Week 31 Weigh-In

Current Weight - 254.8 lbs.
This week's loss - 0.8 lbs.
Total loss - 62.8 lbs.
Average calories per day - 2055
Treadmill - 3.23 miles in 60 minutes over 2 days burning 408 calories.

Whew! Made it through the week without straying from my diet too much. Boy was it hard, but I'm feeling a little better about things today. After 31 weeks of dieting you'd think this would get easier! It doesn't. It never does.

I'm trying to stay focused on my 3 short-term goals. I want to break into the 240's, I want to reach 70 lbs. lost, and then finally hit "240" and no longer be morbidly obese. These 3 things are right around the corner and I'll reach them all in no time as long as I stay strong.

Losing Focus

The past few days have been really rough on me. I seem to be losing my focus. Junk food is looking sooooo good and getting much harder to resist. Ugh! I will not give in...I cannot give in...but I want to so badly. :-( Add to that the fact that the scales haven't been co-operating at all this week. I still have two days before weigh-in so there's still a little hope.

Today I decided to start the Couch-to-5K Running Program. The beginning week or two isn't quite as intense as my workouts have been, but I'm going to do this exactly the way the article says. The only change I made was to add a 5 minute "cool down" walk at the end to bring the total time to my usual 30 minutes. I'd love to increase my overall speed and be able to run for 30 minutes straight. Maybe this will be the ticket?

On the home front things have been pretty sucky the past few days, too. My oldest has been throwing up for two days. Today she said she was feeling well enough to run into the grocery store with me and of course she had to puke while we were there. Thankfully, she made it to the bathroom in time. I also got a warning from the city for having yard waste in my trashcan today. What the hell? It was just a few weeds from the yard! So now I'm wondering if a neighbor turned me in or if the trashman went through our trash. Around here we have the truck with the arm that automatically empties the can, so it's unlikely that the trashman made that discovery on his own. I'm telling ya, I've a rotten few days. :-(

Week 30 Weigh-In

Current Weight - 255.6 lbs.
This week's loss - 2.6 lbs.
Total loss - 62.0 lbs.
Average calories per day - 2063
Yourself Fitness - 30 minutes burning 199 calories.
Treadmill - 1.6 miles in 30 minutes burning 205 calories.

I started the week off great, but it didn't end as well. I suffer from Reflux and I usually have it under control with medication. Several nights ago, however, I woke up with stomach acid in my mouth. Yuck!!! The result of that was a terribly sore throat/esophagus which made it difficult to exercise. Many times this will also give me Bronchitis and/or cause esophageal bleeding. So as a result, I decided to take it easy and avoid the stress of exercise. I'm feeling much better now, so I'll probably try exercising later today.

The good news is that I hit the 60+ pound mark. Woohoo! Watch out 70, here I come! Hopefully I'll get there by Halloween. That is, if the candy doesn't tempt me too much. :-) Mmmm....Brach's Indian Corn.

Expanding My Horizons

While cruising the aisles at the local Kroger this morning, I found an amazing bargain. A $6 package of Brie for only $0.10!

Having never tried it before, I took a gamble and bought 3 packages. You know it's actually not that bad! The weird white rind is super stinky, but once you cut it off the cheese is quite good. :-) I certainly wouldn't pay the normal retail price for it, but I'd buy it for a dollar or two. :-D

I also found Baked Brie that was regularly $9.99 marked down to $0.10 which I might try tomorrow. All of it expires in the next few days, but I read online that ripened Brie can be frozen for up to 6 months. So in case I don't use it all I can freeze it. If I'd known that this morning, I'd have bought the whole lot!

Finding those great deals made it a little easier to throw out a perfectly good big bag of fresh spinach. For those of you in the US who haven't heard, there has been a big breakout of E coli which has been linked to fresh spinach. All of my local stores have pulled anything with fresh spinach from the shelves, including all of the mixed salad greens. I guess I'll be having sandwiches for lunch for the next few days instead of my usual spinach salad. :-( Even dieters can enjoy an occasional Fluffernutter sandwich. Yum!

Week 29 Weigh-in

Current Weight - 258.2 lbs.
This week's loss - 0.2 lbs.
Total loss - 59.4 lbs.
Average calories per day - 1994
Yourself Fitness - 90 minutes over 3 days burning 500 calories.

Well, my body let me down this week. Sure I could've exercised a bit more, or maybe eaten a bit less, but mathematically I should have lost more than 0.2 lbs. My period is due next week so maybe that's a contributing factor.

Although my caloric intake this week was on target, I had too much refined stuff. My biggest weakness has been the Hershey's Miniatures that I bought for the kids' lunches. I bought them with the idea that if they behaved in the morning--while getting ready for school--they'd have a chocolate treat in their lunch box. Unfortunately, Mommy has been getting a lot of rewards too. :-) A few hundred calories a day worth! I went to the store today and restocked my fruit stash with grapes, kiwis, and bananas, so I have no excuses. I will try to limit myself to one miniature per day (after dinner) which has 46 calories.

I did the Yourself Fitness program 3 times in the past week and it has kicked my butt. Ouch! After nearly a week, the soreness is finally starting to subside. My almost 4 year-old has been my workout partner. To keep her from trying to use heavy handweights, I had to buy her her own 1 lb. pink ones. Too cute!

Saturday Shopping at Sam's

So I went to Sam's Club today to stock up on a few things, and it was quite eventful! While I was standing in line at the Customer Service desk, a guy walked up behind me. He started chatting me up about the weather, how busy the store was, the lack of enough air conditioning in the store, etc. I just kind of agreed with him (the old 'smile and nod' :-) ) and turned my back to him. After a few minutes he just walked away.

I thought the whole thing was kind of odd, but then it dawned on me...I think he was trying to pick me up! I replayed the whole thing over and over in my head, and there's really no other explanation. He wasn't all that hot, but regardless it was a real boost to my self-esteem. :-D I had a similar situation in a grocery store last week. That guy, however, was butt ugly. He kept following me around the produce section making small talk about various fruits and vegetables while staring at me in a creepy fashion. Hey...it's all good. Just don't follow me home! LOL

Once I finished my shopping, I had to stand in line for a while before I could check out. While standing there I looked up at the wall behind the registers and saw a big board where they were proclaiming how cheap their prescription drugs were. There were 5 drugs listed, including Lipitor (for high cholesterol) and Metformin (an oral diabetes medicine), plus the price of a cheap blood glucose meter they sell. I then look at the carts all around me and notice that many are filled to the brim with big packages of hot dogs, frozen hamburgers, mozzarella sticks, frozen pizza, candy, sugar soda, and potato chips.

Isn't it odd that this store sells all of these fat- and sugar-laden foods in huge quantities, and then sells the medicines that treat the illnesses caused by consuming them? Something just seems off about the whole thing. What are we doing to ourselves?

Oh, BTW...when the guy walked away I checked my purse just to make sure I wasn't pick-pocketed. Everything was still there. LOL

Week 28 Weigh-in

Current Weight - 258.4 lbs.
This week's loss - 2.2 lbs.
Total loss - 59.2 lbs.
Average calories per day - 1981
Treadmill - 1.61 miles in 30 minutes over 1 day
Total calories burned this week according to Calories Per Hour - 208
Additional Exercise - Over an hour of Hippity Hopping with the kids during Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Whew! School has started and I finally feel like I can get on some kind of a schedule. During summer vacation it just seems like everything is all over the place and out of control.

I picked up a copy of Yourself Fitness for the XBOX this past weekend, and would like to incorporate that into my fitness routine. I was lucky enough to find a used copy at Gamestop for $12, but I had to drive to a store 33 miles away to get it. Heck, even with high gas prices it was still worth it since I saved $23 over what Amazon charges.

Food was really good all week, although I had 2 celebratory cupcakes after school yesterday with the kids. They were 230 calories each and I did count them. I'm really happy with myself for doing so well during the storm and the aftermath, too. It would have been really easy to break the diet at that point, but I sucked it up and dealt with it.

Finally hit the 250's and I was sooooo close to 60 lbs. lost. Next week I must hit 60. I'm going to work my butt off this week to achieve that goal.

I bought a new vegetable (?) at the grocery store to try... Jicama! I'm not sure when I'm going to have it, but I'll be sure to report back with my thoughts.

No matter what diet you follow, be sure to have plenty of water.

We all know how important it is to have plenty of water while dieting, but this just takes the cake. Apparently, Tropical Storm Ernesto thought I wasn't having enough, and was gracious enough to dump millions of gallons of it on my street. How nice of him, huh?

After nearly a foot of rain, the water was so high that it came all the way up to the foundation of our house. Every time a vehicle would drive by, we'd get waves crashing in our yard and against our house. Luckily, the inside of the house stayed dry and there is no evidence of water damage. We lost power, phone, cable tv, and cable internet for 42 hours, but it's all back now. The water has receded too. I think it's time to buy flood insurance. :-D

2 days until school starts!