Monday, March 30, 2015

Exercise, Energy, and an Experiment

Continuing on the thought of exercise, lifestyle, and eating, I have always wanted to be able to have enough energy to do activities with my kids.  That is one of the main motivators I have for losing weight and continuing to eat healthy.  Over the past two years I have had the mindset of "when I get to my goal weight, then I will be able to count cleaning, and playing with the kids as exercise.  But for now I need to make sure I do my official exercise and then any other activity is just bonus movement and maybe it will help me lose weight faster."  I am now beginning to think that I was wrong to think that way.  What I have been doing is when I am working towards losing weight I will work out like crazy, either doing zumba then swimming or doing body pump or body attack and I will walk out of the gym completely exhausted.  Then I have to go home and get the kids something to eat, and even thinking about cleaning the house makes me want to curl up in a corner sobbing.  I use up all my energy at the gym and I hardly have any energy left for the rest of the day.  Playing with the kids is hard, cleaning is hard.  Pretty much doing anything for the rest of the day is hard because I'm so tired.  Some days I just push myself through it.  Remember those days I was getting in 25,000 steps every day?  If I kept up that pace for a few days, usually Monday-Wednesday, I would then crash the rest of the week and not be able to move for three days.  On my good days I would try not to eat any additional food because I wanted to lose weight faster, and I believe that contributed to my binge eating because I would just get so hungry, and I would get so stressed and then I would crash and be tired and feel terrible about myself which lead to emotional eating and binges.  Obviously this is not a favorable way of life. 

Now I am interested in managing my energy levels and spreading out my activity better.  Instead of spending all my energy in the first half of the week, take my activity level down and then see if I have energy for the rest of the week.  Spread it out more.  Today I didn't exercise, and I almost always do on Mondays, in my old way of thinking I certainly would.  I spent the day playing with the kids and cleaning the house.  We went to a friend's house in the morning, and then played in the backyard.  After lunch the kids watched a movie while I swept and mopped the kitchen floors, and cleaned the downstairs bathroom and the kids bathroom.  Then we went to the park.  Afterwards I took a shower because I had decided not to exercise after all, played with the kids, made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, put Chloe to bed, played board games with Lily and then put her to bed.  It was still a very busy day and my fitibit gave me about 500 extra calories which I didn't use because it wasn't official exercise and I didn't feel like I needed to eat them (of course I way over ate the past four days so maybe that is why).  I didn't need to add an official exercise in today, although I would have if I was still focused on being good or being on plan.  No.  I need to find a better way of life.  I can't expect myself to exercise and clean and cook and play with the kids.  I can't do it all, and that is exactly what I have been expecting myself to do and I burned myself out very quickly.

So I am trying an experiment for the month of April.  I will weigh myself on April 1st and then on May 1st and I will take my measurements too for good measure.  I am not going to weigh myself in between those days and I am just going to focus on living my life and making good habits and changing bad habits.  It's changing habits that really makes this a way of life.  You can't diet forever.  Well I guess you could, but it makes maintaining really hard.  It's changing your habits and creating a new life for yourself that leads you to success in maintenance.  I never really understood that until now.  Since this post is starting to get lengthy I will be posting my habits I'm focusing on tomorrow.  Hopefully with some work I can get this figured out at long last and find peace so I don't feel like I am struggling so much and so I don't get so bent up with "I just wish I were done losing weight".  If I focus on living life, and changing my habits, hopefully weight loss will be the happy side effect.  My goal is same, only my methods are changing.  Heather from the half size me show always says "If you do the same thing over and over again, expect to get the same results.  If what you are doing is not working then you should try something else."  there is another quote by someone that goes along the lines of "Craziness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".  So I'm going to change, and the exercise I do with my kids will count as exercise.  I'm not going to try to overexert myself in order to speed up weight loss.  I am searching for a well balanced life.  I want to go into maintenance knowing that I can and will succeed because I have truly changed my habits, I have truly changed myself.  I don't want to always be dieting back down to my goal weight. 

Here are some happy pictures of Chloe drinking the green smoothie I made for lunch. 

Your kids watch what you do.  Will you teach them good habits or bad habits?  My kids are one of my biggest reasons why I want to live a healthy life.  I want to be able to teach them how to eat well, and live happy.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Energy Monkey

I've been reading a book recently called "The Running Revolution" by Dr. Nicholas Romanov.  Since I'm going to be starting my running training soon for my triathlon I wanted to pick up a book and see what I could find.  This one drew my attention because it says on the cover "how to run faster, farther and injury free for life."  All of which sounds good to me.  The book talks about technique, and gives a training program on how to train you to run in a more natural style, the way we would run if we hadn't grown up with shoes.  It's the way the Kenyan's run and if anyone has read the book "Born to Run" that is based on this running style.  I'm going to give the program a shot, no sense in starting running and setting myself up for more injuries, we all should know by now that me and injuries don't get along.  Anyway, that's not the point I want to get at for this post.  At the back of the book Dr. Romanov talks about an experiment done with monkeys.  They studied spontanious energy activity and they saw basically three variations of activity in monkeys that was then deemed that individual's base activity rate.  Some animals were very sedentary, some were moderately active, and some were very active.  The scientists then placed the animals in various situations sometimes limiting their activity, sometimes increasing their activity.  What they found was that if an animal's activity was controlled, either increased or decreased, that animal would spend the rest of the day making up for it to achieve activity equilibrium.  Basically if an animal was confined and unable to move for half a day, the second half of the day they would be much more active and at the end of the day they would even out their energy expenditure to what it normally was for that animal, either low, medium, or high.  If they increased their activity for the first part of the day, they would make up for it the second half of the day by reducing it's activity and by the end of the day that animal would again reach it's own personal base line.  This pattern held true for weekly tests as well so at the end of the week, the animal reached it's average weekly activity rate.  This whole research experiment is brought up at the end of the book because Dr. Romanov was talking about how to gauge how much exercise you should do and how often you should train.  You have to figure out if you are a small energy monkey, medium energy monkey, or a large energy monkey.  If you try to train beyond your energy limits your body will backfire on you, you will hit plateau's and your training will actually hinder your progress instead of improving your performance.  Some people train three times a week, some people need to train 4-5 and some rare people thrive on training 7 days a week.
You can increase your energy levels and your activity levels but there is a certain limit for every person that their body can take.  There is only so much improvement that you can attain.  As you lose weight and get more fit your energy levels will increase of course, but you will eventually have to find that happy medium of what is right for you.  Not everyone can exercise two hours a day 6 days a week. 


I'm now going to jump to an email I received from the Half Size Me Community earlier this week where she was talking about the relationship between binge eating and exercise and how to know if you are exercising too much and if you have a healthy relationship between the two.  In this email Heather talks about how she was working with a client who would push herself to her limits and beyond at the gym until she was so exhausted she wanted to collapse, and she left the gym starving and ready to pass out.... (I know you've done that too- I've done it many times).  This was a wonderful email and I will only highlight a few parts of it to make my point.  Here is a direct quote from the email "if you are like my client and struggling with binge eating, too much exercise can make it worse. When you are already tired and still force yourself to go to the gym and run on the treadmill for an hour, then stumble into the house, only to clean, cook and do all the other chores you feel you “should do,” before you know it, your body will drive you to the kitchen to refuel on whatever is there.  You may end up eating a carton of ice cream, bowls of cereal or handfuls of chips or cookies. Your body is sending you signals it needs a break, but you keep pushing it like a taskmaster until you hit a wall where your body says no more, and demands food and a break."

These two stories coming pretty close together along with my recent injuries hit me like a brick in the face.  I've been trying desperately to stop binge eating, I've also been trying desperately to exercise a lot more in order to lose weight leaving me exhausted for the rest of the day and starving.  I can keep it up for a few days but then it eventually blows up and I crash.  I noticed this cycle a few years ago and now I wonder if it could be as easily solvable as laying off exercise.  I want to be a big energy monkey, I always wished I were a big energy monkey, but I know I'm not.  I'm probably not a small energy money either, but maybe, like most things, somewhere in the middle.  When I was doing really good and losing weight in 2013 I was exercising three and sometimes four times a week.  It wasn't until I tried to exercise 5-6 days a week that I really noticed the pattern with binge eating, and energy crashes.  I'm not talking about the afternoon crash that happens, I'm talking about two to three day crashes where I'm so exhausted I just want to sleep all day.

Obviously my activity level was way too high over the past several weeks and my body broke down because it couldn't handle the stress.  I need to be kinder to myself, kinder to my body and just focus on living life, not on getting the weight off as fast as I can.  I'm going to pull back on my exercise and see if that helps me keep my eating under control longer, see if that helps the cravings, helps the energy crashes, and helps the intense hunger that comes around every three days or so.  Four days, that's it.  I will not allow myself to do an official workout more than four days a week and no longer than one hour.  I need to let go of trying to workout for two hours a day 6 days a week.  It's not healthy for my body, my mind or my spirit.  Hopefully I will discover my sweet spot, and I can keep my eating under control for much longer than 4 days.  It's a marathon, not a sprint but the sooner I can figure out a happy way to live, the sooner I will be able to be happier and move on.  


There is more I want to talk about on this topic but this post is long enough already so I will leave you with this super awesome picture of me at the park.  I bought a new shirt and I love it!!

Friday, March 27, 2015

I don't do Injured Well

So if you've read my story you may have figured out that I don't do injured very well.  I don't deal with it well, and I'm not good at resting.  I like to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.  So of course this is what I have been doing with my back.  I've been trying to lay off the more intense workouts like Zumba that require higher impact and twisting and bending, but I have been doing swimming, which has been the best for my back but also walking the treadmill.  Which turned out to be a mistake since I was walking for over an hour in my cross training shoes.  I haven't yet bought running shoes and since I was wearing the wrong kind of shoes I ended up with some pretty severe blisters on my feet, which of course I ignored and then made worse.  The past few days I've been pretty depressed because I'm exhausted, in pain, injured, and I just want to sleep.  The kids have been getting up multiple times every night for the last four nights or so.  And by multiple I mean at least three times.  Highly disrupted sleep, my back hurts, my foot hurts, my knee I injured several years back hurts.... It's been awful. 

Yesterday I crashed pretty much all day on the couch, and for the past two days my eating has been out of control.  I realize now I was pushing myself too hard and I should have laid off sooner but I wanted so badly to reach the 140s again that I couldn't let go, and now it's backfired on me.  And it all happened because of a number on the scale.  The number on the scale drives us to do crazy things.  I'm tired of being a slave to the scale, tired of letting it denote my success, tired of defining whether I'm a good person or a bad person based on whether my weight went up or down.  The scale cannot tell me who I am.  If I have a good eating and exercise day I know it.  If I have a bad day I know it.  I know it when I am doing what is right and I know it when I am doing what is wrong.  If I wake up in the morning feeling good and then step on the scale and it doesn't reflect what I think it should I then feel like a failure and my day is ruined.  That's not a lifestyle, that's scale obsession.  Dieting to please the scale isn't maintainable, happy, satisfying, or fun.  So I'm going to do something scary and take the scale away.  Measure my success based on how I feel, how my clothes feel and how well I am living my life.  I want to live my life, not be a slave to the scale, not say "when I reach this number then I can start living my life" I want to live now, not at some unknown date.  I've lost enough weight that I can move well, I enjoy hiking, I enjoy walking with the kids, going to the park, going to the zoo, I enjoy a lot more activities now that used to be laborious, torturous, and hard.  Am I at my ideal?  No, I am still going to track, still going to exercise, and keep working.  Because it is a lifestyle, and I'm not going back, I'm going forward.  I'm going to keep progressing, focus on loving myself, focus on exercising so I can live, not living so I can exercise (more on that in tomorrow's post).  Liveable and loveable..... What lifestyle will you choose?  
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Thursday, March 26, 2015

At First I was Angry

A few weekends ago my brother who lives in a different state flew in and stayed with my parents for a few days while he was auditioning for the local Symphony.  He wasn't expecting to get in since he still hasn't graduated with his bachelors yet (getting his degree in performance trombone) but he wanted the experience.  So he flew in and stayed with my parents Sunday, auditioned Monday, didn't make it to finals and flew out back to school Tuesday morning.  I found out about all this Monday night when I was doing my Mom's nails (that's when she told me about it).  I was shocked to find out my brother was in town and he didn't tell me he was going to be in town for a few days.  He chose to go visit our grandparents Monday night, which I suppose is a good thing.  I can't really fault him for that.  The thing that bothered me was that my older sister and her husband drove down and spent Sunday evening with him.  My whole family gathered together and ate dinner and enjoyed the evening..... without me.  Of the 5 other members in my family, no one bothered to call, no one bothered to text.  Family gatherings are getting more and more rare as everyone in my family grows up, gets married, and moves away.  I was hurt, why was I the ONLY person in my family who didn't know my brother was going to be in town?  I wanted to shout out, stamp my feet, send a text message to the family demanding to know why I wasn't notified.  In short, I was angry.  Perhaps I had some right to be, after all it would have been simple to let me know about the family dinner.  We weren't doing anything that Sunday night and could have easily gone over.  We could have even brought extra food.  But then I started thinking about my own actions.  I haven't really been very good at keeping in touch with my family.  When was the last time I even talked to or texted my brother?  A month ago?  When was the last time I talked to or texted my older sister?  Too long.  I hadn't made any effort to reach out to them, so why should they reach out to me?  Perhaps being left out was really my own fault for lack of putting forth any sort of effort.  How hard is it to send a text?  We are more connected today than we have ever been, and yet I go weeks, months, without talking to my older sister and my brother.  I realized that if I don't want to miss important events I am going to have to be the one to do something about it.  I can't change my family, the only person I can change is me.

As I was thinking about this experience I saw this same pattern reflected in my weight loss.  Sitting at 211 pounds I was angry.  Angry at the world, angry at skinny people (how can they eat whatever they want and not gain any weight), angry at the society (why does our society make it so easy to get fat anyway?) Angry at my culture (why do we have to incorporate food into everything we do?  And it's never healthy food, it's always junk food and sugar) Angry at myself (what is wrong with me) Angry at my body (Why did my body do this to me?  Why can't my body be more like my sister's body) Angry at my metabolism (Why can't my metabolism be faster so I can eat like my husband.)  In essence I was angry at everything for making me fat.  But guess what, I can't change all that.  I can't change our culture, I can't change society, I can't change skinny people, or (for the most part) my metabolism (at least not without a lot of hard work and effort which I wasn't willing to put forth).  I wanted to be skinny and now, but I didn't want to do anything about it.  The only thing I can change is me.  I can only change my own actions, and nothing will change unless I choose to do it.

I also realized this a few years ago when it came to friends.  I moved here and I did try to make friends, but I had a really bad run where all my friends I made moved away a few months after we became friends.  I was left miserable, and alone with a husband who worked practically 24/7 in school and work just to make ends meat.  I was upset and angry that I didn't have any friends.  Until I realized that really I wasn't trying.  I didn't know my neighbors, I didn't call people from church or attend play dates.  This is still a struggle for me.  I tend to get so caught up in my own life I forget to reach out to others.  I have been working to change this.  I went out on a meet and greet a little over a year ago and met my neighbors and now I am good friends with my next door neighbor, the neighbors across the street and also a girl who lives just up the street.  We all have kids about the same age so it works out great.  Still, I'm not as good keeping up with my friendships as I should be.  I want to make it a goal to meet up with someone at least once a week.

So my question to you is this.  What are you angry about?  Is it something you are trying to blame someone else for?  Is it something you need to just accept and ask what can you do about it?  Can you change anything about what is making you angry?  If not then you need to drop it and focus only on what you can do to improve or change your situation.

I found a bunch of great quotes on anger by Buddah.  I hope you find them as inspiring as I did
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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Loving myself

I am really focusing on changing my thinking and last week's episode of Half Size Me was really timely.  I would highly recommend everyone listen to episode 162 of the Half Size Me show.  It's called "The Key to finding happiness with Trish Blackwell".  She talks about how the hardest and most important thing to overcome is body hatred and self hatred.  You cannot be successful on this journey and be happy if you hate yourself.  What I love about this episode is that she talks about how to start to overcome body hatred.  She says the first thing she does with her clients is come up with a list of 10 physical things they love about their body.  At first it is really trivial things, but as you continue to change your thinking and retrain your brain you realize that you really do love your body and eventually it turns into self love instead of self hatred.  So I decided to give it a try.  It took me three days to come up with 10 things I love about my physical body.  But here they are
  1. The freckle on my toe
  2. My nose
  3. My belly button
  4. My fingernails
  5. My hands
  6. My toes
  7. My wrists
  8. The veins and tendons on the back side of my hands
  9. My elbows 
  10. My Hair color
I figured if it was good to come up with a list of 10 things you liked about yourself physically it would also be good to come up with 10 things you like about yourself.  Here is what I came up with.
  1. I love my children
  2. I am willing to change and try to be a better person
  3. I am Honest
That's it.  I could only think of three things over the course of three days.  That is how negative my thoughts are towards myself as a person and who I am.  I've hated myself for so long that to give myself compliments and to say that I actually like something about myself  was really hard.  That is why I have been so stuck.  That is why I haven't been able to overcome binge eating or to overcome emotional eating.  Because deep down inside I still hate myself, and I will not be able to continue in my journey until I change my thinking.  I am trying very hard to retrain my brain to think positively.  In the app I mentioned a few posts ago called "Way of Life" you can make notes for each day for each habit you are trying to create.  I have three positive thinking slots and one self esteem slot where I have to tell myself something good about myself for that day.  I make notes each day, four times a day.  The best thing is that I can go back and read all those notes at once to remember the good things that are happening in my life.  To remember my blessings, to know that I am loved and that I am worth loving and there are so many good things going on in my life and also to remember all the good things I am doing and all the efforts I am making.  There is good in the world, there is good in my life, and there is good in me.  I just have to be able to see it, bring it into focus, and throw all the bad mumbo jumbo out of my head.  Tell Satan to take a hike because I'm reclaiming my happiness and he can't keep me down any longer.

I do plan on finishing my list, even if it takes me months to do it.  Hopefully it won't take that long. I am going to try to think of one good thing about myself per day.  One good attribute that I have, and hopefully I will be able to think of many more than 10.  I hope you do to.  I hope you make a list of things you like about yourself, about the good you do, and about the good in you.  It's time to stop berating ourselves for not being whatever ideal we think we need to be.  It's time to do the best we can every day, dwell on the positive things and tell the negative things to take a hike because they aren't worth our brain space.
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Saturday, March 21, 2015

Gone Hiking

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good.  I think I have built up enough antihistamines in my system to keep the allergies at bay.... at least for the moment. This is the first morning that I have woken up and not been utterly miserable.  The time change really threw me off track, combined with allergies... it hasn't been pretty.  But today I woke up on the good side of the bed.  I made poached eggs and toast for breakfast.  It's a little higher in calories than my usual breakfast (500 calories with three eggs, two pieces of toast and some pure fruit jelly).  But I knew I was going to be going to the gym and then going on a hike later in the day and I didn't mind having the extra calories.  The plan was to walk on the treadmill and then go swim laps at the pool, but this morning the gym was hosting an indoor sprint triathlon and the pool lanes were reserved for the triathlon until noon.  I was really bummed because my swim cap and my new swim goggles came in yesterday and I really wanted to try them out today.  So I settled with fast walking on the treadmill.  I'm not running yet, my back isn't fully recovered and I'm not planning on starting the running phase of training until next month.  I'm going to download a 12 week triathlon training app... I guess I could just find a free one online, but I'm kind of a tech junkie.  (Speaking of which, the new apple watch is totally on my wishlist.  When my current fitbit breaks I think I will be upgrading.  Although I hope my fitbit lasts a good long while because the apple watch needs some battery life improvement.  I really try not to buy first generation anything due to all the tech kinks, second and third generations are usually a lot better and cheaper).

After my fast walk (I stayed on for a hour to feel like I got a good workout. My pace was 4.4 mph through most of it) I went and sat in the hot tub for a while.  I love the hot tub at the gym, they have them in the locker rooms so they are female exclusive and I don't even have to leave the locker room!  It's great.  Afterwards it was time to go home, a quick lunch and we were off to the mountains for our first family hike of the season.  It was about 66 deg out today, super nice.  In an interesting turn of events Chloe did better than Lily!  My 2 year old was running up the mountain as my 4 year old was shouting behind "wait for me!"  I was just shocked.  Chloe did amazing the whole time and when it was time to turn around, we turned around because Lily was tired and wanted to go home.  Chloe wanted to keep going!



Hike is over
 Chloe makes the exact same face as I did when I was her age.  I should find a picture of me pouting and compare it next to Chloe for a throwback Thursday sometime.  Chloe fell asleep in the car on the way home and slept for the next several hours, which was great because I got to go out and buy pants!  I've been surviving off of old pants for several months now and I'm tired of it.  One pair is dangerously close to splitting the seams down the butt- half the stitches have already split it is only a matter of time before the other half spit and that is not something I want to happen while I am out and about!  I tried Ross first but there just wasn't anything there.  So I went to JC Penny across the street and I found too many things!  I talked myself down from 4 pairs to 2.  I really wanted to stock up on pants because I always feel like I never have any pants, probably because I never do.  I usually have 2 pairs, which is what I have now and apparently what I will have over the summer too.  I bought size 10s.  I was happy to see I only went up one size.  I knew the size 8s were not going to fit since the size 8s I have at home don't fit. 

The reason why I wanted to buy more pants was because I am so tired of always being on a diet and never buying pants because soon they won't fit anymore.  I've told myself that my whole life and always ended up dangerously understocked on pants (generally following the 2 pairs of pants method).  I am really serious about finding a way of living and I am seriously considering taking the scale out of my life and just focusing on how I feel.  If I'm not stressing to hit a number I am less likely to binge.  I have been stressing that I won't be able to do a triathlon unless I am a certain weight, but I saw several people heavier than me at the gym today doing an indoor triathlon!  I beat myself up for eating a few too many chips, but really in the end it doesn't matter because I am under calories at the end of the day.  This whole crazy diet mentality has got to stop.  I'm tired of it.  I've been doing it my whole life and I am ready to really figure out this whole lifestyle thing.  Today I had a 110 calorie frozen yogurt and late at night I had an 80 calorie special K brownie.  I did a lot of exercise today, and my total calorie intake was about 1,900.  But I earned 900 in exercise so I was still way under according to MFP.  I think if you workout more, you will need to eat a little more.  Your body needs to recover.  For the first time, I am really thinking about the long term.  I will know I'm making progress because I will feel better, I will perform better, and I will fit back into my size 8 pants some day.  I just want to stop obsessing over myself, strive to love myself, and live a happy life.  Is that too much to ask?

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Throwback Thursday

I have never done a Throwback Thursday post before, but I was going through some pictures of the past 8 years and I found plenty of pictures for several Throwback Thursday posts!  I would love to get some from my younger years as well, but I will have to go through my parent's stash to get those. 

Today I'm going to give you a visual timeline from the time I met Matt to present day, and you can see how my weight changed.  There are some holes in this timeline, I didn't come across the pictures from the year we were in Korea so I will have to dig those up and post them on another day.

Here I am when we were dating:
This was taken in late 2006.  It was my favorite picture of me for a very long time because it was the thinnest I was since I knew Matt.  I met Matt at 155 pounds.  Today I'm around 153 so I'm about the same weight now as when this picture was taken.

 This was right after we were married in June 2008.  I think I look pretty good in this photo regardless of my 165ish pounds.  My clothes and my pose must just hide it well. 

This is in the airport right before our honeymoon!  I actually have a whole post planned for our honeymoon, maybe I will post it next Thursday.  This was also before camera phones so I had to hold the camera out in front and take the picture.  Multitasking ;)

This is our first Christmas together in 2008.  I'm making Crapes.  I am about 175 pounds in this photo, you can see I adopted baggy pajama pants and I believe that's one of Matt's shirts I'm wearing.  I gained 10 pounds over the summer we were married due to record heat waves that came through, I pretty much hid inside by the air conditioning.  I Crocheted Matt a blanket that year for Christmas.  Notice how his weight really hasn't changed over the years.  Totally unfair, but onward!

Here is my super awesome selfie before camera phones existed.  It took a couple shots to get it right and I had to laugh at myself when I saw all the messed up shots.  This is on our vacation to the slot canyons and Goblin Valley in Utah in Spring 2009.  I can definitely tell my face is heavier in this picture.


This is 2010-August when we moved back from Korea.  I'm pregnant with Lily but I think I just look fat.  You know those people who are normal weight and really pregnant and all they have is a baby bump?  Craziness, most people just thought I was fat when they saw me :-(  I'm sure you know my pain.  That's our cat, she doesn't look too happy to be picked up at the moment.

Early 2011 after Lily was born, I had lost some of the baby weight but I'm pretty sure I'm still somewhere around 190 in this photo.

Now we get to the photos where I got really large.  I am just amazed at how big my butt looks in these photos.  Lily is there on the chair.  It looks like we are making whipped cream, I have the heavy whipping cream and the sugar out on the counter. This is mid 2012

Here is another butt shot, I'm not sure what my husband was thinking.

This is pretty much as bad as it gets.  This was taken in late 2012.  Could there possibly be any better picture to depict my relationship with food?  There are two forks on my plate!  TWO!  I believe I was trying to eat half a breakfast burrito and I piled the food on too high and couldn't fold it up.  Matt was trying to take a picture of my failed attempt to fit all the food inside the tortilla. 

I have come a long way since then.  Even though I am not at my goal yet I am thankful for how far I have come.  I would much rather stay forever at this size than go back to the size I was.  Sometimes you don't realize how far you have come until you see the pictures and I think to myself "did I really look like that!?"  Yes I did and bless my husband for loving me from thin to fat to thin again (although he never knew me in a "healthy" weight, when we met I was 155 which is still 10 pounds overweight).  Anyway that's not the point.  The point is my husband never said a word through it all.  He just loved me, and I love him even more for it.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Way of Life

It occurred to me yesterday that I think way too much about the negative things in life.  Instead of thinking about all the good things and looking for positives, my mind is entirely focused on the negative.  This makes me moody, upset, and grumpy.  I decided that I did not want to be that way anymore.  I have always wanted to be the type of person that can see the good in anything, but my natural tendencies don't lean that way.  So I have to retrain my brain to think positively.  After last weekend's binge I knew I needed to change something.  My all or nothing mentality is really getting in the way of me making progress in my health and weight loss goals.  I am either doing everything right, or I am doing nothing right.  So instead of worrying so much about weight loss and being good or bad, either getting in all my water or none of my water, eating all my veggeis or none of them, I want to focus on creating a new way of life.  The way you create a way of life is by changing your habits.  I made some very small goals, since lately I haven't been able to achieve any goal I've set, and I want to start a little slower.  My goals are: tracking every day, even bad days. Exercising 5 days a week, drinking three 8-oz glasses of water a day, eating 2 servings of veggies a day, stop stress eating (although that is a larger goal).  Instead of focusing on doing everything right all the time, I am going to try to gradually improve to eat healthier.  I found a habit changing and tracking app called "Way of Life" that I am using to track these goals.  It's pretty simple and reminds you of what habits you are trying to form or break.  I also like how you can make notes on every task for every day.  That means that I can even put in my positive thinking habits.  I set up a reminder for three times a day to think of something positive that has happened today and also to think of something good about my kids and my life.  (My kids stress me out the most so I need to start focusing more on what makes me happy about my kids, and focusing on the good things they do instead of how they fight all the time).  I also put in self esteem where at the end of the day I will write one thing I love about myself or something I did that day I am proud of myself for accomplishing.  If I want to continue on this journey I am going to have to do some internal cleaning.  Retraining my brain to think positively instead of negatively could be the single most important thing I do to make the rest of my life happy, and to find internal peace.
See Each habit?  Green means you did good, Red means you missed.  Blue are skipped days and don't count as either good or bad, so if you only want to exercise three days a week you would skip 4 days.  Source
You can add a lot of data and analyze how you have progressed over the weeks, months, years.  You can get charts, graphs, and look at your data based on percentages, include skip days or not, lots of customization and lots of feedback.  Source

Today for my morning positive thinking I wrote this:  Lily and Chloe are happy this morning.  Lily is playing outside and Chloe is watching a movie.  I am thankful I was able to catch up with tracking my facebook challenge group points.

Afternoon positive thinking: I am thankful that I was able to visit my friend today.  Lily and Chloe were well behaved which made things even better.  I am proud of myself for swimming 20 laps in the pool without stopping.

Evening positive thinking: Lily is creative.  She has fun drawing maps on blank pieces of paper.

Lily had been bugging me because she was pretty dramatic a few times today when she bonked her head and a 20 minute scream fest ensued, so I felt the need to think about the positive aspects in Lily's character.  My goal is to naturally think these positive things instead of needing to stop and come up with things I want it to be natural.  As it is right now, my mind naturally reflects to: How terrible my allergies are already, and it's only the second day of having allergies!  I'm on three different meds (anti-histamine, decongestant, and tylenol for the headache), I'm tired from not sleeping last night.  Allergies hit hard and fast and I wasn't quite prepared, last night I had snot dripping from my nose all night, I had toilet paper stuffed up my nose and had to breath through my mouth, so I did not sleep well.  (Anyone with bad seasonal allergies knows this feeling).  I could go on and on and on, my mind ruminates on these negative thoughts, it's no wonder I'm constantly stressed, upset, and unhappy.  When I think about the good things that happened today like how I went swimming because my back still hurts and I was able to swim half a mile without stopping! After that I made up my own HIIT training and I swam 50 yards (one lap or down and back) with a 1 minute rest inbetween and I shaved off 11 seconds from my previous fastest time!  I used to swim 50 yards in 1 minute and today I hit each one in 49 seconds!  That's my sprint pace so I couldn't maintain that for longer than 50 yards but I was really proud of myself for improving so much! 

After my pool swim I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  Nothing intense, I think my speed was at 3.5mph.  My back and foot still hurt so I didn't want to do anything too hard.  It felt good to walk and stretch my legs. 

Monday, March 16, 2015

Aqua Zumba, the Park, and various other tidbits

Last night as I was attempting to put Chloe to bed I injured myself yet again. Chloe has entered the terrible twos and has decided that sleeping is not for her.  So going to bed at night is very hard to accomplish these days.  We have this toy hippo that the kids can hang onto and push around like a shopping cart and Chloe was pushing that around when I told her that it was time for bed. She of course wanted to keep playing and when I picked her up she held onto this toy. In my infinite wisdom I was trying to get her to drop it while holding her in the air. And drop it she did.... On my foot. Outch! That hurt! So now my foot is injured, it hurts to walk on it.
This is the toy that was dropped on my big toe


So today I'm all busted and bruised and in a pretty crummy mood. But I went to costco and bought two new swimsuits for swimming laps so I don't get so much drag with all the extra fabric on my current swimsuit. Chloe has still been hacking up a lung so I didn't want to take her to the gym today, but it was 70deg today and i took the kids to the park! (Unfortunately I didn't put sunscreen on and of course Lily got burned on her arms.  Chloe and I were fine because we have a much darker complexion, but Lily is so fair skinned and burns easily.)  The kids loved the swings and had a great time.





Afterwards I fell asleep on the couch.  I think I have been working myself too hard lately and so maybe being injured and being forced to take it easier will help me recover some energy.

I woke up only a few minutes later. The kids were watching Dora, and proceeds to climb all over me. I woke up in a worse mood than this morning. I wanted a snack and of course I decided to eat some leftover birthday cake and I discovered something very important. It took me abou 5 minutes to eat that cake and there were probably 500 calories in that cake. I realized that when the food is gone all you are left with is the stomach ache afterwards, the energy drop, and a memory. After I drank my milk I didn't even have th taste of th cake in my mouth anymore! I realized it just wasn't worth the pain.  The momentary pleasure isn't worth to extra pounds, the stomach ache, the guilt, the crummy feeling you get. The pleasure doesn't  even last that long! 5 minutes?  Totally not worth it.

About an hour later I thought I was the worst mom in th world because I was so angry and my temper so short I just wanted to lock myself in my room and cry.  Fortunately by that time Chloe was feeling better and said she wanted to go to the gym. So I figured I better get put of there before I did something I would regret. I dropped the kids off and headed for th hot tub. That's when i noticed I had perfect timing for the Aqua Zumba class and I thought I should give it a try. It wasn't as intense as regular Zumba and certainly didn't get my heart rate up like regular Zumba but it was exercise and It didn't hurt my back or my foot! That is when my mood improved and I realized I was so upset because I didn't workout earlier in the morning like I usually do. I hadn't realized how dependent I had become on exercise to boost my mood and get me through the day. It really does help to relieve stress and make you happier.  So I just have to change up my exercise while I am injured. There is a body flow class I want to try that is a stretching and yoga combo. Maybe if I burn fewer calories I won't be so hungry and I won't eat as much food and I will finally be able to lose some weight!  At the very least. Focusing on my swimming will be good for triathlon training.  After Aqua Zumba today I swam laps. I don't know how many, I just swam. I plugged everything into MFP except Aqua Zumba (it's not in their database and I forgot to bring my heart rate monitor) and even with the cake I stayed under calories.

That does add in my fitbit calories from my trip to the park. It could have been a lot worse and historically I have a hard time getting back on track after being off for several days. We will see what my weigh in tomorrow has to say. I will probably be up still from the weekend. I would expect that to leave my system around Wednesday. It usually takes two days to recover from overeating.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Cracked

Thursday and Friday I was barely hanging on.  Thursday was when I first felt the effects of my Zumba class on Wednesday and I'm not sure what I did (but I have a suspicion that it was all those jump squats) but I couldn't hardly move because my legs were so sore.  I was also incredibly tired because I stayed up late to watch a movie I had borrowed from my sister (Divergent), and to top it off, Chloe had developed a raging fever Wednesday afternoon (102deg) and right when the movie ended and I was going to go to bed she woke up, therefore I was awake for much longer than I planned.  Of course after that I couldn't fall asleep.  You would think I would learn not to watch movies late at night that I have never seen... but then if I didn't I probably would never watch any movies.  So I was pretty stressed Thursday and Matt was gone from 8am-9:30pm working and doing stuff for school.  Home alone with one sick kid, very tired, and can't hardly walk while the other kid is getting more and more restless because they aren't sick.  I definitely overate but was able to maintain damage control.  Friday was worse.  I still couldn't walk (if you have ever been sore you know the second day is often worse than the first day) and I was still tired because Chloe had another restless night.  My desire to eat healthy was all but gone, I didn't get much water in and my lunch consisted of ants on a log... after the various other things I ate before settling on that.  Still, I managed to keep my calories at about 2300 on Friday.  Matt was gone again all day, and Chloe was still sick and Lily was getting more and more restless.

Saturday I was determined to keep things together, I had planned on eating one piece of cake for my husband's birthday.  But then I had to make the cake..... and when I bake it is even harder to stay out of the yummy food.  Especially when you have to taste the frosting to make sure you put enough sugar in it.  We went out to eat for lunch and I already knew what I was ordering: Vegetable soup, but it took a very long time for our food to come, the kids were starving, Chloe was still sick.  It was very stressful in short.  Then half way through eating Lily says "I have to go potty" so I take her to the bathroom.... afterwards I had to pick her up to was her hands and that is when it happened.  I think I may have mentioned how I hurt my lower back in a core strength training class doing planks a few weeks ago.  Well I picked her up and my back just gave out.  After that I couldn't lift anything. I couldn't bend my back at all, the pain was very intense.  I was so upset, stressed, in pain, I couldn't even sit down because my back hurt so much.  It was too much.  I had been too stressed for too long and the food was too available.  Giant chocolate cake.... plus anything else I could find.  (Girl Scout cookies, popcorn...)  I cracked.  I couldn't weather this storm.  Yesterday and today have been a huge struggle.  My eating has been out of control and unchecked.  Mostly in regards to that chocolate cake I made for my husband's birthday yesterday.

Am I upset?  Yes.  Am I disappointed? Yes.  Do I wish I had stayed on track? Yes.  But I knew there were going to be bumps in the road and I know this isn't the end.  It's not an excuse to go haywire for the next few months, I just have to get right back on track tomorrow.  I'm going to switch to primarily swimming for the rest of the month.  I will be good for my triathlon training anyway.  Give my back a break and a chance to heal.  I'm not sure I could do Zumba in my condition right now anyway.  This isn't the first time I have cracked, and I'm sure it won't be the last but hopefully next time I can try to find another way to deal with the stress.  I did pretty good for two days, and lost it on the third.  That is a victory.  I wasn't out of control for four days, only two.  That is progress.  And as I like to say... Progress, not Perfection.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Haters Gonna Hate

So I was recently doing some research online recently about corn, beans, and potatoes and seeing if they counted for vegetables since this week's bonus challenge is eating and taking pictures of your vegetables and a controversy arose over these three foods.  Some said they are starchy carbs, others veggies so I looked it up and Wow!  The controversy online!  I made sure to pull reliable resources like the mayo clinic and if you are wondering here were the results: ground corn and popcorn are grains while corn on the cobb and canned corn are vegetables, potatoes are botanically a vegetable but nutritionally a starchy carb (we are not really interested in gardening here so I ruled potatoes are not a vegetable, but sweet potatoes are, interestingly enough, a vegetable).  Beans can be counted as either a vegetable or protein, you just can't count it as both in one meal.  But the real thing I want to talk about today is the huge controversy that I found on the internet about corn.  All I wanted to know is if corn was a vegetable or a grain and I found so many corn hating articles online it was crazy!  And so I started thinking.

This journey is all about progression, and this journey is unique to the individual.  If you are striving to make healthy eating changes and you choose corn for your vegetable then good for you!  Because it is an improvement from other worse habits.  What did you use to make as a side dish?  Nothing?  Fast food?  White bread with butter? Something fried? Something super creamy and equally as fattening?  Did you even used to cook at home?  Corn is so much better than all of those things and I would much rather see someone eating corn than getting so caught up in all the internet nutritional controversies that exist today that they stop progressing.  Seriously you can find haters for practically every single food out there.  Here are some super popular ones: Sugar, Wheat, Dairy, Corn, Red Meat, Meat in general... Say what?  That is like every major food group in existence, but wait there's more!  You can even find groups of people who say you shouldn't eat any fruit because it contains too much sugar and even people who say eating vegetables doesn't really benefit your health.  What?!?!  Good Grief.  As soon as people start getting fanatic on me I just roll my eyes and stop listening.  The second someone tells me I should ditch an entire food group I tune out, and I hope you do to.  At least until you are ready, willing and wanting to jump on board that band wagon (any Paleo fans out there?  Good for you, I'm glad you found something you like). 

Now I'm not talking about people with food allergies.  Obviously if you have a food allergy you should  avoid that food.  What we should be focusing on is our own individual journey, what is it we really want to do?  If you get really into the anti wheat movement and you decide to cut wheat out of your diet for life and you are loving it then great!  It doesn't mean you should force your views on others because what is right for you may not be right for others.  Heck, what is right for me may not be right for you so while I'm sitting here saying that I refuse to cut out food groups you might be stewing and saying "that crazy person doesn't she realize how dangerous the legumes are!"  (But this is my blog so I get to state my opinion :-)

We are all transitioning into healthier eating, maybe some of us are already there, but then I'm not sure why you read my blog, unless it's for my charming personality :-p
The point is progression not perfection as I stated in earlier posts.  There is no way to please everyone, so don't try to.  If you need to eat corn as a vegetable then by all means go for it.  Substitute something better for a bad habit you had.  Substituting corn for french fries is a huge improvement.  (Unless you are allergic to corn).  Make the changes that are right for you, if you make slow improvements that you know you can sustain you will find much more lasting and greater success than if you make a huge change, like cutting out an entire food group, and then realize later you don't want to live that way. 

Source

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A lifestye is liveable

I used to think that when relating to weight loss and dieting (or rather changing your diet) and making lifestyle changes that it was something liveable not loveable.  When I was in crisis mode and gaining weight and trying and failing to get back on track I would say to myself "liveable, not loveable".  But that thinking is flawed because you have to love your new lifestyle or it won't stick.  So many people want to desperately lose weight as fast as they can, and believe me I've been there and I still want to see the scale going down more often than not.  But what makes the scale go down fast is not necessarily fun, motivating, and long lasting.  Who says you can't go out and have fun while losing weight?  It's all about making choices.  Choosing when to have a large meal, learning when you need to cut back, participating in life without going overboard.  You will never get away from food, its impossible, social events will almost always involve food, family get-togethers involve food, it's everywhere!  Finding an enjoyable lifestyle is about learning when to indulge and when to say no.

For instance at the daycare at the gym they have a basket of suckers out.  At the post office, they have candy out, at the bank they have suckers, at the grocery store they have food samples out.  I have learned that in these situations I am not missing out on any fun if I say no to eating these foods.  I only sample food at the grocery store now if I am seriously thinking of buying what they are sampling, whereas before I would just try it because it was there for the trying.  (Seriously, on a Saturday at Costco you could probably eat an extra 500 calories in samples!)  However, there are occasions where it is okay to indulge and you should because it's a part of life.  Today my sister texted me "Hey!  I get out of school at 12 noon today, want to meet up for lunch?)  I was planning on going home and making a green smoothie for lunch (I was just leaving the gym when I got her text) but I decided sure!  It would be lots of fun to go out for lunch with my sister.  We went to Red Robin.  Red Robin is notorious for having high calorie foods, if you don't know how to navigate any menu you can get caught up spending all your calories in one shot.  But I had my handy dandy My Fitness Pal ready.  I didn't go with a salad but I didn't go with the 1,000 calorie hamburger either.  The trick to enjoying eating out is to substitute what you usually order and like, with something else that you also really like.  You don't want eating out to be miserable, it should be fun and enjoyable.  I haven't been to Red Robin in 2 years and I love their sweet potato fries.  So I ordered them and ate a whole basket, MFP says it's about 550 calories.  Okay, so I tracked it.  As I was looking at the menu I knew I wasn't going to go with a traditional hamburger because they are so high in calories, but I didn't want a salad or a wrap so I looked at the grilled chicken sandwiches.  Some of them came up as 800 calories in MFP, but I found a really yummy sounding one called Bruschetta chicken sandwich that was only 600 calories.  That was manageable.  I stuck with one serving of fries and ate my sandwich and it was amazing and awesome and fun!  I tracked everything.  I had already done Zumba and I had already swam, so I even had some extra calories from exercise if I wanted to use them.  I felt good about my choices, and enjoyed my lunch.  My food choices actually kept me feeling full for the rest of the day and I ate a banana, and some veggies for dinner ha!  I was so full I didn't need anything else.  My total calories for the day: 1650.  That's it!  I was able to eat out, enjoy myself, track my food, and stay on track.  Many times in the past I would go out to eat and say "oh well, I know I've blown it because I'm eating out so now I just might as well start over tomorrow" and instead of eating light the rest of the day, I would pig out on everything I could get ahold of.  That thinking is so messed up, and yet so many of us are plagued with it.  We are looking for excuses to go back to old habits and to eat unhealthy food, and that is why we give in.


So to end this post, I would now say that losing weight is not about finding a lifestyle that is liveable but not loveable (who wants to live and be miserable?  Isn't that why we are on this journey in the first place?)  It's about finding a lifestyle that is liveable AND loveable.
Source

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

153 Then and Now

So I just hit 153 on the scale and as I was going through my pictures the other day I realized that I bought this top when I hit 153 the first time around.  So I have a picture of me wearing it at the same weight and I was wondering If I looked different at all between the two pictures or if 153 looked the same on me then and now.
I no longer have those jeans as I wore them out, they got holes in the knees, so I had to put on my size 8 jeans that are still a bit tight on me, but I wanted to get fairly close to the same pose and the same clothes.

I did zoom in more on the right hand picture than on the left.  It's pretty hard to tell any differences. I think my shirt shrunk in the wash.  My thigh in the front looks bigger in the current photo but that could just be because it is zoomed in more.  Well I tried.  I did notice that when putting on my size 8 pants I didn't have difficulty pulling them up or zipping them, but they are still really tight and I took them off after the photo.  Maybe in another 5 pounds I can wear them again. 

Another thing I forgot to mention in my post about differences and that is I have noticed that my kitchen gloves don't fit very well.  I can't bend my fingers in my gloves anymore, they are really tight.  How crazy is that!  That is something I never really thought about being a problem and it makes washing the dishes harder because I can't get a good grip on them.  

I feel really good about how today went.  I got upset in the afternoon and instead of eating due to being upset I just chewed some gum and then later finished my workout.  Also this evening I made a nutritious dinner of fish and veggies
The fish is Tilapia and I put some olive oil on it with some ginger citrus rub from Pampered Chef and Broiled it.  It came out really good!  The veggies are just mixed frozen veggies from Costco and I put a tsp of olive oil on it and some salt and pepper and cooked it in my microwave cooker.  Super tasty, easy and super healthy!  My fish was only 110 calories and then I added in the olive oil for about another 50 calories.  The veggies were also only about 60 calories. 

Today was a mixed day, I watched a friend's two kids for a few hours in the morning while they went to a doctors appointment.  It actually went really well.  Their oldest is the same age as my youngest and then they have a 6 month old baby.  The kids loved the baby and they all played really well together.  Then I had to go grocery shopping which is always frustrating with both the kids.  Chloe wanted to get out of the basket and run around, the problem is once she is out she runs off.  So I had to deal with her throwing tantrums because she had to stay in the basket. Just a typical grocery run.  Came home, fed the kids lunch and put Chloe down for a nap.  I've been having a chip attack lately.  I've been wanting (and eating) lots of chips around lunch time.  So far I have managed to stay within my calorie range but there are lots of other and better foods I could be spending 350 calories on a day instead of chips.  Once the chips are gone I think I need to keep them out of the house for a little while.  My exercise today was broken up and I only managed about 40 minutes of Zumba on the Wii.  In the evening I decided to redo my nails for St. Patrick's day coming up.  I wanted to try some of the striping techniques I had watched on Youtube and also play with my chevron stickers (I have some white chevron nail stickers).  I think it came out pretty good. 
The time change has messed up my kids sleeping schedule.  I wish we could just do away with the time change, it's awful for kids.  Chloe is STILL awake, so I am going to go put her back to bed, then go to bed myself.
23 pounds to goal. 1 pound lost last week

Sunday, March 8, 2015

The 15 Pound Difference

Most people will tell you what it feels like to lose 15 pounds, or 50 or 100 and that is very fascinating to read.  I often read those posts wishing that were me, and that I could just get off the rest of the weight, be done with my journey.  But my own journey turned out differently than I had hoped or expected.  We have all gained the weight, we know how to do it, we know how it feels, but how many of us really think about it and evaluate it.  Since I gained 15 pounds back after losing 68 pounds and then I am trying to lose that weight again I have noticed several things in how I feel and how my body moves within those 15 pounds.

1.  The biggest thing I have noticed is that my legs are harder to lift.  They feel heavier and I have to put forth a lot more effort to lift them up when I am exercising.  If I do high knees or in Zumba if we ever just lift our legs up, it is much harder than 15 pounds ago. 

2.  Along that line, jumping is much harder too.  When I was doing Turbo Fire with my sister the other day and also a month ago I noticed just how hard it was to do the air jumping jacks, and burpees?  Forget about it, holy cow those were hard.  I could no longer move like I used to be able to 15 pounds ago.  My fitness level certainly was not where it used to be even though I had continued to exercise throughout the entire weight gain. 

3.  My stomach felt sick all the time and it reminded me of when I was pregnant with Chloe.  At the time I contributed it to being pregnant.  I felt sick through the whole thing, now I wonder if I felt sick because I was eating junk and my diet was terrible, or if I was actually sick from the pregnancy.  I'm sure I legitimately had morning sickness for a while but then I probably just felt crappy from eating crappy.  That whole saying "you are what you eat" has really hit home with me now.  If I eat bad, I feel bad, if I eat good, I feel good.  When I was gaining weight these last few months I felt sick all the time.  My stomach was queasy and I went to bed thinking I was going to throw up nearly every night.

4.  Don't even get me started on energy!  Over the last several months my energy has been non-exsistant.  It was a struggle to do anything, my workouts were tough and I often skipped them.  I didn't do as much with the kids, the house wasn't very clean.  All I wanted to do was lie around and do nothing because I didn't have any energy to do anything because all I was eating was processed foods, and simple carbs and simple sugars.

5.  My pants don't fit.  I had to pull out some old pants from earlier when I was losing weight because the pants I bought at the beginning of the season, I couldn't button them up anymore.

After getting back on track for 3 weeks, I have lost 5 pounds and I am starting to feel better.  My diet has improved and so my energy has greatly increased.  Skyrocketted in fact.  This is something that I was really surprised about.  After about the first week I really started feeling better, my stomach stopped feeling queasy and I had a lot more energy to do things like grocery shopping, playing with the kids, cleaning, cooking, and doing my exercise.  Of all the differences I have noticed these are the two that have meant the most to me.  This really is a journey to be healthy.  When you are healthy you just feel better which makes you happier and a more pleasant person.  I am glad I did not give up on this journey and this weight gain has taught me something very important about weight loss.  Even though we are trying to lose weight, it's really the side effects that we are looking for: feeling better, having more energy, and living a better life.

Then: About 145 around July 2014
Now: About 155
I can definitely tell a difference in my face, and also you can see my love handles poking out in the bottom picture on the right hand side.  I'm going to get back down to where I was.  And then I will pass it.  I'm ready.  153.4 this morning, official weekly weigh in is Tuesday.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Surviving the mental battle

The past few days have been difficult for me, but I feel like I have managed the challenges pretty well.  Yesterday my weight was up 1.5 pounds and logically I knew it was because of sodium.  I had made some french onion soup and there must have been a lot of sodium in the beef broth I used.  Nothing makes me retain water like salty soup (think Vietnamese Pho!).  Of course knowing this didn't help anything and I still felt really down all day long.  I did however manage to try out a new Barre class at the gym, it's a ballet style strength training class and it is right before Zumba.  So I'm planning on making it to Barre, then CXWorx and then Zumba on Wednesday mornings.  It's a killer combo but it's doable because Barre and CX (abs) are strength training whereas Zumba is cardio.  I want to add more strength training in, but I have to be sneaky about it because I absolutely hate strength training.  I like the Barre and CX classes because although they are intense they aren't hard core.  Body pump is hard core and the classes are always packed and everyone is fighting for equipment and space.  Body Pump is a really tough class, maybe someday I will learn to love it but this is not that day. 

After my two hours at the gym I came home and got ready for my friend to come over, I was doing her nails that day and we still hadn't gotten a new entertainment center so the cords were hanging down from the TV as you can see in my last post, and she was bringing her two kids (same age as mine: 2 and 4).  So I spent the next hour cleaning up the spare bedroom that has all the spare kids toys and the cat bathroom and the long table I like to do nails on.  I had to sweep the cat litter off the bathroom floor, and scoop the cat box and rearrange the toys so the old tv and vhs player could fit, and then vacuum all the cat litter out of the carpet over by the bathroom door.  It took a while but it was worth it.  We put Blues Clues on for the kids and my friend's kids loved playing with all the toys and we were able to spend the whole time in that one room.  I am just loving doing nails, I need to schedule more friends to come over.  I have another one coming over tomorrow and the room is all ready for her and her kiddos! 

I was able to maintain control yesterday despite feeling upset.  Usually when I have a bad weigh in when I've been doing good I throw away the whole day and then I have to undo the damage over the next three days.  But yesterday I was really good.  This morning I weighed in at 153.4 which is still .2 higher than last Saturday but I am much happier with that.  However today was a much harder day for me food wise and I had a really hard time controlling what I ate.  Despite that I still managed to stay within about 2,000 calories for the whole day which is great considering a bad day usually looks like somewhere around 3,500 calories.  I didn't make the best choices today, I had two servings of chips at lunch time for example, but I was also reasonable and didn't go overboard.  Around 2pm I really wanted to eat something and I finally caved on eating the brownies.  I took a couple pieces and ate one piece and put the rest back!  They are almost a week old now and although my tupperware is trying it's hardest, they can't help but get a little crunchy and I didn't figure crunchy brownies were worth all those calories and if I were to eat brownies I should make sure they are fresh and fabulous. So that was a victory.  This afternoon I tried not to snack much, I did eat pretty healthy: an apple and some hummus and baby carrots.  I tried to keep busy by playing around with my swatch sticks and trying some looks that I found on pinterest.  Of the three I tried the only one that came out looking good was the watermelon. 

Totally doing this on my nails in the summer
After dinner tonight I tried so hard not to eat anything.  I chewed gum, read blogs, looked at nail polish stuff online, but in the end I was just so hungry!  So I air popped some popcorn, put butter on it and shared it with the kids.  I could have chosen better I know but it was easy and something the kids would also enjoy.  We haven't had popcorn in several weeks.  I saved hundreds of calories by air popping it instead of cooking it in oil, and hundreds more by sharing it with the kids.  So despite being over my calories for today, I still feel like I tried by best.  I was just really exhausted and hungry today.  Chloe woke up last night and stayed awake from 1am-3:30am and guess who was also awake for most of that time either rocking her, lying down with her, trying to stop her from screaming, listening to her cry, and then listening to her play around in her room.  Yup!  Me!  I can't sleep when the kids are making noise, it's like we as moms are wired to wake up to the slightest noise our kids make, so even when she was  happy in her room I was lying there awake listening to her. 

In other news we did manage to finally get a new entertainment console thingie.  Nothing big, Matt wanted small and compact.  So we went from this

To this

You can totally see me in the TV screen taking the picture ha!  I think it's a nice upgrade.  The only thing I don't like is all the cords running down from the TV to behind the entertainment center.  The TV is super sweet, and looks awesome.  I wish Matt hadn't mounted it so high up, if it had been lower (around the top of the entertainment console) then we wouldn't be having as many problems with cords reaching, and dangling but I guess that is what happens when you mount the TV without the console to go with it.  It doesn't seem to bother Matt much though and it's his birthday present. 

All in all I'm not really disappointed with today, bad days are bound to happen and thinking about how my days usually go this really wasn't too bad of a day.  I've also been thinking about how when you are losing weight time seems to become distorted.  For example one day can seem like an eternity and I was thinking today "I've been really good for a long time so I can have some brownies"  When in fact I have only been good for about two weeks.  It seems like I've been doing this forever and I just want to be done losing weight so I don't have to stress over it so much.  I'm dying to be back into the 140s but I know that I have to work hard every day to get there.  There are no short cuts.  I just have to be patient.... which unfortunately is not one of my strong points.