I am a MESS!

I don't think I need to say much more than this. I am not doing well. I am seriously struggling with getting back on track. I am having some issues with my Crohn's again (still?) and that never helps things.

I am quite unhappy.

I don't like where I'm at at all, but can't seem to find the motivation to make the changes I need to make. It's a terrible cycle.

I was successful for about 3 days eating Whole30. I even ate Whole30 at my son's birthday party! The next day I decided that I could have one meal off and not stress. That turned in to 2 meals (so all of Sunday because I skipped breakfast) - which has turned in to 3 days.

The kids go back to school on Monday and more structure and organization will come back to my life. That should (hopefully) help.

I have my annual physical on Sept 4th and unfortunately see a completely new doctor - but I plan to talk to him/her about how I've been feeling lately. Perhaps I need a little help for the time being. Therapy? Medication? Something.

So, I haven't written because it's the same old same old and I can only imagine how sick you are of reading it. I'm not giving up. I can't. I am going to lose this weight. I just need to figure it out.

Thanks for the support. I'm going to keep this one short and sweet. I'm guessing I won't be writing for a little while. Hopefully the next post will be able to be a little more positive.

The good news? I was still down over 2lbs today from my weigh in last Wednesday. I'll take what I can get.

Mental Battles

Perhaps starting this when I'm pre-menstrual and planning a birthday party for my son was not the best idea! Ugh!

Breakfast

Today has been full of mental battles all day. The battles today are about whether or not I actually want to do this Whole30 completely. Of course I know why I'm trying to convince myself that I can lose weight without it (well, I CAN - I have before); but right now the reason I'm trying to convince myself to do something else is because I just want to be able to eat whatever. But I have learned over the last 3 months since stopping my previous Whole30, that I'm not in a place right now to eat what I want and just track it (and keep it in control).

Today I was thinking about the possibility of eating "whole30" for 6 out of 7 days a week and giving myself one day to just eat whatever - but not necessarily go totally crazy. The problem with that is right now I probably would go crazy for that one day. Could I still lose weight doing that? Probably. But could I lose more if I just stayed disciplined for the next, say, 6 months? Absolutely.

Why do I have to look at it like it's absolutes? I mean, even if I buckle down and decide to eat Whole180, it doesn't mean that I will NEVER again eat unhealthy food. And perhaps if I were to try to focus on eating the Whole30 way for the next 6 months (30 days, whatever), then by the time I've been doing it for a while my relationship with food might actually change. But I can't seem to get to the point to let that happen. It's almost like I don't want it to happen. What am I afraid will happen if my relationship with food changes? I don't know the answer to that, and perhaps that is the key to this whole journey.

Dinner

Having said all that, I have won the battles (so far) today. I have eaten completely Whole30 compliant today. My plan is to keep moving forward with this way of eating for as long as I can. Even the book says that the Whole30 is not meant to be a Whole365. They don't think that it's realistic for anyone to eat like this indefinitely. However, the way they do eat is basically Whole30 with a few items or meals thrown in there with something not compliant. But when they talk non-compliant they are (sometimes) talking things like milk, whole grains and beans. When I talk about eating non-compliant foods I'm talking about wine, fast food, french fries or other junk food. This is why I need this to help me change my relationship with food. 

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I hate when I have to battle myself this much because I inevitably give in to the battles for at least a little while. I have Robbie's birthday party coming up Saturday and I'm not feeling totally confident that I'm going to get through it staying compliant. Every day that I'm compliant between now and then will help though. We will just have to wait and see I guess. One day at a time and today was a success.

Headache

Well, Day 1 must be over because I woke up this morning with a lovely Whole30 Day 2 headache! I remember the headache from last time and it reared its' ugly head first thing this morning.

Day 1 was pretty good. What's funny is that I really picked a weird time to start this Whole30. Yesterday I took Robbie to the Brown's training camp. Although it was really neat, Robbie was hot and tired and we ended up leaving before it was over so we didn't get any signatures.

Football players...so close to us! 

This would have been an easy excuse to put off starting until today. I mean, we had to leave really early in the morning and were going to be gone until at least lunch time and then we had to go get Mary from my sister in-law's house. It would be so easy to say that I'll just take him to lunch and get focused on Thursday. But I didn't. I packed a lunch for both of us and after we left the practice, we ate in the car.

Roasted turkey, veggies and guac

I had a brief moment before dinner tonight where I was annoyed. I was frustrated because I was tired and didn't feel like making dinner before his football practice. It's just so much easier to swing by the drive-thru on the way home from football. So the second guessing myself came in to play - "if I were doing Weight Watchers or calorie counting, I could still stop and get food on the way home from football". The fact of the matter is that still wouldn't make it OK. And, we've already seen that I can only keep eating like that under control for so long.

Anyway, in the end I did grill the chicken I had been marinating in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Mary and I brought our dinners to the park and after walking with my sister for a little less than 3 miles, I sat and had my dinner. I had made chicken salad with the chicken and cooked up some green beans from our garden.

I got crabby last night after practice and I want to attribute that to the change in eating; but it's probably more likely because I was tired.

I actually felt like I ate a lot yesterday. I didn't stress about not eating in between meals and just ate when I was hungry. For breakfast I had 2 hard boiled eggs and some grapes with walnuts. I ate my lunch in 2 segments. I had some of it in my car, but then my stomach started to hurt so I stopped eating until I got to my sister in-law's so I'd be close to a bathroom (oh, the life with Crohn's).

When I got home around 3PM I had another bowl of grapes with almonds and walnuts. Then dinner was chicken salad (made with about 8oz of chicken) and green beans. After the kids went to bed I was feeling slightly hungry again, but I was also exhausted so I went to bed instead.

On to day 2.....

Whole30 - Round 2

** I feel like I should make the disclaimer to this particular post that it is likely going to get very long winded. I've been doing a LOT of thinking over the last few days and this post is all about that. Consider yourself warned.**

If we're being technical, it's really round 3 since I first attempted a Whole30 last August when I was really sick. I know I've discussed that before, but I only lasted 10 days because my Crohn's flare was so bad that I ended up just not eating because everything hurt. I decided that if all I could ingest was an Ensure shake than so be it and I quit after 10 days (since an Ensure shake would not be compliant with Whole30).

You all know too well about the next Whole30, which happened from April - May of this year. For any of you that missed those posts you can find them in my blog archive.

During that Whole30 I blogged nearly every day about my experience. I have spent some time over the last week re-reading those blog posts trying to figure out if I wanted to embark on another Whole30.

In some ways I remember being unhappy a lot of the time and saying that I didn't think it was a realistic way for me to live. I remember the struggles. The way I felt when I had to figure out what to eat at a baseball game when I was trying to stay compliant.

So why would I even think about trying it again? Well, it's because I also remember staying compliant at that baseball game (and how good I felt after I did that - and how it really wasn't that hard in the end). I remember not eating any ice cream when my kids got ice cream after Mary's last volleyball game. I remember not having to think TOO hard about what I was eating because I didn't have to track how much of anything I was eating.

Of course I also remember the cooking, prepping and cleaning that was involved in 30 days of my entire family eating only whole food. But this time I am not talking about my entire family doing it. I'm talking about just me. Because the reality is that I NEED to make a lifestyle change if I want to get this weight off and keep it off. I need to figure out a way to truly focus on eating healthier the majority of the time; and I think I have come to the conclusion that in order to do that I maybe have to be a little more strict for longer than even 30 days.

One of the things I remember saying during my last Whole30 was that I didn't think I felt that much better than any other time I'm eating less and losing weight. That may or may not be true, but what IS true is that when I was doing the Whole30 I was making healthy choices for those 30 days. Since I stopped the Whole30 on May 21st, I have not been able to get myself on any track of weight loss. I've had a couple good weeks in there, but never enough. I also shifted my focus from eating whole, real, healthy food to eating whatever crap I wanted that happened to fit within my points/calories for the day.

The week that I lost 4.2 pounds recently, I had eaten out (mostly fast food) about 6 times that week! That in and of itself is ridiculous (but that's another issue all together). But I obviously wasn't making the healthiest of choice if I was eating out that much. I mean, I think I had McDonald's at least 3 times that week. I did try to make "better" choices, but it wasn't like I was choosing salads for any of those meals. What I'm saying is sometimes when I do Weight Watchers I choose to still make unhealthy choices, but just try to keep it under control. The problem is, I CAN'T keep it under control (obviously). I may keep it in check enough one week to lose the weight, but then I lose all control the next week and gain it all back.

I already know that crappy food like that is a downhill trigger for me. I keep trying to incorporate unhealthy food into my diet and try the whole "all in moderation" thing, but clearly that isn't working for me. My son is turning 8 years old next Monday and the last time I weighed less than 200 (for longer than a few months) was before he was born. I mean, I hit 180 right after he was born, I hit 190 for a few months in 2007, and I hit 197 in 2011; but each and every time I've gained the weight back + extra.

What it comes down to is that when I was doing the Whole30 I wanted it to be done because I wanted to be able to incorporate the crappy food more often. I wanted to believe that I can lose weight while still eating things like McDonald's, wine, ice cream, cookies, etc, etc, etc. I clearly can't. Some people may be able to, but I have proved to myself over and over again that I can't. However, what also happened when I was doing the Whole30 is that I was eating 3 solid meals a day and sometimes almost forgetting to eat lunch because I was still satisfied from breakfast. I did not overly stress about what I was going to eat (unless we were going to a baseball game or something and I couldn't control my food by bringing it in), because I knew the things I could have and the things I couldn't. I didn't have to think about how many calories or points that is and how much I have left in my "budget" and whether or not it was worth it.

So I have decided to embark on another Whole30 starting Wednesday August 6th. This time around my goal is to actually keep the Whole30 going for as many days as I can. My thought process is that if I have an off day for whatever reason, I will "restart" the Whole30 at day 1. I am not going in to this thinking it's only 30 days this time. But I'm also not going to stress about making it 30 days in a row (if that makes sense). What it comes down to is I'm looking at this being a start to my lifestyle change. My hope is that eventually I can change my relationship with food enough that I CAN be successful with the "all things in moderation". That I can actually learn what moderation means (and learn that it doesn't mean McDonald's/fast food once a day as long as I can fit it within my allowed points/calories).

You were warned at the beginning and if you're still reading please know how much I appreciate it. I love all the support that I get from you guys. It's crazy to me to think I inspire anybody. I am glad to hear that I do. It keeps me going. I want to prove all you people who believe in me right because sometimes I am not so sure myself.

Broken Record

I'm a broken record and this is the problem.

I was watching Extreme Weight Loss the other night and the host said something that really resonated with me. He said that you can choose any diet and weight loss program out there that you want, but until you tackle the emotional reasons for getting fat you can't make the lifestyle change. Or something like that! ;)

Ok. So I have done the counseling thing and clearly it hasn't helped. I'm kind of at a loss what to do. I have actually tried 2 different therapists in the past. The first one I went to suggested I look in to Overeater's Anonymous. I went to one meeting and quickly found that it wasn't for me. And I felt like that was a cop out for that therapist. If I just wanted to do OA I could have done that on my own. So I wasn't impressed with her.

Then, a few years back, I started to see another therapist, but this time I went with the mindset that I needed overall help and the weight stuff would come as a natural part of it. I stayed with him a little longer, but still wasn't overly impressed. I didn't feel like he was helping me enough or even helping me to help myself. I ended up deciding that my money was better spent on my personal trainer and I switched to just see her. That was 2011 and I lost 40 pounds. However, we all know that wasn't permanent and I have since gained it ALL back, plus some.

2011 - when I lost 40lbs. I was around 199 in this pic

So I've said while I was doing the Whole30 that I didn't think it was realistic for me to live that way forever. And I think that's where the problem lies. I always say that I think giving up certain food groups or certain foods doesn't work for me, but I think the fact is that I don't WANT to. I think it does work for me. I gave up fast food for almost 2 years and lost 40 pounds. I did the Whole30 for 30 days and lost 16.6 pounds. I stayed consistent for 30 days and I can't seem to get that level of motivation back.

And by April 2014 this is what I looked like. 

I'm going to talk numbers now and they are embarrassing. But, they are what they are. I did this to myself and why wait until I lose to the weight to talk about where I started from?

Ok. So at the start of my Whole30 I weighed in at a whopping 250.6. I couldn't believe that I had let it get THAT bad. My highest weight previous to that was around 238, so I was not happy with myself (mind you - I weighed about 209 when I gave birth to each of my children...and I thought THAT was ridiculously high).

At the end of the Whole30 I weighed in at 234. In 30 days I had lost 16.6 pounds and was feeling good. My stomach felt better than it had felt all year, but I convinced myself that I didn't feel any better than any other time I eat healthy (which might be true). However, since I ended the Whole30 in May, I have NOT gotten on track. At one point I got down to 233.2, but that was back in June. I have been yo-yoing since then. This morning I weighed in at 239.8.....sigh......

The GOOD news is that I've been basically "maintaining" my weight (within about 5-6lbs) since I stopped the whole30. That would be great if that number was significantly lower, but it's not. But it is good that I haven't gained back all 16.6 pounds of what I lost. The other good news is that I haven't given up. I may be yo-yoing, but that means that at some point I'm being disciplined.

It sure would be nice to look like this again!

Today is August 1st and I decided that this is it. I need to just do this. (and hence broken record - how many times have I said this??) My plan is to eat as "clean" as possible the majority of the time. I'm not going to stress about added sugars or going dairy, gluten, grain-free; but I'm going to focus on eating real foods more than processed ones.

I am toying with the idea of doing another Whole30, but trying to do it even longer. However, I then re-read some of my journal entries and I just don't know. I was overwhelmed with food prep and clean-up; but I do think a lot of that was because I had my entire family doing it. Perhaps it would actually be easier a second time if I did it by myself.

I also think that I'm going to give up my Weight Watchers membership. I joined about 2.5 months ago thinking that it might be good to help me continue to lose weight. I paid for a 3 month online membership and obviously it hasn't been working any better to motivate me than the free sites that are available. So, I think I'll continue to use it for the next 15 days and then cancel it before I have to pay for month 4. I will then use my fitness pal to track my food.

Wish me luck. I really hope I can figure this out soon. I need to lose this weight once and for all.

Cedar Point 2014

So Cedar Point happened yesterday. It was the first trip ever for my kids and my first in the last couple years.

Unfortunately the hubs couldn't come with us because he had to work. The original plan was for me to meet up with my one friend and her son, but then she injured her back 2 days before we were supposed to go. I made the decision to still go with my children and Mary's friend. Yup. Me and 3 kids for my kids first trip to Cedar Point! Crazy? Nah! In the end, my friends' husband ended up coming with their son so my son had someone to hang around with. It was such an awesome day!

It actually ended up being the perfect day for Cedar Point. Rain was in the forecast and it misted for a while in the morning. This kept the crowds away, which was awesome. It eventually stopped and it was actually a bit chilly. I think the only reason we made it ALL day was because it was nice and cool and the sun wasn't beating down on us.

But, here are the lessons I learned from Cedar Point 2014

1) You sure do take a lot of steps in a day at Cedar Point!
     According to my Garmin Vivofit, I walked 23,846 steps, which equated to 10.9 miles. That is by far the most I've walked in one day since I put the vivofit on my wrist in March. --side note - that's kind of sad to me since in 2012 I would have hit that at least once a week while training for the marathon. sigh-

2) Cedar Point is one of the few times I am not focused on food! 
     We arrived right after 10 and ended up not stopping to eat lunch until about 2:15! And frankly, I had to make the effort to stop and get us some food or we would have kept going (and would have crashed hard because of it). We never did have dinner. We had snacks later, but never sat down to eat another meal (not that one was needed after that 2:15 lunch!).

3) However, even when not focusing on food, I make crappy choices when I DO eat. 
    We went to Johnny Rockets so we could sit down and rest for a little bit. I could have gotten a salad, but I got a big juicy burger. It actually wasn't even that great and I really wasn't hungry (see #2); so a pretty stupid decision.

4) My anxiety is greatly increased as an adult! 
    This is an interesting thing. I've always been a worry wort - even as a kid. My worrying has of course increased as a parent. What was interesting yesterday was that my weight caused a drastic increase in my anxiety. I was nervous about rides malfunctioning and something happening to my kids (or to me), but that increased exponentially on rides that I barely fit in. Here's what happened: I got on the Raptor (which I love) and found that I could barely get the shoulder harness down enough to secure the seat belt that buckles into it. It locked, but I felt like the only thing that was holding the harness down was the seat belt and it was stretched to the max. The entire ride I was picturing the belt coming undone and the shoulder harness flying off my shoulders. Crazy, I know.....and it made for an even scarier ride. It was too bad because that is one of my favorite rides and I didn't get to enjoy it.

Woo hoo! Robbie was measured at 52"! 

5) I already knew this, but Cedar Point is a lot more fun when you don't have to stress about fitting into rides. 
     So perhaps the real lesson here is, yes, I am that big!

6) It is exhausting to spend 12+ hours at Cedar Point and then have to drive 1.5 hours home! 
      I do not think I've stayed till closing since my parents took me (and therefore drove home). It was exhausting. Usually wouldn't have been a huge issue, but since we had my daughters' friend I had to get up around 7:30 to make sure she got up for her camp today. I have been exhausted today - even after taking a LONG nap!

7) I eat like crap when I'm exhausted. 
    Honestly, today has been worse, eating wise, than yesterday. Tomorrow's a new day and I will get back on track and still be down on Wednesday - I am motivated!

8) For whatever reason I lose my voice pretty easily as an adult!
     Mary screamed way more than I did yesterday yet I have absolutely no voice today and she's fine. I used to scream way more than I did yesterday and be fine the next day. It's weird. We'll see how long it takes for me to get my voice back.

The lessons learned are not meant to be a downer on the day. Even with all those things going on, I had a blast. I was nervous about going with 3 kids by myself, but it was great. The kids were so well behaved and the day went amazingly well. There was no fighting or bickering from anyone (maybe slightly at the very end of a LONG day).

It will be interesting to see a) how much weight I lose between now and next year when we go again (I'm hoping for 50-60 pounds) and b) how much easier I fit into the rides.

Wednesday Weigh In #7

Just a quick post to share some good news for once! :)

Today's weigh in - down 4.2lbs. That means that in 1 week I ALMOST lost everything that I had "gained" last week. I put gain in quotes because obviously I didn't gain 4.6 pounds of fat last week and I didn't lose 4.2 pounds of fat this week. Water weight can be a horrible and wonderful thing (just depends if you're gaining it or losing it!).

I am still 1.8 pounds heavier than my lowest since re-starting WW this time. I'm confident I can lose that this week, or come close.

I really think I'm not going to stress today and just enjoy myself at Cedar Point. My week will start tomorrow.

Have a good day! I know I will! :)

Staying Focused

It's Day 7 - that means tomorrow is another weigh in day. The fact that I'm willing to say it's Day 7 must also mean that I'm still on track.

I'm doing well....not perfect, but I'm doing it.

Last night my good friend texted me to see if I wanted to come help her paint at her new house. I had been asking her how I could help her, so even though I didn't necessarily feel like going I went. In the end I am so glad that I did. I knew I would be happy about it after I got there, which is part of the reason I went.

Anyway, I spent the next 2+ hours painting, and even though I was also drinking some wine, I tracked everything. Again, my tracking may not have been perfect. I didn't measure the glasses of wine; I didn't measure the peanuts that I would take from the container, but I estimated for my tracker. I earned a bunch of activity points between running on the treadmill, painting, and getting over 12000 steps (I only counted the painting and the 12000 steps - I don't count the running separately since that's why I get the steps!). I ended my day yesterday at 0. 0 daily points, 0 activity points and 0 weekly points remaining.

My goal today is to only eat the points I have - right now that means 35. If I earn some activity points that'll give me a few extra if I need them. As of right now I have what I've eaten so far today and my planned dinner in my tracker and still have 9 points left to play with. I should earn a few activity points (more if I get on my treadmill later to walk or run). I feel pretty confident that I can get through today.

I got on the scale this morning and it was down considerably from last Wednesday so I'm hopeful for tomorrow's weigh in. At this point there isn't much I could do to see a gain on the scale tomorrow morning, but I'd really like to see it down as much as it was this morning, if not more!

I may not be able to post tomorrow because I am taking the kids to Cedar Point for the first time!  I haven't quite decided how I'm going to handle tomorrow yet. One thing I know - I am going to eat what I want. I simply haven't decided if I'm just going to write off the day and start fresh Thursday or if I'm going to end up counting my points for Wednesday so I know how many points I really used. I usually figure this out after the fact. Last Saturday when I had my little splurge I didn't count it that night. I had basically made the decision that I wasn't going to count it and I was just going to get back on the next day and try not to touch my weekly points (assuming I used them all that night). But then Sunday when I got up I decided to estimate what I ate. And in the end this was a better decision because I actually hadn't used all of my weekly points. So we'll see. I'm sure I'll get lots of steps in tomorrow so that'll help as well.

Ok. That's it. Just thought I would check in with some positive posts once in a while! Fingers crossed that the scale is nice to me tomorrow!

Proud

I am calling today Day 5 even though I had a very high calorie/high point day yesterday. The reason this can still be considered day 5? I tracked everything I ate. I estimated if I had to in terms of how much of it I ate since I didn't sit there with a food scale while I was over-eating, but I still tracked it.

The good news? I still have some weekly points left for the week. I will also continue to earn activity points as well so I should be totally fine going forward. I also weighed myself this morning and I'm still down 2.2lbs from my weigh in on Wednesday.

This pic has nothing to do with what I'm writing
about, but I love it so there! :)

Also, speaking of activity points - I was actually really proud of myself yesterday because even though I was having a day where I was eating a lot, I actually got on the treadmill and ran 3 miles. I switched to 3/2 intervals since I'm thinking about trying to add distance instead of just trying to do 3.1 without stopping. Since I was doing the intervals, I was trying to run a little faster during the run intervals than I've been during the .6 mile run intervals. It was a tough workout, but I did it. I am proud because usually on a day when I know I'm going to be "bad", I take the all or nothing approach and decide not to do the workout (especially considering it's been about a week since I had been on the treadmill).

I am doing significantly better. I took a picture of my dinner on Friday because it was just so good and so healthy! Again, it reminded me of when I was taking pics for my Whole30. I couldn't have had the corn then, but other than that, it was a completely compliant meal. I need to get back to having more meals like this!

Chicken breast, corn on the cob and asparagus

So now the key is to let yesterday be yesterday and move on today. To track what I eat and stay within my points. I need to earn some activity points today and if I go over my points to only go over by the amount of activity points that I earn today (since I'm getting quite low on my weekly points). I can do this. The getting back on track right after indulging is the hard part. If I do this today I'll know that I'm back - at least for the time being!

Reluctant

I am quite reluctant to write this post.

You see, there are times when I write a post and it helps me get back on track or stay on track (like all my posts from the Whole30). But, there are times when I will write a post about how wonderful I am doing (like this one), to then completely go crazy the next day and struggle to get back on track. I'm hoping that doesn't happen after deciding to post this today.

Today is day 3. It's another day 3 of yet another attempt to get myself on track and lose this weight. Day 3 means that days 1 and 2 were relatively successful. And if I'm writing this post it means I'm either pretty confident I'll keep going or feeling uncertain of where my motivation lies.

I would say I'm feeling pretty confident today. I actually think one thing that makes me feel a little more confident about continuing on is that days 1 and 2 really weren't easy. There are lots of times when I get back on track and the first day or 2 are SO easy. I feel good, I eat well, I exercise, I do everything I'm supposed to do and I wonder why I don't do it all the time.

Yesterday and Wednesday were not those days for me. Instead I was crabby. I was feeling sorry for myself and wishing that I could just eat what I want, when I want. I also had times that I was really hungry, but didn't want to spend any more points on the day. I didn't want to start my week dipping all the way in to my weekly points like I've been doing (since you see how that ends up).

But yet I stuck to it. Yesterday was worse than Wednesday. I was crabby. I had a splitting headache after dinner (no doubt the annoyance of my daughter's softball game didn't help - frustrated with bad calls and the coach taking her out after only pitching to one person). But even with that annoyance last night I came home from her game and ate a BIG bowl of fruit with a string cheese (for a little protein), which was a total of 2 points.

In 2 days I have earned 11 activity points and as of now still have 1 of those remaining. I will earn a few more activity points today from my steps (but not much because I haven't been getting in my 10,000 steps). I have not been worrying about getting a ton of activity points because frankly I'd like to try to focus on eating less (rather than being able to still eat a ton of crap because I earned x number of activity points).

So, I don't necessarily feel GREAT about where I'm at, but that is what is making me feel good. Following me? The fact that I am not feeling like this is so easy, but yet I'm sticking with it makes me think that perhaps my motivation (for the time being at least) has returned. I have no idea how long this motivation will last - today, tomorrow, a week, a month, a year - but I will try my best to keep it going.

On another note. This is what I printed out the other day:

You probably can't really read it, but it's a training program for a half marathon! Yikes! As of right now I don't have any definite plans to do another half marathon (as in I'm not signed up for one or anything), but I have determined that I do not have an attention span to work on getting faster or better with my 5k time first. I was doing really well with getting on the treadmill every other day for a while, but then I stopped last week and haven't been on since. I think this happens because I know I can do 3.1 miles. If I take a break for a week, I can still get on the treadmill and finish 3.1 miles. However, when I'm training for a half marathon, I feel like if I miss a workout I can't just pick up where I left off - I need to get that distance in before I can move on to the next. For instance, when I was marathon training and missed the scheduled 14 mile training run I ended up doing "only" 15 the next week instead of the scheduled 17 because I didn't think jumping from 10 miles the previous week to 17 was too smart. I missed the 14 mile run because I was actually sick.

When I'm training for something I don't miss scheduled runs (if I can help it) because I don't want to mess up my training and not be ready for race day. In some ways it also helps my eating. After I get off the treadmill (or finished with a run outside), I feel really good and I don't necessarily want to negate that by putting crap in my mouth. I was most successful in my weight loss efforts in 2011 when I was working out regularly and completing several races. What got me started with my efforts that year? Training for the Cleveland Half Marathon. I was no better prepared to run that half marathon that year than I am to run one this year.

So, we'll see what happens. I think that I will start this training program on Monday and go from there. I will push myself enough, but not so hard that I get sick again. I would like to be down another 17lbs before I do another half marathon, but I'm not sure that I'm going to NOT do one just because I haven't lost all the weight. I'm going to base it on my running and whether or not I think I would finish in the time allotted, not necessarily on what the scale says! However, if I do what I need to do, there is a chance that I could be down 17lbs before I would do another half marathon - or at least pretty darn close!

OK. This post ended up being a whole lot longer than I anticipated. Thanks if you're still reading! Hopefully my next post will be able to be just as positive!

Wednesday Weigh In's 5 & 6

This isn't going to be a pretty post. Just giving you the fair warning!

Last week I kept meaning to post my weigh in because I was excited, but then I never did. I was actually down .6lbs, which was pretty amazing since the week wasn't exactly great. I focused on Monday and Tuesday and stayed within my points and ended up with an overall loss.

I had great intentions of continuing that through this week and having a nice loss on the scale.

Last week the boys went for a little trip to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. They left Wednesday after work and were going to be gone until Friday evening. I had ended up scheming to get Mary to have a sleepover at her grandma's with her cousin on Wednesday so I had the house to myself.

However, for some reason this also equates to eating and drinking for me. I had made a conscious plan to be "off" on Wednesday. I figured it was the start of my week and it was only 1 day. I figured that I could resume things Thursday and should still be able to be down with 6 good days on program.

Yea, that didn't happen. It turned out that Mary was invited to spend a 2nd night with her grandma and cousin and my eating craziness just continued as well. I have no excuses. It was stupid. And it continued through yesterday. I'm being stupid and it needs to stop.

Weighed in this morning and it was NOT pretty. Up 4.6lbs. Today's weigh in actually put me up .6 pounds from where I was when I started WW. I'm still down from starting the Whole30, but this is ridiculous.

One thing I will say is that I realized this week that this might be backlash from the steroids. I was talking to my one friend about the fact that I wasn't sleeping well at all and she asked if it was from the prednisone. I hadn't thought of it since I took my last dose, but it stays in your system for a while. I'm usually on it for months rather than weeks and the horrible side effects (like the weight gain) take longer to kick in. I always found it interesting that I wouldn't start gaining weight until I was tapering off the medication. When I realized this, I decided it was even more important to get back on track. I was determined not to let the steroids throw me off this time.

I re-read my post from the beginning of the year where I discussed my goals for this year. I only highlighted 3 goals and I'm not doing so hot with those goals. I'm not working out 3 days a week consistently; I've only lost about 7lbs towards that 50lb weight loss, and I haven't figured out how to stay accountable without being so hard on myself. I've got some work to do!

Hopefully my next post will be a little more positive.

Un-Pause

I've had my finger on the pause button of my healthy eating for a little too long now and it's time to take my finger off that silly pause button! It's time to get down to business!

Today has been a great day so far. I have dinner planned an my food through dinner already put in my food tracker and I still have 5 points left on the day. I am guessing I'll use those tonight after dinner, but perhaps not. Yes, technically you're supposed to eat your daily points every day, but given that I've been way OVER eating for several days I'm sure it won't hurt me to not eat my points today if I don't feel like it.

This pretty much sums up my life this summer. Love it!

In my last post I talked about changing my weigh in day, but then I decided not to do that. I wasn't ready yesterday to "un-pause" so I didn't want that to be the start of a new week. Today I felt determined and ready to resume counting and such, but when I stepped on the scale this morning I decided that it is possible that if I wait until Wednesday to officially weigh in I may maintain from last week or even have a loss! I know how I am  mentally and if I could manage to have even a tiny loss on the scale on Wednesday that may be just the encouragement I need. So I'm going to stick with Wednesday being my weigh in day for now. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't really matter WHEN I weigh in. If I'm motivated to do it, I do it.....and if I'm not, I don't. The sooner I realize this about myself the better. I just wish that I could figure out what causes the click when I decide that I'm ready. I wish I could figure out how to keep it going for more than a day, week, month, etc.

And this pic is just too fun not to share. Yes, that's my son!

More good news though is that I am officially off the prednisone. I took my last 10mg pill this morning. It did what it was supposed to do and calmed the inflammation that was causing worse symptoms, but I'm still not exactly where I want to be with my Crohn's. I saw my doctor today and he is putting me on another medicine in addition to the Humira so that it will hopefully continue to calm the inflammation and make it so that I don't need prednisone (since that's such a nasty medication). I am excited because I never actually went on prednisone for only 3 weeks and in those 3 weeks of being on it, I didn't gain a lot of weight. I'm not even back to my starting weight from when I started WW this time so I'm happy about that. And I'm still down 14.6 pounds from my highest weight at the start of the Whole30. So in essence, I've been maintaining my weight (within 4lbs) since completing the Whole30. I am actually really happy with that fact!

I hope everyone had a great 4th!

I feel good today and am feeling like I can do this and I just need to do it. There's nothing to say I can't indulge here and there, but I just can't do it all the time. There isn't a reason to eat the crap that I eat as often as I eat it! Hopefully this feeling will last longer than a day or two, but I'm happy that I'm not giving up. I mean really, as much as I've stopped and started, I've NEVER given up. Giving up would imply that I never re-start. I may press pause for extended periods of times, but I always brush myself off and try again. I would definitely like to stop this cycle and actually lose all this weight once and for all. The only way to do that is to keep trying and that is my goal.

Wednesday Weigh-In #4

Not good news. Up 2 pounds. Not at all surprising.

I'm struggling mentally right now though. Some times when I have a bad weigh in I can see it as a fresh start and get myself right back on track (even if that only lasts for one day). However today I'm not having that feeling. It's July 2nd and with the holiday coming up I feel like I don't want to have to think about it. I feel like I want to just do whatever I want for the next few days and get back on track after the weekend.

Then I think about how stupid that is and try to convince myself that there is no reason to not track this week. That I can easily choose one day to not track, but still track all the other days. That frankly, if I focus on using only my daily points all days but one, I could probably even lose weight this coming week.

But then I can't decide what I want to do. No matter what I choose it will be my choice. I will own it and move on. I definitely need to get my butt in gear and I need to get on the band wagon for losing this weight. However, when I'm struggling mentally I tend to do better when I just make the decision to give myself a break and then start again soon after. Sometimes if I continue to try to fight through this mental block, I end up taking that much longer to get back on track.

I am contemplating changing my weigh in day. I was thinking Wednesday was going to be a good day because it would give me 2 days after the weekend to recover from any over eating that happens on the weekend (even eating within my points range). However, what has been happening is that I don't get back on track until my week starts again on Wednesday. So now I'm thinking about making my weigh in day Sunday mornings.

The good news is that I continue to do well with the 5k training. I have gotten on the treadmill to run every other day since deciding last Wednesday to start my 5k training. I have completed 4 runs. The first 3 were half mile intervals. I completed the 5k in 50 minutes (or a little over a 5k if you go by the mileage on my vivofit). Then yesterday I changed the intervals a little and did .4/.6 mile intervals. So, I walked for .4 miles and then ran for .6 miles until the treadmill said 3.1. This took 2 minutes off my time and I finished in 48 minutes. The vivofit was actually consistent with the last run and indicated that I actually completed a distance of 3.51 miles. Like I said before, I don't know which device is more accurate, but I will continue to run until the treadmill says 3.1 because I'd rather be doing too much than not enough! I'm happy about this. No matter what happens over the next few days, I will continue to focus on my 5k training. I ran yesterday so my schedule will be to run tomorrow and Saturday. My plan is to do the same intervals I did yesterday.

Glitch

I have good news and some not so good news to report. Let's start on a positive note!

I have successfully finished 3 training runs since I started my 5k training last Wednesday. Yay me! I am currently doing the training on the treadmill for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is I'm back to feeling pretty self conscious about how I look running. Another reason is I find it easier to just go down to my basement and knock out 3.1 miles while watching a show on my kindle than going out in the heat to run. Anyway, so those are 2 of my main reasons for choosing the treadmill right now. I already talked about the runs on Wednesday and Friday, so Sunday was time for me to get on the treadmill again. I was going to get on the treadmill in the morning, but I just couldn't muster up the motivation to get it done. I then was getting some yardwork done (cleaning the patio and such) and decided since I was already sweating that would be a good time to get my run done.

So pretty and clean! 

Of course, I was also having a battle with myself about whether or not I had to run. I mean, I was already getting a workout in cleaning the yard and I could still just focus on getting my steps in, etc. I eventually convinced myself that the 5k training is something I need to do above and beyond "working out". That it's not just about burning calories or getting my steps in, but about getting back on the running bandwagon! I finished my 3.1 miles in 50 minutes again. The workout was the same as the other 2 runs. Walk at 3.0 to half mile, run at 5.0 to mile 1 and continue that cycle until finished with 3.1 miles. The treadmill says 3.1 miles at 50 minutes, but my garmin Vivofit varies from 3.49 to 3.51 miles in those 50 minutes. I don't know which one is more accurate, but I'm happy with my progress regardless.

So that's the good news.

The not so good news is that my food is not going so great again. Sigh......same old, same old. I made it through about 3 days this week with tracking and staying within my points. I hit Saturday and decided I didn't really care. It was only going to be one day. Well, I haven't gotten back on track with tracking yet. I'm not going totally overboard and I'm earning more activity points this week than I have every other week, but still. I would have NO problem taking 1 day to not track and just eat what I want, IF the other days I track my food and don't use my weekly or activity points. That way, I'm probably not going over my points at all if I have one bad day. But, what I've been doing is using my weekly points for the days that I am tracking and I start to get frustrated because I don't have enough points to eat what I want on the weekends. So basically I'm eating too much and I need to get it under control (as usual). The good news though? I'm really keeping it close to in check considering I'm still on prednisone. As of getting on the scale this morning I'm up less than a pound from my weigh in last Wednesday.

I'm a work in progress though. I am really getting back on the wagon regarding my activity. My daily step goal had reached its' way past 10, 000 steps per day so today I decided to override the automatic step goal and just set it at 10,000 steps per day. I think for now that's plenty to shoot for. Oh, and I'm still going strong with my streak of hitting my step goal every day. I was awfully annoyed yesterday though when I synced my vivofit to the Garmin Connect website because there was some sort of glitch and it did not record ANY steps for Saturday. I have no idea what happened. The only thing I can think is that I didn't set my wristband to "sleep" until right around midnight (so technically Sunday morning). I don't know, but now the website tells me that my longest streak is 15 days and I'm starting a new streak as of Sunday! Grrrr....that's not true! My streak is now at 18 days because I hit my 10, 000 steps today!

5k Training

I feel like I can say that it has officially started. On Wednesday I decided to say in my blog post that I was going to start training for a 5k at the end of August. So, on Wednesday I got on my treadmill and I started to train. I decided to do my training a little differently this time. Although I haven't been running at all in the last almost 1.5 years, I feel like starting with something like the Couch to 5k program is too slow for me. I've actually tried that before and usually get bored with it. I think I get frustrated because in 2012 I was finishing a marathon and now I'm trying to get back to running (or even run/walking) a 5k.

No pictures that relate to this post so instead
enjoy this picture of a deer!

When I was training for the marathon, I had gotten to the point where I was running 3 miles without walk breaks on the treadmill. I decided that this time around I am going to train to run this 5k without walk breaks. This is not to say I won't take walk breaks during the actual race because my plan is to do it with the kids and I will let them dictate the pace and any walk breaks. However, if I am training with the thought of no walk breaks then I'll be ready to do my own 5k with no walk breaks.

So on Wednesday I got on the treadmill and started with walking. I walked until the treadmill read a half mile and then I upped the speed and ran until the treadmill read 1 mile (so I ran for a half mile). At first I was just going to do this and then walk to 3.1 miles. While I was walking again I decided that I was recovering pretty well so I would try it again. I walked to 1.5 miles and then set the treadmill to 5.0 (12 min/mile) and ran to 2 miles. I was feeling really good and the running was feeling so great. I decided to do it again. Walked to 2.5 miles and then ran to 3 miles. I then walked the .1 and was done. I did the 3.1 miles in 50 minutes, but I did it. I ran 1.5 miles of the 3.1 in my first attempt. I am happy with those intervals and it felt really good.

I continued my step streak yesterday with a nice walk in the park with the kids. Today the kids and I went on a very nice 8.4 mile bike ride. It was slightly challenging because there were some hills but we all did awesome. I was contemplating whether or not I wanted to run since I already got activity in with the bike ride, but I eventually decided that I wanted to run every other day to get back on track with running. So after getting home from our bike ride I got on the treadmill and did the same workout I did on Wednesday. It felt pretty amazing.

I am a little nervous that I'm pushing myself too much, but I feel good so I'm going with it. As of right now my plan is to stick with the .5 mile run intervals and eventually decrease the distance of the walk intervals until I am running the entire thing. My plan is to run every other day and to stick with one interval set for 3 days. I have not yet printed out a workout schedule for myself, but I just may be doing that soon! :)

Wednesday Weigh-In #3

Big sigh of relief!

Today's weigh-in = Maintain!! 0 pounds lost or gained. Whew!

I can't even express the sigh of relief and shock that I had when I got on the scale this morning. As I said before, I ate too much Sunday and Monday this week. Sunday I had decided to still track my food and I was something like 58 points in the red for the week. I didn't even track Monday or yesterday so I'm sure that I added several points to those points as well. I did continue to earn activity points because I am trying to continue my streak of getting all my steps in each day (today's goal is 9165).

So today starts a new week. I need to take this maintain and run with it so I can actually lose this week. I know I can do this.

I also would like to start focusing on getting back into running. That will inevitably help me easily reach my steps for the days that I do run. There is a run here locally at the end of August that is a 5k "Glow Run" so it's done at night with glow sticks and black lights and stuff like that. I've never done any of these kind of "fun" 5k's before and think this might be a fun one to do with the kids. The race is a little over 9 weeks away from today. I haven't run or run/walked more than maybe a mile or two in over a year so I really need to get my butt in gear starting to get ready for that race if I want to do it! So I think I'll make the statement now that starting this week I'll start my 5k training!

And with that I'll leave you with a nice short and sweet post today!

Streaking!

I'm going to start with the positive for this post. I currently have a streak of sorts happening and I almost let it go last night, but decided that would be really dumb.

So, as I've mentioned before, I bought a Garmin Vivofit back in March to help track my activity. I decided on the Vivofit for a number of reasons, but one of the things I really liked about it is that it gives you a new goal each morning depending on what you did the day before. I believe when I first got the band my step goal each day was somewhere around 5000 steps. If I made that goal one day the next day it would increase, but only by a few steps. Even if I had a day where I hit 10,000 steps, it would only increase my goal by a couple hundred steps.

I've had this on my wrist since I bought it back in March, but I haven't really been using it to its' full capacity. I would see what my steps were for the day, but didn't really care if I wasn't hitting my goals. A few days ago I realized that I've been paying more attention to hitting my goal each day. I had noticed one day online that my longest streak of meeting my step goal was 5 days. I also happened to be at a current streak of 5 days. At that moment I decided I'm going to try to meet my step goal (the one that the Vivofit gives me) every day and see how long I can keep the streak going.

Lots of green lines! 

As you can see from the green lines above, my current streak is 11 days. Last night I almost ended my streak. It was 10 PM and I still had to walk over 2800 steps to hit my goal for the day. I haven't been doing great with my food so I almost just threw in the towel. Around 10:15 I decided that would be really stupid and it actually doesn't take me that long to get in a couple thousand steps. I went downstairs on the treadmill and walked for about 25 minutes to get the rest of my steps in for the day! 

Because I have hit my step goal for 11 days, my goal has been steadily increasing each day. My goal for today is 9,108. With my goal so close to 10,000 steps it is getting a little more difficult to get those steps in every day. I have to make more of a conscious effort to get off my butt more and get those steps in! 

And the not so great news - my food has not been good. I did OK until about Sunday. I tracked everything and was within my points through Saturday night. Sunday was terrible and I ate lots of extra points. I did better yesterday, but then again ate too much yesterday evening. My official weigh in isn't until tomorrow, but I will be up this week - hopefully just a little bit. I'm OK with this. It happens. I do, however, need to stop doing this one good week, one bad week thing. At this point I'd even take 3 good weeks and one bad week out of a month! It's a process and I'm going to get there. 

Last but not least, the Crohn's update. The prednisone is definitely working, but I step down the dosage this morning and I'm a little worried that it isn't going to stay at bay. I'm still having some issues, but nothing like it was a week ago. I'm going to stay positive and know that if I get my eating back under control as well that can only help the issue. We'll see where we go from here. 

Running Out of Points!

This week isn't going quite as well as last week was at this time. I'm still tracking and I'm fighting to stay on track. This is starting to feel more like week 1 though where I had to fight every day leading up to the weekend and then I just stopped tracking for the remainder of the week and started to just refocus again on Wednesday (since that's when my WW weeks start).

I don't want to do that again so I'm going to continue to fight the battle and hopefully win before I run out of points! I suppose it'll just mean that I need to exercise more to earn more activity points! I don't EVER like to see my food tracker go in to the negative though, knowing that I'll have to earn activity points to get out of the red and then when I do earn those points I can't even use them because I already did! I have switched the way that I track my weekly and activity points though so we'll see if that makes any difference at all. I used to track my activity points first; that way I would try to only go over my points for the day based on how many activity points I earned. But it was driving me crazy last week because I would earn maybe 5 points, but use 8 - so I'd use the 5 of my activity points and 3 of my weekly points, but then the next day I'd earn 5 activity points and maybe use none so then it would switch and put some points back to my weekly and take them from my activity. Seemed silly to me. So, now I'm swapping my weekly points first. If I go over the (now) 34 points a day I can have, it'll be subtracted from my weekly points. When those go away, I'll be using the activity points that I've earned throughout the week.

I always try to have at least some points leftover at the end of the week (even though they say you can eat all of them) because I figure this way it accounts for any human error of tracking. If I maybe tracked too many activity points or didn't track enough for some food I estimated, I figure it's covered if I end the week with some leftover points. But I think for this week I'll consider it a win if my tracker tells me 0 points left on Tuesday night and not -100 points or anything!

I did walk with my mom yesterday so I ended my day around 13,000+ steps so that was good for like 9 activity points so that's good at least. I need to do some more walking today to even hit my goal. Mary is supposed to have a pitching clinic tonight and I'm really hoping it doesn't get canceled due to the light rain that's happening because I was planning to walk the track while she has practice. That should help me get the 4600+ steps I still need today to hit my goal.

Last week I earned 32 activity points on the week so my goal will be to earn more than that this week - so at least 33! :)

In other news, I have now been on prednisone for 4 days and I also did my Humira injection today so that's good. There is definite improvement so I continue to feel hopeful that this quick round of steroids will calm things back down and I'll be good to go. If the steroids help it to get under control in only 3 weeks and keep it under control for even several months I can deal with that. Being on steroids for months at a time just stinks though so.......

Wednesday Weigh-In #2

Needless to say it's been a rough week. I have now taken 2 doses of prednisone though and I am already seeing improvements so that's good. I'm staying positive and this is GOING to work. I have never caught a flare this early so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to stop it faster than ever as well.

Source

But moving on to what we all want to know, right?? Weigh-in Wednesday!! I am VERY proud of how I handled my week regardless of what the scale said this morning. I tracked every day last week. If I wasn't sure of the points for something, I estimated as best I could with what WW had in their database. I tracked my steps every day with my Vivofit and made a conscious effort to hit my step goal every day (and the Vivofit gives me a new goal every day based on how well I'm doing with meeting my goals - so the more I meet & exceed them, the more steps I have to do the next day).

Despite starting to flare, I did not succumb to emotional eating. I did have wine this week, but it was one time and I didn't gorge myself in the process. I also counted every ounce of what I drank! And the results of my hard work this week were excellent!

Weight lost this week = 4.2 pounds
Total lost since re-starting WW on June 4 = 5.4 pounds
Total weight lost since starting the Whole30 on April 22 = 17.4 pounds

The key this week will be once again to track everything and stay within my points range. Last week I used all my daily points every day (well, except last night - I ended the day with 3 points left); all my 49 weekly points and 22 of my 32 earned activity points. I was a little nervous about counting all those activity points because I'm not really doing "activity" perse, but I'm tracking my steps over the day and there is an option to enter your steps in from "all-day" to get activity points. My average steps per day right now are 8109. I plan to work up to 10,000 steps per day so I'm happy with 8000 now.

Power of Positive Thinking

I am banking on the power of positivity here. I talked to my doctor today and he agreed to try a short course of prednisone to see if that will calm this flare. I have NEVER been on a short course of prednisone. Every time I've gotten on prednisone in the past I end up on it for at least 3 months at a time. This is why I'm always so reluctant to get on it in the first place. However, this time he has me doing 40mg for one week, 20mg for one week, 10 for one week and then off. So 3 short weeks. I am hopeful that I caught this flare quickly enough to make this work. I took my first 40 mg this afternoon as soon as I got off the phone with him. I am going to think only positive thoughts and say that this is going to work. It'll kick the Crohn's back in to remission and the Humira will go back to working on its' own.

I will also stay positive enough to say that I am going to lose weight these next 3 weeks while I am on prednisone. If I am hungry (which I will inevitably be because steroids do that to me), I will eat fruit instead of calorie filled foods. I will not feel sorry for myself and drown my sorrow in food or wine. I will move forward and know that this is a small bump in the road. I will stop this damn flare in its' tracks and not let this damn disease knock me down once again. I will be stronger than Crohn's disease!

A Nasty and Annoying Disease

Crohn's sucks. That's about all I have to say about that!

I've been feeling pretty crappy again these last couple of days. It's frustrating and so disheartening. The Humira has been working. I've been off steroids since about October 2013. I have felt good. I would never say I got back to 100%, but I was easily at 95% and I was more than willing to take that. I'm back down to about 70%...and that might be being generous. Ugh.

It's amazing to me how quickly it happened this time too. I was feeling fine, then I was having little episodes of stomach aches, but no real big deal and then all of the sudden there is red again. That's never a color you want to see in the bathroom. Unless, of course, you have pretty red walls!

I'm feeling frustrated. I get emotional when I have a flare and I eat when I'm emotional. I'm trying very hard not to do that this time around. I'm trying very hard to continue to lose weight through this flare. I am trying to stay positive and hopeful that it'll end quickly. I have a message in to my doctor and am waiting to hear what he'll say. I'm actually willing to go back on steroids, being hopeful that it'll be a "quick" round and I'll be better. We'll see though. I seem to be getting worse each day so the longer I wait to do something, the more work the drug needs to do.

Needless to say I'm pissed. I can't help but wonder if doing the Whole30 and then going back to eating all those forbidden foods was just too much on my system. I wonder if I never did  the Whole30 if I would still feel sick. I wonder if I kept doing the Whole30 if I would still feel good. But then I think about the fact that all doctor's I've ever talked to tell me that what you eat does not cause Crohn's and it doesn't cause flares either so.......who the heck really knows. It's not helpful to think about all these things, really, so I should just stop wondering. It is what it is and it sucks.

But let's talk about some good news, shall we? Today is day 6 of consistently tracking my food and activity with WW. My weigh in will be Wednesday and since I get on the scale every morning, I'm pretty confident it'll be a good weigh in! :) As of right now I have 9 "extra" points still remaining for the week, which should be plenty to get me through tonight and tomorrow. Oh, I'll also add another 4-10 points to that with activity points from today and tomorrow. I earn between 3 and 5 points a day just by entering my steps into the tracker. For me, a low step day (around 4-5000 steps) gets me 3 points and a better day (8000 steps) gets me 5 points. I've been trying to hit my goal on my Garmin Vivofit every day so that helps. It has been harder the last 2 days because I've been more tired as well. Yesterday walking from my backyard to my front made me out of breath. Sigh......

So that is what has been going on with me. For once me not posting did not mean that I was off track and eating/drinking a lot! :) As of getting on the scale this morning I was getting within a couple pounds of losing 20 since I started the Whole30. I won't get it this week, but it is a definite possibility for next week if I keep at it. I need to keep at it. I need to do this. I am going to do this.

A Little Staycation

Yesterday was day 2 and it was a pretty successful day. It wasn't nearly as awesome as day 1, but it was still within my points and I'm still left with many weekly points to use the rest of this week.

My husband took Wed, Thurs, Fri off this week so we've had a little of a staycation this week as a family. It has been quite nice. Of course the kids still drive us crazy when they don't appreciate all the cool things we're trying to do with them, but you'll have that with a 10 and almost 8 year old!

Anyway, yesterday we took the kids to A Christmas Story House & Museum. I had purchased a groupon for this month's ago and it expires the end of this month so we figured why not!?! If you are a fan of the movie, this is a place you should definitely visit. You can read more about it on the website (or better yet, go see the house), but basically it is the house that was used for the movie that someone has since bought and renovated to look exactly as it did in the movie. It was very cool. I took lots of pics, but won't bore you with all of them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before leaving for the house, I decided to eat only a light breakfast because I figured we would have lunch out. I ate a hard boiled egg and banana for a total of 2 points. I was right and we did go out to lunch. I decided I wanted to try B Spot, the Michael Symon burger restaurant chain here. Obviously big, juicy burgers are going to be high in points, but I was OK with that. I ordered their New Jack City burger and it was yummy. Drew and I also shared a side of onion rings since the burgers didn't come with anything on the side. I estimated my points later based on what was available in the WW database. I used a five guys cheeseburger and half an order of onion rings from Buffalo Wild Wings, I figured that was probably close enough. My lunch ended up being 39 points all on its' own. It was good and I planned it out, but I felt disappointed with myself. I didn't need the onion rings and without those I still would have had like 8 points left on the day. Instead, I was already in the hole 6 points (of course I had activity points and weekly points to use, but still).

I decided I wasn't going to make dinner and perhaps I would just eat fruit to tide me over. However, after Mary's game I was quite hungry. Drew was snacking next to me and I just couldn't stand it. I ended up having a string cheese and some trail mix. I counted it. I ended my day at 47 points. I earned 2 activity points (and had 2 leftover from Wed) so I swapped those 4 activity points along with 8 of my weekly points. Overall not too bad. 

On to today. Day 3. Mary and I started pretty early this morning with garage sale shopping. I did not eat healthy today (until dinner), but I've stayed within my points and right now that's my goal. We stopped at McDonald's to get breakfast before our garage sale shopping (bad, I know - one thing at a time...stay within my points now and focus on healthier options later). After a morning of garage sale shopping we came home to pick up the boys and go see How to Train Your Dragon 2 (SO cute, by the way). We got popcorn at the movie, which we all shared. That was pretty much my lunch. So, yea, like I said, not healthy. 

After the movie we actually went out and did some more garage sale shopping. When we got home I caught for Mary while she practiced pitching and then made a yummy, HEALTHY dinner of filet mignon steak and asparagus. 

As of writing this post I'm at 33 points on the day. I have 2 more points I can use and I will because I'm actually a little hungry. I still have 41 weekly points remaining and whatever activity points I'll get from my steps today (probably only 2 - I actually haven't taken that many steps today). 

So, another really good day. I feel comfortable with how many weekly points I have left going in to the weekend. I feel confident I will make it through this week staying on program and having a nice loss on the scale come Wednesday. Only time will tell though! 

As Close to Perfect as Possible!

Today was a good day. No, actually, today was a great day! It's just one day, but I'll take it. Last Wednesday was when I wrote the post about my new challenge. As you already know, I am basically re-starting that particular challenge again today. Last Wednesday I ended my day having eaten 46 points (I'm allowed 35 so in the first day I used 11 of my extra points). I am so hard on myself when I dip in to that many extra points on day 1 that I find it hard to rebound from that. Last week was no exception. Case in point - the very next day I ate 68 points! I was able to reign it in on Friday and only eat 36 points, but my motivation was gone. You know how that week ended so I won't repeat that.

On to today. I started today with a new level of motivation. I need to stop being an idiot. This is just getting ridiculous. Eating less crap and more healthy stuff is not that hard. I proved that to myself today.

I started the day with a doctor's appointment that required me to not eat until after it. I was hungry when I was done around 9:30 and I decided to stop and get McDonald's for breakfast. I know, you're thinking, WTF?!?! But, I consciously made this decision and was totally fine with it. I counted the points for it (19 in case you're wondering) and moved on.

My husband took today off so after I got home we took the kids and went to the baseball field where the kids play so Mary could practice her pitching. We stayed there for about an hour and practiced baseball/softball with the kids. I wasn't necessarily hungry when I was feeding the kids lunch, but I thought I might get hungry later when we were out again so I decided to have a healthy lunch instead of risking making a bad decision later. I ate a nice leftover salad that my mother in-law had made for me on Sunday. My lunch was a total of 10 points - so that put me at 29 so far for the day, only 6 remaining for dinner!

We let our lunches settle for a little and then headed out to play some mini-golf. We also went to the batting cages as well.

 It was a pretty active day (although I didn't actually get that many steps according to my Garmin Vivofit).  After mini-golf and batting cages we came back home and just kind of relaxed for the duration of the day.

For dinner I grilled a rotisserie marinated turkey tenderloin. It was a pre-packaged thing so it wouldn't have been Whole30 compliant, but this meal looked close to my Whole30 dinners! I had 4 ounces (I even used my kitchen scale to measure it out), which was only 3 points. Broccoli was our side, which is 0 points and I decided to have some raspberry iced tea to drink so I spent 1 point on that. If you're keeping track, that means I had 2 points left after dinner.

 The kids got ready for bed and we watched part of our taped episode of America's Got Talent. I used my last 2 points on an orange creamsicle for a nice after dinner treat. I then had a package of the Dole Dippers (frozen strawberry halves covered in dark chocolate), for another 2 points.

Instead of tracking mini-golf or the batting cages or playing softball with the kids as activity, I decided to just track my steps for my activity today. Like I said, my steps were on the low side, but they still gave me 4 activity points. I used 2 of those for the chocolate strawberries and have 2 remaining at the end of today. As soon as I finish this post I'm going to bed, so I have successfully used 37 points on a day when I had McDonald's for breakfast. This is proof that it doesn't have to be that hard. I can indulge in even a meal a day if I am smart about it. I'm not saying I'm going to eat fast food for one meal every day or anything, I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be as hard as I sometimes make it out to be!

So there you go! I feel good about my accomplishments today. The key is to keep it going.....and now I'll leave you with a pic of how my day ended.....