Is that a four?

I'm sitting here staring at that four. I haven't been below 155 in a very long time. I'm thrilled and excited even though I'm only like .2 away from 155 it's still very satisfying to see that four appear.

I started the Wild Rose D-tox on Monday. I thought it would be harder and that I would be starving and craving and grumpy. But I'm not. Nope I feel amazing.

In the past 5 days I have slept better than I have in ages, I've got more energy than I know what to do with and I'm eating foods I really enjoy.

As part of the "moving is losing" regime I've started doing squats after every time I go to the washroom. Weird I know, but why not? While I'm drying my hands I do 15 squats if there is no one else in the washroom. Luckily I only work with 6 other girls so there rarely is. Since I drink a lot of water, I'd say about 15 SIG bottles during work, I use the washroom A LOT. At least 8 times a day. Which means I'm getting in 120 squats a day and it takes about 30 extra seconds or so.

I'm also stretching a lot more. For about 30 minutes in the evening while watching tv.

I do The Reg that I mention last week then I do a bunch of tricep moves then lots of stretching. Everyone should stretch, it's really important, probably more than we know. It keeps us limber and makes our muscles less likely to spaz out and cause us pain. It also lenghtens our muscles, it's one of the reasons ballet dancers and yogis always look so amazing! So if you do one thing this week stretch!

It's back!

I didn't take a pic earlier this week but it read 159 on Monday. This week I have cut back on the sugar, sodium, flour, coffee and processed foods. I clocked in at least 10000 steps a day each day, one day I even came in just over 15000. I read somewhere the quote "If your moving your losing." and I keep repeating this in my head. Which is probably why the mister is giving me weird looks because I'm doing squats and crunches while watching tv! I feel better already, although I swear if you opened my fridge you would think I was nuts! I've got about 10 containers of berries in there right now and several containers of nut butters and so much fruit!

One of my best friends is back in town and I'm hoping to cheer her up with some physical activity outings. Some girls need ice cream and a bottle of wine but Savs is basically a guru of healthy things. She's a Kundalini yoga teacher, extremely talented tarot card reader, fitness buff and all around awesome woman. She's the one that taught me "The Reg".

What is The Reg? Well she learned it from when she was taking Gatka (seriously she's a ninja!) and it's pretty much awesome!

You start at 10 reps and each round you do one less.

So you do 10 squats, 10 push ups, 10 crunches, with no stopping between.

Then 9 of each, 8, 7 and so on, at around the 7 or 6 mark you want to cry then once you hit 4 your like "this is cake!"

It takes about 7 minutes or so and when your all done you've done 55 of each.

The Reg is the reason I can do push ups on my toes now!! I decided last night to do it every day maybe even more than once or I might tweak it a bit and do two sets of each number. I added weights to it last night doing squat presses etc. I highly recommend it to everyone, it's simple, fast and you don't need anything but yourself to do it!

Double fives!

Seriously April is kicking my butt.

Yesterday I felt nauseous as I went into work by 11am I was laying on the floor of the office bathroom shivering and puking up my yogurt and berries.

(No, I'm not pregnant. Seems if a lady is puking that is the first question everyone asks!)

A co-worker drove me home where I was sick some more, took some Pepto pills(no way could I drink that stuff...ew.) and slept like I had been drugged for about 5 hours. I ate a banana, some toast and The Mister brought me apple juice.

I had a fever of 102 and could barely walk. My head was pounding. Over all it was horrific.

Then I woke up this morning and felt fine. 100% better.

Seriously what the heck?

Stomach bug? Another bout of food poisoning? Could April get anymore sickly?

Anyhoot...I weighed myself this morning because other than yesterday I have been pretty good this week, getting to the gym 3 times and eating pretty well. I'm willing to guess that half of this loss is from yesterday though.

Seriously though two 5's! I cannot remember the last time I saw two 5's in a row on a scale!

New pants are needed.

One of my bff's got herself a sweet little job with Goodlife Fitness at one of their Platinum Plus Women Only gyms AND one of the benefits was she was able to give me a free 3 month membership! The other benefit is I get to see her practically every day and she's one of those people who is really able to motivate others and gets you all excited about how awesome it's going to be even when you know that really jumping up and down for an hour with weights is pretty much the opposite of awesome. Somehow though she makes it fun, she's got that magic!

So for the last two weeks I've been hitting the gym. I only went twice last week due to being sick and I've only gone three times this week(including today) and mostly I've done strength training with some light cardio and lots of walking.I didn't post a weigh in last week because A) I was sick B) I was bloated and C) There was no change from the week before. So I figured I'd just skip it.

This morning I stepped on the scale, got off it and stepped on it again and again. The numbers were the same all four times I stepped on that thing................ Just .8 from 10lbs lost since Feb.26! This also means that since my doctor weighed me back in November I've lost 15lbs! Whoop!

Seriously I did not believe it, mostly because when I finally got over the food poisoning last weekend I could only stomach pancakes and plain pasta. Not exactly the most nutritious foods on the planet!

Another perk of having an insider at the gym is she hooked me up with a fitness assessment which I'm going to on Monday. Should be fun to get all my fat readings and measurements! Hopefully the gym scale is as friendly as my home scale and I don't step on it and get told that I have actually only lost 3lbs and my home scale is a liar because it's tired of me repeatedly stepping on it.

There is a downside though. No it's not my incredibly desire to celebrate with a large chunk of cheese....cake, it's my clothes. Most of my pants are now too big. Yeah I know, poor me, wah, wah, wah. But I loathe shopping for pants. Yes this is great and I am looking forward to a whole new wardrobe BUT I don't want to spend money on these in between sizes while I get there. So I'm off to Joe Fresh to buy some inbetweener clothes to get me through the next 26lbs.

.4 is a number still.

First off I have to apologize for the craptacular photos of my scale each week. See, I weigh myself first thing in the morning and want to upload the photo here right away. Since my regular camera requires me to turn on the computer, attach cables that I can never find and mess around with files, it's much easier for me to snap the photo with my cell phone. Which does have a 3mp camera in it. Which I laugh about because I read this old issue of Bust magazine I had from years ago and they were talking about these new digital cameras and a top quality one was 3mp and cost about 700 dollars!
I digress. It's also hard to take the photo because after about one second of showing my my weight it then flashes the weight 4 times so I have to press the button leaned over and hope that I get the numbers at the right time. It is quite the production for 7am in my bathroom! Anyhoo..lets get on with the show.

Ok, so I only lost like .4 of a pound. Seriously though I was fully prepared for a bit of gain. St. Patrick's day saw me eating basically a loaf of grilled white bread, crab cakes and several Guinness. I also had a chocolate chip cookie from this really awesome bakery that I didn't even know did chocolate chip cookies and I've been particularly lazy on the exercise front..ok all I did was walk around a bit.

I'm not beating myself up over any of it, .4 is still .4 you know. Even more impressive is that I'm down another point on the body fat reader! Hooray!
So the tally for a month of weigh ins is 6.6lbs! WAIT! It's not week 4 of dieting! So the loss is reflective of 3 weeks meaning on average I'm losing 2.2lbs a week a totally healthy amount!

Please excuse the excessive use of exclaimation marks.

It's Friday and I'm in Love!

Last nights diet version of fries supreme was AWESOME! It totally hit the spot and even though the portion size was very small it was filling and delish! This past weekend I diverted a bit from my healthy eating as we ended up spontaneously going over to a friends house for pizza. Before we left I ate a big salad and told myself I would only have one slice, some how I did. I ate it incredibly slowly, so slowly that The Mister was like "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to!" and everyone else was on their 4th slice while I was still taking tiny bites and savoring every bit of pizza goodness. Of course the friends had dropped by a bakery on the way home and picked up some cupcakes. I told The Mister I would split one with him and I had about 1/4 of a lovely red velvet cupcake with some of the best icing I have tasted in this city. That was it though, even though a giant bowl of chips was brought out I didn't have one. I sat as far from them as I could and drank my wine and my giant glass of water. So lets get to the weekly photo....

Honestly when the numbers came up I thought to myself "What is that weird "S" thing in the middle?" it truly took me a moment to realise that it was a 5! I stared at it and then stepped on again and there it was again. I cannot tell you how weird it was to see the number 5 as the middle number on my scale. Reaching the 150's, even if it's basically the highest I can be in them makes me do a little dance. I told myself I wouldn't try on dresses until I was below 150 and apparently that is only like 9 pounds away! OH!

Fast Food Diet Style..

Right now I'm making a healthy diet version of fries supreme..no that's not an oxymoron.
I admit right up front that I am PMSing big time and the urge to lock myself in a closet and eat a bag of chips, a chocolate cake, poutine, pizza and wash it all down with several giant milk shakes is pretty much consuming every thought right this second.
But I haven't so instead I thought "what can I make a healthy version of?"
I'm not following any recipe and it very well may turn out to be the worst tasting idea ever.
Here's the recipe breakdown:

Fries = sweet potato slices baked in oven spritzed with olive oil.
Refried Beans = red beans heated up, mashed with some garlic and then lightly cooked with another spritz of olive oil.
Cheese sauce = low fat shredded mozzarella.
veggies = veggies.
Sour Cream = plain low fat yogurt.

Yeah. So....I'll report back later to tell you if it's edible!

Week one! (we can have lots of fun!*)

My favorite part of the first week of trying to lose weight is that is always the week you lose the most! I will admit to eating my weight in cake and bread last weekend. It didn't help that I had a party to go to and there was cheese and chips and dip and lots of red wine! I won't even tell you what I ate for dinner before the party! Then I buckled down and got serious.
I measured out all my meals, I made my lunches the night before, I ate as cleanly as possible and drink one Sigg bottle an hour of water! I'm eating a lot of high fibre low sugar meals, lean protein and fruits and vegetables. I'm still having my morning coffee and I'm eating a bunch of small meals a day. The biggest help has probably been the ziplock containers I own that are 2 cups. They make bringing lunch into work so easy. I've been going for a walk every day after lunch and only taking the stairs. I even jumped on my elliptical machine this week and since it started being mild my dog got some extra long walks!
When I stepped on the scale this morning I was so happy! I know most of it's water weight BUT my scale is also one of those ones that tells your your body fat percentage and hydration level and I'd gone down three body fat points! Hooray!

4.2lbs from last week!

*Another kudo for anyone who knows what song this is from..hint the beginning isn't "week one"

I'm never going to survive...unless I get a little crazy.*

When it comes to eating I'm a bit like that girl with a curl...you know the one, When she was good,She was very good indeed,but when she was bad she was horrid!

Honestly when I make up my mind to stick to something I do and then I'm so good! I have turned down things that I love when I'm good. I know when I'm good I have the will of steel, I can turn down all my favorites even when literally placed in front of me. Then something happens..something always does. I don't know how it starts. Maybe with "just a taste" then a few days later "a bite" and suddenly I'm thinking "OK I will start again on Monday." Only it's only Wednesday and somehow the knowledge that I'm going to be "good" again on Monday creates a feeding frenzy. Two donuts and a bag of chips in one day? Of course!
I know I'm setting myself up in a vicious dieting cycle.
Funnily enough I only identified it as I was typing!

So of course this Monday I'm starting again..well actually I'm starting on Sunday. Figured it was March 1st so why not start then? But what is going to change this time? Well this time I'm going to do something a little bit crazy....

Starting today I'm going to take a photo of my scale, with me on it. My numbers are going to be here in all their weighty glory. Basically I'm going to embarrass myself into sticking to it! So here for all to see is my starting weight...

Some stats:

1. I'm 5'6.5"(that half inch is really important!)
2. I'm 31 years old
3. According this online BMI calculator it's 26.8 which is overweight.

*Kudos to you if you know this song lyric!

32 by 32?

I mentioned here that I plan on not trying on dresses until I was down a few lbs. I also mention the things I was planning on doing in the new year..well it's just about a month into '09 and I've been to the gym exactly..oh wait that's right I haven't! The only exercise I have been getting is shovelling the mountains of snow that seem to never stop falling from the sky and shivering non-stop. Over the holidays I gained 2lbs which isn't so bad...except I haven't lost those two pounds yet.

Blargh.

Let me tell you some facts about me. I was thin my whole life, my mother (who I have yet to mention because the emotional baggage there is waaay over the weight limit for this airline) used to play me and my best friends off each other basically telling one that they would never be as skinny as the other because of whatever reason. I ate whatever I wanted when I wanted, half a cake at 3am? Why the heckballs not? I gained some weight at some point but apparently gained it all the the bust region. I didn't mind the new curves. Then at some point for whatever reason I started packing on the pounds. I knew I'd gained some weight but really didn't have a clue how much until we got back some photos from a party and I saw myself for the first time in a candid shot and burst into tears. Even though I was dressed head to toe in what I thought was a slimming black outfit I looked about 185lbs. I changed my eating habits a bit and just went on my merry way. But it's hard to change your eating habits when you live with a man who seems to lose 20lbs while eating a pizza! Every cupboard hides temptations of the delish variety! A couple of months later I was weighed at my doctors office and the scale was in the 170's, last year it was 159 and then this year it was 171. So that's where I started this time around 171lbs around November 5th. As of this morning I'm 162.8 according to my high tech scale. I'm just about 5'7" and I'm considered small boned. My ideal weight would be around 130lb.

I'm so close to the 150's right now. I know that all I have to do is hit the gym a couple of times a week and not be tempted by the ever present confections and junk food that seem to taunt me everywhere I go! In the last year I've been dealing with some health issues, nothing serious but perhaps being a healthier weight would ease them just bit.

So to recap...

Start weight. 171lbs (nov.5.08)
Current weight. 162.8lbs (Jan.22.09)
Goal. 130lbs.

32.8lbs to go! Wonder if I can get there by my 32nd birthday this June?!

Losing it.

Right now my kitchen smells like banana bread. Banana bread full of walnuts and chocolate and peanut butter chips. YUM!

About 4 days after we became engaged I had my yearly physical. I knew I had gained weight(again) once we moved to the house my time at the gym became next to nothing and my eating habits got a bit out of control. So that morning at my doctors I stepped on the scale in that lovely paper gown thinking that at worst I had gained 5lbs or so.

No. Because I'm so awesome I gained 11lbs in one year. Leaving me just 4 lbs under my heaviest known weight. I say "known" because there is a photo of me looking like I'm probably another 15lbs heavier than that.

So about a week after my doctor told me the grim news I decided to stop eating sugar, flour and junk food. Sticking fresh vegetables, lean cut meats and low G.I foods. I only drink water, green tea and I cut back my coffee intake. All of the things you're told to do. I started taking the stairs almost every time(hey I'm far from perfect!) Basically I eat a lot of salads now and measure out a lot of things into serving sizes. Like I said, I'm not perfect, so there have been slip ups. Especially as the holiday season started to get into swing. Losing weight isn't easy. It's slow and steady work and it's a constant battle and one that I admit I will probably have to deal with for a long time coming.

So after a month and a bit I have lost about 10lbs. If I can mantain that lose during the holidays I'll be happy. In the new year I'm going to join a local pilates studio and restart exercising 4 times a week. I told myself that I wouldn't start trying on wedding dresses until I've lost 25lbs, which is half of my goal weight.

Funnily enough I only really feel like baking when I'm making friends with salad. Of course the Mister loves it, as he keeps complimenting my "hot new body" (his words not mine!) and I insist he takes all my baked goods to work! It's a win-win!