21 February 2012

Approaching 10%

Well, I know it's been a long time since I have posted. Things are a little funky with the Internet connection at my house. We are in the process of replacing our router and crossing our fingers that that was the problem.

A lot has been going on, but the biggest thing is my weigh-in on Saturday. I stopped by the meetings location on the way out to knit night because I was terrible and slept in too late to make it to the meeting. The lady there was very nice and was very encouraging and celebrated because... I lost 3.8 lbs last week. Yep. Scary thing, isn't it? I think whatever was making them stick finally just gave in. It makes me very hopeful.

I am only 0.2 lbs from my 10% goal. So, next week I will be 90% of the person I was in July 2011. One tenth of me just gone. That's crazy! I had been very good and on-track and I remember how frustrating it was to fall off the wagon. This is the first time I've been below the weight I was at in October before my knee surgery. Finally on track and feeling great. So, wish me luck for the rest of this week. I've got to lose at least 0.2!

07 February 2012

The Soreness, She Hurts!

So, my couch to 5k run went well yesterday... Except for one thing. Something happened about 1/3 of the way in and I had to restart the whole thing. Thus, I was out 40 minutes instead of 30. Honestly it wasn't so bad at the time, which is something I find very heartening, but my legs were pretty angry about a jiffy after I stopped compelling them to move. I took a long soak in the bathtub in some hot water to relax my muscles and warm up since it was cool and rather damp outside. I'm not feeling fantastic, but it's better. I'm going to have to do a better job of stretching next time. I'll do some research on better stretches and post what I find.

Oh, I was able to run the nexercise app in the background while I had the runner app up. It was great.

I bought a huge bag of cuties at the store the other day. They have cute sayings on the stickers. I'm still eating them. They are the only tolerable citrus fruit in my opinion.

05 February 2012

Working Out

Well, over the past week I've been working very hard to get a lot of activity in.

I started couch to 5k this week. I am using the iphone app called 5k runner. You can listen to music while doing it and it tells you when to walk and run. I had wanted to start on Monday, but I was called in to work so I went ahead and did my first run on Wednesday. My sister, her boyfriend, and my little brother all came along with me. It was great to have that support and everyone enjoyed it. The first run was rough. I think some of the problem is the heat. Yes, folks, I live in south Texas and it was pretty warm on Wednesday. Anyway, I did the second yesterday and it went much better than the first. The thing that helped is the fact that it has been cooler for the past few days. I am enjoying it. My sweater has been located. It went much better yesterday. I'm feeling very encouraged.

I did not go running today because the weather was rainy and nasty when I wanted to go. So, I decided to do 50 minutes on the exercise bike/spinner. I have been using a new app a friend introduced me to for that. It's called nexercise. I'm pretty happy with it. It tracks your activity and calculates experience points for it. It's pretty cool and I'd suggest it to people with an iPhone. I believe it's in beta for android, as well. I know someone else signed up to do beta testing. Cool app. I'm going to see if I can get nexercise and my 5k runner app to run simultaneously and see how that goes tomorrow. We will see.

I am very surprised at how I've been feeling about this. I have never been one for much physical activity and part of me has been terrified of how this would go, but I feel really great about it. We'll see how much I progress as time goes on.

04 February 2012

Weight Watchers Weigh-In

Today I went in for my weigh-in. I unfortunately gained 0.2 lbs. It took a month for me to work up the courage to go back in and I paid for it. I have been struggling and have not been very motivated to keep up with the plan in the past month or so.

I can attribute this to a few different things. The most apparent is the lack of structure in my life. When I first started weight watchers, I was working in an office environment with set lunch times and considerably less stress in many ways.

Another is the lack of family support. My mom and I started weight watchers together in July and she has has a lot of trouble staying on plan, as well. My sister and her boyfriend have also moved in and they have little concern for their weight and tend to eat a lot of junk food, so I have had more opportunity to eat things I should not be.

Another problem I have been having is lack of motivation and creativity to cook dinner. There are a lot of different recipes I know, but none is them sound very good lately. This also causes me to eat out a lot more than I should. With all of these factors, I have been going over my points rather often. The weekly extra 49 are there for extra eating, not to be used on a routine basis as I have been.

There are a number of things I need to start doing to help keep myself motivated to push onward.

1. Roll with the lack of structure. Pack food for when I am out of the house. This will help me out a lot when I am at school or work. I get tired of sandwiches so getting more creative with lunch is going to be essential. One of the things I have purchased in the past and really enjoyed are the tuna or chicken salad kits that come with the necessary ingredients to mix up your own salad (mayo and relish) and crackers. I get the Sunkist brand for tuna and Harvest Creek for chicken. They are really good and only 6 points plus for the whole kit. Not too shabby.

2. Better snacking. I have not been fabulous about eating good snacks and this shows up in my healthy checks. I I don't get nearly enough fruits or vegetables. Instead of eating my sister's Oreos, I am going to try to go for fruits and vegetables. I love fruit and many vegetables so there's no reason to not enjoy them as a snack for no points as opposed to points-heavy snacks that don't fulfill any real nutritious need.

3. Ask for my family's support. My sister and I take turns with cooking and she tends to cook a lot more heavy, fatty foods. I know that I have been coming off as a snob when I ask her to avoid cooking with a lot of fat or butter. I need to have a sit down with the whole family and explain that I want to have dinner and eat with them, too. It doesn't have to be perfect, but a little give and take is necessary in this scenario. Also, I probably need to take more time to cook myself. At least when I cook I know what's going on and how to count everything up.

4. Encourage my mom. Having her do well on the plan will help me. She has been encouraging me to go back to the meetings and now I need to encourage her, too. She has wanted to go back and I news to encourage her. She was going to go with me this week but she took my little brother out of town to go to an indoor water park. We will see how she does.

5. Get good ideas for cooking! I how subscribed to a number of great recipe twitter feeds over the past few days. I'll be sure to post about anything interesting I try so that I can keep track of different successes and failures accordingly.

With all of these tools, I think I will be well armed in the struggle to get back on track and work hard to do better. I was very successful in weight watchers before and can be again if I set my mind to it. Life changes, circumstances change. It's necessary to roll with those changes and not use them as an excuse to not do well. I'll be posting about this topic much more often, now. I know I will have a lot of success to share.