Month 2 Weigh In

Day 59

Days/Weeks/Months - they are all kind of weird when you really break things down. I am calling this Month 2 weigh in, but since I started on Sept 1st, Month 2 technically doesn't start until November 1st. However, as I mentioned in my last post; I decided to weigh myself every 4 weeks rather than the 1st of every month. So, it's been 4 weeks since my last weigh in, but it's only been 59 days on the journey! Anyway, just funny to me.

Even though I said I was going to stay away from the scale I did weigh myself several times throughout this month. In the end I probably still weighed myself 4 times even though I wasn't doing it once a week. I mentioned yesterday that I had weighed on Oct 15th and then again this past Monday since I had eaten a little more throughout the week last week. I had 2 perfect days Mon and Tues and I was TOO curious so I weighed myself yesterday morning. I was excited because the scale was back down and was actually UNDER my goal for this month. I had another perfect day yesterday, but this morning the scale was UP one pound from yesterday. Sigh.

I fought with myself a little this morning about what I was going to do. My options were: 1) take yesterday's weight as my official weigh in since it was down and where I wanted to be. 2) have another perfect day today and weigh in tomorrow. If it's down take that number; but if it's up take today's number. 3) just take today's damn number for what it is and move on! I am happy to say that #3 ended up winning. My weigh in this morning was once again only .2lbs away from my goal, which means that I actually DID reach my goal of losing 5lbs in 4 weeks. I didn't reach the number goal for Oct 29th, but I don't care. Again, my goal for Nov will be to actually lose 5.2lbs over 4 weeks to hit my goal number. But am I going to be upset if I miss that number by two tenths of a pound again?!?! NO! If that's the case I will again have lost 5 lbs in 4 weeks and that's a great streak to be staying on.

November and December are notoriously difficult months to try to lose weight. There have been several years where I continued to lose weight through December, but then lost my motivation in January. I love that this time around I am really focused on one month and 5 pounds at a time. I hope that I can continue that for many months to come; and then continue it so that I NEVER go back to where I am now.

Official Results as of Today:
Weight lost since Sept 1st = 9.8 lbs.
Weight lost since my HIGHEST weight of the year in June = 13.4lbs. And to me it is amazing that it takes less than 15lbs for me to start noticing. I know that it's not enough weight that other people will notice and I'm OK with that. I notice it in how my clothes fit and how my face looks in pictures.

On to the next 5 lbs! Next "official" weigh in scheduled for Thursday November 26th - yup...Thanksgiving Day! :)

The Good and Bad of being more laid back......

Day 57...and still going.

It's been a while since I've checked in here with my progress. It's funny that I feel like I don't have much to talk about when I'm not weighing in once a week. In lots of ways I feel more relaxed, which is good and bad. Of course now that I'm writing a post I am thinking of PLENTY of things to discuss! ;)

No pics that go with the post, but I'll post these instead! :) 

The GOOD
I think because I'm not focusing SO much on my weight, I am allowing myself a little more freedom (but in a positive way). I'm taking the guilt out of losing weight. The way I see it is that my goal is to lose 5lbs in a month; if I have a few days where I'm just not feeling it, that's OK. I know I can lose 5lbs in a week if I REALLY want to. The key is to not go totally crazy and overboard so that I gain weight and have to actually lose more like 10-15lbs in a month to stay on track with my goals. But, I feel I've been doing that. There have been several days this month when I wasn't going to track. I allowed myself whatever I wanted (wine, fast food, whatever). But, the next day I decided to just track my food - just to see. Most times that I've done this I haven't gone that far over the calories that I burned that day. This is definitely progress.

The BAD
Of course there is always the bad side of feeling more relaxed. I find it funny that I posted on October 14th and said that I was going to wait until Nov. 1st to weigh in. Yea, the very next day I weighed myself. I decided that getting a half way check wasn't such a bad idea. The problem with it though? I was just sick for a couple days. One of those days I ate less than 500 calories and the 2nd day I think I maybe hit 1200. But, when I got on the scale on October 15th it read a number that was 6.4 lbs less than what I was on Oct. 1st! Obviously I was happy about this, but I also knew it wasn't totally accurate since I just hadn't really eaten for 2 days. Well, the bad was that I kind of let myself have a little too much freedom last week. I actually weighed myself again Monday morning to see what kind of "damage" I might have done. In reality it wasn't bad (in my opinion). I had "re-gained" 2.4lbs from that Oct 15th weigh in, but I was still down 4lbs from where I was Oct 1st. That's still progress and still only 1.2lbs away from my goal weight for the end of this month.

After Robbie's tough loss in the Championship game

And now we're back to the GOOD actually :) Because of the totally realistic weight loss goals, I did not stress at all when I saw the number on the scale. I decided that I was going to be as perfect as possible for the next few days before my "official" weigh in and see if I could meet my goal. And my goal is still just that 5lb loss (actually 5.2lb since I missed the previous months' goal by .2). I mean, of course I would LIKE to see the 6.4lb loss (or more) since I was there back on the 15th - but I'm truly not caring if I don't. I'm focused on meeting the goal I set out for myself 2 months ago. If I lose more great...but if I don't (even if I had in the middle of the month) that's OK too.

Tonight I started looking at my goals again. I had previously said that I wanted to lose 5lbs each month which would bring me to my goal weight right around my 40th birthday in 2017. Today I decided that my new goals are actually going to be based on 4 weeks and not necessarily one month. So, Oct 1st was a Thursday so my official weigh in's will be on Thursdays every 4 weeks. That means that this Thursday (the 29th) is my 2nd official weigh in. The goal is to be down 10lbs from where I started on Sept 1st. I am confident I will be there. And if I'm not I know I will weigh less than I did on Oct 1st...and that's all that really matters. BUT, with this new change in "official" weigh in dates it means that I should hit my goal weight by January 2017 - 2 months before my 40th birthday. And honestly I'm not even positive what my goal weight is going to be. I have a number in mind, but I realize that I might be perfectly fine a few pounds above that. I also realize that as I get smaller it is going to be more difficult to maintain the same rate of weight loss. However, I feel that as I continue to lose weight I will continue to increase my GOOD habits and decrease my not so good ones. Only time will tell. So far I'm liking the changes I'm making and am feeling more confident that I might actually succeed this time. Wow. Wouldn't THAT be nice!?!? ;)

Another sign of progress? I can actually stand to look at pics of me!

Sickness, Sports and Progress

Day 44

This past weekend was a busy weekend full of sports. Friday night was spent watching my 9 year old niece cheer at the halftime of the high school football game. It was adorable. The girls ranged in age from pre-school to 5th grade and they had this camp all week to learn the cheers and then did their little cheers and dance at halftime.

Saturday I spent some time in the kitchen trying to make my mom's famous meatballs and sauce. They turned out pretty darn good if I do say so myself! :) Then Saturday night we took Robbie to the indoor soccer field where Drew and I used to play in a co-ed over 30 league. Robbie is going to play soccer there on a U10 team this winter. I think it'll be really fun for him.

Sunday we had the 1st round of the play-off's for Robbie's football team. Mary cheers for his team and this year is the last year she'll be able to do that. They won BIG 26-6 so they are still in the play-offs for this weekend.

Then, we went on to Mary's first volleyball game of the season. We pulled out another big win, which was a great way to start the season! I feel very lucky as this is the first time I'm ever coaching a team by myself and I have a great group of girls! They make me look good!

Something I noticed over the weekend is some great progress I feel like I'm making. Mary and I went to lunch at Ruby Tuesday on Sunday before the football game. I usually get the salad bar and the mini's (2 mini cheeseburgers and fries). The salad I make isn't exactly healthy with bacon, eggs, ranch dressing, sunflower seeds, etc. So, this is a HIGH calorie meal. However, I usually eat my whole salad plus my entire plate of food. Sunday I ate 1 of the burgers and maybe half the fries on the plate. This may not seem like much to you, but this is a huge sign of progress to me.

Monday I started to not feel great after staying up too late Sunday to watch the season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead. Yea, I ended up not getting out of bed yesterday unless I was going to the bathroom. I slept most of the day (which was good), but just felt like poop. Today has been better and at least I was able to get out of bed, get some work done, and hold practice for volleyball.

I am going to continue to get some rest so I can be all rested up for another sports-filled weekend. We have Robbie's play-off game on Sunday at 11:30 and then Mary has 2 volleyball games at 2 and 3 on Sunday. I need to be as healthy as possible for those games.

I have no progress to give with the scale because I have actually not weighed myself since the beginning of the month. I didn't eat anything yesterday until dinner when I had maybe half a brick of ramen noodles. I haven't eaten much today either so hopefully that'll help things along as well.

I feel like I'm making good progress. I actually haven't been exercising as much, but given how I've felt this week I'm OK with that. I also know that for me weight loss is at least 80% food (since I've gone through being VERY active without losing any weight). I almost thought about weighing myself tomorrow to get a mid-month check in, but I'm going to resist. See, it's easy to resist when I physically put the scale away :) I am going to wait until November 1st!

Saying NO to Emotional Eating

Day 36

Things have been going well. In the 36 days since I "re-started" I have logged in to myfitnesspal for the last 28 days in a row. For the past few weekends I have been allowing myself not to track on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Last weekend on Saturday I realized that I really didn't go crazy on Friday and that I wanted to see where I was at with my calorie intake. I completely estimated for dinner since we went out to Burgers 2 Beer. I think I was fair in my estimating, but who really knows. I ended the day at 2202 calories and that was counting the wine I had :) I call this a success because according to my Garmin Vivosmart I burned 2335 that day. That means that I still had a deficit and frankly that's all that matters. On Saturday I ended up tracking again even though I was allowing myself not to track. With estimates I ended the day at 2049 eaten and 2371 burned. On Sunday I did not track at all. But, I still think that if I had it wouldn't have been too terrible.

The good news here? I am getting to a point where even when I'm allowing myself "not to track", I'm eating less calories than I am burning. That's what I call progress. And progress will help me reach my goal.

But, on to the topic at hand. Emotional Eating. This is something I have struggled with for as long as I can remember. I eat when I'm happy. I eat when I'm sad. I eat (and drink) when I'm stressed. I just eat. I talk myself in to it most of the time because I allow myself to believe that if I'm strong now I'm just going to give in later; so I give in now and promise myself I'll just get back on track ASAP. Sometimes I think that can actually be OK. If I'm craving something specific I think it's better to just eat that, track it and move on.

Anyway, I am also making progress in this department as well. I think part of why I am making progress is because I am allowing myself a few days of "freedom". Yesterday was a REALLY bad day. I mean, things could have be worse, but I was stressed. When I start to get stressed like that I start to become really overwhelmed at everything I have to do. One thing causing stress somehow magnifies everything else. Last night I was dealing with a computer issue and the fact that my house is a wreck was really noticeable. And although I didn't do anything to fix that (like clean); I did NOT eat my emotions yesterday.

Then today happened.

I was still stressing because I was still dealing with my computer issue. The longer I have the computer issue the more behind I get on my work. The more behind I get, the more I stress about everything I have to do. That usually ends to a complete shut down and I do nothing! It's wonderful really.

Today I had a big breakfast so I was only going to have a light lunch if I had one at all. It was about noon and I was actually hungry. That annoyed me because when I have a big breakfast I usually don't get hungry until later in the day. The mental battle started. I was going to go get McDonald's. Take a break from annoying technology. You'll get back on track tomorrow. It just means you have one extra day on a weekend you have to stay on track. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then it was a little after 1 and I didn't frankly even feel like going, but I was hungry and didn't want to have to think about what I was eating (and for some reason that always mean McDonald's). Then I decided that I made something the other day that was really good and I thought it would calm my "need" for McDonald's. I diced a potato and cooked it in some olive oil on the stove. I counted the olive oil and the potato and it was about a 220 calorie "meal". And you know what? It did the trick! I no longer felt the need to get McDonald's. I was no longer hungry and I was SUPER proud of myself for not succumbing to emotional eating.

The day isn't over and I still have challenges ahead of me. I didn't plan a dinner tonight because we had plenty of leftovers to go through. I'm quite hungry right now so making a decision on dinner may not be an easy one. But I am determined to get through this day without eating my emotions.

And now my week is going to look up! Of course I do still have that nagging issue of a really messy house.....sigh.....

One Month

Day 31

I just looked back at my last blog post and had to laugh hardily at the fact that it was titled "I get a little carried away with NUMBERS"; because I've spent some time today crunching NUMBERS!

I've said it before; but for someone who claims to not like math I am really all about the numbers. I want to find the "science" I guess in losing weight. I want it to make sense in a way that it probably never will. I think sometimes too it helps to keep me going for whatever reason.

Anyway, so after one month I have lost 4.8 pounds. I probably should be doing measurements too, but I haven't yet. Maybe I'll wait to start measuring inches for when my weight starts to stall ;)

My goal was to lose 5lbs this month so I fell a little short, but .2lbs is something as simple as maybe not emptying my bladder before getting on the scale. I'm not worried about it. I'm also not worried about the fact that this is probably the least amount of weight I've ever lost in the first month of re-starting or starting a "diet", "lifestyle change", whatever you want to call it. And that is why for the first time I think I may actually be moving towards making a lifestyle change! This really is kind of huge people!

So because I don't know how to just leave well enough alone and because I do want to continue to improve myself I came up with some goals over this past month. I have long term goals and then specific goals for the month of October. Want to hear them? No? Well, too bad! I put things in my blog and it makes it real to me. That doesn't mean I'll automatically reach that goal, but it means I'll think about it before I give up.

Earlier this month I decided to come up with goals that focused on not only weight loss, but fitness. I decided to make these goals totally realistic and slow on purpose. I really want this to be a change for good.

Goal #1 - Lose first 30lbs by March 1, 2016 (6 month mark).
Goal #2 - participate in Towpath 5k or 5 miler (haven't decided which I want to do yet) in April 2016.
Goal #3 - participate in Towpath 10k part of their 10-10 race in June 2016.
Goal #4 - lose 2nd 30lbs by September 1, 2016.
Goal #5 - participate in Towpath half marathon in October 2016.
Goal #6 - lose final 24-34lbs (the range is there because I'm not sure what my body is going to look like and be like when I get closer to goal. I may be more than happy and healthy at a weight slightly higher than I was thinking. Therefore, my "weight goal" is a 10lb range) by March 1st, 2017 (10 days before my 40th birthday).
Goal #7 - finish another marathon in 2017

Talk about goals, right?!?! Whew. When I think about it taking me 1.5 years from my starting point to lose all my weight I feel like that is FOREVER. When I see it broken down into 30lb increments and such I realize it is not that long at all. It amounts to losing an average of 5lbs per month. 1.25lbs per week.

Now on to this month. I decided today that I want to try to make sure I'm staying on track with my monthly goals of weight loss. So, since I didn't meet my 5lbs this month I need to make up those .2lbs next month. In order to even know what goals to strive for this month I looked at what I accomplished last month.

September Accomplishments:

• Tracked 19 out of 30 days (63%)
• On the days that I tracked I averaged 1804 calories per day. 
• On the days I tracked I averaged burning 3183 calories per day. 
• That means that on days I tracked I averaged a 1379 calorie deficit per day. 
• I lost 4.8lbs over the course of the month (weighed on Sept 1st and Oct 1st). 

October Goals:

• Track 21/31 days (68%)
• Average closer to 1700 calories per day on the days I track. 
• Continue to average around 3100 calories burned on days I track. 
• If I do those two things I will automatically average a 1400 calorie deficit per day I track. 
• Lose 5.2lbs

The fact of the matter is if I strive for the above goals I should lose 5.2lbs without a problem. My hope is that as this continues to go on and I continue to challenge myself with baby steps; I will naturally eat less/healthier on the days that I am not tracking. Better yet, I am hopeful that at some point I will prefer to just track 85-90% of the time so that I can be as successful as possible. But I'm not expecting that now and I'm not being hard on myself about it. I am proud of what I accomplished this month and feel like I might actually be making the change I need to make. Only time will tell though right??

One last thought to leave you with (I realize this is a long post). I am once again thinking about trying to stay off the scale this month. Focus on the other numbers I put as goals and then weigh myself on November 1st to see how I succeeded. I think if I hide my scale I might actually be able to do that. Yup. I'm going to do that. Putting the scale away until November 1st!