Jim's Week in review ... the post spring break edition

So, today is the final day of spring break. Spring break is ... well, it is fun. It is also my worst nightmare. Let me explain. I am a mindless snacker. If I am home, I will snack, pure and simple. It doesn't have to do with being hungry, it has to do with habit. It is a habit I am trying very hard to break. I can think nothing of watching something on TV and munching on a bag of chips or pretzels. As a matter of fact, I really AM thinking of nothing while I am doing it. So my main defense has been to not have those snack foods in the house.

Spring break, however ... well, it kinda queers things. I had my first family barbecue of the year during spring break this year. My brother and sister and their families came over, we fired up the grill and cooked up a storm. Chicken breasts, dogs and burgers (both beef and turkey). I limited the other items to veggie trays. No creamy potato salads and no pasta salads, both of which are absolute diet killers. My sister makes an awesome salsa, though. However, there is always an abundance of chips and pretzels at a barbecue, and now those are just sitting on my counter.

Add to that, there was Easter dinner yesterday, and I was invited to a Palm Sunday dinner last week. then during the week, I was on the go alot, so there was a lot of eating out. Needless to say, I didn't do so good this week. Have you ever felt like you were losing the same three pounds over and over again? I have looked at my posts since starting to blog here and realized I have been fluctuating between 275 and 272 most of the time. My trip to the scale today found me at 275 again. Over the next few weeks, I am sure I will lose down to 272 again, then end up messing up again. I really need to start thinking thin!

Well, back up on the horse ... time to drink water, stop eating and start exercising again ... and until Friday, I hope that you, gentle readers will do better than I have been. Anyone with a few ideas on how I can break the habit of mindless snacking, please drop a comment. I could use the help.

Mamavation Monday - It was bound to happen

Do you know this boy? I do. That's my oldest son standing outside of Spartan Stadium on Saturday morning. We were incredibly blessed to be gifted two tickets to attend Saturday's game against Indiana. Ben is what I'd call a superfan. He rarely misses a game if it's televised. He knows the players names. He cried when the quarterback came off the field to allow the second string quarterback a bit of experience. You see, the quarterback is a senior and this was his last home game.

My plans for this weekend didn't include driving 45 minutes to Lansing. I was going to clean (desperately needed) and focus on the holidays. Instead, we dropped everything and went. Know what? I wouldn't go back and change that decision for anything. This boy, so eager to see his team, didn't hesitate when faced with a huge flight of stairs up to our seats in the 59th row. Instead, he handed me his blanket and put one hand on the bench in front of him and hauled himself up. He hauled himself up all of those steps. He jumped to his feet cheering when his team scored. He threw himself at me and hugged me. He didn't let the fact that he has cerebral palsy slow him down one bit. He didn't complain when we had to walk down 8 flights (4 stories) worth of stairs after the game. He just did what he had to do and is already asking me if we can go again next year.

I need to take my inspiration from this little boy. He could have looked at those steps and said mom, I can't do this. Instead, he climbed. He could have stayed rooted in his seat because we were so far up but instead, he cheered and jumped up to support those guys down on the field.

This week, I've had roadblocks in so many aspects of my life. My house still looks like a tornado ripped through it. I lost days worth of kitchen cleaning and catch up because my sink blocked up. We got it fixed, just to find out that instead of fixed, it's now draining into the other sink. The plumber doesn't want to come back out even though he said it was fixed. Justin is still 2300 miles away with no sign of him being here anytime soon. It will probably be another 2 months until I see him again and then just for a weekend. The strain of the distance is especially horribly hard during the holidays. Take all that and the one week a month I hate hate hate to weigh in (women, you know which one) and the gain resulting from massive amounts of water retention and other blech and yeah, last night I said flat out, I want to admit defeat.

Will I? No. I'm going to try really hard to take a lesson from my son and just keep going, to focus on the good that's happening and hope that those who are around me this week can take a bit of inspiration instead of seeing only what I didn't get done.

Average Daily Water Intake: -- I'm honestly not sure.

Workouts: Friday swimming with the 5th graders & allll those stairs at the stadium with a few pushups thrown in.
Weight Change: 268.8 (+7 pounds) <-- The scale picture doesn't lie, but umm...yeah...wow. That's precisely what I lost last week. It will come off again.
Overall Weight Change: -22.8 pounds

What the .... ????

Hmmm ... 274.4 plus 3.4 equals 277.8.  And that leads me to my post title.  What the????  I haven't really done too much wrong this week.  Lets break it down, shall we?

First the good: I made it all five days this week.  I hopped on my exercise bike every day this week and rode for fifteen minutes each day.  WOOHOO!  Another good thing: my water consumption is up, about 48oz per day.  My short term goal is 60oz.

Now the bad: I ate out a few more times this week than I had for the past couple weeks.  I love Shrimp Fried Rice and Kowloon Chicken from Wong's Wok.  It took me a long time to get off the burgers, but now I need to find a better way to structure my food consumption of my new favorite fast food.  I know what the problem is: portion size ... they really load you up there.  If I were smart, I would bring a nice storage bowl and put half of it in there.  Oh, and if I eat out, I do it later in the day, so it throws my eating schedule off whack.

As the old saying goes, he knows what to do, he just doesn't do it.

Well, lets see what next week brings, shall we?

Mamavation Monday - One Tired Mama

Holy heck, I'm tired. I don't even know how it could possibly be Monday again. I feel like I've done nothing but run, run, run....and gotten so little accomplished! Let's look back at the last couple of weeks...

It all started out 2 weeks ago'ish when we went to Roger's school for his openhouse. He got the teacher that we thought he would and he's happy about it. Then, it was off home to have some family movie time before we went to Detroit to get Justin. Except, dumb mom moment...I locked my keys in the van. I had to call Peter (their dad) and luckily, he still had a spare and was willing to drive the 22 miles out to unlock my van for me. Whew! Then, a late night drive to the airport meant an early morning arrival back at the house for sleep.

We spent Thursday - Sunday morning camping at the wonderful Hoeft State Park and then stopped in to see my grandma on the way home. She was doing pretty well and kept us entertained and enjoying her for a few hours before it was home again. Labor Day brought tons of errands and then taking the boys to their dad's house. Tuesday brought school and taking Justin back to the airport. Since then, it's been desperately trying to get into the swing of the new school schedule while fighting off a cold. I think I'm doing ok with the schedule, but not so much on the cold side of things.

Today has been crazy. I thought I had a few quick phone calls to make and here it is 12:33pm and I'm still working on getting all of that mess sorted out. It's just insane sometimes how difficult it can be to work with the medical community for the good of your child. Oh well. It will get done. With any luck, it will get done before today is done.

For now though, I leave you with two things....the first is something I came across while searching for today's blog graphic (by the way, I so do not consider myself to be a supermama) and all I could think was what the heck is this a graphic for?

I would love to hear your suggestions. Maybe it's to show some kind of exercise. It can't be a birthing position because she has pants on and no kid wants to get stuck in mom's pant leg on the way out. Any ideas?

Lastly, I leave you with a video...this could maybe, sorta, kinda, possibly be our application video....maybe....

Now, since silly Blogger refuses to let me re-align my text to the left, I leave you with this totally silly looking last paragraph. I've gained weight. I haven't lost weight. I'm not giving up. Today is another new week and a new week of change. I can do this. I can get back down to where I was and I can keep going from there. I will not let the stress of being a special needs mama slow me down or get in my way. I may not be a super mama but I am a kick ass woman and I can do this. I will do this. Starting right this very second. 

It's Almost Like Visiting an Old Friend ...

Yo-Yo (slang): Fool or idiot.
Yo-Yo (noun): A child's toy that goes up and down on a string.

And if I ever find the dang string attached to the number 281, I will find the biggest scissors I can and cut it!

For the past year, I have been yo-yoing between 281 and 271.  I am back at the top of the string again, and I am NOT happy.  For the past month, I have been out of my routine, and I am finally settling back in to a routine.  School has started back up again, and that helps immeasurably.

I could focus on what went wrong, or how I feel about it, but instead, I am going to focus on routines.  the routines will all be based around being in school again, obviously.  My lunch period is kind of late (1:45-2:45pm), so I think that part of my routine will have to be a set time for a healthy snack in-between classes.  Actually, since my morning free period is second period (about 10:05-11:05am), maybe I will eat right near the end of my free period.  After all, in my schooldays routine, I eat breakfast around 6:30am, which puts that free period about four hours later, and maybe I can keep a few granola bars around for my lunch period later in the afternoon.

Now I have to think about a few other things to work out in my routine and then I can hope to watch the pounds melt off. First things, first, back to work, then on with life and weight loss.

Oh, by the way, I feel like a fool for the way my weight has gotten out of control.

Summertime Blues and Dangerous Dieting

Well, it has been quite a while since I have posted, so I should give a brief summary of all that has happened to me in the past couple of months. Well, school came to a screeching close way too soon for me (I never seem to have enough time in a school year to accomplish everything I want to accomplish), I went to Washington DC with a group of teachers for a week, and I got very involved in a new relationship which created far too much stress in my life. It has been unbearably hot outside, and I haven't been hiking for the first two-thirds of the summer.

I am starting to get the relationship stuff figured out, and think it needs to come to an end, which of course will cause more stress. I got out hiking this past weekend (it felt good to put a few miles under my feet again), and I am slowly getting myself together with a little counseling and support of good friends.

So my weigh-in first: 276.8. I am up from my low of 271 point whatever, and down from my start weight on the blog of 277 and definitely down from my start weight when I first started trying to lose weight of 294. So, hopefully I will get back on track now.

I have some friends though, that have lost huge amounts of weight, 18 pounds in the past month, give or take. It is kind of depressing, until I learned exactly what they were doing. They were following a fad diet from the 70's which has become repopularized of late called the HCG diet. The diet involves a strict calorie limit of 500 (in their case 700) calories per day. Everything they eat is low-fat and they cut sugar and starches almost completely out of their diets. They take a multivitamin, and they take HCG drops to aid in the weight loss (FWIW, even without the drops, a 700 calorie a day diet would cause dramatic weight loss).

Katie and I did some talking about this diet and researching it, and learned some pretty interesting facts:

• HCG is a hormone created by a woman's body to nourish the womb and make it a good place for a fetus to develop.
• More than a dozen clinical trials tried to verify the value of HCG in weight loss and found no direct benefit.
• HCG influences other hormone levels including estrogen and progesterone.
• The FDA considers HCG illegal as a diet aid and prevents direct-to-consumer sales.
• The National Institutes of Health say that the minimum daily caloric intake should be 1,200 for women and 1,500 for men.
• A 1981 study found 17 people who died after following severe calorie restriction diets for 5 months.

There is no magic cure for obesity. There is no superdiet out there waiting to be found. Common sense at the table and moderate physical activity are what are needed to lose weight. Time for me to get back on track!

Stress, Stress, Stress = Yo Yoing

Welcome to crazy Jimville! My life has been a crazy roller coaster of stress and sickness. We have finally established that the most likely cause of my gastrointestinal distress over the past month has been the Byetta. I tolerated the starter dose well, but the full dose was just too much for my system, I guess. I am off of that, and seeing how things go taking just Metformin for the summer. Why? because being off the Byetta for a couple weeks while sick, my blood sugar stayed close to normal (120-135 range) and my A1C, which is a long-term indicator of healthy blood sugar was 6.0 (top end of normal range is 6.1).

I am a stress eater, and there has been plenty of stress in my life lately. the school year is rapidly coming to a close, and I am nowhere near ready, either educationally or financially. Also, I am in a new relationship which is going well, but that adds a whole different set of stressors. Add to that I haven't been sleeping well, and I am up to 274.2. Of course, thanks to hiking, I do most of my losing during the summer anyways, so I am looking forward to that number changing over the next few months.

Well, that teensy tiny update is all I have time for right now. Happy losing out there!

Jim's week in review ... back in the saddle again

Yup! Back in the saddle indeed! This has been a good week! My water consumption was up (2-3 bottles per day) and ... don't freak out on this one ... I have been riding my exercise bike again! Every morning this week I have spent 15 minutes on the bike. Honestly, I had forgotten how good that felt. On Tuesday, I went in to work having ridden and a couple teachers mentioned how chipper I was looking.

This weekend, I will be out camping and hiking We will be hiking on the trails of the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest on the Parnell Segment. First we will be heading to a camp shelter near the Parnell Observation tower and take fresh pics for the front page of my hiking website (which I really need to update). The website can be found at http://mnjhiketheiat.net (shameless self-promotion). My plan for Saturday is to hike and aside from breakfast, eat nothing but a couple protein bars and drink nothing but water all day.

A couple times in the past week, I have had some severe intestinal issues, including some bloating, belching (a nasty, sulfuric affair) and diarrhea. A friend suggested a nice little OTC remedy, and I took it for the first time last night and the early results seem promising. I will post more about the results of trying this out next week.

And now, the moment of truth. If you remember my post last week, I had gone back up to 275. Well, today I am down to 273.2 (loss of 1.8). I think that once I break through the 270 barrier, I will probably start losing more rapidly ... I just need to break through that barrier.

Well, off to work for me, and happy losing to you!

Jim's week in review... Spring Break Edition!

So, today is the final day of spring break. Spring break is ... well, it is fun. It is also my worst nightmare. Let me explain. I am a mindless snacker. If I am home, I will snack, pure and simple. It doesn't have to do with being hungry, it has to do with habit. It is a habit I am trying very hard to break. I can think nothing of watching something on TV and munching on a bag of chips or pretzels. As a matter of fact, I really AM thinking of nothing while I am doing it. So my main defense has been to not have those snack foods in the house.

Spring break, however ... well, it kinda queers things. I had my first family barbecue of the year during spring break this year. My brother and sister and their families came over, we fired up the grill and cooked up a storm. Chicken breasts, dogs and burgers (both beef and turkey). I limited the other items to veggie trays. No creamy potato salads and no pasta salads, both of which are absolute diet killers. My sister makes an awesome salsa, though. However, there is always an abundance of chips and pretzels at a barbecue, and now those are just sitting on my counter.

Add to that, there was Easter dinner yesterday, and I was invited to a Palm Sunday dinner last week. then during the week, I was on the go alot, so there was a lot of eating out. Needless to say, I didn't do so good this week. Have you ever felt like you were losing the same three pounds over and over again? I have looked at my posts since starting to blog here and realized I have been fluctuating between 275 and 272 most of the time. My trip to the scale today found me at 275 again. Over the next few weeks, I am sure I will lose down to 272 again, then end up messing up again. I really need to start thinking thin!

Well, back up on the horse ... time to drink water, stop eating and start exercising again ... and until Friday, I hope that you, gentle readers will do better than I have been. Anyone with a few ideas on how I can break the habit of mindless snacking, please drop a comment. I could use the help.