Weigh-In and 30, 20, 30!

Yesterday I weighed in and I was down 1.6 pounds.  Not gonna lie.  I was disappointed.  I've since changed my tune so don't jump on me.  But yesterday, my first thought was "I did 30 Day Shred 6 days in a row as well as some zumba and yoga and I only lost 1.6 pounds??? BULL$HIT!!".  Now that I've slept on it, I'm happy with 1.6 pounds.  It's down.  It was more than 1.  It's in the healthy range for successful weight loss.  And when doing the math, if I do this 25 more times, I will be within my lifetime membership range again at WW.  So last week 25 more times!!!  Here we go!

30 Day Shred . . . ah f*ck it.  :)  Seriously, I can't watch Jillian every day for 30 days.  Yes, it's an excuse but really I can't.  I started off doing it, by day two I'd muted it and by day 6, I couldn't watch her anymore.  Her silent enunciation started driving me nuts and now that I've mentioned it, it's going to drive you nuts too, I apologize.  So my new plan is just activity for 30 days straight.  I have a multitude of dvd's and Wii workouts that I don't have to get sick of any one in particular.  Tomorrow I'm starting with Bob's Pure Burn Super Strength.  I've done it before and really liked it because it was very close to a class a I fell in love with at the gym called Barbell Blast.



20 -- I got to change my HYC badge to 20 lbs lost!

30 consecutive days tracking.  Today is day 30 and I've tracked every bite, lick, taste, sip. Everything!  It works.  It keeps me in check.  I'm so excited to be just a week away from my previous record of 37 days.  Today has been a rough day.  I've been feeling a little woeful and bogged down by life stuff and in turn, that makes me feel hungry.  Emotionally hungry.  And I want to cure it with a mountain of bad food.  I actually need to go grocery shopping right now but I don't want to go because I know that I will come home with some crap to ingest tonight.  I know I'm not physically hungry so I'm really trying not to go nuts and I'm tracking everything.  It's 7:29 pm and the only thing I'm having more today is a glass of wine.  Come to mama!!!

Weight Makes Me Wait . . .

. . . But not anymore!!!!  I will back up.  I have always let my weight stop me from doing things and going places.  If it's going out to do something where I think there is the potential for me to look ridiculous, I try to find a way to not do it or I just don't go.  And for going places like traveling, I think of trip pictures.  I don't want fat trip pictures.  It's stupid, I know it is, I'm not really living.  I thought about it a lot before my trip to BC in May and it really turned out fine.  I mean, duh, I just don't post the pictures where I look much larger than everyone else or I'm sporting extra chins!!

Back to the present, my Vancouver sister messaged me on Sunday night talking about how she was going on a yoga/spa trip with some friends in California and she was going to spend a couple days in San Francisco by herself and she was nervous because she'd never done that before.  Then she joked that I should meet her in San Francisco.  We laughed, wishing we were the type of people who just did that and had the money to just do that.  I kept thinking about it and then went online to check flights out of curiosity because I really had no idea how much that flight would normally cost.  Seat sale.  Oh my. Opportunity.  I tell my sister and we get excited for a minute and then I say that I really can't afford it.  She understands and we say one day, we'll take a trip together.  I lay awake all night thinking about it and what i realized was that the weight was stopping me more than my bank account.  I have zero objections to charging a trip and paying it off over the next few months because trip opportunities and travel buddies rarely come up.  This is a great opportunity so when I realized it was actually my weight and my own self-conscious feelings that was stopping me, I got really angry at myself.  Missed opportunity after missed opportunity.  I got to work the next morning exhausted and I looked up the flight again.  Next to it, it said "one seat remaining at this price".  The night before it said four.  I booked it.  I BOOKED IT!!  I'M GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO!!!  WITH MY SISTER!!!  While I am still self-conscious and I am still thinking about it and I am busting my ass to at least lose 10 pounds before I go (September 9th), I refuse to let my weight stop me from doing things anymore and I'm so pissed off that I did this for so long.  And so the countdown begins . . .

30 Day Shred Update
Day 5 . . . damn you Jillian . . . doable, I'm getting in more push-ups than when I started and taking less breathing breaks.
Day 6 . . . damn you Jillian . . . I'm starting to get sick of watching her.  I have it muted and listen to music but I'm starting to notice how much she enunciates, I think I'm a lip reader now!
Day 7 . . . FAIL.  I shouldn't call it failure.  Working out six days in a row and tracking all of my food and staying on plan isn't failure and I need to change my attitude.  After not sleeping Sunday night because of the above story, I just kept getting more and more tired.  I got home from work today and put on my sports bra and my shorts and sat down on the couch with the dvd remote.  Put my head back and fell asleep for an hour, sitting up. Tomorrow is a new day.  Actually, tomorrow is the day I take my measurements to see if any inches have been lost since I started Shred.

Almost forgot, another very cool thing about my trip to San Fran is that I fly home through Vancouver and I'm going to stay there for a few days and I'll get to see my family again!  So excited!!!

Anyone been to San Francisco?  Any tips on must see's and must do's?

Damn You Jillian!

The week has started off well with a 2 pound loss, woohoo! Really?  Tracking works? Really?  Yes, yes it does.  Today marks 23 days of tracking and I'm determined to get past my previous record of 37 days.  While I am encouraged that the scale has gone down three weeks in a row, I'm so irritated that this is where I was in March.  Losing weight that I've lost already is so infuriating.  I just hope I"m mad enough this time around to keep it off.

What's working . . . salad.  I've never been a salad fan unless it's made by someone else.  I hate the washing, chopping and preparing.  By the time I'm done all that, I don't even want to eat it.  I've been eating two different salads that are easy to prepare with minimal chopping. Caesar salad (I use the PC Yogurt Caesar dressing) and the romaine/spinach with strawberries, feta, pecans, and raspberry vinaigrette.  I've had a giant salad every day for the last week +.  I have it as soon as I'm done the workout after work and then I start making supper.  It keeps me from being too hungry and overeating at dinner.   I'd like to add another salad choice to the mix though, preferably something with blue cheese dressing, I love blue cheese dressing.  Anyone have a simple salad or favorite blue cheese dressing that is point friendly??

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to do the 30 Day Shred for 30 days.  I didn't start for the first couple days.  I needed to work up to it.  I started on Saturday, August 6th and I've done it every day since including today, that's 4 days.  I've muted her now and I just play my iPod.  My experience so far:

Day One . . . damn you Jillian . . . I did the whole thing but took about a 5 second rest at the end of each segment.

Day Two . . . damn you Jillian . . . same as above.  I did a bit of yoga this night as well and I think that helped with the muscle stiffness.

Day Three . . . damn you Jillian . . . I did more push-ups in the time allotted this time, I took less breaks.

Day Four . . . damn you Jillian . . . same as above and I discovered Two Door Cinema on my iPod, must listen to them more.  Today I also did 10 minutes of Zumba after just for some more cardio.

The cover of the video says "lose up to 20 pounds in 30 days".  I'm not going to get there because I think it's lofty but I'm going to take a run at it.  The morning I started Shred, I took "before" pictures which likely won't see the light of day, and I took lots of measurements.  I'm going to keep that up weekly.  I want results!!!

Sweaty after Shred and then even sweatier after the added Zumba, my hair was stuck to my neck.  EW.

Next up . . . Yoga.  Any yogi's out there?  I'd really like to get into yoga.  Especially since I did just 10 minutes on Sunday and I think it saved me from the major muscle pain that starts about two days after I start doing some work outs.  I have Rodney Yee's Power Yoga but I knew after the first ten minutes that it was more of an intermediate DVD as opposed to beginner.  I need a good beginner DVD.  Any recommendations?  I've looked into the beginner DVD with pose instruction by Rodney Yee but can't find it anywhere so I'd have to order it.  Does anyone have it and like it?  Or have a different beginner DVD that they love?  Thanks!!

Weigh-in and Randoms

So this past Monday was a stat holiday here in Canada so we didn't have a WW meeting and I just weighed in at home.  Down 2 pounds!  Yes I'm pleased.  Getting closer to Onederland again and can't wait to get there.   And once there, I want to stay there . . . FOREVER.

This will be random, I apologize.  I can't ever think of anything to write about and what I've come up with as being the problem is that I'm boring.  So here are my random thoughts and tidbits for the week:

I was thinking I would do the 30 Day Shred for 30 days.  The most I've ever made is 10 days. Anyone want to do it with me?




I normally take the bus to work and today I took my car.  I was thinking I should come up with a list of errands to run on my way home to make the car at work more worthwhile.  The only things I could come up with were that I needed cat food and a box of red wine.  Those two stores are side by side so then my dilemma was, is it more pathetic to take a bag of cat food into the liquor store or a box of wine into the grocery store to get cat food??  I chose to walk back to the car and put the booze in and then get the cat food.  I decided both options looked equally as sad.  hahaha!


I got an iPhone!!  I love love love it.  I downloaded the WW eTools app and it is so awesome to be able to just enter everything I eat right then.  Makes keeping up with my consecutive days tracking much more convenient (notice the 18!).  I love the iPhone for so many other reasons too.  The only flaw I've discovered with the iPhone is that it can't take a picture of itself so I can post it. :)  Anybody have some favorite apps that I can't live without?


Well, I think that's all the random I have for now.  See?  Boring!!

Ah, Week One!

I love week one.  I always have a big loss once I've gone back to WW after taking time off. I get back on plan and boom, down 5.0 pounds!  Yeah baby!!!  I need to get back to Onederland seeing as how I only spent 5 minutes there the last time :(  I've been trying to be very consistent this week by working on habits that make WW work for me.  Some of those, setting the coffee maker the night before, having a few frozen  dinners in the freezer just in case I don't have something to take for lunch, and always having some fresh fruit & veggies on hand for snacks.  I'm trying new things and using ideas shared from other bloggers.  One of which is this salad: romaine (I used spinach & romaine), strawberries, feta pecans, raspberry vinaigrette.  So delicious and so very pretty to look at (as you can see here).

I"m also a sucker for pudding. I always have been.  Since I was a kid fighting my siblings for a beater or the bowl!!  I have a cupboard full of sugar-free fat-free pudding that I bought in the States on my last cross-border shopping trip.  What can I say, they have some flavors we don't have here and the Canadians are ripped off!!  Below was my fave of the week, white chocolate pudding with strawberries and half a banana.  Yum. Yum. Yum.

I have to get working on the activity side of things.  I'm not putting a lot of pressure on myself at the moment though.  I really just want some good, solid habits as far as my eating and meal-planning goes.  Today marks the end of day 8 of tracking all my food.  I think that's the highest I've gotten since I tracked my record of 37 days.  

Victory Moment:  Today at work was someone's 40th birthday at work and they brought in a delicious cake.  I bolted as soon as we finished singing and went outside for a few minutes. By the time I came back in, cake was gone and empty plates were in the garbage.  

And a shout out to these two:  George Catstanza on the left and Sophie on the right.  This pretty much sums them up.   Georgie is a two and a half year-old goofball and Sophie is a serious 13 year-old who always has to have a paw on me even if she's sitting behind me on the couch and has to stretch.  They are such mood boosters, I should have named them Paxil and Zoloft.  Seriously, someone should do that, that's hilarious!!

So I will leave it at that.  With one question!  Have any of you tried those "green" bags or "green" containers?  Typical "as seen on tv" fare that is supposed to keep produce fresher for longer.  So if you've tried them . . . do they work, not work?  Thanks!!

So Far So Good!

I'm really happy I went back to the WW meetings and bought a 10-week pass.  These first 4 days back at tracking everything have been really good and I'm paying attention to what I"m preparing and making my own morning coffee and packing lunches.  I find that making my own coffee and packing my lunch really sets me up for success for the day.  I'm NOT NOT NOT a morning person so if the coffee isn't set and the lunch packed the night before, it doesn't happen.  I buy a coffee which generally turns into something much higher in points and lunch is usually something terrible, delicious but terrible.  I also try to eat at home more when I'm paying for a WW pass in order to offset the added pressure to the budget.

Today, a friend and I were exchanging emails and she said she was making fajitas for dinner.  From that moment on, it was all I could think about.  I got off the bus and walked across the lot to Safeway and bought the fixings for fajitas!  They were so delicious.  I weighed and measured everything and assembled my two fajitas and then put all the leftovers in the fridge right away.  I would surely have gone back for third (at least) if I'd left the stuff out.  Now I know I've got a tasty supper in the fridge for tomorrow night :)  My pictures aren't quite up to other blogs but I had to take them because they looked so good.

Funny thing happened at the office today!  With my job I regularly talk to the majority of the real estate legal assistants and paralegals in the city.  One of the regular girls calls me today and right away we start talking about how hot it is.  It's been in the 40's here with the humidity.  INSANE!!  We are not accustomed to this.  It's also been like that for two and a half weeks.  I'm miserable.  Looks like another week of it is in store.  Anyhow, she then says "I don't like the heat anyway but I'm also a bigger girl and that makes me even more uncomfortable".  I say that I can relate.  Then she says "I'm working on it though, going to Weight Watchers".  I started laughing and said "ME TOO!".  As it turns out, we've both lost a lot of weight on WW in the past.  She's lost 100 so far!!  I lost all mine and gained it back.  I said that I just went back to meetings this past Monday and bought a ten-week pass.  She just went back Tuesday and bought a ten-week pass.  And it gets better . . . she lives five minutes from me.  So after talking to each other on the phone a few times a week for the last three years, we've just discovered all this.  The meeting she goes to is the one I used to go to so we've likely seen each other!  We're going to try to hook up for some meetings.  So funny because we've never actually met, haha.  I think if my friend isn't going to make it on a Monday night, I'll tag along with my new buddy on the Tuesday night.  It's the same leader so that's wonderful because she's fabulous.  

So after catching up some blogs, I've got some new meal ideas to inject some variety and I'm excited!  Off to set my coffee maker and pack my lunch :)

The F Word.

The other F word.  I had such high hopes for last week.  I lasted two days before I started to self-destruct.  The exercise disappeared, the tracking took a swan dive and the pounds started coming on.  Who decides to exercise for 15 minutes per day and track all their food and manages to gain 3.2 pounds in a week?????  I do.  FAIL.  I stepped on the scale this morning and saw 216.0 staring back at me hated myself in that moment.  FAIL.  FAIL.  FAIL.

I'm not quite sure what happened this week.  I am but I'm not.  To say that I'm an emotional eater is the understatement of the new millennium.  I also don't ever really feel physically full.  My standard answer when someone says "are you hungry?" is "i could eat".  Really??  I could eat??  Do I even consider whether or not I'm physically hungry.  Nope.  I'm going to eliminate "I could eat" from my vocabulary.  The other problem this week was the heat.  The heat here has been incredible and for people that like hot & humid, it's a dream.  For me and my fair-skinned, fair-haired self, it feels like hell.  I need for it to be about 5 - 10 degrees cooler than it is to be even remotely comfortable so I've spent most of my time inside.  I did watch the first season of True Blood though :)  And a bunch of movies.  Although . . . I could be exercising inside.  It's not like I don't have a window unit air conditioner and a fan.  But I chose to be miserable and eat to make myself feel better for a very short time.  Excuses excuses excuses.

I'm starting my war on Failure.  Tonight, I went to my WW meeting for the first time since April.  I also bought a ten-week pass.  It was so hard walking in there and weighing in knowing that I was going to be heavier than the last time I was there.  And because I'm a lifetime member.  I got to my goal weight and maintained it for three months and became a lifetime member.  Then I gained it ALL back and then some.  For right now, I need the support and accountability of being weighed in by someone and there's nothing like throwing some money at the situation to motivate!  I could also use the weekly pep talk.  Initially, I was just going to weigh in and say hello to my regular leader and then leave but I sat down and stayed for the meeting and it was really motivating and encouraging.

If you watch Bachelorette, you'll
understand the pic :)

So now, I'm watching the Bachelorette (this is for another post called The S Word - Shame).  Once that's over, I'm packing my big-assed salad and fruits and veggies for work tomorrow.  WAR ON FAILURE!!!

Recipe!!  So this recipe was on the weekly handout this week and apparently it went out in a Weight Watchers email a couple weeks ago.  I haven't had it but several people were raving about it at the meeting so thought I'd share it.  I found the link for the Blueberry Squares.  Just 2 Points+ per square!  Let me know if you try it and like it.  I'd make it but then I'd eat the whole pan so I'll have to wait till I have an occasion or party.


Final Bachelorette Thought:  She is going to regret who she let go.  Mark my words.