Holiday Plan - Update

Sooooo I made a holiday plan a couple weeks ago and at my first real test I totally failed on sticking with it. Thanksgiving came and went and I "took a break" with my eating for the entire weekend. I feel ok with this except for the fact that I had made a different plan and didn't stick with it, very like the old me who would always fall off the diet wagon around Thanksgiving. I would always tell myself that I would get back on track Friday and it would always turn into Monday and then Monday came and it turned into waiting till New Years. If I don't get back on track today then I have a serious problem but I think I will be ok today, that is part of why I am writing this post. Hopefully, if I put it out there for everyone to read then I will be able to get back on track. I am pretty sure I can - much more sure than I would've have been in years passed. The good news is that I kept up with all my exercise this past weekend and I didn't gain too much weight. This is different than my behavior I the past. A lot of times if I was taking a break from dieting then I was taking a break from exercise as well. Also, I ran the 10k on Thanksgiving and it was awesome - I will do a separate post on it soon. I just wanted to write a quick post this morning to help keep myself on track today!

Vacation!!!

I am headed off on vacation, again. Only this time it will be a nice break because we are leaving the kids behind! I love my daughter oodles and scoodles and I am already having a little bit of anxiety about leaving her without me for the weekend, but I am excited to have a couple days off. Its a strange thing to want a break from my daughter but at the same not want to leave her, I guess that's being a Mom. I'm pretty sure as she gets older it will get easier :)

With the whole Food/exercise/lifestyle change thing I have been doing pretty good this week. I have kept up on my half marathon training and have been eating better. I just need to get through the next week, where I know I will gain weight, not stressing about it and keeping up the physical activity to help keep my mood up.

I am still not feeling quite like myself but I maybe after the vacation I will feel better. I have never entered the holiday season with such a unhappy attitude. I think part of it was last year December was a bad month for me health wise (that it part of why I have been so successful on this diet). I don't want to be back in the place where I was last year - so part of it is just feeling bad based on approaching the time when things were bad last year. Does that make sense? Maybe not. Honestly what happened last December wasn't too horrible physically, but my hormones were so out of control that my moods were crazy and I am pretty sure hormones is a big part of the blues I have now.The point is I need to have confidence in myself and realize that I am not the same person that I was last year, I am probably 150% healthier than I was last year. Things will be good this holiday season. I can be happy and feel good approaching the month of December.  I need to not whine and complain anymore on my Blog, not dwell on things ;) .

Anyway, I am off on vacation and when I am come back hopefully my mood will be better. I love the holidays and the family togetherness - whats not to be happy about?

Feeling Blue

I am running out of steam. I no longer am enjoying the diet part of my lifestyle change, not that I ever was really, but I am feeling a definite lack of energy towards eating better. I am just going through the motions during the week. I eat almost the same thing day in and day out and then on the weekends I cheat a little - EVERY weekend for the last 3 weeks. I am doing OK weight wise, OK because I am not consistently gaining weight - I gain weight every weekend and then lose it during the week.

I have stopped caring to dress nice or wear makeup or do my hair. Today is the day of the week where I have to go into the actual office instead of telecommuting like every other day of the week. Until this week, even though I dreaded actually being in the office, I enjoyed getting ready and dressing in some of my nicer clothes, putting on make up & doing my hair. I had no such desire this morning. I pulled my wet hair back in a clip, my face is clear of make up, and I am wearing khakis Capri's (no jeans only because they are not allowed) and a sweater. I am not feeling it. Maybe I should have forced myself to put the effort in when getting ready, maybe I would feel better right now. Maybe I am feeling some winter blues even though it is only November and I live in Phoenix where the days are sunny and the highs are in the 70s.

All I know is I feel blue, not quite depressed, but just down....maybe its just hormones, maybe its the bad eating every weekend, but probably its just reality that losing 94lbs is awesome but for some reason also a little disconcerting. I look like a different person, but I'm not - and its hard to adjust to what almost feels like a stranger staring back at me in the mirror. Sometimes I miss the old me, not the way I looked, but I knew that person and was that person for many years thats who I feel like I am. I haven't adjusted to the weight loss mentally. I am not explaining this well, so I will just leave it at this - I am feeling out blue.

Weight Loss at a Glance

I keep track of my weight in three different place - yup, 3. Fitday because I have recorded my weight on that site since 2008 - so it has some history. Sparkpeople because that is where I keep track of my calories in/out (sometimes...) and then to make sure I had my own personal record I have an excel spreadsheet with my weight loss this time around. This is the most interesting to look at...so I thought I would share:

This may not be interesting to you, feel free to skip over. The different colors represent a Sunday thru Saturday week. The red weeks are when I was on my period and the bright yellow is when I was on vacation. The bold numbers at the bottom of each week are the totals for each week and the numbers at the very bottom of the column is the total loss for the month. The 94.2 is the total I have lost to date. Its a little confusing because the negative (-) means that I gained weight. But there is it, my weight loss journey for the past (almost) 11 months.

I have done a lot of posts lately about how far I have come and it is in no way to brag. I am struggling. I need a reminder of the journey that I have taken. Every weekend I cheat a little (or a lot) and I feel like I am not getting anywhere anymore. I have lost weight this week but I am already convinced I won't be strong this weekend and I will gain it all back. I need to figure this out long term now that I am getting closer to the end and I am afraid I won't figure it out. So, I am trying hard to be proud of myself and remind myself that I am strong. These posts are more for me than anyone else - I need to be aware of my strength.

Chub Club - Results

The Chub Club competition that I have been competing in has come to an end and I WON!!! WAHOO!! In the end I won $335, which will definitely help with Christmas this year. My results are as follows:

Weight:

184.6 to 159.4

Measurements:

Arm - 11.5" to 11"

Thigh - 22" to 21"

Calf - 15.5" to 14.5"

Bust - 41" to 36.5"

Chest - 35.5" to 33"

Waist - 39" to 36"

Hip - 47" to 41"

I'm not really sure how accurate the measurements really are since I didn't really pay to much attention to the tape being in the same exact spot every week. And the weight is about 2lbs higher than on my home scale. But overall I am very happy to see some results :) Below is the picture I took for the virtual biggest loser, which ended about the time the chub club started and then a picture I took this morning (um, sorry about the quality, I suck at picture taking)

Before

After

Not a huge difference but still there.

I wanted to find a picture of myself from before I lost all this weight, but my choices are poor since I hid from the camera at every turn, but here is goes....my weight loss progress in pictures:

 This is me the day before my wedding (Nov 2007) I weighed about 230-235

Now, this is me about a month into this lifestyle change - I weighed about 236 here (from the side, sitting down is never flattering, even now I refuse to take a picture at this angle but this is the closest I have to a beginning picture this year):



Now the one from this morning side-by-side with the one 3 years ago:



 I have come a long way and needed the visual reminder myself of how much work I am put into this. It is no longer a marathon, but more of a 10k. I can't give up now, I have come too far.

Thank you C25k!

Roughly 8 months ago I was struggling to find my groove losing weight and wanted to find a way to kick my butt into high gear. Enter the Couch to 5k training plan. I had never considered running in my entire life. I was always part of the group of "walkers" when we were supposed to run 1 mile in PE in school - you walk 90% of time and then sprint to finish with the PE teacher yells that you only have a couple minutes to finish under the 12min deadline. I loathed running but started to wonder if maybe I exercised like I never had before I would lose weight like I never had before. The C25k looked totally doable, mostly because I forced myself not to focus on week 3,4,or 5 and just get through the 1st week of running 1min intervals. I still distinctly remember running on the treadmill the first time. I remember when I was 10 seconds into my first minute of running, I thought I was going to die - I watched the seconds tick by for the first full minute in complete agony. I felt like it was torture, but when I was done I felt proud of myself. Each and everytime I completed a day of c25k training I felt like I might literally die it was so hard (I put my cell phone in my sports bra in case I passed out and wouldn't be able to get back up to the phone to call for help). I remember the first time I completed 20minutes of straight running, I had to yell out loud "you can do this!" for the last 5 minutes in order to finish. I was so proud of myself when I was done - I ran upstairs to tell my husband I had made it and how amazed I was that I ran for 20 minutes straight!

I am not writing this to brag about how awesome I am, I want to remind myself how far I've come and if anyone stumbles across my blog and is contemplating starting a running program, maybe they will be encouraged at how it was not effortless for me At ALL and if they are struggling, just know that you will get through it and one day you might be running a 10k and having the time of your life while running like I just did.

I write this to remind myself at how strong I have become and have this post for me to look back on whenever I fell down on myself for any reason at all. What I accomplished this year is amazing - if I could go back in time and talk to the Amy of 10 years ago, she would NEVER believe me if I told her that I ran 5 miles the other day and had FUN because of a new jogging stroller. I have come along way and I can only hope that I keep going in the right direction.

B.O.B.

I have a new love in my life. Its the beginning of the relationship, the honeymoon phase, wanting to spend all our time together. My life was not complete until it came into my life...

There have been others that I have come into my life that I have loved just as much: Ipod, IPhone, my mini vacuum for tile floors, my nook, but none of these others things also benefit my health like the B.O.B. Ironman stroller. The first run with my new stroller was on Sunday morning and it was AWESOME. My running schedule only called for me running 2.5 miles. So I ran to Starbucks thinking I would just walk home but as I was running I realized that I was enjoying myself. Pushing my daughter in her stroller was a breeze, actually pushing might even be too strong of a word. The stroller literally felt like it was no effort to run with. I decided to run back home and, while I was running, I added an extra mile at the end because I was enjoying myself so much. This is a new experience for me, to love something that I used to loathe (running). I never thought I would get to this place. And its not all the jogging stroller but the fact that the weather was perfect, I had already completed the required mileage, and I had my daughter with me enjoying the ride - all these things together made the run fun. I have used it almost everyday since Sunday and my love has not faded, we may make it past the honeymoon period after all ;)

Holiday Plan

I decided about 3 minutes into Saturday that I wanted to take the weekend "off" from calorie counting and just enjoy the holiday weekend (read: eat candy). I was thinking I would still keep it under control and just indulge in a couple pieces of candy. Wrong. As soon as the first piece was gone there was no stopping me. I had a weekend of complete candy consumption. More sugar than I have put in my body in probably over a year. Now, I am OK with taking breaks and not worrying about what I eat for a couple of days, I think doing that makes it more possible to eat healthy long term. But this weekend was different. This weekend the old Amy sorta creeped out. I felt like I used to get when I was on a diet and decided to "take a break". I would eat WAY more than I needed to because I was going back to "dieting" on Monday. I was NEVER successful at getting back on a diet after a weekend of overindulgence. And this break had me feeling like that old Amy, just a bit. Not enough to freak me out completely, but enough to be aware that come Monday it would be more of an effort to get back to healthy eating than other breaks I have taken since I started this. I think part of it is that we are entering the holiday season and I am not sure how I am going to make it through this without completely falling off the wagon. I have a hard time during this time of year wanting to diet. Ordering iced green tea at Starbucks instead of a hot white chocolate mocha or making tacos for dinner (no cheese, sour cream, guacamole, beans) instead of lasagna. Something about the colder months makes me want to eat more comforting food. This is probably an excuse, maybe I am getting burned out - I'm really not sure. There is one thing I learned from this weekend: I am not perfect and I will have set backs. I need to not let myself get so down about setbacks that I give up completely. I need to plan ahead on how I am going to handle the upcoming holiday season. So here is my plan, in writing, for the holidays:

I Will....

• Stick with my lifestyle change everyday except for the following
• November 19-22 (Vacation)
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas Eve & Christmas Day
• Stick to my exercise schedule everyday - even the days above that I take off
• Only expect to lose a couple of pounds in the next two months - I would like to weigh 155 on January 1st 2011. If I can get through the next couple of months with even a tiny loss, I consider this a victory.

This is my plan for the holidays. Everyone needs a plan if they are trying to change their old habits - have you made yours?