Progress Report Tuesday

It’s Tuesday, right? I did wake up this morning wondering what day it was. Then wanted to cry when I realized it was only Tuesday. Seems like a long week already! Geez.

Either way, it’s time for Progress Report Tuesday! The results this week, a loss of 1 pound! Not quite sure how that happened. Wait. Scratch that. I do know how. I don’t think we went out to eat once in the past week. Hmm…what a difference cooking one’s own dinner makes! Oh, and more than one meal this weekend consisted entirely of popcorn. And while I did not track any points again this week, I still kept my afternoon snacks and dinners low to no carb. I’m telling you, it works!! I mean, how else could I lose a whole pound, not tracking my points, writing down what I ate, OR doing any exercise??

Yes, workout class was cancelled both Tuesday and Thursday and lazy me didn’t do anything else instead. It was a busy week this past week. With no good shows on TV, we were actually doing things in the evenings. Working in the yard, cleaning the house, cooking.

That’s like last night, I felt like I had such a productive evening! Having watched no TV, I updated our budget spreadsheet for the month of May (which took a long time, actually), I played on Twitter a bit, posted some recipes to my blog here, cooked dinner, washed, dried, and put away all the dirty dishes from all my cooking Sunday and last night. By 10:30pm, I was exhausted! I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to get ready for bed!

Alright, I've been working at my weight loss for just over 2 months now. My total loss so far has been 9.6 pounds! That's crazy! A lot of my work pants are actually getting really loose. And these are pants I've had for years! Some since I first started working 3 years ago. Was I really that much bigger 3 years ago when they fit when I bought them? Man, doesn't seem like it. I do think I'm a lot more fit and toned now though than I used to be. So I think I'm weighing more than I used to but I'm still smaller since I've gotten more muscle. Such a great feeling. I always told myself I wanted to be in super great shape before I ever got pregnant and it looks like I've finally made it! Just about. There's still a few jigglies that I'd like to trim down still. But CardioSalsa starts next week! Woohoo! Can't wait!

Progress Report Tuesday

I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but I had a loss of 3.4 pounds this week. Now, granted, 2.2 of those were what I had gained the last week, but I really wasn’t expecting to lose much more than that and I lost another 1.2 on top of it! Crazy. I hardly counted points at all this past week. I did for like breakfast/lunch/snacks, but I never added up dinners. We had leftover fajitas for dinner every night and I never tried to figure out how many points it was. Even as early as yesterday morning I still hadn’t even lost the entire 2.2 pounds I had gained. But I don’t think I ate very much yesterday so I guess that’s why it so much less this morning. I had a late brunch of a lean pocket about 11am, then only had 2 graham crackers with peanut butter for a snack at about 4:30pm (no lunch) then we had a light dinner of pork chops with tomatoes and squash and then I had a small cup of ice cream. All before 8pm. And didn’t go to sleep until about 11pm. So yeah, I guess that would make up for it. I didn’t realize until just now how little I ate yesterday. Hmm. And I wasn’t ever too hungry either. Must have been living off my fat stores. :o)

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be actually tracking my points. Seems like I can only make it about a month before I start to slide on the tracking. But like I said before, I’m really starting to see what I can and cannot eat on my own. I basically eat the same breakfast/lunch/snack every day during the week so it’s really just dinners that I need to be careful of. And as long as I plan it all out at the beginning of the week, I do pretty well with that. It’s only when I don’t plan that we run into trouble.

I decided this morning that my goal was to fit into a particular pair of jeans that I own. I haven’t tried them on in a few weeks. Last time I tried, I could get them on, but I could barely move in them! So my goal would be to be able to wear them comfortably. I’ll try again in a couple more weeks and see where I am.

Our cardio/abs/strength training class ended last week and our new cardio salsa class doesn’t start for a few more weeks. Our instructor, however, has agreed to meet with us at the park to keep up the class until the next session starts. I’m so happy about that! I love the classes with this instructor. She’s awesome! So no down time between classes! And it’ll be nice to be outside for a bit in the evenings. We had a small cold front come through (surprisingly, this late in the year) and it’s been beautiful weather so far this week.

Only 51 more days until vacation!! That’s definitely enough motivation to keep it up, keep it up, keep it up!!

Back to the counting board...

So much for my trying to do Weight Watchers again. I wasn’t really tracking my points. I just kind of took note of how many points things were, but I didn’t write anything down or anything like that. It was working pretty good for about 2 weeks, I finally got back down under 130. Then came the wedding in Florida and it went back up, but as soon as we got back home and I started eating “normally” again, it went back down. Unfortunately it has gone back up after this past weekend, which I thought wasn’t too bad, eating wise. Well, I blame it on the cookies John forced me to make on Friday…we’ve been eating some every single day. Then there was Chik-fil-a on Saturday morning…but I only got 4 chicken minis…nothing else. Oh yeah, then Frito pie for two different meals. And we went out to dinner Saturday night where I ate more red beans and rice than I should have. Okay, so this weekend was not great. Either way I’m still not where I want to be and I HAVE to do something about it. So, it’s back to ACTUALLY counting points…staying within my point range…and working out!!

Thank goodness our workout class starts back up again this week…today, actually. That will help out. And I must must MUST do more cardio at home. Last night was a great example of what we SHOULD be doing. I made sure to have a snack late in the afternoon so I could workout once I got home. I did 30min of cardio on my Wii workout game (My Fitness Coach, MFC from now on) then a couple minutes on the Wii Fit (where it shamefully said, “Oh, it’s been 33 days since your last workout!”). But I was pleasantly interrupted on the WiiFit with John asking if we wanted to take the dogs on a walk since it was so nice outside. Which we did, for about 45min. down to the big retention pond behind our subdivision where we let the dogs off the leash and let them frolic in the water. It was a very nice evening…minus almost getting drug across the ground when the dogs spotted a rabbit and took off after it faster than I could get my footing!! It was already after 8pm when we got back home, so I just made chicken sandwiches for dinner. Though made with frozen breaded spicy chicken patties, that alone cost me 320 calories! Geez. But yeah, we definitely need more nights like that.

Oh, and about me trying to wake up early to workout…had some help with that this morning. Major woke us up whining about 3am, so John gets up to let him out. Apparently he was having trouble trying to poop…poor dog. Then he starts whining again at 6:05am. My alarm was set to go off at 6:15am, so I go ahead and get up. Turns out he had thrown up in his crate and couldn’t lay back down, so I let them both out and brought his bed downstairs to wash. By now it’s only 6:15am and I’m wide awake. Well, I had done so much cardio last night, I didn’t want to do anymore this morning, so instead I put together a lunch for John (then forgot to tell him about it) and washed a couple dishes, then went upstairs and woke John up and ironed a shirt for him, then put away my three loads worth of clean clothes. And by that time it was time for me to get in the shower. I love mornings where I get so much done! Thank you Major for throwing up! J

Off the wagon

Good job, Julie. Day 1 of starting WeightWatchers again and I've already fallen off the wagon. Okay, so our office provides us with a stocked kitchen for lunches. Lately I've been really good and just having a sandwich for lunch. Thus was the plan for today. Well, also lately, the grocery lady has been buying small cups of Hormel chili. Probably to get rid of the excess of Fritos we always have. A lot of people have taken advantage of this and have been making Frito pies. My favorite! Well, we eat lunch later than most, so there's usually no more chili by the time we get up there. But there was today!! So instead of my healthy sandwich, I caved for the Frito pie. But you know, really I think I deserve it, having spent TWO HOURS pooper-scooping the backyard by myself on Saturday!!