Two Fifteen and… Go!

It’s only Sunday morning but my weekend is effectively over, being that I have to spend the rest of today working on a report for work that I couldn’t get done last week. I actually had a dream last night about my supervisor getting all mean about me not having it done by tomorrow (which would never happen, he’s about the nicest guy you’d ever meet). So after I post this, it’ll be back to work for me…

This weekend has been really great, though, and I feel like I’ve had plenty of fun/relaxation to make up for the fact that I have to work today. Friday was the show at the pavilion, which was just fantastic (sitting in the grass, drinking wine, listening to local live music). Saturday was my WW meeting, a TurboSculpt workout, and a good amount of gardening, plus the cooking of a really wonderful meal. This morning I got to talk with an old friend on the phone and have a wonderful breakfast. It’s been a good weekend, I’d say.

Best part being that I feel totally back on plan… Even though I was trying to pull myself up out of the exam-related funk of last week by the end of last week, I didn’t feel I was entirely successful - but this weekend I’m definitely back to it. I feel better, I’m eating things I enjoy (instead of eating things just because they’re there), I’m moving more… I’m also (TMI alert) all the sudden more regular than I have been for a week and a half, thankfully… I guess that Fiber One and water really does get things going! :p So generally I’m happy, my body’s happy.

Now to tackle that 2lb gain I saw yesterday (yeah, that was the official WI result). I’m hoping it’ll come off in a week… but I can’t really dictate how much my body lets go of from week to week so we’ll just have to see what happens. I’ll do everything in my power to fix the gain. That’s all I can do, right?

Hello, blog. Long time no see.

I used to love posting here, I’m not sure what happened that I just dropped off from it! It’s not like usual, when I stop posting in my blog about the same time as I stop eating healthy and fall off the wagon. No siree, I’m still keeping up with Weight Watchers and doing my thing, albeit slowly.

Last post: March 16.
Weight as of last WI (March 1): 205.6
Today’s date: April 18.
Weight as of April 12: 200.8.

So it’s been a month and a half and about 5 pounds, which is slow progress. I have conflicting feelings about the speed of all this, since I would obviously love for it to come off faster but then again, I can’t do too much complaining about ANY steady loss. So yeah, I’m losing maybe 1 pound per week, but it’s a steady loss, and that’s certainly something I want to embrace!!

I have my weigh-in tomorrow morning, and as much as it will sadden me to see a gain, I’m still going to go and accept that gain for what it is. I know there’s nothing I can do to avoid that reality. This past week was very stressful… thankfully the source of stress is in the past now and will never return… but the fact remains I used that stress as an excuse to turn to all manners of junk, which I know I could have avoided if I tried. I just got to a point where I stopped trying. Funny thing is, I don’t feel bloated or gross as a result of it. So it really is a mystery what’s going to happen tomorrow morning.

All I know is that no matter what, I’m back OP now and will continue to be, and starting tonight I’ll be back on the exercise wagon as well. I haven’t gotten good exercise in for about a month and a half, and boy do I miss it! I miss the feeling of energy afterwards, I miss the feeling of strengthening muscles, I miss the sense of accomplishment, I miss feeling like I’m doing all I can to get this body healthy. Hopefully a renewed commitment to exercise will really help with the WL, we’ll have to see.

Anyway, I’m hoping to post here more often now, so we’ll see what happens! I’ll be back tomorrow to report on the outcome of my WI.

Long time no post, huh? Well, I don’t intend to abandon this blog by any means. Just that my DC trip started a bit of an emotional downward spiral that I’ve just now been able to see my way out of. My weight loss for the last two weeks is 0.8 pounds, which isn’t much, but it’s a small victory against all of the emotional eating I’ve been alternately participating in/resisting. I’m back on track and will certainly be posting a more satisfying loss next Saturday!

I just wanted to share the results of an experiment I just performed… I made yogurt! Yes indeed, I’m becoming one of those people. I used milk powder to reconstitute the milk I used because regular dairy has gotten ridiculously expensive. I went to Sam’s Club and bought a 4.5lb box of Carnation instant fat free powdered milk for about $13.50, which has enough powdered milk for just over 17 jars of yogurt at 32 oz/each.

Now, if it were only the milk that made yogurt, that would be about $0.77 per 32 oz jar! Unfortunately you need a starter, as well — some store-bought yogurt with active cultures. It’s $2.49 for a 32-oz container of yogurt at the store, or 64 tablespoons. You need about 3 tablespoons of yogurt with cultures to start 32 oz of yogurt, making 1 store bought container more than enough for the entire box of powdered milk’s worth of yogurt. So, add that cost to the cost of the powdered milk and the final cost per 32-oz jar of homemade yogurt is $0.86! That’s close to two dollars less than the cost of store yogurt (and if food price inflation keeps on the pace it’s going, it WILL be two dollars less). Plus all the cost is up-front, so you can start when you have money in anticipation of tighter times ahead.

A note on the store-bought yogurt. You may be thinking, sure one container of yogurt is enough to start a 4.5 pound box of powdered milk, but it certainly won’t last long enough to do so! Well, as the Hillbilly Housewife points out, yogurt can be frozen in ice cube trays for future use. So freeze in ice cube trays (they make good portions too), then remove from the trays and bag them to save space in the freezer. Then just pull out the cubes you need!

There are also yogurt starters available for purchase, but they are guaranteed more expensive than the store-bought yogurt method. For instance, Custom Probiotics sells a yogurt starter and also says it can be used to make almond milk yogurt (which, I gotta tell you, is incredibly tempting — I love almond milk but I’ve heard from too many other sources that almond milk will fail as yogurt because it lacks the protein necessary or something). Anyway, doing the math, a $50 bottle of starter there will be good for 125 quarts (32 ounces each) of yogurt. Instead of the $0.09 the store-bought yogurt adds to the total cost of homemade yogurt, yogurt starter will add $0.40 per 32 ounces, taking the cost of your homemade yogurt up to $1.17. Which still isn’t bad, sure, but I think it’s unnecessary when the store-bought method works just fine. And it doesn’t require a $50 start-up cost.

Anyway, as for method, I followed the Hillbilly Housewife method pretty much to a T. To keep it warm I used the oven method as she describes (I don’t own a heating pad or a cooler, so the oven was the best bet). I put it in a warm oven at about 10:30pm, then when I woke up at 7am I had perfect yogurt!! Now I’m off to try to play with it more. I’m going to let it strain in a cheesecloth for a while and see what I can do from there — I don’t know if I’ll go all the way to yogurt cheese but I’d love for it to get to the consistency of Greek yogurt… Mmm….!

This is my -2.4lbs for the week dance:

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Whaddaya mean, you couldn’t see it? I’m doing it right now!

Needless to say, I am one happy camper today!

After starting a bunch of goal-related and motivational threads on 3FC today (I feel like maybe it’s becoming an addiction, posting there. Maybe?), I feel tons better about pulling myself up out of my slump. I gave myself multiple opportunities (and this is another) to voice specifically what I intend to do in the upcoming weeks to right my situation. It’s really helped me commit to re-focusing because, you know, even if you say you’re refocusing it doesn’t make it so until it actually happens.

It’s probably good that I’m recommitting before tomorrow’s WI, because I’m afraid my week may have had unpleasant scale-related side effects. We’ll see, though — I woke up today feeling slightly smaller than the day before (was having a major fat day Thursday), and my pants are fitting nicer than they were when I wore them Tuesday. Perhaps I was just retaining some water or something. So who knows, it could go either way! (Of course I’m hoping it goes down, I’m ready to hit my first 10-pound mark, and even readier to get the heck out of the 200’s!)

So… here are some short-term things I need to work on:
-TRACK. I’ve been slacking in tracking (ha, a rhyme!) and I think that’s a big problem. I lose track of what I’ve eaten and find ways to negotiate my point count down (”I didn’t really eat 1 cup, it was more like 1/2…”) as to find room to pack more junk in. So bite it & write it.
-EXERCISE. It’s been about a week and a half since I’ve moved in any constructive way. I’ve been like a slug. Sitting around. I need to get back on my exercise wagon, even if it’s only 3x per week.
-CLOSE THE KITCHEN. Bye-bye, after-dinner snacking hell. After dinner and dessert (if there is one/if I want one), the kitchen è chiesto. (chiesta? because kitchen is feminine? oh Italian, you fail me.) Perhaps I should pick up on a habit I see many praising — have a cup of tea after dinner. The extra liquid fills your stomach, and the warmth is comforting. We shall see, we shall see.

Here are things I want to accomplish in March:
-Achieve at least 700 minutes of exercise. I tried for February but ended up 120 minutes short. So close!
-Go to a WW meeting every week!**
-Do something active every weekend.
-Study everything that needs to be read for my oral exams.
-Keep eating out to once per week, twice if necessary.

In February, I lost 2.2 pounds. That’s not a whole lot, but at least it’s a loss!! I’m gonna count it as a success.

**Okay, I’m really excited about this — I think the WW gods are smiling on me. I was getting worried about next week, as I’m going to DC and won’t be able to make my regular WW meeting. I just looked up meeting locations in DC to see if I could swing by one to at least get weighed for the accountability, and wheeeeee! There’s a WW center literally three blocks away from my company’s DC office, which I’m going to visit on Friday! Which means I just have to walk down the street and weigh! (Which is also very convenient if I end up moving to DC and transferring to that office!) I was concerned because I’m going with two non-diet-friendly people, and was worried they’d bully me out of going, but now there’s no excuse — there’s a Borders on the ground floor of my office building so I’ll just walk down to the WW center myself and they don’t have to be bothered. Yippee, I’m actually *really* excited about this!!

Okay, here’s to a new week, and a new month! I will be back tomorrow with my WI results, for better or for worse!

Lizzie - Thanks for checking in on me, here I am :)

I feel like I haven’t posted in a while, probably because I haven’t. It’s been a week, huh?

Well, WI last Saturday showed no loss, no gain. Which is fine by me, really — I mean, as long as I don’t gain, I’m doing something right. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what my body does at this point in my cycle — it’s about 2 weeks before TOM and I’m getting my typical skin and mood things, so I think that explains the lack of loss.

This week — I have no idea how this week is going to shape up. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything. Eating has been generally bad… or at least, bad as I define it. I guess technically I haven’t crossed my FP line — I’m sure I’ve eaten at least 30 of them but I don’t think it’s gone over 35. So hopefully, as long as I’m careful tonight and tomorrow, I might see a little shift in the numbers. What really messed me up this week was a box of graham crackers — what a poor decision it was to bring anything into my house that came from the cookie aisle, I should know myself better than that! “Oh, they’re low-fat graham crackers, it’ll be okay.” And then Sunday becomes one giant graham cracker-fest, with lunch comprising of a grilled cheese sandwich and about 10 graham crackers. I’ve been over my target points every day this week, which feels strange because I’m not used to eating like that.

I also haven’t exercised in over a week.

Well, if I DO see a gain Saturday (which is a possibility), I’ll know why. I won’t be gaining despite doing everything right, which I think is one of the hardest things to see when you’re actively trying to be healthier. I’ve done nearly everything wrong this week (I say nearly because despite everything I’ve made a couple good choices and haven’t gone over FPs yet) so I’ll definitely deserve whatever shows up.

I’ve also stopped being diligent in keeping up with tracking in my WW journal this past week, which I think is indicative of my dwindling focus. I come back to it to find blank pages I can’t fill in accurately because I can’t remember what I ate. I’m headed down some very dangerous paths here, guys, and I need to get myself back on track before I start giving up hope.

I think part of my problem, too, is that I’ve been at this for 2 months now, and lost 8 pounds. Now, I’m usually the one to tell people “be patient, you can’t control the pace at which your body loses.” But 1 pound per week sounds awfully slow. Then again, if I continue losing 1 pound a week for the rest of the year, I’ll be 52 pounds down by New Year’s. That’s okay I guess. Sigh. I don’t know. I’m just in a funk, and maybe it’s hormone-related, too. What I need to do is start exercising again — get out there and do it. that’ll probably help me feel better, wouldn’t you think?

Goooood afternoon everyone.

Well, it’s 4pm and I’ve met all of my daily fruit and veg requirements, eaten two of my healthy fats, and ingested both my dairy servings (going by calcium intake, not dairy specifically). Water intake is sitting at about 32oz, though, which can (and should) be improved on.

I’ve only eaten 15 points so far today, too, which means I have a ton left over for dinner.

Of course, this on a day when I have a really low-points dinner planned due to its high vegetable content. We’re having broiled (”indoor grilled” — shhh) portobello caps topped with roasted red peppers and melted provolone cheese, with a side of oven-baked spiced sweet potato french fries.

I’m just having one of those days where I don’t have a whole lot of high-cal foods planned, and I don’t really want any high-cal foods. Aren’t days like this part of the normal course of human eating? Should I really push myself to get up to 27? When other people ask this question, my answer is always, “yes! of course! slow metabolism lurks behind low food intake!” But when it’s me trying to convince myself to bulk up my meals, I just kind of groan.

With dinner, I’ll reach 20 pts consumed. I guess I could eat a bucket of almonds to make up the difference. I really don’t want to do it unhealthily — that is, I don’t want to fall victim to the chocolate spread throughout the office as I have been doing this week. I was aiming for today to be sugar-free because I really need to break the cravings I’ve been getting since Valentine’s Day-related splurging. Maybe I can make a bean salad type thing to go with dinner.

Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll report back tomorrow about what happened tonight, I’m just not up for thinking about it right now. What happens happens. What does everyone else do in these situations? Do you just deal with it and promise not to make it a habit, or do you force the points/cals in?

The Happiness Project is something I heard about from Marianne over at PracticeLiving. She talks about hearing the idea from an old friend of hers, and I’m not sure if her friend decided to start it independently or if she was inspired by someone else. However, a quick search reveals The Happiness Project, a developing documentary about the search for truth and happiness throughout the world. It’s an interesting concept, to do it on a global scale, since what makes us happy can vary so widely from culture to culture.

I mean, think about it. Even something so basic as the conditions under which we live can be the cause for happiness/unhappiness, and chances are you have a different ideal than the guy sitting next to you on the bus. Maybe he dreams of mountainside solitude while you envision your eventual purchase of a home in a trendy beachfront community. Those are two very, very different ideas of happiness associated with space, and can comfortably coexist within one culture. So just imagine how vast the differences can be when we transcend borders.

It’s a fascinating concept. I have to wonder, though, how well-executed the final product will be when it’s revealed. It has the chance of being eye-opening and astounding… and it has an equal chance of becoming a pedestrian travel video. So the jury’s still out on that one.

Anyway, all this has inspired me to do start a similar project, along the lines of Marianne’s friend’s idea: to take a photo each day of something, however small, that makes us happy. It’s an interesting way to really re-focus, at least once a day, on what brings you happiness and positivity in your everyday life. Sure, it’ll make me happy to be 60+ lbs lighter, but what makes me happy now? Plenty of things. But we get sidetracked in the negativity associated with weight and losing and dieting and exercise and frustration and sweat and forget about the immediate pleasures and ever-accessible joys of life.

Plus things like this appeal to the amateur photographer in me. Not that I have any decent photo equipment… I have a really nice Nikon SLR but it’s pre-digital and therefore not very appropriate for this task. My little Canon Elph will just have to do…

I will start a different blog, I think, for this project. I just wanted to write about it here because it’s something to think about. When I get started I’ll be sure to post the link somewhere. Hope everyone’s doing well.

Happy President’s Day! (Or is it Presidents’ Day? Or Presidents Day? I’m really not sure what the “official” word is on that!)

It’s a beautiful day here in Charlottesville, with temperatures in the low 60’s and sunshine all over the place. I’m quite happy with the warmth today because it means I can get out there and jog this evening! I haven’t been able to since it turned cold again, and I’m too much of a wuss to go brave the elements just yet. I’m looking forward to it. I also plan on walking home after work, so I should actually get a good 4+ miles of moving in today, in addition to whatever I manage to accumulate between walking to the bathroom and the water cooler throughout the day (which won’t be much, stupid sedentary job that makes me work on President’s Day, grumble grumble).

In other positive news, all the angel food cake and whipped cream is out of the apartment now. Of course, how it managed to leave the apartment is another matter… But point being it’s all gone now and I’m actually looking forward to being on plan this week. I just never feel as good when I’m loaded up with sugar. I wonder if I’ll ever get to a point where dessert just doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore from the outset. Hmmm…. probably not…. but one can hope. :)

And in closing, I’ll leave you with a little motivational story: A woman in West Virginia who lost 120 lbs through good, clean eating and exercise! (Imagine that!) She looks amazing and radiantly happy — what a wonderful inspiration!

Totally groovin’ off the TurboJam vibe. TurboJam vibes are a good thing… In fact, they are fantastic! They make me all happy and energetic and positive and upbeat about this journey towards fitness. Wooooohoooo!

So y’know how it’s been since Sunday since I exercised? I seem to have made up for it today, as I just couldn’t sit still and ended up doing three active things — biking downtown (which is a HUGE accomplishment for me, as I’ve been wanting to do it for a while but always felt too self-conscious), the TurboSculpt workout, and a yoga session I hadn’t done in a long time.  Wahoooo for moving my exercise ticker again, I was starting to wonder if I was going to make my February goal but it seems I’m back in the running!

Tonight… tonight is pizza and beer night. Right after I finish this post I’m going to go change and head over to a friend’s house. I’ve bought some Corona Light and a California Pizza Kitchen thin-crust pizza for the occasion, and if all goes according to plan, I should be consuming 15 pts between the two. I’ve allowed myself to eat half the pizza… That’s enough to make me feel like I’m indulging without doing any real damage (it’s 9 points for 1/2 the pizza, that’s pretty decent!). The beers are 2 each, and I’m counting on three but might have four… I’m okay with four. Because of the exercise I’m only over my points for the day by 1, so if I have an extra beer it means 3 into FPs and that’s no problem. Hurray for exercise pretty much negating my angelfood cake/whipped cream/strawberries episode this afternoon! … I need to get away from sugar for a couple days, I’m starting to crave it a little too strongly. Had too much of it last week.

OH! Before I forget… I actually managed to *lose* this week! Yep, a whole 0.6 of a pound! That takes me down to an even 8lbs lost to date. Hey, it’s not a gain, so I’ll take it for sure!! I’m hoping this week will show a biiiig loss, and maybe push me towards that 10lb mark. I just have to make sure I work hard and DESERVE a big loss, which I didn’t last week. I barely earned my 0.6…

Well, that’s it for me for today. Hope you are all having wonderful, healthy, active weekends!