Weigh In - December 30

Starting Weight - 235 on January 1st, 2012
Current Weight - 214.7

Weight lost gained in 2 weeks -  3.5 lbs
Weight lost so far in 2012- 20.3 lbs

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Well, it's no surprise that after a week at my Mom's house over Christmas that I gained weight.  I didn't over-indulge, but I did enjoy myself.  And now I'm home and almost ready to get back into the swing of things.

Hilary bought me a new step/calorie counter for Christmas and Sarah got me a Fitbit Zip.  While it might seem silly to use both, I like them each for different purposes.  I am very motivated by seeing the numbers climb over the course of the day and will try to get in those few extra steps around the house to make my goal.

TaeKwon-Do starts up again this week.  I'm planning to test for my yellow belt at the end of the month so I need lots of practice.

Tribesport is also giving me lots of motivation when I sign up for challenges of exercises I can do around the house with little to no equipment.

Liam got a punching/kicking bag that I'll be setting up for him today.  It's a lot of fun and I think we will both get a lot of use out of it.  I don't think I'll be using his new chin up bar... not only will I have to install it low enough for him to reach, but I don't have the arm strength (yet) to lift my own weight.

So overall I'm ready to face a new year.

Resolutions for 2013

I’m not usually one to make resolutions, or even to set long term goals, but I’m going to give it a go this year in the hopes of having commitments to help keep me on track.

1. I want to work towards getting at least my Green belt in TaeKwon-do this year. I will test for my yellow belt at the end of January, so that would mean moving up 2 more levels over the course of the year.
2. I want to try to run a 5K run for a fundraiser for Liam’s school in June. Considering I can’t run the 0.5K that we do as part of our warm up in TKD, I have a lot of work to do for this one.
3. I want to continue to log my food everyday in MyFitnessPal.
4. I want to lose at least 30 pounds this year. This still doesn’t get me to my desired final weight, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on to hit that magical number.
5. I want to bike more in the summer.
6. I want to continue to get fit.

Six goals (really 5, since the first 5 all feed into #6) seems reasonable.  So here's to a happy and heatlthy 2013.

Weigh in - Dec 16, 2012

Starting Weight - 235 on January 1st, 2012
Current Weight - 211.2

Weight lost this week -  2.3 lbs
Weight lost so far in 2012- 23.8 lbs

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I am getting back into the habit of weighing myself regularly.  I stopped weighing myself sometime towards the end of the summer and  I now realize that not seeing both the progress and the backslides is detrimental to my success.   I am truly motivated by the numbers and need to focus on them so that I have something to work towards.

Knowing that I've lost almost 24 pounds this year is great.  Looking back from when I first tracked my weight in April 2010 and seeing that I'm down 48 pounds from then is even better!

One pound at a time, the journey continues.

Motivation , Accountability and the Internet

Getting fit, eating right and working out can be hard.  Having people in your corner cheering you on can be the difference between sitting on the couch and getting up and moving.  I have amazing support in Hilary.  She helps with making good food choices by planning healthy meals and having fresh, great food in the house.  She also reminds to me exercise and go for walks and puts up with my hula-hooping on the Wii Fit in the living room.

In other parts of my life, the internet has been an important way for me to meet people, talk about topics that are near and dear to my heart and learn from people who have already been there and done that.  So it makes sense that I turn to the internet for weight loss and fitness (even though the fitness part seems counter intuitive) 

I track my calories on the MyFitnessPal website.  I really like the site as they have a great database of foods. But their forum never really appealed to me for a place to chat and get support. 

I joined the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans and for awhile they seemed like an okay place to hang out online.  They sponsored an opportunity for me to participate in the Healthy Wage Matchup.  But they never seemed to follow through on things  and the discussions weren't what I was looking for so I strayed away from them.

Then this week I stumbled upon a fairly new site, Tribesports.  While I don't consider myself a sports enthusiasts like some of their members do, that doesn't seem to be an issue.  I can track my fitness progress there, participate in discussions from weight loss to fitness to how my day is going and they also have exercise challenges that you can participate in.  The more active you are on the site, the higher your ranking.  But it's really the people that keep me going back to it.  I can post that I did 25 lunges and within minutes 3-4 people have "encouraged" me or left a comment telling me what a great job I'm doing. The instant satisfaction of knowing that  someone else is encouraging my progress is great.  I also feel accountable to complete the challenges I've signed up for, because people will see whether or not I have posted each day with what I've done.

This week alone I've been motivated to get up every morning and stretch, stay off Facebook, do lunges, planks and wall push ups.   And I feel great!

A Weight Lifted

Jut over a month ago I had some medical/health issues that were concerning enough to send me to the Doctor, who then sent me for tests.  I had the tests yesterday and got a clean bill of health!

What I hadn't realized was how much the concern about the possible outcomes of the tests had been weighing on me.  I think part of my inability to get back into the swing of diet and exercise was the dread of what the tests could have turned up.

Now that I have put this behind me, I feel lighter and freer today.  Ready to focus on my healthy-health and not worried about bad results and scary diagnoses.
 

I will

I WAS able to lose 30 pounds.

I WAS able to track my calories every day.

I WAS able to drink 2 liters of water every day.

I WAS able to exercise for 30 minutes every day.

I WAS able to enjoy treats without overindulging.

I WAS able to measure out my food and have portion control.

I WAS able to make good food choices.

I WAS able to monitor my weight loss and gains.

I WAS able to blog regularly about my journey.

I WILL do it all again.

*I think this makes an excellent 100th post for this blog.

Coffee... how I love thee!

Or alternately titled "Why do I do this to myself?"

I started seriously drinking coffee when I was 14 years old.  I had my first job working as a nursing assistant in a retirement home.  I worked 2-3 evenings a week till 9:30.  The dining room always had 2-3 pots of coffee brewed, just ready for the taking. Within months I was up to drinking at least a pot of coffee a shift.  Amazingly caffeine has never interfered with my sleep.  Quite the opposite actually.  It seems that the soothing heat of a hot cup of coffee late at night will lull me to sleep instead of keeping me up.  That being said, it certainly wasn't much help when I was cramming for exams.

I started drinking coffee with milk and sugar, but in my early twenties I switched to black.  But then I developed hypo-glycemia and had many fainting spells from low blood sugar.  I also smoked at the time.  After too many instances of feeling woozy (or passing out completely) I finally made the connection that if I smoked while drinking black coffee I would pass out.  Who knows what was so special about that combination, but adding milk and sugar back into my coffee solved the problem (and no, at the time the idea of quitting smoking never even entered into the realm of possibilities).

I continued on with my love affair of coffee, drinking several a day.  Until I decided to get serious about losing weight.  When I looked at my overall diet, the quickest hit for cutting out calories was to cut back on my coffee intake.  A medium double double from Tim Horton's is 230 calories.  That is currently 17% of my daily intake.  It seemed like a no brainer.

Cutting out coffees on the go was easy.  Cutting back on my morning coffees at home took a bit more work, but eventually I got down to just one a day.  I'm not willing to give it up completely.  And so for the past 9 months or so, I've enjoyed a single cup of coffee before work.  But every now and then, if I have a bit more time in the morning, I figure that I will splurge and have that second cup.  We don't use cream at home, and the cups are smaller then they are at Timmie's, so from a calorie point of view, it's not that bad.

The problem though?  My body seems to have gotten used to a single cup of coffee and the second one now has me doubled over in pain, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  And yet do I learn?  Of course not.  It's not until I'm sipping the last drop and the pain in my upper rib cage starts that I have a D'oh! moment. The pain lasts for about 30 minutes and nothing seems to help it move along any faster.  I'm such a slow learner that I think I need to put a post it note in the cupboard by the sugar bowl that reads:

Why does the lure of good food always win out over common sense?