So I got on the scale this morning and …      180

Once again I am excited !!! I have now not only met my goal I have passed it by a pound AND I did it in 5 weeks instead of 6. YAAAAAAAAAAAAY !!!!!!!    :o) 

I’m not sure what I’m going to do as my I met my goal treat. I know it won’t be food though. I made up my mind at the beginning of this journey that my goal met rewards would not be food and will most likely be something for my appearance a pedicure, new clothes , a new hair do, getting my ears re pierced etc.  “Hey I just lost 10 pounds lets chow down on a gallon of ice cream”  just seems kinda counter productive.  It would make this a ONE step forward,  TWO  steps back thing and I would eventually give up. Anyway, when I decide what I’m gonna get I’ll post about it ! I may wait til Justin gets home and let him help me decide.

And  THAT  folks is my tip for today !! DON’T make your rewards a food item !! You would do better to pick a day (mine is friday night at family movie time) and let yourself have ONE serving of something you REALLY miss… for me it’s root beer. Barqs to be specific.  :o)  If you do that you can handle sticking to one portion where if you put it off for a looooooong time and make it a reward you can’t help but eat a lot cause you missed it for so long and you feel entitled to do so cause you “earned” it. But you will also “earn” your way back up the scale.  I will pick anything I may want (cds, movies, a shirt, my new tattoo)  but I know a good bit of the time it will go toward my appearance. I want to enhance the new me cause I’m proud of the work I’m doing and the self control I now have. Plus being pregnant for almost 2 years straight I did NOTHING for my appearance. When I’m pregnant I’m to miserable to care.  :o) 

I am going to work out EVERY day this week including Saturday and Sunday because hopefully Justin will be home next weekend for 6 days and I don’t know how much formal exercise I’ll be getting in that week. I am also going to work out twice a day every other day this week.

So “the skinny” is ….  I worked out Mon.- Weds. and I worked out twice on Thursday.  Today I did yard work for exercise and it kicked my butt cause I was already sore.

I stuck to my calories all week EVERY day !!

Peace

Steph

There have been many changes in my life since I decided to start this blog. One of them being I have become a “temporary single mom” 3 and a half weeks out of the month. I also have started babysitting my neighbors little boy to help her out. However in a few weeks I will be taking on a full time babysitting job to help out with some of the bills and household expenses. It will be two children and one is a baby only a month older than mine. I am already busy and soon I will be busier so I have made a decision. I will blog any day I get a spare moment but…  I am going to really only blog twice weekly now.  Friday cause its weigh day and Tuesday cause its about the halfway point. If I have a bad day and cave to temptation I will definitely post what happened though. So if I don’t post assume I had a good day and stuck with it.  :o)   

I have done something interesting … I have been trying to add in  a second workout but just haven’t gotten to it.  Well  I finally did ! I finished watching Biggest Loser and thought “I’ll start doing a second workout today kind of like a “last chance workout” and if it works out I’ll continue to do it every other day and then eventually add it to every day.”  It went well and I enjoyed it ! I did my favorite  Firm DVD after getting Connor off to school and then did the short 30 minute one I blogged about the other day at 4 after getting Connor off the bus. Weigh day is tomorrow so we’ll see if it paid off.

Jamie I am working on a good vs. empty calorie tip section for you ! And I have asked my sister to make her first guest post about that as well so be checking for that !

SO I have been at this now for about 4 weeks but I took that week long vacation in which I neither gained nor lost so we’ll skip that and say I’ve been at it for 3 weeks…

I weighed this morning and    183

I am so excited 10 pounds in 3 weeks !!! My goal is 12 pounds in 6 weeks and I have almost met my goal with 2 weeks left !! YAY !!!  10 pounds, I can NOT believe it ! I have struggled so much in the past I can’t believe how everything is coming together for me this time instead of working against me. I have put in some serious hard work as far as will power and sticking to my calories go but all in all it has so much easier than before. And I have done all this without really exercising so i can’t wait to see how this week goes when I step up and workout ! My sister has shared with me that even on a breastfeeding diet with the breastfeeding exclusively  burning 500 calories a day if I were to add even one workout I could get fabulous results. I got started and never got around to the exercise and am doing great without it. I am excited to see how much more it can help :o)

Well I finally have something to say here ! I am EXCITED and ECSTATIC and so many other feelings. WOW ! I can’t wait to keep going,  I can’t wait to do more. It is amazing what seeing some results can do for you. I am way beyond motivated right now I just want to hold on to this feeling, wrap it up and save it for the stressful days when I THINK I desperately NEED that bar of chocolate or bowl of ice cream. :o)

I’m going to get back to writing down what I eat so those who might need to see what I am eating to know you can eat good and enjoy it can see it. I’m also not walking around “hungry” all the time. Some days I have trouble eating enough to get my whole calorie quota met.  I have not really felt deprived since starting this. I might miss the occasional candy bar or soda but thats about it. I have discovered help for my big weakness though and that will be tomorrows tip.

So “the skinny” for today is

Another work out

And my daily calorie total is       1811

SO… I actually did some formal exercise yesterday that wasn’t a ride on my recumbent bike while watching TV. Although I have decided that I don’t get enough exercise and as long as I ‘m not having to hold the baby atleast one of my hour long shows if I wanna watch I gotta pedal :o) that gets me exercising,  even on my busiest days I make time for a little tv. Anyway… I did one of my favorite things a THE FIRM workout dvd. I have several and I tried a new one cause it was only 30 minutes and I didn’t have a lot of time.  Also it promised to be light and easy and I’m WAAAYYY outta shape (no wait round IS a shape :o) ) So I did it and I made it thru the whole workout without stopping. I was barely sweating and my heart rate was up but not killing me. I thought ok either I didn’t do it right or I have finally found a work out by them that is awful. I have found ones I don’t enjoy or care for but never a bad one. And then,  I got up this morning and couldn’t walk up my stairs.  HELLO muscles I forgot I had. As the day wore on I felt it even more. HELLO muscles I haven’t used since my horse riding days. Then this evening I sat down to watch my favorite show and when i got up after an hour I was stiff and even more sore… HELLO muscles I didn’t even know existed. And hello heat pack. It’s really not that bad I can function but I can indeed feel that I did something and did it right :o)  I am so glad I did this cause now I have found a good easy one that I can manage even on busy days (not crazy days but the busy ones there is a difference) and I am now motivated to get back to doing these every day I can. I was putting off doing my dvds cause I was afraid that I was so out of shape I would be dying half way thru and hate it.  The picture below is the workout I did   

SO my tip for today is www.thefirmdirect.com  You can find older  dvds (and the new ones) by them on ebay (search the firm workout ) and clips to see if you’d like a specific one on youtube. Also if you want to know what a specific one involves and if you’d like it email me I can probably tell you :o)   They promise visible results in 10 workouts and they deliver if you do them right. I remember my mom saying when she started their older series when I was younger “Yeah you get  results in 10 workouts, you can’t walk .”  These things really work I LOVE them they are my favorite workout ever and I swear by them so to speak.  I may highlight the contents of my favorites in later tips.

“The skinny” for today is

I worked out again so I’ll probably be REALLY feeling it tomorrow

And my daily total in calories is … 1796

Peace

Steph

I had no idea that the diet would be easier than I expected and the blogging every day part would be the hardest.  I have always had so much trouble losing anything after any of my pregnancies. ( part of why I am so heavy at this point) This time it all just seems to be coming together for me and I am so grateful ! The blogging every day I thought would be so easy but life has been so CRAZY !!

So todays tip is the other half of my food schedule…

I now sit down in the morning (or the night before) and plan out my meals for the day. If i do this I know how many calories I’ll consume that day.  This way I don’t come up short in 2 ways both of which are bad.

At first I would get to the end of the day and go to total up what I ate for my blog and I would come up several hundred calories short which might be ok if I was full all day and not starving myself but not right now. Since I’m breastfeeding I really need to meet my quota. Then I realized that was no good so I’d come to the late afternoon total up what I had eaten so far, come up short and eat til I met my quota. Also not good. Even though I stayed within my limits that many calories all at once or squished close together most of them get stored as fat because you can’t burn them all that fast. Also it was the END of the day so I’m getting ready to climb in bed and yup you guessed it store calories instead of burning them cause I’m sleeping so I’m not using much energy.

If I get into the day and decide I don’t want what I had planned I just look for a substitute that does sound good at the moment with a very similar calorie content. That way I don’t have to refigure my whole day but I’m not stuck to what I wrote on my menu.

Okay not a whole lot to say here again… I have noticed again that I’m starting miss a few things. We do “family movie night” on the weekend though so I’ve decided that if I’ve stuck to my calories thru the week and exercised (formal exercise) at least twice I will let myself choose one small thing I miss as my movie night treat. Then I will also have to exercise self control and portion control while I eat it. I think giving myself this “treat” now that I’m well established in my GOOD eating habits will keep me from giving up or giving in to often. :o)

So here’s “the skinny” for today

Couldn’t begin to tell you exactly what I ate since I am playing catch up here but I’ve been writing down my daily totals.

My daily total is                 1805

Peace

Steph

Ok I have been battling allergies and a breastfeeding issue. The issue made me VERY ill and had me down for 24 hours with flu symptoms including a fever. Thats why I missed some days blogging and I did not weigh this week.

So the issues I faced this week are going to be the focus of my tip today. I’m not exactly sure what the title for this tip would be so I’m just gonna write what I learned this week.   I recommend  a meal plan for the day. It’s how I do it. I actually have 2,  sort of. I have my overall schedule that I try VERY hard to stick too.  You’ve seen it in “the skinny” it goes Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, SMALL Snack.  (I will share my other plan in tomorrows tip.) It keeps my blood sugar and fullness level on a pretty even keel and helps to not feel the need to over eat.  SO  I say TRY because lets face it life gets in the way and I may be out when I need one of the snacks. Or I may not quite be home in time for lunch and I have to remind myself EAT as soon as I get home. But this week I faced and even bigger problem with sticking to my schedule. I was “sick”.  It is almost physically impossible for me to eat when I have a fever.  So I went about 24 hours without eating much at all and my body has gotten used to a steady schedule of food. Plus with the breastfeeding by the late afternoon I was a dizzy mess from lack of food. I forced myself to eat a little something. The next day though… I was still a little weak but no fever and I was ravenous !!! I kept my choices healthy but I ate EVERYTHING I could get my hands on.  I ended up feeling sick because my body is not used to such massive intake anymore.  SO sick is sick and changes the game plan but try to be careful still. Sip soup something anything to get some calories in you. I wish I had thought things thru more while laying on the couch. :o)  I will weigh this Friday as usual but I skipped this last week.

Again nothing to really say here…

So “the skinny”  for today is…

Sunday so no formal exercise

I lost my list of food and calories but my calculator is still open thankfully so my daily total is …                                   1796

So back to following my diet very closely the vacation is over.

I was a little afraid that the slight vacation and a little Easter candy would make it hard to get back on track. Not really though. I think it was balanced out by two things, 1. a shopping trip during which I took 22 items in the dressing room and only one fit right. (and all these items were XL I HATE THAT ! I will not be XL for the rest of my life, I WON’T !! )  And even more importantly…  2. Seeing my sister. She has been dieting and faithfully working out  (with a much busier and schedule and waaaayy more temptation than I have) and has lost 30 pounds !!! She looks amazing and I am so inspired to keep going ! Her progress is incredible.

Hmmmm… a tip for today, what do I have to share ???  I guess right now I would recommend a diet and or workout buddy. Just watching my sister’s progress from afar has inspired me and knowing my dietician sister is supposed to be reading this also helps.  I know that having someone you’re accountable to can be a great motivator. I have heard of friends having a contest but I don’t think that would help me personally. I just need someone to encourage me and to chastise me when I want to fall off the wagon. LOL :o)  A workout buddy is great too ! It can get you to the gym even on days when you don’t feel like it  cause no one can resist some girl time. Just make sure you do your gossiping and TV show talk while sweatin on the treadmill. And that’s todays  tip.

Nothing really to say here today cause I pretty much shared it all in my opening paragraph…

So here’s  “The Skinny “ for today…

Breakfast: 2 packets instant oatmeal     260

Am Snack:  Apple                          75

Lunch: Progresso hearty vegetable and noodle soup Peanut butter and one slice whole grain                         350

PM snack   pretzels and cheese           420

Supper:  Lean Cuisine herb roast chicken and red potatoes cauliflower in cheese sauce                                           260

Dessert:   Captain crunch and skim milk        280

Daily total                       1645    

Gotta up that daily  total !

Peace

Steph              

I am back from vacation... I was careful but did not count every little calorie and I actually was very active !! I weighed this morning and... 185. So I did not lose but I did not undo my progress either I am satisfied with that.