Another Challenge to push myself

So a group that I'm part of is doing a 90 day weight loss challenge. I've done one like this through a mom group I'm part of & I actually came in 2nd overall. This one will be a tad different though. We are alao including inches. Time to gear up & push myself harder.

With Danika starting school & both girls starting soccer I am doing my best to squeeze in gym time before I pick up the kids from daycare.  It's definitely a game of learning to balance everything without killing myself. At least with Robert starting a new job this week & being back to M-F I can get to the gym on Saturday's (after soccer of course).

Starting weight (as of 9/2): 172.8
Belly: 41in
Hips: 44 in

I'll spare you my pictures ;)

Down 2 lbs!?!

So I posted last week that I was going to do my best to follow a plan. For the most part I did, until I had a training class on Thursday. I couldn't take my lunch.  Of course that then snowballed into Friday & Saturday. Somehow I am still down so I'll take it! I know my metabolism is up because quickly after I eat (even a large meal) I am again.

As far as the gym I made it 2 days, but I made sure those counted.  First day I did some cardio on the elliptical. It's getting easier each time, then finished up with weights. Second day I did an hour of Zumba.

Going to attempt the same thing this week but now we have to throw in school for Danika, new daycare for the little kids, and soccer practice. And I'm also thinking about another activity for Danika to start in September.  I am crazy, yes I know ;)

Update for the week

So over the weekend I realized it had been about 3 weeks since I had been to the gym.  I set a goal for this week to go at least 3 times. I'm happy to report I have been twice! I also decided to make a meal plan for the week. Aside from a donut & some cookies today I have stayed on track! Tomorrow I didn't have a plan because I will be in a training class, so I will just have to see what is around the area when lunch comes up.

Hoping to see good results on Saturday!

It's really been (over) 2 weeks? !?

So this morning Robert asks when was the last time I went to the gym. Honestly I couldn't remember. So I decided a few minutes ago to check my handy dandy LA Fitness app & I haven't been since July 31st! Yikes!

I cannot believe I didn't realize it had been that long. Although with having Danika breakout in a mystery rash, last minute weekend trip to see my brother before je deploys & dealing with school/daycare changes on top of the normal work/family stuff, I've been a tad busy.

Yesterday I did hop on the scale & still managed to lose. I'm down to 172.8. Probably would be a tad less if I wasn't so bloated with AF deciding to make an appearance even though I'm not supposed to have it but every 3 months (that's another story).

My plan for this week is to get to the gym at least 3 times & track what I'm eating. I don't plan on tracking calories or anything.  Just an overall snapshot of what I am eating. The thing is I haven't really changed my eating habits & I'm still doing well for the most part.

This is our last week before our oldest, Danika, starts kindergarten.  Things are about to get crazy busy around here.

Progress!

Over the last few weeks I have been fluctuating back & forth on my weight. I finally seem to be back in track! While I only made it to the gym this week, I have at least tried not to give into ALL my cravings & eat all the food! I'm down to 173.6 AND I'm down another pants size!

I finally decided to go shopping for new dress pants for work this week & boy was I surprised. The last pair I bought were size16, this week I got into a 14! Being that I haven't worn a size 14 in well over 10 years I am beyond ecstatic!

That's all for now, but hopefully I will have more awesome news to report next week.

It's that time again

Today I weighed in at 174.4...2 lbs down from last week. Aside from the burgers I had for lunch & dinner on Thursday, I did well with my eating this week. Only made it to the gym once though.

Weight Gain

So today's weigh-in was totally expected as a gain given PMS and my period this week. Now that it only happens every 3 months it was way worse. I couldn't get enough to eat no matter how much I ate. I'm up 1 lb since my last weigh-in 2 weeks ago. The good news is while my weight has been fluctuating I'm still losing inches. I have lost 1 inch in my waist. Even my newer pants are starting to get loose. I'm happier about inches lost even if my weight isn't moving.

Robert dropped his gym membership so now I will be going it alone. We also dropped the kids club membership.

Today we will be hitting the pool with my mom & grandmother so that will be aome exercise. Tomorrow we are taking the kids to the aquarium so I'll get some walking in. Next week I plan to hit the gym as much as possible. Hopefully now I can motivate myself to get to work early.

No weigh-in

So I decided to skip the weigh-in Saturday. Between cooking out for the 4th of July & my nieces birthday party on Saturday I know it wouldn't have been great. Also, until Saturday night I didn't do any exercise, which wasn't by choice. We got to spend 3 awesome days with my brother & his family. Every time we visit I wish more & more that things were in line for us to move up there. Hopefully we can in the next few years.

The kids got to enjoy lots of cousin time & lots of outside time. We roasted marshmallows,  went to 2 different firework displays & just had lots of fun. Now it's time to make the trek home and get ready for work & school tomorrow. I cannot believe summer is half over & soon I will have a kindergartner!?!

Weigh-in

It's weigh-in day agin. Luckily everyone started off in a good mood today. I hate being woke up by cranky kids, it just makes me cranky.

Anyway, back to weigh-in. Today I'm back down to 174.6. Which is good considering I only made it to the gym once. And that one time was for 15 minutes. Alex had a meltdown at the Kids Club so we had to cut our trip short.  I was just getting really good & sweaty on the elliptical.

An update on my goals.

1. Get to work at 7 am - only managed once this week. I'm not sleeping well so it makes getting up difficult.
2. Watch what I eat - I did fairly well on this one. I kept track for about half the week & only ate what I brought for breakfast/lunch/snack
3. Workout 3 times - So far I've been once. Hopefullu headed out as soon as the kids have breakfast. PLUS we are headed to the pool today.
4. Workout for an hour each time - didn't happen
5. Cook Sun-Thurs - I made it all the way to Thursday. We ended up at DQ because I REALLY wanted steak fingers.

Next week will probably be a not so great weigh-in since we are headed to visit family. The plus side is my family is doing the same things we are, actually more because they really do watch what they eat. But with a holiday & a birthday to celebrate I may just skip weigh-in.

Weekend Fun & Goals for the week

So this weekend I finally (yep finally) got to spend some time in the pool. Usually I drop the girls off with my mom for a few hours and go run errands that I can't with them there or just enjoy the quiet while Alex naps. This weekend I had nothing that I needed to do, so we made plans to swim.

Saturday we got up, grocery shopped early (rare occasion that I take 3 kids with me); Alex took his afternoon nap & we hit the pool around 3 pm. We same for 2 hours! Danika is getting so good at swimming, she no longer has to wear floaties or her vest. She is jumping off the diving board (we taught her how to do a cannonball!) and going down the slide. Such a little fish!

That night was Nerd Night with a group Robert & I are part of. We play games & they collect donations for various charities. We later went to see the new Man of Steel movie. Sunday we got up and cleaned out our garage.

Serioulsy if you looked at that one room, it looked like we could be on an episode of hoarders. We finally got everything separted for donation to Goodwill, bulk trash & things put up that we planned to keep; then we went & dropped off the Goodwill donation. I'll be glad when next Monday get's here because it's bulk trash day and my garage will be almost completely empty!

Around 3 pm we went swimming again. Boy was it nice! The girls wore themselves out swimming for a little over 2 hours. Seriously, it took them 10 minutes to fall asleep last night.

After all the swimming & the clearing of the garage I didn't feel bad for not making it to the gym this weekend. My food choices on the other hand weren't so great :p But it was date night & I wanted a good burger; so we hit up Twisted Root. I did skip popcorn at the movie theater. For the most part Sunday my eating wasn't bad, except the burger I had for lunch; but I got the junior burger so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I cooked dinner for what seems like the first time in forever.

This week I need to make sure I get to the gym at least 3 times AND workout for at least 1 hour each time. I have been pretty lax in my working out lately & it's showing. The scale isn't moving. One thing I know I need to do is do some of the classes. I'm doing the same stuff each week so my body is getting used to it. I have been wanting to try a Spin class, maybe I'll try to do that this week (and hope I don't die!).

I also need to watch what I'm eating. When I'm not getting that movement at the gym my metabolism isn't moving as fast, but you can't tell my stomach it's not hungry.

Goals for this week
1. Get to work at 7 am (this makes working out easier)
2. Watch what I eat
3. Workout 3 times minimum
4. Workout for an hour minimum
5. Cook (Sun-Thurs) - Fridays & Saturdays don't count in our house

Stay tuned & I will have an update on whether I accomplished my goals when I weigh-in Saturday.

A minor set back

Today is weigh-in day. I hadn't really expected a loss this week, but I didnt expect a gain. Up 1.4 lbs this morning. Obviously my waiting to eat dinner until Robert got home & then also having a piece of the yummy cheesecake he made was not the best idea.

Hoping this will give me the kick in the butt I need to get motivated at the gym again. Everytime we go I just want to finish up within 20-30 min & get out of there. Obviously that's not going to help me move forward.

Now I must go grocery shop & hopefully we can squeeze in some swimming this afternoon before date night!

Weigh-in time

Short & sweet this week as I have a busy day of grocery shopping, cleaning, a birthday party & a small wedding. 

The scale didn't move much this week, only 0.8 lbs. But that can be attributed to my lack of working out. I caught a small cold this week and have had zero energy.  Finally feeling better which means in between all of those thinga I have planned for today I need to squeeze in a workout.

Official weight this week 174 lbs

Have a great weekend!

Weigh-in Saturday!

So today is my first weigh-in....and I lost 2 lbs! Woohoo! I didn't think it would happen considering I didn't make it to gym as much as I would like and I didn't eat like I should have. Nonetheless I am thrilled!

Official weight today....174.8

Weigh-in day

So I decided weigh-in day will be Saturday. I typically don't work out on Fridays, so it makes sense. I have found that doing a work out the say before weigh-in makes me retain fluid, because I will rest on weigh-in day and usually be down up to a pound the next day.

I am still trying to get back on track eating wise from being on vacation.  But we ate so much delicious food that my body is still craving it. Needless to say we had Twisted Root Burger twice in a row this week.

With all that being said, my official weight this morning was 176.8. I would like to be down to 135. Who knows if that will ever happen, but to be a good weight for my very short 5ft2in body it's where I need to be. So that's approximately 42 lbs I need to lose. I've already lost 37...yep that's right...I used to weigh OVER 200lbs. Not something I am proud of but it is what it is.

Thank you for reading my rambling & following me on this journey. Maybe I can get Robert to do a little blogging about his journey as well. Without his support I don't think I would be as far as I am today. Now if we can just get the eating part down & not give in to ALL of our cravings I think we will be good to go.

Now is as good a time as any.....

I started this blog months ago....not really sure how long ago exactly, but lets say it wasn't really during the peak of my weight loss journey. As of today I have lost 37.2 lbs in the last year or so. I don't really know what the starting point was, as I wasn't really tracking it in the beginning. The weight just sort of started coming off on it's own. Let ast year at the end of August/beginning of September I took on a new role at work. While you would think that becoming a supervisor of a department would naturally be MORE stressful than the job I was doing, it actually has been LESS stressful. Throughout the last 8 months I have been doing this job I have lost a good amount of weight. There has been ZERO dieting! It has call been through eating less, and this was not on purpose...turns out I am a stress eater, I just never realized it before. With there being virtually no stress in my current job I don't feel the need to snack. I had pretty much cut out drinking sodas, I'm struggling with this recently, but plan to get back on track soon. In February I joined a "Biggest Loser" competition on the local mom's board I am a part of, while I didn't push myself very hard I managed to lose almost 12 lbs in 12 weeks! I also came in 2nd place! About 4 weeks into the competition I was finally able to convince Robert we needed to re-join the gym. After some price comparisons (LA Fitness & 24 HR fitness were the same) it came down to how much they were charging for the Kids Club...LA Fitness won. They were half the price of 24 HR Fitness. We have been super happy with them in the 3 months we have been going there now. Robert & I get to workout together, the 3 kids get to play....everyone is happy. Recently I decided that although I previously didn't have a "goal weight" in mind, I know about what weight is healthy for me. That weight is approximately 42 lbs from the weight I currently am. I made myself the promise that if I can lose the remaining 42 lbs by my birthday in January that I will reward myself with a new tattoo. Not just any tattoo though, a tattoo that will go along my rib cage. The only person that will see it will be Robert, but it's what I want. I have no idea what it will be yet, just the location. I am actually at the point now that it would probably look decent, but I just really wanted to set a goal for myself. The only thing that may hinder me from meeting my goal is the fact that I need to have a hysterectomy later this year. My OBGYN has said it's no rush and to schedule when I am ready. I'm hoping for the fall. When I was pregnant with Alex we found that I had a fibroid tumor, it is still very much present on my cervix, continuously growing, and causing me all sorts of issues with my body. Thankfully for now I am just taking a birth control pill, sorta weird to have to take the pill when your husband had a vasectomy, but so far it is working and everything is under control. Soon I will update with pictures, etc as I set out to meet my new weight loss goal. I plan to include weekly weigh-ins, etc. This helps keep me accountable.