Well hello there, me.

I'm ba-ack!

So I lost my first ten pounds by the end of May, bringing me to 159. Have been stagnant ever since, but I joined Weight Watchers three weeks ago and I have been slowly, I mean SO SLOWLY, begun to lose again. I'm talking 156 on a good day.

I am watching Chris Powell guest hosting on Dr. Oz, and he says that a weight loss goal should be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-sensitive (urgency!).

He says you should divide your current weight and divide by 100 to get the number of pounds you should be able to lose each week. That is 1.5 pounds a week, so I guess I am doing ok.

I'm not exercising right now. I got rid of my gym membership in favor of the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. It was ok, but now I am burnt out on it and want to get a real gym membership with child care.

Chris Powell is also saying that you should alternate high carb days with low carb days. On high carb days, a meal should have one protein, one carb and as many vegetables as you can eat during a high carb day. Then on low carb days, you still have a high-carb breakfast. On the high carb day, you are boosting metabolism, then on the low carb day you are burning fat. On the seventh day you eat whatever you want! There's a sabbath day to this whole thing.

He said only eat junk outside your house. Don't keep it around.

We just went to visit my parents and I did do a lot of mindless eating, so now I am trying to get back working toward good habits like I was before.

So here are my SMART goals:

Get back to 139 pounds and be able to run 3 miles without stopping before my birthday.

That's 17 pounds to go.

no weight loss in week 2.

well, despite being better about working out this past week, i didn't lose any weight. in fact i am 166.4 when last week i was 166.2.

i was prepared for this and i'm not upset. i know that a consistent effort over time will get me where i need to be.

i did a pretty good job at journaling my eating last week, but i wasn't counting calories at all. just kind of "eye-balling" it and allowing myself lots of little things here and there that really add up.

to reach my goal weight by october 1, which i really want to do so by the holidays i'm in maintenance mode and not still trying to lose, i'll need to start losing 2 pounds each week and sticking to right about 1200 calories a day. this is an intense daily calorie goal that will require creativity and super-mega discipline. i will need to become the girl who says no to treats even if it's kind of socially awkward to do so. i will need to become the girl who says "i already ate" when invited out to eat. it's going to require sneaking in as much exercise as possible. like jillian michaels during nap time AND a solid sweat sesh at the gym later that day.

Calorie Count

i just joined caloriecount.com. it tracks all your calories and key nutrients and has tools to find bmi, bmr, help you track your goals, a place to journal, etc. my mom uses it and really likes it, and so far it seems really helpful.

this is what it says about emotional eating (here):

You use food to affect your mood. This started as a conscious way to motivate yourself when you needed it, but then it became your second nature and turned into an unconscious method of dealing with problems.

Your Eating Habits

You are familiar with sweets, such as cookies, ice cream, cakes, waffles and other carb-loaded diet killers. They somehow creep into your diet whenever you need a little bit of moral support, or when you feel frustrated, unhappy or simply bored. Therefore, those excess calories are not consumed during your regular meals, but in between.

The Solution

Emotional cravings are easily confused with hunger and are therefore difficult to identify. In most cases, emotional eating patterns only become evident when they have already taken place. Therefore, emotional eaters should plan their meals ahead, and always have a clear idea how much they want to consume. This makes any deviations clearly recognizable and allows the user to find alternate and non-food related methods for dealing with emotions.

I love the solution it offers. this is something i can work into the organized life i am trying to have. this is something i have already been trying to do, too, as far as giving myself a little pep talk before eating, where i talk to myself about how much i should eat and strategies for not blowing my goals.

one thing i am trying to figure out

ok, i'm trying to figure out a lot of things. obviously.

but, one thing that really bugs me about myself is my tendency to binge when i'm unhappy with my weight loss progress.

it's seems so counter intuitive, right? "i'm not losing weight fast enough so i'm going to eat more crap food."

*sigh*

i do this more than i'd like to admit.

i got the itch again today. i wanted to go out an get a cupcake. i drive by the cupcake place on my way to the gym every day and today i was thinking if i was good all day, i could go get a cupcake in the afternoon.

well. then i weighed myself and i haven't lost any weight since monday. i know that was only two days ago, but for some reason this made me furious and i wanted to eat everything. in. sight.

luckily i had the presence of mind to stop myself, but why did i want to do that?

is it just because i'm thinking, "well i obviously am incapable of losing weight so i might as well eat what i like."

or does the letdown of my slow progress make me reach for the junk food because the short rush of sugar makes me feel happy, if only for a minute?

i honestly don't know. i don't know if it is just a psychological reaction or part of a chemical addiction to food.

i think a lot of women have these tendencies, but i don't think we ALL do. and i don't think we HAVE to.

i don't have an answer right now. just something i have noticed and have been thinking about lately.

720 calories in an hour.

Oh baby, I've still got it!

I got on the treadmill last night with my usual goal of 600 calories in an hour. I noticed when I kicked up the incline a little, I would exceed my goal.

So what did I do? I kicked it up a little more to make my goal an even 700. By the time 60 minutes was up, I had burned about 710, then I needed a little cool down because I was REALLY booking it. that brought me to 720.

I play a little game with myself on the treadmill. 10 calories a minute is "on schedule." So after 15 minutes, I should burn 150 calories to stay on schedule. Anything more than that is just a bonus.

I'm going tonight again and I want to burn 720 in the 60 minutes. Notch it up a bit each time.

Things are going pretty well with my food journal. I think I'm ready to go beyond just writing things down, to cleaning up my diet a little bit. My diet isn't terrible, but I have room to improve.

via

workout setback

so i mentioned last week how excited i am to be back at the gym. last monday i went for the first time and could tell i got a little blister but didn't think much of it.

i went again on tuesday and when i got home, the whole heel of my sock was soaked in blood.

it hurt so bad!

i tried to work out on it on thursday but it hurt so bad, i only got about 20 minutes of cardio in. so frustrating. i had told tiffany that i'd want her to watch jameson on friday and i cancelled. i felt like a failure and that i was making excuses. it was disappointing.

bought new shoes, ended up being too big, so i took them and exchanged them today...here's hoping to a better workout week! my blister is good enough healed and i think my new shoes will work. yay!

week one weigh in

today i weigh 166.2. That's a loss of 3.6 pounds or 2.12% of my total body weight. Mark beat me this week (and maybe Matt and Christy will too), but I'm smaller.

if i were one to count my chickens before they're hatched, i would conclude that i can lose 40 pounds in under 4 months at this rate. i don't know if that will happen. i'm getting to my goal weight by respecting myself and by healing my relationship with food, and if that takes till christmas, it takes till christmas. if it takes till our anniversary, ok. (i mean obviously hopefully it won't)

i feel great about this first week, and i feel like there is a lot of room to ramp up my workouts and tighten up my diet in the future when i plateau. good news.

i plugged my stats into livestrong.com today and found out that my daily caloric target to lose 2 pounds this week is 1392.

Sunday, Sunday Sunday.

Sunday is a tricky day. Real tricky. With the exception of three hours of church, you're pretty much home all day and can't really do a lot of work activities that comprise the rest of the week, so I tend to eat all day. Bad news when you're trying to lose weight. But an excellent case study in mindful eating.

So today was fast Sunday, which meant no eating till dinner. This helped me a lot. I prepared a lean pork loin roast with stir-fry vegetables and brown rice. I had a reasonable portion, maybe a little big, but not ridiculous. I was full afterward but not stuffed.

Then we decided to start a new tradition for our Sunday treat. I love to bake and I want to still be able to do that regularly. So we decided that I could bake on Sunday, then Mark and I would determine on our own how much of the dessert we wanted. We could eat it all on Sunday or save it. It's up to us. Then once we portion that out, we'll take the rest to a neighbor (or two, depending on how much left over we have). We did it tonight and so far, so good. It will give purpose to our Sunday night walks and help us get to know neighbors better. For the record, we each kept three cookies. Mark at all of his tonight. I ate one tonight and am saving the others for a time when I really "need" a cookie.

Our first weigh in is tomorrow morning. I cheated and weighed myself this morning and I was down almost three pounds. I would be thrilled to reach the three pound mark tomorrow, but we will just see. If I don't hit it, I won't be upset. Slow weight loss is fine, as long as it's coming down, I'm eating more nutritiously and I'm addressing my relationship with food.

little breakthroughs all around.

yesterday at a family dinner, i decided to eat mindfully ahead of time and i'm so glad that i stuck to this. i had one reasonable portion of the dinner, one small strawberry shortcake and one small piece of berry coffee cake. i should have skipped that altogether. BUT, a huge plate of it was sitting next to me all night and i didn't eat any more. big deal.

today, mark and i went to olive garden. walking in the door, i was trying to form a bread stick strategy. how many should i eat? i told myself i could have one, no more than two. then the waiter brought out the salad and bread and i instead thought i would just wait for mark to have one before i had one. he never did, so i didn't either. then before i knew it, i didn't even care about the bread. i was talking to mark and people watching and not so focused on wolfing down all edibles within arms' reach. and i had less than half of my entree and i was full. in the car afterward, i had one andes mint. there were 3 of them, and i just had one.

i think that i am getting better about eating purposefully. i'm getting better about thinking about what i eat before i eat it and not just eating for something to do.

Let yourself be grumpy!

Losing weight is hard because it's work.

Work is work! Losing weight is a job. It isn't always fun and it's sometimes tedious and tiresome and you wonder if you're making a difference.

But you have to keep at it.

I need to remember this every day. I might be grumpy. And that doesn't mean I need to coddle myself or give in! It means I need an attitude adjustment and probably a glass of water.

my purpose.

so we know it is time for me to lose weight, because i can't fit into any of my clothes and i am technically "overweight." but i've been really thinking lately about why i'm ACTUALLY doing this.

lots of people are technically overweight, after all. i could just buy bigger clothes and that would be that.

but i'm not going to do that.

i'm doing this for a couple reasons. one is that i feel disgusting and i miss "me."

another is that even when i was thinner, i never quite got to where i wanted to be. i've dreamed of the 120s for years. I have never been there as an adult, with the exception of a few weeks one summer in college when i hardly ever ate. literally, i would go a day or so without anything. having too much fun i guess? i don't know.

the actual 127 number comes from 30 rock. it's so silly, but that's the truth and i want to be totally honest here. on the 30 rock pilot, jack guesses liz's weight as 127 pounds and he's right. i think that number is supposed to be chubby, which is kind of sad. so that's how i got the number. plus i love the number 27. always have.

anyway, another reason i want to do this (1. feel disgusting and 2. never have reached my goal weight before) is to have healthier subsequent pregnancies and not have losing the weight be such a huge ordeal.

i know that losing baby weight is going to always be a challenge. it's just how it goes. but with this first pregnancy, i didn't exercise and i ate whatever i wanted, whenever i wanted. i also started out the pregnancy at 144 pounds, which is 6 pounds heavier than my set point of 138 that i can easily maintain if i'm getting regular exercise and being somewhat careful about what i eat. when jameson was born, i weighed 190, give or take. that's a 46 pound weight gain and so far i have only been able to lose 21 pounds of it.

think about it: if i started the next pregnancy at 127 and then gained the recommended 25-30 pounds, that would put me between 152 and 157 - only 8 pounds higher than my starting weight for my first pregnancy! coming home from the hospital and shrinking easily below 150 in the first two weeks of my baby's life sounds wonderful. imagine how much less stress i would have about losing weight!

to loosely paraphrase ronald regan, "i know it's a hell of a challenge, but i ask myself: if not me, who? if not now, when?"

proud moment!

I just made cookies and I didn't have a single one or taste anything while I was making them, other than to lick a tiny morsel of peanut butter off my finger...it's been a while since I've done that!

Now to continue in strength and still not eat any of them at my YW activity tonight...I can do this! Gotta make sure I keep some gum in my mouth.

why do i do this?

yesterday ended up being terrible, diet wise. i did go to the gym, thanks to my neighbor tiffany who took Jameson for an hour.

mark went up to farmington to play basketball with his dad and then stayed over up there because he had court in ogden this morning. last night, i ate everything in sight.

well it started with the costco sushi i ate in the afternoon, followed by my normal dinner, and then left to myself with jameson in bed and mark gone, i ate off and on all night. i wasn't even hungry! AND i'm trying to diet, obviously.

ugh.

new rule: if you eat it, you have to write it down.

i started a google doc for my food diary. i'm calling yesterday a learning day and moving on today.

How can I get out of this habit??

via

Trading babies.

My neighbor, Tiffany, who I happen to visit teach, agreed to trade babies with me so that I can work out during the day sometimes and so she can run errands without a baby and help in her daughter's class sometimes. I think this is a good idea and I hope it helps me become better friends with her as well as get plenty of workouts in each week without taking up every single night.

I feel really hungry today. I'm trying to eat higher protein/fiber and drink more water.

I weighed myself this morning and I weighed the same as I did yesterday. It's ok, only been one day...I think I might want to just weigh in once a week.

I can still do it! I just haven't been.

I worked out at the gym tonight for the first time in a loooong time. Even walking into the gym, I felt like my posture was better. I was so excited, but nervous about how weak I might be. I did just cardio and it felt amazing. I think I need new workout shoes, but still, I felt amazing. Back in the "glory days," I would do 60 minutes at 3.8 miles per hour with the incline at 15. Tonight I did 45 minutes at 3.5 and I worked up to an incline of 10. Not bad. I think I can work up to where I was quickly and start melting some serious calories. I left just feeling so good that I can still work out and work out hard, and I am so looking forward to getting strong and powerful and maybe even doing some running!

april 2 (week 1, day 1)

i started off today by eating 2 huge oatmeal fudge bars. calories...i don't know, 5,000?!

even as i was eating them, i was thinking, "i should have thrown these away." then i was thinking "if i eat these, they'll be gone and won't tempt me anymore. we can't have these around while we're dieting."

i was remembering a conversation with my husband last night about using willpower until refusing certain foods becomes a habit. i know it isn't realistic to cut out foods from your diet completely, but i really need to be better about this if i'm going to be successful.

today i also arranged to trade babysitting with a girl in my ward so that i can do a daytime workout a couple times a week (so i don't have to be gone every evening).

it's time.

i've decided that this is the time to lose the baby weight and to take responsibility to reach my goal weight before i get pregnant again.

today is day one. my husband and i are doing it together. my day one weight is 169.8 pounds.

my goal is 127 pounds.

so, i have 42.2 pounds to lose.

i'm employing a few strategies to get this weight off.

1 - since i have never lost more than 10 pounds at once, and i am confident that i can lose 10 pounds (and keep focused for that amount of weight loss), i will be losing this weight 10 pounds at a time. so i will have little rewards for myself every 10-ish pounds (at 159, 148, 137 and 127).

2 - i will try to re-train my brain that food is not a reward. to do that, i'll put a dollar in a jar each time i work out. when i reach one of my mini goal weights, i'll take all the money in the jar and do something nice for myself. i might go shopping, get a manicure, or do something else to treat myself.

3 - speaking of workouts, mark and i have passes to gold's gym express, which has plenty of cardio machines and circuit weights. i will have a lot of focus on quality cardio workouts and use the "calories in, calories out" strategy for losing the weight for as long as that works. after a certain point, i will have to switch it up and start putting more focus on weight lifting to boost my metabolism by increasing muscle mass while still doing lots of cardio.

4 - diet. i have gone on so many diets in my life. if i don't know how to eat right by now, i'm really in trouble. i will be focusing on the foods that give me the biggest nutritional value for the calories and keeping a food journal. right here.

here we go!