Hey Everybody!!!!! Happy New Year and all that jazz :D

I feel like I've been away forever!

The holidays with my family were great.  We had an awesome time, lots of laughs, lots of good food, lots of junk food, but somehow I still managed to go for a 5km walk almost everyday I was there.  I think that the walking was the magic ingredient because I managed to loose over 3.5 pounds while I was away.... I weighed 243 on December 16th and  and when I came back on December 30th I weighed 239.4.  Unfortunately, the time between December 30th and today was filled with pretty much the same kind of eating, but no walking... up went the weight again to 243.6 by Jan 4th, but it's not like I don't know why :P  In the end by the time this morning rolled around I had gone back down to 241.6.  It's not where I want to be, but it's better than 243.6

I'm not the type of person that likes to make resolutions... in fact I always resolve to not make any... and I accomplish that every year hehehe  What I do like about starting a new year is the feeling of renewal, second chances and a sort of renewed vigor when it comes to fitness and nutrition.

So I may not make resolutions, but I do make lots of plans.  I was originally hoping to run the 10km in May, but I haven't trained well enough or lost any weight, so I'm going to switch that to the 5km race in May, AND I am aiming to beat my personal best time of 44 minutes and 44 seconds.  I feel that goal is very achievable.

I also plan to take advantage of my gym membership and go to some Zumba classes or Cardio kick boxing with Alex.

I also plan to rearrange my workout areas (yes, i have more than one area LOL) to make my life a bit easier in the deep dark cold Canadian mornings.  I want to try and do the 30 day Shred challenge with my Jillian Michaels DVD.  I've done it twice, and was able to complete the workouts, which is sad.  So I started thinking about what is stopping me from working out early in the morning... other than it being crazy early.  I believe it's the fact that I was set up in the living room near my treadmill.  I dislike the DVD setup that requires me to mess around with a switch box to go between TV, Cable Box and DVD.  Dunno about you, but that early in the morning I'm not coordinated enough to be able to figure that out easily.  So, in my craft room/spare room/junk room upstairs I have a tiny TV with a DVD player.  It's closer to our bedroom, there will be more floor space once I do some re-arranging and the media setup is dead easy.

I'm hoping that along with the 30 days of Shred and the regular running 3 or 4 times a week that I will feel like I'm accomplishing some great new habits.

And the biggest plan of all is to go and join Weight Watchers, go to the weekly meetings and learn as much as possible about better eating habits.  Doing weight watchers on my own has helped me change my eating habits a lot, but I think need to re-learn everything because of the new plan, and I'd rather do it through my local meetings.  I don't regret doing the points program on my own because my body has definitely changed along with inches lost and a better eating plan, but I want to start out fresh and re-focus..


Keep yer fingers crossed for me!!!

Queen of maintenance

... that would be awesome if I was at my goal weight!  I continue to forge onward and I'm thankful that I haven't gained so far during this holiday party season, cause i've had my fair share of parties so far.

This weekend is the long 12 hour drive out east, so I've been busy laundering, packing and sorting through all my clothes so that I can donate the stuff that is too big to family back home.  It's like a second christmas, but with clothes. :)

I haven't been exercising, other than dragging large baskets of laundry around.  I know i'm bad, but at this point, I'm too busy to care or beat myself up over it.  I'm still watching what I eat and sticking to my points as much as humanly possible, which is probably the main reason I'm maintaining instead of gaining... all good in my book.

Ok, so people in the US in states like Florida are moaning that it's cold (30's/40's) well here it is a nice balmy 4 degrees... yup 4 degrees and in Sarnia Ontario (which is about 3 hours west of where I live) there were 240 people stuck in their cars on a snow plugged highway.

Now do you know why I don't run outside in the winter???  It's fricken crazy!  And this isn't even the worst of it yet.. wait until January or Febrary when we get wayyyyy below sub zero temps... Awesome!

I want to move to Nevada...I don't want to wait 15 years until retirement... I need to win the lottery!

That's it for today, just wanted to poke my head in here for a quick update...prove that I'm still alive :)

YES! Bring on the magic!

Awesome!  I have dropped 3 pounds from my 4 pounds and change gain from last weeks time warp /sick week.  I didn't exercise this week due to being tired but I'm starting to feel totally like me again.  I intend to add the exercise back beginning this weekend along with tons of Christmas decorating and gift wrapping :)

I got a comment last week on my blog from an Anonymous reader (Thanks for reading Anon!)  Anon brought up a good point that I had already been thinking about and pondering how to implement.  Simply put, Anon said "Eat less" and "use a smaller plate"  both great tips to deal with the scale in general.  I was interpreting it in a different way with this thought in my head "Maybe Weight Watchers points are set up for people in general and most overweight people are basically sedentary so a big reduction of calories in the beginning when they implement the points system they drop weight fairly consistently and mostly up until they get within 20lbs of their goal weight."   Soooo my brain kept whirling and whirling... I've lost about 20 lbs since Alex and I started running ... my eating has slowly evolved to mostly non processed foods, lots of veg and fruit, lean meats and a fair amount of exercise.  All good things to get into the habit of doing, great long term investments into a healthy lifestyle, but it felt like maintenance without any weight loss results.

In the summer when I did a big push to increase exercise it made a bit of a difference, but I couldn't keep up with that much exercise without giving up cleaning my house :P  Tempting as that may be, I have to balance everything in my life, soooo back to the drawing board... or thinking board :D  What if the points are too generous for me?  What if I were to lower my daily points allowance by a smidgen to see if that would be enough to kick start the scale, yet not cause the body to get stingy and really lock down on the weight loss (aka starvation mode) or worse yet, cause my brain to flip out and cause a-fall-off-the-wagon-eating-festival? *shudder*

You see, currently per the WW system (Momentum Plan, not Points Plus) for my height, age, gender, type of job and being in the 230's, I should be using up 28 points per day (1400 calories)  with an additional 35 flex points per week.  I haven't used my activity points in several months and try to only use my flex points occasionally.   I grabbed my WW documentation and went through it and recalculated the points total as if I weighed 200 (I WISH!) and it totaled up to 25 points (1250 calories) and since Monday I've been following the 25 points and so far 3 pounds down.  It's only been 5 days, but so far it feels good.

It's too soon to tell if this is indeed a good course of action, but with time and some exercise added into the mix, maybe I'll find my recipe to make weight loss magic!

A week of my life is missing!

OK, so it's not that dramatic, but in the scheme of things, it's kind of annoying.  I was out of commission for a week with Strep throat.  Bleh ... No exercise... No dieting... No tracking... No nothing.  Absolutely nothing constructive at all was accomplished... I didn't even write Christmas cards.  I suck!

So to backtrack to the weekend before the big time warp, the experiment went very well and taught me many things.  On the Friday we went to the Keg armed with all their website nutritional info and we came out winners.  My weight did not go up due to the restaurant outing and in fact it went down a bit.  On Saturday it was part 2 of the experiment and armed with nothing really.... things went horribly horribly wrong.  I tried to stick to the veggie trays (thankfully there were 2 kinds of veggie trays) but found myself nibbling on a few cashews here, and a few chocolate covered almonds there.... those suckers add up quick.  Obviously I went to the party hungry, and I really should have prepared better for it...Then dinner was steak with scalloped potatoes.  The steak was probably double what I should have eaten and the potatoes should not have graced my plate at all.  So 3 pound gain for one night out... basically trashed my whole week's worth of work in one evening.

And then I got sick on Sunday.....  which meant I gained more... NO FAIR!

*sigh*

Back at work today, back to tracking, dieting and hopefully this evening I won't be too wiped out to even walk on the treadmill for a bit...

On at least a different note... looking forward to hearing more details about the new Weight Watchers plan.  I'm thinking if things don't start to move around, I may invest in going to the meetings... as a gift to myself... I can always quit after I get all the new books on the new plan if I find that it's too expensive...stay tuned!

Still lot's of room for improvement... practice, practice, pratice

Practice will probably never make me perfect, but practice might help things feel more natural....

I'm talking about how to deal with weekends and especially eating out socially on weekends...  Last week I had Thursday off for Remembrance Day and I did very well, stayed on plan and even got some exercise into my day despite wanting to lounge on the sofa all day :P  I am a couch potato after all, it's my natural habitat.... like the house Hippo in the TV commercial except I don't eat raisins :P  House Hippo

So over the weekend, my plan was to repeat the success of Thursday.  Sounds pretty easy.  Well, Friday I went out with friends for some Vietnamese and I chose my meal very carefully and next day on the scale I still managed a loss.  Saturday during the day I walked a nice long 7.38 kms outside in the fabulous weather, but Saturday night I went out unexpectedly.  Now, there were things on the menu at that place that "I could have" ordered, but I was a bad bad girl.  Alex was there with me, and she put it best when we spoke on Monday  "I think I got caught up in the atmosphere… the pizza wasn’t even good.  And dessert was unnecessary.  Delicious! But unnecessary"  I also felt like I got caught up in everybody's thrill to eat naughty and really didn't need dessert either.  Part of the issue was eating so late... I should have brought snacks with me for Alex and I to munch on while we watched our friends at the Curling Club.  They were burning calories, while we sat down and talked LOL  Not many calories burned there!

So what I get from this is that it's good to know about social outings way in advance to help your brain build a steel like resolve when it comes to reading the menu, bring healthy snacks like carrots and celery to help fill you up and regulate the blood sugar and most of all... nobody needs dessert!

I also have resolved to do some form of exercise everyday... even if it's just walking on the treadmill.   I wonder if I could do 100kms in a month.... hmmmm might be a new goal to set...lot's of kms to strengthen my base so that I can then do the training schedule to run 10km.  Right now I can run 5km without any issues... but anything over 6km seems to make my knees hurt... so I'm working on my base with fast walking and hoping to up my kms to 10km walking and then progress into running again.

So off I go into the sunset... practice... practice... practice....

Apparently i'm not the only one that thinks i'm awesome :D

On Wednesday afternoon I had an appointment with the Diabetic Team's Dietitians at my family doctor's office.  I've been seeing this new family doctor for almost two years now.  When I told her I was a type II diabetic (controlled with diet and exercise) she set up an appointment for me to meet with her Diabetes team.  That was about a year ago and when I met with the two ladies (I forget their names) they said that I was on the right track with my learning to run with the Couch to 5km and following Weight Watchers on my own.  They gave me their blessing and a pat on the back and sent me on my way.  This year it was two new ladies, Collette the nurse and Bennett the dietitian invited me in and asked me how things were going.

I told them that my recent appointment with my Endocrinologist was a good one with some really great numbers; 6 blood sugar, 126/70 blood pressure, low cholesterol but same weight as 6 months ago.  I told them I had run 4 races this year (5km distance).  I told them I was still following Weight Watchers and slowly transforming the types of food I ate from pre-packaged 100 calorie snack bags and Smart Ones frozen meals to fruit, veggies and as many home cooked (even if pre-cooked) meals as possible.  I told them I was struggling with bouncing around in the 230's for several months now, and that I thought I needed to increase my exercise and be much more regimented on weekends.

You know what those two nice ladies said to me?

• Your numbers are really good, keep up the good work.
• Your exercise regimen is really good, we're impressed... even we don't run races!
• Your eating plan looks very good during the week, we're glad you're switching to more whole foods.
• Your weekends need work for sure, but you have to keep in mind that if you sleep really late, that messes with your blood sugar levels and that's why your brain makes you go overboard later on in the day.

*DING*

• Don't be too strict or hard on yourself because we don't want you to abandon everything.  You are awesome and you are doing great.
• We want you to keep up the good work and most of all don't forget that an occasional treat when out with friends is OK.  You still need to live.

To which I responded "yeah, but we don't have to celebrate every time we go out to eat ... right?"  They laughed and agreed that it's best to make rewards non-food related, but that when out with friends a few extra calories are OK as long as you laugh a lot :P

I'm happy with my progress so far and like most people I know I'm impatient and want more progress.. NOW NOW NOW :P   So I'm going to accept the fact that I'm doing really great compared to how I used to be a long long time ago, and try not to forget how far I've come.  Maybe put up my worst before picture up on my bathroom mirror of inspiration....

That being said, I still want to strive for better.. so I'm going to work harder on my weekends.  It's not in my nature to be so strict that I totally fall off the wagon so I'm not too worried about working on my deviant weekends.  I have to give credit to Collette and Bennett for reminding me (*DING*) about low blood sugars, It's been so long that my blood sugars have been in the really good ranges that I've forgotten the golden rules of diabetics and that is to eat regularly otherwise you mess up your blood sugars.  Low blood sugars can be just as bad as really high blood sugars.. so thanks ladies... that reminder really drives home the benefits of eating 3 meals and some small snacks every few hours to make sure my whole body is a happy camper.  Now if only we can figure out how to re-wire the brain hahahaha

Today's experiment is going well so far..... stay tuned...

Weekend experiments

This past weekend I was planning an experiment....I was going to try and eat as close to a weekday schedule/amount as possible.

Saturday:  Up at 8am, breakfast, snacks, were like during the week.  Lunch was skipped because I had a function to attend in late afternoon and I knew it was going to be point heavy. (mostly wine points)  I still managed to lose weight by Sunday.

Sunday:  Up at NOON!  yeah, you read that right, Noon.  So it would have been the perfect day to eat the regular schedule, but time shift everything... nope.. didn't happen as planned... I gave in to the request for waffles and by the time they were made  and we sat down to eat it was almost 1:30!  I was beyond starving....the waffles were a WW recipe and 8points for 2 huge ones, but it's not the waffles that sent my day out of whack, it was the extreme hunger... the rest of the afternoon was spent making egg bake for weekday breakfasts and homemade WW pizzas for lunches... I tried to eat snacks like yogurt and grapes, but the other snacks that I usually eat require two hands, either to make or consume, so the apple didn't happen and the carrots/celery with hummus didn't happen.  I did however eat a lot of pieces of veggies while prepping my week foods.

It all came to a crash when I just couldn't avoid the hunger anymore and used the leftover veggies with some measured ground chicken combined (unfortunately) with unmeasured rice noodles... those noodles albeit totally yummy were too much and I gained 3 pounds by Monday morning.  *sigh*  I've already lost 2 of the 3 pounds, but the point was very clear to me.  "Don't let myself get too hungry" 

I am liking the breakfast and lunch made in advance thing for during the week, and I think time shifting or otherwise on the weekend can work, as long as I keep eating the same types of foods and snacks.  I have the day off on Thursday and I may try the time shifting thing that day, since I'll be home alone during the day.  

I've read a lot of blog posts from other people talking about planning ahead is crucial to their weight loss success and I can see how that is true, but if I want to live this lifestyle, I really need to adjust myself to real life situations and come up with more strategies and tricks to deal with all the social things we do.  I HAVE to get into the habit of ordering a damn salad with chicken on it when I go out...  HAVE to drop the whining voice in my head that keeps saying "but you're out with friends, you need to celebrate!"  Celebrate what?  Knowing how to put on shoes and leaving the house?  Not everything is a celebration.

Awesome quote that I read today:

"You can't expect to loose weight if you keep shoveling the same garbage in your mouth that made you fat."