End of June wrap-up

Checking in to see how I did on my goals for June.

1. Drink only water: this was a sort of pass. I drank pretty much water and slipped up on about 5 occasions. 2 were deliberate (close to the end of the month I really wanted lemonade bc it was SO hot), 2 were unconcious and one was were I felt forced to take a shot (of alcohol).

2. Go to the gym 15 times : FAIL. I went 10 times. I slacked in the beginning but started going regularly during the last week and a half but it was not enough.

I lost 3.8lbs this month.

For July, I want to try the same excercise goal: go to the gym (or dance studio) 15 times in the month.

Foodwise, I'm thinking i want to see what some version of the atkins would be like. Low carb I guess? Anyone had experience with that? I'm afraid I'll lose a lot then gain the month after! But if I'm counting calories, should it matter?

That's all for now. I hope I lose around 10lbs this month.

Monday Weigh-In

222lb.

Went down .2. Not a lot but at least it went down. It doesn't feel on par with my effort but hey, in biggest loser they usually plateau in the 2nd week. I'm hoping next week is more tangible. Till then I'll just enjoy "feeling smaller."

Weight Vs Size

Official weigh-in day is not till tomorrow. However, I was excited (because I've been so "good" with my calories this week) that i stepped on it a day earlier.

Up .2lbs.

I tried not to be too bummed about it but I was. I mean, I went over my calories last week and dropped 4 lbs. I only went to the gym twice. This week, I've been under calories almost every day and significantly upped my exercise. I was expecting at least a 2lb loss.

This got me thinking. Why do we place so much emphasis on your actual weight? This week I noticed my jeans felt looser. At the end of the day, I care more about what my body looks like than what I weigh so I'm going to focus on that.  My goal is to lose 100lbs in a year. However, I want to be about a size 4/6. If that happens at 80lbs lost, then that's were I'm stopping. I'm not letting a number that is influenced by so many little things dictate how I feel.

Whatever the scale says tomorrow, I'm ready. I know my body is in better shape than 2 weeks ago and eventually the weight will follow.

It works! It works!

I think I might marry my iphone.

So, like you all know, I've been trying out this new app called Loseit! (I'm not an affiliate or anything) and it's been helping me track my calories (food AND exercise). I had set a calorie goal of about 1500 a day and every single day of last week except for 1, my net calories were over that goal by about 1000 calories!

So why did I lose 4lbs! this morning? I must have been eating a whole lot before I started tracking. Now this has pumped me up and I'm extra motivated because I kept thinking of what I would have lost if I had stayed within the range and exercised everyday!

Speaking of exercise, I'm now at 5/15. With only 9 days of the month left, it seems like I will be failing this goal and have to roll it over to next month.

Finally made it to the gym

Can I tell you how much I love the loseit! app! For one, it breaks your meals into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I had 1835 cals the whole day and 1205 of that was snacks! A real eye-opener for me.

The good thing was that it made me realize I couldn't skip the gym so now i'm at 3/15 for the month. I set my goal on the elliptical to burn enough calories to negate the extra I consumed (plus a little more). So 52 or so mins of elliptical burned 643 cals and my net cals for the day was 1192. Not bad.

If I go everyday for the rest of the week (which I plan to) I'll be halfway through my gym goal for the month!

Monday Weigh-In

226.2.

Up 2 lbs.

Guess you can't lose weight when you eat a whole box of pizza over the weekend and don't excercise.

Started using Loseit! and gave my self a calorie limit of about 1500. Going to the gym today. 

Hope you all are doing better than me.

Success, temptation and motivation.

Still at 2/15 in terms of exercise. I'm going to step that up this week.

I almost had another moment where I accidentally had a drink. I went out to dinner with a friend and the waitress came over to ask what we wanted. I asked for a Shirley Temple and when she was almost halfway across the room, I yelled for her to come back. "I'm sorry, can i just have a water?". She must have thought I was crazy but I felt proud. This experiment is really showing me how much I might inadvertently take in calories.

My eating has not been so great though. I'm not looking forward to tomorrows weigh-in as I'm sure there will be a gain.

I recently got an ipod touch and just downloaded two apps I'm excited to try out.  One is the Jillian Michaels app and the other is called Lose it! They are both free. I'm not really sure what the Jillian Michaels one does but the Lose it! app is a calorie tracker.

I've found counting calories to be great for losing weight so hopefully since i carry my ipod around, this will help. I'll update as I go along.

Will report back tomorrow

Peer Pressure

First things first. I went to the gym today (yay). Did an hour on the elliptical. It got hard towards the end (showing me how out of shape I've gotten) but music kept me going. So now I'm looking at 2/15. Good. I should be able to make that goal.

The weekend was fun. Went to a friends birthday party where my nothing but water plans got derailed. I was very sneaky and good in the beginning. I had told her beforehand about my goal and that I wouldn't be drinking. Her response "but it's my birthday, you have to!". I know better than to argue so for the first part of the night, I just pretended to drink but I was really just drinking water. This worked well until she insisted on having the waitress make a special drink for me.

I got out of that by handing it to someone else as soon as she walked away. She came back and asked where the drink was and I told her I had finished it but then another friend told her I didn't drink it. She started to get upset that she had gotten a drink just for me, and it was her birthday and... (she was drunk) so to shut her up, I bought her a shot and had one with her.  Figured calorie wise, it was better to have a shot than a mixed drink.

This is an interesting experiment because when I chose this goal I thought it would be quite easy to achieve but it's only the 7th day of the month and I've broken it twice. Oh well, I guess it's making me more aware of what I'm drinking.

I'm going to try to up my water intake because lately I've felt a little dehydrated and that makes me crave "refreshing" drinks which in my head are things like lemonade and iced tea.

Advertising works y'all.

Monday Weigh In

Weighed in today. 224.2.

I lost 1.8lbs since last week and 1.6lbs since I started.

98.4 lbs to go.

I'm going to write a longer post today about peer pressure.

My favorite blogs

I used to read a lot of personal finance blogs and they were really helpful so I thought I would see what they could do for me in the realm of weight loss.

Well, you're reading this so this is one of the things I've been encouraged to do. Be Accountable. It's very motivating when you have to report back to a bunch of readers (I experienced this with PF too).

Anyway, I started off reading about Tyler over at 344lbs. It's amazing what he has done. He started off eating what he liked too, just in moderation. I think he's such an inspiration and his blog feels very interactive.

One of his posts led me to check out Jen over at priorfatgirl. She's awesome! She's no longer in the losing weight phase as she has lost almost 100lbs and looks great! I love her blog because it has loads of useful and interesting recipes and it's very honest. Right now I'm just waiting on her bf to propose - teehee.

I also read Mary's blog but this one is a bit different. She's very open and honest (lots of picture updates and videos) but for me she shows some of the thinking patterns I want to avoid. I think her blog embodies what theantijared was talking about in this post. The two things that stuck out in his post were;

Great weight loss bloggers are very supportive:

"I know you gained six pounds, but that is probably water weight! There is NO WAY you can gain that much weight by eating a few slices of cake!"

I am supportive, but to a point. I love to help people, but it is hard to give advice to those who want to make excuses for their weight loss or failures.

                                                        AND

Weight loss bloggers think about the future, and do not think about the present:

"Well, I ate a lot today, but tomorrow is a new day."

I know that if I can not do it today, then I will not do it tomorrow.

I don't have that many readers yet but I implore you. Don't leave "encouraging" comments when I don't do what I should. I don't want to foster an environment that keeps saying that it's ok to fail (even though I know that it is (once in a while)). I started this blog so i could be accountable and that does not include making excuses. To use biggest loser terms, I prefer a more "Jillian" approach than Bob. I WANT to be told when I'm messing up and when I'm making excuses. Even though most of the time I know that's what is happening, for some reason it's different (and for me motivational) when other people say it too.

Just to be clear, this is not an attack on her blog. I love her positivity and and willingness to share. She has also lost approximately 40lbs! I just think that it's good practice to learn from other people's mistakes when you can.

If you have any other favorite weightloss blogs, let me know.

Failed challenge

Wow, only on day three. To be honest, it wasn't intentional.

I was at the mall, feeling hot and bothered and I passed by a vending machine. I thought to myself "an iced tea would be very refreshing" and I bought one. I started drinking it and then halfway, I was like "$%$@! I gave up soda/other beverages". I threw what was left away but then i remembered earlier that afternoon I had bought a strawberry lemonade.

I guess when it's hot I think about "refreshing" drinks. This is probably how calories slip in when  I'm not paying attention.

Still trying it for the rest of the month though. Gym was a no-go yesterday so still sitting at 1/15

I prefer morning workouts!

Day 2 of the June Challenge. Did not go to the gym today so sitting at 1/15 or the challenge.

I didn't go for a very dumb reason. I forgot my headphones. Technically, I could have gone home, picked up the head phones and gone to the gym but after battling traffic for close to 2 hours, I just didn't feel like.

This is why I like working out in the morning. It doesn't give me time to make excuses/reasons for why I can't work out. I wake up and just go before my brain has time to turn on. Working out after work gives me a whole day to think about why I don't want to work out. Plus, its easier to get headaches and such.

Unfortunately, my gym doesn't open till 6am and I have to leave for work at 7am so morning workouts are not an option.

First day of challenge

Well, yesterday went pretty smoothly. I didn't have any issues drinking water at work. After work I had a really bad headache and after driving with it in traffic for close to 2 hours I really didn't want to go to the gym. But I did. One because, it was Day ONE and I promised you guys and two because priorfatgirl is always saying that you have to go even if you don't want to.

I didn't have the best workout. 20 mins on the elliptical. I wanted to do 40 but the machine kept going off, so I did it while it was off. Somehow not seeing how many calories I was burning and not being able to change the resistance made it really boring. I'm glad I went though. My headache went away after that brief stint.

I noticed something weird. When I got home, I had some m&m's (instead of real food!) and once I did, I wanted some soda. I didn't have it but I think it was interesting that I didn't think of soda until I had junk food. Something to think about.

Anyone joining me in this challenge?

June Challenge

Weighed in yesterday. 226. I hadn't started focusing yet so I'm not surprised.

My challenge for June is to only drink water. I'm going to give up alcohol too. The only other thing I'm allowed besides water is milk in my cereal. I don't usually drink a lot of soda but I tend to drink a decent amount of juice. The other part of the challenge is to make it to the gym 15 times this month.

I think that's doable so let's see what impact it will have on my weightloss. Still need more ideas for challenges so if you have any, be sure to let me know!

Challenges

To make this blog a little more interesting and to borrow an idea from Steve pavlina, I'm going to do little challenges throughout the year to keep things dynamic.

I think I'll try both short and long (max 1 month) trials. Ideas currently floating in my head include:

• 30 straight days of bikram yoga
• 30 day shred
• 30 days of being vegetarian
• 30 days on the atkins diet? (not sure about this one, my heart!)
• weeklong raw food (don't think i could/want to do this more than that)
• 1 week on just fruit? (would too much citrus present a problem?)

If you have any other suggestions on things I could try, let me know.