Day 15 of 53 April 17, 2008

Goal: I realize today is Day 15. I want to set a bet with myself that I can be down 10 lbs by Day 26 (the halfway point). Maybe I’m nuts. Maybe I need to start RUNNING!

Food:

Breakfast: Thomas’ fat free whole wheat English muffin with jam, coffee with skim and splenda = 3 points

Snack: grapefruit and 100 calorie pack Hostess blueberry muffins = 2 points

Lunch: WW bread with turkey, carrots, applesauce = 5 points

Snack: PB Bliss bar = 1 point

Dinner:

This is where it gets tricky. And this is where the extra weekly points come in.

Our visitor from Norway really wanted to go to Outba*ck before she left to go back home. She’s leaving Friday, so we were down to the wire.

I went online and googled “outb*ck and WW points” then printed out the list I found. I think I decided before we even got there that I would do a shrimp and veggie griller.

After perusing the menu, I decided on the Salmon with fresh veggies and got a salad with oil and vinegar. How bad can that be, right?!?!

Well, I did sneak a few bites of the appetizers that were on the table. Someone ordered cheese fries with bacon and a Blo*min’ Onion. (BTW – An entire BO with no sauce is around 56 points). Based on that number, I’m going to guess that my little bites here and there might have been close to 15 points. Damn.

And I ate the entire salmon and the salad and my veggies. I am sure that both the salmon and the veggies were COVERED in butter, so I think I have to add 6 points to that meal above and beyond the estimated points. The websites I saw didn’t have the points for what I ordered (why didn’t I stick to the griller?!?!)

So, I’m guessing my meal was probably 15 points, including the salad. Plus the “extras” I had for appetizers, that’s another 15 points.

30 points at dinner alone. For the love of all things, I can only have 24 points per day.

I had 13 points left for the day before I walked into Outba*ck. Damn them. Let’s figure I went 17 points over my daily allotment and maybe that’s even low.

At least I know it was a one time thing this week and I will be good the remainder of the week. It was good food and you have to live a little, right!?!?!
Finds:
I love those Cryst*l light “on the go” iced tea mixes to throw into a bottle of water. I have very low tolerance for sweet stuff, so I usually only put a third of the powder into my water bottle. But I am now ADDICTED to the Peach Tea flavor. It makes drinking water very easy and I think it’s really refreshing.

Want to try:
Along the same lines, I used to love putting Real Lem*n powder into my water for a fresher taste. I saw on hungry-girl.com (my new bible) that there is now Real Lime. OMG! I need to find that. I love love love anything that is lime (especially when it’s in a corona)

Day 14 of 53 April 16, 2008

Another day come and gone with no exercise. I will continue to blame my long hours and our houseguests, but come Saturday when our guests are gone, my excuses will be falling away.

I had a pretty good food day.

Breakfast: coffee and banana (2 points)
Snack: orange
Lunch: salad with lots of veggies but some full fat dressing (5 points)
Snack: carrots and PB Bliss bar (1 point)
Dinner: small burger, lean meat grilled, no cheese on WW bread (5 points?), some turkey kielbasa (7 points)
Steamed broccoli

Not too bad. Around 20-21 points, give or take a few.

I felt good when I got on the scale. My fresh out of the shower weigh in was a sight I hadn’t seen in awhile.

Is anyone else participating in the Spring Challenge? Anyone else on track with their own challenge or weight loss goals??

Day 13 of 53 April 15, 2008

Food:

I am allowed 24 points and I am usually around 26 per day, no matter what I do. I know you need to eat all of your points, but on Day 13, I ate only 18 points and I felt pretty good. The only thing is that I didn’t really eat breakfast and I need to work on having a halfway decent breakfast.

Morning: Coffee (1) and Grapefruit (1)

Lunch: Chix salad on WW bread (4), baby carrots (0), apple (1)

Beverages: 2 Diet Dr. Peppers and lots of water w/ Cryst*l light iced tea

Snack: WW Peanut Butter Bliss Bar (1), Banana (1)

Dinner: WW tv dinner enchiladas with fat free sour cream (6), salad with vinaigrette (2) and ½ a WW mint chocolate chip ice cream cup (1)

I’m doing this off memory, but I don’t think I missed anything.

Exercise:

I got home late from work and we had company again so I missed out on the treadmill. I have to do it tonight. I am very frustrated that I can’t seem to make a workout schedule fit into my life, but I am coming to the realization that I will just need to get up early (5:30 or so).

Weight:

As I reported yesterday, I am down 2.2 lbs. This brings me to 185 even. I am less on my home scale, but we’re sticking with the WW official weight.

Spring Challenge weight loss: 2.2 lbs

Weight lost overall (since May 06): 20.6 lbs

Amount left until First Goal achieved: 17.8 lbs

The warm weather is starting to hit me. I want to be in shorts without being completely mortified. My son is 14 months old and being outside is like the greatest treat on the planet. I MUST play outside with him without a second thought. I can’t wait to get into a cute pair of shorts without standing in front of the bathroom mirror going “ugh. Look at that fat ass.”

Day 10, 11 and 12 April 14, 2008

It was a busy weekend. And I’ve just flown right into the beginning of a busy work week.

Can’t write too much right now, but I need to update.

My official weight will be my WW weigh-ins on Mondays.

As far as my “new” week 1 went, I lost 2.2 lbs this week.

Not as good of a start as I had hoped, but it is a LOSS, so I can’t complain. Plus, I didn’t really deserve to lose any more of that this past week.

This upcoming week, I will deserve to lose every pound I lose as well.

Day 9 of 53 April 11, 2008

Lesson of the day: carefully read the nutritional info on the package. For example, the WW quesadillas have 4 points on the box. There are 2 (half) quesadillas in the box. I heat up both for lunch and eat both – because only 1 was definitely not enough food. After lunch, I reread the box. 4 points is for 1. I had 8 points for lunch. Dammit.

Food:

Breakfast: fruit (pineapple, peaches, grapefruit, oranges and honeydew) with full-fat cottage cheese (I had no other choice)

Snack: banana and Crys*l Light iced tea

Lunch: 8 point quesadilla (BTW – I can make a much better and bigger 4 point quesadilla at home) and a Diet Dr. Pepper

Snack: WW Peanut Butter Bliss bar (I’m still totally loving these – and Hungry-girl just did a write up on them)

Dinner: we had leftover pulled pork, which is terrible points-wise. But I just did a little bit of it (less than a cup) and I threw it on a WW English muffin. This was followed up with a salad (just lettuce and nuts) with balsalmic.

Exercise: none again. I really suck. The time thing is very tough. I have been working long hours the past 2 weeks (leaving the house at 7:30 am and getting home around 7:30 pm) Every night this week, we’ve had company at our house around dinner. Plus, I haven’t been going to sleep until after 11 pm. The only way I will be able to get on the treadmill is to get up before 6 am. Ugh.

Weight:

Again, I am still not declaring official weight until my Monday WW meetings. However, based on my “just out of the shower totally naked weigh-in” this morning, compared to my “just out of the shower totally naked weigh-in” on Day 1, I am down 4.8 lbs.

Day 8 of 53 April 10, 2008

Exercise: just my everyday walking. Nothing special. I do think I should get a cheap pedometer. Just walking from the parking garage to my office and all of the walking I do in the office should be a decent amount.

Food:

Not bad. I haven’t done my points yet because my book is at work.

Breakfast: Thomas’ light whole wheat English muffin with small amount of I Can’t Believe it’s not butter and some Stonew*all Kitchen blueberry jam (worth however many points it may be).

Snack: Banana

Lunch: turkey, lettuce and cheese on WW bread and a key lime WW yogurt.

Snack: 2 WW peanut butter bliss bars (2 points)

Dinner: whole wheat pasta with chicken and peppers, zucchini and tomatoes (my wonderful wife made two skillets – one for her with regular pasta and one for me with whole wheat)

Dessert: a pear and some popcorn (with a teeny bit of butter)

Motivation:

Last night, I started watching the Pr*metime about “The L*ast Lecture”. It was on too late, so I taped the rest. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, this amazing college professor found out he had terminal cancer and decided to share his perspective on life before he died. It’s quite amazing.

This morning, I woke up and decided that I need to read A N*ew Earth. It’s in my work bag and I’ve been carrying it around with me. I think I need to sit and read it ASAP.

One of the things that has held me up with the weight loss is my attitude. I never realized how negative and lazy I was until I started listening to people who are inspirational.

I think my inability to lose weight up to this point has been my total lack of self-propel as I like to call it. I mean, here I am, this (somewhat) successful lawyer, mom to an amazing little boy, wife to the most beautiful wonderful woman I’ve ever met, friend to great friends. I have a great life. What is the apathy about? Why am I sitting around not feeling as great as I should? For crying out loud, I have my health, I am not disabled, there are so many people who would kill to have my physical abilities, why do I waste them?

I remember one of the posts from a while back on From Thick to Thin – an article about mental weight loss. What I took away from it was this ATTITUDE = OUTCOME. Isn’t that the entire point of “The Secret”. It seems so f*&king simple. Why is it really so hard to actually DO? Live? Achieve?

Question(s):

What keeps you motivated?

Or in the alternative, what is standing in your way of achieving?

What stops us from taking control of the things we can control?

Day 7 of 53 April 9, 2008

Exercise:

I had a meeting at 8:30 am in my town, so I was able to get on the treadmill in the morning by getting up at 6:30. I did 18 minutes of run 1 min/walk 1 min. It’s a modified version of the runnersworld.com week 1 beginning program, but I didn’t want to overdo anything. It felt good despite the tough part of having to get out of bed to get on the treadmill.

Food:

Again, things were pretty good until dinner time. We had tacos. Yummy.

Breakfast:
I had a Thomas’ light whole wheat English muffin with blueberry jam (just a little bit), my usual DD coffee (Toasted Almond) with skim and splenda.

Snack:
PB Fib*r one bar and an apple

Lunch:
H*ealthy Choice steamer thing (chicken marinara) = 5 points. Those steamer meals are really good. I am putting it on my shopping list to get many more.
Diet Dr. Pepper.

As for my beverages for the day, I bought one of those new G*torades, the G2. I drank the entire thing over 2 days by mixing with ¼ drink and ¾ water. I can’t drink it straight up, I have to really water it down. This morning, I looked at the sodium content and decided to try ProP*l instead.

Snack:
2 of those WW peanut butter mini bars – so yummy.

Dinner:
I had 4 small tacos. Not so good, but dammit I wrote it down.

Weight:
I weighed myself this morning and think I’m down 2 lbs from last week, but I will use my Monday weigh-in WW weight at the official weight.

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Jocelyn! Your progress has been so amazing! Thank you for your tips. I hope we can help inspire each other to stay on course!

Day 6 of 53 April 8, 2008

Went over my points on Day 6. Dammit.

But I did go to WW for the first time since the first week of January. And believe it or not, I have only gained .7 lbs since then.

I wasn’t going to post my actual weight on here but I’m now throwing caution to the wind. If I’m embarrassed about my weight then I better damn change it.

Here’s the weight info:

• When I met Lois, I weighed around 135 lbs. At 5’7”, that was fairly lean.
• After law school and life, I weighed in at my very first WW meeting back in May 2007 at 205 lbs.
• That is a gain of 70 lbs people!!!!
• Poor Lois. When I met her, I was all cute and skinny. Then I pulled the whole “bait and switch” thing.
• My goal weight for WW is 155. I don’t think I will ever be 135 again.
• As of yesterday, I am 187.2 lbs.
• I have gained 5 lbs since my prior WW loss, but I’m still down about 18 lbs from where I started.
• My 10% goal right now is to lose 18 lbs-19 lbs. This fits in well with my “lose 20 lbs in 8 weeks” goal. Again, I know it’s lofty, but since I have lost all of January, February and March, I need to kick it up into full gear now.
• Losing 10% gets me into the 160s. That is a great start.

Even with looking at all these numbers, I am keeping the “5 lbs at a time” mantra in my head so I don’t get too overwhelmed.

So, I did go over my points, but I am very glad I went to the WW meeting and I am tracking. I was down to 6 points when I got home for dinner.

Lois made pulled pork and mashed potatoes and our friend Suz was baking cupcakes in our kitchen. Ugh. I rationalized having some of everything because it was a weigh-in day and I’d already been weighed in! LOL!!!

Exercise:

Nothing on Day 6 but I will be reporting more progress in tomorrow’s post.

Plus, I am seriously considering signing up for the “moonlight” run 5k on June 6th. I might wait a few more weeks before I waste my $13 entry fee, but I really think this might be a good motivation for me.

Find of the day: WW Peanut Butter Bliss mini bars = 1 pt. Yummy!

Day 3, 4 and 5 April 7, 2008

Ok, ok. So I already blew the “a post a day” thing.

This is a 3 day wrap up.

Friday was a pretty good day. Again, no exercise. (I totally suck)
But I stayed under my points for the day.

Saturday started off well. I had coffee and a bowl of Cheerios with banana and blueberries. When we arrived at the 9-yr-old boy birthday party, I grabbed a Fiber One bar and had 2 bowls of salad with oil and vinegar. Then, I started “picking”. I had a few honey wheat pretzels, but then I dipped them in ranch. Oops.

We left there to head to the 2-yr-old boy birthday party. This turned out to be a total disaster, food-wise, that is. My friend Suz made 2 different baked bries (one with maple/walnut and one with berries). So I had to try them both on some apple slices. I also needed to try some artichoke dip with pretzels.

I thought I was doing okay by staying away from the big ticket items (cake, ice cream) but I think I ate enough veggies (with dip) and oh yeah, a piece or two of pizza to pack on a few scores of points.

Saturday and Sunday, no exercise. I really suck.

But, I did have a new workout motivation. I ran into a woman at church who just came from a 5K. She told me about a “moonlight” run that happens Memorial Day weekend. I’m thinking of making that a goal. I’m going to look into how long the run is and if I can do it by then.

Needless to say, I got on the scale yesterday morning and weighed the same that I did on Wednesday.

Today is Day 6 and I might actually attend a WW meeting today. I know I won’t be happy with the weigh-in. I’m guessing it will be 5 lbs more than my last WW weigh in 10 weeks ago. Sigh.

But I’m still forging ahead. And writing about it. Good or bad.

Day 2 of 53 April 4, 2008

Workout

I set my alarm for 5 am and got out of bed at 6:30 am. I think I may try to wake up 10 minutes earlier every day until I get to 5 am. I can’t just jump right to it. I need my sleep, but I definitely need to work out in the mornings. Evenings just won’t work with our busy lifestyle.
I did a modified version of Day One on the runnersworld plan. The last time I tried it, I was sore and incapacitated for 4 days. This time, I took it easy. I’m out of shape and overweight, I don’t have visions of marathon greatness at this point.
I was on the treadmill for 20 minutes doing 1 minute walking, 1 minute running. All times were approximate since my watch was on my dresser 2 stories up.
After the treadmill, I made sure I stretched my calves, hamstrings, Achilles and quads.
Then, I did a few quick stomach crunches (10 to the left, 10 to the right, 10 straight up) and a set of 10 push-ups (in the “women’s” style).
My back hurt when I tried to do any more crunches and my arms wouldn’t take any more push-ups. I think it’s hysterical that many moons ago, I passed the Air F*orce Academy physical test with FLYING colors.

Food
Breakfast: 1 cup coffee with fat free French vanilla creamer. 1 cup cottage cheese (full fat – that’s all they had at the café) and some fruit (strawberries, grapefruit, peaches, oranges and pineapple) with just a splash of Spl*nda.

Lunch was okay but I did a full Pan*ra sandwich (the veggie one on multi-grain bread) and 2 different salads. I ate a lot of fruit salad in the afternoon to make it through a seminar that ran 5-7 pm.

Then, I had another ½ of a veggie sandwich for dinner, along with just a few stuffed shells that Lois made for dinner.

The dinner thing can be tough sometimes when the wife isn’t on the diet train. I’m looking forward to summer to eat a lot of grilled stuff, including tons of veggies.

I am getting the daily emails from hungry-girl.com and encourage everyone else to sign up. I really want to try the butternut squash French fries soon.

I am down one pound since Monday, but I’m getting bloated and I’m not going to weigh myself until next Monday.

The weekend is coming and it will be challenging, but I know I can do it.

I’m feeling o.k. right now. I’m not blown away with my start, but I’ve also had a lot going on and feel tired. I know I will start feeling great soon as I get into a rhythm. I just keep thinking about myself in a pair shorts in 2 months.