100's!!!!

Today is a good day. I hopped on the scale this morning, as I do every morning, hoping, praying, crossing fingers that I finally be a weight with a 1 in front of it and it happened!! I have been hovering at 200.2 lbs since Friday. .2 lbs!! It was torture, all I wanted was to lose just a teensy bit more so I could see that magical 1 and it finally happened. For some reason this makes me feel a little more like I can reach a "normal" weight sometime relatively soon and that makes me smile. I think what I am most excited for is having more energy and feeling fantastic and I think that is what has made the difference for me this time. I am not constantly thinking of how great I will look or what clothes I can buy (I think about it just not constantly) but I think how much better I will feel and how much more energy I will have to play with my daughter. This seems to be a huge motivator for me when it comes to sticking on plan. I have to do this, I WANT to do this, to give my daughter a more fun, a better, Mom. Today was a big sign that I am on my way to this being a reality. YAY!!

Letting Go

I have a TON of clothes. The walk in closet that I share with my husband is pretty big (at least 8ft x 8ft) and I take up at least 3/4 of it. Of course I am sure this is the case with many women out there but my issue is that I have an assortment of clothes ranging in size from 14-24 and now that I am a size 18/20 I feel like I should get rid of the bigger sizes just for practicality. I mean the closet is overflowing. But I am unwilling so far to get rid of anything, which means that there must be some part of me that thinks that I will not succeed.

I've lost a lot of weight in the past and I got rid of those clothes with glee but eventually I had to buy bigger sizes. I don't know if I can do that again. Sure, its hard to pull out the old size 24 pants but its ten times harder to go out and buy them again. I have told myself that this is it, I will be healthier, I will not gain the weight back and I hope that's true but I seem to have very little faith in myself deep down. I am not sure I will be this diligent forever and it scares me.

Disneyland = best vacation for weight loss

Disneyland is the best place to go on vacation and eat almost whatever you want. Even though I went all crazy with the food, when I weighed myself this morning I was down a pound from last week!! Now, that's not huge if I had been sticking to my diet but I'll take it. We were at Disneyland for two days and both days we stayed for at least 14-15 hours (I'm hard core about getting my moneys worth and staying from open to close) our hotel was a mile away and we walked the distance. So minimum we walked 2 miles outside of Disneyland but inside the park we probably walked another 5-10 miles a day. Seriously. I should wear a pedometer next time. Both days by the end of the day my legs were sore and with all the running and bike riding that I have been doing, that doesn't happen much lately. Anyway, my point is, if you are trying to lose weight but want a vacation then an amusement park is definitely the way to go. Seriously so Stoked :-)

Food Confession

I did not survive the birthday weekend unscathed. My husband and I went to Disneyland/California Adventure because I'm a huge fan and it is a fun place that does not require drinking. For me Drinking=Really bad food choices on top of the calories in the alcohol. Anyway just to get it out there here a list of everything I ate:

French Fries
Chips & Guacamole
Churros (plural, 2 of them...they are the best at Disneyland, seriously try to go and not have at least 2!)
2 Chicken Tacos sans cheese (not too bad except they did not have any corn tortillas, had to go with flour)
Creamy scallop potatoes
Filet Migeon (one good thing)
2 Frozen chocolate covered bananas (counting this as a good choice since my husband was all about a double scoop of ice cream in a waffle cone)
2 Croissants
Corn Dog (had to be one of the worlds best!!)
Pretzel (the big and soft kind)
Granola Bar
Hershey's with almonds bar
Spaghetti with Meatballs
3 pieces of bread dipped in olive oil
3 bites of gelato
Popcorn
Breakfast burrito
Peanut M&Ms
Corn Nuts
Birthday Cake

This was over the course of 4 days, Yup 4 days of eating almost anything I wanted. I avoided dairy as much as possible because I am pretty sure I would just not feel well after not having any for months. Overall I feel ok about this. I have gotten back on track with my eating and will feel out of the danger zone once I make it through this weekend. I still have moments where I think that if I just had one piece of chocolate I will be ok, but probably not. I need to be strict right now. I need to not let myself fall back into the pattern of my birthday ruining any diet momentum that I have had.

Birthday Dilemma

There are two times in the year that always derail me from any diet/healthy eating that I have been successful at. The first is always Thanksgiving. I tell myself its ok to eat whatever I want because its a holiday and everyone else is eating what they want, Darn IT! Which is fine if I went back to eating better the next day but that doesn't EVER happen. I have this internal (or maybe even external) dialogue that goes something like this:

Me: Thanksgiving is over, time to go back to a healthy breakfast
MeToo: Technically since work is closed on Thursday and Friday, then Friday is still a holiday,lets go get a pumpkin spice latte and pumpkin cream cheese muffin
Me: Ok, but back to healthy eating on Monday


Of course Monday rolls around and I have completely forgotten (or chosen to ignore) any plans to get back on track. Why bother when Christmas is around the corner?

Anyway, the second time is my Birthday. My birthday has NEVER failed to derail me from healthy eating. In fact, now that I think about it there was a year that I made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas but I have never made it through my Birthday. Why is this significant? Well, I am 11 days away from my Birthday. And not just any birthday, the big 30. I am already debating with myself on whether or not to allow myself to go "off plan" for the weekend before my birthday. Part of me really feels like I have earned a little break from the constant calorie counting and limiting of certain foods, the other part of me is freaked out that I won't be able to go back on plan and I will be lost again in the hell/heaven of eating whatever food I want. I really don't have any answers yet on what I am going to do and I hate that food is still so important to me that I spend all this time mentally debating with myself on what to do. When will I be stronger than my desire for food? When will I be able to let go and not care about it?

I made it!!

This morning I weighed in at 206lbs which is not a significant number to most but that is the what I weighed before I got pregnant. I was on a diet at the time so I was recording my weight in FitDay (the only time I record my weight is when I am on a diet). I remember wishing I had lost more weight before I got pregnant but I was happy that I had lost the 30lbs I had. I remember feeling good about myself but when I got pregnant there was no way I could have continued the diet I was following and instead of trying to eat healthy and not gain a ton of weight, I used being pregnant as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. I gained a ton of weight, I was 270 at my last Dr appt before I had my daughter. I lost 20lbs just having her because my doctor appt 4 days after she was born I weighed in at 249 and have been hovering around there for over a year. So, even though 206 usually isn't a number people are excited to see, I jumped up and down when I got off the scale this morning!

In Other news...I have been struggling with the C25k lately, I decided to try doing it outside on Monday because it was nice and cool outside in the morning and it was HARD. I knew that it would be harder for me but I was a little surprised how hard it was. So I didn't make it the whole 25 minutes without any walking. I stopped twice and walked for about 30 sec and I feel ok about that. I mean, 2 months ago I wouldn't have been able to run more than 1 minute (if that) outside. I am kind of breaking free from the C25k schedule though. I am running 25 minutes minnimum but will go longer if I feel I can (which, hasn't happened yet) hopefully that will happen soon because I signed up for a 5k next month and even though I know I don't have to run the whole thing, thats my goal - no matter how SLOW I am running, I would like to run the whole thing. So at my pace that means running for about 37 minutes straight and that boggles my mind. Hopefully I know I can do it, right?? Right.

C25k Fail

I do my 3 times a week runs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday these days work best for my schedule. I usually wait until my 14 month old daughter goes to bed to start the run on the treadmill but yesterday I decided to go ahead and get it over with while my 12 year old stepdaughter played with her. They were in the "bonus" room and I was in the living room, so like 20 feet away with no walls separating. Anyway, I started out as usual - at about minute 5 I have to push myself to go the next 20 minutes...it is a total mental thing because I know I am physically capable of doing it. Anyway just before I hit 18 minutes of straight running, and I am thinking to myself I will be finished soon and I am starting to feel proud for not giving up, I hear my daughter start screaming - not regular crying- but loud, I got hurt, crying. So I stopped and went over to see what happened. My stepdaughter said she fell of the couch (lesson learned that I always have to watch her when she plays with her sister). Once I got there and was holding her she calmed down pretty quick so I guess it wasn't to serious but then I was faced with the choice. Do I go back and finish the 7 minutes I have left even though I just took a break? Do I wait until my daughter goes to sleep so I can do the whole 25 minutes over??? Or do I try again the next day (today) to do day 2 of this week? I chose to try and do it again today. I don't think I am at the level yet where I can do for 18 minutes and then an hour later do 25 minutes (maybe I can but I was too scared to try). So maybe I will actually only count this as a C25k fail if I don't finish today. I will let you know if this is a true fail or not. I've got to keep myself accountable :)

***I had a Hersheys Miniature at the lunch meeting we had at work today, I absolutely need to make sure that I do the 25 minute run today. Not to make sure I burn the calories (because its not that many and I am not that obsessive) but I need to reassure myself that I am staying on track and not slipping into junk food land.