday for the rest of my life. I'm always going to be put into situations where I will have to make less "favorable" decisions that what I'm used to but I know that I'll be able to make sensable choices when I come to those situations.

Now for an opinion question that I'm hoping you lovelies can help me with. So this year for my birthday my mom is buying me a tattoo. I have 2 other tattoos, a heart on my ankle that I got right after I turned 18 and the words "Rispetto, Amore, Desiderio" on my wrist (It means Respect, Love, Dream in Italian). I've been mulling over ideas for awhile about what to get this year and I'm not sure I'm decided yet. Today I thought of an idea that I really like but I need your opinion on it. What I was thinking of getting was the Roman Numerals of 08.13.2009 on the inside of my fingers. It'll look something like this:

This is the date that I officially started working out regularly and eating healthy on a daily basis. I know that I WILL continue on this journey and I feel like this is one of the most important things I have done for myself and my future health. I know that this tattoo will not allow me to ever give up or ever stop because this will be a permanent constant reminder of what I started, how far I have left to go and how important it is to continue to live like this. The thing I worry about is having to explain to people that I got the date I started my "diet" on my hand. I feel kind of embarrassed even talking about it and I'm not sure if I'll feel embarrassed having to constantly explain it. I feel like a lot of people will throw doubt at it saying "What if you don't stick to your diet this time, then what?" That would be a valid point except for the fact that this time I will not allow myself to fail. This is my lifestyle now and I will NEVER go back to how I used to be. EVER. I think I just have to remind myself that this tattoo is for ME and no one else, just like my decisions to finally get healthy. What do you guys think? I know some of you may not like tattoos in general but if you could just tell me what you think about the idea? Please be honest even if you think it's not something I want to hear.

Thank you everyone for your continued support of me on my journey!

...No Pain No Gain...

2009-09-21T17:12:00.001-05:00

It seems as though another week is upon us. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! My weekend was fun but very busy.

Friday after work me and my cousin headed on a short road trip to Milwaukee to pick up her god kids that she was taking for the weekend. Oh my lord are these the cutest kids ever! Here's a picture of each of them. Aren't they adorable?!

We got home at about 9 and I was in no mood to head to the gym so I didn’t. :-/ oopsy poopsy.

Saturday my mom, my brother and I went out for lunch and then shopping to spend some hard earned money! At lunch I had a dish called the Low Cal Pal. It's a grilled beef patty (basically a hamburger with no bun or anything like that) a small cup of cottage cheese, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, watermelon, cucumbers and tomatoes. It was really good! I'm not a big melon fan so I didn’t touch the cantaloupe or honeydew melon but I love watermelon, cucumbers and tomatoes so I ate all of that. I ate about 1/3 of the patty and almost all of the cottage cheese and then I was STUFFED. It was a good feeling to know that I can no longer clean my plate at the restaurant and an even better feeling that I no longer WANT to clean my plate. After lunch we went to the mall. My mom had a gift card for Bath & Body Works so we headed over there and got 3 new body sprays. The fragrances we got were "Butterfly Flower", "Moonlit Path" and "Sea Breeze". (Not sure if the last name is correct but it's something like that) They have amazing scents there right now so if you have one near you definitely stop in and see what you can find! I also picked up my dress and some fun accessories. Here are some pictures:

The dress

Fun matching bangles

Some pink hoop earrings

And amazing matching sunglasses!! How fun :-)

After the mall I went to the park with my cousin and the kids and then we did a little shopping to pick out a dress for her. I DID make it to the gym Saturday night. Woo Hoo! I've added a 5 minute warm up on the treadmill walking at a speed of 2.5 with an incline of 10. It's a nice warm up that really gets my heart going and I think the incline will be good to work my legs and butt. I also have added an extra 10 minutes to the end of my cardio because I feel I am physically able to do that now.

Sunday was football day of course. (Yay Vikings won!! #1 in the NFC North Division now!!) At around 3:30 my cousin and I headed back to Milwaukee to bring the kids home. They were exhausted so they slept the whole way which was nice for us. When I got home I did my grocery shopping for the week, ate a little Sheppard's pie for dinner and headed to the gym. Focus was abs with light biceps/back and inner/outer thighs. I added the 5 minute warm up but not the extra 10 minutes to the cardio because my foot started cramping up pretty bad, not sure why.

I plan to go to the gym tonight and tomorrow and also weigh in tomorrow. I'm excited!! Oh! I almost forgot to tell you one of my embarrassing weekend moment. Saturday night at the gym I was so much in the zone that I decided I was just going to walk right into this long pole that sticks out from the oblique machine and here's what happened..

Haha it hurt like hell but you know what they say, no pain no gain.

Have a wonderful night :-)

Fabulous Friday

2009-09-18T22:55:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday! It's about time!! Ugh is anyone else having SEVERE allergy problems like I am? I don't know if its just the Midwest or what but wow are allergies crazy this year! I'm so stuffed up everyone keeps asking if I'm okay because I sound horrible, haha.

Last night my friend and I went shopping and out to eat. I bought a cute pair of glasses because I don't own any and my eyes really need a break from wearing contacts all the time. They were only $45 after my insurance chipped in and they'll be ready in about 2 weeks. I'm kind of excited but I'm not sure why because I'll still wear contacts about 90% of the time. It's always fun to get something new though!

We went to Chili's for dinner. I did pretty well. I got the Guiltless Grilled Buffalo Chicken Sandwich with steamed broccoli and water to drink. We also had chips and salsa as an appetizer. I was sooo tempted to get the honey glazed chicken crispers (my favorite!!) but I was proud that I stayed away. It was also nice and cheap only $10 and that included the tip!

After dinner we went to the mall and I found the dress I'm going to wear for my bday party. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but the dress I originally wanted from Forever 21's plus size line Faith 21 is not being carried in my size at the current moment. I also read some reviews online that the line runs very small and I was already worried that the 2x wasn't going to fit me. I made the decision (it was hard because the dress is sooo cute!) to find another dress. I found a very cute navy blue one at Macy's but it was $80, I would have to order it offline and I was worried that I wouldn't have time to exchange it if it didn't fit. So me and my friend headed over to D.E.B Shop and luckily all of their homecoming dresses are out right now so it was very easy to pick a few quick and try them on. The one I picked out is a knee length spaghetti strap. The bodice is leopard print with a hot pink sash underneath that ties in the back and the waist down is black with ruffles. It's very cute and only $30! I'm going to try to get hot pink heels we'll see if I can actually find any haha! I really liked how I looked in the dress. I realized after we were done shopping, that when I was trying on the dress I wasn't nit-picking at everything I didn't like about how it fit me because I was very happy about how it fit me. Usually I just settle on something because I can't find anything that would look much better but I was very happy with this dress and it's nice to have some confidence in my body for once. I could definitely see some changes in my body, specifically my arms and stomach. It felt very very good. Needless to say, I'm a very happy girl today :-)

My goal is to get to the gym tonight, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before my next weigh in. I've decided to switch my weigh in day to Tuesday and up my goal to 20 pounds by my birthday. That means I have 7.9 more to go! I put a couple lists on the right hand side of my blog, one for my weigh in's and one for my goals. I could only remember a couple of my weigh in's without looking at my sheet so once I find that I'll complete the weigh in section up until last week.

Alright that's enough for now, have a wonderful weekend! I'm going hiking tomorrow with the fam. I'm excited!!

Oops, I Cheated...

2009-09-17T21:16:00.001-05:00

It's almost Friday!! Woo Hoo! I'm soooo ready for the weekend, how bout you?!

So Tuesday I cheated. Kinda. My weeky weigh in's are Thursdays but if you remember I had to bump it up to Tuesday last week because of my doctors appt. Well, Tuesday at the gym I decided to face my fear of what damage I may have done the previous week and stepped on the scale. The scale read 256.9. Another 1.9 pounds gone! Woo Hoo! Very very very excited about that! It definitely doesn’t compare much with the 3+ pound weeks I've been having but losing nearly 2 pounds after a week from hell is amazing. My weigh in days might now be switched to Tuesdays instead of Thursdays we'll see what I feel like doing next week. I am now 1.9 pounds away from losing 15 pounds so far. Wow, I really can't believe it. When I started on August 13th, my goal was to lose 10 pounds by my birthday dinner October 9th and my birthday on October 17th. I didn't set the bar too high because I really wasn’t sure what to expect from my body. I didn't know if the eating would be easier or harder than I thought it would be, I didn’t know how much I would actually make it to the gym and I wasn’t sure how quickly my body would start to change. About 2 weeks ago I decided that I could definitely bump my goal up to 15 pounds by my birthday. Now, I'm not sure what to do. My birthday dinner/party is 3 weeks from Friday and my actual birthday is 4 weeks from Saturday. Do I bump up my goal again to 20 pounds? That's 7 pounds in 3 weeks. Can I do it? If I get back on track with the 3 pound a week weigh in's I could do it with a few pounds to spare. If my weigh in's continue to be around 1.9 pounds then I will be a couple pounds short. I think maybe it would be good to set a bar that I'm not sure I'll make. I think it will help to motivate me to work my butt off. What do you guys think? I think that's probably what I'll do.

I also decided that every 20 pounds I lose I will take a new progress picture. That means that one may be coming soon! And as much as I don't want to, when I take a new progress picture I will post that one with my starting picture to compare. These will be on my Pictures Blog that is currently empty. I'm not thrilled about seeing my start picture up for everyone to see but I think it's something that needs to be done so I can truly see all my progress.

Ugh I'm quite hungry right now, not sure why. Can't wait for lunch in 20 minutes!!

:-)

Scaredy-Pants

2009-09-15T23:55:00.000-05:00

Hello! Nothing much new here since yesterday's post. Food has been good. Got 6 inches cut off my hair last night! It was scary but it was well needed and I love it! Today's post is mostly to get some emotions off my chest that are building up and what better place to do it but here?!

I'm scared. Yep, it's as simple as that. I'm scared. My exercise routine has been a little rocky lately and it's starting to scare me. I weighed in last Tuesday at 258.8lbs. I did not work out on Wednesday. I did not work out on Thursday (besides my belly dancing class). I did not work out on Friday. Saturday I was unable to make it to the gym so I did the "Workout" DVD at home. I did work out Sunday. I did not work out last night. In the past week I have worked out TWICE and only one of those times was actually at the gym. My next scheduled weigh in is on Thursday and I'm scared that I will not have lost any weight. I'm scared that I will actually gain weight. The scariest part is that if I do not lose any weight this week it will be MY FAULT, no one else's. I have 3 days to make up for the past week before my weigh in but at this point it may not be enough. I know that this is not my final weigh in or anything and that I have a LONG road ahead of me but I've had so much success thus far. I'm scared to think of what it would feel like standing on the scale only 5 weeks into my journey and seeing that I gained weight. I don't feel like I've lost enough to be "okay" with a gain, there's not enough "cushion" there. Missy (The Ups and Downs of Losing Weight) mentioned in her post today about how exercise is now one of the things that is non-negotiable in her life. It's something she needs to do and it's no longer an option. That's how it has been for me the past 5 weeks but for some reason it's starting to slowly worm it's way back into my "optional" category. I know there will be many more bumps in my journey and if anything this is just a reminder that I need to work hard to achieve the results I want. My success will only be a reflection of my work. Whether or not I have a gain on the scale on Thursday I need to keep on trucking and not let this slow me down.

What Time Is It? Game Time!

2009-09-14T16:27:00.001-05:00

Happy Monday! (haha yea right!!) It's been awhile AGAIN since I last posted. I need to get better at that but sometimes its difficult to find the time. I'll try to start where I left off.

Thursday's doctor appt went well. My doctor was really impressed with the amount of weight I lost in such a short time. It made me feel really good because that is part of the reason I really started to kick it into gear 5 weeks ago. My blood pressure is still slightly elevated but I'm sure with a little more weight gone it'll be back to normal soon. Bellydancing was a blast again and I think I'm catching on pretty quickly.

Friday I went shopping and out to eat with my best friend Erin. I need to learn to make better decisions when we go out to eat. Lately I've been pretty good but Friday I was taken over by the temptation monster. We had mozzarella sticks as an appetizer, 9 for only the 2 of us!! I only ate 2 (I know I know I shouldn’t have even touched them) and then moved on to the main dish: chicken tenders and french fries. I swear chicken tenders are my kryptonite. I did pretty well but I could have done A LOT better. I ate 3 of the 5 chicken tenders, about half of my fries (with the BEST honey mustard ever made) and water to drink. I would have done relatively well if I stopped there but of course I didn’t! I then had a chocolate mousse "shooter" for dessert with cooking crumbles and whipped cream. AMAZING! But worth it? Definitely NOT and I will be kicking my own ass up and down the gym to pay for it. I almost never order dessert so I'm not sure what came over me.

Saturday I layed pretty low, I scratched my eye pretty badly and was dealing with the pain of that most of the day. I did go grocery shopping to stock up on food for the week though. I wanted to go to the gym but since I couldn’t wear a contact in my right eye (and I don't own glasses at the moment) I was not comfortable driving to the other side of town with only one good eye haha. Instead I popped in my "Workout" DVD by Jackie Warner. (The one they made on the tv show Workout. Great show!) Her and her trainers proceded to kick my ass for the next hour. I'm glad it was tough because it made me feel better for not making it to the gym and I know I still got in a great workout.

Sunday was the best day of all! Why you ask? It wasn’t because I got to clean the bathrooms or do my laundry or prepare my food for the next week (even though these were all VERY exciting...not). It was because it is OFFICIALLY FOOTBALL SEASON!! I forgot how much I miss football in the offseason. Not only do I miss watching the games (GO VIKINGS!! Sorry Packer Fans!) but I also miss the cool breeze and smell in the air that means Fall is fast approaching. I love Fall. It is my 2nd favorite season. (next to Football of course!) Here in Wisconsin, Fall is absolutely breathtaking. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures this year for you guys to see. I love sweatshirt weather and cuddling next to a fire or on the couch with a blanket watching a movie. I love hearing the breeze and seeing the leaves scatter across the street. What I don’t like is knowing that the 6 month Winter we have here in the Midwest is close behind the arrival of Fall but I try not to think about it too much. I made it to the gym last night with abs as my focus and light inner/outer thighs and biceps/back.

I plan on going to the gym tonight after I get my haircut. I might be getting 6 inches cut off my hair! I'm excited but VERY nervous :-) I never get my hair cut and it is currently almost down to my butt. I think I could easily stand to lose 6 or more inches (now if I could just cut that off my waist haha)

Hope you all have a wonderful night. Biggest Loser starts tomorrow!! Ahh so excited! AND the Big Brother Finale is tomorrow! Wow so much to watch in one night!

Stop Drinking Haterade...

2009-09-10T00:09:00.002-05:00

Happy Hump Day everyone! I love four day weeks :-)

This is another post that is going to need a disclaimer: Warning, the post you are about to read has a lot of "venting" in it. If you do not wish to read someone complain about things that probably don't even really matter, please turn away now or forever hold your peace.

Before I get into what the disclaimer was about I'll update you on yesterday. Food was good. Same old chicken, same old veggies, same old everything. Same old everything I LOVE :-) I think finding food that I can stand eating almost everyday has really helped make the eating part of the journey a lot easier than I thought it would be. I love the fruits and veggies I eat and I don't try to force myself to eat ones I know I don't like. I love greek yogurt and laughing cow cheese and V8. It's all part of who I am now. I also switch up the marinade I'm using everytime I grill new chicken just to keep things interesting. It's fun and I'm enjoying it.

Exercise was good yesterday. Did the 4 mile walk with my step-mom and then hit up the gym. Yesterday's focus was arms with light hamstrings and upper abs/obliques. I finished it off with 40 minutes on the stationary bike. I need to remember to add in a 10 minute warmup on the treadmill before I weight train. I have a doctor's appt. right after work tomorrow and tonight I am going to see my boyfriend so I won't have a chance to work out before I see my doc. I would love to impress my doctor with how well I've done since I last saw her 6 weeks ago and I really wanted to know what my weight was looking like before I see her. Since tomorrow is my official weigh in day I decided to weigh myself last night just to see if my weekend choices affected me as much as I thought they did. Well, happily as of last night I was down another 2.2 pounds! All I'm hoping for now is to not gain anything before I see her tomorrow. I would love to lose another pound or so but quite frankly I'm not expecting that because I won't have the chance to work out tonight. The 2.2 pounds has me at 11.2 pounds lost total so far, so I am very very happy with that!

So now for the fun stuff. My venting. I'll try to keep it short I just need to get if off of my chest. So I got this new temporary part time job on the weekends for a little extra money. The job only lasts 4-8wks but right now I'll take whatever I can get. Basically I'll be working at a cheese factory on the candy and giftwrapping production lines. I think it'll be fun but of course my "best friend" had to bring my mood down. I told her the pay is $8/hr and $12/hr for any overtime. She proceeded to argue with me about the fact that I won't get any overtime because I'm only working 16 hours. I nicely told her that my boss said anything out of my normal schedule of 16 hours would be considered overtime. After she argued some more I decided that this wasn't worth the fight and just let it go. The hours of the job are Saturday and Sunday 6am-2pm. After I told her this she told me that I was always going to be tired and that it was going to suck. I told her that since I get off so early I could easily take a nap when I get home and I reminded her that at one point I worked a full time job during the day, had a 7 day a week paper route from 3am-7am and went to school full time so I didn’t think this would be a problem. She then went on to argue that I wasn’t going to have a life anymore. After I told her I thought it would be a fun job, she told me its sounds to her like it will be monotonous and boring. It seems like everytime I said something positive she countered with a negative. I don’t know, maybe I took it for more than it was worth but it just bothered me. I don’t understand why she can't just be happy for me or at least pretend to be.

Within the past month or so I've become a lot more independent of her and everyone else. I've started doing things for me and doing things that I love. I took the bellydancing class by myself because no one would do it with me and I wasn’t going to wait around when its something I've been wanting to do forever. That’s definitely not something I would have done a couple months ago. I don’t know what gave me the courage to branch out and do things on my own but I'm glad I have. I think that sometimes when you're having success and someone else isn't they get hostile towards you. Whether it's because they are mad at you or at themselves, I'm not sure. There's other times that people are happy for you and support you. I just want to say thank you to everyone who has been so kind to me here and left me the support I needed. Don’t get me wrong, I have many people in my day to day life that have been more than supportive but it seems like lately the people I want to care the most are the ones that care the least.

Weekend Recap

2009-09-08T18:44:00.000-05:00

Hello all happy Tuesday!! I just realized it's been a while since my last post, oops!

Before I get into the weekend I will update on Thursday and Friday. I did my first bellydancing class on Thursday and it was a blast! We learned a few moves and kept if very basic but it was still a lot of fun. I will definitely be taking the level 1, 2, 3 and 4 classes after I finish the beginners class. I will just have to start saving up some money because after the beginners class almost every level is split into A and B (Ex: 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3, 4) and the 6 week class is $180. Ouch! However, I feel that it is worth it because it's something I've fallen in love with.
Friday was good, eats were the same. Spent my night with the boyfriend so I didn't make it to the gym.

Labor day weekend was very very nice! I got to rest a lot and catch up on "me" time. Saturday I started my day by signing up for a 1yr membership at my gym! Great way to start the day I think :-) I then went shopping all day with 2 of my girls. We ate out for lunch and dinner! Yikes! I think I kept my food intake reasonable though, um well maybe not but I tried? For lunch we went to Noodles and I got a small pesto cavatappi with water to drink. It was 510 calories, 21g of fat and 18g of protein. Yikes on the calories and fat!! I usually get the pad thai because it is a LOT healthier but I was craving the cavatappi so I got it. I'm definitely digging the "if I want it I'm going to have it" (within a reasonable amount) way of living. For dinner we went to Olive Garden. I had the Ravioli di Portobello with water to drink. It was 670 calories, 30g of fat and 1400mg of sodium. Yikes again! I only ate half of it so I guess it was more around 335 calories, 15g of fat and 700mg of sodium. That makes me feel a little better but not much. Hopefully it won't affect my weigh in too much but I feel if I work hard enough this week at the gym I won't have a problem (we'll see). I didn't make it to the gym Saturday, although I know I definitely should have after meals like that!

Sunday I got a text bright and early from my friend saying that she had her baby!! Yay! After I had the other half of my ravioli for breakfast, I headed up to the hospital with another friend and we visited the proud parents and new baby for a couple hours. I forgot how little newborns are! I went home and did some chores around the house and then went grocery shopping with my cousin. I got some veggies, grapes, yogurt, V8 and cottage doubles (I forgot how much I love cottage doubles!). Then I hit up the gym with focus being legs with light triceps/shoulders and lower abs/obliques. I also did 40 minutes on the stationary bike.

Yesterday was the best day of all! I sat on my butt most of the day and didn't even change out of my pj's. Call me lazy but I call it well deserved. Most of the morning I watched the "Dance Your Ass Off" marathon. I love weight loss shows and what a cool concept to incorporate doing something fun to help lose the weight. I'm glad they made a show that showcased an alternative to the same old gym routine everyday (granted they did still work out in the gym as well as dance). My gym was closed because of the holiday. I was very sad about this so I found my own alternative: cleaning the bathrooms. Wow did I forget the work that goes into this! I am actually feeling it in my legs this morning and was sweating my butt off yesterday! I didn't eat a whole lot yesterday because quite frankly I wasn't very hungry. Yesterday total I ate half of a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and onions, a couple glasses of milk, a couple handful of grapes and a strawberry cottage doubles. Maybe that makes up for the day before!

Today food is back to normal. Chicken with cucumbers and grapes for lunch, V8 to drink. Snack is laughing cow cheese on 3 crackers and a peach cottage doubles. I have my 4 mile walk tonight with my step-mom and I plan on going to the gym as well. There's a live Big Brother on tonight that I'm very excited about! And Biggest Loser starts in exactly 1 week!!!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Deep Breaths

2009-09-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone! No post yesterday sorry! I wrote one up and was going to post it when I got home from work but by the time I ran errands, ate dinner and worked out it was 11 o'clock and I was toooo tired. I really didn't have much to say yesterday though so it wasn't too big of a deal.

Yesterday, I wrote about how last night was my weekly weigh in. Food and exercise have been pretty flawless but I just didn't think I lost any weight. I didn't feel it like I did the week before. Last week I could tell in my stomach the most. This week I felt exactly the same. I'm not sure if I was maybe losing weight in other places but this week just didn't feel the same. I think maybe that knowing I had chinese and culver's last weekend was haunting me and constantly in the back of my head. I thought I did pretty good keeping my unhealthy meals to a minimum. I portioned them out pretty good so I don't think I did that much damage but I still couldn't help but think that theres no way I could have lost anything eating like that. I think maybe it blinded me to what was really going on.

Well, I am very happy to report that I lost 3.4 pounds this week! Yippee! I think it was all in my head. I felt guilty and that made me see my body in a different way. Everytime I looked at myself I saw the salty chinese food and the chicken tenders. What I forgot to see was that my cashew chicken and a pint of steamed rice lasted me for 4 meals (it usually lasts for 1) and that I only ate half of my chicken tenders with no fries and water to drink.

I've learned a lot these past 3 weeks. I've learned that I need to calm down and take a deep breath. Whenever I used to start a "diet" I would plan out everything to the tee and keep my paper with me so I could see exactly what I was eating and when I was eating it. I would plan out exactly what I was going to do at the gym, what exercises in what order for how many reps and sets. I would plan out exactly what day I was going and what time I would go. I couldn't have anything outside of my "diet" and if I didn't make it to the gym I would beat myself up. Eventually, I would not make it to the gym and never go back. This wasn't how I wanted to live my life. I wanted to be free and have faith that as my decisions came about food and exercise I could make them wisely.

Now, things are different. I go grocery shopping at the beginning of the week and get my chicken, veggies, fruits, greek yogurt, laughing cow cheese, V8 and Fruit2Day. Having grilled chicken for lunch everyday is easy and I love it. I love my fruits and veggies. I love my greek yogurt, I love it all. I used to look up all these recipes and try to make them and when I didn’t have time I would just stop at McDonald's. I don't have to go all out and crazy to be healthy. I just need to eat less and eat foods that are good for me. I can have a cheat day here or there if I keep it reasonable. I had 3 chicken tenders and water. Nothing else. That was about 350 calories. I had chinese but instead of eating it in one meal, I spread it out to 4. Now I'm certainly not saying I can do this every weekend but once in a while if I am smart about my choices it's ok to have something out of the ordinary. I don't have soda anymore, I don't have fast food. I'll have a piece of chocolate maybe once a week at the most. I don't crave McDonald's, I don't crave M&M's. I want water and veggies, things that make me feel alive and energized.

My exercise routine has completely changed as well. I exercise on the nights that I don't have other things going. I don't exercise everynight but it comes out to about 4-5 nights a week. If I need a break one night, I take one. I rotate what I focus on everynight so I go to the gym knowing what area I'm working but I don't have a specific plan laid out. Like Rebecca (@FatFitnessFood) said this morning, it's easy. I feel like I'll jinx it by saying that but it really is. When you take the time to listen to yourself and your body, be organized in your life and thoughts and just take deep breaths things start to fall together. I'm having a lot of fun on this journey, why would I stop?

Selfish? Comfortable? All of the Above...

2009-09-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

Hello! Happy Tuesday! Every second we're closer to Friday! :-)

Food was good yesterday, same old stuff. I did snack a little after work because I was starving but I think I packed a good hearty afternoon snack today (3 Breton crackers, 1 wedge of laughing cow cheese, 1 oikos vanilla greek yogurt - about 150 to 200 calories for it all) so hopefully that hungryness will be cured. Went to the gym last night, focus was abs with light biceps/back and inner/outer thighs. Also did about 35 minutes on the bike. I HATE ab workout days. The reason is because I never feel like I'm working them out enough. I'm hoping that the pilates and bellydancing classes will help in the area more.

Lately I've had a lot on my mind. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but my boyfriend is currently trying to get into the music business. He's very talented and it seems like every day he is getting closer and closer to actually achieving his dream. This absolutely scares the shit out of me. He is starting to record his first album today and part of me wants to jump for joy - for him and another part of me wants our lives to stay how they are - for me. It seems so selfish, no scratch that, it IS so selfish to even think that way. I know this, but I can't help it. Basically, I feel as though I am going to get left in the dust. I feel like I am going to be forgotten about and if he ever gets famous enough he'll be able to have whatever girl he wants so why would he stay with me? He's reassured me many times that he doesn't want anyone else and no one has been there for him like I have but I can't help feeling the same way. I've talked to a few people I know that have been somewhat in the spotlight and the "Fabulous Life" doesn't always turn out to be all that fabulous. I want him to be happy and this has been his dream is entire life so of course I want this for him but how we are now is comfortable and I like comfortable.

Maybe that's my problem. I don't take a lot of risks. I've had this blog about losing weight for 8 months now but only within the past 3 weeks have I actually made the effort and lost weight. Being fat is comfortable. Eating shit is comfortable. Not exercising is comfortable. These are things I've been doing my whole life. I've been used to these things for 20 years, it's not an easy thing to break. Me and my boyfriend have been together for 2 1/2 years. Our relationship is comfortable. Our life together is comfortable. Mabye that's not enough. Maybe this music thing is a blessing in disguise. Who knows what adventure it could take us on. Who knows?

But maybe after all this worrying nonsense, I'm ready to find out.

New Title

2009-08-31T13:43:00.000-05:00

Howdy! Second post of the day! What?!? Crazy I know! This one will be short though I promise.

You probably noticed that I changed the name of my blog. "Jenny's Weight Loss Blog" just didn't seem to have much oomph behind it and was way too generic. "Together We Can Prove Them Wrong" was inspired by the post I read this morning from Jack Sh*t (<--Very funny man ladies and gentlemen). He talked about how even though he can't be next to each of us dragging our butts to the gym or cooking healthy meals for us, to remember that there is always someone fighting on this journey with us. Whether it be your next door neighbor, someone in a different state or even a different country, there is someone trying just as hard to exercise and eat right. No matter what you are not alone. I was thinking about this exact thing last night at the gym. Every time I go to the gym there are a few severly overweight people there walking on the treadmills, the elipticals or lifting weights. Last night there was an overweight man running sprints on the treadmill. The people always look determined but defeated at the same time. I always wonder if they have a support group and I always find myself wanting to give them a hug and tell them they are not alone.

So this blog title and the blog contents are dedicated to everyone out there on this same journey as I am. Just know that together we can prove everyone wrong.

Thin Does Not = Being In Shape

2009-08-31T10:55:00.001-05:00

Happy Monday Everyone! Hope your weekend was great! I had a wonderful weekend, it was very busy but very nice.

Friday night I went grocery shopping and got some chicken, veggies, fruits, greek yogurt and some laughing cow cheese. I had an eggwhite omlette and then managed to talk myself out of going to the gym. I just didn't have it in me. I knew if I forced myself I would resent it and the gym would start to become a chore, so I allowed myself to stay home and instead watched a movie with my brother. We watched "I love you man". If you haven't seen this you NEED TO! One of the funniest movies I have ever seen, it's definetly in my top 15 movies.

Saturday was busy busy busy. I woke up at 8:30, showered and ate 2 slices of turkey and laughing cow cheese on a piece of bread with some grapes and cucumbers on the side. After that I headed to my cousins to help her move. We started around 11:30 and we were done about 2:30. I was very impressed with us and how fast we moved them. We had 8 people, 4 cars, 1 truck and a UHaul trailer so I think we did pretty darn good. For me it was a lot of back and forth with boxes (the boys handled the big stuff) and up and down stairs. There were really no stairs moving her out but her and her boyfriend moved in to an apartment on the 2nd floor so moving in was constant stairs. It was a really good workout and I am very happy to report that I was barely out of breath or breaking a sweat. We got lucky with a pretty cool day, the sun came out a little but not too much. Ironically enough, me and my cousin Steve (2 of the heaviest people there) were the ones that were the least sweaty and the least out of breath. How could this be you may ask? Well, we both started working out within the past month and have both lost weight. I'd like to think that it's because we are both in the best shape of our lives thus far. It just goes to show you that being thin doesn't necessarily mean you are in shape.

Saturday night, my friend cancelled our dinner plans because she had homework but it was okay because I was looking forward to just vegging out. My family ordered chinese to eat, which was probably a bad idea but I did my best to eat as well as I could. I ordered a pint of the cashew chicken with steamed rice. I ate it for dinner Saturday, breakfast Sunday morning and breakfast this morning and there is still some left so I think I portioned it out pretty well. We also ordered 6 orders of crab rangoons. I am obsessed with these things!! The chinese place actually knows us by name because of the amount of crab rangoons we get. (Kind of embarassing but pretty funny) Each order has 6 rangoons in it and we usually get about 8 orders which is 48 crab rangoons!! We got 36 this time and boy oh boy was it hard to stay away from those. I usually eat 15-20 when we get chinese but this time I had 5 and that was it. I know I should have had just 1 or 2 or even none but I was proud that I was able to stop at 5. I knew that telling myself I couldn't have any would make me go crazy and only result in a late night binge of 10 or more. By allowing myself to have only 5 it proved that I can still have a treat once in a while in small portions and stay on plan. I probably won't have chinese for another month or two so I think it was just fine. I did make it to the gym Saturday night, which was great for me. To go work out after a day of lifting heavy boxes and running up and down stairs was a huge accomplishment. Funny enough, Saturday was my day for legs to be my main focus. They were sooo beat but I kept them as my main focus and still pushed them to their limit but needless to say the limit came a lot faster than usual. Biceps/back and lower abs/obliques were light that day along with 35 minutes on the bike.

Sunday I slept in until 12:30 and it felt amazing!! I lazed around for the majority of the day until about 4:30 then I got ready to have a dinner date with my friend Chelsea. Our dinner dates ALWAYS consist of Culvers and then Big Brother. At Culver's I got the 4 piece chicken tenders with no fries and water to drink. I only ate 3 of the 4 pieces and refilled my water twice. Yay me! Next time I think I will try to keep it to 2 pieces of the 4 but I wasn't over stuffed with the 3 so I think I did pretty darn good. Food wasn’t the greatest this weekend so hopefully that won't affect my weigh in on Thursday too much. I'm hoping that by portioning it out like I did and continuing to work out that I didn’t do too much damage.

Tonight I will hopefully be taking the Intro to Cycling class at the gym, which I am very excited about and Thursday I start my bellydancing class!

Sorry for such a long post, have a wonderful Monday!!

Who I Want To Be...

2009-08-28T11:34:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday! Wow my week was super long, anyone else's? The weekend is going to be busy but I am looking forward to it!

So I had my weekly weigh in last night. Um, hmm I'm not really sure what to say…

Except that I lost 3.8lbs since last Wednesday! :-)
Ahh I couldn't believe it! I was so ecstatic I wanted to do a back flip right there in that locker room. Haha. At first I thought that it was a big number for one week but thinking back to the last time I lost a good amount of weight, I remember that the first 20lbs came off pretty quickly before it starting slowing to about 1-2lbs a week. Initially, I wanted to lose 10lbs before my bday dinner on October 9th but now I may be able to squeeze out 15. We'll see, either way I'll be happy.

Food was good the past couple days, same old stuff. Work out went good last night. Focus was abs with light biceps/back and inner/outer thighs. I always forget to mention the cardio that I do because I do it every day so it doesn't really change. I do about 35-40 minutes on the bike after my weight training. I think I'm going to add a 10 minute warm up walking at an incline on the treadmill before my weight training. I would really like to find a few more ab and butt exercises. I have a good amount of ab exercises but I feel like I'm not working my lower abs enough. I know that it is a hard area to work but I feel like I can do better. Same with my butt. I do lots of squats, which I love doing I just wish I had a few more moves to add in there to maximize my results. Any thoughts?

In the past couple of days, I've realized that this person I'm becoming is a person that I want to be. I've always wanted to be the person that juggles friends, family, work, school and EXERCISE and absolutely loves it. I want to be that person that WANTS to go exercise instead of NEEDS to go exercise. Slowly but surely it's getting easier to get my butt to the gym. About 75% of the time now, I don't try to talk myself out of it. It has become something I want to do and something I'm starting to crave. This morning at 8:30 I realized I hadn't filled up my water bottle yet for the day. The reason I realized this? Because I was craving water. I was craving WATER. Who would have thought that would ever happen? I surely didn’t. I thought, no matter what, fat or thin I would still hate exercise and dread having to drink water and eat healthy. I thought for sure that this journey was going to be a lifetime full of pain in the ass trips to the gym and eating food I hate. I think that's why I was so scared. I was comfortable in my rut eating shit and not exercising at all. Being healthy feels good. I feel alive, I feel accomplished, I feel excited. I'm exactly where I want to be and this time I'm not going back. There will be no more posts saying, "Monday I'm starting my diet, for real this time." Instead, they will be replaced with, "Monday was great, I stayed on track with eating and my trip to the gym was awesome." I used to think of quitting and then I thought, if you quit what's next? Where do you go from here? You surely can't stay how you were or soon you'll be the size of a house. So that means eventually you will have to "start over" again. Well, guess what? I'm sick of starting over. I'm sick of being defeated. It's not an option anymore. I'm not giving myself any more excuses. I'm feeling how wonderful it is to live this kind of lifestyle, why would I go back?

Theres no reason to.
Period.
End of Story.

Have a wonderful Friday!!

Great Success... (In your best Borat voice)

2009-08-26T13:39:00.001-05:00

Happy Hump Day! I would like to start by giving this post a disclaimer. I have a lot of fun exciting things I want to share but none of it really goes together so basically this post is going to be all over the place. Hopefully it won't be too crazy, I'll do my best. :-)

Now, with that out of the way, I'll do a quick update on food and exercise for yesterday. Yesterday's food was pretty good. A Morningstar Chicken Patty for breakfast with a little ketchup and milk, cucumbers for a morning snack. Lunch was grilled chicken breasts, cucumbers and a V8. Afternoon snack was wheat thins and yogurt. For some reason my stomach goes insane in the afternoon. I think I need to find a heftier (is that a word?) snack for the afternoon because that growling drives me CRAZY! Dinner was probably high on calories but I did my best to not eat too much. We had spinach ravioli with spaghetti sauce and a couple pieces of garlic bread. I had orange juice and water to drink. I didn't make it to the gym yesterday but I did do my 4 mile walk with my step-mom so I think I did pretty good in that area.

Since I've started working out at the gym and eating better about 2 weeks ago, I've had a lot of great things happen. I forgot what it's like to be successful at this and it feels amazing. If I could have only remembered this a while ago I would probably be 20lbs lighter and much happier. Either way, I'm consistantly working out and eating well now and that's all that matters. Now since I don't really know how to organize this part because, like I said before, it's kind of all over the place, I think I will outline some of my accomplishments and elaborate as I go. Sound like a plan?

1. As of last Wednesday I had lost 1.8lbs. My ticker at the top isn't completely accurate because I never updated it after I gained back the weight I had lost during the 5 week frenzy that Rebecca had. I started almost 2 weeks ago weighing 270 lbs. Last Wednesday I weighed in at 268.2. I'm suuuuper excited!! I'm losing weight and for me almost 2lbs a week is exactly where I want and need to be. I don't want to lose the weight too quickly but I want to be losing enough to be actually making a dent in this mess I'm currently trying to clean up. I'm very excited to weigh in tomorrow and hopefully I will have good news to share. I'm hoping for another 1-2lbs but I will take anything at this point!! I also took some before pics Monday night because I didn't want my body to change too much before I had the chance to do so. I'm not very fond of them so they may not be posted for a while but at least I have them in my possesion.

2. I can tell that my body is starting to change. My mom and my brother have even made comments that they think I'm becoming slimmer especially in my mid-section. Now I know they're family and they are supposed to say nice things like that but I can tell too. My shirts are fiting a little different and so are my pants. It's a slight difference but I can definitely tell. It feels wonderful to see that my hard work everyday IS paying off and I can't wait to see even more changes in my body.

3. So you all know I used to be addicted to McDonald's. I truly was addicted. I ate it everyday for lunch and sometimes for dinner as well. I would crave the chicken nuggets everytime I smelt the glorious scent of fatty fried food. I would devour every bite the second I got my hands on it and I wouldn't feel the least bit guilty (Hence the 270 pounds just hanging out on my body). I had a McChicken last week because my boyfriend was getting it for dinner and I hadn't eaten yet. I chose the healthiest thing I could find on the menu. Before that, I hadn't had McDonald's for quite a while. I can't remember the last time I had the 10 piece nugget meal with honey mustard and a chocolate shake. Last night I faced the biggest test I've had to thus far. My brother had his wisdom teeth taken out yesterday and I told him I would stop by McDonald's on the way home and pick him up a chocolate milkshake. I drove up, ordered a large chocolate milkshake and drove to the first window to pay. It was at that point that I realized I didn't even have the slightest urge to order food, no fries, no drink, no nuggets, no burger, NOTHING! As I thought about it more I couldn't stop smiling. I didn't even take a sip of his shake on the way home. I threw the straw in the backseat and drove my happy little (big) butt home. :-)

4. On the 4 mile walk that my step-mom and I do every Tuesday there are two killer hills. I am always out of breath and dread seeing these hills rapidly approaching in the distance. Last night I could tell that these hills were easier. I actually didn't realize we went up the first hill because I was fine once we got to the top. I was a little winded on the second hill but it wasn't anything near what it usually is. That alone is telling me I'm making progress in my journey.

5. My Thursdays are about to get a whole lot busier. Why you ask? I am going to be taking a Pilates and Belly Dancing class on those nights. I'm so excited!! I've wanted to take both classes and now I am!! Pilates is from 5:30 - 6:30 and Belly Dancing is from 7:30 - 9. How perfect! They start next Thursday for 6 weeks but I have a feeling I'll be continuing after that. :-)

6. And last but certainly not least: yesterday I learned that no water=bad day! I forgot my water bottle yesterday and didn't have time to go home to get it so I tried to drink as much from the water fountain as I could but I was lucky if I got in 20oz yesterday. I felt blah all day. I had a headache, I was tired and basically dragging around trying to find some energy. Everything in my day was the same as it usually is. I got the same amount of sleep, work was the same, co-workers were the same, I didn't have any extra stress so I'm pretty sure it was lack of water. I'm used to drinking almost 100oz a day and yesterday I had barely any. I'm happy to report that my water bottle is with me today, I've drank about 56oz so far and I'm feeling great! :-)

I know that was a SUPER long post!! Sorry about that but I wanted to share everything that's been going on! Success feels wonderful and I hope you are all experiencing it in some way or another as well. Have a great night and I will leave you with a quote that I'm enjoying right now.

"If you care at all, you'll get some results.If you care enough, you'll get incredible results."
-Jim Rohn

Oh, Sweet McDonald's

2009-08-25T21:10:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone! Happy Tuesday! No post yesterday, sorry! No excuse either, I just didn't post. Oops.

Weekend Recap:

Friday night I had an egg white omelette and then I headed to the gym. Focus was abs with light triceps/shoulders and inner/outer thighs.

Saturday was a verrrry busy day. I've been helping my cousin prepare to move for the past 2 weeks or so and she is moving this Saturday so we needed to do touch up paint and spot the carpet. Her old roommates left their room a MESS. There were HUGE black spots all over their bedroom carpet and one wall was almost completely black (The walls are supposed to be white). They also had scuffs all over the other walls, their closet and the ceiling. (I have NO IDEA how you get scuff marks all over your ceiling!) So we started with putty-ing any holes left by picture frames and stuff. Then we started painting. A couple walls had to be completely repainted, while another couple were fine just being touched up. I also touched up the ceiling and a couple of walls in the living room/kitchen area. After that we scrubbed the carpet for hours! We got all the stains out but boy oh boy was that hard work. We then cleaned the bathroom, swept the laundry room and the kitchen, packed up a few boxes and cleaned some of the refrigerator. It was a very long day and I worked my butt off so I didn't make it to the gym. Oh well.

Sunday my family headed up to the Dells so that my dad could drive a NASCAR for 10 laps. We got him a gift certificate to do so for father's day and since we got rained out last weekend, we headed up there Sunday. He had a blast and it was really fun watching him. On the way home, we stopped at Mexicali Rose for lunch. I had water to drink (almost finished a whole pitcher by myself!) and a grilled chicken fajita salad. I ate half of the salad and saved the other half for dinner while I watched Big Brother. After BB was over, I headed to the gym. Focus was legs with light biceps/back and lower abs/obliques.

Yesterday eats were on point. I had some grilled chicken for breakfast and lunch. Fruit2Day for a morning snack. Some lentils with my chicken at lunch and a yogurt for an afternoon snack. Dinner was a 6inch turkey sub on Italian bread from subway. I got lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, onions and mustard (no cheese). I had about 80 oz of water and some milk with my meals. Went to the gym last night. Focus was arms with light front/back thighs (hamstrings?) and upper abs/obliques. Tonight I do my weekly 4mile walk with my step-mom and I have TONS of laundry to do so I don't think I'll be making it to the gym but definitely tomorrow!

Well this post is getting very long so I will have to tell you about some fun news tomorrow! Very excited about it :-)

Have a wonderful Tuesday! BB tonight!

P.S The other night at the gym I saw a McDonald's bag and drink in the garbage can. Really?! Who brings McDonald's to the gym!?!

Attitude Adjustment

2009-08-21T17:14:00.006-05:00

Hey guys! No post yesterday? What?! Sorry! I had every intention to when I got home from work but the boy called me randomly and asked that I come see him cause he was missing his boo :-) Since he lives a little over an hour away my night was basically spent at his house. (Fine with me hehe)

Anyways, yesterday I was going to blog about things I use to crave ALL the time that surprisingly enough I don't really miss now that I'm eating healthy; however, before I went to visit my boyfriend I watched the preview for the new season of BL and was completely taken aback by something I saw. (If you've seen the preview you probably know what I'm talking about) There was a lady on there talking about how she has a wonderful husband and young daughter (maybe 3 or 4?) and a 2 1/2 week old son. Now my first thought was "why are you on the show if you have a 2 1/2 week old at home?" She then went on to say that they were all killed in a car accident. I was speechless. Shocked. I got immediate goose bumps and tears came to my eyes. This woman's life was shattered. The 3 most important people gone forever, yet she is on the Biggest Loser. She is stepping up and taking control of one of the few things in her life she can control right now. If she has the strength and perseverance to get up EVERY MORNING, with a heavier heart than I can even imagine, and work out and eat right, why can't I? What's my excuse? I can't think of anything that even compares to what she is going through. As today progressed I found that I was slowly talking myself out of going to the gym tonight. Then I thought to myself, "Are you serious?! Come on!" I just keep reminding myself of that lady and what she's going through and I remember why I love shows like the Biggest Loser. They give me 20 reasons to be inspired every 6 months. These people beat the BIGGEST odds and they succeed at something I've been trying to succeed at forever. They can do it and so can I. They WILL do it and SO WILL I.

On a lighter note, food has been pretty good. Yesterday's morning snack was a Fruit2Day. I had a Morningstar chicken patty for lunch with some lentils and some horseradish to dip both of them in. I also had some V8 to drink.

Afternoon snack was yogurt. Dinner was a McChicken from McDonalds (ahh I know I know, horrible!) Today, morning snack was another Fruit2Day. Both breakfast and lunch were grilled chicken breasts with some horseradish. Breakfast I had milk to drink and lunch I had a V8. I did have a lot of water yesterday, close to 80oz I believe and today I'm currently at about 28oz.

I didn’t go to the gym last night but I am going tonight. Focus tonight is abs with light biceps/shoulders, outer/inner thighs and butt. Tonight will be the first time since I joined this gym that I will be going alone! I'm kind of nervous but I think it will be good for me as well.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!! :-)

P.S I will leave you with an AMAZING quotation that I read on Hollie's blog.

"When God leads you to the edge of the cliff, trust Him fully and let go. Only one of two things will happen. Either He'll catch you when you fall, or He'll teach you how to fly!"

Staying True...

2009-08-19T18:03:00.012-05:00

Two days of blogging in a row! How fun :-) and this time I have pictures!! Woo Hoo!

Yesterday was pretty darn good. Last night I went grocery shopping with my cousin and sister and got some chicken breasts, asparagus, lentils, a 6-pack of V8 cans and 4 Fruit2Day juices. (Love these things! If you haven't tried them yet, definitely do!) Then I went out with my friend Tyler to dinner at Red Robin. It was tempting but I drank WATER and had a SALAD. How fun! I was really proud of myself. I got the Apple Harvest Chicken Salad, which was absolutely divine! I ate a little over half and saved the rest for lunch today. Lunch today was

a Garden Vegetable Boca burger,

1/2 of my salad from last night

and a little Toblerone from my co-worker for desert :-)

I did have a piece of pizza for breakfast though, which isn't all that great but I tried to pick the smallest piece possible. Tonight I'm going to whip up a couple of chicken breasts and cook some lentils and asparagus for dinner and lunch for the rest of the week. Food has been very good and rather easy when I actually put in the effort.

Last night my sister and I went to the gym at about 9:30. For weight lifting, I focused on legs. I pushed my legs pretty hard but looking back on it, I feel as though I could have pushed them harder. Next time I will remember this. I also did light triceps, shoulders, lower abs and obliques. After that was done I hopped on the stationary bike for 40 minutes. I left there suuuuper tired but feeling really good. We have plans to go again tonight but at 8 instead of 9 cause we didn’t get home until midnight last night!

I'm very excited because today after work I get to go check out a Hummer Limo that I'm going to rent for my friend and I's 21st bday dinner on October 9th. (My actual bday is the 17th and hers is the 10th) I wanted the Escalade Limo that they had but it got rented before I had a chance to snatch it up. Oh well, I think the Hummer will be just as nice. Also, here are a couple pictures of dresses that I've picked out to try to fit into by the dinner. My #1 choice is the black and pink one. Which one do you guys like the most?

Now, I'd like to introduce you to a good friend of mine: my water bottle. LOVE this water bottle! Basically because it has a straw but also because it holds about 28oz of water, it's BPA free even though it's plastic and it has a double wall so it never sweats! I drink about 3-4 of these a day but lately I've been lacking and only drinking about 1 1/2. I definitely need to step this up asap.

Alright, that's it for today. Have a wonderful night everyone. Big Brother tomorrow!! (Last night's episode was AMAZING!)

It's Been A Long Time...

2009-08-18T16:26:00.001-05:00

*Warning: This post is going to be rather long, since the author of this blog is too lazy to post everyday and she has lottsss of information to update you on. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.*

It's been sooo long! I'm not really sure where to start but I guess I will start with my personal goals regarding this blog.

1. I will post EVERYDAY! Not just once a week or once every two weeks but EVERYDAY. I enjoy blogging so I'm not really sure why I haven't started this already.

2. I will start to post pictures in my blog. I don't know about you but I LOVE reading blogs with pictures in them. They are so much more fun and enjoyable and that is what I strive to be :-)

3. I need to stop being so selfish and start commenting on people's blogs. Every blog that I read is so inspiring and makes me strive to do better; so why not let these people know how much their words mean? It's not hard and it makes me feel good leaving a positive message for someone who has made an impact on my life and on my health journey.

Ahh, now that that's out of the way let me continue with my new found love. Now this man has stolen my heart, makes me feel very good about myself and is helping me on my journey to healthiness. His name is Gym ;-) short for the Harbor Athletic Center. That's right, I joined a gym! I'm very excited and it's exactly what I needed. I knew this all along in the back of my head but I didn't want to admit to myself that I couldn't do it home. I couldn't do it in a place that I usually relax, a place where I lay on the couch and watch tv and just veg out on lazy Sundays or a place where I just roam in my pj's until 1 on a Saturday afternoon. It was too comfortable and that's why it didn’t work. The last time I lost a significant amount of weight was when I belonged to a gym. For me, it's a sanctuary dedicated to being healthy. I love being there and I'm so inspired by everyone that's there. Just being in the constant presence of other people sweating and working their butts off while you're doing the same is just amazing and it's almost like an unspoken bond. My first day going was on Thursday. I went Thursday, Friday, Sunday and I will be going again tonight. I couldn't go on Saturday because I was out of town and I couldn't go last night because I was with the boyfriend. I've found that I don't need a set schedule for what nights I'm going and what nights I'm not going. Basically I just keep track of what I worked on the last time I was there and I rotate my schedule. I think that mentality will be key for me to incorporate this into my life. I know I can do it, I just needed to finally get the right tools in my belt.

Another thing I'm very excited about with the new gym is that they have TONS of classes that are included with the membership. Next Monday my sister and I (she also joined so I have a workout buddy!!) are taking an intro to cycling class. I took a cycling class in college and loved it so I'm hoping to take one class a week after I do the intro. I am also planning on trying a Pilates and yoga class and maybe even a "water boot camp". I just love being excited about something that's good for me. Huh, who would'a thought :-)

Okay, well I think I'm done for now. My brain is getting tired haha and I should probably be working :-/

Anyways, Big Brother tonight! Word on the street says it's going to be a good one! So excited!

..Deep Fried Heart Attack...

2009-08-06T16:59:00.001-05:00

So it's about time I post huh? :-) I've been MIA for a while, doing a little soul searching after hearing about Jen's mom. I know it hit us all hard and made us really re-evaluate what we're doing in this whole weight loss thing and just in life altogether.

So starting today through the 16th of August, is the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee. They talked about it a little on the news this morning about what will be there, what you'll see and most importantly what you'll eat. Now of course Wisconsin is known for beer and cheese but I'm starting to wonder if we should also be known for deep frying and putting chocolate on whatever we can. Some of the 'highlights' they mentioned were chocolate covered bacon, deep fried Twinkies, deep fried snickers bars, deep fried cheese (also known as cheese curds) and my mom's favorite: cream puffs. Did I mention that these cream puffs are about the diameter of 2 softballs put together? The first thing I thought of was "gross" and the second thing I thought was "Are paramedics going to be on sight in case someone has an instant heart attack?" Honestly, don't those foods have enough fat, calories and other crap in them without adding chocolate and throwing them in a vat of oil? If you'd like to see why there's a problem with obesity in America just come to the state fair, or probably any fair in the U.S for that matter. Bleh.

On a happier note :-)...

Food has been good. I went grocery shopping on Monday. Got lots of veggies, some Boca/MorningStar patties, egg whites, pitas and some Greek yogurt. I know that the patties are considered processed food which I am trying to stay away from but I've come to realize that it's essential for me to have something like this on hand in case I don't end up making something else. I would rather eat one of these with a salad than ordering a pizza or Chinese, which is usually what I would do. I've also read a lot about lentils lately and how amazing they are for you. I'm thinking about incorporating some of those into my meals with some chicken or maybe with some rice and veggies in a yummy stir-fry. The biggest accomplishment for me right now is water! It might sound weird but for me having the right kind of water bottle is what made the difference. I've discovered that I drink fluids (especially water) more frequently if there is a straw involved. So I found a 28oz water bottle with a pop top thingy that connects to a straw inside the water bottle. This entire week and some of last week I've been drinking between 56 and 116 oz of water a day! (usually it's around 84) Yay! I finally found something that worked for me and I know that's going to be the key for everything in this journey from eating to exercise.

As far as exercise goes, it's getting better. I went on my weekly 4 mile walk on Tuesday. Haven't walked at all the rest of the week but I plan to tonight and tomorrow night about 2 miles apiece. On Monday I did about 25 minutes of free weights for my arms while watching some Gossip Girl on DVD. Last night I did about 15-20 minutes of leg work while watching GG again on DVD. (Have you checked out this show? Amazing!) Tomorrow I plan to do abs and next week I NEED to force myself to get up early before work and either do some weight training or take a walk, maybe both? I'm not sure we'll see. But overall exercise is good and definitely improving. The best part of all is that I'm not really thinking twice about it. Basically I think, "Hmm I should go work out while watching TV" and that's what I do. I've gotten over talking myself out of it and instead actually want to do it.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Thursday! Big Brother tonight!! Live evictions! Sooooo excited! :-)

2009-08-03T00:45:00.001-05:00

As most of you probably know by now, jen a priorfatgirl's mom passed away tragically on friday. Jen has been an amazing inspiration to me and hundreds of people in the weight loss community. Please keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers. They don't deserve this. I'm so sorry Jen...

Quick Update

2009-07-29T21:31:00.002-05:00

Happy Hump Day! Just a quick update cause I am suuuuuuper tired even though it's only 9:30!

Food today was pretty good. Had some more of the cheese mushroom chicken for lunch but I did also have a diet coke with it. :-/ Dinner was one chicken tender and a few fried okra bites. Wow now that I'm typing this food doesn't sound as good as I thought it was lol. Oops. I did make this amazing tuna salad though for the next couple of days for lunch. It's nice to have something on hand to grab quick so I don't have an excuse to eat bad. I put in tuna, carrots, celery, red onion, avocado, a little bit of sun dried tomato pesto and a little bit of shredded parmesan cheese. The calories are suuuper low since almost everything is veggies and the tomato pesto is pretty low on calories as well. Anyways I'll be eating that for the next few days I made quite a lot. I think I'll probably eat it with some yummy crackers that my mom buys. I finally bought a water bottle that has a straw so I don't have an excuse to not drink water during the day. For some reason I tend to drink more water if I can drink it from a straw. I dunno kind of weird. Anyways lately I have been craving milk, like someone told me all cows were going extinct and if I wanted milk I better drink it now. I've always been a big milk drinker but lately I crave it all day every day and when I get my hands on some I just guzzle it down. Any thoughts as to why this might be?

Exercise today was good. I went on a 30min walk with my mom. She always walks our boxer Cassius and we used to walk our chihuahua Emmy but about a year ago she went completely blind. Well today I felt bad for her that she had to get left behind so I carried her on our walk. Now when most people think if chihuahuas they think of cute little doggies but not ours. She weighs 8 solid pounds and boy was I feeling it right away. I tucked her under my arm basically like I was a running back carrying a football. I switched back and forth from arm to arm throughout the walk so I figured it was a pretty good work out for my arms as well. And tomorrow I WILL get up in the morning to do some weight training, I think abs.

Okay, well I already wrote more than I thought I would so toodles, goodnight and sleep well everyone! :-)

2009-07-28T22:26:00.001-05:00

How fun! Im blogging from bed via a text message!! Haha Im having wayyy too much fun with this.

Eating is getting better and Im working on getting this healthy eating thing down. I have to finally be done with fast food and soda. Last night my mom and I made this amazing cheese mushroom chicken. It was only about 250 calories per serving :-) I had some for lunch today as well (instead of McDonalds yay!) Anyways I need to go grocery shopping asap so I can get on with this healthy lifestyle change.

Exercise is good and continues to get better. My doctor told me I have 'slightly elevated' blood pressure and guess what her cure was? Lose weight. Big surprise I know. So I changed my schedule at work to come in a half hour later, this way I can get in some weight training before work with no excuses because I will have ample time.

So yeah Im tired so I shall put down this phone and call it a night.

Toodles, sleep good! :-)

Monday Monday

2009-07-13T16:20:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday!! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. My weekend was good. I did a whole lot of nothing and a whole lot of laundry. I also saw Bruno on Friday night with a couple friends. It was amazing! :-) Very very funny but I think Borat is still a little funnier. (My friend disagrees) Anyway it was a great start to the weekend.

I had my yearly physical this morning. Weight is down 2 lbs! Yay! I wasn't sure if I was going to make the 2 pounds for the five week frenzy I'm doing but I (just barely) made it. I have to go back in 2 weeks though because my blood pressure was slightly elevated. My goal is to be 5 lbs lighter when I go back there. I love my doctor to death but sometimes I feel as though a lot of doctors don't fully believe you when you're overweight and you tell them that you are working out and eating better so you can lose the weight. I'm sure they have heard it plenty of times and not seen any results plenty of times so I guess I can't really blame them but I'm excited to show her that I really am working and I will lose this weight.

This week I will only be able to get up early to work out 1 day because I have to make up the time I missed for the doctor's appt today and I would rather make it up before work than after. I will be walking at night though, so I won't miss that part this week, it's the weight training in the morning that I will have to squeeze in another time. (Maybe after I get done from walking?)

I think tonight I am also going to do a little grocery shopping I'm thinking of making some tuna salad for my lunch the rest of the week I'm not sure though.

Anyways….

My brain is kind of hitting a wall so I should stop this post probably.

Have a great Monday, Big Brother tomorrow!!

McDonald's Maniac

2009-07-08T21:01:00.001-05:00

So, that is officially my new name. For the past 2 days I have gone to McDonald's and gotten a 10piece chicken nugget meal with a medium chocolate shake. That's okay right? Ha, I wish. I'm my loveliest dreams maybe but not in reality.

For breakfast I had scrambled egg whites with cheese and turkey which was delicious and some toast with grape jelly on top. I may make an egg-white omelet for dinner to try to make up for the 2000 calories I've already eaten today..

Ouch..

I think I'll try to get my lazy butt in the car and drive to the grocery store tonight and pick up some food so I can get this eating plan into action. I know exactly what and what not to eat, I know portion sizes and understand the basics of calories and grams of fat and sugars etc. I just choose not to do it. Why? I'm not sure. I guess it's because my poor little self would have to actually THINK before putting something in my mouth, I'd actually have to take the time to plan out my meals, pack a lunch in the morning and ingredients to whip up some scrambled eggs at work and wow that's just too much work huh? My step-mom and I walked 4 miles last night at a pretty brisk pace so I probably burned a couple hundred calories but I just decided that hmm maybe McDonald's won't make me fatter today. Maybe they put some special pixie dust on top and suddenly it's like eating grilled chicken with veggies on the side right?

What a sad fantasy world I live in.

Do I want to lose weight? Yes

Do I want to be healthy? Yes

Do I want to look good in clothes? Yes

Do I want to be happier? Yes

Do I want to be proud? Yes

Is fast food healthy? No

Will it help me lose weight? No

Can I burn the calories I need to by watching TV? No

Can I tone up my arms and legs by sitting on my ass? No

Is it fun to be soo full that I feel sick? No

Looks pretty cut and dry folks..

I need to get my head out of my ass and get the ball rolling. NOW

Happy Hump Day!! Big Brother starts tomorrow!!!

Not Dead...

2009-07-06T18:16:00.004-05:00

So I'm not dead. Ha. Good thing right? :-) I've been on blogging hiatus because I'm lazy. Seems to be my excuse for basically everything in my life huh? I've still been here reading my favorite blogs and sucking up as much inspiration as possible but I'm just too lazy to personally type up a blog everyday. Don't worry though I'm back and better than ever! (Ya, right)

Anyways...

Food sucks, exercise starts tomorrow.

I will leave you with a quote that has inspired me and hopefully you as well:

"You don't drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there."
-Anonymous

Amazing I know :-)

Pray for me tonight I start my 5am workouts tomorrow!! I have made my FAVORITE song "It's Your Life" by Francesca Battistelli my alarm tone to help inspire me to actually WAKE UP. If you haven't heard this song definitely check it out! It was featured on the episode of BL when they were doing the marathon at the end. But in case you don't have time to look it up and listen here are the lyrics:

This is the moment
It's on the line
Which way you gonna fall?
In the middle between
Wrong and right
But you know after all

It's your life
What you gonna do?
The world is watching you
Every day the choices you make
Say what you are and who
Your heart beats for
It's an open door
It's your life

Are you who you always said you would be?
With a sinking feeling in your chest
Always waiting for someone else to fix you
Tell me when did you forget

It's your life
What you gonna do?
The world is watching you
Every day the choices you make
Say what you are and who
Your heart beats for
It's an open door

To live the way that you believe
This is your opportunity
To let your life be one that lights the way

It's your life
What you gonna do?
The world is watching you
Every day the choices you make
Say what you are and who
Your heart beats for
It's an open door

It's your life
What you gonna do?
The world is watching you
Every day the choices you make
Say what you are and who
Your heart beats for
It's an open door
It's your life
It's your life

Happy Monday!!

...Down :-)

2009-06-15T16:20:00.002-05:00

Happy Monday Everyone!! I hope you all had a great weekend, mine was fabulous!! First, I'll do recap and then share my exciting news!!

Food was pretty darn good. Friday I went shopping with two of my girls. We had dinner at Noodles and I got a small Pad Thai with a lemonade. My dinner was delicious!! And suuuper low calories. I think the website says somewhere in the 300 range for a small. Sounds good to me :-) Saturday we went out to eat at Red Robin after our walk (more on that in a bit). I had the apple harvest chicken salad which was divine!! I ate half of it and boxed the other half to have later. I also had water with my dinner instead of soda even though I was very tempted! Saturday as a snack I had the other half of my salad because we ate dinner pretty late. For dinner we ordered chinese. I was going to order one of their "special diet" meals but instead I got the sweet and sour chicken with a pt of steamed rice. I ate half and had the other half for breakfast on Sunday. I also had a few crab rangoons. I just can't resist those!! Sunday was a pretty small for food. I had the other half of my chinese for "breakfast", but it was more like 12 so I guess it would be considered lunch. I didn't have much else if I'm remembering correctly but I really wasn't hungry so I didn't eat. Today I had grilled chicken for breakfast and lunch but with lunch I also had some asparagus. Snacks were 1 hard boiled egg white and string cheese. Nothing else yet but probably an egg white omelette for dinner. I'm doing pretty good with food so that's a relief. That's usually my worst part.

Exercise has been pretty good for the most part. Saturday was awesome! Me, my step-mom, her sister and her sister's dog got up and took a walk at 8. We decided to walk around the lake...10.7 miles!! Wow I still can't believe that I did it!! The first 3 miles seemed the longest. It was hard to get past those but once I did, miles 4-6 just flew by. I was feeling very good and they went super fast. At about mile 7 my feet started hurting. I have insoles in my shoes because I have flat feet that cause kneed problems. Because of those insoles and my knee problems, I have trained myself to walk on the outside of my feet and that's where I was feeling the most pain. Miles 9 and 10 were the worst. My feet were killing me, I could tell I had blisters forming on the outsides of my feet. I finished it though and the only time we stopped was for about 5 minutes and a local bike shop to get some water. I was pretty tired the rest of the day and pretty much layed around. I think that was probably the best for my feet because once Sunday came my feet felt pretty good. I definitely want to do the walk again. Maybe in a month or so once I get used to walking more. I'm going to start walking nightly about 2 miles with my mom and 4 miles with my step-mom on Tuesdays. I am also going to get myself doing more circuits, hopefully daily or close to it.

So for the good news...I lost 4 pounds!! I am currently at 266. Yay, I'm so excited. It's nice when you start to see your hard work pay off, it reminds you why you're working so hard and it makes it worth it!!

Well have a great night everyone!! Good luck in your endeavors and with your goals

Same OId Same Old

2009-06-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

Almost Friday!! Hurray!

Things are going pretty much the same, I'm finally getting off of my high that I was on earlier and I'm starting the do that day to day stuggle of trying to find time to work out and making good food decisions.

Food was ok yesterday. Breakfast and snacks were the same, lunch was a sub from subway with no cheese and mustard instead of mayo. (I think I mentioned this in my last post?) When I got home from work though I had a bowl of popcorn and a few gummy bears. Not my greatest moment. Dinner wasn't great either. My mom and I were out shopping until about 7 and at that point I wasn't in the mood to cook so I picked up one of those asian noodle dish thingys at the store. It was in a package and microwavable so basically it was a processed noodle dish with lots of salt. It was 450 calories which wasn't horrible considering I had calories to spare. I had two cups of chocolate milk with dinner though which was probably about 300 calories alone. I'm not sure if dinner pushed me over my limit but I'm sure I was close. After dinner my mom wanted me to go get a sundae with her but I said no. (yay me!) It kind of made me feel bad though so I might buy her one today or tomorrow since I know she loves Dairy Queen Blizzards. I need to go grocery shopping to get more veggies and chicken so I can have my salads again.

I didn't exercise yesterday. I could have, I should have, I just didn't. Today I'm going to see my boyfriend in Milwaukee right after work so I probably won't work out. (Unless you consider some lovin'..ha sorry if that was wayy inappropriate ;-) Anyways I plan on doing a lot of exercise this weekend so that will get me back on track.

P.S I haven't had a soda since Monday...

Yay!

Hump Day ;-)

2009-06-10T21:03:00.001-05:00

Happy Hump Day!! Halfway through the week thank god!!

Yesterday was very successful again, which is very exciting! Food was good, exercise was good and I'm feeling good! :-)

Food was about the same as Monday with lots of veggies and chicken. I definitely need to work on water though! Only 1.5L again yesterday and today I haven't had any. :-( I really need to kick that up a notch. Last night for dinner we had scrambled eggs, potatoes, Boca sausage links and hashbrowns. Not the healthiest but I made sure to keep the portions small so I think I did alright. I also had 2 cups of orange juice and a cup of 1% milk. Today food has been about the same again but we ran out of chicken so instead of having a grilled chicken salad for lunch I headed over to subway and got a 6 inch turkey breast sub on white with lots of veggies and mustard instead of mayo (my fav!) I also didn’t have any cheese on the sub because I know how that can rack up the calorie content. I had a can of apple juice with it instead of soda which is big for me because I am a soda-aholic. Food has been pretty easy thus far which I am very happy about, that has always been my downfall.

Exercise yesterday was good as well. My step-mom and I walked 4miles after we got off of work. We did it in about 1hr 10 minutes just like last time. I thought we were walking a little slower because it seemed easier but I think it seemed easier because it was. It was still hard, I was still sweating and out of breath at some points but it was somewhat easier than last time. I know that it will become easier each time we do this which is awesome. Mentally I felt good and physically I felt good. No tight calves, no numb feet or anything of the sort. I have a small blister on the bottom of my left foot but I wasn’t wearing very thick socks so I'm pretty sure that's why. Other than that it was good and refreshing. I look forward to many more of those nights. I didn't lift any weights when I got home though so I'll have to do that tonight so I can tighten up my arms :-)

Great Success...(in your best Borat voice)

2009-06-09T11:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone, Happy Tuesday!! Things are going very good and yesterday was a great success.

Food yesterday was awesome. For breakfast I had 4oz of grilled chicken breast with about 2tbsp ketchup (I really need to break my ketchup addiction) and about 2 cups 1% milk. For my first snack I had 1 hard boiled egg white with about 3tbsp homemade guacamole. Lunch was a salad with green peppers, red peppers, onions and 4oz of grilled chicken. I also put about 2tbsp fat free bleu cheese dressing on top. My 2nd snack was an apple and string cheese and my 3rd snack was 2tbsp peanut butter. I then made a delicous egg whtie omlette for dinner with green/red peppers, onions, low fat mozarella cheese and a little grilled chicken. I had a cup of green grapes with it and a cup of V8 tomato juice. Today will be mostly the same but I am eating dinner at my dad's so basically whatever he cooks I will be eating. Meals are usually pretty healthy at his house, my step-mom is a vegetarian and they are both health-conscious so it shouldn't be a problem. I only drank about 1.5L of water yesterday so I need to kick that up a notch. I've been trying to not drink any water 30 minutes before or after I eat because I'v e read a lot that doing so takes most of the nutrients from the foods that you are eating. I think I'm going to buy some individual cans of V8 to take to work to drink with lunch. Or maybe like apple juice or something would be good? I'm not sure, any thoughts?

Exercise was also good yesterday. I did my very first circuit and I LOVED it. The time absolutely flew by because I was switching exercises every minute. I think this will definetly be my workout of choice from now on. Yesterday I only did a 20 minute circuit but I was dripping sweat. I'd like to eventually get up to a 45 minute circuit but I knew I couldn't start with that. Last night I did legs and abs. I did 3 leg exercises and 2 ab exercises. Each one lasted 1 minute long and then I moved on to the next. I repeated that circuit twice and walked on the treadmill for 5 minutes after each rotation. I think next time I do it I'll do one more rotation and add another treadmill walk. Eventually I want to be up to 10 exercises and 3 rotations and 3 treadmill walks. That will put me at a 45 minute circuit which should be perfect. Tonight I won't be doing a circuit, instead me and my step-mom will be doing another 4mile walk. Hopefully this time I will have better luck with the calves and feet. I will probably lift some weights afterwards just to get in my arm exercises that I'll be missing by not doing my arm circuit tonight. I've also been looking into joining the Dairyland Walkers Walking Club. Hopefully I can get one of my friends or my mom to join with me because I think it would be really fun.

Well I'm about to eat lunch so I better go. Things are looking up so I hope they are looking up for everyone else as well!! Have a great day!

:-)

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is...

2009-06-08T13:47:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone hope you had a great weekend!! So thanks to Prior Fat Girl I am starting the "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" Challenge. My goal by August 1st is to be down 10lbs and FINALLY start this process. From the comments on her blog it looks like most people started last week so I'll be about a week behind but I'm not too worried about that. If I don't meet my goal by August 1st I will be donating $50 to the Wisconsin Children's Hospital - Cancer Center and if I do meet my goal I will buy a new pair of jeans. I currently own none because I'm too afraid to face the music and see what size jeans I am now. I'm guessing I'm somewhere near the 18-20 mark. Yuck.

So last night I went grocery shopping and bought some veggies so I can start back on track eating healthy. I will be logging daily in my food journal again and drinking at least 3L of water a day. So far I'm at about 1 so I'm doing alright. I bought a green pepper, red pepper, onion, avacado and a bag of lettuce so I can start having salads for lunch. I also grilled up some chicken breasts to put in the salad. I bought this really cool salad "container" that has a bowl for your salad and then a top the has a dressing holder and little compartments for other food ( I put my morning snacks in there). In the lid part of it there is an ice pack to keep the salad cold until lunch time. I also bought these little mini containers and chopped up all the veggies I had and put them each in their own container. I knew this was important to do otherwise I would make the excuse every morning that I didn’t have time to cut up the veggies. Now I can just pour a little from each container on my salad with the lettuce and chicken and I'm good to go in about 2 minutes. It's also good for throwing in an omlette quick! I'll probably have an eggwhite omlette for dinner with an apple or piece of fruit. I think I'm headed in the right direction with food and I'm hoping to stay there.

I'm going to exercise tonight since I didn't this morning. I have the house to myself tonight and I have a lot to get done: laundry, cooking dinner, shower, research and exercise. Don't worry exercise is definitely it's on the list! I think I will do a circuit, probably arms or legs. It'll be the first circuit that I'll be throwing together so hopefully I do an alright job.

This weekend really put a lot of things into perspective for me. My family is going on a vacation at the end of June and I had to buy a swimming suit. Blah. I haven't bought a suit in probably 3 years and it was quite embarassing to say the least. I tried on suit after suit and nothing fit. I realized why nothing fit; I haven't really been looking at myself as being that overweight. I know I've gained weight but I still picture myself as 220lbs. I went to try on a XL swimsuit instead of heading straight for the plus size department. I've never shopped in the plus size department and quite frankly I don't ever want to but I know that if I stay doing what I'm doing that's exactly where I'll be. I'm not sure how I got away without doing so for this long but it won't last much longer if I keep this up. I made a promise to myself after I found a swimsuit that fit (size 18! Yikes) that I won't let myself get any worse. In terms of my weight, this is the tip of the iceburg. It's all downhill from here.

:-)

Back on Track...kinda

2009-06-03T10:30:00.001-05:00

Happy Hump Day!

Yesterday was an ok day. Food was pretty good I suppose but definetly not excellent. I had an amazing salad for lunch from the local grocery store near my work. They have a salad bar and it's like $4.50 per pound so my salad cost around $3.50 which wasn’t too bad at all. I put in tonssss of veggies and a few chicken strips for some protein. Overall, I drank a little less than 3L of water yesterday. I did really well at work but when I got home I got distracted and forgot to drink more..oops.

Exercise actually wasn't too bad, my step-mom and I did a 4mile walk around our neighborhood. She walks very fast and it was hard to keep up, I was actually about a step or two behind her the whole walk haha and I was huffing and puffing it was kind of embarassing. But I finished without stopping so that was a great accomplishment. I know once I get into the swing of things again with exercise I'll be able to keep up with her and maybe push her a bit as well. Something really weird happened though and I'm not sure why, maybe you guys can give me some insight. Right away my calves were BURNING and really tight. I think this happened for a couple reasons. 1) I was kind of surprised at how fast she was scooting, so I think for the first 5-10 minutes I wasn't really walking properly. 2) My shoes aren't the best for walking so I definetly need to get shoes that are better suited for activity. 3) I forgot to stretch before the walk which I know is ESSENTIAL! Also, about 35 minutes into the walk my right foot went numb. It stayed numb for about 15 minutes and then was fine again. It was really weird. Again I'm not sure if it was my shoes or the fact that I'm an overweight person walking 4 miles?
Hmm I don't know…any thoughts?

Have a wonderful day and night!!

Back and...Better Then Ever??

2009-06-02T10:20:00.001-05:00

Hello Again! I've been on hiatus from blogging for what, 2 weeks now? I've still been here enjoying reading what everyone's had to say but I've held off on what I've needed to say just because I felt like reflection was best at this point. I know that losing this weight will not only make me healthier but much happier; however, I somehow cannot seem to convince myself of that when I'm sitting on the couch watching a good show or at 5am when my alarm goes off and without second thought I reset it for 5:50. I'm drinking 2-3 sodas a day and I've had so much McDonald's in the past week I'm considering making a sequel to "Super Size Me". So I've layed out a "baby-steps" game plan because that's the only way I'm ever going to get this ball rolling.

1. I will be drinking 3L of water a day. This will be replacing my disgusting soda habit that I've formed and overall make me feel and look better. I even bought this really cute little water bottle to help inspire me to drink more. (I'm at work now, but I'll post a picture of it when I get home) The water bottle holds about 1/2 L so if I drink about 6-7 of these a day I will hit my 3L a day goal. A good thing about it only holding 1/2 L at a time (I'm trying to think positive here) is that the water fountain at my work is about a 2 minute walk away because it is on the other side of the building. I figure I'll get in a little bit of exercise walking over there a couple times a day.

2. I'm done with fast food. Yep, you read right. I know that you aren't supposed to cut anything out of your life completely like that but really what is fast food good for? It makes me feel sick afterwards because everything is so greasy and fried, it's expensive and it obviously hasn't done anything relatively good to my waistline. It's disgusting and without a doubt my worst enemy. I don't need it in my life nor do I really want it. It's fast and convenient hence the reason I turn to it so much.

3. My eating is getting re-vamped. I did really well for the week or 2 that I stuck to 6 meals a day including healthy snacks. The problem came when I felt like I didn't have enough money to go grocery shopping so I skipped for a week and everything else fell apart. Ironically, I had enough money to eat fast food, just not buy myself anything healthy. Funny how that works huh? Basically it was easier to drive through versus cooking a meal and planning everything out. Well I'm going shopping again and getting lots of veggies, fruits and lean chicken. (I've discovered I'm not really a fan of turkey) I've decided to try to incorporate some of the ideas of the raw food diet into mine. The raw vegetable pasta looks amazingly delicious so I can't wait to try that one :-)

4. Mm the dreaded exercise. I'm trying to get my mind back to how I felt about 2 years ago when I lost 40 pounds and exercised almost everyday. I was sooo happy and looked/felt wonderful. I enjoyed my nightly trips to the gym and didn't mind the exercise. If only I could get in that mind frame again I would be golden. It's no longer an option as to whether or not I get up at 5am. I will get up and I'm not going to let me stop myself any longer. That's what I've been doing for 20 years and look where it got me. I also would like to start walking nightly with my mom. (she walks about 2 miles a night) Me and my friend are starting a weekly walk around the lake (about 14 miles) and every Tuesday night I exercise for 45 minutes with my step mom. When I read everything I'm going to do it looks really good: Circuit train in the morning with weights, cardio at night and a nice long walk on Sunday mornings. Now if all of that actually happens I will be surprised to say the least. But why? Why should I be sooo surprised for being successful? That's a big problem that I'm having. I don't believe in myself and by not believing in myself I'm not really letting anyone (including me) down by not losing weight. So today is the start of believing and knowing that I can do this.

Blah, I hate writing all these "today's the day" and "this is what I'm going to do" posts because I feel like I should only have to write one of those and that would be it. I would stick to it the first time and just be writing posts about how amazing I feel and what I've been doing and all my progress. I guess if I wasn't struggling with this I probably wouldn't have turned to blogging huh? Haha anyways have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!!

...I still miss Biggest Loser :-(

Get Bugged

2009-05-22T17:18:00.002-05:00

So I think I'm going to break down and buy a bodybugg. I've heard really good things about them and I really think it will help a lot. I'm very excited!! Not much else to say right now, food has been bad, exercise has been non-existent. Hopefully my new toy will motivate me to finally get my ass on track. It'll be exciting and motivating to actually be able to see that I am doing something instead of constantly wondering if what I'm doing is enough.

Hope you all have a fun and SAFE Memorial Day weekend!!!

Blah...

2009-05-16T22:33:00.003-05:00

So I've been suuuuuuuper busy lately and I haven't been posting nearly enough!!

My eating has been blah, very blah. I just keep eating out and I need to really learn how to fight the temptation and just eat better if I do go out to eat. I've been having a lot of ice cream lately too, I'm not sure why. I haven't written down what I've eating since like Wednesday so I need to get back on that Monday too.

Exercise has been bad as usual. I'm doing my weekly workouts with my step-mom on Tuesday nights and I got up to biking for 40 minutes now which is nice. (I started at 30) I would like to get up to 60 and stay there. I've also been doing the Britney Spears dance classes which I love so that's good exercise as well I just need to start exercising on the other days of the week.

Sorry I don't really feel like blogging and I'm not sure why just busy and super tired and just a lot on my mind. Money's tight like always and I know it's tight for everyone it just is hard to deal with sometimes and it's discouraging. I haven't seen my boyfriend for 2 weeks because he has been very sick with the stomach flu. (Don't worry it's not the swine flu!! lol) But it's also hard to really want to do a lot when I miss him so much. Blah I dunno I'm just tired and need to get a good nights sleep. Dance class tomorrow!!

Hope you are all having a great weekend!!

:-)

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can...

2009-05-11T18:48:00.002-05:00

Happy Monday to all! I bet everyone is just thrilled to be back to the daily grind. I kind of am because I really don't mind work and would rather be here making money then at home doing nothing. It would be nice to sleep in a little extra though! :-)

So eats this weekend were…hmm how do I put this? Horrible? Horrendous? Disastrous? How about all of the above? Friday I did pretty good. I had the house to myself so I watched an old movie from when the Olsen twins were 6 haha it was awesome. And then I watched some of my Friends DVD's. I only had a small bowl of chicken alfredo for dinner with a glass of milk but I did have a couple glasses of Orange Peach Mango juice so that brought my calories up. Saturday I vaguely remember everything I ate which usually means that nothing I ate was healthy and I was stuffing my face without really thinking first. Hmm lets see, I started the day with pasta salad and a bagel. Then I had a chicken salad sandwich with apple juice, then an ice cream sundae from Dairy Queen with lots of chocolate and brownie pieces, then a 3 piece chicken dinner with fries, loads of ketchup and 4 glasses of diet coke. Wow looks like all my disciplined hard work the previous week went all down the drain. Great job Jenny. Sunday I had a couple pieces of Rocky's Pizza, lots of jalapeno cheese bread, some cheese curds, soda, milk and a gyro. Again, great job way to keep up the healthy eating. Well I'm definitely suffering today because I just ate lunch less than 2 hours ago and my stomach is growling already. Too bad I guess I just have to suffer through it and get myself back on track, my own fault. I knew this hurdle would come and I really think that it'll be the hardest of overcome. When I'm with my friends, we go out to eat. I figure 'Hey if they can eat all this junk I can too'. Well it's wrong, I know it's wrong but I have such an addiction to food that I just don't care. I know that I can't completely get around eating out with them but I can definitely make healthier choices and eat less. I felt disgusted going to bed last night knowing that I could have done better and I simply didn't. Oh well I guess we'll see how next weekend goes.

Exercise for the weekend was okay, not horrible by any means. On Saturday I did a lot of walking downtown with friends and a ton of shopping. Sunday I did my Britney Spears dance class. Ahh I've started to become addicted to dancing and I LOVE it. The song we did was "I'm A Slave For You". The choreography was very challenging and I definitely gained a new respect for dancers. No wonder they are soo in shape. Wow it really works you out and I am very sore today. After the class me and my friend, her sister and my sister (we're doing the class together) practiced for like 2 hours because we wanted to get it down and keep the moves fresh in our minds. So I must say that Sunday was definitely a good day for exercise. Me and one of my friends also decided to start walking together on Sunday mornings. We would like to once a week (Sunday) walk around one of the lakes that is here. It's about a 14 mile walk so we will definitely have to work up to that but I'm excited to get started.

Well I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!! (sorry for the long post..oops)

:-)

Satisfied...

2009-05-07T21:45:00.002-05:00

So I forgot how amazing it feels to eat healthy and be "satisfied". I think I said this in my last post but I feel sooo wonderful just having my stomach be satisfied instead of overstuffed, bloated and sick. Ahh this is the life…

Eating yesterday was good. I've gotten my body used to the less calories and all it took was 1 day of hunger pangs and I haven't had any again so I'm very happy about that. I actually forgot to eat my first snack today until 10 am (I usually eat it at 9:30) because I wasn't hungry lol. Part of me wanted to not eat because of that, but I knew that if I didn't eat I would become hungry and for me that is one of the worst feelings in the world. I get an upset stomach, dizzy and a horrible headache. I think that is one of the reasons I overeat so much. Whenever I get the hunger feeling I want to shovel food in my mouth to ensure that it goes away before the headache starts and I'm miserable. Hmm I guess I never thought of that before. Eating healthy has been relatively easy. Last night I made turkey stuffed portabella mushrooms to take to work for the next couple days so I'm excited about that. I can't wait to get some fresh asparagus on Saturday at the farmers market, yummy :-) I think the thing I've had to adjust to the most with this new eating is not eating when I get home from work. Before I would get home and shovel food in my face as I watched the Tyra Banks Show (<--LOVE that show). Now I come home and don't eat anything until 4:30 when I have a small snack. It's been a big adjustment and I still find myself getting up at commercial breaks and walking to the fridge but then I just turn around and walk right back to the couch without grabbing anything. I'm very proud that I can do that and it makes me feel good and confident that I can overcome this eating battle once and for all. I must confess, I did have a chocolate cupcake today at work. Hmm I'm not upset about it though. If I want something I'm going to have it, I just need to teach myself that not everything I eat can be a chocolate cupcake and that when I want to have a treat I can but I can't go on a total binge. One chocolate cupcake was nice to satisfy my chocolate craving and now I'm probably good for another week or maybe even longer. I've learned that the harder I am on myself about what I eat the faster I go back to junk food that only make me feel sick afterwards. Healthy is the way to go, eating 6 times a day with 3 snacks and 3 meals and a little treat here and there. That's what is working for me and I'm sticking to it.

What's not working, however, is exercise. I think that starting a new way of eating and starting to exercise all in the same week was not something I could handle. I think once I make it through my first week of eating healthy and counting calories I will be ready to tackle my exercise demons. Next week I'm starting and I'm not giving my self a choice anymore. No more free passes because I'm only hurting myself. Not exercising is in no way benefiting me at all. Once I get that through my head I'll be golden. Wish me luck!

:-)

Happy Thursday!!

(almost Friday!!)

Sweet Success

2009-05-05T08:47:00.000-05:00

So yesterday was a pretty good day.

I did remarkably well with the eating, I was actually quite surprised with myself. It was my first day of eating every 2-3 hours, watching my calories and writing down everything I eat. I haven't totalled up the calories yet but I think it is right around 2000 calories. That is exactly where I would like to be right now. I figured out that I was eating at least 2500 calories a day so I needed to cut out around 500. Eventually I would like to be at about 1800 calories and stay there for life, but for right now 2000 is good. I packed two snacks and a lunch for work, one snack to eat at 9:30 and one to eat at 2:30 and that seemed to work out good. I wanted to also incorporate another snack after dinner but soon realized that I am probably going to have to eat 2 snacks in between lunch and dinner because I eat lunch at 11-11:30. I'm fine with eating 2 snacks before dinner and then nothing after, I actually like that better. I did have a few slight hunger pangs yesterday but nothing major and I was definetly expecting some considering it was my first day cutting out more than a meals worth of calories. What I really enjoyed was the feeling of being "satisfied". I can't tell you the last time that I didn't stuff my face so much everytime I ate food that it was uncomfortable to do anything because I was soooo full. Yesterday I didn't have that feeling once and it was amazing. It felt so good and it has been FOREVER since I've felt like that I forgot what it was like. And by the way I never realized how many calories is in regular peanut butter..wow!

Exercise…what exercise? I need help because I don't know what to do. I can't get my lazy ass up at 5am to exercise. My alarm goes off and I reset it for 5:50 when I normally get up. Blah this morning I was like "you don't have a choice, get your ass up" but I still rolled over and reset my alarm. Does anyone have any suggestions on things I can do to make myself get up? I want to work out in the morning so that I also have the option to work out at night and have "two-a-days". I just need to get in the routine of waking up early and doing so. Any suggestions would be realllly appreciated.

Happy Tuesday!! Biggest Loser Tonight!!

:-)

Weekend Recap...

2009-05-04T09:26:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday! Hope all of you had a wonderful weekend!

My weekend was BUSY but very very fun!!

The definite highlight of my weekend was the "Best of Britney Spears" dance class I took on Sunday. It was soooo much fun!! And such a great workout!! It's a 4 week workshop (every Sunday in May) for $40 and each class is an hour long. The instructors made a mix of 4 Brit songs: Oops I Did It Again, I'm A Slave For You, Me Against the Music and Circus, and each week we learn the choreography for one of the songs. On the 4th week we will put all 4 songs together for the complete routine. I've never taken a dance class before but it has always been something I wanted to do and let me tell you I will definetly be taking many more!! I must say the choreography was pretty challenging for my first class but hey it's Britney Spears what do you expect? Boy did I get a workout, by the time I was done my face was beat red and I was pouring sweat. I think my next class will be a 6 week Bellydancing workshop! :-) I'm super excited about that too.

I'm starting today with healthy food, no soda, no sweets for now and lotssss of water. I made my food journal this weekend so I will be recording everything I eat in there so I can see a visual and keep me better accountable. I made veggie quesadillas this weekend for lunch this week. I added 2 slices of turkey breast for a little protein. I also brought in 2 snacks to eat at 9:30 and 2:30 to keep me nice and full throughout the day. I also bought some portobella mushrooms this weekend (yummy!) and will be buying some ground turkey to fill them up for this recipe I found online. Yum I can't wait!!

I knew I wouldn't get up at 5 this morning to exercise so I didn't even attempt it but tomorrow starts me morning routine so it's not a choice!! Tonight, however, I am going to my friends house to practice our dance class routine so that will be some good exercise and I'd like to start doing extra ab work right before I go to bed (especially lower abs!!)

Well that's all I have for now. Hope you guys have a fun and successful Monday!

:-)

Wow...

2009-05-01T14:52:00.001-05:00

So despite my mini-meltdown this morning (sorry guys!) I'm having a rather good day. I feel like it's exactly what I needed to push me back in the right direction. There are a few changes that I'm going to be making over the next couple days to really set this plan into action.

1.) I am starting 2 new blogs. One will be my daily journal and the other will be a food journal. I will put links up on the side of my page if you want to check them out. I think it is important for me to start writing about life in general everyday as someone would in a journal. I need to really reflect on what's working, what's not, what's making me happy/sad, changes I need to make in different areas and basically just so I have something written down day to day that I can go back to if I need to see how I'm doing. A fellow blogger (thanks for your kind words!) made a good point to me. I have to love myself as I am right now before I can ever love myself skinny. I think right now I'm not happy. There are things that make me happy, yes but overall I'm not happy. I'm hoping that journaling and reflecting will really help me get back on track and love me again. The food journal is important because I need to write down everything I eat. I went to a couple of different websites and calculated what my calorie intake needs to be to lose weight. In order to maintain my weight I need to eat 2450 calories! I was shocked. That means that since I have been gaining weight I've been eating more than that. Yuck. That makes me feel absolutely gross. I want to cut my calories down to 200 to start and then maybe to 1800 to stay at for life once I get into the groove of things.

2.) I need to be honest with the people in my life that love me. My friends and family are aware that I want to lose weight but I've never really been open with them about all the steps I'm taking, including this blog. My boyfriend actually didn't even know I was trying to lose weight until this morning. I don't like telling people because I'm not proud of the fact that I actually have to do this, but I realized that telling my loved ones and having them support me is the #1 thing I need. When I told my boyfriend this morning that I was sorry about our fight and that right now I'm not happy with myself and that's why I've been so crazy he asked me what was wrong. I decided to give in and tell him that I'm trying to lose weight and all I can think about all the time is my weight and how I must look to other people. This is what he wrote back, "Baby you can't do anything but be you. I mean I'm not all religious but God makes us the way we are. You can always just work out to get better if you think it's that bad. I'll do it with you." When I saw that I teared up. I was expecting him to say something like "well stop eating so much and get your fat ass to the gym". (Okay maybe not that harsh lol) But I really wasn't expecting him to be that open and accepting of what I'm doing and actually want to join me and be there with me. I've learned that I can't do this alone and involving those I love is very important and essential if I want to be successful.

3.) I want to get more in touch with my religion. I've never been a super religious person but my family has always attended mass here and there and both me and my brother are confirmed into the Catholic Church. All of my grandparents (I have 7) are very religious, my step-dads parents actually spend an hour a day praying the rosary and other prayers. I've always prayed to God at night before I go to bed and I'm very proud of my religion, I just haven't put forth the effort to really do much besides my once a day prayer. I want to read the bible cover to cover and get some different "bible study" books to further understand and relate to what I'm reading. I don't ever want to be one of those people that pushes their religion on others and is so revolved around everything God and everything church but I do want to consider myself religious and "get closer" with God. I think it will not only help me to become happier with my life and myself but also assist me on this journey.

Sorry for babbling on I just figured that if I wrote down my thoughts I'd be more apt to actually follow through with them. Thanks to all of you for your support and kind words.

Happy Friday!!!

:-)

Pursuit of Happyness?

2009-05-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

I'm not happy. Right now I feel like I'm almost to my breaking point. To the point where change starts to happen because I'm are so fed up with how everything is going.

I realized this last night, when me and my boyfriend got in yet another fight. For no reason. He said a lot of things I needed to hear. He said that I seem like I'm never happy, that right now he never see's me smile and he feels like I'm always bored. It made me step back and look at how I'm acting. He's right. I sit there and mope. Basically because I'm constantly, non-stop always thinking about my weight and how I look and hoping that I look okay and knowing that my clothes don't fit right anymore and knowing that my face is so round that you could pluck it off my shoulders and shoot a free throw with it. I'm so distracted by my insecurities that I can't focus on spending good quality time with him like I need to. He's the love of my life and has always been there for me no matter what. I've put on 50 lbs since I met him 2 1/2 years ago and he still thinks I'm sexy and still loves me for me and here I am worrying about whether or not he does. What I need to worry about is whether or not I love me for me.

I don't.

I've come to realize this. Right now I can't love myself because this isn't me. This isn't who I am. This isn't who I'm going to be. I want to lose weight, I want to feel good in clothes, I want to be healthy and I want to be happy.

I need this.

People can't feel good about me until I feel good about myself.

Period. End of story.

Protein Shake? For Breakfast?

2009-04-29T14:40:00.002-05:00

So I need your guys help! Please? :-)

So I've been thinking about starting to have protein shakes in the morning for breakfast. The problem? I have no idea where to start and no knowledge really on this subject. That's where you lovely people come into play :-) Do any of you have protein shakes for breakfast or any other meal? If so, what are your favorite recipes or essential things to put into it? I know that a lot of protein shakes call for some kind of protein powder. For some reason I've always been "leary" of using protein powder, I feel as though it's not as nutritious or good for you as regular food. What do you guys think of protein powder and which ones are your favorite? Also, I saw that you can substitute egg whites instead of using protein powder. Is this as effective?

Sorry for all of the questions!! Hopefully someone out there has the energy and knowledge to answer them.

:-)

Happy Hump Day!!

Mmm Monday

2009-04-27T08:51:00.002-05:00

Happy Monday to everyone! Personally my Monday would be much nicer if it would stop raining! It has been raining nearly non-stop since Friday and all last week as well. Hmm oh well I guess it's supposed to be stopping after today. I must say I love logging on here Monday morning after the weekend and reading all the blogs. I purposely don't read anything over the weekend so I have a lot to read come Monday. :-)

Food this weekend wasn't good at all. I honestly can't remember half of the stuff I ate which is the worst part. I'm not choosing what to eat, instead I just shovel stuff into my mouth. I've tried to be very conscious about what I eat so far today. For breakfast I had half of a grilled chicken breast with some ketchup and a small glass of milk. I guess that wasn't enough to hold me over because about 20 minutes ago my stomach started growling so I went upstairs and got a bagel w/ cream cheese from the vending machine. I was very proud of myself because the second I opened it up I threw the bigger half away and just ate 1/2 of the bagel with a tiny bit of cream cheese. According to the nutrition facts, 1/2 of the bagel should be about 115 calories so not too bad. I have also been trying to load up on water. Friday I drank 3L which is really good for me and so far today I've drank about 1L. My goal is to drink at least 3 a day. Today I brought one of my Blueberry Turkey Burgers for lunch. Now don't get me wrong they are very tasty but I am such a visual person that I'm not sure I can get myself to eat it. It looks like a mushed up blueberry muffin but it tastes like a Turkey Burger. I don't know I just hope I get paid today so I can go grocery shopping and get some more yummy healthy foods.

Exercise has been pretty blah. (No surprise there!) I had to be to work at 6am today for some overtime so I wasn't able to do my circuit training this morning but I plan on doing it tonight when I get home and then start doing it in the mornings for the rest of the week. I'm very excited about starting that I think it will really boost my confidence and give me a kick in the butt that I need.

I'm trying to find ways to keep me motivated. I took some "before" pictures (not too cute) and now I just have to find the cord to hook my camera up to my computer to post them (even though I don't want to lol) on here. I think I'll do that tonight. Also, another blogger mentioned starting to take pictures of everything they eat to keep themselves accountable and I think I am going to start that as well. I think it will really help me when I have to stop to take a picture before I eat anything. I suppose that is enough for now.

Toodles

:-)

New Love...

2009-04-24T08:10:00.002-05:00

So I found a new love...

Cooking.

I've never been much of a cooker and basically relied on my mom for meals (pretty lame I know). But I've come to realize that if I want healthy meals I have to make them myself so I can prepare them how I need and want them prepared. Last night I went grocery shopping and got supplies to make Blueberry Turkey Burgers and Veggie Quesadillas. I made the burgers last night and oh my goodness they are AMAZING! I don't even know how to describe them. They are kind of sweet which isn't a suprise considering there are blueberries in there. I brought one for lunch today with some steamed asparagus and lowfat mozzarella cheese to put on top. I def. should have bought wayyyy more asparagus, I forgot how much I LOVE it! Too delicious!! I can't wait for 11am to roll around!

Didn't work out at all yesterday but I will be taking a walk with my mom after work. She usually walks about 2 miles. This weekend I'm going to start getting into the circuit training and then start full blast on Monday. It's going to be fun and I think I'm actually going to enjoy it. I know it'll make me feel and look better so I can't wait to get started.

Happy Friday!!

Reflection

2009-04-23T08:09:00.002-05:00

So I'm very glad that I weighed myself last night. It helped to open my eyes to what I needed to see. How can I be motivated enough to do anything if I have no idea where the starting line is and how far I have to go to achieve my goals? So I decided now would be a good time to reflect on what has contributed to this weight gain and what I'm going to do to change it.

1. Not exercising - Hmm no surprise here that this has contributed to significant weight gain. My plan is to get my lazy ass up an hour earlier than I do now and work out each morning before work. My problem is when my alarm goes off at 5am I think "No way in hell am I getting up right now" and reset my alarm for 6am. I've come to realize that within 20 minutes of waking up I no longer remember how 'amazing' it feels to be laying in bed, but if I used that extra hour to work out I would see the results. Basically it's waste an hour sleeping that I don't even remember or get my ass up and make a change. I like the latter. I'm a very 'plan-y' person so I've layed out my routine. M-F I am going to do circuit training in the morning. Monday and Friday will be intervals of walking on the treadmill and arms, abs and legs. Tuesday will be treadmill and abs, Wednesday will be treadmill and arms, Thursday treadmill and legs. I will also go on a 2 mile walk after work with my mom when I'm not busy doing other things. Saturday or Sunday (whichever I'm available) I will mix it up doing some kind of cardio. I'm thinking either long walks or maybe doing one of the exercise videos I have.

2. I'm Happily In Love - Now I don't plan on doing anything drastic here lol except re-evaluating using this as an 'excuse' for my weight gain. When you're in love and your boyfriend (or girlfriend) tells you that you are sexy and they love you no matter what it makes you feel ok about eating McDonald's and it makes you feel ok about gaining 10, 20 even 30lbs. If they don't mind it you shouldn't either right? Wrong. Yeah, my boyfriend loves me but if I truely loved myself and was genuinely happy with me and my body, I would be allowing him to love me even more. They say if you don't love yourself no one else can love you as well and it's very true. Not only is this transformation for me but for him as well. He deserves a happy, healthy girlfriend beacuse he is absolutely wonderful.

3. Fast Food - Again, not a huge suprise as to why I've gained weight. I eat fast food multiple times a week. When I'm with my boyfriend we eat fast food, when I'm shopping with my friends we eat fast food, at work for lunch I eat fast food. Man, that's nearly 6 or 7 times a week that I eat fast food. Not only is it bad for my waistline but also for my wallet. I never realized how much money a week I spend on food. I could go and spend $30 at the grocery store and have enough food for lunches and dinners all week. But instead I spend $40 on just lunch and maybe a dinner here and there. So now I need to start buying food to make myself healthy lunches and dinners and refuse to eat out with my boyfriend and friends. Lol easier said than done. I am going to the grocery store tonight to get some stuff to make Blueberry Turkey Burgers and Veggie Quesadillas. Yummy :-)

Whew, sorry for such a long post. I think those are the 3 main reasons for my weight gain and I think that writing them down and now knowing my starting weight will really help me to focus on me and getting healthy and happy. I can't wait, it'll be a fun ride.

:-)

Embarassing? Yes...Suprising? No

2009-04-22T18:00:00.003-05:00

So even though I'm very embarrassed right now I figured that talking about what just happened would help me to kick my own ass.

So I decided to finally weigh myself seeing as I haven't since I "started" this journey back in January. So since my digital scale sucks and I need to get a new one I hopped on my mom's non-digital scale (is there a better term for that?) and guess what happened? I exceeded the weight limit of 266 lbs. Hmm how embarrassing? But unfortunately not surprising. So I hopped on my digital scale and tried to get a reading I thought was about right. Now my digital scale gives me a different reading every time I stand on it and it varies depending on if I move the scale or not. So the general reading was about 270. Blah. It makes me feel so gross. I figure since I'm not positive about my exact weight right now my first goal is to get down to a weight that I can actually measure on my mom's scale. Ha

So anyways I plan on taking pictures tonight and will post them on my pictures page that is currently empty. Ooops. I'll let you guys know when they're up.

I've been steady researching recipes to make and have found a ton really yummy looking ones on recipezaar.com (Thanks to the blogger who suggested this website!!) Tomorrow I'm going to the grocery store with my mom and I think I'm going to get stuff to make Blueberry Turkey Burgers. They sounded soooo good in the recipe I hope they are! I think I'm also going to get stuff to make Veggie Quesadilla's so I can get this weight loss mission on a role.

So I hope you all are having a great Wednesday! And thank you to ALL of you for your ongoing inspiration.

:-)