Weigh Day

Ok, I can only guess what my last official weigh in was, as my computer problems prevented me from updating my "Pounds Lost so Far" gadget, so I decided to use my lowest recent weight and go from there.  It looks like I gained 5 pounds.  I'm not going to freak out.  I'm just going to power through this.  I think I'll have my computer problems resolved within the week, which will do wonders because not being able to get online has really kinked my style.  The weight loss software I use only allows you to enter your weight once every seven days, and I couldn't get online yesterday so that's already blown for the week.  Totally sucks, but I can work around it.  As far as physical problems, my shoulders are still messed up but my knee seems fine.  I went for a four mile walk yesterday with two kids in the double stroller...approximately 120 pounds extra to push around town.  I had plans to go to the Y this morning but my two year old has a bit of a temp and is acting like he's down for the count.  There is the possibility I can make it in the evening, or maybe even a bike ride.  Now that would be heaven, zipping around on a bike, feeling the wind, no kids bickering....ahhh.

hello again!!!

     Hey there!  I'm back.  My absence can best be explained by a combination of computer problems, being busy preparing for the holiday, ongoing health problems and a bit of a lack of motivation too.  Since that last post I've lost and probably gained those same four pounds.  I've been up and down, still fighting the good fight overall, but with some struggles.  I've decided to change my Weigh Day to Tuesday, which is sort of random, but I feel I just need a fresh start and will make that fresh start tomorrow.
     A dear, dear friend asked me to post about what I've learned lately.  I have to admit that I had to think about this one because I don't feel like I've had any epiphanies, but rather just some things that I already knew have been reinforced by my recent experiences.  1) There's no way around your goal, you just have to go for it head on.  In the context of losing weight, and with many other chanllenges, you just have to be disciplined, remember your plan, and do it, no matter how tough it is. 2) That being said, you have to listen to your body.  If you have a problem, pay attention to it before it becomes a bigger problem.   3)  Remember to learn from your slip ups.  This is a good way to remind yourself of what works for you and what doesn't.  Right now, eating chocolate and salted cured meats isn't working for me.  Neither is skipping workouts.  Fresh start needed.  4) When times are tough, you know who your true friends are.  Make sure you thank them and keep them close!

Weigh Day

I gained 4 pounds this week.

Struggling with Momentum

     I'm having a rough time.  Yes, I'm counting calories, which I know is a big help but I'm having a hard time burning calories, which means eating much less than I'm accustomed to.  I just can't seem to get that momentum moving my way again.  I have the drive, the motivation, but my body just won't cooperate.  The knee pain has improved greatly, but my physical therapist said to continue to rest it for another week.  That means non-impact exercise only, such as the elliptical machine and the bicycle.  I know I don't burn a whole lot of calories on the exercise bike, so I hit the two elliptical machines for 30 minutes each yesterday.  This was a decent burn, but it aggravated my two neuromas.  (A neuroma is a pinched nerve between your toes.  When they're really bad they burn and it feels like stepping on a marble everytime you take a step.  I already had surgery on the two, but they still bug me.)
     My shoulder pain turns out to be the rotator cuff.  This is pretty serious if you tear it.  Mine isn't torn but it's inflamed and irritated.  So when the physical therapist says to rest it, you better believe I have to rest it.  I am determined not to let it tear.  So that means no upper body workouts whatsoever.  I can't even lift my two year old, and I've had to reverse the direction of diaper changing.  For those of you who are changing diapers, try it....it's harder than it sounds.  The therapist actually said not to use that arm for a week, but, come on...three kids and one arm....you do the math!
     In the meantime my house is looking scummier and scummier and I just can't catch up on it.  I need to rest that arm.  I hate sitting around in a dirty house.  I find it depressing.  Hubby's schedule is wacky again this week and a half or so, so he isn't able to help out at home much. 
     I see the deadline for my goal slipping further and further off on the horizon, and I don't see anything I can do about it right now, and this is extremely depressing.  Beyond words, really.  My overall goal is still to lose 100 pounds.  I've been cruising along almost to the halfway point.  I wanted to hit my 100 by my birthday at the end of September.  Right now, it looks like the earliest would be mid-October, but that's if I were able to hit that 2 pound per week loss every single week, starting this week.  I think these injuries will set me back further than that.  The alternative is to drastically decrease the calories I eat, but this isn't healthy either because it will result in muscle loss.  My plan was to do this in a healthy way, so I guess I'll just be treading water for awhile.

Weigh Day!

Good morning!  I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that I made my weekly goal of -2 pounds.  I'm still having problems with knee and shoulder pain, so I haven't made it to the gym.  But I have been exercising with my Wii and I've been burning some calories remodeling my bathroom.  And I've been counting calories again, which I know makes all the difference.  I'm in the process of setting up my next short term goal, with the overall goal still being 100 pounds gone....I'm almost halfway there!!!

Weigh Days, Rollercoasters and Injuries, Oh My!

I just re-read the last post to remember where I left off.  I was struggling back on March 14th.  Since then I got back on track, and back off again.  Today, just in the last few hours, I think I'm back on track again.  This has been the first true rough patch that I hit.  Here's my story since the last post.  I did well with diet and exercise, though my shoulder started bugging me and got progressively worse until I had to put upper body workouts on hold.  But I hit lower body exercises extra hard.  That weigh day, March 17th, I had exceeded the goal I had set for March 24th by 1/2 pound.  I was on top of the world and wanted to rush on over here to share it with you but my laptop was down.  (I know I can post from my smart phone, but it's a pain and I really kept thinking hubby would get the laptop going.)  I had four compliments at the gym, one from someone I don't really know that well.  They had said that they see me working out, hauling all three kids along, and it was paying off.  Someone said even my face was thinner, which I had noticed but thought it was due to the stomach bug.  Nope, bug is gone and face is still thin!

Having the laptop down meant limited access to some of the technology that I rely on heavily for my weight loss....no pun, really.  The router and/or our internet provided server kept crashing and it really slowed my down in terms of counting my calories.  God forbid I should have to keep track with a pen and paper.  I guess it was just me making excuses for exceeding my calorie limits.  My shoulder kept getting worse and I missed the gym a bunch of times because of the boys being sick again.  Just colds, but its not right to bring them to the gym when they have nasty green boogies running down their faces...or was that just another excuse too?  So the next Weigh Day came, March 24th and I had gained 1/2 pound.  Huh.  I was so devasted and angry with myself at the time that I didn't realize until just now while blogging this, that I still met my goal for March 24th...24 pounds in 12 weeks.  Hmm.  I'm sitting here honestly shocked.  I felt so defeated and crushed and disappointed that I had gone sooooo far off course that I gained.  And yet I met my goal.  Wow.  Sooooo, I've been beating myself up for a week for a relatively minor crime, in the grand scheme of things.  I know there's a lesson in there somewhere.

The day after that Weigh Day my knee started to hurt, bad.  Possibly the result of all the extra lower body workouts?  And hubby brought home a bottle of wine, which we enjoyed over the course of two evenings.  Which also included cheese and crackers.  Low fat cheese, but, still.  And my knee pain brought exercise to a screeching halt over the weekend.  And I made pancakes for the fam, but actually ate some with them this time.  (Do you know that I've been making pancakes for them, but not eating them myself?  Eggs are more filling and fewer calories.)  And we went out, all 5 of us, for pizza and beer (only for 2 of us) on Sunday.  Guilt guilt guilt guilt.  Guilt guilt guilt guilt.  So today is Monday and I've been trying to reign myself in.  I feel like I lost control a little bit there.  After rest, ice and motrin, my knee is almost good enough to go to the gym.  I burned 600 calories on Wii Boxing just before I starting writing this.  I'm back.  My technology is back.  I've got to set the next goal.  I'll keep you posted.

For any of you out there who struggle with motivation or determination, or whatever, I hope you can see that I lost mine too...for a few weeks.  So you're not alone.  I beat myself up over it.  I regret that.  It's not useful, just wasted energy.  Some things were out of my control, but I made some weak choices too.  It seems to be about momentum.  The force that makes a moving body stay in motion.  The trick is to get it to swing around and start heading the right direction.

What was the plan again?

Oh my goodness.  I am so far off track it's ridiculous.  I'm still not feeling too great from that stomach bug and now my 4 year old has it.  I need some normalcy here, please.  I'm kind of amazed at the situation, but I miss the gym and the diet too, actually, as much as it sucks to deny yourself yummy yummies and to have to count, weigh, and measure even the good food.  I've never been a huge fan of exercise, but I miss it right now.  That's pretty amazing.  I think I just miss my normal routine at this point.  Last night was the first night in an entire week that I ate dinner.  I won't be able to get to the gym today, but I can start counting calories today.  Right now.  Let's see, a yogurt for 90 calories.  Off to a good start.  Oh wait...then there's the two animal crackers that I thoughtlessly shoved in my mouth.  Or was it three?  I don't even know how many calories those are...why did I eat them?  And maybe I can burn a couple hundred calories on Wii today, now that I think about it.  Okay folks, crisis over, time to get back on track and hit my goal.

Weigh Day

The official loss is 1 pound.  This is quite disappointing considering the killer of a stomach bug I've had since Monday!  I'm sort of kidding.  I'm counting this pound only because, at the start of this, I had said I'd weigh in every Thursday, win, lose or draw.  So there's my pound.  My focus for the next few days is just to recover and rehydrate.  My goal for the coming week is to enter two more blog posts before next Weigh Day.

Weigh Day!

This week's total is 2.5 pounds gone, baby, gone!  I've decided that life can get as crazy as it wants to, but nothing is going to stop me from reaching my goal!  I'm lucky to have found a great gym, our local YMCA, that has some really supportive people and a wonderful babysitting room and staff.  Without them, I really don't think I'd be almost halfway to my goal of losing 100 pounds.

Weigh Day....belated (oops)

Oh my goodness.  It's almost time for weigh day and I still haven't posted last week's weigh day.  I lost 1 pound.  One measley little pound.  It's hard to see that on the scale after the previous week.  Oh well, I can't beat myself up too much.  It is a loss, after all.

Life has gotten insane lately and I'm feeling a little worn out.  Hubby has been working crazy hours under some atypically stressful circumstances.  My parents have been having some big legal problems and my mother feels that we're close enough that she can lean on me.  Not to be crass, but wrong-o.  I've got nothing left to give after taking care of my family and hitting the gym.  I actually went three days without a decent shower last week. 

Weight loss is a full time job, in and of itself.  It truly is a struggle to pack up for the gym with three young children in tow.  And then it's another struggle to get them into their coats when it's time to leave.  Grocery shopping doesn't happen if no one is available to watch the kids and, other than hubby, there really isn't anyone who is able to handle all three of them. 

I apologize for all the boo-hooing here, but I'm hoping that by blogging it out I'll get rid of the stress and find increased motivation.  My plan is to just keep showing up at the gym as much as possible and keep counting my calories.  I know that eventually some of the stress will blow over, and I can only hope to be thinner when it does.  Any other outcome is just not acceptable.

Weigh Day

Another 3.25 pounds gone!!  I worked hard for that one.  I'm also excited to say I've lost 2 inches from my waist and 3 from my hips in the last month!  The weather has improved and I'm able to get to the gym more regularly.  I did struggle a little with the amount of calories I was eating earlier in the week.  This was due to accomplishment my goal of learning how to bake bread from scratch.  It was soooooo damn yummy, but at about 150 calories for a smallish slice, I had to really watch it.  And of course when you eat fresh-baked real bread you have to put real butter on it.  Any lo-cal butter substitutes would've been a crime!  Olive oil for dipping was great too.

I think my goal for this week will be to eat fewer calories so I don't have to kill myself at the gym to compensate.  Looking for better balance this week, please.

Burn baby, burn!

Today I hit a personal best: 700 calories burned at the gym. This is the most calories I've burned in a single workout session. What goes into that workout? I started with 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill. Then I moved on to about 45 minutes or so of strength training. Today was lower body day, so I was working on legs and glutes and threw in some ab work for good measure. My abs are still kinda shot from this last pregnancy, but ya gotta start somewhere, right? Then I wrapped it up with 30 minutes on the elliptical, using an interval setting. Oh, and I did my physical therapy routine too.

So that's that. It was fun. I am sore, but I'm going to bed feeling thinner and a little more toned up. Looking forward to weigh day!

Now where did i leave those 36 pounds, anyway?

I've been noticing lately that my clothes are looser and I can fit into some things that I haven't worn since before this last pregnancy (baby girl is 4 month old today!).  This has got me wondering, where does weight go when you lose it?  I tried to logic it out:  fat is made up of calories, which is really just a measurement of energy, which is neither created nor destroyed...so...hmmm.  It must go somewhere, right?  I've never really thought about this before, but suddenly I was obsessed with solving this mystery so I did a little internet sleuthing at ask.com.

By the way, please don't consider any of this to be scientific fact, just a report of what I read while researching.  Someone actually asked the inevitable, "When you lose weight do you get rid of it by pooing?"  I must admit I had considered this hypothesis myself, but the answer given was "No."  I guess if that were the case we could just take laxatives and have permanent weight loss. 

Here's the deal.  In a nutshell, when you eat fewer calories than you burn, your body turns fat into energy for a series of metabolic processes involving your liver, kidney and muscle.  Then, these components are further broken down to provide energy for your body.  The heat generated by these processes helps regulate body temperature and the waste products of these processes are water and carbon dioxide.  (If that's true, of course, because this was on the internet afterall.) 

So you pee it out, sweat it out, and exhale it out.  But the process also starts with that calorie deficit--burning off more calories than you eat.  Well, this is less glamorous or magical than I had imagined, but it does reinforce for me the efforts i have been making.  Please feel free to do your own research and share it here.  I'd love to see if there are any other explanations and what they are, but my toddler just woke up from his nap and so my research time must come to an end.  In the meantime, I'll be peeing, sweating and exhaling myself away!

Weigh day

Hello there! I've missed you! I kinda lost focus this week. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but most of my "putting my health first" energy got shifted to the back burner. I want to figure it out so I can learn from it and truly change my ways, but, honestly, I think it had a lot to do with pms and hormonal shifts. I got a little run down and lost momentum in the gym too.

The final number this morning is 1.25 pounds gone. This is good, but not quite my goal of 2 pounds per week. As far as regaining focus, it's a big attention getter when the scale whispers in your fat ear. I am re-committing to journaling everything that goes in my mouth. I've also created some new playlists to listen to at the gym...stuff that'll help me get moving. Do you know I actually listened to David Gray's "White Ladder" yesterday? It fit my mood at the time but I think it effected my workout--I just couldn't get fired up listening to that. In fact, I wanted to nap soooooo badly afterwards.

Okay, here we go...new week, renewed focus!

Weigh Day!!

3 pounds gone!!!!!!!  Woooooohooooooooo!! I actually don't believe it, but scale don't lie! 

I'd like to share with you one of my favorite apps for iPhone.  It's called WeightTrack, and guess what it does?  You enter your goal weight, beginning weight, and update with current weight.  This little beauty not only tells you how much your average daily and weekly weight loss works out to, it also graphs it for you.  It calculates your BMI too.  Perfect for those truly obsessed with their weight loss stats (like me). It's a scale-hopper's dream come true!

S'no Picnic!

We are getting hammered with winter weather in New England.  We're on our second snow day in a row today, with a bunch of ice out there.  Not the kind of stuff I like to tangle with.  This weather is doing a double whammy on my diet, uh I mean "new lifestyle."

First, I'm having a hard time getting to the gym to workout.  For about half the week, for the last several weeks, it's either too snowy to drive there or they don't have the babysitting room open because school has been delayed or cancelled.  I can't even get out there to do a good shovelling workout because of my children...though I have snuck out there once or twice for a few minutes.

Second, my two boys want to snack all day long.  How do you not snack when you have to prep snacks and watch them eat?  How do you smell peanut butter and not eat a spoonful?  How do you make a grilled cheese sandwich and not eat one....or at least the crusts that get left behind?  (I know it's a terrible habit to eat off the kids' plates, but I actually love the crusts of grilled cheese sandwiches.  And they don't.)  My older son loves to make a "picnic" in the living room.  Yesterday I ate a salad.  He actually asked me to eat "something better" at today's picnic.  We had a chat about that one.

And of course there's only so many calories you can burn on a Wii.  Especially when you have to be the role model for taking turns with a four-year-old and a two-year-old.  Then there's the girls' night out I had the other day.  I had to.  And it was a month since the last time I went out, so it was well-deserved, if not absolutely necessary.  This is definately a struggle, but I'm fighting for weight loss everyday...except the day off I took the other day.  I try to remind myself of my committment to getting healthier.  For me.  And it will be spring someday!

My Lighter Half

My husband weighs less than I do. It's something I've sort of known for a few months, but now I'm sure of it. We have a balance scale, like at a doctor's office and he left his weight on the scale. Not just a smidge less, but about 30 pounds less. I find this both embarassing and maddening.

To make matters worse, he has begun the same diet as me (basically just counting calories) and he has lost more weight than I have since he started. It is so not fair.

Well let's think about this for a minute. I do all the grocery shopping, meal planning, meal preparation...and meal cleanup too. Perhaps if I had a personal chef I could lose weight effortlessly. I need a me. I want to scream.

Weigh Day

Hello there!  Thursday was my Weigh Day and I lost 1.75 pounds, which is .25 short of my weekly goal.  I am still on track overall, but am disappointed to miss a weekly goal.  I was on track with the amount of calories I ate but a little behind with the amount of exeercise I did.  I'm going to remind myself that I did the best I could with a snowy week.  I'm also going to focus on eating better quality calories this week and see if that helps.  I have a hunch that 100 calories of banana are a better choice than 100 calories of Oreo.

Motivation Follow-Up

So here's how the rest of the day went yesterday.  I did make it to the gym for a decent workout (yay!).  I did do a smidge of stress eating, but well within my calorie limits.  What have I learned?  Well, I guess the same old tendencies are there -- to be lazy and to stress eat -- but with a new twist of staying on track.  Keep calm and carry on, as they say.  Is this perserverance?  It kinda feels like it.  Tomorrow is Weigh Day, so the evidence of whatever actions I took this past week will be there, either way.

Got Motivation?

I'm dragging a bit today.  My back aches, my knee hurts, I'm overwhelmed with the kids and housework and hubby is really stressed out at work.  Suddenly my family looks like something you see on The Nanny.  I don't feel like going to the gym and I do feel like drowning my stress in some chocolate or maybe some nice warm bread with butter, or maybe wine.  Weigh Day is only two days away and I'm not so close to my goal for the week.  This is the first real dip in motivation that I've had this time around.
I'm blogging this out to hold myself accountable for my actions for the rest of the day.  I'm going to report tomorrow how the rest of today goes...good, bad or ugly.  One of my goals with this blog has been to motivate others, and I'd feel really bad if I had to post that I sat on my ass and ate a pound of cookies. 

"Thin" Food: You Are What You Eat (I Hope!)

I've been really taking the time to read food labels in the grocery store.  Because I'm actually counting calories, I want to really compare total calories, but also consider the overall quality of the food, like trans fat, fiber, cholesterol, sodium, etc.  It's very time consuming, but I've found a few gems.  If I ever figure out how to add pages to my blog, maybe I'll add a page listing some of my faves.  And if I really get my act together, I'll ask the companies that make those products to pay me for advertising. 

But here's the trend I notice:  many of the foods I love are sold in "thin" versions which, of course, are much lower in calories.  There's bagel thins, sandwich thins, pretzel thins and you should see the lunch meat...three slices stuck together are still see-through.  Suddenly it seems that everything I eat is thin.  Hmmm.  Could it be that simple?  Eat smaller versions of what you like and the pounds will drop off?  What an epiphany!  Why didn't figure this out a long time ago?

Weigh Day!

Thursdays are my official weigh day and I'm happy to say I lost 2 pounds this past week, which is my weekly goal.  I'm feeling a major sense of accomplishment because I really had to scratch and claw my way to meeting my goal this week.  Because of a series of winter storms I wasn't able to hit the gym as much as I wanted to, so I further restricted my calories to compensate.  It was a pain in the ass, but now my ass is smaller! 
I've mentioned starting using technology to help me with weight loss.  I've actually learned how to turn on our Wii, which Santa brought us in 2009.  It's a shame, but I never get interested in any of our gadgets because I just don't have much talent with computerized gizmos.  (You can see visual evidence of this in the appearance of my blog.)  I've also suffered a much shorter attention span since I started having kids.  But I had to learn how to hook up the Wii....it was do or die (sort of).  I've been doing the Free Step game while watching tv.  The really cool thing is that I can see my progress on the Wii.  I'm used to seeing the scale go up and up and up.  All through the past decade really.  It's a real thrill to see my weight and BMI going down.  It is truly a novelty, and I love it!  Next I want to see my Mii get thinner...she's a chunky gal.

My Hard Core Day

     So I spent a day trying to live in the spirit of the woman who blew her nose in her shirt in order to stay focused on her workout.  (See the previous post if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)  It started around 7am when hubby and I discussed our plans for the day.  He had the day off because of MLK Day.  It was a carefully crafted plan, choreographed like the New York City Ballet.  I workout at our local YMCA, which offers babysitting but follows the public school schedule.  So if school is closed, there's no babysitting.  We planned how we could each put in a workout and balance the kids, plus grocery shopping.  Healthy food doesn't just grow on trees, you know. 
     I went to the Y at 8:30, and left by 10:45 to go grocery shopping.  (By the way, they had babysitting after all.  I'm always so close to being on top of things, but just not quite right.)  I headed to BJs for some items, then Stop & Shop for other items that we don't need a full gross of.  I got home at 1:30, believe it or not.  For some reason time stands still when I'm at Stop & Shop.  I was looking for some relatively healthy chocolate and cookies---yes, I'm modifying my behavior, but I'm not giving up on chocolate entirely!  It is very time consuming when you actually read food labels and compare, but sooooo worth it when you find a good product.
    I got home, starving by then, and chowed some lunch before hubby ran out to the gym.  He had to run to the mall to buy new running pants and didn't get home until about 5pm.  I still hadn't showered, mind you, and the kids were starting to get wild....their sign of hunger.  I fed them a snack of mini bagels and headed to the shower.  Along the way to the shower, I stumbled upon things that needed to be cleaned or put away, etc.  By the time I got out of the shower the kids were winding up again.  I always say that 6am and 6pm are the witching hours at our house.  For some reason the boys get insanely wild and even the baby gets fussy.  I blame it on hunger, because all calms down once they get food in their bellies.
     So, I got out of the shower and got dressed and I needed to do my physical therapy exercises which are helping me fix my urinary incontinence problem.  (Hey, after three kids, who wouldn't pee a little when they cough or sneeze?)  I have some simple exercises that take about 10 - 15 minutes and so far they've been very effective, but I never have time to do them.  Correction:  I never make the time for myself to do them.  By then I heard the baby screaming and the boys running and jumping--to the point where the whole house was shaking--and of course they were hooting and hollering too...a truly wild rumpus had kicked in full force.  And hubby was yelling at them, but it did't seem to be helping at the moment.  I knew that I needed to go downstairs and provide some backup to hubby and impose some order on the chaos.  But I really want to stop peeing my pants too.  It's my Hard Core day, so I ignored all the ruckus downstairs and I did my physical therapy exercises.  For me.  Me.
     We ended up eating at 8pm, which is actually the boys' bedtime.  They were fried, I was fried, but I was hard core and I got my things done.  It wasn't pretty, BUT I achieved my goals for the day.  I burned the calories I needed to (2900), kept my calorie consumption within my limit (1900), and did my physical therapy routine twice.  It all comes down to a shift in focus.  My focus wass on me today.  Not that I'm neglected anybody else.  Really, the boys were having fun being nutso while I took care of myself.  The baby would've been fussy anyway.  A late dinner every now and then isn't going to kill us.

                             Tell me about something hard core you've done recently.

Footnote:  I hope I didn't offend anyone with TMI about the incontinence stuff.  I included it because it was integral to the story but, more importantly, if any of you reading this have the same problem I want to encourage you to talk to your doctor about it because it really can be fixed.  My OB/GYN offered me surgery or physical therapy, so I opted for therapy.  The therapist said that shes' seen way more severe problems than mine respond well to therapy.  It's a few really simple leg lift type of exercises and they work like magic!

Hard Core

Here's something I've been thinking about lately:  If I can do so much for my family, work so hard to keep them organized and on track, then surely I possess the skills to do the same for myself.  For all you moms/dads or people who manage others at work, you know what I mean.  I'm talking about the ability to plan ahead and the fortitude to execute those plans.  We know how to get things done.  For example, the other day I was on an elliptical machine at the gym and the woman on the machine next to me was sniffling quite a bit.  Finally, she just blew her nose in her t-shirt.  Of course it was gross, but I thought, "Now there's a chick who knows how to get things done."  Now, THAT'S hard core.  So I'm dedicating my day to getting things done, even if it ain't pretty.