Ouch.

Well I kind of fell off the horse at the end of this week.  I never eat well on Thursdays - I'm too busy, grumpy, and not at home enough to care about it, I guess.  Friday wasn't any better, and Saturday my boyfriend Andrew and I went to Sonic for lunch and then I went out with my friends to the bars.  I had a great time, though.  Wednesday's lack of weight loss just kind of made me wonder what the point of me trying so hard was if I'm not going to lose weight, but after some very nice comments from Bonnie and Terri (thanks, guys!  : D) I see that I just have to be patient and really stick to eating well.  I've read that if you do something every day for 21 days it becomes fixed in your brain as a habit.  Maybe that will happen to my diet - if I can stick to it for three weeks without eating too many crappy things, perhaps I won't want crappy things anymore.  It'll probably take a lot longer than that for my love of bad food to disappear, but I didn't gain all this weight in a day and I won't lose it in a day either.

Well, I had Sonic for breakfast (I know, I know, terrible..but it's such good hangover food).  I work at the library tonight, a place completely devoid of vegetables and completely stocked with donuts and bagels which I can get for free.  It's really hard for me to turn down free donuts, but I'm going to concentrate on not eating anything unhealthy tonight.  It's only four hours, I think I should be able to do it.  I have a lot of homework to do today, but I'm going to make healthyness a priority and go to the gym before work.  I may post again tonight, but definitely tomorrow.  I have to find a little notebook somewhere to use for a food diary.  Hmm...

EDIT:

I did make it to the gym.  I rode the bike for thirty minutes, burned 250 calories.  But at work, I had two donuts.  : (  Tomorrow is a new day!

Wednesday Weigh-In #1

Today I went to the gym and did my intervals around the track, and weighed myself afterward to discover I have not lost any weight.  Not at all.  The scale was fluctuating between 208 and 207.8 pounds.  I'm pretty pissed off about this, considering I've been faithfully going to the gym and trying to eat well all week.  Maybe it was the clothes I had on, maybe it was the time of day, maybe it was my monthly lady things, maybe it was all the gods ever invented smiting me.  Whatever it was, I don't care.  I'm just pissed, and disappointed.  I only wanted to lose a pound - one little pound.  Now I'm two pounds behind.  This is either an example of A) Just how hard it is for me to lose weight, or B) A prime example of my laziness when it comes to eating.  I'm gonna guess it's a little of both.  So, from now on, the physical food diary is going to be made use of - I'll write down everything I eat and drink every day, and tally up the calories at the end.  I won't go out to eat unless I've looked up some nutritional information first.  I'll focus on eating at least three servings of fruits and veggies daily.  I'll stop drinking pop completely.  My water bottle and my food diary will be my best friends.  I will be healthy, dammit!

I guess old habits die harder than I thought.

Anyway.

How 'bout some good news?  Yesterday, I went out and bought myself new running shoes!  I worked out with them for the first time today after wearing them to class/work/around campus all day earlier.  They are such fantastic shoes.  They're cushy and soft, and after I got home (before the gym), my feet didn't hurt hardly at all.  Usually when I get home at the end of the day, my feet are throbbing and I have to sit down.  I'm never going to take these shoes off, and when they wear out, I'll buy another pair.  Sorry Puma, but Nike just one-upped you.

Running in them was...amazing.  They must have made my exercise more efficient, because I was sweating a lot more today than I have before doing these intervals.  My stride was easier, and I didn't feel like I was struggling for every step.  Once I found my groove, I flew around that track.  I was able to (and wanted to) run longer and even a little faster.  I still did my usual intervals so I didn't wear myself out too fast, but before I knew it my half hour was up.  I wanted to keep running.  I liked running.  And if it hadn't been for the fact that my legs were killing me and that I had yoga to go to, I wouldn't have stopped.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I have shin splints or something.  My shins were really hurting on Monday after I worked out.  Tuesday, when I got up out of bed in the morning I could barely walk.  It got better during the day, and today I was fine until I started jogging.  As soon as I finished my first jogging interval the pain was back, and it was bad.  I kept going, and it lessened a little (once I was warm, I think) but they're still sore.  I think I may work out on the bike on Friday and let my legs rest until next Monday.  I really don't want to end up with a stress fracture.

Well how about some food-diarying for today.

Breakfast: cheerios w/soymilk - 190
Snack: two servings cheese at work (but only two!) - 160
Lunch: small bowl of minestrone soup, PB&J sammich, diet coke - 63+~400+0
Snack: mini bowl of cheerios w/soymilk - ~100
Dinner: Healthy Choice dinner, apple, Jell-O Mousse dessert -400

Total: 1313  Nice!

Okay, well I have some grocery shopping to do.  I'm all out of my favorite cheerios.  : (  Nighty night.

Schedule of Insanity

So, I keep mentioning I have a ridiculous schedule.  I thought I'd lay it all out for you guys so you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Sunday:
Work from 5:00-9:00pm

Monday:
GIS class 9:30-10:45
Spanish Conversation class 1:25-2:15
Archaeology of Ancient Mexico 2:30-3:45
Gymtime
Yoga 6:10-7:00

Tuesday:
Work 7:00am-11:00
Spanish Lit 11:15-12:30
I usually go in from 12:35-1:15 to help with the lunch rush
Spanish Conversation 1:25-2:15
Work 2:30-3:30
Bellydance 6:35-7:35

Wednesday:
GIS Class 9:30-10:45
Work 11:00-1:00
Spanish Conversation 1:25-2:15
Archaeology of Ancient Mexico 2:30-3:45
Gymtime
Yoga 6:10-7:00

Thursday (a.k.a. Hell Day):
Work 7:00am-11:00
Spanish Lit 11:15-12:30
Lunch Rush work 12:35-1:15
Spanish Conversation 1:25-2:15
Archaeology of Violence & Conflict 2:30-4:45
Bellydance 6:35-7:35
Work 9:00pm-1:30am

Friday:
Spanish Conversation 1:25-2:15
Gymtime


So.  Yeah.  Now you can understand why I have a difficult time getting to the gym during the week.  Thursdays are seriously the worst - I'm a huge grump all day and end up eating like crap because I'm in a crappy mood.  The trade off is glorious, sleep-in day Fridays.  Ahh, Fridays.

Tonight, I didn't go to the gym because I had bellydance.  Before dance class, however, I went out and bought myself new running shoes!  I've been jogging in my every-day Pumas, and it's been killing my ankles/shins/knees, so I invested $80 in some Nikes, and I can't wait to work out in them tomorrow.  They're so comfortable I still haven't taken them off and I've been home from class for an hour and a half.  It's seriously like walking on clouds. 

Today's eating has been meh.  I had an apple, Raisin Bran crunch, and skim milk for breakfast (~500, it was a huge cereal cup), so that was good.  But I then proceeded to eat about half the cheese we had in stock.  I just can't help it.  I stand there, behind the deli line, hungry and bored, and the glorious, golden cheddar just sings my name.  Of course, the swiss is good, too.  So not only did I eat all the cheese a cow could produce, I also had a veggie-hummus wrap and another sugar cookie.  : (  Please understand, I do not normally eat sugar cookies, but grouchy old Aunt Flo has come for a visit to sabotage my healthy efforts.  What a bitch.  I got home and ate some peanuts and some hummus on a slice of bread.  Oh, I also had a diet coke.  Trying to steer away from pop, but that's hard too considering I used to have three diet cokes/coke zeroes a day. 

So, here's the not-yet-skinny (haha...it's a joke...get it?) so far:
- I really need to keep track of what I eat.
- My exercise level is good.
- My sleep level (very important for general health) is good-great.
- My general happiness level is good-great. 
- I have lost half a pound.  But my weigh-ins are on Wednesday now!


So yeah, that's it for tonight I think.  Just a funny sidenote - my bellydance instructor is also, serendipitously, my yoga instructor.  She ends up seeing me more times per week than my boyfriend, poor man. 

Also, please comment if you feel like it!  I really enjoy opening the blog to find comments waiting for me - they keep me optimistic and encouraged.  : )

Have a good night, everybody!

Playlist!

Just for fun, I thought I'd put up a few songs I really like working out to.  : )

Bleed it Out - Linkin Park
Glow - Nelly Furtado
O. Lover - Jason Mraz
Don't Slow Down - Matt & Kim
Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare - Matt & Kim
Just Dance - Lady GaGa
Swingset - Jurassic 5
Calabria 2008 (ft. MIMS & Natasja) - Enur
One, Two, Three, Go! - Bellanova
Asterisk - Orange Range
Lotus - Cage the Elephant
When Love Takes Over (ft. Kelly Rowland) - David Guetta
Baby Please - Jurassic 5
D.A.N.C.E. (Mstrkrft Remix) - Justice
Get Right - Jennifer Lopez
Don't Ask Me - OK Go
Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley


There's totally more songs than this, but those are just a few of my favorites. 

So, today went well!  Except I didn't have any fruit. : (  I'm out of bananas, you see, and slicing up apples just takes too much time in the morning [/excuse].  But, I did stay under 1300 calories with a hummus sammich (of course), a bagel and cream cheese, a Healthy Choice dinner, and a cookie.  I ran out of the house without eating breakfast this morning so I was pretty much starving until I could get a sammich at 1 pm. 

I also went to the gym today, and did my intervals.  I had yoga today, so I'm a little more sore than usual (we did some poses I've never even seen before), but I'm excited for dance class tomorrow.

So, yeah, a good good day.  Nighty night.  : )

On the road again...

Wow, I haven't posted since Tuesday?  Scurry.

Wednesday I went to the gym again and did the same intervals.  Jogging is starting to grow on me (if you'd told me a year ago I'd be saying that I probably would have died laughing and set my tennis shoes on fire just to prove the point).  The more jogging I do on the track, the better I feel afterwards.  During, it kind of sucks, but afterwards it feels nice.  Wednesday eating went well, Thursday was okay (I had Taco Bell because I was in a super grumpy mood), and Friday was pretty much a giant bust.  Pizza Hut for the win, there.  I find I go through mini-cycles of eating well for a couple days, eating crappy for a couple days, and doing it over again.  I guess that's what I get for more or less cold-turkeying my previous way of eating, but if I work on it more I'm sure I can get more good days per week and less bad days. 

Overall, I'm already noticing some positive changes - I have more energy, my skin already looks nicer, my digestive system is less out of whack, and I find myself craving exercise instead of cookies.  Unfortunately, my schedule is ridiculous, and trying to fit in gym time is a hassle.  But I think I have a pretty good system worked out - I can go Mondays and Wednesdays after class and before yoga, and perhaps Friday afternoons if I feel like it.  Saturdays and Sundays are also good options.  So with my bellydance classes (which are quite the sweat fest, lemme tell ya) that adds up to a pretty active week that I feel good about. 

So this weekend, I had to come home to pick up my cat (yeah, I kind of let him here at the end of break, poor thing). I really, really wanted to workout today since I didn't get the chance to go Thursday or yesterday because I spent my whole evening in the car, but the high school track isn't open to the public unless you've paid the semester fee of 30 dollars, and one day at the YMCA here in town is fifteen dollars.  No thanks.  I'm hoping I can get home tonight in time to go to the gym before the gym closes, but if not, I may just have to double up on the exercise tomorrow (if I ever have time to go...)

So far today I've had breakfast - cottage cheese (80), english muffin w/cream cheese (180), a banana (80), and a leftover Pizza Hut breadstick cause they're like crack (140 - yikes).  So that already equals nearly 500 calories.  Today may not be a perfect day, but I kind of don't care because I seriously love those breadsticks. 

Oi vey.

This is becoming harder to keep up with than I thought.

I didn't get a chance to weigh myself on Friday because I went traveling, but I weighed myself today to find that I weigh 208 pounds.  At the doctor's, my weight was 208.5, so at least I lost half a pound.  Pretty good for eating healthy only half the time and exercising only one day.

I keep reminding myself of something I told my boyfriend: "If you make it a priority, the opportunity won't slip away from you".  I'll lose this opportunity to lose weight and be healthy if I don't concentrate on it as a priority.

Today, I went to the gym and did intervals on the track - walk a lap, jog half a lap, walk a lap, jog half, and so on and so forth - for half an hour (while my gymnast roomate quite literally ran circles around me), with five minutes of quick warm-up walking and five minutes of cool down.  And then I stretched a whole bunch.  I've been eating pretty well today.

Breakfast: Cheerios w/soymilk, banana - 280
Lunch: Hummus wrap w/swiss cheese, lettuce, green peppers, jalapeños, red onion, banana peppers, and pickles.  It was seriously yummy, but I'm not sure on the calories because I don't know how much the wraps have in them, but I think it was pretty healthy.
Snack(s): I eat a lot of cheese at work.  I probably had six or seven dairy servings today.  Cheese is kind of my second-favorite food, behind mashed potatoes.
Dinner?: Got home from the gym and dance class to boil me up some broccoli.  Also plan on eating an apple.  And maybe some string cheese.

So, all in all, not bad.  Good veggies, little too much dairy, not quite enough fruit, decent breadstuffs. Oh, and I had a cupcake.  Not so good, but it was free and I couldn't resist.

So, I'm going to let my good eating today and my .5 lb loss inspire me to do it all over again tomorrow.  : )

Adios!

Oops.

Well, I didn't get the chance to weigh myself yesterday, so I'm going to put that off until next Friday, when I have something of a normal weekend.  I travelled this weekend to see some friends, but most of them weren't here when I get here - they made other plans.  That's putting me in a pretty bad mood, and I'm pretty prone to emotional eating.  I'm trying not to devour anything and everything in sight, but it's difficult.

Here's hoping next week will be better.

Yikes.

Well.  I'm not going to do a full diary entry today - but I have been keeping track, and I'm right around 1400 for the day (Thursday).  Not too bad, in my opinion.  The past two days, I was nowhere near on target - cookies and heaping plates of Mexican food distracted me from my goals.  Tomorrow's the weigh-in, but it will be on a different scale, so I'm not sure what kind of number I'm going to see.  I feel pretty confident that I've lost a pound, or close to it, even with the so-so eating and only one day of exercise.  My boyfriend even said I already feel smaller to him (but maybe he was just being nice).  This weekend I'm traveling to another city to visit some friends, and since I recently turned 21, I'm sure I won't be eating very healthy this weekend.  : /

Also, another revision:  it's become clear that an hour of cardio four days a week is never going to happen with my ridiculous work/class/homework schedule.  It seems like Mondays and Fridays are the best days for me to work out (minus this weekend because I won't be in town).  Dance classes start next week, but I can only do it one day a week instead of two because of aforementioned schedule of insanity.  So two yoga classes and a dance class, two days of working out...I think that equals a fairly active week.  Fairly active is better than sedentary, which is what I'm coming from, so I guess every little bit helps.

Well, I didn't get off work til 1:30 this morning, and I'm exhausted.  I'm going to invest in my wellness by catching some shut-eye.  Weigh-in numero uno tomorrow!

Getting on Track

Today was my first official day of classes, and I am exhausted.  So just a quick food diary entry is in store tonight.

Breakfast: Cheerios w/soy milk - 190
Mandarin oranges - 80

Lunch: Sammich w/50-cal bread, hummus, turkey, veggies, mustard - 250
2 string cheeses - 160
Banana - 110

Snack: Doritos - 200
Jello-brand chocolate mousse - 60 (absolutely delicious!  You should really try them)

Dinner: Campbell's Select Harvest Light soup - 160
String cheese - 80

Total: 1290.  Perfect.

For today's exercise, I walked about an hour and a half to/from class, at a pretty decent pace.  Also, I went to the gym and got on the treadmill for half an hour, doing intervals.  One minute jogging, two minutes walking.  I could barely finish the running segments by the end, but I know it'll get easier the more I do it.  I burned 250 calories on the treadmill. 

Hasta mañana.  : )

Alrighty then.

Well.  Eating well over the last two days has been almost impossible.  The Red Lobster dinner was DELICIOUS, so very very good, but alas - the cheddar bikkits were in fact my downfall, as I predicted.  Last night, my boyfriend's parents took me out to a casino buffet.  Although I did manage to have a salad, I also managed to somehow scope out and consume every single fried item offered (detecting fried foods must be my sixth sense). 

Today, I had a small bowl of cereal, grandma-made french toast (the best kind), two glasses of milk, a bag of Doritos on the road back to school, and then sushi at my now-favorite restaurant.  Not much fruit, and not much veggies - the kind of eating that got me in trouble in the first place.  But the sushi I got was pretty healthy.  I also had a little 80 calorie cheese snack.

I also did some major grocery shopping tonight, and letting me walk into a Walmart with unlimited funds is basically like buying yourself a ticket to the greatest future-diabetic, one-woman show on Earth.  However, I am very proud of myself - I did not buy a single pack of cookies, bag of chocolate chips, box of frozen appetizers, or candy bar.  In fact, I bought fresh vegetables - broccoli, green peppers, and lettuce - and cut them all up nicely and FoodSaved them!  My grandparents bought me a little mini FoodSaver for Christmas, and I have to say, it really is the best thing since sliced bread or space heaters.  Not only does it allow me to save money by keeping fresh vegetables I would have had to otherwise thrown away, but it also allows me to actually eat fresh veggies!  I sliced the green peppers and broccoli up in perfect bite-size portions for my sammiches and salads, and can't wait to dig into them.  I also bought a few Healthy Choice dinners (all low in calories and fat, and very high in tasty-looking-ness), some vanilla soy milk, hummus, low-fat cheese snackies, deli bread, extra-fiber whole wheat bread, bananas, appples, mandarin oranges...basically, a whole hundred dollars' worth of really good healthy stuff.  I'm pretty excited.  I don't have to work tomorrow, so no cookie temptations will present themselves to me and I should actually be able to count some calories.

I feel like the greatest obstacle I'm going to face this semester is stress.  I'm taking sixteen credit hours, along with two hours a week of extracurricular dance classes and twenty hours a week of work.  With studying time added in, that's like working overtime every day at a full time job.  And I'm supposed to keep up a healthy lifestyle on top of that?  Luckily, my yoga class and dance classes will help de-stress me while providing some needed exercise, but I'm starting to wonder if I can actually do the 50-50.

I guess the best thing is to stay positive and have one of those "Si Se Puede" attitudes (Yes, it can be done!, more or less). 

Well, I'll check in tomorrow with some foodage and hopefully some exercise.  See ya.  : )

Revision?

I was playing around with some BMR calculators today, and discovered that the one I first used to figure out how many calories a day I needed to maintain my current weight was very wrong.  I've played around with about six other ones, and they all come back saying 1776 calories.  So, a minor revision to my gameplan is in order:  to lose a pound a week, I have to reduce that number by 500 a day down to around 1300.  That number sounds more familiar to me from my previous attempts at losing weight.  I'm going to try and eat around 1300 calories a day, since I can't exercise every day like I would like to due to my frighteningly busy school schedule (if only I didn't have to sleep at night, sigh).  Otherwise I would cut calories by 250 and exercise off the other 250.  But I think this new gameplan will work pretty well for me.

My grandparents are taking me to Red Lobster today for my birthday!  And although I love salmon and it's very healthy, I love those cheddar biscuits like a fat kid loves cake and video games.  I'm going to try to limit myself to two biscuits, but in the face of cheesy warm goodness, my resolve just might fail. 

Here's hoping, and hasta luego!

The Beginning

Here we go.  Fifty pounds in fifty weeks.  I know I can do it this time - I've lost weight before and I know how to do it.  It's the getting lazy and gaining it back that's always the problem.  Well I've been hearing people tell me I'm lazy my entire life, and I will not be lazy about my health anymore.

At first, I wanted to lose weight to look good.  So my boyfriend would give me even more of "that look" (you know what I'm talking about).  I wanted to fit into a certain size jean.  I wanted to be able to compare myself to other women my age and say "Hey, look, I'm finally skinnier than so-and-so".  But losing weight isn't about looks anymore.  I have more serious problems to attend to, like the heart disease and diabetes that crops up in my family all too often.  I want to be healthy so I don't have to face these frightening problems.  And since I don't want kids, I want to be healthy my entire life.  I need to take care of my body so I can make it for the long haul.  There's a lot of things to learn in this world, and I don't want to miss out on something interesting because I was too lazy to get up and exercise.

So here's the gameplan:

- Cut calories.  I figured out via a handy little BMR calculator that to maintain my current weight at my current activity level (lightly active - I am learning to bellydance, after all), I must consume 2,442 calories per day.  Scary.  To lose a pound a week, I have to cut that figure by 500 calories a day down to 1,942 at most.


- More exercise.  Right now, I believe I qualify as "lightly active".  I do dance, and I walk alot from class to class, but I need to do more.  Even though going to the gym requires sports bra technology most likely designed by a top-secret and underground military wing of the government, I'm going to shoot for an hour of cardio four days a week.  I've read that 30 minutes most days a week is sufficient, but in my experience my body needs a little more activity than that to really get burning that fat off.  My dance and yoga classes this first semester will help alot, but I will need to go to the gym a few nights a week as well.  I also hope to get a little strength training in a couple times a week, although the yoga will help with that too.

- Eat healthy stuff.  I think it's pretty obvious from my BMR calculation that I eat like crap.  Not enough vegetables, not enough fruit.  Too much sugary stuff, too much fat.  I need to learn to cook at home, and to cook healthy things.  My grandparents bought me a nifty Food Saver for Christmas, so I can keep my veggies and salads fresh for a lot longer, so I can actually eat them.  And no more chowing down on cookies while I'm at work.



So with those goals laid out, I'm also going to use this blog as a kind of food diary, along with reporting on my feelings about my workouts and my progress.  I'm going to weigh myself on Fridays, hopefully, on the scale at the gym.  I went to the doctor's this morning and found out I weigh 208 pounds - very scary.  So fifity weeks from now, precisely on Christmas Eve, I should weigh 158.  :D

Okay!  Food diary entry number one.  I may not post every day, but I will try to keep track of it most days of the week.

Breakfast: 3 eggs and a glass of milk - ~350 cal
Lunch: Salad with bread and butter - ~400 cal
Snack: two small Hershey's turtles - 80 cal
Dinner: Applebee's dinner (mozzarella sticks, steak and veggies, and dessert) - ~300, ~600, 300
Beverages: water, all day long

Total: ~ 2030.

Exercise: 30 minutes of shoveling the driveway and 40 minutes boxing on the Wii.  (And yes, shoveling really does count).

Not bad for day one.  : )