Woo! After two crappy losses I put up a good number this week! Down another 1.3 pounds! Very happy about this!! It's nuts too because I ate 34 of my 49 weekly points (something I've never come close to before) and only exercised one day! Hubby had to have surgery so I was in the hospital most of the week eating total crap. I'm pretty amazed.
I decided yesterday to try Insanity. I need to be working out more than I have been and this seems like a good way to do it. I haven't been able to run in 90 degree heat with 98% humidity and I definitely can't take the dogs with me in that kind of weather so I've been slacking. I did the Fit Test yesterday and here are my results:
Switch Kicks: 50
Power Jacks: 27
Power Knees: 60
Power Jumps: 22
Globe Jumps: 6
Suicide Jumps: 5
Push-up Jacks: 15
Low Plank Oblique: 26
Boy did that kick my ass! Day 2 is today and it's the first real workout of the program. I'm excited even though I know it's gonna hurt something awful. I should be able to get through 7 weeks without any interruptions (I AM going to do this every day I swear!) but we go on vacation in September and it's going to mess up my 60 days. So for me it'll probably end up being 64 ish days instead. I took before pictures which I will post next to my after pictures when the time comes. I am not following the diet plan so it's going to be WW and Insanity for me. We'll see how good it really works! Hoping to look really hot on our vacation!! I have a potential to lose about 14 pounds by then if I keep it at a healthy 2 pounds per week. We shall see!
Until next time.
July 18, 2012
July 11, 2012
Milestones
I hit a big Weight Watchers milestone today. I got under the big 10% loss line!
I've been really discouraged these last few weeks because I've only lost 0.7 pounds in my last two weigh ins total. So far I have been used to at least a pound a week for the most part since I started WW in March. I thought I killed it the last two weeks but the scale didn't show that. I was (and still am) having a hard time seeing the bigger picture that I have lost 21.7 pounds in just under 4 months and that I've been feeling better in general! I'm only 1 pound away from being half way to my ultimate WW goal! If anyone told me this is where they were right now I'd be so happy for them and congratulate them so much for an awesome accomplishment. But me, I just think oh I could have done better, or there is still so much to lose.
This part of me, Vemily, is the hardest part of this journey. It's so much easier for me to fit in a run when I don't want to or say no to ice cream at my dear hubby's parents house than it is to just be proud and happy with what I've accomplished. How on earth did I get this way? I really don't know but I decided a few days ago to seek outside help. I am actually going to go see a psychologist to try to learn how to love myself. I have been trying for a long time and only making a little headway so I think it's time for a little assistance. I've been meaning to go to learn how to handle stress better related to my job but I am finally going to bite the bullet and call this Friday and make an appointment. When I started this blog it was not only to help me with weight loss (and hopefully inspire others that it is possible) but to also help me become a happier, healthier person in general. As cliche as this sounds I want to emerge from this fat cocoon I've built myself as a strong, powerful, beautiful butterfly when it's all said and done. I don't want to come out of this and just be a skinny inwardly-ugly caterpillar. I know with my logical brain I am a smart, pretty, capable person. I need to train my emotional brain to agree with that.
I can say however that given the last two weeks, old me would have probably thrown in the towel saying this isn't working anymore and just quit. I haven't thought that even one time! So that is a small accomplishment I'm happy for.
I also did some reading on WW and apparently is common to hit a plateau around 10% lost and that if you never use your weekly points you tend to not lose as much. This last tidbit was from reading on the message boards so I don't know how true that is, but I stopped using any weekly points the week my weight loss slowed tremendously. So I'm going to start to use some weekly points again and try to fit in my exercise this week. Wish me luck world!
Until next time.
I've been really discouraged these last few weeks because I've only lost 0.7 pounds in my last two weigh ins total. So far I have been used to at least a pound a week for the most part since I started WW in March. I thought I killed it the last two weeks but the scale didn't show that. I was (and still am) having a hard time seeing the bigger picture that I have lost 21.7 pounds in just under 4 months and that I've been feeling better in general! I'm only 1 pound away from being half way to my ultimate WW goal! If anyone told me this is where they were right now I'd be so happy for them and congratulate them so much for an awesome accomplishment. But me, I just think oh I could have done better, or there is still so much to lose.
This part of me, Vemily, is the hardest part of this journey. It's so much easier for me to fit in a run when I don't want to or say no to ice cream at my dear hubby's parents house than it is to just be proud and happy with what I've accomplished. How on earth did I get this way? I really don't know but I decided a few days ago to seek outside help. I am actually going to go see a psychologist to try to learn how to love myself. I have been trying for a long time and only making a little headway so I think it's time for a little assistance. I've been meaning to go to learn how to handle stress better related to my job but I am finally going to bite the bullet and call this Friday and make an appointment. When I started this blog it was not only to help me with weight loss (and hopefully inspire others that it is possible) but to also help me become a happier, healthier person in general. As cliche as this sounds I want to emerge from this fat cocoon I've built myself as a strong, powerful, beautiful butterfly when it's all said and done. I don't want to come out of this and just be a skinny inwardly-ugly caterpillar. I know with my logical brain I am a smart, pretty, capable person. I need to train my emotional brain to agree with that.
I can say however that given the last two weeks, old me would have probably thrown in the towel saying this isn't working anymore and just quit. I haven't thought that even one time! So that is a small accomplishment I'm happy for.
I also did some reading on WW and apparently is common to hit a plateau around 10% lost and that if you never use your weekly points you tend to not lose as much. This last tidbit was from reading on the message boards so I don't know how true that is, but I stopped using any weekly points the week my weight loss slowed tremendously. So I'm going to start to use some weekly points again and try to fit in my exercise this week. Wish me luck world!
Until next time.
June 27, 2012
Good day!
Today has been a very good day so far.
First, I woke up rested! Second, I weighed in and lost 2.8 pounds this week!!!! So happy! That means I've lost over 25 pounds total and 21 while on Weight Watchers!! I'm only 0.5 pounds away from the 10% WW goal too. Third, I got released from constant chiropractic care! I'm now on an as-needed basis for appointments. Very excited about this for my wallet and my life. Fourth, I managed to make a delicious smoothie today for breakfast which I'll talk a little bit more about down the page. And finally fifth, my Xterra got almost 17 mpg on this last tank! It's still breaking in and this is the best mpg I've had so far. I know not health related but it made me very happy at the pump this morning.
I recently had a fleeting desire to go 100% clean on my food. I'd say right now I'm about 60-75% clean depending on the day. After thinking about it I decided I didn't want to give up shake on Parmesan cheese or my fage yogurts with flavor completely. I have however decided to cut out some of the more processed foods in my life.
First up on that list was my go to work breakfast of a fage yogurt (want to stop eating these every day, but still as snacks a few times a week probably) and an Atkins milkshake box drink. Mainly I want to get the Atkins shake out of my life completely. It's very processed with lots of chemically altered things in it from what I can tell. My goal is to be able to read all the ingredients in the food I eat. If one of those ingredients happens to be sugar, that's a food I will rarely eat but not deny myself completely. Perfect example is the fage flavoring stuff. It has sugar in it but it's not a bunch of chemicals. Anyway, I decided to try to make smoothies for breakfast. So far this has gone well! I've tried various fruits with spinach, protein powder, and almond milk which was ok. My main issue is our blender doesn't pulverize the spinach enough and I end up getting chunks of spinach up my straw. These have been ok tasting. Not bad but without a lot of flavor. Today I decided to skip the spinach and add some Greek yogurt. This was delicious!! I'll list the recipe below.
1 cup frozen strawberries (Wegmans has amazing frozen produce so I bought all frozen fruits)
1 cup frozen peach
1 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
1 container 0% plain fage yogurt
1/2 scoop vanilla cake protein powder
I let the fruit thaw a little overnight in the fridge and threw that all in the blender and pressed the button. OMG was it good!! It didn't make enough for 2 so I ended up drinking the whole thing. It was only 5 points!! I don't think I'll need the protein powder and the fage though so if I cut the powder it's 3. It's kept me going for 5 hours so far! Next time I'm going to add ice cubes to beef up the serving I think to make 2 drinks. I love this new found breakfast food I can make real fast and go with. It's pretty hard for me to find GF breakfast items that are low in points, healthy, and also grab and go style food. I'm going to plan out my week and put all the frozen ingredients into ziplock bags so it goes even faster in the morning. And this has eliminated my need for the processed foods! The frozen fruit is absolutely nothing but fruit that was fresh picked and thrown in a freezer ASAP. I'm really pumped about this and am going to get different fruits to try next week.
In other news I had a small victory over Vemily. She reared her ugly head last week during Zumba class. We switched to a dance class room that had mirrors on all the walls instead of the gym we has been using. I felt horrible about myself actually seeing how I looked. I thought I looked so fat and disgusting and also wasn't quite as good at Zumba as I thought I was. It was extremely distracting and I was really hard and mean to myself. Normally when this would happen I'd give up Zumba and go have a pity party ice cream to make it all better. That would then lead to me feeling even worse about myself. But instead I ran for 20 minutes after Zumba! This was my first real run since I hurt my back. I started out mentally harassing myself but ended up feeling pretty good about myself and what I accomplished. It was up near the 90's and I was drinking more air than breathing, but I accomplished more than my goal of a mile and I didn't quit. This week at Zumba even though I felt like crap I went and I thought I looked good! Vemily be damned!! I will beat my self hating tendencies!
Other good things that happened this week were that I didn't use a single bonus point all week on WW and even some days didn't use all my allotted daily points either. I also got 58 exercise points! That's an all time high for me.
Outside of the fitness world one of my goals from my first post was to be happier in general. I was proactive about the bane of my existence which hopefully will turn into something good. If it does I'll post all about it in utter jubilation I'm sure. Until then I can't really write about it though. I also stretched my ears back to 9/16th. I have been sorely missing my 3/4 inch beauties lately so this has made me happier in life and about my appearance.
All in all I think it's been a good week!
Until next time!
First, I woke up rested! Second, I weighed in and lost 2.8 pounds this week!!!! So happy! That means I've lost over 25 pounds total and 21 while on Weight Watchers!! I'm only 0.5 pounds away from the 10% WW goal too. Third, I got released from constant chiropractic care! I'm now on an as-needed basis for appointments. Very excited about this for my wallet and my life. Fourth, I managed to make a delicious smoothie today for breakfast which I'll talk a little bit more about down the page. And finally fifth, my Xterra got almost 17 mpg on this last tank! It's still breaking in and this is the best mpg I've had so far. I know not health related but it made me very happy at the pump this morning.
I recently had a fleeting desire to go 100% clean on my food. I'd say right now I'm about 60-75% clean depending on the day. After thinking about it I decided I didn't want to give up shake on Parmesan cheese or my fage yogurts with flavor completely. I have however decided to cut out some of the more processed foods in my life.
First up on that list was my go to work breakfast of a fage yogurt (want to stop eating these every day, but still as snacks a few times a week probably) and an Atkins milkshake box drink. Mainly I want to get the Atkins shake out of my life completely. It's very processed with lots of chemically altered things in it from what I can tell. My goal is to be able to read all the ingredients in the food I eat. If one of those ingredients happens to be sugar, that's a food I will rarely eat but not deny myself completely. Perfect example is the fage flavoring stuff. It has sugar in it but it's not a bunch of chemicals. Anyway, I decided to try to make smoothies for breakfast. So far this has gone well! I've tried various fruits with spinach, protein powder, and almond milk which was ok. My main issue is our blender doesn't pulverize the spinach enough and I end up getting chunks of spinach up my straw. These have been ok tasting. Not bad but without a lot of flavor. Today I decided to skip the spinach and add some Greek yogurt. This was delicious!! I'll list the recipe below.
1 cup frozen strawberries (Wegmans has amazing frozen produce so I bought all frozen fruits)
1 cup frozen peach
1 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
1 container 0% plain fage yogurt
1/2 scoop vanilla cake protein powder
I let the fruit thaw a little overnight in the fridge and threw that all in the blender and pressed the button. OMG was it good!! It didn't make enough for 2 so I ended up drinking the whole thing. It was only 5 points!! I don't think I'll need the protein powder and the fage though so if I cut the powder it's 3. It's kept me going for 5 hours so far! Next time I'm going to add ice cubes to beef up the serving I think to make 2 drinks. I love this new found breakfast food I can make real fast and go with. It's pretty hard for me to find GF breakfast items that are low in points, healthy, and also grab and go style food. I'm going to plan out my week and put all the frozen ingredients into ziplock bags so it goes even faster in the morning. And this has eliminated my need for the processed foods! The frozen fruit is absolutely nothing but fruit that was fresh picked and thrown in a freezer ASAP. I'm really pumped about this and am going to get different fruits to try next week.
In other news I had a small victory over Vemily. She reared her ugly head last week during Zumba class. We switched to a dance class room that had mirrors on all the walls instead of the gym we has been using. I felt horrible about myself actually seeing how I looked. I thought I looked so fat and disgusting and also wasn't quite as good at Zumba as I thought I was. It was extremely distracting and I was really hard and mean to myself. Normally when this would happen I'd give up Zumba and go have a pity party ice cream to make it all better. That would then lead to me feeling even worse about myself. But instead I ran for 20 minutes after Zumba! This was my first real run since I hurt my back. I started out mentally harassing myself but ended up feeling pretty good about myself and what I accomplished. It was up near the 90's and I was drinking more air than breathing, but I accomplished more than my goal of a mile and I didn't quit. This week at Zumba even though I felt like crap I went and I thought I looked good! Vemily be damned!! I will beat my self hating tendencies!
Other good things that happened this week were that I didn't use a single bonus point all week on WW and even some days didn't use all my allotted daily points either. I also got 58 exercise points! That's an all time high for me.
Outside of the fitness world one of my goals from my first post was to be happier in general. I was proactive about the bane of my existence which hopefully will turn into something good. If it does I'll post all about it in utter jubilation I'm sure. Until then I can't really write about it though. I also stretched my ears back to 9/16th. I have been sorely missing my 3/4 inch beauties lately so this has made me happier in life and about my appearance.
All in all I think it's been a good week!
Until next time!
June 21, 2012
Workouts!
In my first ever post I said I wanted to do a few posts about what I have tried so far on this journey. Things that worked and things that didn't really work.
Ellipticals. My first ever real workouts were solely using an elliptical. For the better part of my life treadmills terrified me (I will get to that later), and Planet Fitness had lot of ellipticals and everyone always raves about them. Well it worked ok. I thought, wow I'm doing so many miles each time! I would usually aim for about 45 minutes once I got my stamina up. I was convinced I would be able to run for real no problem. Ha! Yeah that didn't really work out how I thought it would. I signed up for a charity event through my then internship to do a "predicted mile" and failed horribly! I don't think I could even run for 5 minutes at that time. I also liked to use the elliptical when I was living in the dorms at school. It was convenient, I wasn't going to die by zooming off the back of it like I was certain would happen on a treadmill, and it was working for me. It helped me lose weight my junior year and be the smallest I was in college. Overall I'd say that I like the elliptical if I don't have other options but I've since found better alternatives.
Fast forward a year or so. My major elliptical usage was done prior to the start of my real weight loss endeavors but I wanted to include it.
Weight circuit training. At the beginning of my weight loss journey I had just graduated, was unemployed, and still had my Planet Fitness membership. I thought it would be a good idea to try to do circuit weight training to add to my elliptical-ing. I had a nice beefy trainer help me pick weights for each machine and off I went. I did this off and on for a few weeks but ultimately gave it up. It just wasn't for me. I know building lean muscle helps burn fat, but I really didn't like doing it at Planet Fitness. The apparent judgement free zone was full of frat boys who all thought they were better than you and skinny little "I put my make up on to go to the gym" girls who were probably all dating the frat guys. Needless to say I didn't really feel free from judgement. I blame this on the gyms location, right next to a HUGE off campus apartment complex. All in all I would try this again if I could be somewhere I felt comfortable. Say my own home with no one watching! That isn't going to happen so this workout is off my list!
Wii Fit. I was so happy to find a Wii Fit under the tree a few Christmases ago from my loving hubby. When I really decided once and for all I was really going to do this no matter what it took this was my first go to workout. Every day or so the little balance board would cheerfully inform me that I was obese and then I'd start my workout. My favorite activities were boxing, free step, and the marching band one. Boxing worked up a great sweat. My other great calorie burning activity was free step. Turn that on, switch to the tv and your ready to burn! Eventually I "outgrew" the Fit and moved on to more intense workouts. I still get it on now and again. I plan on getting on it to hear the balance board happily tell me that now I'm just overweight soon! I would highly recommend a Wii Fit as an exercise tool for a beginner. It's fun and easy and still gives you a pretty good workout if you pick the right activities.
Just Dance on the Wii. While I was phasing out the Wii Fit I started to play Just Dance as a workout. Boy, does that work up a sweat! Not only was I burning a lot of calories per hour but it was a lot of fun! I love to dance and was unfortunately born with no grace, rhythm, or general coordination. It was great to make up my own "dance classes" without having anyone be able to watch me fail miserably! At the Wii game anyway. My goal to burn calories was definitely achieved. It was also great because it allowed me to add on another few minutes to my workout by just picking one more song if I was up to it. This is a workout I would definitely recommend to people to have fun and sweat a lot! I also would do this again for myself.
Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. I heard about this little gem of a workout when I was using the Knot 911 app for wedding planning. Lots of brides were trying to lose weight and someone suggested trying Jillian's ass kicking 30 Day Shred. I ordered the little sucker on Amazon for something like $8 and bought some 2 pound hand weights at Target and I was ready to go. I thought it would be hard, but I thought I had a certain level of fitness already, albeit a low one. Yeah, no. It was HARD! The hardest workout I'd done since the beginning of all this and it's only 26 minutes!! You are supposed to do it for 30 days non stop to "lose 20 pounds" and at this point in my journey I still believed a little bit in gimmicks. I think I did it for 18 days non stop before I stopped doing it every day. In that time I only lost maybe 2 pounds. However, this is one of my favorite workouts and I still do it regularly over a year later. Jillian really does kick your ass! When I did it for the 18 days I noticed I was stronger. I could lift things easier, I was able to hold myself in the lunges or the push ups easier. I was amazed at what just 18 days did for my muscles. Looking back I might have lost inches. I wasn't tracking those at the time though so I'll never know. This is a great workout and I recommend it to anyone looking for an intense, short workout you can do at home. It's my "rainy day" workout when the weather is nasty. I would say out of everything I've done this is my 3rd favorite workout.
Couch to 5k (or c25k). This changed my life. I hated running my whole life. All the way back to gym class when you had to do the presidential fitness challenge and run a mile in front of all your skinnier, faster classmates who didn't end up huffing and puffing at the end of it. I avoided it at all costs. I never used treadmills, as I have mentioned my great fear of them, and would choose activities that didn't involve any real running. Again I found this program from a fellow bride on a planning app. I decided to "waste" $2.99 and bought the c25k app for my phone. On the first day you only have to run for 45 seconds at a time. After the first few of these it became increasingly harder. I know that sounds ridiculous. How can 45 seconds of running be hard? I don't know, but it was. The first day was really hard for me. But day 2 was a little better! And most days after that I could make it through. Out of the whole 8 week program I only had to walk extra 2 times. By the end of the program (which actually took me more like 12 weeks) I could run non stop for 30 minutes outside on the road with some hills!! Let me say that one more time. I could run for 30 minutes!!!! Now if a serial killer was chasing me they probably would catch me because I'm not very fast (these are the things I think about while running) but I could do it! Running has been the best thing hands down for my weight loss thus far on the exercise side of things. I kept it up as my main form of exercise right up until my after wedding when I took a break from fitness and eating right. I had just picked it back up again in October or November of last year right before I hurt my back at Thanksgiving. Just recently I've started to run again. I love it! It's my favorite workout for sure. Well, except for in 85 degree 90% humidity. On a small side note during this phase of my exercise I finally conquered my fear of treadmills!! I started being terrified and holding on for dear life, but after a few sessions I wasn't holding on and even watching tv instead of monitoring my distance from the very front of the machine. Anyway as I said I've finally been able to run again. I'm doing a 5k on August 5th with my family and I need to get back into it. I've managed to run 1.5 miles twice this week. I am confident I'll get there with time to spare. I would highly recommend anyone use c25k as a workout tool. No matter what your level of fitness, it will work! As long as you can walk you can learn to run! So all of you loyal readers, go download it now!!
Zumba. My last workout in my long string of workouts is Zumba. I had wanted to try it for a long time when my mom asked me to do a Zumba for charity event with her. We did it and it was fun! It also was a heck of a calorie burner. I was looking for a place to go so I could keep up with this new found fun exercise when I saw a flyer in my office building for a new class starting near where I live. I checked it out with one of my friends and I have been going twice a week every week since April. It's a lot of fun and works up a lot of sweat. I'm going to start to do it at home now though to save money, $10 a week adds up. But again this is something I would definitely recommend to someone who is looking for a group class that is fun and a great workout.
Well that's a lot of info, I've been writing this for a week now! I'll be posting another quick post after this today too. I said I'd post once a week and I really want to keep at it!
Until next time!
Ellipticals. My first ever real workouts were solely using an elliptical. For the better part of my life treadmills terrified me (I will get to that later), and Planet Fitness had lot of ellipticals and everyone always raves about them. Well it worked ok. I thought, wow I'm doing so many miles each time! I would usually aim for about 45 minutes once I got my stamina up. I was convinced I would be able to run for real no problem. Ha! Yeah that didn't really work out how I thought it would. I signed up for a charity event through my then internship to do a "predicted mile" and failed horribly! I don't think I could even run for 5 minutes at that time. I also liked to use the elliptical when I was living in the dorms at school. It was convenient, I wasn't going to die by zooming off the back of it like I was certain would happen on a treadmill, and it was working for me. It helped me lose weight my junior year and be the smallest I was in college. Overall I'd say that I like the elliptical if I don't have other options but I've since found better alternatives.
Fast forward a year or so. My major elliptical usage was done prior to the start of my real weight loss endeavors but I wanted to include it.
Weight circuit training. At the beginning of my weight loss journey I had just graduated, was unemployed, and still had my Planet Fitness membership. I thought it would be a good idea to try to do circuit weight training to add to my elliptical-ing. I had a nice beefy trainer help me pick weights for each machine and off I went. I did this off and on for a few weeks but ultimately gave it up. It just wasn't for me. I know building lean muscle helps burn fat, but I really didn't like doing it at Planet Fitness. The apparent judgement free zone was full of frat boys who all thought they were better than you and skinny little "I put my make up on to go to the gym" girls who were probably all dating the frat guys. Needless to say I didn't really feel free from judgement. I blame this on the gyms location, right next to a HUGE off campus apartment complex. All in all I would try this again if I could be somewhere I felt comfortable. Say my own home with no one watching! That isn't going to happen so this workout is off my list!
Wii Fit. I was so happy to find a Wii Fit under the tree a few Christmases ago from my loving hubby. When I really decided once and for all I was really going to do this no matter what it took this was my first go to workout. Every day or so the little balance board would cheerfully inform me that I was obese and then I'd start my workout. My favorite activities were boxing, free step, and the marching band one. Boxing worked up a great sweat. My other great calorie burning activity was free step. Turn that on, switch to the tv and your ready to burn! Eventually I "outgrew" the Fit and moved on to more intense workouts. I still get it on now and again. I plan on getting on it to hear the balance board happily tell me that now I'm just overweight soon! I would highly recommend a Wii Fit as an exercise tool for a beginner. It's fun and easy and still gives you a pretty good workout if you pick the right activities.
Just Dance on the Wii. While I was phasing out the Wii Fit I started to play Just Dance as a workout. Boy, does that work up a sweat! Not only was I burning a lot of calories per hour but it was a lot of fun! I love to dance and was unfortunately born with no grace, rhythm, or general coordination. It was great to make up my own "dance classes" without having anyone be able to watch me fail miserably! At the Wii game anyway. My goal to burn calories was definitely achieved. It was also great because it allowed me to add on another few minutes to my workout by just picking one more song if I was up to it. This is a workout I would definitely recommend to people to have fun and sweat a lot! I also would do this again for myself.
Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. I heard about this little gem of a workout when I was using the Knot 911 app for wedding planning. Lots of brides were trying to lose weight and someone suggested trying Jillian's ass kicking 30 Day Shred. I ordered the little sucker on Amazon for something like $8 and bought some 2 pound hand weights at Target and I was ready to go. I thought it would be hard, but I thought I had a certain level of fitness already, albeit a low one. Yeah, no. It was HARD! The hardest workout I'd done since the beginning of all this and it's only 26 minutes!! You are supposed to do it for 30 days non stop to "lose 20 pounds" and at this point in my journey I still believed a little bit in gimmicks. I think I did it for 18 days non stop before I stopped doing it every day. In that time I only lost maybe 2 pounds. However, this is one of my favorite workouts and I still do it regularly over a year later. Jillian really does kick your ass! When I did it for the 18 days I noticed I was stronger. I could lift things easier, I was able to hold myself in the lunges or the push ups easier. I was amazed at what just 18 days did for my muscles. Looking back I might have lost inches. I wasn't tracking those at the time though so I'll never know. This is a great workout and I recommend it to anyone looking for an intense, short workout you can do at home. It's my "rainy day" workout when the weather is nasty. I would say out of everything I've done this is my 3rd favorite workout.
Couch to 5k (or c25k). This changed my life. I hated running my whole life. All the way back to gym class when you had to do the presidential fitness challenge and run a mile in front of all your skinnier, faster classmates who didn't end up huffing and puffing at the end of it. I avoided it at all costs. I never used treadmills, as I have mentioned my great fear of them, and would choose activities that didn't involve any real running. Again I found this program from a fellow bride on a planning app. I decided to "waste" $2.99 and bought the c25k app for my phone. On the first day you only have to run for 45 seconds at a time. After the first few of these it became increasingly harder. I know that sounds ridiculous. How can 45 seconds of running be hard? I don't know, but it was. The first day was really hard for me. But day 2 was a little better! And most days after that I could make it through. Out of the whole 8 week program I only had to walk extra 2 times. By the end of the program (which actually took me more like 12 weeks) I could run non stop for 30 minutes outside on the road with some hills!! Let me say that one more time. I could run for 30 minutes!!!! Now if a serial killer was chasing me they probably would catch me because I'm not very fast (these are the things I think about while running) but I could do it! Running has been the best thing hands down for my weight loss thus far on the exercise side of things. I kept it up as my main form of exercise right up until my after wedding when I took a break from fitness and eating right. I had just picked it back up again in October or November of last year right before I hurt my back at Thanksgiving. Just recently I've started to run again. I love it! It's my favorite workout for sure. Well, except for in 85 degree 90% humidity. On a small side note during this phase of my exercise I finally conquered my fear of treadmills!! I started being terrified and holding on for dear life, but after a few sessions I wasn't holding on and even watching tv instead of monitoring my distance from the very front of the machine. Anyway as I said I've finally been able to run again. I'm doing a 5k on August 5th with my family and I need to get back into it. I've managed to run 1.5 miles twice this week. I am confident I'll get there with time to spare. I would highly recommend anyone use c25k as a workout tool. No matter what your level of fitness, it will work! As long as you can walk you can learn to run! So all of you loyal readers, go download it now!!
Zumba. My last workout in my long string of workouts is Zumba. I had wanted to try it for a long time when my mom asked me to do a Zumba for charity event with her. We did it and it was fun! It also was a heck of a calorie burner. I was looking for a place to go so I could keep up with this new found fun exercise when I saw a flyer in my office building for a new class starting near where I live. I checked it out with one of my friends and I have been going twice a week every week since April. It's a lot of fun and works up a lot of sweat. I'm going to start to do it at home now though to save money, $10 a week adds up. But again this is something I would definitely recommend to someone who is looking for a group class that is fun and a great workout.
Well that's a lot of info, I've been writing this for a week now! I'll be posting another quick post after this today too. I said I'd post once a week and I really want to keep at it!
Until next time!
June 14, 2012
Chipping away.
Have I mentioned I love Weight Watchers? Every time I used to see their slogan or hear "Because it works!" I would just say to myself yeah, right! But you know, it really really does work!! I've been on it for about 3 months and I have consistently lost weight each week. Maybe not a full pound each week but my average weekly loss is 1.4 pounds! Now to me that is huge! Every other diet/lifestyle change/whatever I've ever tried has not been this successful for this long. Ever. I find myself gaining confidence for the first time and thinking that hey, I actually CAN lose weight. Not only that but I can eat the foods I want and exercise and much or as little as I want. It still works if you follow the rules!
I sound like a commercial.
This week's weigh in I was sure I was going to have gained or only lost maybe 0.2 pounds. Unfortunately we had a death in the family that ended up in a 6 hour trip to Long Island (yay NYC traffic!) and consuming m&ms, snickers, and taco bell for "dinner" on the way home (yay gluten free road trips!). That had me worried enough right there. Then throw in a surprise trip to Applebee's (gag) that was unavoidable because it was for work on Monday and I was convinced no way I lost anything. Let me tell you, as much as I normally don't want to eat somewhere like Applebee's, holy crap is their food bad for you!!! It's difficult to try to find gluten free food in the first place, but then trying to find a "healthy" option out of those choices was near impossible. I settled on a chicken and shrimp dish and modified it a bit to get it under 20 points (I've never eaten that many points in one meal since I started WW). Their salads were in the upper 20s and 30s half size with no dressing!! It was disgusting. Anyway I made it through and stepped on the scale yesterday morning, buck naked (hey pj's must add at least a pound right??) and gasped in my surprise. I had lost another 1.2 pounds! Each pound I get away from 200 makes me so happy! It made my whole day. So in the end even though I used over half my weekly points in just 2 days I still lost. I guess it's true, you can eat those points and still lose. I had been very skeptical thus far of eating more than a few of those bonus points. I'm not planning on eating them up each week (I'm not sure I could, that's a lot of extra food!) but it's nice to know they are there in case of cross state family emergency or horrid work dinners.
On another front I've been slacking on exercising a lot lately. I keep making up excuses (these mainly feature "I'm so tired I just can't possibly exercise after work" or some such variation) and putting it off. Both my Zumba classes got canceled this week (my only structured exercise) and instead of doing something else one day I just lazed around. At least yesterday I took Sookie to the park and walked with my mom and her dog for 3.57 miles. It was a lot of fun and we are going to start to do it once a week now that she is on summer vacation. So next week and the remaining portion of this week I'm going to make a goal to exercise at least every other day. Walk the dogs, go for a run, Zumba, clean, whatever it is I'm going to do it! I know when I exercise I lose a lot more weight. Especially running. As a second part to this goal I will pick running back up. I loved it before I hurt my back and I will love it again now that my back is more or less healed!
Lately I've been feeling pretty down about this whole journey even though it's working and I'm shrinking. I have been finding Vemily making her biting, snarky comments more than normal and I hate it. I look at myself in the mirror and I can't see anything positive about myself. I just focus completely on the negative. I still look fat and gross in my head and I still can't pull off the outfits I want to wear or whatever is bothering me that day. So in addition to chipping away at the fat, I am going to make a conscious effort to chip away at Vemily's strong hold she has on my brain and self confidence. Every time I think a bad thought about myself I'm going to think a good thought to counter act. If I say I'm fat, I'll say I'm smart. If I say I'm ugly, I'll say I'm loving and caring. If I can't stop the bad thoughts maybe I can at least water them down with good thoughts too.
Until next time.
I sound like a commercial.
This week's weigh in I was sure I was going to have gained or only lost maybe 0.2 pounds. Unfortunately we had a death in the family that ended up in a 6 hour trip to Long Island (yay NYC traffic!) and consuming m&ms, snickers, and taco bell for "dinner" on the way home (yay gluten free road trips!). That had me worried enough right there. Then throw in a surprise trip to Applebee's (gag) that was unavoidable because it was for work on Monday and I was convinced no way I lost anything. Let me tell you, as much as I normally don't want to eat somewhere like Applebee's, holy crap is their food bad for you!!! It's difficult to try to find gluten free food in the first place, but then trying to find a "healthy" option out of those choices was near impossible. I settled on a chicken and shrimp dish and modified it a bit to get it under 20 points (I've never eaten that many points in one meal since I started WW). Their salads were in the upper 20s and 30s half size with no dressing!! It was disgusting. Anyway I made it through and stepped on the scale yesterday morning, buck naked (hey pj's must add at least a pound right??) and gasped in my surprise. I had lost another 1.2 pounds! Each pound I get away from 200 makes me so happy! It made my whole day. So in the end even though I used over half my weekly points in just 2 days I still lost. I guess it's true, you can eat those points and still lose. I had been very skeptical thus far of eating more than a few of those bonus points. I'm not planning on eating them up each week (I'm not sure I could, that's a lot of extra food!) but it's nice to know they are there in case of cross state family emergency or horrid work dinners.
On another front I've been slacking on exercising a lot lately. I keep making up excuses (these mainly feature "I'm so tired I just can't possibly exercise after work" or some such variation) and putting it off. Both my Zumba classes got canceled this week (my only structured exercise) and instead of doing something else one day I just lazed around. At least yesterday I took Sookie to the park and walked with my mom and her dog for 3.57 miles. It was a lot of fun and we are going to start to do it once a week now that she is on summer vacation. So next week and the remaining portion of this week I'm going to make a goal to exercise at least every other day. Walk the dogs, go for a run, Zumba, clean, whatever it is I'm going to do it! I know when I exercise I lose a lot more weight. Especially running. As a second part to this goal I will pick running back up. I loved it before I hurt my back and I will love it again now that my back is more or less healed!
Lately I've been feeling pretty down about this whole journey even though it's working and I'm shrinking. I have been finding Vemily making her biting, snarky comments more than normal and I hate it. I look at myself in the mirror and I can't see anything positive about myself. I just focus completely on the negative. I still look fat and gross in my head and I still can't pull off the outfits I want to wear or whatever is bothering me that day. So in addition to chipping away at the fat, I am going to make a conscious effort to chip away at Vemily's strong hold she has on my brain and self confidence. Every time I think a bad thought about myself I'm going to think a good thought to counter act. If I say I'm fat, I'll say I'm smart. If I say I'm ugly, I'll say I'm loving and caring. If I can't stop the bad thoughts maybe I can at least water them down with good thoughts too.
Until next time.
June 6, 2012
Oh right, I have a blog now.
Well I promised to write again last week, but I am a slacker. Life is always crazy, but I really want to write in this so I'm going to make an effort to write at least once a week but try for two or three.
So anyways here is a little intro to who I am outside of weight loss and fitness! I'm a 24 year old recently wed (if 9 months ago counts as recent) civil engineer who lives in upstate New York. I went to two colleges before I figured out what I wanted to do, then I went to one more! I graduated with my Bachelors of Science in Engineering in December of 2009 (also the month I got engaged to my lovely husband!).
As you may have guessed from the title of my blog I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I've read the books and watched the movies far too many times to count. I'm also a big fan of zombies and tattoos (of which I have many, currently about 58 hours worth of work). I am an avid reader in general and love to knit in the winter. I can't bring myself to knit much once the weather warms up though.
My little family consists of my husband, our two kitties (who were recently put on their own diet and exercise plan by our vet), and two very energetic, rambunctious Aussie shepherds. To up my nerd factor a little bit both cats and one dog are named after literary or tv "sci fi"/fantasy (I guess those are the correct genres, I've never been good with genres) characters. Lily Potter, Captain Jack Harkness, and the Sookie Stackhouse herself. Honorable mention to Bama who is named after his home state. Really we should have named him Houdini since he is quite the escape artist. I love our little fam!
So that's a little glimpse into my life I suppose. I'm sure more info will come out as I narrate this weight loss journey. Speaking of the weight loss journey two weigh ins have passed since I last wrote!! Thankfully I lost on both of them! I am now sitting solidly back in ONEderland (as the Biggest Loser folks like to say) and very happy to be back again! Now you all don't know this but the first time I got under the dreaded 200 mark I swore upon all things dear I would NEVER go over that mark again. Now I'm going to say it again.
I am NEVER going to be in the 200s again. For real this time.
With one exception. If hubby knocks me up with quadruplets or something, I'd cut myself a little slack. But that's it!!!
I also promised to take progress pictures last week. I did end up keeping that one! These were from Wednesday or Tuesday (5/29/12 ish) and I was 200 pounds here. I am very excited to hopefully within a year put these next to my after shots! Sorry if the formatting gets messed up, I'm writing from the app this time.
Until next time!
So anyways here is a little intro to who I am outside of weight loss and fitness! I'm a 24 year old recently wed (if 9 months ago counts as recent) civil engineer who lives in upstate New York. I went to two colleges before I figured out what I wanted to do, then I went to one more! I graduated with my Bachelors of Science in Engineering in December of 2009 (also the month I got engaged to my lovely husband!).
As you may have guessed from the title of my blog I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I've read the books and watched the movies far too many times to count. I'm also a big fan of zombies and tattoos (of which I have many, currently about 58 hours worth of work). I am an avid reader in general and love to knit in the winter. I can't bring myself to knit much once the weather warms up though.
My little family consists of my husband, our two kitties (who were recently put on their own diet and exercise plan by our vet), and two very energetic, rambunctious Aussie shepherds. To up my nerd factor a little bit both cats and one dog are named after literary or tv "sci fi"/fantasy (I guess those are the correct genres, I've never been good with genres) characters. Lily Potter, Captain Jack Harkness, and the Sookie Stackhouse herself. Honorable mention to Bama who is named after his home state. Really we should have named him Houdini since he is quite the escape artist. I love our little fam!
So that's a little glimpse into my life I suppose. I'm sure more info will come out as I narrate this weight loss journey. Speaking of the weight loss journey two weigh ins have passed since I last wrote!! Thankfully I lost on both of them! I am now sitting solidly back in ONEderland (as the Biggest Loser folks like to say) and very happy to be back again! Now you all don't know this but the first time I got under the dreaded 200 mark I swore upon all things dear I would NEVER go over that mark again. Now I'm going to say it again.
I am NEVER going to be in the 200s again. For real this time.
With one exception. If hubby knocks me up with quadruplets or something, I'd cut myself a little slack. But that's it!!!
I also promised to take progress pictures last week. I did end up keeping that one! These were from Wednesday or Tuesday (5/29/12 ish) and I was 200 pounds here. I am very excited to hopefully within a year put these next to my after shots! Sorry if the formatting gets messed up, I'm writing from the app this time.
Until next time!
May 28, 2012
Hello world.
Well here goes nothing. My name is Emily and I have a lot of stuff I want to change about myself.
In a nutshell I'm hoping this blog will help me. Mainly I want to focus this blog on my weight loss journey. As much as I'd love to say, hey this is the old story of my weight loss, I can't. My journey started in May of 2010 and it is still going. Me and my now husband had gotten engaged in December of 2009 and by May I was ready to really commit to weight loss and a full lifestyle change. As embarrassing as this is to admit to well, anyone at my high back in 2010 I weighed in at 220 pounds.
I can't find my original "before" pictures. I probably deleted them, but the shot on the left is probably from sometime in June 2010 and the right is probably somewhere around June or May of 2011. The right is close to my all time low.
From May 2010 until September 2011 I did pretty good, lost a little over 30 pounds, learned to run (BIG supporter of the Couch to 5k program!), stuck to eating healthy and was happy with where my body was going. I accomplished this through calorie counting and exercise. That sounds like it was a breeze. It was not. It was hard and I struggled a lot. Unfortunately like many new wives who struggled with weight loss, I got a little lazy and over indulgent after the wedding. Starting right away on our honeymoon!
The combination of eating foods I shouldn't have, and larger portions than I should have, as well as becoming very lax in my exercise routine got me back up to about 200 pounds. I managed to run my first ever 5k in October 2011, came in 4th from last but I finished! I can't remember my exact time but it was close to 43 minutes. This was a huge accomplishment for a person who in April HATED running and never thought she could run for 2 minutes straight, let a lone for 43!
To throw one more complication into my life right before Halloween 2011 I was diagnosed with either celiacs disease or a gluten allergy. My doctor didn't do any formal testing, so I don't know which it is exactly, but either way I have been eating gluten free (with some trial and error) since then. Since the 5k I had started to really get back into the groove of things. Exercising again, not as much as I should have been, but any exercise is better than no exercise. I had also gotten my eating back under control. The gluten free issue definitely threw that off for a while, well, more than a while. I thought I was doing well based on my calorie counting but I wasn't really losing much weight.
Fast forward to the weekend after Thanksgiving 2011. Add two herniated discs that took me out of work for 2 weeks solid and stopped basically all exercise for 2 months. This came quite possibly at the worst time of the year too, right before the holidays!
After all this was said and done we're in mid March 2012. I'm disgusted with myself inside and out. I've been eating poorly, not exercising, and that little voice inside my head was convinced that I was a total failure and could never ever really lose weight and be fit and healthy. That all the goals and milestones I had achieved were garbage as I'd basically wiped out all my previous weight loss and general fitness level. Basically I was worthless to myself. Now the rational side of my brain knows that self worth isn't based on a dress size or how long you can run for, but that didn't stop the irrational side from dominating my thoughts.
I had been seeing a lot of commercials for Weight Watchers on TV. I had never understood why people paid money to what I thought was basically the same thing as counting calories. But since that wasn't working for me with or without exercise I started to ask around about it. They had a deal where you could sign up and pay for 3 months for the online membership and the start up fee was waived. After talking to my beloved hubby we decided that it was worth a shot if all it cost was about $50 for 3 months. Worst case I don't keep the membership and we are out less than $20 a month for 3 months.
Well let me tell you, I am SO glad we decided to "waste" the $50. I am now in the beginning of week 11 and I've lost 14.6 pounds and a total of 8 inches (I started the measurements on April 18)! I started on March 18th at a weight of 215.4 pounds. My current stats are as follows:
Weight: 200.8 pounds
Height: 5' 7"
Dress Size: 12-14 (oh women's clothing manufacturers and your varied sizing)
This picture is the most current picture I have of myself. This was taken on Saturday. I'll take some progress pictures tomorrow after my zumba class.
I am very pleased with how WW works. It really isn't just counting calories like I thought. I feel like I have so much more flexibility than when I was trying to hit 1200 or 1400 or whatever amount of calories I was aiming for. I really can see why my "low cal" gluten free diet wasn't working. While I may have been eating fewer calories than I do now on an average day (I'm still tracking my calories with My Fitness Pal even though I go by my WW points now) I wasn't eating the right kind of calories. Gluten free is hard. I was eating a lot of foods from the gluten free aisle because I was "safe" with them. However prepackaged gluten free versions of normal food are not really that good for you. WW has forced me to figure out how to eat healthy and gluten free at the same time. And you know what, Jennifer Hudson is right. It works!
Now that you know all that (that is if anyone is reading this!) a few more points before I conclude this massive first ever blog post. First, lets talk about my goals. I'm just going to list them in no particular order.
1. Lose enough weight that I am comfortable with how I look. I put a goal of 170 pounds in WW, but when I get there I'll decide if I like what I see. Maybe I will stop at 172, or maybe I'll keep going until I get to 150. Its not so much about the number to me as how I look and feel in my own skin.
2. Get fit! I don't want to just be "skinny" I want to be a kick ass bitch! I want to keep running 5ks, maybe even a half marathon some day! I want to be strong and healthy.
3. Kick that vicious irrational Emily voice out of my brain forever. From now on I'll call her Vemily, I'm sure I'll be talking about this particular issue again. I have been my own worst critic for a very long time. I'm almost 25 and I don't want to be my own worst enemy anymore.
4. Get to a point in my overall life that I am happy more than I am not. I have no grand illusions that life will be always be full of happiness, but I know that I can make it better than it is now. This has a lot to do with other issues outside of weight loss and fitness, so I won't really talk about it much. But it is one of my main goals.
I want to use this blog to help become a better me. I'm hoping if it works, maybe someday it will inspire some other girl who doesn't think she can achieve her goals and dreams to work towards them until she does.
I've never blogged before, so this will be a bit of a learning experience for me. My next few posts I want to focus on what I've done in the past and what I'm still doing that works and what didn't work for me. I also think my next post I'll do a little bit of a personal intro, so you know a little bit about who you are listening to! My weigh in day is Wednesday. I've cheated and weighed in early (I tend to do this at least once a week, but I don't count any loss until my official day) and I'm hoping for a big loss of 2 pounds this week. That will put me back into ONEderland! We'll see soon enough.
Until next time.
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