It's HOT!

I mean it's HOT. I'm sweltering in the heat. I live in one of those old fashioned houses that has radiators for heat and no A/C. We moved in here at Christmas time so we had no idea how hot it would be. Time to get an A/C because Kiki was not exercising today with it being 95 degrees INSIDE the house.

Speaking of exercising I've been doing it every other day and eating like I was instructed. I have not used up all my flex points but I have been dipping into them. I feel like I've been cheating and I'm a bit worried that the scale is going to show even more of a gain, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it won't. At least that starving feeling has gone away. In fact even when I don't eat much I don't feel that bear hunger anymore. I hope I've tricked my body into thinking that I'm not going to deprive it of calories. That's so funny to me! I'm one person yet my mind and my body are like two different entities. One can fool the other. Crazy.

Tomorrow I'm going to brave the heat and take my son to a nearby farm. He's 21 months old today but every animal he sees is a cat. I'm hoping if I can show him a cow, pig, etc...that he'll start calling the animals by their appropriate names. I'm hoping to clock in some points with the walking (do you burn more calories if you sweat like a horse because of the heat???) I'm drinking a liter of water every 2-3 hours to flush my system. Can you tell I want a nice weigh in. I did get a tape measure so Sunday I will start tracking my inches. I'm figuring that I can handle the scale not moving a lot better if I can see inches falling off.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Thin Friends

The problem with Thin Friends is that they tend to be Food Pushers (thanks to whomever’s blog I stole that phrase from – please forgive me for not remembering who it was!) A Thin Friend may not necessarily be all that thin, but definitely thinner and in better shape than you are. Keep them around for the camaraderie and love but do NOT diet with them, LOL! Although they may not mean to they tend to lead you astray with bad dieting advice (and they always want to diet with you!) or impossible exercise programs that your big body can’t exactly handle at the moment. Do these phrases sound familiar?

• “Just skip breakfast and eat a really tiny dinner and then you can eat anything you want for lunch and not gain!” (Usually followed by something obnoxious like “I did it for a week and lost 10 pounds!”)

• “You can do the advanced workout…it’s really not that hard.”

• “Why don’t you just exercise?”

• “You can’t just eat a little bit of this?”

• “Seriously, the ** diet is how Britney lost all that baby weight, so it works!”

• “Aw, come on! You’ve been good all week! One day won’t hurt!”

• “Can’t you just skip it for this week and start over next week?”

• “No, seriously, it’s not that far of a walk.”

The reason for this blog tonight: I had a phone call this evening with a Thin Friend who is a subconscious Food Pusher. I say subconscious because in my heart I don't really think she's doing the pushing to be malicious but that she really doesn't want to see me miss out on anything. Let me set up the dialogue: She had invited me to a big company picnic being thrown by Herr's potato chips in PA. I originally said yes but after much thinking I changed my mind and told her no tonight. Here's our convo.

Thin Friend: "But Kiki! You are going to turn down FREE food???"

Me: "Yes, I have to. I don't want another bad weigh in."

TF: "Can't you skip this weekend? Girl, there's gonna be crabs and ribs and the last time XX went he said they even had lobster!"

Me: "If I hadn't had a bad weigh in this Sunday I might have, but I really don't want to, not after that weigh in."

TF: "But all you have to do is control yourself! I'll watch you!"

Me: "You know damn well you won't. You'll let me eat whatever, LOL."

TF: "LOL, true, true. I’ll be right there eating with you, too! LOL! But you'll be okay. Just don't eat past 7 and drink a lot of water! Anyway you'll be in the sun sweating and chasing after Bailey (my 20 month old son) so you'll burn it off.”

Me: "I really would and I really want to but I just don't want to risk it. I would hate myself if I ruined my hard work."

TF: "You suck, LOL."

It’s funny how many conversations I have had along these lines with Thin Friends. I love all my friends to death and would never cut them off just because they are thin but I definitely won’t diet with them anymore. For one, since they have less weight to lose they don’t mind taking more time to lose it. They will skip a week and go back to it the next week because since they only have five-ten pounds to lose it won’t really set them back too far. If you have 100 pounds to lose it will set you way back because every bit of weight we lose is just a drop in the bucket and we have a long way to go.

The other reason I won’t diet with Thin Friends anymore is that they just don’t seem to understand me and what I’m going through on the same level as someone who is/has been in my situation as a very obese person. When I lose all this weight and I become a Thin Friend I will have battle scars and a long memory so I will still be able to know where my overweight friends are coming from. Of course I would never tell my Thin Friends this because I know it would hurt their feelings as they might mistake what I'm saying as a lack of trust. It’s not that Thin Friends don’t try to understand but until they’ve ever been called fat in a malicious way or been prejudged because of their being overweight they will not understand why I don’t like going shopping for clothes or going to the club on the weekend or going to the beach/pool. I’m not saying that thin people don’t feel anxiety over their weight, but I’m saying it’s not the same type of anxiety.

Now that being said I can’t say all my Thin Friends are non-supportive. I do have some nice online buddies that are in my baby weight loss group who are small enough to be considered Thin Friends and who have never made me feel like there wasn’t support. I also have a couple real-time Thin Friends who may be thin but have had firsthand experience with overweight people in their lives or were obese at one point themselves so they, too, understand where I’m coming from. And before anyone else points it out, yes, I've had some overweight friends be just as counterproductive.

Anyhoo, I’m done running my mouth…er…hands. It was just a thought swimming around in my head that I felt the urge to blog about. Hope everyone is doing well on their plans this week! So far so good for me!

I GAINED!!!!

So after a week of forcing my notoriously lazy butt to move and groove and exercise daily I go to weigh in today and find out that I gained a pound! Talk about disappointed. I exercised at least 30 minutes a day and stayed within my points, even having some flex points left at the end of the week. I was bummed at first but after several people explained why that happened I'm kind of okay with it. The main reason was that I didn't eat enough last week. Remember how I kept posting that I was starving all the time? My WW leader said I wasn't listening to my body. If I was feeling hungry, real hunger not mental hunger, than my body was saying that it needed fuel. When I denied it my body held tight to the fuel a.k.a. fat for energy. My brother Mr. Muscles (the one who did not get the fat gene and drinks weight GAIN shakes to buff up and has such a beautiful body that all my girlfriends drool over him-- so unfair!) said that I'm expecting too much too soon, that although I might show a gain now the proof that my efforts are working will show in a couple weeks and to be patient. Of course I came home to do research to see if anything concurred with them and I found several articles that did (like this one) and so I feel better.  Also I can tell by the way my wedding ring fits and the way my face looks that some progress was made. I think I need to take my own advice and start using a tape measure as well as the scale.

Something else my WW leader said about eating our points that I didn't know: she said that if you only eat your daily points every day like clockwork that you body will learn to expect to only receive that amount of calories daily and will start to slow down on good weight loss or plateau. She said that we need to stop thinking of the 35 extra flex points as "cheating" points and use them. Her suggestion is to use the points to alternate your daily intake. For example I am allowed 32 points daily so I can eat 32 points today, then tomorrow I should eat 37 points, the day after eat my 32 again, the day after eat 33, and so on and so on so my body will not "memorize" how much I am giving myself daily. My brother concurs and added that I should eat more protein to fuel the muscles. Maybe everyone in the world knew this except me but I'm glad I know it now.

After my weigh in I did have to stop myself from sabotaging everything. My first thought was to quit exercising since I lost weight just fine without moving. I'm now in a better frame of mind so I will give it my all again this week, increase my food and protein intake and hope that things look better on the scale next week. Can anyone recommend a good, tasty protein shake or powder? My WW leader recommended blending a smoothie for the protein and I think that's a good idea. Let me know!

I hope everyone had a great weigh in this week!

No pain no gain, right?

So, while my son was napping I did this 10 minute workout called "Beach Body - Thin Thighs" and although it was a good serious workout I only felt a little fatigue in my leg muscles. So I thought. When my kid woke up and I started to climb the stairs to get him WHOA NELLY! My thighs were like "No!" Then of course my son is all clingy and wants Mommy to carry him down the stairs.  And I do, knees a-wobbling and everything. So then I get this bright idea to work on my abs while my son is eating his lunch. I put on the 10 minute ab workout from yesterday and get started. Up until that point I hadn't felt any pain in my abs but as soon as I got into the crunches THOSE muscles started screaming! I make it through the workout but the whole time I'm thinking just how much I really hate exercise, LOL!

But like the title of my blog says, no pain no gain. I'm going to try and do some sort of cardio activity every day and some muscle toning as well. I'll alternate between my upper and lower body but since the abs and quads are endurance muscles and can be worked out every day I'll try and do that darn thighs and abs workout daily. My motivation is that muscle burns more fat and in the end will help me reach my weight loss goals faster. But really, when will I start to LIKE exercising?

I'm still having the crazy hunger where I want to eat everything in site. I'm curbing it by drinking a lot more water and snacking on fruit and, of course, baby carrots. I'm going to remove myself from temptation by getting out of the house for a few hours with my son and chase him around the playground.

Oh, dieter's tip to share. I've read a bunch of blogs where people were complaining of water weight. Drink a couple cups of strong coffee or tea with sweetener. The naturally occuring caffeine will act as a gentle diuretic to flush the water out of your system. Don't use it to replace your water for the day! A friend told me this trick a while back and I admit that it helps. After all the main ingredient in Pamprin and Midol to relieve bloating is caffeine so it makes perfect sense.

Good luck to everyone fighting the food demons today. Lord knows I need it!

A change in plans

So I've decided not to do the WW walking challenge anymore, not until I can find a track or get a treadmill. The time maximum is hard for me to meet while walking on hilly terrain pushing a stroller and I want to do the program the way it was meant to be done. So it's on hold. HOWEVER this does not mean that I'm not moving my butt! I have still been exercising. I am still walking with my son, I'm just not timing myself or following the WW walk schedule. I've also discovered the Fitness TV channel on Comcast on Demand so I will be taking advantage of that as well. In fact today I did a 10 minute bellydance and 10 minute hip hop dance cardio workout plus a 10 minute ab workout. The bellydance one was a nice workout but not hard since my belly shimmies with ease but the hip hop work out...woo wee! I had no idea I was that uncoordinated! The ab workout was just right -- it burned enough to let me know I was doing something but it ended before I felt that it was too much. I actually put our DVD recorder to good use and taped the shows as I did them. There's a hula one I'm going to try tomorrow!

Speaking of fitness shows, if you have Comcast on Demand check out Leslie Sansone's "A Walk in the Home" episode on Fitness TV. Let me tell you why I love this woman! On most fitness tapes you just know that the camera has been turned off somewhere in the taping so that the makeup artists can run out and dab off the sweat and touch up the makeup because how is it that you are sweating like a dog in the sun while the instructor is glowing and barely out of breath? Well if you look at Leslie in this show not only is she sweating profusely but her face is red and she's huffing and breathing hard. I love it! I like that she lets you see that it is hard work to exercise and I don't mind the idea of huffing and puffing right along with her. She's very real and I like that.

But I digress. I'm going to try and do at least 30 minutes of some sort of exercise a day. And to make it more of a challenge I am not going to count the regular activities of my daily life anymore. I used to give myself credit for walking around the grocery store, lugging laundry to the laundry room, walking through the mall and other stuff like that but not anymore. I only want to count the activities that I take an effort to do. I do have a pedometer now and will be counting my steps but not for credit. I am just curious to see how many steps I do take in a day and if I can make 10,000 steps a day.

Ever have one of those days where you see food and have to insert it into your mouth? I'm having one of those days and no matter what I've eaten I want more! But so far I've been able to resist eating too badly and have been munching on carrots, rice cakes and other low cal/low fat snacks in 1 point portions. I wonder if the sudden jump in my physical activity has to do with it. I know it's not because of my TOM because that passed already. I just want to hold out until dinner because usually after that meal I'm good for the evening. We are having pork loin chops on the bone marinated in garlic and herbs. My son will be having creamy macaroni and cheese so Lord help me to resist eating some of that!

I hope everyone else is doing great in their dieting endeavors. I'm off to blow bubbles outside with my son!

I can (and did!) move mountains!

The "mountains" are in reference to my bodacious bottom! I promised in my blogs last week that I was going to start moving this week and I have kept my word. I started the Weight Watchers' Walking Challenge. I thought it was just a 16 week program but I was mistakened. It doesn't say just how long it goes on but I'm going to try my best and be faithful to it. Thankfully the first week starts on a Monday so I could be lazy and relax yesterday. Today I had to walk a half a mile in 10 minutes. It is suggested that you do the walk on flat terrain or on a treadmill but I just put my son in his stroller and walked around the neighborhood at a brisk clip. I don't have a pedometer so my husband used Google Earth to map me a route that would be exactly half a mile. It was hot but nice today and not so bad. I didn't finish in 10 minutes but more like 10.5 minutes but one part of my walk was uphill so I excuse myself for that extra 30 seconds. I walked an extra minute or so before the brisk pace just to warm up and so the 11-12 minutes of brisk walking gave me 1 activity point. Tonight I will be doing some toning, mainly abs and legs. I figured incorporating some light toning/weight training would be beneficial as well. So this is day one and I kept my promise to move my butt! I aim to keep it up!

I weighed in yesterday and although I didn't gain I only lost 0.6 of a pound for a total of 14.4 pounds. Although I did eat pizza at the beginning of last week I only used half of my flex points. I am disappointed and that too adds to my motivation to exercise. I really need the activity points too because I ate a lot yesterday at my family's BBQ. I didn't eat junk but I ate some potato salad and I tried every bit of the grilled meats. The chicken. The pork chops. The sausages. But I skipped the ice creams and cakes for dessert and ate a lot of watermelon instead.Oh, and I did grab a double cheeseburger (kids meal) from Burger King (12 points). Yeah, I should have had the chicken sandwich with no mayo but I really wanted a burger. With cheese! So because of yesterday I only have 17 flex points left for the week so I'm going to really have to make sure to just eat my points and not go over.

Thanks to all of you who added me to your MySpace.com pages. If you haven't added me please do! It's here. I really am one of those people who like to make new friends and I will always try to keep in touch. Plus it's nice to find out some other things we might have in common besides losing weight.

I'm off to go cook dinner. We are having chili. I found a great hint online a while ago that said to fry the lean ground beef, drain the fat and then boil the beef a little to get more fat out. I've done this twice so far for chili and spaghetti sauce and you can tell it works because there are hardly any fat puddles in the food AND you can't taste a difference. The sauce gives the beef flavor!

I hope everyone else had a great holiday weekend and did well on their weight loss goals!

I'm going to turn into a baby carrot!

I was on Roni's Weight Watchen site (www.weightwatchen.com) right when I started WW and I saw that she snacks on baby carrots all day long to curb her hunger and cravings. Being that she's successfully lost all her weight and then some I started doing the same. Sure, it's not potato chips but it satisfy that need to be eating something. But today I ate a whole bag! I don't know why but I've been hungry all day long and even though I ate a good breakfast (2 boiled eggs and toast) and a good lunch (left over turkey burger) I felt like I was starving. It's not the TOM so all I can think is that whatever I've been eating has had a high glycemic index and it's leaving me with sugar lows. Luckily carrots are not high in points and the bag I ate was really only a small bag.

Speaking of turkey burgers the ones I made last night were okay. Not fabulous but I think it's because I under seasoned. Also I think I couldn't accept that this was turkey and not beef because I kept wanting it to taste just like a hamburger. All in all not bad and I'll probably attempt to make these again but I think I will take Endurer's advice and use Lipton onion soup or something in it. I did take some of the turkey and add grated apple to make mini meatballs for my son and they were quite tasty, so I may try that next time. I do believe that these would be awesome on the grill.

Okay, so I've said a thousand times that I need to move my butt more and after the blogs on EP I've been newly motivated by my shame! All of you seem to be moving and grooving! So I'm getting myself a pedometer this weekend and starting Sunday I will be doing the WW walking challenge. If you get the magazine or go to WW online then you know what I'm talking about. If not e-mail me and I'll send it to you. The goal is to get from a sedentary lifestyle to being able to walk 13 miles a week effortlessly. It's a 16 week program and I figure with the weather being good and my son being willing I have no excuse. Truthfully I would prefer a treadmill because I am not one for walking outside but I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone-- get more exercise and get more fresh air. So starting Sunday. I promise!

Does anyone have a MySpace page? Mine is here. Add me as a friend! But send me a note on their so I know you aren't a spammer. There are pics of me, with my head attached LOL!, and some of my family.

*Sigh* I forgot to thaw something out for dinner which means I'll either have to run to the market for something to cook or order in. Maybe we'll stop by Burger King. Their Tender Grill chicken salad is only 5 points.

I gotta go clean my house. My son had a play date today and boy can two 20-month olds do some damage!

Gave into temptation

Yeah, so we ordered that Pizza Hut pizza last night.  But I did well, I swear! We ordered a large (eek! I know, we should have opted for the medium) hand tossed pizza. My hubby had the meat lovers combo on his half, I had sausage, mushrooms and onions on my half. Extra cheese on both sides though. <Bowing my head in shame>. BUT I only ate one slice! I promise. Just the one. I used the nutrition calculator on the Pizza Hut website to calculate the points in the slice I at and the one piece cost me 10 points but I am happy to say it didn't bust my points for the night. I had eated very well during the day so I had the points to spare. So yes, I indulged my craving but I didn't overdo it. So far today I've eaten light and have been drinking lots of water to counter the sodium intake from last night so I really doubt that last night will affect the outcome at the end of the week. At least I'm hoping it won't! What did I do with the leftovers? I promptly double wrapped them and stuck them in the freezer. When I have a desire to eat something I want instant gratification so I will reach for something ready to eat as opposed to unwrapping a slice and thawing and reheating it. I froze my husband's slices, unbeknownst to him. LOL.

I have to thank those of you in the dieting community that turned me on to the Laughing Cow light cheese wedges. They are awesome! At first I was just using them to smear on the 100 calorie pack wheat thins or Ritz crips but now I use them on my sandwiches and save myself 2-3 points because I'm not using sliced cheese or mayo. I can have a sandwich with 2 slices of WW bread, 5 slices of Oscar Mayer deli ham or turkey, laughing cow, and  top with lettuce, tomato and cucumber all for a mere 3 points! 

Speaking of eating I'm going to take your advice and make turkey burgers for dinner tonight. I usually only use ground turkey for chili, spaghetti sauce, sloppy joes, etc...but never in burger form. I hope they come out tasty so I can sell myself on turkey. Oh, by the way, did you know that the best ground poultry is white meat poultry, that ounce for ounce ground dark meat poultry is not that much healthier (fat/cholesterol)  than red meat? I learned that from my nutrionist which is another reason why I've never really used ground turkey in my diet. I figured if there really wasn't a difference why switch? But now at this stage in the game I figured even a "little bit better" is worth the effort.

It's a sunny afternoon so I don't have any excuse not to take my son out to the park. I wish I felt the same way about exercise as many of you do but I loathe it. I've never felt invigorated after a workout, just sore. I've never missed not working out and no matter how much I do try to exercise I never *miss* working out when I skip it. But for my weight loss effort's sake I am going to try and get into some sort of routine. I'll start on Sunday.  I have a lot of workout tapes and might as well put them to good use. Maybe I'll even whip out my "Sweatin' to the Oldies" tapes! Don't laugh! The whole tape is about 45-50 minutes of continous low impact aerobics so you are getting a workout. And who doesn't love Richard Simmons? Or maybe I'll just crank up the 80's music...calling Duran Duran!...and just shake my booty for 30 minutes. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Alright, time to get this child o' mine dressed for the park. Sunshine here I come!

Visions of CAKE!

Normally I am not a sweets eater. I get my occasional craving now and then but for the most part I'd rather grab a hoagie instead of a ho-ho. Explains the weight, doesn't it?  But recently I have been having day dreams of a many layered chocolate cake with decadent chocolate icing. In my day dreams I'm watching myself eat fork after fork full. I can almost taste the icing! Alas, I am munching on baby carrots. Not even nearly as satisfying. This is the reason I have cleaned my house of all junk food. I know it's bad to deprive yourself but it would be better for my hips if I just omitted the bad stuff. 

Everyone keeps telling me about the WW snack cakes and I just may have to break down and get some. I'm just a bit fearful of my lack of willpower. About a month ago our grocery store had all the SmartOnes desserts on sale and we stocked up. We got tons of the ice cream snacks. And we (by we I mean me and my husband, who is doing this with me) ate them all in less than a week. I mean sure, we counted the points but really, eating 2-3 desserts a day? That was ridiculous! So I never bought anymore. But I'm starting to feel deprived and I know that is one of the falling rocks that leads to a cheating landslide.

Memorial Day barbeques are coming up. I'm going to steal someone's idea from EP and make healthy skewers but I know it's going to be terribly hard to not inhale a burger or four. Or ribs. Or chicken.  Someone suggested that I make burgers out of buffalo because that's supposed to be healthier, less fat than beef. Why the heck not? I'll eat anything that is barbequed right! Luckily I'm not a big potato salad or baked beans kind of girl so I will just be happy with chargrilled protein and leave the fattening sides alone. I sure hope there's cake!

Hey, has anyone out there had a baby in the last year or so? I belong to a very nice Yahoo group forum called After Baby Weight Loss and here lately the membership has dwindled and the list has quieted down a lot. I think groups like that one, just like this EP blogsite, help to keep members motivated with the constant sharing and comparing of dieting tips and ideas so I'd like to see it pick back up soon. If you are interested in joining please, we'd love to have you. I'm one of the moderators and I personally would love to have you join. Here's the link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfterBabyWeightLoss

These carrots ain't rocking my world so I'm off to see what else I can eat that won't blow away all my points. Ciao y'all!

Challenging Challenges that Challenge Me :-)

I had a very pleasant weigh in at WW today...I lost five pounds! (Yay!) So I am down a total of 13.8 pounds since my first WW meeting, and only 12.2 pounds away from my first goal of losing 10% of my body weight.