Chalean Extreme

Surprisingly I managed to stay eating healthy today in the face of the stressful events.  Mostly just the kids misbehaving due to lack of sleep and not willing to sleep made for an extremely stressful day around the house as anyone with kids knows.  It's a good thing I had some dinner in the freezer that I had prepared yesterday.  I was planning on saving it for later but tonight proved to be the night I needed to pull it out since Matt was gone at the clinic and the kids were so clingy and whiny and fussy that I couldn't get two seconds to go prepare anything.  But at least I did get my package in the mail!

So I have been searching the internet for new exercises to do and also great at home exercise videos.  This started of course because I injured my foot and I am not able to do my usual routine, so I was looking on Amazon for Pilates DVDs and yoga and different things I could do while I was not using my foot so much.  During this search I came across a boot camp dvd and in the reviews some people were mentioning other videos such as The Firm or P90x and I decided to see what those were all about and also to Google what the best at home workout videos were.  It was in my Google search that I found my soul mate: Turbo Fire.  I am a cardio junkie.  I love cardio, and I am not very good with strength training (which is why I have been having such a hard time these past 3 weeks not being able to do cardio).  Turbo Fire is a high intensity cardio workout designed by Chalean Johnson.  She also does Turbo Jam and Turbo Kick, but Turbo Fire is the most intense of all and it is a 90 day program.  It also boasts killer music, which is a trigger for me.  That is one reason why I love Zumba because I love the music.  It is also more choreographed and dancy.   Perfect for me and the things I like!  Like I said, it is my exercise soul mate.  Unfortunately, I think that I have a few more months of rehab before my foot is going to be up to the task of doing a high intensity cardio workout.  It is still very sore to the touch, and still hurts to walk there is no way I will be doing Turbo Fire any time soon *sniff sniff*

So!  I also came across ChaLEAN Extreme.  Also a 90 day program, also by Chalean Johnson.  (I have heard only good things about Chalean so I am excited to give her programs a try).  Chalean Extreme is a weight lifting program that focuses on building lean muscle (not bulkey) to burn fat since muscle burns fat.  The program comes with a resistance band, and a nutrition guide as well as a schedule.  You spend 5 days a week working out, 3 are dedicated to weight lifting and 2 are cardio and stretch.  Stretching is also an area I am not very good at doing.  I have heard only good things about this program.  I have heard that you lose a ton of inches even though you don't lose a whole lot of weight since you are building muscle (and muscle weighs more than fat).  But hey! If you are burning fat and building muscle all the better.  This is going to be a hard challenge for me because I am not a big fan of weight lifting but I have heard that this is a great program for women and for people in all walks of life weather they are just starting (me) or have been lifting for a while.

I want to borrow some weights from my parents since I think that having the actual weights will yield better results than using the band for the whole time, especially in the last two phases.  Speaking of phases, Each month is a phase and each phase gets more intense and adds more weight.  I am thinking about starting on Monday.  That gives me a few days to watch the extra bonus DVDs (Chalean talking about nutrition and the motivational CD) and go through the nutrition book and start to make a meal plan.  I need to focus on eating healthy in the meantime and make sure that I am well and truly out of the food binging I guess you would say, that I have been doing the past few weeks.  So much for my month of no sweets!  Instead of losing 5 pounds I think I gained 5 pounds!  But with the excitement of starting something entirely new and entering into uncharted areas and the possibility of losing dozens of inches in the next few months and building muscle like I never have before and getting lots of energy and just being able to move and lift and making this whole mom thing easier!  That is a lot of motivation and rewards to look forward to.  I still have two months before Emily's wedding, that is two months of results and granted they say you burn the most fat in month three, but you still see results in month one and two, and I am ready to give it all I've got.  I just hope my foot cooperates, which it should since this program is mostly weight lifting.  Which is why I chose to do it now.  When this program is done, Turbo Fire is calling my name and I will be ready at the end of these three months to meet the challenge of Turbo Fire and do better than I would have been able to do it now.

So they actually left out my resistance band in the package which I was pretty upset about, so I called BeachBody and told them that they left it out and long story short, they are sending me one in the mail and it will be here in about a week.  Looking at the picture above it looks like one of the DVDs are missing (the one on the bottom right) but that is actually an additional bonus DVD that doesn't come with the program. I'm sure they put it in there to make you feel like you need to buy it to complete your set which kind of peeved me.  Can't they just be happy you bought a program from them?

Anyway, I watched the basic DVD with the intro and I am going to be taking some before pictures which I am not entirely sure I will be posting since I want to take them in my sports bra and bathing suit bottom which isn't exactly "modest" but it is the best way to see exactly how your body has changed over the course of the program.  We will have to see how I feel at the end.

A Surprise in the Mail

Today continued my rampage of eating.  I always do really good until I reach lunch time.  Breakfast consisted of oatmeal and milk, and lunch was my usual sandwich wrap.  Last night for Family Home Evening, our topic was "I am a child of God" and we made sugar cookie people which were children of God.  Not good for my poor resistance right now.  I think I ate 4 of them last night and another 4 this afternoon.  I thought that getting out of the house might help so we went to a meet up at Focus on the Family which I was really glad to go to since I have been cooped up in the house since I hurt my foot.

Unfortunately it didn't curb my bad habits I have dug myself into these past few weeks and when we got home Lily and I watched Wall-e and made popcorn.  (we have gone through almost a whole box of butter this past week making popcorn, cookies, and frosting).  However, today I received my inspiration and ability to pull myself out of my rut via a package in the mail!   I was not expecting it to arrive until tomorrow so I was very excited when it came today.

I

It's my heart rate monitor!  Yipee!  I have been wanting one for a while now and I am super excited that I finally have one :-)  Now I can track my workouts and see how many calories I am burning, and where my heart rate is during my workout, if it is in the cardiovascular zone or the fat burning zone.  It stores up to 99 files so I can look back over my workouts!  I entered in all my data, it asks for your height, weight, age, and gender and then of course it uses the heart rate strap to monitor your heart rate and it calculates how many calories you burned during your workout!  So of course I had to try it out.  I was planning on just letting my foot rest some more this week but I was so excited that my watch came in that after Chloe went to bed I pulled out my I-pad and started up my Zumba game!  I picked a bunch of medium intensity songs and then modified a couple of the moves so that my foot didn't get hurt.  I did not work out as intense as usual because I wanted to be very careful about where I was placing my foot and making sure I didn't tweak it at all.  The last thing I need is for it to get injured again.

Interestingly enough the longer I exercised, the better my foot felt.  I think stretching out the ligaments and muscles helped to loosen it up so it didn't hurt as much.  Here are the results of my workout.

So I exercised for 54 minutes and 54 seconds and burned 427 calories.  I like how it has the timer on it.  I actually selected fewer songs than usual and it is good to know how long I was actually exercising for.  I also noticed that my heart rate was going way down in between songs since you have to wait for the pre song demo to finish and you have to wait for the next song to load.  Here are the rest of the stats:

These show my average and max heart rates and the amount of time I spent in the fat burning zone and the fitness zone.  It was pretty much equal, which I thought was good since I did not exercise as hard as I usually would have.

I am super excited for my watch and this is just the boost I need to get re-focused before I start Chalean Extreme in a few days.  I will post about Chalean Extreme tomorrow as it should be arriving in the mail tomorrow! 

Mending

Still on the mend today.  I thought that you might enjoy a picture of my poor maimed foot since it seems like all I've done lately is complain about how much my foot hurts and how I can't exercise.  So here it is.

Nice and black and blue and green.  This was taken a few days ago so it does look a little better now, but still bruised, especially up by my toes and next to my ankle.  I have noticed that the inside of my foot is hurting a lot now because I have been using that side of my foot much more to compensate for the outside being injured.  So I have been resting the past two days.  An unfortunate side effect of all this rest is that I have noticed myself getting more and more physically tired.  I wanted to take the kids to the park today since it was a nice day and we haven't been out in several weeks and if Lily hadn't been so persistent I wouldn't have gone because I was so physically tired I just wanted to go take a nap.  However, we had just gotten back from a two hour shopping trip so maybe that had something to do with it.  I haven't been to the store since I was injured so we didn't have very much food in the house hence the longer shopping trip.  Still, shopping never used to drain me like that before.

It was a short trip, Lily my 3 year old pooped in her underwear shortly after we arrived at the park and we had to go back home.  The underwear was not salvageable, I will spare you the rest of the details, but we have been trying really hard to get Lily potty trained.  She does very well going pee in the potty but she absolutely refuses to poop in the potty.  She has a long history of stool holding which you probably don't want to read about right now.

Anyway, after the children were cleaned up and put into bed for a nap I had some time to fiddle with spark people some more and found that there are definitely parts about sparkpeople that drive me absolutely crazy.  For one, the amount of ads on their site.  Their site is plastered with ads and they keep popping up and I have to keep closing out of them.  I am not sure why my popup blocker isn't blocking them.  So that takes spark people down a few notches on my favorites list, but their recipe page is still amazing.  I would still say that you definitely need to check out spark recipes.

So, getting back on track with my eating and here was my breakfast:

1 egg with 2 egg whites, some tomatoes, onions and the deli mean (chicken) that we had in the fridge.  Sprinkled with some Parmesan cheese on top, mandarin oranges on the side and a glass of milk (plus you can see my multivitamin and calcium pills too!)  Lots of protein in the eggs, lots of complex carbs in the fruit and veggies.  There is also zucchini cut up and put in the omelet as well.  This is one of my favorite breakfasts, it is fast and easy and keeps you feeling full longer than a lot of other foods.

Speaking of breakfast, I have encountered Cottage Cheese several times and heard that it is amazing for you.  Tons of protein, and other nutrients.  So while I was at the store today I came across cottage cheese while getting the milk and I actually had to stop and think if I was brave enough to actually try cottage cheese for breakfast.  What I have come across is mixing fruit into it and eating it for breakfast.  In the past cottage cheese has been on my bad list for as long as I can remember (along with Zucchini which I now like) so I decided in the end to go ahead and give it a try.  I am going to look up some specific suggestions before I experiment by myself but I hope I like it because if not I will have a whole container of cottage cheese that probably won't get eaten.  Maybe Chloe will eat it, she eats everything.

Spark People

Today I decided to try out Spark People and see what it was all about.  It is really awesome!  I personally think it is better than My Fitness Pal because it is more comprehensive.  One of the best features is that you have access to thousands of healthy recipes where the nutrition information is all laid out for you, and all the recipes have been rated by other users.  You can store favorite recipes and make your own cookbooks!  I just started three new collections (crock pot, casserole, and Dinner).  I am really excited to start cooking my way through some of these recipes!  It really makes figuring out what to eat easy, Free recipes are always a plus!  They also have a recipe creator where you can enter in your ingredients and they will calculate the nutritional information for you, just like the weight watchers recipe creator calculates how many points are in a recipe you want to make. 

They also have a community where people talk over different topics and can find support with each other just like in Weight Watchers and they have scientific articles you can read as well, just like in Weight Watchers!  It is based on calorie counting and gives you a range of calories to eat.  So my range was 1,200-1,500 each day without exercising, and then if you add in your exercise your range will increase.  I really like how they give you a range to eat in instead of saying you can only eat 1,200 calories in one day.  It gives you more flexibility kind of like the weekly points that you get in Weight Watchers.  For the nerd in all of us we can get spark points for tracking food, exercise, reading articles, making recipes, tracking healthy habits, etc.  Collect points and you can level up!  Just another motivator for people who are motivated by earning points and leveling up :-)

For the first time in any weight loss companion I noticed that they ask you about your health.  Not only do they ask about nursing/pregnancy but they ask if you have diabetes, heart problems, seasonal allergies, etc.  It's a basic short medical history and they take into account your answers to create your very own special diet program. 

Re Connecting

Today I finally succeeded in eating right.  I managed to kick myself out of my food funk I have been for the past week and a half.  My foot is starting to feel better, I can walk almost normal now.  I was looking for an exercise to do since pilates just isn't my cup of tea, and I started looking at the Zumba DVDs that I have.  There is an exercise on there called sculpt and tone, so I put that in the DVD player yesterday to see if I thought my foot could handle it.  I only watched about the first 5 minutes and decided that today was the day that I was going to start exercising again.  There is a 10 day program for getting "toned" and I decided to follow that program and make today day 1.  Basically you alternate videos doing the sculpt and tone 45 minute workout one day and the next doing the 20 minute express video with the flat abs (15 min).  I had to modify several of the moves while doing the video today but I managed to get through it!  Huzzah! 

I have been thinking a lot lately about making a lifetime commitment.  It startles me that when a wrench was thrown into my life I reverted back to my old habits, and even overindulged day after day.  I guess that one comes down to  coping methods.  During the past year I have been able to change my coping method from food to exercise.  I've noticed that when I exercise it makes me feel better and gives me the energy that I need to continue doing what I need to do.  With my foot injured my coping method reverted back to old habits.  I know that I am still an emotional eater but I thought I had made better habits than that.  I am glad though that I was able to kick myself out of this downward spiral today and start fighting for my goals again. 

I am still determined to reach the end, tomorrow I will weigh in and see what damage I did to myself over the past week and a half and then say that what was in the past is in the past and continue to look towards the 140s!  I am closer than ever to hitting my healthy weight zone, I can't stop here.

Totally Off this Week

Sorry I haven't been posting much this last week.  With my foot injured I haven't been able to exercise, or at least my motivation to exercise has been non existent.  I did do one pilates workout that was about 25 minutes long but I had kids crawling all over me the entire time and it was not something I wanted to do again.  In addition to me hardly moving, I have had the worst eating week since I started.  There is just way too much junk in our house.  Chloe's birthday was on Wednesday so we had cake.  Lily has been using the potty so she got to make cookies as one of her rewards, then we had a neighbor bring cookies by for Chloe's birthday so our house has just been saturated.  Since I am very upset about my foot, my emotions are riding high lately (it's not just my foot it's the health insurance changing, taxes, and financial stress but we don't need to go into that here).  I have not been able to control myself.  I have been into the cookies and cake like there is no tomorrow.  I probably ate half the cake by myself and I've had about 6 cookies a day to boot.  Last night I pulled some Brats out of the freezer and ate those instead of making my healthy dinner.  I have not been able to break out of this funk I am in.  I think once my foot gets better and I can exercise again I will be able to do much better.

So here are some pictures from the week. 

Chloe Loves Popcorn

Lily gets a new dress if she poops in the potty... so far she hasn't taken the bait.

Lily also loves popcorn

Doing a craft that was a reward for using the potty for 3 days in a row (still no poop though, just peeing but it is a start)

I got pancakes and whipped cream for breakfast on my birthday!

Birthday Cake is soooooo good!

Herbal Life 4 week challenge End

The finale of my 4 week challenge was actually a let down.  Granted it was the holidays and all that but, I had still hoped for better.  Besides that my poor brother in law was aching all over from doing a very intense workout a few days ago and then he went moshing at a concert and got a little beat up.  So he was down and out of it.  To make matters worse, I injured my foot about 5 minutes into the exercise after driving an hour and a half to get there.  But here are my results: Keep in mind the weight was taken in the evening instead of the morning.  The morning this was taken I was 150, and my start weight was 156
Category                     Start                          End
Weight                           157.8                          152
Upper chest                   37 1/4 inches              36 3/4 inches
center chest                    37 1/2 inches             36 1/2 inches
belly button                    33 1/2 inches              32 1/4 inches
butt/hips                         36 1/2 inches              36 inches
right thigh                       21 1/2 inches              23 1/2 inches
left thigh                         21 1/2 inches              23 1/4 inches
right bicep                      11 1/2 inches              11 inches
left bicep                        11 1/2 inches               11 inches

I don't quite understand how my thighs increased in size by two inches each.  Even if I was building leg muscle I should be losing fat in that area.  Since I have injured my foot though, I am going to start doing Pilates and hopefully that will help take some inches off of my butt and thighs.  I have always hated my butt and thighs, they are a problem area for me, even when I was in high school and was in my healthy weight range.
So Monday I am going to try to do 30 minutes of Pilates every day and hopefully that will help to strengthen my core and help me to continue to lose weight even though I can't move around too much at the moment.

150- 60 pounds down

I finally made it to 150.  Looking back, it really didn't take me too long to lose the last 10 pounds, it just felt like it took forever.  I lost these 10 pounds in a little under 2 months (just one week under) and during the holidays to boot!  It was just incredibly frustrating because my weight yo-yoed up and down and up and down the whole time which made me feel like I wasn't making progress when I really was.  I would be 158 then 160 then 157 then 159 then 156 then 161 (thanksgiving week) then 158 then 155 then 152 then 155 etc.  etc. etc.  All the way until Wednesday when I weighed in at 150.1.  So yes, incredibly frustrating.  I know why: it's the holidays and I would over eat and my weight went up, then the next week it would go down, then the following week I would indulge and it would go up, you see the pattern.  But despite all of that, I fought a good fight and I made it to 150 (even it if was 8 days later than my goal).

As luck would have it, the very day I reach this important milestone, and I am super excited to get into the 140s and finally get into my healthy weight range...... I injure my foot.  Now I can't walk :-(   I am sooooo upset.  I was really psyched up for losing these next 10 pounds because it will put me into my healthy weight range and now I can't exercise.  So I will have to really focus on nutrition and be very careful with what I eat because I know plenty of people who have had foot injuries or surgeries and they are sedentary for a while and they gain tons of weight since they can't exercise and move around.  Now I feel like I am walking on thin ice.  I don't want to lose the muscle in my legs that I have built up either because we are going skiing in a little over a month, and one thing I have been working towards is getting in good enough physical shape so that I can ski the whole day.  I have not been able to ski a whole day in about 6 years, I have been too heavy, my legs too weak, and too out of shape.  I have been working so hard for this ski trip and I am going to be so upset if my foot doesn't heal in time. 

There is an ice pack under that bandage.

So, starting off the next 10 pounds on the wrong foot, but it is just another hurdle I will have to overcome.

Running

Stop the world!  Jenna has started running!  I am not running very far or very fast.  I don't like running.  I'm not even running for me, but running I am.  I have been on three "runs" now around my block.  The first time I ran .83 miles in 13 minutes.  So why am I running exactly?  I am running to get my dog some exercise.  I have a miniature poodle named Pippin and I feel bad that I have kind of been ignoring him for a while since I have been so focused on the girls and on losing weight.  Now it will be a two way benefit!  I am finally thin enough to where I am not in physical pain when I run (I used to have a lot of pain where my excess fat bounced while running).  Anyway, Pippin needs to get some exercise and he loves to be outside.  I want to get him out so he is not cramped up in the house all day and he gets some of his energy out.  Although I am sure that I am exhausting myself more than him.

Pippin was not cooperating with the camera

This is me before running, I thought it would be better to take a picture of me before rather than after, and I only ran for 17 minutes. Ha! I think I am looking super cool in my CU Buffs outfit.  I got that outfit when I was in the Marching Band and for several years I was too fat to wear it.  I have been wearing the pants to Zumba lately since it has been so cold.

Anyway, here is a summary of my run in my Argus App

So you can see I ran 1.39 miles, and it took me 17 minutes and 11 seconds.  The tile all the way to the right is a map of where I ran, basically a circle within a circle.  I ran one mile in 12 minutes and 21 seconds.  I have a long way to go if I want to get back to my high school time of 9 minutes per mile.  But I am glad that I am getting some extra exercise, and Pippin is getting some exercise too.

My Weigh Ins affecting my Mood

I was unprepared for the results today as I stepped on the scale and was shocked to see the numbers 153 staring back at me.  Weighing in on Thursday at 150.8, I was furious that the scale reflected a two pound increase since then.  It is true that we ordered Chinese food for dinner last night, but I only ate half of my portion of food.  Yes this is a 1.5 pound decrease from last week, but I could not mask my disappointment at being two pounds over my Thursday weigh in as I thought I would weigh in the same.  What bothers me the most though is that this affected my mood for the whole rest of the day, and I am still upset about it.  I thought I had been doing well this last week, and I have just been so frustrated lately because I seem to be stuck.  The whole month of December has been up and down, up and down and I am sure that has to do with the holidays, but I have been really frustrated with it.  I have decided to wear my new clothes since they are tighter and will remind me to make good choices so I can fit into them better and they will feel more comfortable.  The past two times I bought new pants, I got rid of my old ones and was forced to wear my new tight fitting pants.  Each time I quickly lost weight to fit into them better and eventually they became lose on me.  If I want this to happen again, I need to wear my new clothes and not focus on how lose my old pants fit because then I think that I can just eat whatever I want to because my pants are lose.

Today was the first day of having church at 1:00 and it was so much nicer.  I didn't feel like I was starving through church and I was not starving when I came home.  I made dinner in the crock pot so all I had to do was make some biscuits and heat up some frozen peas to complete the meal and we were ready to eat!  Sunday this year is going to be crock pot dinner day!  I am super excited for that, and today is the first Sunday in probably a year that I have not over indulged.  In fact I ate 25 out of my 26 points allotted for the day.  Of course I was watching everything I ate since I was so furious with my weigh in this morning.  Normally I would wait until Thursday to weigh in again, but I want to check again tomorrow morning just to see if it was a fluke or not.  I really want to get out of the 150s and into the 140s and finally get into my healthy weight range.  I am afraid I am not very patient, I am so close it is hard to wait.

Argus-Fitness Tracking App

I know I just had a post earlier about a new app, but I just found this one yesterday and I think it is awesome!  Argus is a fitness tracking app and the newest version works with the M7 chip in the new Iphone 5S that I just upgraded to on Tuesday.  The M7 chip tracks your movement while preserving battery life, and this app will access the information stored in that chip.  It asks for your height, weight and gender and uses that to estimate about how many calories you burned that day based off of your movement!  You can also track your runs, walks, and lots of other exercises too (like cycling, zumba, skiing, boxing, etc). Here is a screen shot of my day yesterday.

I am not a big fan of the honeycomb matrix, which took me a while to figure out how to read, but once you get used to it, it isn't bad.  So this basically says that on Friday January 3rd (yesterday) it tells me the weather (high 57 and low of 23) and to the right of that I logged my run.  Yes I ran for the first time yesterday! (I wanted to take my dog out to get some exercise).  So you see that I ran for 11 minutes and 50 seconds, and just above the running tile it tells me how far I ran (.84 miles) not far haha!  Just to the left of the distance it shows me a map of where I ran (just around the circle I live on).  If you click on one of the running tiles it will pull up a summary of your run where it tells you your altitude, and altitude changes, your cadance (steps per minute) and your pace (how fast you are running your mile) and you can scroll across the chart to find out this info at any specific point in your run!  It is so cool.
So after all of my running information (just above it) it tells me how many steps I took yesterday: 10,692 and also my estimated number of calories that I burned yesterday (2,046). 
Yes this means that you have to carry your phone with you all the time or it won't be accurate but most of us carry our phones in our pockets or purses all day anyway. 

On a completely unrelated note, my family came over yesterday for a few hours!  It was nice to spend the afternoon with them.  Especially since my brother is going back to BYU today.  I was able to see him one more time before he left.  Here is a picture of me and my little sister Chase.  I felt underdressed because I was in super casual clothes and Chase looks all nice.  She has a good fashion sense, unlike me.

New Year Reflections

The start of a new year.  A time for reflecting on the past and preparing for the future.  This was me one year ago:

227

I was so very unhappy with myself.  Not just my weight but every aspect of my life.  Chloe's pregnancy was hard on me and I felt like I had lost my life.  I made a list of areas I wanted to improve on and it was not short, and encompassed almost everything under the sun and every area of my life.  I was miserable, and moderately depressed.  One year ago I had a decision to make: I could either wallow in self pity and continue to hate myself, or I could change and become the kind of person that I wanted to be... I chose to change.

This is me today:

153

Last year was a year of progress.  I did not hit a single goal I set for myself.  I did hit many milestones in my weight loss, but not my ultimate weight goal.  I've learned about healthy eating, I've found an activity that I love, I have become more active with Lily and adjusted to having two kids.  I've worked on playing my flute, I've learned about fashion and how to properly dress myself, I've joined a mom's group, met my neighbors, and made some new friends.  That is a lot to accomplish in one year.  I still don't feel like I am as good of a mom as I would like to be.  Lily still watches two movies a day and often logs time on the ipad  to boot.  I am still 30 pound from my goal.  I would like to hit 121 to make it an even 90 pounds lost and then have a maintenance range of 121-126.  I have not even hit my healthy weight range yet! I still want to increase my Pampered Chef business so our finances are not so tight, I need to make sure I find time to play my flute at least once a week to keep up my tone, my crafting supplies remain abandoned, and I need to work on building lasting relationships with the new people I have met.

I still have a long way to go, but I have come so much farther than I have left to go.  Twice as far in fact.  I have lost 60 pounds and I have 30 left.  That means that I have lost 30 pounds twice already, and I know I can do it again.  My goal for the new year is to lose about 5 pounds a month, giving myself 2 months to lose 10 pounds.  I was looking at my weight chart for last year and it took me about  two months every time to lose 10 pounds with a few exceptions.  (190 to 180 took me 3 months since that was Julia's wedding and my Birthday were back to back which essentially meant I took a month off of weight loss).

I have a lot of motivation to get me there too.  First, at the end of March my Sister-In-Law is getting married and I am bound and determined not to look fat in those photos!  My goal is to lose another 15 pounds by the wedding.  That will put me at about 137ish.  Second, my parents are getting professional family photos taken near the end of April and I would like to lose 20 pounds by this date which would put me around 132.  Still about 10 pounds over my ultimate goal, but 10 pounds is a lot closer than 30!  Plus, I won't be in the overweight category for the BMI so hopefully I will be looking pretty good.

To give myself a jumpstart on this goal, I have decided that I need to detox my body after all the sweets from last month.  So January is going to be a month of no sweets.  Exactly the same as my last 30 day challenge (except I don't expect it to turn into 6 weeks this time!) I plan on getting back on track and eating healthy and not consuming any desserts or candy during the month of January.  Fortunately most of the country is also doing the same so it shouldn't be too difficult :-)

I meant to post this last night but I was over at my parent's house eating our amazing New Years Meal of Shrimp Curry and fruit salad.   I think this is the first year that I have not over eaten a this meal!  I had one serving of rice, one scoop of curry, one bowl of fruit salad (which would be healthy if it didn't have whipping cream (we whip our own cream for this fruit salad) mixed in with it) and one bowl of jello.  I didn't even have any bread, mostly because I forgot it was on the table.  With two kids to look out for I overlooked it, but that was just fine with me, I didn't need it anyway.  My sister Chase also made jalapeno poppers.  I ate one and then had to use the bathroom and while I was contemplating if I wanted to eat another one, everyone else ate them up for me so by the time I got back into the kitchen they were gone!  Well that took the decision out of my hands, and saved me a whole lot of points! (one jalapeno popper is 4 points!)  Everything was delicious and I am proud of how I handled myself and the things I chose and chose not to eat.  I wasn't deprived of anything and I didn't over indulge.  It was a great start to the new year.