Bleh monday

Up .8 today. That's annoying, but it could have been a lot worse. Excellent weekend with too much fun and not quite as much working out as I thought I did. :) It certainly could have turned out worse. A shoutout to Katrina for an awesome milestone today. She crashed through the 275 barrier and I'm so proud of her. I'm going to update this post later today with measurements, I think. Hope I'm reshaping my body. It would be nice, since I hurt every post workout. :P

Everyone keep pounding away and we'll all get to healthy together.

start of MILI
Weight: 362.6

Chest: 59

Waist: 56.5

Hips: 51

Arms: 15" (left) and 17.5" (right)

Thighs: 25" (left) and 25" (right)

Today:
Weight: 359.0 (-3.6)

Chest: 59 (0.0)

Waist: 55.5 (-1.0)

Hips: 51 (-0.0)

Arms: 16.5" (left) and 17.0" (right) (-1.0) Nope I don't get it either. Yay symmetry.

Thighs: 24.5" (left) and 25" (right) (-0.5)

Total, -3.6 pounds, -2.5 inches

Mamavation Monday - Breaking Through.

Wow, I am so late in writing this post but I...nope, I don't have a super good reason. That's ok, though. Sometimes things happen at a different time and it's for whatever reason that it is.

*grins* Ok, I'm tired. I admit it and when I'm tired my posts sometimes make no sense at all. If that's what happens here, I beg your forgiveness and tolerance. Just leave me some oddly funny or bizarre comment and we'll be even. ;)

I just had the most wonderful awesome and fantastic weekend. Justin flew in on Friday and we went to Toledo for the weekend. We got to see great people perform a shadowcast of Repo: The Genetic Opera and then went and had the privilege of hanging out at the amazing Chris and Lauren's house. It was so good to just be in the company of friends being silly. Don't get me wrong, I have the brainiac side of life too but sometimes you just want to be able to relax and not feel the pressure that being a geek brings.  The best part is that after the masses leave, you never know where the conversation might lead.

Saturday was super fantastical too. We slept too late, had breakfast and rushed back to Chris and Lauren's. Lauren cut my hair like the pro she is and we got to have a wonderful lunch out with their family. Afterwards, the rest of the day was ours so we went back to the hotel and hit the pool. Maybe I ought to say the pool hit us! The chlorine level was so high in the pool that when I rinsed out Justin's shorts (which are old and have been washed a billion times), they were dripping purple dye. Ewww!

You know what, my brain is scrambled right now. The truth is..we had an amazing weekend and now that it's done, I'm struggling today. Our times together are so amazing that I want to spend the rest of my life with him and knowing that it will probably be close to 4 months until I see him again tears me up. Leaving him at the airport yesterday broke my heart and I could barely drive away.

What does this all lead to? A crudload of emo eating..mindless shoving of food in my face so that I'm distracted from the gaping hole in my heart by filling the much smaller one in my stomach. I'm not going to lie to you. I ate an entire pizza last night over the course of 7 hours. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it, either. It happened. Today, I'll be a little bit stronger and I won't do that.

Short summary? The weekend together was heaven. The time with our friends (because now they're his friends too) was wonderful. The kick ass boots he bought me? In the words of the sales girl? They look epic on me. The desperate kisses at the airport? Slightly tragic. The drive home? miserable. Today? A new day. A new chance. The scale? See below.

My numbers?

Average Daily Water Intake: 75oz (doing better!)

Workouts: 3000 step challenge x2 days + Pool time + 1mile on an exercise bike
Weight Change: 274.6 (-0.6 pounds)
Overall Weight Change: -17 pounds

After 2 week challenge/at start of MILI:

Weight: 276.8 (really 276.4 but I'm going with the scale picture for this) -1.6 pounds

Chest: 48"

Waist: 40.75" -4.75"

Hips: 54.5" 

Arms: 18" (left) and 17" (right) -1" and -.5"

Thighs: 27" (left) and 27.5" (right) -1" and -1.5"

Grand Total Change: -1.6 pounds and -8.75"

At halfway point of MILI:

Weight: 274.6 -2.2 pounds

Chest: 48" 

Waist: 40.25" -0.5"

Hips: 54.0"  -0.5"

Arms: 18" (left) and 16" (right) -0" and -1.0"

Thighs: 27" (left) and 27" (right) -0" and -0.5"

Grand Total Change: -2.2 pounds and -2.5"

Some of you know that my Friday morning (just for the heck of it) weigh in was quite a bit less than that. It's ok. I did it once, I can do that again. I traded the weight loss this week for a weekend of not being hyper focused, just vaguely focused on my weight loss but intensely focused on the man I love and what we have together.  I'm a very lucky girl to have such an incredible man in my life and I know this was just a temporary tradeoff in our journey of life together. 

A scary moment ...

So last week on Wednesday, I was asked to run another teacher to the hospital.  He was having mild cardiac symptoms, and needed to get  to the hospital.  I got him there, and a few hours later, we got the word that he had had a mild heart attack.  This of course has created a little concern for me, as he is in better shape than me.

Of course, do I do anything about it?  I talk a good talk, but when it comes time to put my words into action, not so much.  I actually did get on my exercise bike twice this week, and on the elliptical once.  But the real test is the total action.  Lately, I have been on a bit of an eating binge, but I am slowly getting it under control.  Now If I can get consistent on the bike, well, that would be awesome.

My weigh in this week was 275.2, which is a whopping .2 loss.  Wow?  Whatever happened to my 1-2 pounds per week?  Oh wait, that's right, I have been grazing like an overmilked cow.  Once I get the grazing under control I will hopefully get back on track.

This weekend is the annual Ice Age Trail chili campout at Lapham Peak State Park.  I will take a bunch of pictures and post them and see if I can find some great (healthy) recipes, but a chili campout may not be the best place to find them ...

Here's hoping for the future!

Mamavation Monday - Distractions!

You know you took one look at that picture and either went, "Huh?" or you started giggling. It is the oddest looking scale I've seen in a very long time. Why did I post it? Well because of the camera/scale war I have going on in this house. You see, taking a picture of your scale number is so much harder than it sounds. For me it involves the following steps:

1. Turn camera on.
2. Get camera zoomed in on the scale.
3. Set camera to the side.
4. Get scale turned on.
5. Step on scale.
6. Madly grab for camera when number comes up.
7. Get annoyed because camera strap has fallen in the picture.
8. Wrap said strap around camera.
9. Set camera to the side.
10. Repeat until you either scream in frustration and storm off or manage to get a blurry picture.

So, that's what I did this morning. Then, I sat down to write the post and discovered my camera hadn't saved the photo! Argh! I stomped back into the bathroom (which my pedometer happily recognized as steps) and tried this whole process again. The scale said I'd gained .4 pounds in 5 minutes! Really scale? I know you're ticked by this process but give me a break.

Now, for the past few months, I've been weighing myself in the bathroom. My bathroom (not because I want it!) has carpet. I discovered this morning that depending where I put the scale, my weight changed. How's that for accuracy? So, I moved it to the only piece of linoleum we have...which is right in front of my front door. That didn't work because it slants. Then, for my own amusement, I put it on the living room carpet. I instantly lost 30 pounds! Man, as much as I hate this carpet, I might keep it for that reason alone. I wish I'd gotten a picture.  Finally, I settled on the kitchen because it has super thin and rather useless carpet and the 10 times I stepped on and off the scale (that's how many attempts it took to get a picture!), the number stayed the same unlike other locations. So, to my neighbors...if you read this, don't look in my kitchen window on Monday mornings because you might get a show you didn't want to see. Or heck, I'm looking better these days..maybe you do want to see...

Right, that was a long tangent, huh? Long story, short..I posted that carpet covered scale in honor of my living room carpet which loves me. Now, since I know y'all have lots more blog posts to read and leave love for, let me show you this week's numbers...starting with the scale picture that I eventually got.

I hope you can see that number. It's a bit dark and now I realized I was zoomed in pretty far but those are my toes on there. I seriously need to remove the old nail polish and either redo them or leave them bare. This half painted look is not so sexy and since I get to see Justin this weekend, sexy is my goal. Homework is just that much nicer when a person is feeling sexy, don't you think?

Uh-oh, I'm tangenting again. I swear I have oooh shiney syndrome this morning. Seriously. That's a real thing, just like Wii arm. See? There I go again...I'd better give you the numbers before I spin off into space....

Average Daily Water Intake: 75oz (doing better!)

Workouts: 3000 step challenge x4 days + 3 Gruntstyle workouts
Weight Change: 275.2 (-2.8 pounds)
Overall Weight Change: -16.4 pounds

Now, for this week's Mamavation Question:

How would you brand your health and wellness lifestyle?  How do you want others to know you in this area?

Brand it? I'm not honestly sure. I guess Welcoming Weight Loss is my way of branding it. I want people to see that I'm a very real person with very real struggles in this area. I have those that I look up to and those who look up to me (though this is wow for me!). I'm successful, in part, due to the people that I have along for this ride and without them, this would be so much more difficult. I'm not actively looking to expand this brand, though the door is open for anyone who needs a Weight Loss home though knowing me, if they're female, they'll be pulled right into Mamavation too.

“This post is sponsored by New Balance and I’m writing this to be entered into a giveaway hosted by Mamavation – a community dedicated to obesity prevention & weight loss for women.

Move it, lose it! *

* actual losing it may vary....

So this week I worked out hard on improving muscle mass and strength. I hit the gym 3 times this week to lift and I think I may have over moved it and under lost it, since I backslid slightly. I'm not horribly concerned. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat, so I'm planning ahead. :)

Here's your picture:



So for the week, I'm actually UP 0.2 pounds. Not too worried. I'll be down next week.

Off to do a billion pushups for papavation monday.

Goal Setting or Small Steps, Big Goals

I love this picture. I don't know if you can tell, but each of those containers holds giant amount of Legos with the tag line What Will You Make? When I saw this, I knew I had to use it for this post. You see, today I'm going to tell you why I chose 1,000 steps as my first goal towards walking my way into a healthier life.

Y'all know what Legos are, right? They're these tiny building blocks that you can hook all together to make some seriously awesome creations. At the bottom of this post, I'm going to show you just a few of the things people have made. Seriously, I almost didn't get to this post because I was so buy geeking out over Lego creations.

Here's where the simile/metaphor/other geeky english language term comes in. Like Legos, you can change and build a healthier you, one building block/one step at a time. You've heard me say babysteps probably a million times now and it's a practice and theory that I totally subscribe to and believe in. We all want to be super human. We all want to do it now but let's face it, that's just not realistic for most of us.

Let's take walking for our example. I know there are people out there who walk 10,000 or more steps a day on average and that's awesome for them. As for me, if I tried that I'd never get off the couch. The very number would overwhelm me to the point where I'd get nothing done. So, I wore my pedometer for a few days and then averaged out what I get in a normal day. Are you ready for this? On an average day, I was only getting in about 500 steps. Ouch! That's not good and I think we all know that. I needed to make a change but one that was achievable.

Here is the major important point to this. Our goals need to be achievable. Yes, they need to challenge us or they're not really a goal. However, if we do not make them achievable, we won't reach them and where will we be? Right back on the couch with our favorite tub of icecream while watch Biggest Loser and say why can't that be me? Why can't I do that? Hello! Those people have nothing to do but workout! We have lives, kids, jobs and more.

Make your goals achievable. For me, I looked at my average and said I can do better than that. I can do 1000 steps a day. Once I get 1000 every day for a few days, I'll up it to 2000. Know what? I had a cheering squad behind me last night and I got to over 2000. It felt amazing! Today, I have a step partner and we've challenged ourselves to do 2000 again. Once we're regularly hitting that goal, that number will go up.

My advice is simple. Perhaps so simple that you're going to read this and go duh, we all knew that! It doesn't matter what goal you're trying to reach, take it slow and break it down. Are you not reaching your daily water goal? Take a look at what you're getting on average and then increase it by 8oz. That's one small glass of water. Keep increasing it slowly and seriously, before you know it, you'll be right up with those folks getting in 100oz a day.

I know some people who have had some real reality checks in their lives lately. They want to rebuild themselves, inside and out. My advice to them has been the same. Take it one step, one piece at a time. You didn't become this person overnight and you won't change overnight. You can babystep your way to being a better person. Someone once asked me how I'd eat an elephant..the correct answer? Umm..I wouldn't ewww...the answer they wanted? One bite at a time.

So, like these folks built these amazing Lego structures one brick at a time, let's change our lives one small, healthy goal at a time.

Mamavation Monday - Failure

Ugh. The truth is that I don't want to post this week. I stepped on the scale this morning, full of hope and stepped back off in tears. Not only was there no loss but I gained. I thought I'd done so much better this past week. I was watching portion control. I was trying to eat healthier. I wasn't perfect  but I was better than in other weeks where I did lose. I'm embarrassed. I feel like I let everyone who has been cheering for me down. I blew it. I failed. How can I expect to be an inspiration when I can't lose the weight myself? I'm so sorry everyone.

I wish I had more to say but somehow that scale picture says it all...

Average Daily Water Intake: 75oz (doing better!)
Workouts: Gruntstyle 2 week challenge 4x
Weight Change: 278.0 (+1.6 pounds)
Overall Weight Change: -13.6 pounds

Question: What parts of your body are you especially proud of right now? What makes you love them?

An honest answer? Right now there aren't any that I'm especially proud of. I'm feeling rather miserable about myself right now after a gain on the first week of MILI. I need to reevaluate and to try to remember:

Failure does not mean I’m a failure;
It does mean I have not yet succeeded.

Failure does not mean I have accomplished nothing;
It does mean I have learned something.

Failure does not mean I have been a fool;
It does mean I had enough faith to experiment.

Failure does not mean I have disgraced;
It does mean I have dared to try.

Failure does not mean I don’t have it;
It does mean I have something to do in a different way.

Failure does not mean I am inferior;
It does mean I am not perfect.

Failure does not mean I have wasted my life;
It does mean that I have an excuse to start over.

Failure does not mean that I should give up;
It does mean that I should try harder.

Failure does not mean that I will never make it;
It does mean that I need more practice.

Failure does not mean that You have abandoned me;
It does mean that You must have a better idea.

-Unknown

This post is sponsored by Grunt Styleand I’m writing this to be entered into a giveaway hosted by Mamavation – a community dedicated to obesity prevention & weight loss for women.