Week 3 already?

My battery and arm band came in, now I can go on walks jammin to some tunes! Now I just need to reinstall the software for the player. Hmm I wonder where that could be...

I forgot to weigh myself this morning, I had to shuffle out the door unexpectedly and by the time I got back I had drank coffee. I fairly certain that I gained a pound or 2 back. I've been pretty bloated I'm pretty sure the weight I lost last week was water weight. I didn't do so hot last week. I was feeling down on myself and didn't have much motivation. Also, with T's dad around, I was afraid to get caught mid work out and I CANNOT work out in front of anybody. I don't even like it when T sees me work out. Funny though, I can work out at a gym, just not in front of any body at home. I guess I just feel more vulnerable.

On to the goals:

Week 2 goal: not met :( See above for my excuses. :/
Month 1 goal: completed and rewarded for. I can't wait to try out my new flat iron tomorrow morning! I had no idea what I was doing when I picked one out, I hope it lives up to my expectations.

Now since I didn't complete last week's goal and I feel as though I should have, I just didn't make the effort, I'm going to make it this month's goal.

Month 2: Complete 30 minutes of physical activity 5 days out of 7 and 10 minutes of abdominal exercises 3 out of 7 days per week. Reward: New hiking/running shoes. I saw a pair I liked at Marshals for 25-30$.
Week 3: Consume 3 servings each of fruits and vegetables every day of the week. Reward: I think I'm gonna stick with the starbucks tall sugar free fat free hazelnut mocha. mmm mmm.

Holding up

Man I felt like crud today. I could barely bring myself out of bed this morning. I felt no drive to do anything to do with healthy living. I honestly didn't eat much today, but what I ate wasn't exactly the best choices, minus the salad, carrots, and hummus I ate after my walk (think: doritos, banana bread, chocolate chips, and more banana bread). I think part of my blah-ness had to do with getting to bed late last night (damn dorito's quest!) and not going on a walk yesterday. I finally got around to doing my first ab workout of the week. AT 6:45 pm. The workout I chose was a bit too advanced for me, so I just ended up doing my old school crunch routine from my college days. I do however feel 10 fold better after the fact. That just goes to show that working out does more than shape your body, it shapes your mood, too! I think next week I might mix up my walks with a little cardio on the t.v. I'm not sure what my exact goals will be. All I know is that I sit too much on my rump during the day!

I can't wait until my new battery and arm band arrive for my Creative Labs Zen Micro. It sure will make working out a little bit easier. I just hope the new battery is all it needs to work. Otherwise I think I may have to invest in a new mp3 player *crosses fingers* and I really don't need another thing to buy!

Begin Week 2

Wow! I can't believe I lost 2 1/2 pounds in the first week! I really didn't expect that. Who knew simply talking 5, 1/2 hour walks and significantly decreasing eating out would help me lose that.

Week 1 goal: accomplished!
Month 1 goal: so far so good! I gave in to Taco Bell yesterday, while running errands, the only time I ate fast food last week.

So, lets move on to week 2: incorporate 3, 10 minute ab workouts while maintaining my 5, 30 minute walks. Now that we have cable again, I can access FitTV on demand, which has many different workouts to choose from, including ab workouts.

My reward will be a tall nonfat sugar free, hazelnut mocha from Starbucks. Mmm that sounds so good! I haven't picked out my flowers for accomplishing my goal for week 1. I should make a point to do that today.

Even though I still feel tired, although I think that could have a direct relationship with sleeping patterns of late, I do feel as though I have more energy. I'm doing better with keeping up with household maintenance, which is something I'm not all that great at. Mostly because I'm too lazy to do it. But I'm learning that there's something to say about having a clean and organized home. It's actually a lot easier to be lazy and more enjoyable to sit back because when i look around I see clean and organized instead of clutter and messiness. I love that I know where things are when I go to look for them. You know I read somewhere that there is a correlatoin between people's messy homes and their weight. As you can imagine, they found that people with messy and cluttered homes had a tendency to be over weight. My question is, what came first, the messiness or being over weight? I've been obese since I was 5. I do remember that growing up, my room was overwhelmingly messy. Really, though, I think the point they were trying to make is when we let ourselves go in one faucet of our lives, we have a tendency to let ourselves go in all faucets of our life. On the other side of that, I think that if you start to pull yourself together with say, exercising, everything else falls into to place as well. You start to take care of every part of your life. You find the motivation for everything, not just one thing. That's not to say it happens over night, but I've noticed that every day I put more effort in another thing that I previously did not. In the end, I think you want your surroundings to match your life style. If you feel you have it all together, you want your life look put together.

Alright, I think it's time to get off my butt and go for a walk. Happy week 2!

One step closer

So far, so good. I've completed 4 out of 5 walks, with 3 more days left! Today I even walked in the rain. Mind you, it hadn't rained all day until I went outside to take a walk! But I forged through, baby and all.

Don't misunderstand my eating well. I'm only eating better. I am eating a balanced meal versus a bag of doritos. I eat 2 seperate snacks in the afternoons. (Hey, T hasn't been home before 8:30 3 out of 4 nights this week!) I sneak silly things. I still eat too much cheese (I ate an extra slice while preparing my lunch today) and find things like bags of gherradeli milk chocolate chips in my "baking cupboard." But! I did make it through the grocery store tonight with out picking up a "snack" as I often do. I admit it here and now. I often hunt down the perfect "cheat" when I'm at the grocery store. This usually happens when I shop hungry. I will scour the bakery or cookie isle or check out lane to find that one sweet chocolaty thing that will quench my craving. My favorite? The fresh chocolate éclairs from the the bakery. Or a pack of Oreo cakesters. Those are pretty much a little piece of heaven. Today though, I made it out of there with out them. I bought a can of Pillsbury orange cinna rolls, with the excuse of T's dad coming. Gotta make sure we keep Big B happy! Naw, I just thought it would be a nice treat for everyone and T is always begging asking for them. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. Hey, at least I had a coupon!

Ugh. That's really what this whole thing is about, well at least half of it, anyway. It's all excuses. I can't do this because of this. Why do this today when I can do it tomorrow. I need this because...I didn't do it yesterday, who should I do it today (or I ate this yesterday, why not today?) You get the idea. All that combined with the emotional/confidence factor is a recipe for disaster. You saw those pictures, I posted right? That's exactly where you end up, and I don't ever want to be there again!

I decided to change the reward for my weekly goal. Who needs nail polish when there are beautiful fresh cut flowers? I would much rather have a beautiful bouquet on my new kitchen table to gaze at than paint on my nails! Flowers make me happy and that's what I really need in my life right now! Though I should do some research and find out what are some hearty local flowers around here.

This whole reward system is kinda hard to pin down. We're still trying to iron out the kinks. Nugget and I discussed it and and came to the conclusion that coffee (ie: starbucks, coffee bean) and smoothy (jamba juice, juice stop) shops do count as rewards as long as we stick with the smallest option (tall, 12 oz, etc) and make it healthy like non fat or sugar free.

I'm so impatient! I want to see where I'm at at day 28. I want to reward myself with that flat iron! I think I may actually be having fun with this. Oh, and I haven't eaten out once this week! I'm trying really hard to make a home cooked meal every night. In a moment of weakness I almost succumbed to my chocolate covered cherry in chocolate ice cream blizzard craving from Diary Queen, but I turned the opposite direction and drove to a park to take a walk instead. Did I mention that my moment of weakness was due to my inability to find the store i was looking for? I often give in to the dark side out of frustration, anger or shame.

Wow, every time I try to wrap up this post, I think of something else. Alright. I'm over and out.

Finally, pictures!

I'm definitely in a better mood today, than yesterday. Though the baby sure was trying my patience this morning. I had Tony snap a few pics last night as we were going to bed. He wasn't at all excited about it...he had just laid down when I caught him off guard. Oops! I took a few myself just now, standing in front of the mirror.


These are not great my any means! But they're the best I could do.

Side View

Front View

Saggy Arm!


Sleepy Man

Ick, look at those big stretch marks! I'm so ashamed of them. Most of the upper ones are new this year. Yikes. Just looking at those pictures disgusts me. How can I love myself when I think I look disgusting?

I've made it to the third day. So far, so good. After a phone call from Nugget yesterday, we decided that since it was the first month, we were allowed one mistake. But after that, no rewards! Speaking of rewards, I keep forgetting to post mine!

Week 1: new nail polish
Month 1: a flat iron for my hair

These are things I wouldn't ordinarily buy for myself. I really really want a flat iron, I've never had one, and I think I wouldn't hate my hair so much if I used one. As for the nail polish, I thought that would be fun (and maybe prevent me from biting my nails)!

Although I wasn't going to work too hard at eating better this month, I find myself doing it naturally. I think it's mostly because I want to succeed, and I do enjoy fruits and vegetables. Probably more than the average person, actually. Being a veggie and understanding nutrition, I have come to love eating them. I don't think I've met a fruit or veggie I don't like. I take that back. I don't like the Asian pears. Those were just weird. I still eat a lot of carbs though. They're just so yummy in my tummy! One thing at a time, Katie, one thing at a time.

Day 2

Day 1 went awesome! I took the baby for a half hour walk around the block and the weather was great (not too hot). At least it wasn't too hot outside. Our apartment is a whole other story!

I wasn't able to get the pictures taken because FH got home late and by the time dinner eaten and cleaned up, it was 9:30. Or plop on the couch time. We gotta get it done tonight, though. I'm already on day 2 and I want the pictures to be true to my start weight.

I did take my measurements this morning, though. That's a hard task when you don't have someone to do it for you, like when you're getting fitted for say a wedding dress ;). It's hard to determine the exact position of your waist, hips, etc when you're looking down. Here they are:

Waist=44" Arms=16"
Apex=52.25" Chest=41.25"
Hips=53.5" Breasts=47.5"
Thighs=29.75" Under breasts=42.5"

I'm defining the "apex" as the midpoint between waist and hips, aka, around the belly roughly across the belly button. I mostly did this because there's just so much fat on my body and I wanted to be as accurate as possible. I realized halfway that I was holding my breath, and therefore sucking it in a bit so I had to start over again. Like I said, it was a frustrating task when you do it yourself.

I quit saying my affirmations at some point last night while falling asleep and today I'm feeling it. I guess thats just more proof of why their worth it. I feel groggy, it was hard to wake up, etc. Which will undoubtedly leave me in a grumpy and impatient mood through out the day. Perhaps i should set a goal at some point to incorporate night time and morning affirmations into my day. But the whole point of this program is to set small goals in an effort to not overwhelm ourselves. Too much too soon seems to be a major pitfall for us.

Oh, and I made a new ticker because the website I was using didn't seem to work correctly. I bought a digi scale at target the other day because our old analog didn't seem to be calculating accurately. I apparently don't weigh 230, so I have 90.5 lbs to lose, not 100. Is it weird that I was disappointed I only had 90 to go? I liked the way 100 pounds lost, sounded!




I hope that works!

Here we go!

Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

That was fun to say!

I'm going to start this program optimistically with a sprinkling of realism. I had a hard time choosing a goal for month 1. Since we're just getting started and I would rather not set myself up to feel that I've failed in the 1st month, I'm not going to choose a number, but rather a habit. I was originally going to focus soley on getting my butt moving this month and eating next month, but I decided to mix it up a bit. So are you ready to hear my goals?

Month 1 Goal: Limit fast food intake to once a week.
Week 1 Goal: Go on a 30 minute walk 5 days out of 7

We ate fast food A LOT this weekend. Heck we've been going a little crazy with easy access to burger king and taco bell since we've moved up here (which are pretty much the only veg-head friendly joints out there). With Tony's dad coming on Friday and my family coming in June, it will be a challenge. It will take a little planning ahead, but I'm ready to take it on. As far as going on walks is concerned, I don't think it will be a problem. I have to get used to the fact it rains here. A lot. And if I want to get some activity outside I have to get used to doing that in the rain. It's supposed to rain off and on all week, but at least it will be in the 60's. Which will be refreshing after the 98 degree days . We bought a car seat and snap n go stroller over the weekend which will make it that much easier to get outside. No excuses!

I will try to post pictures and measurements tonight, after the FH gets home from work. If not, they'll be up tomorrow morning.