Weekly Weigh In

It's weekly weigh in time over at Tales From the Scales. I now weight 219! This is a 3 pound lost from the TFTS weigh in last week and a total loss of 3.8. Still working on the sleeping thing and now I need to add water to the things to work on. Things have been really busy at work and I forget to drink my water.

Update on last week

I hit my first goal of 220 on Friday. I didn't post anything about it right then for two reasons. One, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't go up, that I would stay there. Two, I spent a lot of the day at work and was very busy there. So, YAY! Goal One reached! My next goal is to be 215 on or before Dec 1st. Yes, that seems like a long time away. But in past attempts I've done really well for the first month or so and then I stop losing as fast and get discouraged and slack off and stop losing for a couple months. Then I get more discouraged and then I start gaining. I'm trying to avoid that.

This brings me to last week's Thea Thursday - Mental Rehearsing. For mental rehearsing you imagine yourself in a situation where there is potential to over eat. It took me a minute to figure out what is most immediate that I could use for this. An obvious situation is Halloween, but it still seams so far away (yes, I realize its just a week away). This weekend is my Grandfathers 80th birthday party and it seems soo much sooner. Any time there is a family gathering, there are large quantities of good, bad for you food. However, I've noticed in the last couple years my aunts have made an effort to have a veggie try and some kind of fruit available. So, for my visualization I see myself with an empty plate going through the buffet line. I take a large helping of veggies first to allow less room for other things, and if that's not possible (if the veggies are toward the end of the buffet) I DON'T need to taste a little bit of everything. I will allow myself two small pieces of cheese and a small piece of cake, if I have flex points left. I will know that information before I leave the house Sat morning for our long drive. While I'm at the party I will try to stay in the living room, to avoid grazing in the kitchen. If I do end up in the kitchen I can eat as many vegetables (without being dipped in anything), but will not have sweets or salty stuff.

Moving on to a recap of last week. It went fairly well food wise, I was down to my goal at the end of the week! I ended the week with a few flex points left over. I still need to work on getting to bed at a "decent" hour. My idea of "decent" might be slightly changing though. Out of no where the other day my DH told me that he's been enjoying me staying up later. It gives him more time to spend with me when he gets home from his various activities and meetings. So, perhaps I'll see if I can't work exercising into the evening and try to get to work 30 minutes earlier.

That's all for now. I'm going to go to bed now.

Another Weigh In

Today is the weigh in for the "Look Great in 2008 Challenge". Today I weigh 222.0. This is a loss of 0.8. It's a pound more than I weighed on Monday. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm not too upset about it because weight will fluctuate over the course of time a bit, and it's just a pound and I still lost almost a pound.

I haven't done any better with getting to sleep earlier. So, I'm still working on that one. Nothing else of interest to report right now. I'll post again tomorrow for Thea Thursday.

Weigh In

Monday was my first weigh in. I weighed 221. That's a loss of 1.8 pounds! When I entered it in at Weight Watchers online there was a little note at the bottom that basically said weight loss might not go as quickly as this as I progress. Maybe not, but I hope it does.

In the past week I've still only exercised that once. I think I need to get myself in the habit of going to bed earlier before I'll be able to get up early enough to exercise. I've set my alarm for 5am the last two days with the intention of getting up to exercise, but when 5am comes I groan, reach over and hit snooze. Then when 5:10 comes I groan, reach over and reset the alarm for 6am. I think getting to bed before 10pm instead of around 11pm might be helpful.

On Saturday we went to my parents house to celebrate my grandparents 63rd anniversary. There was much yummy food. Including curd and other cheese products. For those of you who don't know what curd is, oh, you have no idea the what you're missing. There was also cake. I had only used about 2 of my flex points for the week, so I went ahead and ate mostly what I wanted. I had an extra helping of the fruit salad (it was only fruit, no extra stuff) and finished eating when I felt full, not when I felt like I would pop if I ate any more. That in itself is a small victory. Eating in extended family situations usually equals over-fullness feeling.

So, for my story board goals 1-4, I've been doing fairly well. I more often than not get five fruits/veggies a day and have at least ten glasses of water. Ten might not be the 14 I originally set as my goal, but I think it's a good place. I made Mon through Wed lunches for work Sunday evening and have been planing supper at least one day in advance. I need to work on number five, getting to bed decent time every night. Falling into bed at 11pm just isn't cutting it. I really should be in bed at 9pm, but that just seems sooo early. So, for now I'll aim for 10pm. Once I'm doing that fairly regularly I'll start exercising regularly. In the mean time, I'll exercise when I can.

Story Boarding

Today's Thea Thursday is Story Boarding.
I'm to list the first thing that needs to happen for me to achieve my Winning Outcome. And then the second, third etc until all steps equal a successful Winning Outcome.

So, to begin let's review my Winning Outcome:
I will eat healthy and stay within my Weight Watcher point guidelines. I will get my daily five of fruits/veggies in four or more days a week. I will drink 14 cups of water a day. I will lose 2.8 pounds (weigh 220) by Nov 3

Now for my Story Board:

1. Plan and prepare my meals in advance.


2. Meals are small reasonable portions of various things including fruits and/or vegetables.


3. Eat fruits and veggies for snacks.


4. Fill water bottle first thing in the morning at work Mon-Fri and at home Sat-Sun.


5. Go to bed at a decent time EVERY night.


6. Exercise three days a week, at least.

Those are my steps. I all to easily find myself eating microwavable meals for lunch at work. About 90% of the time this is because I didn't prepare myself something for lunch the previous night and didn't want to spend the time on it in the morning before going to work. The microwavable meals aren't horrible for me, but I don't think the have the same nutritional value that fresh foods do.

This week I've been having a pb&j sandwich on wheat with a spinach salad with various toppings for lunch. It's worked out quite nicely. Next week I think I'll create one big salad that I'll put into containers for work daily. Then hubby and I can also partake of the salad when we sit down for dinner.

The big change for me this week is I know what dinner will be before I get home. I cooked on Monday and we ate late since DH had a meeting at church and got home at 8. The rest of the week I prepared crockpot meals the night before and threw them together before I left for work and dinner was magically done when I got home. The other big change from the past couple months was that I was the one preparing dinner. I know DH liked it, not that he really said anything about it, but there was a comment a couple weeks ago that he'd like it if we handled dinner differently. Normally he was responsible for all dinnerness in the small window he had between getting home from work and getting out to his other commitments.

One other thing. It turns out that I started this lifestyle change PMSing. This definitely is a large contributing factor to my incredible orneriness this week. Work was the other factor, but it was made sooo much worse by the PMSing. The big thing is though that I didn't end up eating absolutely everything that crossed my mind and path. AND I haven't had any candy from the Administrative Assistant's desk for a week! She is quite well stocked with wonderful candies that make both chocolate and sugar people happy.

One last thing. Exercising. I have exercised a total of once this week. Yes, a whopping once. This is better than the zero I've been averaging, but I can and will do better.

Now, I'm off to spend some time with my husband who got home and was told to please leave me alone for ten minutes so I can finish my blog post. He was very nice about it and a little perplexed.

First "official" day

I decided to sign up for Weight Watchers Online. I have one free week to decide if I like it. So far so good. I did good with fruits and veggies, okay with water (10 cups so far - 4 short) and ate all my points with no extras. Eating all my points was an accident. I thought I had 2 points left, so I decided to eat an extra serving of cauliflower and cheese and for dessert had one cup of sorbet instead of half a cup. Half a cup of sorbet has one point so a cup must have two right? Wrong, a cup has 2.5, which put me half a point over, but there are flex points so I was okay. Then I decided to see if I could replace my snack of an apple with granny smith (when I did sparkpeople granny smith wasn't in their database). I could! AND a small granny smith apple is only half a point while an apple is a full point. Yay!

Anyway, I managed to not eat a bunch of stuff when I got home grumpy and unhappy from work. Sat myself in front of the computer until it was time to start dinner and it seemed to work.

Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to get up early and do a FIRM video. I'll let you know what happens.

The first health babble

I found myself looking for and at weight loss blogs in the last week. I also found myself mad a lot last week. I've been mad at work, church and myself. I know that when I workout I healthfully work off some of that anger and just generally feel better. I also have been feeling bad about my body. I have a roll of fat under my boobs. I thought I got rid of that last year! How did that happen? Oh yeah, I weight 222.8 pounds and that's where I seem to be gaining. Well, there and my boobs, which means my bras aren't fitting right either. Do you know how expensive bras are?! I really don't want to buy new ones. For now the ones I have will work, but if I don't take care of this then I will need new bras. Also, as I was researching some stuff for this post (like healthy BMI) I found out that my BMI is now 30.3. Did you know that you're considered OBESE at 30? A couple of years ago I weighted more than I do now and I managed to avoid knowing I was considered OBESE for my height (6'0") and weight (222.8). That just MUST change.

Anyway, in my quest for a good weight loss blog I came across Tales from the Scales. I must have found it on Thursday because the first post I read was Thea Thursdays -- Anchoring. It caught my attention. I didn't have time to delve too far in (I was at work), so I printed that weeks and the three prior weeks to look at later.

Last week I found out my sister is doing Weight Watchers online with a friend of hers and she really likes it. So, I started thinking about joining and today I found myself alone at home, my husband gone for a couple hours and me with nothing to do (but avoid housework). So, I thought some more about weight loss and figured that if I had a blog to record my ups and downs on I might stick with it longer than two days. I guess we'll find out. So, I came up with a name for my new blog and started thinking about my first post. I pulled out my print outs of Thea Thursdays and read through them and jotted down my answers.

Anyway, here I am 29 years old, 6'0" tall, 222.8 pounds with a BMI of 30.3. My first goal is in the sidebar to the right. I want to weigh 220 pounds by Nov 3, 2007. I think that is very doable. And my answers for the Thea Thursdays are going help me on the way. They also have something going on called the "Look Great in 2008 Challenge". I haven't looked at it yet and DH wants to go out furniture shopping yet tonight and I do too. So, that will have to wait until later. Here are my Thea Thursday answers:

Thea Thursdays - Winning Outcomes
I will eat healthy and stay within my calorie or ww point guidelines, whichever I end up doing. I will get my daily five of fruits/veggies in four or more days a week. I will drink 14 cups of water a day. I will lose 2.8 pounds (weigh 220) by Nov 3.

Thea Thursdays -- Empowering Beliefs
I will succeed on this journey because I like to enter things into the computer. I like to track my progress. I like to see my progress on a graph, with the line slowly going in a downward direction. I deserve the downward graph. I deserve a body that is in shape. I deserve to be healthy. I deserve a able to have a healthy pregnancy when that time comes.

Thea Thursdays -- Anchoring
My anchor is my engagement ring. When I was engaged I was doing what most girls do, losing weight to fit into my wedding dress. I found out a week before the wedding I lost too much weight and my dress was too big, I needed a smaller size! And I thought that I hadn't lost enough! So, when I'm facing a difficult decision about food or exercising, I'll touch my engagement ring and remember that I am capable of making good decisions about my health.

Right now I'm not sure what my blogging schedule will be. I do need to come up with one so I will be accountable. Hopefully, I'll have time later tonight or tomorrow to check out the challenge and Weight Watchers Online.