Getting back to making the right choices about my snacks

Friday, April 20, 2012

This week has been my school vacation. I've been mostly at home all day. And I've been makign poor eating choices and gaining weight rapidly. :( I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm hoping writing about it will make me snap out of it.

I really can't blame this on some sort of "set-point theory," the excuse I've been known to use for my weight ups and downs. This time though it's just simply giving in to poor choices. I have a fridge full of crisp apples and fresh oranges, and my usual "on track" plan allows me to eat as many of them as I want. However, I've been scouring the shelves for other, more nutrient-dense items, like granola bars, crackers, tortillas, cheese, and peanut butter. Each day this vacation I've woken up set to be "good"... healthy breakfast, healthy lunch, healthy early snacks, morning exercise........ and then by midafternoon I'm digging into a couple quesadillas or whatever, and then looking for more. Whatever sort of benefit I'm getting from doing this, it's not worth it. I want to turn this around right now. I want to eat the apples and the oranges (and if that's not enough, I could have any other fruit or vegetable I want!) instead of the junk that just makes me sluggish and gain weight.

Will check in and let you know how it goes...

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My Activity Feed - Who Knew?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Yes I'm writing a blog at 11 P.M.! It's my week off! I can write a blog whenever I want :)

I can't believe I never noticed this before, and you all probably already know this...but when you click on "FEED" at the top of your Spark page you see all the status updates you ever wrote on Spark...and, more interestingly, all the comments and "likes" people left in response. I had no idea anyone was commenting or "liking" my status updates at all! I went back and read them all...my earliest one was over 700 days ago. I went to my Activity Feed settings and the button for getting an email when someone comments on my status was checked, but I've obviously never gotten any of those emails...do you guys get emails when people comment on your status? To anyone who's ever felt ignored because I didn't mention the comment, I'm sorry, and thanks everyone for the support I hadn't realized I was getting!

In other news, I had a bit of a binge today - very naughty. Then I met my hubs in the city and we walked around to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We crossed the Boston Marathon finish line! Hehe - just for fun. The marathon was over and the crews were cleaning up. My feet hurt - I don't know of any sandals that are cute and comfortable to wear to walk 4 miles or so around the city. We had dinner at a fancy place we had a Groupon for but I was still stuffed from my binge so we shared an appetizer (polenta) and a dish (chicken and mushrooms with risotto)...Jess had a beer and I'm not drinking alcohol these days, just in case. ;) Then we got dessert...his idea but I loved the idea...but it was a chocolate cake with mousse which he doesn't really like...so guess who ate the whole thing minus one bite...yup. Sooo stuffed. The scale will punish me in the morning. Oh well. Between my run and my walk today I did 8 miles. Plus I crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon and hey, isn't that at least a 2,000 calorie burn right there?:)

PS - whenever I go into the city proper I feel so dowdy. Who are all these incredibly stylish city girls?! Why can't I look like that?

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Insignificant Ramblings

Monday, April 16, 2012

First, I'd just like to say that reading the lovely comments you guys write on my blogs absolutely makes my day!! :) I love my Spark friends!

This is the first day of April vacation ("vacation" as in a week off from school to be at home, not "vacation" as in airplanes and beaches), and I have some time on my hands to write down the insignificant ramblings in my head.

Let's see...where do I begin? It's been beautiful out and Jess (Mr. SeppieSusan) and I have been doing yardwork. Yesterday we started our vegetable garden!! We don't really know what we're doing - we either do "how to" searches on google or make things up as we go along. :) Jess and a friend who came over to help took the wood that used to make clotheslines and laid it down on the ground to make a big square for the garden, then Jess filled it in with dirt he dug up from another part of the yard. So far we have planted tomatoes, sweet peppers, cilantro, mint, onions, and strawberries, and soon we'll be adding arugula, basil, and yellow peppers. I have no idea how this stuff will turn out but I am so excited at the thought of being able to grow our own food! We're also clearing a bunch of weeds to plant a big backyard lawn - I've been attacked by poison oak a few times but yesterday I showered immediately after I was done and seemed to avoid another attack. We're also going to build a patio, and use mulch and plant bushes and flowers and we're going to have a pretty yard! My family did minimal yardwork when I was growing up, or at least I did, so this is all new to me and very exciting.

What else...I had an extremely sweaty run this morning, and a few days ago I went on a run where I kept getting honked at by guys in cars and on motorcyles. I'm sure the honks annoy some of you ladies but I kind of get a little thrill out of it to be honest. :)

Random but interesting - I found out that my neighbor across the street is the mother of Maura Tierney, a famous actress. Maura apparently grew up across the street from me! Her mom, Pat, was so modest - when we were telling each other about our families, she just said that one of her daughters lives in California - no mention of her being famous. It was another neighbor who told us she was actually famous (and "had her own TV show for a while there" - i.e. ER - haha).

The not-very-nice Body Pump instructor I've complained about in my blog before has decided to stop having Body Pump on Sundays - the one day a week I go - and instead he's going to teach a class called Ripped. He said it's popular in his other gyms, he's noticed a difference in himself since he started teaching it, cardio and strength training together have been shown to be effective, etc etc etc...I'm bummed about the loss of Body Pump, but maybe he's right. I'll try this Ripped class. I guess I like Body Pump partly because I know it, and I know that I'm good at it (well, at least some of the tracks). So trying something new couldn't hurt. Although, as another woman in my class said (echoing my thoughts), I only do BP once in a while (she said 2x/wk but for me lately it's been like 1x or 2x/month!) because I do lots of other things already. Oh well.

OK, now on to caffeine. When I had Good Friday off, a week and a half ago, I decided that'd be a good day to start not drinking caffeine. I slept most of the weekend...although not just from the lack of caffeine - I was also sleep deprived and had a cold. Anyway, during the work week I did drink a little bit - but a really little bit. I used to put two and a half heaping tablespoons of ground coffee into my coffee maker to make two mugs, and I would have that every day and then sometimes buy another cup before the gym too (a small). But this past week I used barely half a tablespoon for the same amount of water, and had just practically clear coffee. It was more about the routine than the coffee itself. And this past weekend I had NO caffeine, and none today either, and I feel fine, so I would say I'm officially over the addiction. That didn't take very long!

Finally, in baby-making news, I kind of feel like I either have the start of PMS, or something more exciting is going on. Funny how the earliest symptoms of pregnancy are exactly the same as symptoms of PMS. I know it's way too soon...we've only been trying for two weeks...but a girl can be optomistic, can't she?

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Week 8

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Week 1 I lost 3.2 pounds, from 170.0 to 166.8.
Week 2 I lost 1.6 pounds, from 166.8 to 165.2.
Week 3 I lost 1.0 pound, from 165.2 to 164.2.
Week 4 I lost 0.8 pounds, from 164.2 to 163.4.
Week 5 I lost 0.8 pounds, from 163.4 to 162.6.
Week 6 I lost 0.4 pounds, from 162.6 to 162.2.
Week 7 I lost 1.4 pounds, from 162.2 to 160.8.

This week I gained 1.0 pound, from 160.8 to 161.8. You win some, you lose some.

Honestly, this type of situation is exactly why I'm so glad I weigh in daily and not weekly. I write these weekly weight-loss posts, but I weigh myself every day and sometimes more than once a day. I like seeing the patterns and knowing what behaviors and circumstances do to my weight so I won't freak out. I know that I was on track this week, both with my behaviors and my weight, so I'm not too worried about a gain. If I only weighed in once a week, I'd be putting so much emotionally into that one weigh-in that I'd be devastaed to see a gain.

Plus, the longer I'm in this game the more I'm starting to think that I'm sort of meant to weigh around this much, even though I'm still kind of fat and would really look better if I weighed less.

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Week 7

Saturday, April 07, 2012

My plan was only for 6 weeks and this is week 7, but I'm still going strong so here goes...

Week 1 I lost 3.2 pounds, from 170.0 to 166.8.
Week 2 I lost 1.6 pounds, from 166.8 to 165.2.
Week 3 I lost 1.0 pound, from 165.2 to 164.2.
Week 4 I lost 0.8 pounds, from 164.2 to 163.4.
Week 5 I lost 0.8 pounds, from 163.4 to 162.6.
Week 6 I lost 0.4 pounds, from 162.6 to 162.2.

This week....

I lost 1.4 pounds, from 162.2 to 160.8. Yaaaay! Oddly enough, this is the same week that my weight had gone way up temporarily, due to eating a lot of junk food at and after our party. But like I said in an earlier blog, it came right off and then just kept going down. Yay.

In other news I'm now on Day 2 of no caffeine. I slept so much yesterday during the day, and then last night I slept from around 9 P.M. to around 8 A.M. (but so did my hubby and he's not taking himself off caffeine. I think we were both just tired). I know I don't HAVE to stop caffeine altogether, but I'm just kind of trying it out to see what happens.

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