Weighing In

Skyler had a check-up this morning, complete with another part of her flu shot, which is always fun! It was fairly uneventful (though you would think from her wailing that they were torturing her with 1,000 needles), but she got weighed and measured and she has gone through quite the growth spurt! She was 21 lbs and 31 1/2 inches, which puts her in the 25th percentile for weight and 65th for height. I am so happy/surprised/relieved to have her weight finally back to a safe normal! She’s been hangin’ on at the very bottom line of the growth chart for so long, this news is more than welcome!

In other weight news, I’ve stuck to my South Beach diet perfectly so far this week, and I’ve lost 3 pounds since Monday morning when I started. I know I shouldn’t measure my weight more than once per week, but I can’t help it. Each morning on the scale has been less than the day before, so I know that at least I’m not fluctuating up and down YET and it’s going in the right direction. I’ve also really enjoyed the diet so far. When I use the recipes online, I can make some pretty delicious stuff!

Resolution

Last year, I didn’t make any. I was already on the quest to lose the baby weight, so I didn’t really feel like it counted, and that was enough of a project that I didn’t want to add any new goals to last year.

But now I’m here another year later and still haven’t lost the last of the baby weight. I’ll admit that my motivation went in phases last year, and once my beach vacation had come and gone, I think the weight loss motivation for 2008 had been spent! I pretty much gave up the last couple months of the year, thinking hey its winter, I’ll enjoy the break, and soon enough I’ll feel disgusted enough with my self and start having to wear my immediatly post-pregnancy pants again and realize its time to get back in the fitness groove.

And that time has come soon enough, as I just pulled out a pair of jeans that I’d purchased a few months after Skyler was born that had gotten too big for me over the summer, and now they fit just fine again. Yuck!

So today I finally did two things:

1) I enrolled in the online South Beach Diet program. It’s free for the first 7 days so I can figure out if this is going to be doable. It requires a lot more food prep than I’m used to, but overall the menu looks tasty!

2) I picked up Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred workout video from Target. I’ve heard great things about this one, and since each workout is only about 20 minutes, I have ZERO excuses to not find time for it. I did the beginner workout tonight and thought I was going to die. Sad.

So, I’m back on track, officially starting Monday. Hopefully I do better this time around than I did last time I posted fitness goals on here! And this time, my goal is fifteen pounds, since I’m a few up from where I was last time I made the goal of ten.

Catching up – Part I

Thank you, Amy, for the reminder to publicize my weight loss progress! Overall, my nutrition has been pretty darn good. I will admit to two meals over the weekend that were far from healthy, though. One happened at a couple’s wedding shower we attended on Saturday, involving bbq, cole slaw, breads and chips and dip, and one rich piece of chocolate cake. On the bright side, I made a conscious effort to eat one serving of fresh veggies, hoping they’d help fill me up and at least get some good vitamins in there. It didn’t, however, keep me from overeating that meal! Then the next day was Skyler’s birthday, which we had all kinds of yummy food, actually very similar to the prior night! I attempted the same strategy with veggies but again, it didn’t work. I still ate way too much of the bad stuff!

However, two bad meals out of a week and a half since my last post, I think is not too shabby. I’ve also been fitting in more workouts. Sunday I actually ran seven miles! It was a gorgeous evening and had it not gotten dark, I could have gone further, but seven was my goal and I fit it in just before sunset. I ran and did push-ups yesterday on my lunch hour as well, and tonight I did a workout video targeting lower body. I don’t remember last week’s workouts but I know I fit in a couple, but could’ve done better.

I’m now down 1 pounds, to 134. It doesn’t seem like much but after Saturday and Sunday I was up to 137 for a couple days, so at least I’m headed back in the right direction.

I also have several friends at work who are working on weight loss goals as well, so we’ve been trying to keep each other accountable. Some of us try to workout at lunch a few times a week, and another friend and I exchange daily emails with each other listing what we ate the day before, as well as our weight. She calls it being “accountabili-buddies,” which I think is hilarious. It does help planning my meals knowing that I’ll have to owe up to them on paper the next day.

Oh, and before I move on from this topic, I must post a review of what I think is a very interesting food product: Amy’s California Veggie Burger. I’ve been trying to get more veggies in my diet, so I thought this might be an easy lunch option. Believe me, I was skeptical. It’s made of mushrooms, grains, veggies, and nuts. I don’t even like mushrooms! But I tried it, and while it tastes NOTHING like a beef burger, it actually is quite tasty. It’s also nothing like other veggie burgers I’ve tried that have a heavy soy flavor (i.e. – elementary school burgers). I can’t even really describe the flavor but it was very wholesome and good, and I will definitely purchase these again!

Rocky start

I haven’t had the best start to my ten pound goal, but it hasn’t been awful either. But I need to admit to a few things so I can lose the guilt and move on. The last two days my lunches have been less than healthy. On Thursday a coworker brought me over a plate that consisted of a chicken fajita (flour tortilla, seasoned chicken, cheese and salsa – not too bad, though the tortilla is pretty much worthless calories) and some espinaca dip with chips. Oops! I didn’t have a large quantity, but the quality was not good for weight loss, for sure. Then I got busy and didn’t even snack the rest of the day. Basic omelet & cheese for dinner, natural granola bar for dessert, so at least I ended the day decent.

Yesterday started off fine until a couple girls I work with wanted to go get sushi for lunch. I haven’t had sushi since January, I think, so I couldn’t say no to that! We did get edamame as an appetizer, which is basically soybeans, so that was healthy. But then the four sushi rolls that we shared were fairly loaded up with calories. I will say it was a nutritious set of calories, with seafood, cucumbers, and avocadoes. Not the worst, but not the best. Last night we got Applebee’s takeout, and I behaved and got a yummy grilled chicken salad with sliced avocadoes. I managed not to workout Thursday or Friday, but as soon as Skyler laid down for her nap today, I got out a full body sculpting video and spent 40 minutes working out. Oh, and my breakfast today consisted of Cocoa Puffs. NOT HEALTHY.

Okay, I got it out there. Things could’ve been much worse, but also much better. Basically my progress so far has been good enough to maintain, but that is not my goal. The hardest part is the weekend, when we tend to eat out more, and typically one meal involves pizza, so hopefully I can limit myself and get another good workout in tomorrow!

Ten.

That’s my goal, ten pounds. Ten pounds lighter gets me comfortably into all my old clothes. And it is not an unreasonable number, because at my thinnest (a little over two years ago) I was even twenty pounds lighter than I am now. So ten seems like a healthy, attainable goal. I’m blogging about this personal matter because I must get it in writing and get my goal in front of others’ eyes so that I have a reason to stick to it. When it’s my own personal goal, I am the worst slacker! So, I’m putting it down here, and I’m also going to report on my quantity and quality of exercise in at least one blog post per week, and grade myself on nutrition (not diet because I’m really just trying to eat in a healthy way that I can sustain for life).

I’d like to say ten pounds in ten weeks, but my vacation is only seven weeks away, so if I could lose ten in seven, that would be even better! It’s definitely doable, if I can actually stick to it. Really any progress would be grand, because I’ve been stuck in the same 5 pound area of the scale since only a couple months after I had Skyler, so somethings got to give!

So at my starting point, I’m going to brave it and post those dreaded numbers I see on the scale: 135.

Since Tuesday I’ve been eating mostly wholesome foods, and tonight I did a 40 minute workout video.

Hopefully I can stick it through and actually reach my goal in the next couple months. In the meantime, if a week goes by and I haven’t mentioned anything regarding this goal, PLEASE SOMEONE, leave me a comment and ask me how it’s going so I have to fess up!

Lettuce wraps, spatulas, and canoes

1) Jimmy John’s lettuce wraps are my new favorite thing! Jimmy’s always has good sandwiches, but as I’m [still] attempting to get back down to my desired weight, I try to do the low-carb thing, so sandwiches are usually not an option. I know lettuce wraps are nothing new as an alternative to bread or buns, but Jimmy’s must be the best ones I’ve ever tried. I don’t know what it is, but I’m a huge fan now! It makes a low carb meal not as much of a drag.

2) Near my work there is a strip mall of sorts. It’s a little more on the industrial side of things – I suppose its B2B and not much there for consumers, however I’ve recently been noticing a place called “Spatula Central” and I have to take a double take every time I see it. Is it really a place that specializes in only spatulas? If I were to go there, would I find wall-to-wall spatulas, and how would they be organized? “By type:” metal, plastic, rubber, wooden, etc. Or maybe they’d be by use: egg spatulas on aisle 2 – they couldn’t just be your garden variety spatulas, I mean surely they have spatulas that are better than others for omelet-making, which would be next to the best egg-scrambling-spatula ever, which would certainly be different than the omelet spatula, because if you can have a store called “Spatula Central”, there MUST BE a major market for unique spatulas! I think we own 2 spatulas, one that is kind of medium-sized and square (scrambled eggs), and one that is larger and round (flipping pancakes). Although they both seem to work perfectly well for any time we have use for a spatula, so really, this whole idea of an entire store called “Spatula Central” just completely blows my mind!

3) Today we are headed to a remote part of Missouri for our “annual” canoe trip (which is the first time annually since 2005 since we and our friends have been busy expanding our families in the passed couple years). Skyler went to Grandma’s for the weekend, so now I’m faced with packing for the trip. I’m really hoping we still own all the camping/floating gear that I’ve collected throughout the years, because I realize that since we’ve lived in this house, we haven’t gone on a float trip. It’s quite possible some things never made it in the move! So, i should head out to the shed and see what kind of gear I can dig up. That’s all for now!