Archive for May, 2008
May 28th, 2008 by Cynthia
I must admit... I usually don't leave it this late to write my weigh-in post! Procrastination at work? Not really... I actually was dedicating some time to getting some actual house work and other tasks done. You probably noticed that I did not wait to change my ticker or pounds to go button!
Anyway, the verdict was 221.6. Confirming that last week's horrendous weigh-in was *mostly* a water gain. But not entirely water. So I have some work to do to get back to my previous low of 219.6.
Truthfully, my weight has been bouncing around quite a bit since Monday. I keep having sugar cravings and sadly, have given in to some of them. Though I drew a line at buying the tempting bag of high fructose corn syrup strawberry bon-bons at the store. Those stayed at the store! But I brought home and ate two Reese's Nutrageous candy bars and a large can of Wasabi fried peas and ate them all in an evening.
Even yesterday... after eating well all day, we went to a movie. Then had a late meal out. I had a salad... and with dressing on the side which I used in a fairly minimal fashion, i.e. fork dipping. Also had a bowl of soup... but the shame was in asking my husband to buy me a cookie on a stick. I love those! I did remember to order iced tea instead of a diet soda... I'm working to ditch the habit of automatically ordering diet soda at restaurants.
All I can say is thank goodness for goals! I have a goal to reach or be under 200 pounds by the end of the year and time is passing by. So I have to get back on the wagon NOW if I mean to reach it. That means better logging and more attention to preparing proper meals and back to exercise.
Yesterday I did some house cleaning... and I realize that I need to keep up on that better. It's so easy to procrastinate, because I have the perfect excuse... i.e. "My feet hurt." And they DO. Quite a bit last night after yesterday's efforts. But the housecleaning needs to get done too. I feel better when my house is clean. You know, I keep my kitchen clean, because it's essential for me to be able to go in there and fix a meal fast. And it feels good to have a clean kitchen. But that feeling gets diminished when the rest of the house is a constant hairball.
Well, today, I will do the living room. That's where I use my TRX trainer right now and also my fitness ball. I hate putting my equipment in there when the floors are fuzzy with cat fluff drifting about.
May 25th, 2008 by Cynthia
I just got tagged by Christine Braun over at Iowa Avenue to play a blog game by creating a six word or less memoir. Mine's the title of this post and also the title of my member log over on the Precision Nutrition forums. These five words are what I try to keep in mind as I go about my daily life.
Naturally, sometimes when I look at cat fuzz on the carpet and decide I need to vacuum, I ignore these words and trot off to the pool instead!
Still, one of my worst habits is procrastination and it is a habit I fight every day on various fronts. And I've sure done my share of "I'll start a diet tomorrow." or "I'll eat better tomorrow." or "I'm going to eat what I want this week and come Monday, I'll change my lifestyle for the better." or even "It's the holidays... I'll eat what I want and go on a diet after New Years."
It's easy to put off life change. Life change is work and the vast majority of people, including me, naturally veer away from extra work. Hence the proliferation of quick fix diets and the taking of pills and meds to correct the ills caused by overeating and under-exercising. Yet... life change is also easy when taken a step at a time, a moment at a time. And we only have NOW to make that step. The past is done... the future may or may not be there for us. You never know what life will throw you. We assume we will always have that tomorrow, but that's not guaranteed.
I may lapse on occasion, I may... as I did last night, buy a dark chocolate bar and a small can of Wasabi fried peas and eat that INSTEAD of a healthy meal. (I stayed under maintenance calories though!) But I will make change for the better at my very next opportunity.
The past is the past. If you skipped your exercise session, if you ate fast food, whatever it was, you can't go back and undo it. So the only thing to do is realize that the time you have to change is NOW! Even if you only make one healthy decision today... that's OK. It's a foundation to be built on. It's all about choices. I made a poor choice last night... but I am making a better choice now. Keep moving forward, folks!
Back to the game... you are IT!
BlubberBeGone
Radical 180
VP Health & Fitness
Kathy Calculates: Weight Loss
All About Habits
However, I'm also going to add that as far as *I* am concerned, participation is entirely voluntary, it's an invitation and may be refused or ignored. My friends know me as sudden death on chain letters and chain emails! Play if you want to... and if not, that's OK.
Rules of play:
Write your own six word or less memoir...
post it on your blog...
Link to the person who tagged you...
Tag 5 or more bloggers...
Leave a comment on the tagged bloggers site with an invitation to play.
May 23rd, 2008 by Cynthia
Well, some of the weekend weight gain is now off... I'm hovering slightly below 223 pounds. But that's a number that is not making me very happy after seeing the 2-teens ever so briefly! So I'm trying to rein in the eating and eat cleaner and fewer calories while my feet are recovering.
They are being slow about it. I've decided not to push this week and just keep off them as much as I can. I'll return to exercise on Monday. My body could use a break and it's telling me "OFF THE FEET NOW!" The flare-up has pain in my heels... usually the pain is located in my arches. I'm taking my fish oils, my Aleve and drinking a lot of water and icing.
I did fine with eating on Monday... so-so on Tuesday/Wednesday. OK yesterday, except I found one last PowerBar unpacking and ate that for breakfast and I got on a bit of a peanut butter eating thing last night. Calories were still firmly in line, but didn't need those extra fats.
I am clicking along today.
Meal 1 = (362 calories) smoothie (green tea, plain yogurt, protein powder, flax meal, almonds, spinach, Greens Plus wildberry burst and blueberries)
Meal 2 = (320 calories) grass fed lean ground beef with onion, carrot, mushroom, baby bok choy, spinach and green pepper and 2 TBSP red curry sauce. Also a tangelo.
Meal 3 = (420 calories) smoothie (green tea, cottage cheese, protein powder, flax meal, almonds, walnuts, spinach, cinnamon)
Meal 4 = (465 calories) Pure Catch Marinated Tilapia - Toasted Black Pepper (from Safeway), 2 cups broccoli, reduced-fat feta cheese, sesame seed, a little sesame oil, lemon juice, craisins
Meal 5 = (203 calories) a little pudding/softserve dessert with cottage cheese, coconut milk, a little grated ginger root, 1/2 serving of banana flavored protein powder and frozen strawberries whipped up in the new Vita-Mix.
Total: 1770 calories.
May 23rd, 2008 by Cynthia
It may have been caught by my Akismet spam trap. It doesn't catch legitimate comments very often, but once in a while it does and I have to de-spam them before they will appear. I do moderate new commentators.
May 21st, 2008 by Cynthia
It was a rainy and rather gloomy looking Tuesday morning and I was still feeling a bit beat up from my weekend trip as I sat down at my computer to lazily peruse my email. But then I spotted an email with a subject heading of ! "You won the Lipton bike!".
Now THAT got my attention!
Hi Cynthia,
You won the Lipton bike from my contest! Here's a link to my video revealing you as the winner: http://tinyurl.com/65jgtt
So, please get me your full name, shipping address, and I guess a shipping phone #, and I'll forward your info. onto Lipton.
Congratulations!
WOW! I let out an immediate WHOOP! Then ran to the bedroom to rouse hubby, who was sleeping late. This was BREAKING NEWS! Fortunately, my long suffering husband is used to my excitable outbursts.
I had entered a number of the Lipton Bike Giveaway blog contests. But I don't think I ever expected to really win. This is the biggest thing I've won ever! I spent chunks of yesterday chanting "BIKE, BIKE, BIKE!".
I won mine over at Everyday Goddess blog! You can even see a video of Liz drawing my name WHILE RIDING HER OWN BIKE! I can't imagine making a video while riding a bike, much less doing a contest drawing, but it's all there in the video, which is quite fun! I must say, Liz has been great... she's already forwarded my info to the Lipton contest representative and given me the contact info for same. I guess now I wait to hear from them. Or maybe the bike just arrives on my doorstep. I honestly don't know how these things work. I'll keep you posted!
Meanwhile, my husband started entering some of the blog giveaways as well! He even found a few new ones. I don't know if Lipton will give more than one to a household, but he didn't see any rules saying they wouldn't. Maybe if I get into riding, we'll have to look for a bike for him.
Speaking of which... I haven't ridden a real bicycle in about 30 years. I think I'm going to have to learn all over again! I actually looked up some reviews of the Fuji Crosstown 2.0 yesterday and they seemed favorable. And I found another, more detailed review here, again, sounds good. So with luck, it will be just the right bike for me. It will only be the third bicycle I've owned. My first one was small, red and with training wheels on. I actually ended up learning better without the training wheels. Later, as I grew, my parents got me a silver "English racer" style bike. I rode that one a lot.
I'm thinking that this will be a challenge... our streets here have some mondo potholes... and we have hills. Fairly steep hills. I live on one. I've never ridden on hills before AT ALL! So I did some Googling this morning and came up with a local bike club... and a bicycle safety site. I feel better already. When the bike arrives, help will be available.
May 19th, 2008 by Cynthia
Well, stressful though getting ready for the trip was, I had fun! I wouldn't say the eating was utterly horrible, but I ate too many calories, I'm certain of that! I didn't track and I was too busy to log.
My weight is now almost 10 pounds higher today than it was last week at 229.0 pounds.
Sigh.
I'd say most of the problem eating was road trip food. I had meant to make some food at least for the drive to the Seattle area... but ran out of time and instead, swung by Albertson's and picked up some dozen or so PowerBars. I find those help when I get sleepy on the road and given at the time, I was running on 2.5 hours of sleep, getting tired was almost a certainty. Plus, I figured I wouldn't have time to stop much for actual meals. So though I did have a proper smoothie for breakfast on Friday, the other food was several PowerBar Performance - Peanut Butter bars during the drive and a Subway roasted chicken breast wrap with a cookie and water. And a cup of coffee and two cookies at the Indian John Hill rest area. (Coffee was BADLY NEEDED by then!)
Once at my hotel, I went down to Shari's restaurant and had grilled salmon with steamed veggies and a rice pilaf. And I'm afraid I splurged and had dessert, apple pie ala mode. Plus a cookie on a stick! And ate another couple PowerBars and some beef jerky back in my room.
Breakfast Saturday was the hotel's continental breakfast. I had a bowl of cheerios mixed with granola and milk. Plus a mini muffin and an orange and glass of apple juice. Lunch was a turkey sandwich box from Ingallina's, with fruit, bag o' chips and a frosted sugar cookie. The sugar was rather welcome by then, it was a long hot day. But I got to visit and have fun with friends and was on my feet a lot, so I'm sure I got plenty of walking exercise. Dinner was at Olive Garden, where I had the Venetian Chicken (chicken breasts in an apricot glaze with vegetables). Also had some bruschetta, tossed salad, a single breadstick and 2 strawberry daiquiris. No dessert!
My feet were pretty badly off by the time I retired for the night... I filled a couple gallon ZipLoc baggies with ice from the ice machine and did my best to ice them down. I still felt hungry, so ate another couple PowerBar Nut Naturals and some jerky. Thirst was a biggie, I kept trying to drink, but was chatting so much that I really didn't get anywhere near my normal liquids consumption in. So I was drinking a couple diet cokes a night from the hotel vending machine.
Breakfast at the hotel again... waffle with butter and syrup and bowl of cheerios. PowerBars as needed to keep me going. Two cookies and coffee again at Indian John Hill. Late lunch finally in Prosser at Taco Bell. And then, after some rest and unloading the car, the remaining three PowerBars and some beef jerky for dinner. Watched "The Tudors" and "Desperate Housewives" and crashed.
OK... most of the weight is going to be water weight. So it's not as bad as it looks right now, but it's still possible I gained a pound or two. I'm getting back on track TODAY!
One bit of bad news... came back with a big blister on one toe. So I had to skip water aerobics today. My feet are rather painful, so I am going to try and do what I can to calm them down again. Even my ankles are upset. And my back is a bit sore from being on my feet so much.
May 13th, 2008 by Cynthia
Shows what I know. I was thinking "Ate fast food salad Saturday night.", skipped some meals, didn't eat veggies with every meal, was getting a little lax with prompt food and exercise logging, didn't exercise as much and what do you know... maybe my body needed a little rest.
Yesterday's weigh-in at 219.6 was a pleasant surprise!
Today's weigh-in was even more pleasant, though I suspect that is simply a water issue. Pool workouts seem to suck me dry... and that's even with drinking 20 cups of water yesterday! The hydration percentage difference on my Tanita scale was telling. Yesterday, 35.9%... today 35.0%.
Still, it feels good to be tasting the 2-teens!
Here's the calorie per day breakdown for the curious:
Monday = 2141
Tuesday = 1825
Wednesday = 2243
Thursday = 1581
Friday = 2436
Saturday = 2358
Sunday = 1681
Total of 14,265 for the week.
What I aim for weekly is 14,700, i.e. 500 cal/day deficit. Probably explains why I was so hungry yesterday!
With a road trip coming up, my aim is to enjoy myself, but hopefully in a moderate fashion so I don't totally destroy my recent progress.
