75 Days

Day 1/75

There is something I like about making these short term goals for myself. Now granted, the only time I have ever actually succeeded in one of these "challenges" was when I posted 55 days before our 2018 Disney trip. 

Today's lunch/midday snack

Well....that's actually not true. I also wrote this post when I was 50 days away from the end of the Living Lean challenge last year. 

When I was 55 days away from Disney in 2018 I wanted to lose 12.8 pounds. I set short term goals to hit during those 55 days so that I could hopefully reach the number on the scale that I wanted to hit. If you recall, I hit that number and more actually! I ended up losing 12.4 pounds in 30/55 days and then lost another 3 pounds in the next 25 days. Perhaps the lesson there is that I actually set the bar too low. I didn't feel the need to continue to be as strict as I was being during those first 30 days because I had basically hit my goal. But, it felt amazing to actually reach a weight loss goal that I had set for myself.

Then, last year, I had 50 days remaining in the challenge and I wanted to lose another 10.8 pounds to reach my personal goal. Again, I set goals for myself to hit in those 50 days. They were very basic goals and came down to tracking my food (while staying in a pretty decent calorie deficit), maintaining my consistent workout schedule and get my water in. My attitude was that if I did those things and didn't hit the number on the scale at least I would know I did everything in my power to reach that goal. And again, by about day 49 I had dropped 11 pounds to reach my personal goal.

Dinner

During my 55 day Disney challenge I did not set the goal to track every day. I set that goal for the first 28 days, but then I gave myself a week of not tracking. During the 50 day challenge I set the goal to track every day and try to maintain an average daily calorie deficit of 700 calories. So basically to track and "stay within my calories". But, because some days I would have a huge calorie deficit I didn't even hold myself to staying within my calories every day because all I was looking at was the average deficit. What this meant though, was that I tracked my food every day for 50 days. As a result, I hit my number goal.

So, my first goal of 2020 is a 75 day challenge with myself. We leave for Disney in 75 days and I have a number goal I would like to hit by that trip. Of course I'm second guessing what number to actually pick because I'd really like to be successful again; BUT, I don't want to sell myself short (again). That's why I like my A goal and B goal mentality. I know for some people it gives them an "out", but for me it helps me to feel successful even when I don't reach the goal I really wanted to hit. It helps to remind me that even if I don't lose ALL the weight I wanted to lose, I am still better than where I was if I hit my B goal.

After dinner snack

If I use last Friday's weight as my starting weight, I will have 11 weigh in's before we leave for Disney. Based on that starting weight, I have 21.8 pounds I would like to lose before the Disney trip. That is no joke in 11 weeks, but I think it's doable. I have averaged over a 2lb/week loss before, but not for 11 weeks in a row! But, I think a lot of the time I end up averaging less because I'm content with the rate of weight loss (which is totally fine). So, perhaps if I set my goal that high it'll help keep me focused for the entire 11 weeks. And perhaps it won't and that's OK too. Ultimately I would like my B goal to be no less than 16.8 pounds because that will bring me back to where I was in May when the challenge ended and I had hit my goal. So yes, I gained back quite a bit of what I had lost last year, but I've moved on from that and I'm totally over it. I'm over it, but I want to re-lose it for sure!

Regardless of which goal I hit, I will absolutely weigh less for this Disney trip than I did for our last one so that will be something to be proud of no matter what happens in the next 75 days.

OK. So the goals for these next 75 days are:
1) TRACK my food every day
2) NO wine
3) Workout 6 days per week
4) 96-128 oz of water every day

I will be double tracking again with MFP (My Fitness Pal) and WW (Weight Watchers). My specific tracking goal will be to stay within my WW points the entire 75 days. To me that means ALL points allowed (daily, weekly AND fit points). Not all people use ALL their points, but I consider myself to be "on" program as long as I'm within all those points since that's why they're there. Now, if I use ALL my points every week the chances that I'll lose 21.8 pounds in 11 weeks is probably pretty slim. The number on the scale is the end goal that I'm hoping for; but the 4 goals listed above are the things that I can control. If I hit those 4 goals every day for 75 days I will have completed this challenge successfully regardless of what that scale says on March 20th.

Day 1 is done and I can check off each goal. I tracked my food today and ended the day at 20/23 points and 1222 calories. I had no wine. I worked out (LL and 10,000+ steps) and drank 128 oz of water.

#noexcuses Week 4

Remember this awesome post exactly one year ago today??? Last year I decided that I wanted to have a 30 day check in on the scale at Living Lean. That post was all about how that totally back-fired on me I basically had a mental meltdown.

Even after my post last week about my obsession with the scale, I decided I wanted to do the same this year and get a 4 week weigh in at LL. I did that yesterday and I'm happy to report that my reaction to it was completely different from last year. The LL scale was very comparable to my home scale so that's great!

After my disappointing weigh in last Saturday I decided to stay off the scale for at least a few days. I actually found that figuring out why I am so obsessed with the scale helped me mentally this week. I am going to continue to try to just weigh in once a week, but I am not sure how well that will go. This obsession with the scale isn't going to go away overnight.

As you can see, I lost everything I had gained last week plus another 1.8 pounds bringing my 4 week total to 9.4 pounds. I am getting so close to a new low!! I am going to try as hard as I can to stay focused while not going totally crazy. Last week I ended up eating significantly less points, but was eating more calories each day. Basically that means that I was focusing on those healthier options (0 point foods) to fill in those calories.

My average calories were still a little lower than last week, but that's because I was more consistent. Rather than keeping my calories super low each day and having a day where I just binged (because I felt more deprived); I kept my calories slightly higher every day. I think that helped keep me more balanced mentally. I had several days this past week where I ate more than 1700 calories and only a few days where I was under 1400.

Breakfast, lunch and snack on repeat this week. 

I decided that today I'm going to give myself a "splurge" day. I am not going to track today and just take a day to not focus so much on food. Tomorrow I will be right back at it and focusing on crushing my goals. I am 5 pounds away from the goal I wanted to hit in the first 8 weeks and I have 4 weeks to hit that. Even with a 3 pound gain one week this month I still managed to average a 2.4 pound loss per week. I know that rate won't continue; especially since at the start of this challenge my weight was higher than it's been in months; but I am willing to bet that I can maintain a 1.25 pound average loss for the next 4 weeks so I can meet my first goal.

That 5 pounds will also put me lower than I've been since before I got pregnant with Robbie! That means it'll be the smallest I've been since 2005! Let's DO THIS!!

#noexcuses Week 2 Weigh In

Week 2 is in the books and I am happy to report that it was another successful week. I actually think I am loving weighing in on Saturdays because I think it is helping to keep me on track (for now at least). Of course I might just be staying on track more easily right now because I'm feeling very focused and motivated. I know this level of focus won't continue for the entire 16 weeks so I'm going to do as much as I can now to ride this train as long as possible.

Week 2 was another week of not even using all my weeklies and earning over 100 FitPoints (99 of them could have been swapped for food). I ended the week with 9 weeklies remaining. I had 4 blue dot days, but as I talked about before, blue dots are one part of the WW program that I don't completely agree with. I've previously had 5/7 blue dot days as part of my goals for the week, but I'm not focused on that this time around. This time I am really just trying to stay on track with my allotted points. I'm also double tracking again in MFP so I can see where I am in terms of calories each day.

My average calorie intake this past week was 1,431 calories (1,022 net calories). I had days like the pic above where I even had a small DQ cone after my infusion and ate too many goldfish crackers, but still ended my day 1,461 calories (but 33 points). Then, on Friday I ended up eating the least amount of calories I  had eaten all week! Who am I!?!? 

I am happy to report all of that hard work turned into another good loss on the scale. Unfortunately I'm still not back down to my lowest weight, but I'm getting close. I will take 7.6 pounds in 2 weeks and use that to drive my motivation to keep going strong. I know that the weight loss is going to get slower now but that's OK. I really only have 6.8 pounds left to get to my first goal (a new low) and I am OK if it takes until the 8 week mark to get there. 

My mindset is back to where it was last April when I lost 12.6 pounds in 4 weigh in's. I am currently finding this relatively easy again. This week I not only had that ice cream cone, but I had popcorn for lunch one day as well. I had a moment on Thursday when I wanted to eat for no reason. It took a ton of self talk and a moment of weakness with some goldfish crackers; but I reigned it in and ended that day still eating under 1500 calories. 

Friday's food amounted to just under 1200 calories!

The best part is I really haven't been all that hungry. Thursdays moment of weakness had nothing to do with being hungry which is why I was able to talk myself into stopping. I basically told myself that if there was something in particular I really wanted to eat then I should just eat that, track it and move on. But I didn't want anything in particular. I just wanted to eat to eat, which is really just stupid and not necessary. I ate those goldfish (even weighed them out), counted them and told myself that I ate for no reason so it was time to be done. Then, I had my after dinner snack already tracked in my tracker so I was going to still eat it. It wouldn't have been a big deal if I did. I still would have been under 1800 calories on the day, but there was NO reason to eat it. I wasn't hungry so I told myself to just be done eating for the day. 

As I sit here and write this I'm once again contemplating whether I'm going to eat an after dinner snack or not. I've eaten 20/23 points and about 1200 calories so I certainly can eat if I want/need to, but I'm not currently hungry so I may just decide to be done for the day. I've been trying to stop eating by around 7:30 each night and since it's already 7 I'm thinking I may just be done for the day. I know one thing is for sure; it would make a very strong start to week 3! 

SaturWEIGH

In all the times that I've been tracking my weight on a weekly basis; I don't think I ever had Saturday as my official weigh in day. I do Monday often; have done Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, but never Saturday (I don't think).

Since I had to be weighed in at LL last Saturday I decided this time around I would have Saturdays be my official weigh in day. Of course the number on my scale last Saturday morning was different than the one at LL since that was later in the day and I was wearing clothes 😂I will be using that weight to track my weekly weigh in's.

Having said all that, I actually didn't get started this past week until Monday so I'm even more stoked about this week's weigh in.

I did not track on Saturday or Sunday last week, but after tracking Monday through Friday I actually had 44 weekly points remaining! I had rolled over so many daily points throughout the week (you can rollover up to 4 per day if you don't use them) that even though I used some on Thursday and Friday, I still ended the week with 2 more than I started with! Between Monday and Friday I also earned 92 FitPoints of which 71 could have been swapped for food.

All in all I would say that was a pretty successful start to this challenge. 6 days down. 107 to go. Just need to stay focused. Every week won't be like this past week and that will be OK. Last week I worked out every planned day (Mon, Wed, Fri at LL and walking on Tues and Thurs). I drank a gallon of water every day and most days I was done with that gallon before 8 PM. I tracked all my food and obviously stayed within my points.

Week 2 started today and I am off to a great start. I used some of my weekly points today but it's funny because I still only ate 1479 calories. I finished my gallon of water a little while ago, I tracked everything I ate today (and stopped eating around 7 tonight), and enjoyed my rest day to its' fullest.

On tap for week 2: 1) LL workouts Mon, Wed, Fri. Treadmill or outdoor run/walks Sun, Tues, Thurs. 2) Gallon of water everyday. 3) Track my food every day. 4) Stay within allotted points (dailies, weeklies and FitPoints).

Here's to another successful week!

Day 3/113

I am counting Monday as day 1 even though my official weigh in was Saturday. I did not start until Monday and fully enjoyed my weekend. But, throughout this challenge Saturday will be my official weigh in day, so this week's weigh in won't actually be a full week of being on track. And when I say official I just mean how I will be marking my weekly loss throughout the challenge.

Also, I will be using the weight that I was on my home scale Saturday morning to calculate my weekly loss rather than the LL scale. The only time LL will weigh me in again is at the 8, 12 and 16 week marks.

Ok. So we're at day 3. Sometimes days 1-3 are really easy and sometimes not so much. I am happy to say that this time these 3 days have felt incredibly easy. I actually wasn't going to do a blog post today because I almost feel silly be SO excited about 3 good days. I mean, I still have 110 days to go just in this challenge. I was also slightly nervous that if I wrote a blog post about how awesome I'm doing then tomorrow I would have a challenging day. But, I decided that I needed to write this blog post today for my future self.

I've talked before about how I often go back and read through my old blog posts. I've been blogging for almost 7 years now and it has never taken off to be anything more than an outlet for me and I'm 100% OK with that. I love this outlet and I love the ability to go back and read through my struggles and successes.

So here's what I want to tell my future self.....THIS IS NOT THAT HARD!!!!! You really need to
stop making it so hard. What I did this week was plan a breakfast for all week, lunch for all week and 6 different dinners. I made these meals hearty enough that I haven't been eating at all between them and I've barely even gotten hungry. I plan a snack or dessert for after dinner, but I've been done eating by 7:30 or 8 each night and am not hungry between then and bed.

Breakfast has been the absolute weirdest concoction, but I have been on a kick with it for a while actually. It's 3 hard boiled eggs, 1 tbsp chipotle mayo, 2 chicken & maple breakfast sausage and a banana. It amounts to 5 points/507 calories. This keeps me full for a few hours and since I don't often eat breakfast until 9:30 or later I can have a late lunch so I don't get too hungry before dinner.

Lunch has been Dietz & Watson buffalo chicken breast, 1 oz of Trader Joe's Lite shredded mozzarella, 1 tbsp Hellman's Lite Mayo wrapped in a Mission Carb Balance tortilla. I pair that with quinoa & black beans, baby carrots, sugar snap peas and an apple. This amounts to 7 points and 490 calories.

Dinner Monday was chicken parmesan with Banza pasta (which is pasta made from chickpeas). This dinner was 5 points/435 calories. I didn't care for the chickpea pasta so I only ended up eating half of my serving.

My after dinner snack/dessert was an Enlightened bar, which I have talked about before on this blog. These are seriously so good and I have come to the conclusion that they actually really help my weight loss efforts. I eat one of these between 7 and 8 and I am not hungry at all for the rest of the night. There are many times when I am starving right after dinner and it drives me crazy. That hasn't happened at all this week.

I ended Monday at 19/23 points and 1467 calories.

Tuesday was just as successful. Breakfast and lunch were the same. I was a little more hungry in the afternoon so I also had a banana between lunch and dinner. Dinner was pot roast and broccoli. I had read a bunch about nutritional yeast so I decided to try it. I sprinkled some on my broccoli. I don't have much of an opinion on it. It wasn't a strong flavor at all. I'm going to try the nutritional yeast in other ways before I decide whether I think it's worth it or not. Dinner was 7 points/300 calories. Tuesday ended with 22/23 points and 1497 calories.

On to today. Sometimes I fall apart on day 3. I was a little worried that would happen today for no reason, but it didn't. I actually felt the least hungry today, but I did have to fight with myself not to eat for no reason. Breakfast and lunch were the same. Wednesdays I don't eat breakfast until almost 11 so I wasn't eating lunch until around 2 today. I had no problem getting through the day without snacking in between those meals. Dinner was grilled chicken marinated in Olive Garden Italian dressing with a boatload of green beans. This dinner was 3 points/315 calories.

Tonight I decided to have slightly more of a snack after dinner. I had apple slices with 2 tbsp of PB2 powder. This snack was only 1 point/125 calories. I then, of course, ended my day with an Enlightened bar.  Final count today was 19/23 points and 1517 calories.

With WW Freestyle you can "rollover" points you don't use in a day. You can only rollover up to 4 points a day. Monday I rolled over 4, Tuesday I rolled over 1 and today I will rollover 4 again. In just 3 days I have added 9 points to my 42 weeklies that I get. I have also earned 43 FitPoints since Monday.

I am meeting my mom for lunch tomorrow, but I have already planned out my day so I'm not concerned about it at all. I actually tracked all my food for the week (well, except for Sunday) on Sunday! I am already thinking/planning out my food for next week. There is no reason why I can't keep on this streak for 16 weeks (and beyond). I don't need to be this "perfect" all the time either, but there's NO reason why I can't eat like this most of the time so that I can still fit in those indulgences that I like every once in a while. I did that last April with no problem and dropped 15 pounds that month. I don't need to lose weight at that rate all the time, but that just proves that this doesn't have to be as hard as I make it. I like that I have this outlet to remind myself of this because I am SURE that I will hit hard times again when I think this is the hardest thing ever. It's not. Remember that!

#NOEXCUSES Goals

16 weeks; 4 months; 113 days.....a LONG time

16 weeks is a long time. But 16 weeks will also come and go before we know it. Last year I talked about everything I accomplished in the 8 week challenge when I wrote this blog post. A couple of things that stand out the most to me were the fact that for 8 weeks I did not have one drop of alcohol, I was 100% "on program" for all but one weekend through that entire time, and I lost weight 7 out of the 8 weeks of the challenge.

In all of these years of my weight loss journey I don't think I have ever been focused for 16 weeks in a row. Inevitably I give myself a day/weekend/week to not track what I'm eating (which always means eating and drinking too much). That leads me to my first goal for this 16 week challenge:

Goal/Plan #1 = Track everything I eat no matter what!
Easy enough, right? I am going to continue to do WW while I do this 16 week challenge. The other part of this goal is the real challenge and that is to stay within my allotted points for the entire 16 weeks. I will go back to wearing my Garmin so that I can earn FitPoints, but I am going to try very hard to not eat my FitPoints most weeks. It's all a mental game for me. I thought about continuing to not wear my Garmin and if I go into negative points in a week know that it doesn't really matter because even if I didn't track them I still did earn the FitPoints. BUT, I think seeing me go into negative points would have a horrible effect on my psyche and I can't risk that. I also think it would cause me to try to be "perfect" and that's not realistic either. No one is perfect.

Goal/Plan #2 = Workout at LL 3 days/week and Run 2-3 days/week. 
Pretty self explanatory here. I was going to up my workouts at LL to 4 days per week, but I know I'm not going to maintain that. I've been working out at LL pretty consistently 3 days per week for a year now. I'd like to get back to more consistent running and I don't want to go crazy and push my body to 2 a days or anything.

Goal/Plan #3 = NO alcohol for the ENTIRE 16 weeks!
This is a BIG one. It is no secret that I enjoy my wine. Last year I gave up wine for the 8 week challenge and it actually wasn't even that difficult. I told myself at the start of the 8 weeks that it just wasn't an option for 8 weeks so it made it easier to avoid. Same thing this time; just for twice as long. 😆 Here's the thing; I have learned over the years that I can lose weight while still drinking, but that it's so much easier when I am not drinking. I lost all my weight last year between January and May. I also avoided alcohol from Jan 15th-Mar 9th during that time and then gave it up again starting April 2nd. It's no wonder that in those 4 months I dropped 29 pounds. I let alcohol back into the mix in May and from then until now I didn't lose anything else (and gained back several). If I'm serious about getting closer to a healthy weight, I need to give up alcohol at least for the time being.

Outcome Goal "A" = 175 on the scale
Outcome Goal "B" = 180 on the scale
You know I don't usually like to put a number goal on these things, but I'm going to do it. I put a number on my goal last year between April and our Disney trip at the end of May and I absolutely crushed that goal. The above goals are lofty goals, but they are not unrealistic. Neither of those goals require even averaging a 2lb/wk loss. I think trying to average under a 2lb/wk loss is pretty realistic. I am also confident that if I stick to the 3 goals above I will be able to average that kind of loss without a problem.

I would love to put a body fat % goal on myself as well, but to me that's just so hard to pinpoint. I have no idea what is realistic when it comes to losing body fat. Last year in 8 weeks I dropped 3.2 percentage points so perhaps it'd be realistic to hope to drop at least 6 points. But I'm not declaring that an official goal. I can tell you I would love to be 30% body fat by the end of this challenge, but I don't really think that's realistic so I'm fine if I don't hit that goal. Perhaps just less than 36% would be good since I believe that's as low as it got in 2018.

Another thing I did was take a few pics of some jeans that don't currently fit. If those jeans zip up at the end of 16 weeks and I didn't reach either of the above numbers on the scale I think I'll still be pretty damn happy with my results. I can't control what the scale will read at the end of 16 weeks; but I can control what I do to get there. Consistency is going to help me reach my goals. 2019 needs to be the year that I figure out how to be a little more consistent with my weight loss efforts. Let's do this, friends!

Happy November

My view for my walk the other day.....when it actually wasn't raining!

How is it already NOVEMBER?!?!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween and didn't go too crazy on candy. I was actually very proud of myself yesterday because it wasn't even a challenge. My daughter went to a friends house to help pass out candy and my son went trick or treating with some friends. The night wasn't any different for me than any other night.

I saved some points for the end of the day so that I could steal a piece (or 2) of candy and that's exactly what I did. I had half a serving of Chewy Lemonheads (3 points) and one of the mini size Reese's Pumpkins (4 points). As you know, I'm entering my calories in My Fitness Pal as well as tracking on the WW app. My calories yesterday were 1369....on Halloween! Needless to say I am feeling very proud of myself today.

I decided to re-do my weight loss calendar. You may remember I posted a different looking calendar a couple times this year and my weight loss looks slightly different on that one. When I first made the calendar I would count the loss for that month from the 1st to the 31st; but I decided that doesn't give the most accurate measure of where my weight is at. So, these are the dates I used to figure out the above calendar:

January = 1/1/18 - 2/1/8

February = 2/1/18 - 3/1/18

March = 3/1/18 - 4/1/18

April = 4/1/18 - 5/1/18

May = 5/1/18 - 6/8/18 

June = 6/8/18 - 7/1/18

July = 7/1/18 - 8/1/18

August = 8/1/18 - 9/1/18

September = 9/1/18 - 10/8/18

October = 10/8/18 - 11/1/8

You'll see that May is actually all of May plus the start of June which means it incorporates our vacation. You'll also see that it has taken me quite a while to get back on the losing train since getting back from vacation in June. September also incorporates the start of October because I was struggling at that point and really didn't want to get on the scale on October 1st. I think I was scared that the scale might show me a number I didn't want to see. 

But, what I want to focus on is the loss for the month of October! I am absolutely STOKED to see 4.6 pounds on that calendar. You might think I'd be disappointed because "that's not much weight", but you'd be wrong. You'll remember that on September 4th I blogged about wanting to lose 5 pounds in September. And, you'll remember that in my first October post I talked about how I did not meet that goal. Interestingly, for October I didn't denote any specific goal for the month. 2 weeks ago I simply stated that I wanted to get back to being more consistent again with my tracking. I also re-joined WW. 4.4 of those 4.6 pounds have come since that post on 10/16/18. 

Perhaps this has something to do with my loss this month. 😉
I have PR'd on so many things in the gym this month.
This was just one exercise where I did PR'd.
This is 240# and I deadlifted that 6 times! 

On Monday I talked about how I didn't track my food on Sunday and had used almost all my points by the time Saturday was done. What's interesting is that on Monday this week I was easily able to get right back to it. I tracked what I ate and kept my points/calories low. My calories have been pretty low all week and, although not easy, I would say it hasn't been hard because I am allowing myself to have my weekends. I've decided that's where I'm going to stay for a while. If I can be more strict with myself during the week I should still be able to lose weight even with not tracking on the weekends. And, I remember what happened last time I did this; I felt so good when I was tracking during the week that I would start to track on the weekends "just to see" where I was. Or, I enjoyed seeing the scale drastically drop during the week when I kept my calories nice and low that I maybe didn't want to eat as much on the weekends because I didn't want to see that huge jump on the scale on Monday. Also, the more consistent I am with eating reasonably, the more natural it becomes. My "free" weekends naturally won't be as "bad" (I hate using that word but don't know how else to really explain it) because my body has gotten used to less food. But just knowing that if there is something I really want, I can  have it as long as I just wait for the weekend makes all the difference for me right now. 

If I can do all these things and lose 4-5 pounds a month I will still be down another 8-10 pounds before January 1, 2019. That will put me at my lowest weight since before Robbie was born (he's 12) and would be my most successful weight loss in one year ever! And, since I just looked that up, I realize I actually only have to lose another 4 pounds (and keep it off until January 1st) in order to have my most successful weight loss year. 😁I can do this. It doesn't have to be that hard....even if we are starting the most difficult 2 months of the year for weight loss! 

Day 4

For some reason day 4 has always been the most difficult day for me. Since most of the time I will be "starting" on a Monday, day 4 falls on a Thursday and perhaps I tend to fall off because I'm anticipating it being too hard on the weekend or something.

Day 1 (2, 3 and 4) breakfast

So here we are at another day 4. The good news is I've made it to day 4! If you've been reading my boring posts lately, you know that day 4 hasn't been a given these last few months. Last week I got through day 4, but fell apart for days 5-7. I am trying a lot of self-talk today to prevent that from happening again this week.

Day 1 (2 and 3 - haven't decided on day 4 yet) lunch

A couple of weeks ago I only lasted through day 2. On day 3 I overate and then just couldn't get myself back on track for days 4-7. I do think re-joining WW will be what helps me finally jump back on that wagon for more than just a handful of days in a row. Reason being is WW gives me the freedom to have a day (or even 2) where I overeat, but if I track what I'm eating I can see that I'm not actually "off program". There are plenty of times when I'm following WW and I have a day where I end up not tracking because I don't want to see the "damage" I'm doing. When the next day comes and I have a clear head I almost always go back and track everything I ate the day before. The majority of the time when I do that I see that I haven't actually used all my points so really I'm still fine as long as I get right back on track. It helps me to see what "getting back on track" has to mean.

So last night when I indulged while watching my baby girl perform during pre-game at the Cavs game; I didn't even think about it because I still have 26 of my weekly points as well as all the FitPoints that I'm earning this week. My only goal this week is to track and stay within my points - even if I use every last one of those weeklies and FitPoints.

Mary is 4th from the left

But then we're on to today. Day 4 and a day after using 40 points yesterday. The self-talk comes in to play because I start to second guess if I will have enough extra points to get through the weekend staying on plan. Basically do I have enough points to indulge as much as I want on the weekend?? The answer is NO and I never will. Even if I had all 42 weekly points and all my FitPoints coming into Friday, they still wouldn't cover the amount that I've been eating on the weekends. That's why I'm not actively losing.....DUH! 

On the JumboTron

It's getting back into the right mindset. It's not trying to figure out how I can play the system to eat everything I want, but getting back to thinking about what is really worth the indulgence and what I can wait to have until a little later when I've made a little more progress. I will never give up eating certain things, but I need to remember that I am perfectly able to avoid things for a finite period of time while I work on my goals. I can also remind myself that I can make room for those things here and there even when working on my goals - I just can't have it all. 

I chose to eat chicken fingers and fries at the game last night. That will more than likely mean that I will have to choose to skip something over the weekend (wine, an extra snack at the football game Friday night, another heavily fried meal, etc). Does it mean that I won't be able to indulge at all this weekend? No. I need to constantly remind myself that when I get into the groove, it is not that hard! It's not. But, man, why is it so hard so often then??? Because our minds lead us to believe that it is hard. It would be hard to say I am never going to have chicken fingers and fries ever again for as long as I live. But that's not what I'm saying and that's not what I have to do. I simply need to make the choice, count it, shift the rest of my week, and move on. And that is not that hard. So I will prove to myself once again that it's not that hard and that I can and will do it! 

What an awesome experience for these high school kids!

Back to Basics

I've noticed a theme over my last several blog posts. They usually happen at the beginning of the week and they talk about what my plan is to get myself back on track that week.

I could be embarrassed by the fact that I keep having to talk about how I really haven't gotten back on track yet. But, rather than be embarrassed I am choosing to look at it from a different angle. What I see is that even after 5 months of not getting myself back on track I continue to try each and every week. Some weeks I may last 1 day, some weeks (like last week) I last 4 days; but I always try to get myself back on track each and every Monday.

This weekend I realized that counting calories right now isn't giving me enough structure to kick my butt back in gear. I once again went back and read through some blog posts to give me some much needed motivation. I read through all of April since that was such a great month for me. In reading my posts I was reminded about when I was doing WW and tracked a "bad day" to find that I had still actually only eaten about 1800 calories. In the past few weeks when trying to get back on track counting calories I would say 1800 calories was a pretty good day.

What it comes down to is that WW seems to help me focus on better quality food. The point system helps me to determine if a food is "worth it" or not for me in that moment. When counting calories it might be easy to say that something that's 100 calories is just as "worth it" as something else that is 100 calories because the calories are the same. With WW those 100 calories may be 0 points (if it's a banana or hard boiled egg) or 3 points (if it's a 100 calorie bag of pretzels). The hard boiled egg will likely hold me over better than a small bag of pretzels. My body will also process that egg differently than the pretzels. And as much as I logically know this, I seem to make the "better" choices when I'm following the WW program and not just counting calories.

Anyway, I'm saying all this to say that I decided to renew my WW membership again. I signed up for the 3 month contract so I will be doing it for at least the next 3 months. Between February and May when I was following WW I lost about 19 pounds. Let's see what I can accomplish over these next 3 months. I don't expect it to be quite that much for several reasons, but I will be happy with the scale moving back in the right direction again. I need to lose 6.6 pounds to get back to where I was on June 15th when I hit my lowest weight this year. I have 31 days between today and Thanksgiving and my goal is to be back down to my lowest by then.

So let's get back to basics and do what worked for me back in April and see if it will work for me again. My goals this week are:

TRACK! Yea, that's pretty much it this week. The goal for this week is to track everything and stay within my points. I get 23 points per day; 42 weeklies to use and then can earn FitPoints for exercising. For this week I am not worried about how many of those points I use, as long as I end the week at 0 (or with points remaining obviously).

Right now I am focusing on 31 days. I do feel like focusing on short term goals like this have also helped in the past. So today was 1/31 and was a good day. I ended my day at 24 points. On to day 2!

So Far So Good

Day 3/32

It's only been 2 days, but they were not necessarily the easiest of days. I'm happy to report that I am officially re-focused. Monday was day 1 and the day was going by  just fine. I had a bacon, egg and cheese english muffin for breakfast that I made at home so it was 8 points. For lunch I ended up having 2 97% fat free hot dogs on one bun with a big bowl of fruit. I had one jolly rancher in the afternoon and even tracked that tiny piece of candy for 1 point. Dinner was chicken marinated in Olive Garden dressing with green beans for only 3 points. That's only 17 points on the day and I get 23. We had Robbie's last baseball game that evening and I brought a baggie of grapes to snack on during the game.

After the game I was pretty hungry and trying to figure out a snack. I ended up eating another 97% FF hot dog with a piece of cheese wrapped around it (with no bun). That took 4 of the 6 points I had left. Robbie then told me that he and Drew were going to go get milkshakes from Steak N Shake to drown his sorrows (they lost the game which ended his season. He was sad to be done with baseball for the season). When Drew asked me what I wanted from Steak N Shake I said nothing. He came home with milkshakes for everyone but me and Robbie also had a burger and fries! I ate my Enlightened ice cream bar and finished out my day at 25 points (1405 calories).

2 days back on track and 2 blue dots...and a blue dot so far today! 

Yesterday came with its' own challenges. The day started with a failed run. My legs were super sore from Mondays living lean workout and I was just not feeling the run. I kept going, but only ran for the first mile+, the remaining 2 miles I walked. I made myself the same breakfast as Monday. I ended up going to my parents house to do some laundry while I worked (long story, but our dryer is out of commission right now). My mom had said she didn't really have much to offer for lunch. I ended up bringing the leftover chicken from Monday night as well as grapes and cherries. When my dad asked if we wanted to order a pizza or something I said no! When my mom said she wished that Robbie would have come because it would have given us an excuse to go get ice cream for lunch I told her I wouldn't have gotten any anyway. Besides the things I brought, I only ate a sugar free jello while there. I was starving when I got home but stayed focused and made myself a healthy dinner. My after dinner snack was carrots with some light dip and an enlightened ice cream bar. Yesterday ended at 22 points (1272 calories).

As of right now I have 2 points remaining for today, but I've only tracked 882 calories. Still so weird to me how the points/calories comparison works. I have breakfast, AM snack, and dinner tracked so far. I still have to figure out and track my lunch and most likely I'll have 90 calorie (3 points) after dinner to have my ice cream bar. The problem is that I need to go to the grocery store so right now I don't have a lot of 0 point foods on hand for lunch. I will still get my blue dot if I eat 28 points so today my goal is to stay in that range. After I go to the grocery store I can better utilize the 0 point foods to increase my calories without increasing my points!

32 Days

Day 1

I've been just a little busy.

We decided that this is going to be our summer to get lots of projects done around the house. Project #1 was actually our front steps. We did that back in May when the top step completely crumbled under my feet. We hadn't quite decided what order things would go in after those steps, but when we got on the pool deck for the first time this season we realized that had to take top priority. The old deck was just incredibly unsafe and we didn't want to have anybody over to swim with the deck in its current state.

The deck was quite the under taking, but it is now done and absolutely beautiful and incredibly safe! The deck was finished on July 4th and by July 8th we were working on doing the demo of our dining room! This dining room project is going to be even more daunting than we had anticipated (and we anticipated it to be a huge project).

The good news is doing all this demo and construction is great for working out. There were plenty of days when I skipped my run because I figured I'd burn enough calories doing the work I had to do on the house (and I did).

The not so good news is that my eating has been horrible lately. I've eaten significantly worse since being home from vacation than I did on vacation. I do this EVERY time I go on vacation. I don't know if it has to do with being on vacation or just getting out of the habits I was in. I obviously didn't track for 2 weeks on vacation. I came home and tried to immediately start tracking again and I think I only lasted 4 days. In those 4 days I was able to get back down to where I was before vacation, so that was good. I haven't tracked anything since then. And not only that, I got back into the habit of eating things "just because" or eating things because I know I'm going to restrict myself from those things later so I mind as well get my fill of them now. It's so stupid! It's back to the mindset of the food not always being there. I worked so hard to change my mind earlier this year and realize the food will always be there and I can make the choice to have it if I REALLY want it, and I can make the choice to skip it if my goals are more important than having that food.

All clean and ready to be torn apart!

I still have been getting on the scale though and I was surprised to see the scale not going up as drastically as I thought it might (or should). The bad thing about that is I also wasn't feeling any push to get myself back on track because I wasn't gaining weight rapidly. There isn't really anything wrong with that mentality. I mean, if I can take a little break and basically maintain my weight within 5 pounds of my lowest that's not such a bad thing. But, there's no reason to eat as poorly as I've been eating for as long as I've been doing it.

I kept pushing the envelope and kept eating horribly knowing that at some point the scale would reflect the damage I had to be doing. 199.9 is the number that drove me in April and continues to be the number that drives my motivation currently. Back in April it was about getting to that number for the first time; now it's about not going past that number. I do NOT want to see 200 on that scale EVER AGAIN! I am so proud of the fact that I hit 199.8 on April 18th and I have NOT seen 200 again since the day before. Even with weighing myself daily and seeing the normal fluctuations, 200 has never been a number that appeared on that scale since April 17th.

So, I need to find a new number to help drive me to get back on track. I had already decided that today was going to be my day to re-focus. The scale this morning was closer to 200 than I want to be so it definitely helped push that motivation to actually re-focus today and get back to losing weight. I have 32 days until my parent's 50th wedding anniversary party and my goal is to be as close to 185 as possible. I honestly can't remember the last time I weighed 185 pounds. I know after I got married and before I got pregnant with Mary I was hovering somewhere around 160. By the time I gave birth to her I was over 200. I was 189 when I got pregnant with Robbie; so it's probably been about 15 years since I was consistently 185 (or less).

32 days is plenty of time for me to reach that goal but I have to focus and work at it. I will have to track my food every single day for those 32 days. I will need to keep my calories/points in my allowed range every day for the 32 days. I've done it before and I can (and will) do it again. Today is day 1. I have had 2 meals so far today and have already planned and tracked my dinner. I will be tracking using WW and will try to have 5/7 blue dot days each week. My goal/plan is to only use my dailies and weeklies each week and not dip into my FitPoints. These are all the things I did back in April when I lost 14.6 pounds. During April I still had days where I ate popcorn at the movies, I had ice cream on basically a nightly basis, I had a couple days where I just lost my focus and binged (but estimated it as best as I could after the fact). I'm saying all this to remind myself that it's not that hard! It doesn't have to be as hard as I make it out to be. Track my food and move on!

So there you have it. I'm back and re-focused on continuing this weight loss journey. I've given myself a long enough break. It's time to get the scale moving back in the right direction!

Vacation Part 2

I have barely any pics from the 2nd part of vacation so I'll just continue to bombard you with our awesome Disney pics.

The Disney part of the vacation was done on Saturday. We started the day in Animal Kingdom and quickly decided that next time we will not visit a park on our leaving travel day. We were pretty well spent from the week and knew we had about a 6 hour drive ahead of us. We ended up leaving the park even earlier than we had originally planned and were on the road around 1 PM. 

Our plan for that Saturday was to drive to South Carolina, spend the night and then drive to Maryland the next day. My husband had a conference that he had to get to on Sunday evening so we had no choice but to go straight there. When we originally planned this trip he thought the conference was the following week. So after another 2 days of driving we arrived at the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor, MD. 

Here's the real kicker. Because Mary had to get back home for dance team practices we decided that I would drive from Maryland to PA to meet my parents. Yes, my parents are amazing. Not only did they take our son for 5 days, but drove 3 hours one way to pick them up! My parents took the kids and dropped Mary at our neighbors and took Robbie home with them. I ventured BACK to Maryland to have some quality time with my hubby. 

One of the only pics I got while at National Harbor

Once again I noticed some pretty major changes that have happened with my way of thinking. I was very frustrated Monday night because I got stuck in some major traffic on my way back to National Harbor. It was now almost 8 by the time I was back and showered and the only food I had all day was when I met my parents in PA around 1 PM. I was irritated and hungry. We went to Cadillac Ranch and they have these "nacho's" on their menu that are basically loaded waffle fries. Um, yum! In the past I would have easily shared that appetizer with Drew and then also get an entire meal myself. I decided that their Two Apples Spinach Salad sounded really good and it was basically a side salad so it wouldn't be huge. I still had wine and I'm still positive this meal was way more calories than I needed; but the big deal is that I would have eaten a lot more even just a year ago. The other difference is the salad is really what sounded the best to me. And OMG it was good! 

So back in 2015 when we went to Disney we actually did the same trip. We went straight from Disney to National Harbor because Drew attended the same conference. That time the kids stayed in National Harbor with us. I really wish that this time Mary and I would have taken the time to recreate the above pic. I actually really loved this pic in 2015 even though I couldn't stand how I looked. It's unfortunate I don't have one from this year to show you. 

So during this week I actually think I probably did more "damage" than the week at Disney. I'm not sure that I was eating much more, but I wasn't taking 20,000+ steps a day. I spent time during the days working (since I work remotely and Drew was in meetings anyway) and then in the evenings we would walk to dinner and walk around the harbor for a little while. I did go down to the gym on both Tuesday and Wednesday so I was proud of myself for that. 

I ended up buying Mary a shirt that I think I might end up stealing. I was texting her pics of the shirts to choose from and it ended up that the one she liked best didn't have any in XS. The smallest they actually had in that one was a medium; but she decided she liked it enough and would wear it big. This shirt looked quite big to me so I decided to try it on back in our room. I texted her this pic and told her that I might just keep the shirt for myself! I know this shirt is cut big, but I still can't believe I fit into any medium size shirt! I probably will end up wearing it more than Mary will 😆 

We got home on Thursday evening and on Friday I stepped on the scale to see my official post vacation weigh in. I was a little nervous because on one hand I had given myself permission to gain weight and as long as I didn't see 200 again I told myself I'd be OK. BUT, I had been feeling like I really did such a good job so I really didn't think I should have gained a ton so I was nervous to see what the scale would reflect. Friday morning the scale read 195.2! That's only a gain of 3.2 pounds in 2 weeks of being away! 2 weeks of eating out for every meal of every day. 2 weeks of giving myself permission to eat whatever I wanted; whenever I wanted. 2 weeks of drinking plenty of wine! 

Now here's the kicker and here is where I have always struggled. I decided to let myself continue to have the weekend and just get back to it on Monday. That's a slippery slope because it gets harder and harder to get back on track once you let yourself hit pause for a while. What I will tell you though is that I don't think it's going to be that hard. I have goals. I think I've finally convinced myself that I CAN do this and that I WILL do this this time. I am so proud of where I'm at, but I'm not yet content. Remember how I talked about already feeling complacent last year on my birthday? Basically because I was fitting into clothes that I had in my closet that hadn't fit yet, I was finding it harder and harder to stay on track. Now, I've had to go out and buy new clothes because the clothes I have don't fit; but this time it drives me to continue to stay on track. I have a bag full of size 12 clothes from my sister that I want to fit into. 

So getting back on track after vacations has notoriously been harder for me than not gaining a ton of weight when ON vacation. If I look at my weight from some of the other Disney trips we've taken, I usually gain only a couple of pounds.....but then in the next few weeks of being home I gain several more pounds! I went back to weighing myself every day because I do think that for now it has been helping me. Saturday my weight jumped more than a pound, but I didn't panic. I knew that I was going to get back on track on Monday and that I didn't actually GAIN more than a pound overnight. The next morning it went down .2 and on Sunday it went down another .2. By yesterday morning the scale read 196.2 - so another pound up from Friday and 4.2 pounds up from the start of the vacation. Honestly, I was fine with this. 

Mary and I are the big blue blob. It was raining and Mary and I
were sharing a poncho (long story) so we covered ourselves
with it for the ride. We were laughing the whole time. 

I never gave myself a number of what I would be OK with me gaining while on vacation, but I think I always had 5 lbs in my head. I wanted my weight to be 195 so that I'd have that 5 pound buffer. So I think that's why the 4.2 pounds didn't bother me because it was still less than 5 and I had definite plans to get back on track. I also know that because it came on so quickly it will likely come off quickly. It's not actual fat; it's water weight and bloat. 

So yesterday was the day to get back to it. I hate calling it back on track because I don't necessarily see what I was doing as being "off track". I was consciously not trying to lose weight for those 2 weeks. Anyway, yesterday started another time period of being more "strict" with my food choices. I went back to what worked so well in April. I stayed 100% on program yesterday eating my 3 meals and Enlightened bar to end my day. I ate nothing in between meals and ended my day having used 20 of my 23 points. According to MFP it was right around 1500 calories. I also got back to drinking my water. I have been pretty perfect with drinking a gallon (or just slightly under) of water EVERY DAY. These last 2 weeks I maybe drank half that amount (or even less than half). When I got on the scale this morning it had dropped 3 pounds from yesterday! That means I am only 1.2 pounds away from my pre-vacation weight after just ONE day of being strict. 

From April 1st to May 1st I lost 14.6 pounds. I tracked every single day and never went over my weekly points.  From May 1st to May 26th I lost 2.2 pounds. I also did not track 9 of those 26 days in May. My plan is to get back to that tracking every day and staying within my points for the next 25 days. 

Back to it! I have goals to crush!