Minnie Me

FEELING GOOD TODAY!

I always weigh myself on Sunday night between 8 and 9pm if at all possible. I started out weighing myself all of the time as is recommended  but I found that this did nothing but drive me completely batty as the number changed all of the time due to little fluctuations throughout the day. I also always wear the exact same thing even though it's getting huge on me so that it doesn't affect my weight in any way because I can be kind of a control freak and I can't weigh myself in my birthday suit in the living room now that we share an apartment with our friend James. lol I also weigh in on my wii fit which has been really accurate for me. 

Last week was a bit of a bummer, I've been loosing weight even if just a little every week since I really got serious about weight loss and the week before I had just celebrated loosing my first 20 pounds...and then I gained 2 back....To be fair, this was very likely because we ordered in pizza, went out for Thai and for Italian food all in the same week and I overate in all three places and your weight can fluctuate for a lot of reasons besides all of that. Erm...also I went on like one walk for exercise all week...lol...who knew that as much as I love food, changing my eating habits is actually tremendously easier than getting my butt of the couch. ;) The point being that it was deserved and even expected but disappointing none the less and I felt like this week I had to make up for it. 

I worked my butt off this week and with 1,719 calories under my calorie budget this week I was expecting good things but it's always nerve wracking. Somehow with all of my hard work, I still feel like the numbers are going down magically and so anything can happen! lol I even started taking measurements in case I started building muscle and was getting leaner but wasn't loosing numbers in a week so I wouldn't get discouraged if I was getting leaner but not lighter. I've been measuring my waist through the whole process and last week after the slight gain I also measured my upper arms, chest, hips, thighs, and calves. 

This week I lost 4.4 pounds! That officially puts me at 159.4 pounds. So psyched to be out of the 160s range now! The weight loss definitely makes up for last week since I have lost this much in a week once before but usually only loose a pound or two a week. I also remeasured for kicks before I weighed myself and found that since last week, I have lost 1/2 an inch in my arms and thighs and about an inch in my chest and hips. Feeling so accomplished and drinking a celebratory FUZE Slenderize which I am name dropping because it's super yummy low calories. I'm drinking the Tropical Punch low cal one right now and it's only 10 calories for the whole bottle! 

I also started something new this week to change up my flagging exercise regimen that I am very excited about!

Drum Role Please.....

After years of excuses for why I don't run, I signed up for the Color Me Rad 5k Run in August and suddenly got really excited about attempting to train for it.

So, I found this app on my phone called Ease into 5k. It's 2 or 3 bucks and there were some similar apps for free, but this one was really highly rated and I decided it was worth a 2.99 investment. :) 

Usually when I have tried to run before, I think I always did too much too soon. I'm excited about going about this in the right way to build up stamina and endurance so I don't get discouraged as easily as in the past. Yesterday was a simple 5 minute warm up then 9 intervals of running for 60 seconds and then walking for 90 seconds followed by a 5 minute cool down walk. I ended up just hitting the treadmill since I basically decided to do all of this at like 9pm last night. I ran about 2 miles with a run pace of 10:54 min/mi according to the app once I figured out how to adjust the walking and running pace. (I was walking and running faster than it thought I would, but I think it's OK because I was at a comfortable pace for me. What can I say, I'm a brisk walker.) 

Everything I know about running is basically provided by Google so if any of you runners have any suggestions I am open to feedback! My current running play list is a random last minute pick of songs that I already owned last night that had a faster tempo or could be somehow inspirational. I'm gonna share them because they are probably not what you would usually find on a suggested play list for running but I had fun with them. :D

1. Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet 

2. Evacuate - The Boxer Rebellion

3. Fighter - Christina Aguilera

4. I'm Too Sexy - Right Said Fred

5. If I Never See Your Face Again - Maroon 5

6. Little of Your Time - Maroon 5

7. Moves Like Jagger -Maroon 5

8. Oh, Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison

9. Only Girl (In the World) - Rihanna

10. P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) - Michael Jackson

11. Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

12. Tonight Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae

13. Wanted - Jessie James

Fun Stuff!

So that's where I am today. I got my food scale in the mail on Friday and used it for the first time today. No more guesstimating dry ounces, yay! lol....Funny that this excites me now...haha

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter! We had a nice quiet relaxing one and I did my ritual egg coloring while watching the Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire so it was lovely all around.

BLESSINGS TO YOU!

Weight Loss: My Journey Thus Far

Hello all, here's my new attempt at finding something worth blogging about. ;) I'm coming clean here and laying a foundation, so this one is a little long. I am hoping that blogging about this will help to keep me accountable as I forge ahead. Bless you if you bear with me through the whole thing. ;D

Weight Loss: My Journey to A Healthier, Hotter, Better ME!

Back Story

I don't really remember caring about my health or my weight too much until I was in high school, so I'm going to go to start there. I was around 147 pounds throughout most of high school without really trying very hard. I'm 5' 5" and have always been more curvy then lean. At the doctors office I remember being told that I was slightly over what my weight and BMI should probably be but that I wasn't in a danger zone by any means. I've never been athletic per say, but at that time, I was forced to take PE, I walked across our little town to and from school everyday, I enjoyed bike riding out to my grandfather's ranch house occasionally, I loved the pool in the summer, and I was often doing something at the theater that involved a little bit of dancing. My meals were also mostly dictated by a school lunch program and the food provided by my mother who happens to be a home health care nurse who knows a thing or two about nutrition.

Then came college. I don't really know how I managed to do it, but I maintained that average of a curvy 147 pounds through my first year of college avoiding the dreaded freshman 15. Maybe it was because I was running all over the UW campus all day long eating like a broke college student who couldn't stand eating ramen 3 meals a day, which meant I had to get creative at meal time. Maybe, it was because I occasionally went to the gym (and I do mean OCCASIONALLY) to hit the elliptical or catch a badminton game with a girlfriend since it was included in tuition and I didn't believe in not using facilities I was already paying for. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because I was stressed out about living in Seattle while my fiance was in Dayton (Eastern Washington for those of you that just went, Ohio?), having to plan our wedding over texts and MSN messenger all the while knowing that I had already bought my wedding dress....a year before the actual date....In any case, my weight stayed right where it was and as before, I didn't give it much conscious thought.

And then, I got married. lol I started making a little extra money, commuting from Everett to Seattle and back everyday by bus, and settling into a comfy but extremely busy existence with my wonderful husband who has never been demanding an any way about my appearance. And then I was approx 40 pounds heavier in what seemed like an overnight gain to me although I guess it was a gradual thing over a span of a few years. It was the kind of incremental weight gain that happens in such a subtle way that it just sneaks right up on you. The weight gain was me in focus, layering on in places where I already was curvy. If I had gained 40 pounds in just like my stomach and my backside, I think I would have noticed a lot sooner....

So all of this means that I just kind of ignored it if I noticed at all until, I started to see a double chin in every single photo of me. Everyone who has gone or is currently going through a journey like mine has a point when they realized that enough is enough, for me, it was as simple as noticing that weight gain in my face. I quite suddenly felt uncomfortable in my own skin, a foreign feeling to me up to this point, and was newly oversensitive to how the rest of my body had changed. A huge part of it was and is vanity, but I also realized how sluggish and older than my years I had been feeling lately and how I was always getting sick even before I started working in a preschool. ;) I just wasn't feeling healthy either. So, when my soon to be sister in law Tiara started loosing weight using this app on her phone, I was inspired by her thought it sounded easy enough to try.

Long story short, I use a free app called Weight Loss on my phone to track my calorie intake, calorie burn through exercise, protein intake, carb intake, and fat intake. I measure my food, pay attention to serving sizes, pre make my lunches, etc. I started working out more, hitting the small gym at our new apartment complex, regularly using the burn mode on our Just Dance 4 game, starting a once a week belly dancing class and walking on my lunch breaks when possible.

When I started my new job as a floating teacher at Lake Forest Park Montessori, I lost 5 pounds. I don't count that weight loss because it was before I really stepped up my game and started using the phone app. I started really sincerely trying after Christmas of of 2012. I started out at 183 pounds on January 1st. As of last Sunday, March 24th, I weighed 163.8 pounds. I've had a few ups and downs with it, but I am very proud of my progress thus far and am feeling fabulous and a lot healthier already! I am about to change it up a little to keep from plateauing at 20 pounds lost and am ready for the next 20!.

In my next blog I'm going to tell you all about that. For now though, that was a lot of reading! If you hung in through all of that, THANK YOU!

To Be Continued....

BLESSINGS TO YOU.