Monday Weigh In

Another week of the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge is complete. I have completed 2 weeks and have 6 more to go. As of today I have completed 9 Living Lean workouts as well as continued walking/running on days off. Last week I did learn a hard lesson though and realized that I have to take at least one day completely off to let my body rest and heal.

Week 2 went well. I realized towards the end of this week that I had not eaten out at ALL for 15 days. You all have no idea how huge that is for me. I did get Chipotle on that day because I could easily fit it in my plan and felt really good about eating home the majority of 2 weeks.

My lunch

Then, on Sunday I faced my first real challenge in regards to food. We met the in-laws for lunch. We went to a steak place which was nice because I've been eating low carb so theoretically a steak place should give me plenty of options. I sat at the table and watched my entire family eat their yeast rolls with honey butter while I just waited for my food. I did not even take a single bite of anybody's roll.

I decided on the steak medallion salad with the dressing on the side. It was a good salad; although the steak was a little smoky for my taste. It was very nicely done on the inside, but the outside was quite charred (as you can see), which gave it a little too smoky of a taste for my liking.

Mary's lunch

Anyway, I was surrounded by my family and their fries. I would say one of my biggest weaknesses is my love of fries. I can proudly report that I did not even steal one BITE of anybody's fries.

But do you want to know the absolute best part of all of this?!?! I actually didn't even really mind. I wasn't mad. Don't get me wrong - I NOTICED it. I noticed that I would have absolutely had one of those rolls as well as my own fries if I wasn't doing this challenge (even if I was counting calories, I would have "planned" for a higher calorie day).

I finally seem to have it in my head that this is a CHOICE I am making and I can get those rolls or fries any time I want. I just don't want them right now. I am in CONTROL of what I put in my mouth and there is no reason for it to make me mad because I am the one controlling it.

I've always been a control freak and it often would drive me crazy that that would never carry over into HEALTHY eating. To me, controlling my food always meant eating what I want when I want (which most of the time wasn't going to be veggies and such).

Perhaps this time I'm able to embrace it because I'm not putting the pressure on  myself to make this change "forever". I am looking at 8 weeks and that's it. I think when I get bogged down with "lifestyle changes" I think that means I can't (or perhaps shouldn't) eat that roll and fries at lunch EVER. Or I feel like I will never know how to choose when to make those less than stellar choices (and I'll go back to wanting to make them ALL the time).

Just a random pic of me and my beautiful daughter from lunch on Sunday. 

The fact of the matter is I did a pretty damn good job of maintaining my weight (within 5lbs) from May 2017 until November/December 2017 (right until the last 2 weeks of the year 😒). I couldn't have done that if I'm not making some sort of lifestyle change throughout this process. Obviously I'm not ready to be maintaining my weight, but maybe I'm making progress towards figuring out how to keep the scale moving in the right direction while learning the balance required to maintain the loss once I get there.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention my weigh in: Week 3 weigh-in = down 1.6 lbs for a total of 7.6 lbs. I am hoping that my consistency will continue to pay off. I have not been this consistent with my diet since when we did the Whole30 in 2014! We are going on 19 days without a single slip up. That number will just continue to grow. On to the next week of the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge!

A Weigh In and a Revelation

I am now 5 workouts into the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge at Living Lean and I am honestly loving it.

You're all going to laugh at me, but I actually went out and bought a new scale over the weekend. The scale I was using was driving me crazy and I was pretty sure it was off by almost a full pound. I mean, the fact that the LL scale at the END of the day and with clothes on was only .6 more than my scale at home told me something. Clothes alone usually add a couple of pounds; especially when wearing jeans!

Anyway, so I got a new scale, but of course on Monday morning I weighed on the old scale first to compare that to my weight last week on that scale. So my week 2 weigh in?? Down 2.8 pounds. That's 6 pounds in 2 weeks. Now, if you compare the number on the new scale to the # on the old scale last week the difference was 3.6 lbs. Losing these first 6 pounds puts me back to where I was before the holidays so that's good. I still have about 5 pounds to go to get back to the lowest weight I hit in 2017.

Now on to my revelation. I realized this over the last couple weeks and it actually really bothers me. The good thing is I'm going to work on changing it. Leslie (who I am doing the challenge with) asked me one day how it was going with having no wine. She was wondering if it was difficult or if I thought about it or anything. I told her it was funny because it has been a total non-issue for me because it's just NOT AN OPTION. Why? Why isn't it an option and why does it come so easily for me to just say it's not an option this time? It's because I have 2 other people counting on me to be the best I can be for these next 8 weeks. But isn't that sad? Isn't sad that it takes me feeling like I'd let someone ELSE down to actually do what I need to do to continue to lose weight? It's sad to me that clearly I don't feel like I'm enough of a reason to continue doing what I need to do to lose weight. There was a day I got frustrated and although I was mad because I WANTED to eat/drink my emotions away; there was never a thought that I was actually going to do it......BECAUSE IT JUST WASN'T AN OPTION! How crazy is that? When I realized this I realized that the one other time I was most successful in sticking to a program consistently was when my entire family did the Whole30. And I can remember when days 10-11 hit and I wanted to quit. The ONLY reason I didn't quit was because my entire family was doing it with me. They were counting on me to do this as a family and succeed so we could all get our reward for completing the challenge.

The positive is that perhaps this 8 weeks won't be as hard as I thought because I have the mind set that it's just not an option. It's not an option to eat off program. It's not an option to have that glass (or bottle) of wine. And, perhaps after 8 weeks of things just not being an option I'll decide that I'm good enough to continue to do that for myself after the contest is over. I have a goal I really want to hit for our next trip to Disney in May. But no one else is counting on me for that. It doesn't matter to anyone else if I hit that goal; and it shouldn't matter. ME wanting that goal should be enough to push myself to obtain it.

It's been 12 days since I started this contest and I have not had 1 slip up in that time. I honestly cannot remember the last time I strung 12 consistent days together with absolutely no cheats. To be fair, there are times when my "program" allows for cheats, but my plan for these 8 weeks is no cheats. WHEN I succeed in this 8 week contest it will have been the longest time I've ever tracked my food daily without skipping even one day. Even some of my most successful times of losing weight I'd give myself one day (or more) per week to just not track. I am so hopeful for what 8 weeks of consistency might bring.

And so it begins.....

The official start of the weight loss contest was yesterday!

The initial weigh in's and "kick off party" were last Wednesday so my strict diet started Thursday. As much as I HATE sharing this, I will:

My starting stats are:
Height: 5' 4.5" (I'm SHRINKING 😭)
Weight: 222
Body Fat %: 42.2%

Ugh. Those are some ugly stats. I had gotten down to 210 in 2017 (all the way back in May), so gaining back 12 of those pounds does not make me happy. However, I also know that a lot of that gain is bloat and water weight from overeating the last 2 weeks of the year. I had been maintaining around 216 for a while so I'm pretty confident that one week of better eating will drop a pretty significant amount of that weight.

So Wednesday morning I weighed myself at home and my scale said 221.4 (which was the same as what my scale had said on Monday morning). When I weighed in at the gym that evening (after having eaten LOTS of food that day) fully clothed (like in jeans - not even workout clothes), their scale said 222; so I'm pretty positive my scale is on the heavy side. That's OK with me actually. When I report my weekly weight loss on my blog, I will be keeping track based on what my home scale says every MONDAY. But my official contest finishing stats will be from how they measure/weigh me at the gym (on Sunday 3/11/18, which if you recall is also my birthday!!).

A typical dinner - taco stuffed zucchini boats. 

So I weighed myself yesterday morning before my first workout class at Living Lean. I will call that the end of my first week, even though the contest didn't officially start til yesterday.

Week 1 - down 3.2 pounds

I have LOFTY goals for this contest. I want to win. But, I want to win because that means I will have lost a bunch of weight. The prize will be great, but, really, I keep envisioning not only being the winning TEAM, but the single person who lost the most amount of weight (there is no separate prize for that - just recognition). I'm hoping that if I continue to envision that goal every day it'll keep me on track when I want to eat or drink.

There are 59 days between last Thursday and my birthday. The longest I have ever stuck to a program with NO cheats was when I did the Whole 30 in 2014 with my family. I did the program pretty close to perfect for 30 days. In those 30 days I lost over 16 pounds! I was heavier so I don't expect quite the same kind of weight loss, but the plan is to stick to my "program" for the full 59 days. I am not doing the Whole30 again, but I am eating pretty similarly to that program. The biggest difference is I am eating dairy and I am still using artificial sweeteners (like Stevia).

A pretty typical lunch - bacon, avocado, cheese & turkey roll ups with some kind of veggie.

5 days down, 54 to go! Besides the eating, I will be working out at Living Lean  at least 4 days per week. I hesitate to put numbers on my goals because I really don't know what is realistic. I don't want to sell myself short, but I also don't want to pick such lofty goals that I couldn't possibly meet them. Of course I  have a weight number in mind, but I'm not ready to share it here yet because I'm not totally confident that it's a realistic goal. So my goal is to lose as much weight and body fat as possible in the next 8 weeks. Wish me luck!

2018 is Here.....

I can not even believe it is already 2018.

I can not believe I started this blog in May 2012........and I can't believe I still have to talk about how much weight I need to lose.

But alas, let's look at the positives.

I've struggled with my weight for almost as long as I can remember. I struggled with it in high school when I was rail thin (and thought I was fat), and I struggle with it now.

But; I continue to fight. The good news is that my weight has been less each January since 2014. The bad news? Not nearly as much as I would like.

Family pic taken on Christmas Eve. My daughter is REALLY
good at taking selfies! :) 

I once again fell off the wagon HARD for the last couple weeks of the year.

Focusing on the positive though - I didn't totally fall off until right around Christmas and as of yesterday I am TOTALLY back on track! I realize it's only been 2 days, but the fact that I'm even attempting to get right back on track is a great sign. Also, I don't think I've EVER gotten back on track on January 1st. I usually will wait until at least the 2nd to even try. This year I decided I was READY and was going to do it right away.

The other thing that's awesome is that I'm feeling really good right now. I'm feeling totally motivated. I know that this won't last (because it never has before) so I'm trying to do as much as I can now to keep it going for as long as possible.

This year my friend convinced me to do a weight loss challenge with her at the gym she goes to. She wanted me to do it last year, but I didn't. I decided this year to go for it as a way to help get things rolling in the right direction for 2018. This is a challenge that has a cash prize that I know my friend REALLY wants to win. Obviously I would like some extra cash too, but I've been there, tried that and it doesn't necessarily help to keep me motivated. I'm actually thinking that what might help this time is that I know how badly Leslie wants to win and I want to help her do that. Perhaps if I think of it in terms of someone else counting on me I'll keep pushing. Clearly, just doing this for myself hasn't worked well enough to date. We'll see. The contest officially starts 1/15 and ends on 3/12. What's funny is that you have to have your final weigh-in no later than 3/12. I think I'll choose to do my final weigh in on 3/11 and then perhaps I'll get to indulge for my birthday! ;)

My goal is to stay on track from now until that March 11th weigh-in. That's a LONG time for me to stay as close to 100% compliant as humanely possible. I don't know that I'll meet that goal, but if I strive for it I'm sure I'll do better than if I give myself some wiggle room. Who knows what will finally work. That's what this journey is all about.....finding my balance..

So let's ROCK 2018 and hopefully continue getting closer to our goals.

We've got this!