Weekly Weigh In: Week ??

I can't believe a it's been about a month and a half since my last recorded weigh in.

Seriously, it felt like one week.  I was a little flabbergasted when I looked at the calendar and I realized I was many, many weeks behind.

Anyway, while I've been gone, it has been both good and bad.

First the bad.

Cause that's how I roll.

Shortly after my last post, I had a few gains and a few losses.  Then another gain.  And another.  And then I'd maintain and then I'd gain more.  And as of my last weigh-in (last Friday) I stood on the scale and accepted my fate.  I weighed my highest weight in 6 years.  And I wasn't shocked at all.   My eating habits during the last month and a half were clearly not in alignment with losing so I am happy I don't weigh more.   And let me be clear, when I say my highest weight in 6 years, it's only 6 pounds more than what I weighed in January of 2013.  But it's a big deal to me.

And now the really bad news, though I weigh just a few pounds more than I did even in September, the jeans that fit me back in September most definitely do not fit now.  That tells me something very important.  I've lost muscle and gained fat.  A lot of fat.  You know how you can't trust the scale to tell you when you have a true loss?  Well, you can't trust it to keep you on track with a true gain.  I might have only gained 6 pounds of scale weight, but the inches I gained around my waist probably sent me up two sizes.  I wish I could say this is shocking, but it's not. 

There are a lot of reasons this has happened.  First, tis the season.  Not an excuse just a matter of fact.  Halloween, followed by my birthday, followed by Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas.  It's a killer combination.  Second, the time change.  This gets me every year.  I have a harder than usual time when we set the clocks back in November.  I suffer mildly from seasonal affective disorder.  Nothing too big but it does wreak a little havoc every year.  And thirdly, well honestly, those 2 things added together equals most of it.  The SAD zaps my motivation, gets me a little down, and then the string of food related holidays usually gives me the old one-two punch.  And the next thing I know I'm sitting on the couch wondering what's wrong with me?


You know what?  Nothing is wrong with me.  I just didn't do what I was supposed to do.  That's all.  My body isn't broken, I just gave my body what it needed to gain fat.  End of story.  And the only way to get rid of it ...

Well, that's the easy part.  I know how to get rid of it, I just had to find my mojo to get back into the swing of things.  But we'll talk about that part later.


Now lets talk about the good stuff that has happened since last we met.  Because believe it or not, it wasn't all bad ;)


I ran a 5k! 

And I only had one goal.  To run it in under 40 minutes.  I know that's not a crazy fast time or anything but it's what I wanted.  I'm pleased to say that I made that goal.

I have also been exercising since I last wrote.  I continued to run 3 days a week.  It has only been in the last week (after my 5k) that I took a week off.

I signed up for another 5k on Thanksgiving morning.  I may have already told you this, but it's still something good I did. 

I surprised my fiance with tickets to his first NBA game last weekend and I was utterly pleased to find out the seats were super close.   I'm his hero now.  And who doesn't love being a hero?  That's Blake Griffith walking by us to go back to the locker room. 

Doesn't he remind you of that famous Sasquatch photo?

And finally, yesterday I went out on my lunch break to go on a walk to try to get more activity into my day.  I haven't done this in awhile so I was very happy that I took the initiative.  Sometimes taking the first step back into a healthy lifestyle (no matter how small) is the hardest.  And for something so small, it made a huge impact on my motivation because today I feel like a new person.

And wouldn't you know, the universe rewarded me for my healthy decision.

I took my usual walk up to Universal City and they were filming Extra TV up there.  So I stood by for a few minutes and got to see AC Slater.

That is Mario Lopez and Nicolette Sheridan doing some ballet.  I have no idea why, but I'm putting this in my good column because it's always nice to catch something fun.  Especially during work hours.  Plus I'm trying to be as positive as possible here folks.

Now if I could just win the lottery this week ...

Weigh In Update

Hello everybody.

It's been a few weeks since I have last posted on here.  I wasn't expecting to take a break, it just kind of happened!

So the last we spoke, I was just finishing up my Whole30 and I do have additional comments on that whole experience but I'll have to get to that in another post.

First, a couple of things have changed since the last time and I hope they will only impact me POSITIVELY.

First and foremost, I got engaged!!  It happened a couple days after my last reported weigh-in.  So we've been in a whirlwind of excitement over that.  I kind of lost track of blogging as were being doted on by our friends.  No, we don't have a date set yet but off-handed it's looking like next August or September.  In any case, things just kind of got real on my weight loss efforts.  I've always envisioned myself losing all my weight before I got married.  But you know, that was always in the future.  Well it looks like the future just caught up with me.  GULP ;)

Wanna see my ring??  I didn't want to go with traditional so we went with black AND white diamonds in a non-traditional setting.  I love it!  It's crazy sparkly.  And oh how I love sparkles.

Secondly, I quit weight watchers.  I had been thinking about this one for a while so it wasn't a spontaneous decision.  Over the last 8 months, I have been tracking my food and trying my best to lose weight and what I found was that, for me, the quality of the food completely outweighed how I tracked the food.  And lets face it, money is tight for everyone right now.  It doesn't officially go away until mid-September but I've already switched back over to my LoseIt application.  I was an original member of their premium program so it only costs me $15 a year to continue with that.  So I'll save over $200 for the year with the switch.  I'm in a hard save mode since the engagement so every little bit helps.  Besides, it'll be a nice little experiment.  My theory is that I won't see a major difference in my weight loss.  I think it's the balance of everything that dictates whether I lose weight or not.  I don't think it has anything to do with the method of tracking.  Meaning, if the quality of the food I eat is at its highest (whole foods) and I get in my workouts (ugh) then I'll lose.

In any case, it's nice to change things up.  And it's SUPER nice to get that money back each month.

And thirdly, I signed up for a 5k in November.  It's actually on my birthday!  For the last 3 years I've always done a race and I haven't done one this year so I decided to find one and this one happened to be on my birthday so I signed up!  It's the Hard Rock Cafe 5k and this one is in Hollywood running down the boulevard.  I haven't done a race in Hollywood yet so I thought it would be interesting.  Plus, it's a nice little incentive to keep me working out.  The competitor in me hates Hates HATES to do less than her best.  I started training last week and I'm proud to report that even though I haven't run since last November (my last race actually) I was able to eek out 2 miles without any major difficulty.  

And finally the moment you've been waiting for.  Since my last weigh-in I'm up 5.8 pounds.  And I'm sheepishly smiling as I'm typing this.  We've been in celebratory mode for 2 weeks in a row AND in 3 days we leave for the east coast to see my family.  The original plan had been to do the Whole30 then take a weekend off then hit it again so we'd be prepared for our beach vacation.  However, he had other plans.  He asked me to marry him and so our plan turned into:  do the Whole30 take a weekend off, get engaged, then CELEBRATE CELEBRATE CELEBRATE!!!

In all honesty though, while I don't regret my celebrations because we've just experienced a major life event that DESERVES to be celebrated, I do, however, feel yuck yuck YUCK!!  I tried on some things last night to start mentally packing for the upcoming trip and to my chagrin, things weren't fitting so well.  Especially bathing suits.  I was kind of depressed last night but after getting a good night's sleep I woke up with a little perspective.  I decided to stop stressing, get back on track, let you guys know that I was still alive and enjoy life right now.  Our last celebratory event was Sunday night so my body is still working out some of the gunk that I ingested and I know that I'll easily drop most of those 5 pounds in a few days.  It's just hard to work through the mental aspect of it sometimes.  You know?  So I've been eating lost of vegetables and chicken this week and trying to get in my workouts. 

And that's what's been going on.

I have a lot more to talk about but those will have to be in future posts.  They include:  engagement plans, vacation plans, racing plans, and Whole30 afterthoughts to name a few.

Hope you guys are all excellent!!

Today's Menu:
B:  paleo breakfast casserole
L:  chicken zoodle soup
D:  chicken salad on top of giant salad

can you tell I made a lot of chicken this week?  :)