Weigh-in & Fun Stuff (for me)

Well peeps, I weighed in at 202.8 yesterday morning.  I was down 0.6 for the week and I lost that 0.6 in the first two days when I reached the "overweight" BMI range.  I hit a bit of a wall on the weekend when I slacked off of tracking.  My sister and I took a little road trip down to the US so that we could shop.  I was looking for a bike and some food items that we don't have here in Canada and stuff that is cheaper despite the fact that our dollars are the same right now!  I generally buy Laughing Cow cheese in all the light flavors.  Here, we have original, light original, and one other regular flavor.  So I stock up.  Cheese is also so much cheaper in general so I buy the grated and freeze it.  Stops me from barreling through a bag too!  And I love flatout bread.  We don't have it AT ALL.  So I had a blast with my sister who was shopping for stuff for her very first apartment.  We had Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch (something we don't have as well).

AND I GOT A BIKE!!!  FUN FUN FUN!!!  Yes, this a picture of my new bike in my living room.  hahaha!  It will be stored in a storage room I have off of my front porch but I have a little rearranging to do in there before I can make that happen so for now, I want to keep my new baby inside.  It's at the back wall of the dining room now, not just hanging out in front of my TV.   I have a $75 gift card leftover from Christmas to Mountain Equipment Co-op so I'm going to get my helmet, lock, and various accessories from there.  Gotta pimp my ride ;)  So excited for all the snow to be gone now!!  I'm also excited to ride my bike to the gym instead of taking my car and fighting for parking.  :)

I went to boot camp tonight and got back to tracking today and it's going well.  I made a yummy random supper that sort of resembled an enchilada?  I combined brown rice, black beans, salsa, sour cream, and shredded cheese and rolled it up in light Italian flatout bread.  Delicious and super filling.  Finished it off with some strawberries and pineapple and I couldn't eat another bite.  

The last fun (for me) thing is that four people today told me that they could tell I'd lost weight.  FOUR PEOPLE!!!  That just spurs me on.  More more more!!!

Have a good week everyone!  

ps.  I so love all the comments and truly appreciate them.  It's so nice to know that I'm not alone and that others are doing it too.  Love you all!

pps.  I secretly hope I can take off 2.8 pounds to get into the one hundred's.  It's a bit much but oh how fabulous that would be!!  Wait, I guess I have to lose 3.0 pounds to actually have the scale start with a 1. Eek.

I'm OVERWEIGHT! :)

This is how the happy dance went.  Two-oh-two point eh-eight.  Cha cha cha cha cha-cha.  Two-oh-two point eh-eight!!  I noticed after Monday's weigh-in that my BMI was exactly 30.0 which is in the obese category.  I kept decreasing the weight in the BMI calculator to see how far I was from 29.9.  202.8!!  I'm officially out of the obese category!  I posted about the day I realized I was considered obese so I figured I'd recognize the day I wasn't.  Next stop - NORMAL!  According to the calculator, that's at 168.8.  I'm having a party when I get there and I'm going to dance like this!

ps. Cupcakes to Carrot Sticks used this video in her blog once and I cracked right up so I knew i had to do it.

Well Surprise Surprise!

How's it going bloggy peeps?  I've been back to tracking daily for the past six days.  That 2 pound weight gain last Monday woke me from my ridiculous non-tracking nightmare.  This morning went like this: get up, groggy, not enough sleep, stumble into the bathroom, pee, step on the scale reluctantly . . . WHAT THAAAAA . . . I'LL TAKE IT!! I was down 4.6 pounds.  Current weight 203.4. Guess I lost that water weight plus a little extra. Happy happy joy joy!  Now that I'm not pms-ing and angry at my weight, I'm enjoying meal prep and packing lunches again. In fact, I packed mine tonight when I made supper.  I love knowing I'm just going to have to grab it out of the fridge in the morning and I'm good to go.  So unlike me!

I haven't gone back to the gym yet.  I've missed two weeks.  I could go to boot camp tomorrow.  Could.  Should.  Might.  I refuse to promise anything.

My Salad of the Week

Now I want to talk about salad.  Yes, salad.  I hate preparing salad.  It feels like a whole lot of work.  I love salad when SOMEONE ELSE makes it for me.  However, it's a great way to get a lot of veggies in.  It also takes longer to eat than other food (or that could be just me) so by the time I'm done eating it, I'm not likely to be scrounging around once the rest of the meal is done.  The past few days I've been making a Greek-ish salad.  I've been using the Costco baby romaine mix, spinach, red onion, cukes, tomatoes, feta, and homemade Greek vinaigrette using the Epicure mix.  So question:  what salad creations are your favorites? I need ideas because I tend to eat a salad I love until I'm totally sick of it and can never eat it again.  I ruined a nice spinach/raspberry vinaigrette salad that way.  Funny little salad link . . . this blogger googled "woman laughing alone with salad" and made a post about it.  Pretty funny.

Salad suggestions welcome & needed!!

Aaand . . . I am so close to being under 200 I can taste it.  Really hoping I can do that by March 31st.

UPDATE:  I just published this post an hour or so ago and I already have an update.  I JUST noticed that my BMI on the ticky thing above says 30.0.  According to the BMI calculators I've read 25 - 29.9 is Overweight and 30.0 and above is Obese.  I kept putting in a lower weight to see how far till I'm 29.9.  202.8.  I'm going to weigh myself every day till I see 202.8 and you'd better believe there will be a post about it!

Where's That F&%K#%G Wagon?

Because I need to get back on.  I fell off the wagon, hit my head, and had amnesia so I forgot I was on Weight Watchers and going to the gym and stuff.  It came rushing back to me like a bad dream when I stepped on the scale yesterday morning.  I was up 2 pounds.  Sigh.  I do have a list of excuses.  But they are just that, excuses.  It was like the perfect storm.  PMS (which seems to be worse every third month), I struggle with depression more than I'm willing to admit, everyone around me at work was so sick I was tempted to call in healthy, and then I had 36 hour flu bug.  All of that made me feel pretty entitled to stay home from the gym.  Honestly, as I type this, the boot camp class I did not go to is just finishing up.  The day I lost the tracking battle was on day 38.  I had successfully tracked every bite for 37 consecutive days, then on the 38th day, I was just dozing off the sleep for the night and remembered that I hadn't put in the supper that I didn't weigh and measure or the handful of graham crackers that I didn't count.  Because I didn't actually know how many points I had consumed, I decided not to get out of bed to attempt tracking it.  I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN OUT OF BED.  Breaking my streak lead me to not track for the next six days.  So tomorrow is day one.

Hopefully the Biggest Loser has some motivation for me tonight!

Crabby-A$$ed Weigh-In

Holy Moly, Mondays in the blogosphere are busy!  I get home on Monday evenings and find that nearly everyone I follow has posted Monday and by the time I read all those, I don't have the time/energy/desire to do my own.  I'm not complaining though, I love that people are posting!  So I do weigh-in on Mondays but don't get it up here till Tuesday.

Now on to the weigh-in . . . I weighed in at 206.0 yesterday morning which is a loss of 1.4 lbs.  I'm not unhappy with that at all.  I feel like it's a great loss for the very hard week I had and I was half expecting to stay the same.  I'm crabby like nobody's business (pms) and I wanted to eat everything in sight (pms) and for the first time EVER on WW, I used all my weekly points (pms).  CRAZY!!  Then to top it all off, I thought boot camp tonight was at 6:45 pm but it wasn't, it was at 6:00 pm.  Boo hiss hiss.

So I'm going to finish watching Biggest Loser and get to bed at a decent hour and hope my crabby-assed self is a better person tomorrow!!  :)

****UPDATE****  Totally just realized I'm down 20 pounds now!! Yeah!  Oh and now that it's 11:00, I'm so not in bed early.  Tsk Tsk.

The Angry Dieter

The first 29 days of tracking and staying within my points for the day and week were at times challenging but ultimately very doable.  Until . . . Day . . . 30.  All day yesterday (the 30th day), I thought about cheese and crackers.  Mostly Brie.  Big old wheel of melted Brie and a box of crackers.  Maybe some havarti.  Provolone.  Gouda.  I think you get the idea.  You may think, "well why not have a small amount of cheese in something prepared?".  I do that.  I do that almost every day.  For 29 days, that worked like a charm.  Oh but evil day 30, I wanted cheese.  A lot of cheese.  I wanted to feel the kind of full I felt before I started on this journey of mine.

The other thing  I kept thinking about all day was how much I didn't want to go to the gym.  I was tired.  I wanted cheese.  And I didn't want to go to the gym.  I'd already told one of the other girls that I would be at barbell class so I knew I had to go.  I did only 15 minutes on the treadmill.  I didn't attempt running.  I did the barbell class and enjoyed it.  During the class, I decided I was going to the store right after and getting the Brie and crackers.  I drove halfway there and turned around and went home.  At this point, you would expect that I would feel proud of myself.  Proud that I had resisted the temptation.  Proud that I had conquered day 30.  I only felt angry.  REALLY ANGRY.  I was angry that I gained all this weight back.  I was angry that I couldn't have what I wanted.  I was angry that I don't have the metabolism of a teenaged boy (or either of my sisters for that matter).   I was angry that for the first time in over a month, this felt like a fricking DIET instead of the healthy lifestyle change I've been selling myself.

I know this will pass.  It will likely pass in 3 - 5 days.  Nudge nudge, wink wink.  But for now, I'm angry.  I may end up eating a block of cheese at some point but if that happens, I'm going to track the damn thing.  And likely regret eating it in the first place.  I will keep reminding myself of this.

FOUR WEEKS!!

Monday weigh-in --  down 2.2 lbs!!  

A look back at February . . . down 9 lbs.  Four solid weeks of tracking every single day.  I'm so proud of that and I can honestly say that in every weight loss effort in my past, this has never ever happened.  When I first decided to keep count of my consecutive days of tracking, I didn't say "I need to stay within my points every day", I just said "I need to track everything".  Staying within my points happened naturally.  I was surprised actually.  In the past, I'd fall off the wagon and then decide I wasn't tracking that day and once that decision was made, it was a free for all.  Now I know that no matter what I put in my mouth, it's going in the tracker.  I didn't think I'd make it to Day 28 and now I don't want to put that counter back to zero so I have to keep on going! Can I do two months?  Can I do three?  How about tracking every day till I leave on my trip to Vancouver?  That's 79 more days.  I'm going to try it!!

Also in February, I committed to go to my three classes per week and do 20 - 30 minutes on the treadmill before each class.  I went to EVERY SINGLE ONE.  I have no excuse not to. I stopped dreading the class and the workout because at the end of it, I have a good time, I have fun with the other women in the class, and I never ever say "gee, I wish I hadn't gone". For the treadmill workout, I walked briskly at an incline for the first two weeks.  For the last two weeks, I've been following Couch to 5K ever so loosely.  I will likely spend two weeks on each level until I start this running plan.

Here we are now at March 1st.  I'm so excited it's March.  It's getting closer to spring and oh do I need spring.  This winter feels like it's been longer, colder, and snowier than all the winters before it.  I'm not the only one that feels that way around here either!!  Anyhow, March 1st is a good time for a new goal.  I want to add one more gym day to my three classes.  I'm not sure yet if it will be another class or just another day when I use the treadmill or the elliptical or the bike, but one more workout for sure.

Enough rambling.  Next, do any of you have bikes and love it?  I'm in the market for a bike.  I think I've decided on a hybrid but where I hesitate is price.  This will be my first bike as an adult and I don't want to go and spend $300 - $500 at a bike shop for something I have no idea if I will get a lot of use out of.  Well, really, I don't have $300 - $500 to spend.  I am comfortable spending $100 - $200 at a department store.  So where do you fall?  Do you have a department store bike and are happy with the quality for recreational riding?  Any input would be great!

I also had a request for the Eggs Benedict recipe, my Saturday morning ritual.  I actually got this from Natasha at Girl Stuck in a Rut.  I kept seeing her pictures of Eggs Benedict and emailed her for a recipe. I've never made her exact recipe because while I like asparagus okay, it's not one of my favorites so I've substituted sauteed mushrooms (love), onions and spinach for the asparagus.  Also, you can use whatever you love and there can be so many variations on this.  The key is the sauce.  It is called Mayacamas and I found it in the gluten free/organic section of my grocery store.  It calls for 1 1/4 cups of milk and 2 tbsp of butter. It works out to 3 points per 1/4 cup of sauce.  While it doesn't taste exactly like restaurant-style Hollandaise sauce mix, it's not going to because it's not 90% butter!  :)  Thank goodness!  Okay, so how I make it:

1 WW english muffin or thin bun, toasted (3 pts)
piles of sauteed mushrooms, onions, spinach (0 pts)
2 poached eggs (4 pts)
1/4 of sauce (3 pts)
Couple of drops of tabasco

I did make this a couple of times just using microwaved egg whites because I realized too late I was out of eggs and it was still tasty and lower in points.  I've also spread a wedge of laughing cow cream cheese on the english muffin for a little extra richness and that was also very tasty.  You can't miss!!!