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: Week 56

   In case anyone was wondering, the magic castle last weekend was FANTASTIC.  It was so much fun.  A little pricey but a good time nonetheless.  If you ever get the chance, you should go.  The dressing up part was also fun.  Since I work in entertainment, I don't dress up.  Ever.  The most I do at work is jeans, dressed up blouse and heels.  And more often than not, I'm not even THAT dressed up.  But I'm definitely never in dresses, sparkly jewelry, and fancy hair and makeup.  And that's what I did for the magic castle.  Unfortunately no photography is allowed in the castle (which I guess is part of the mystique) so there is no photographic evidence of my fancy self.  But trust me, I was fancy.

As for my plans this weekend ..

I have just a few things on my plate.  I'm in the market for a new sofa, so I have a few stores I'm going to check out and then hopefully purchase a brand new sofa.

Hopefully.

Wanna see it?

Beautiful isn't it?  I'm a little worried it might be too big for the space but whatever.  I want it. 


Other than that, we have a housewarming/engagement party to go to tomorrow night.  Thankfully, the couple lives near us so it's close.  I'm just aching for the day I can be a home-body again.  You know, staying in on a Saturday night.  Renting some movies, cooking some dinner, just snuggling up with your favorite somebody and relaxing.  I have a few more weekends to go but I can feel it coming!

And now on to my weigh in.

Result:  +0.0

That's right.  I maintained. 

How did I get there?

1.  I know it doesn't seem like it but I did eat in a deficit.  This week I ran, on average, a -285 calorie deficit per day.  Again, not the 500 I'm aiming for, but a step up from what I did last week!  I'm hoping to do better again this coming week.

2.  I also ran.  Only 1 day.  I'm 6 weeks in on my 10k training program and I was supposed to take this week off.  I ran 1 day and then decided to give in.  I'll admit, it's a little scary to take this much time off.  I'm supposed to pick back up this weekend and a little voice inside my head is wondering if I'm actually going to start again.  Of course I will!!  I hope I will ?  Oh please God let it not be hard.

3.  I drank my water.  Good not great.  It needs work.

4.  What I ate?  I made everything and it all was gluten free and in some cases dairy free.  The menu included:  pumpkin pancakes, bacon, eggs, chicken/vegetable teriyaki with rice noodles, tacos, sushi, salad, apples, turkey, grapes, cheese, and peanut butter. oh yes and coffee.  Lots of coffee.  And some kettle chips were in there as well.  But honestly, kettle chips are ALWAYS there somewhere.  I kind of stuck to the same foods over and over this week.  I found that once I had the calorie count down, it just was easier to eat the same things so that I didn't have to keep looking things up.  Also, it just so happens I was really into all the food I made this week so win-win.
 

Weigh In: Week 55

Happy Friday everyone!!

I haven't done a real weigh-in post since August 9th.  That's almost two months!!  I've been busy.  And while I really enjoy being busy, I'm getting tired of it.

I don't know what it was about this year, but every weekend I've had since August 9th has been booked for me.

And I have another 2 weekends to go before I get a breather. 

I don't mind being busy and having things to do, but when it's one after the other after the other, it gets tiring.  Sometimes having events on the weekends are nice, it helps to make you think your weekend was longer than it really was.  Ever have that happen?  When you have a regular two day weekend off from work and for some reason, the activities you have planned make it feel like a 3-day weekend.

While those weekends are what I strive for, the opposite also can happen.  You know how it goes, you get off of work on Friday and you're so busy from that moment on.  The next thing you know, it's Monday morning, you're on your way to work and you feel as if you haven't had one second of down time?

That second scenario has been my life since August 9th. 

I'm hoping this weekend might be a little less cumbersome.  Today, I'm getting off of work early, to rush home and get ready.  And when I say ready, I mean get like ready, ready.  Like dressed up fancy ready.  So that in itself is some work.

We're getting all fancy tonight because we're going to the Magic Castle.

The Magic Castle in Los Angeles is a private club for magicians.  And the only way to go is to be invited by a member.  And once you're invited, you get really dressed up, eat a fancy dinner, and then see some crazy magic. 

My fiance's sister is taking us tonight to celebrate our engagement.  We've never been before so I'm pretty excited.  I'm sure it'll be good times.

Then on Saturday, we agreed to house sit for a friend.  You know, watch the house, take care of the dog.  It's not too much work but it does require a lot of running back and forth.  And then on Sunday, I'm hoping (HOPING), we don't have much to do.  So yes, maybe this weekend won't be too bad at all.

As for this past week ...

Weigh In:  -5.0 lbs

I didn't formally weigh in with my last post because I had just started writing again so that five pounds is since Tuesday 9/24/13.

What I did?

1.  I worked out 3 times.  I ran.  I do between 35-40 minutes 2 times a week and then a long run on Sundays.  This past week my long run took 68 minutes plus warm up and cool down.  I'd say I'm burning about 300 on my short runs and in the upper 500s for my long run.  That would work out to around 1100 calories total burned for the week.  My goal is to add in an additional 1-2 days of strength training.

2.  I ate in a deficit.  Twas not the great deficit I had in mind when I started my wedding plan but I'll take it.  I also didn't track as dutifully as I should have.  I'm still working the kinks out of getting back in the swing of tracking calories full time.  I averaged a deficit of -212 calories per day.  Next week, I'm really aiming for two things.  First and foremost, I'm going to track every day.  And secondly, I'm shooting to make my deficit closer to the 500 calorie mark.

3.  Water!  Since it's becoming cooler, it's a little harder to remember to drink my water, but I'm still in the game.  In fact, this entire year, my fiance (I really feel weird writing that.  Like I'm pretentious or something.  But honestly, it's kinda cool) and I have kept our soda intake to almost zero.  We drank a few sips of Sprite while on vacation to see if it tasted different (it did.  it was very sweet and the carbonation kind of burned my throat ... weird right?) and I believe we have had some cocktails while out that contained soda.  But other than that, our drink of choice is water or coffee or if we're feeling crazy adventurous, unsweetened iced tea.  What can I say?  We're crazy like that.  And here's another fun tip, drinking water saves you money.  When we were on vacation with my family, my parents picked up the tab one night for dinner for a bunch of us.  There were 11 people.  Everyone but us ordered soda and when my dad got the bill he commented on how he should start ordering water more because the drinks alone cost $27. 

4.  What I ate?  I've been eating a mixture of foods.  I'm still trying to come out of my vacation fog with food.  While I was gone I was not able to cook so I got used to packaged foods and eating out.  Unfortunately that practice followed us back home for a little while, however, this past week was almost perfectly normal (for me).  I made a vegan mushroom stroganoff over brown rice pasta, steak salad with roasted brussel sprouts, and I was supposed to make applesauce muffins but wouldn't you know I just couldn't get it done.  I also ate some sushi, bacon and eggs, dark chocolate, potato chips, Trader Joe's pre-packaged salads, and Reese's Pumpkins (YUM!).

Today's Menu:
B:  Bacon and Eggs + coffee
L:  Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff + pasta
D:  Magic Castle

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?  :)

5Ks and Birthdays

Oh my.

It was an eventful weekend.  After I weighed in on Friday morning, I woke up Saturday morning and just out of curiosity weighed myself.  It was the lowest weight I had seen yet.

And that victory would be short lived ;)

I had a great birthday weekend.  It started Saturday- very casual and relaxing.  Ordered in some food from my favorite restaurant, rented a couple of movies, and turned in early.

We had to be up early for our race on Sunday.

We participated in a 10k/5k to raise money for the We Spark Cancer Support Centers.  I originally signed up for for the 10k (it would have been my first) but hurt myself over the summer.  I got cleared by my podiatrist to do the 5k just a couple of weeks ago so they were kind enough to change my registration for me.

I hadn't run in almost 5 months and I thought I had done really well preparing with the 2 1/2 weeks I had.  I even eked out two 5ks on the treadmill prior to the race so I was feeling confident.  However, I was NOT ready.  It just so happens that this particular course went along the back-lot of Universal Studios and is crazy hilly.

CRAZY HILLS.

Even so, it was a great workout and I had a lot of fun.



There were over 2000 participants in my run - very crowded at the start.

But we eventually made our way around the sets and got to see some awesome things.





This is the house from The Great Outdoors.

And below is the Phantom of the Opera doing his thing on Wisteria Lane (where they filmed Desperate Housewives).

And we even got cheered on by "Mother" - she's in the house from Psycho.

We ran into a lot of characters along the way:  Indiana Jones, Zorro, Frankenstein, Count Dracula and even the Grinch.  We got to stop at sets from Jaws, War of the Worlds, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Back to the Future amongst others.

I actually was thankful for all the photo ops because it gave me a chance to stop for a second before the next hill came.  But eventually, I did finish.  It's my slowest 5k to date, even without the stops, but I'll take it.

 After the race, we went inside the Universal theme park and rode a couple of rides.  I burned crazy calories that day.  I probably also ate them all back that night :)

Yeah, my planned birthday night (Saturday) turned into a 2 day event to include Sunday.  It's all good.  I counted ALMOST everything.  My mom sent me gourmet cupcakes from Georgetown and I had one and told myself I was NOT going to count my Birthday Cupcake.  I just wanted to enjoy her thoughtfulness on my special day and not worry about calories or points or anything.

And enjoy it I did.

I did, however, track everything else.

So here's hoping my body recoups from the race (I'm still oddly sore) AND the eating.  I used up ALL my weekly points on those 2 days.  Totally worth it, although, usually when I eat all my weekly points back to back like that I tend to have a gain.  Oh well.  I guess we'll see what happens come Friday.

Today's Menu:
B:  Pizza (Yeah, I made pizza for breakfast this week.  I got sick of eggs.  Like really sick of eggs.  Actually eggs and anything breakfast food related.  So, I made a pizza, easy on the cheese and chock full of veggies. And it will be breakfast for the next couple of days.  Sometimes to stay on track you gotta shake things up!)

L:  Salmon + Grilled Veggies + Quinoa Tabouli

D:  Thanksgiving Sandwich :)  I have been craving stuffing lately.  Especially Stove Top Stuffing.  However, if you look at the ingredients in that stuff .. well it's not good.  So, I tried a recipe I found for my own stuffing.  It was surprisingly easy and with a few substitutions came out point friendly.  So tonight, I will make a sandwich that has:  stuffing, chicken, cheese, and miracle whip.  And while that may sound gross to you - it's what I've been craving.  Hopefully it'll hit the spot.

And, it's only 7 points plus.

Add a side of green beans and roasted butternut squash and you've got yourself a makeshift Thanksgiving feast.