My boyfriend and I have decided to lose weight--together. He has also gained some weight in the past few years that he wishes to take off.
We went on a walk this morning--we were both off from work because we just got home from a trip to Oklahoma City to visit his father, who lost his partner about two weeks ago.
Our walk was going to be about an hour long (so I thought). We ended up traipsing through the City Of Boise's entire greenbelt that runs through the city! I now have a HUGE blister on my big toe on the right foot. It hurts.
While in Oklahoma, I made a decision to make a HUGE change in my fitness habits. I like to walk and I've always loved to ride bikes (since childhood), and I have always enjoyed GOING to the gym. I've been talking about buying a nice bike for a while and I've also talked about joining the gym again.
I put a down payment on a $400 bike today! I Bought a 2008 Giant Rincon bike for me!! I have a bike, but it's not comfortable at all. I have an $80 Magna that I bought at an all-purpose store when I was 18. That makes the bike 10 years old...but the bike is a man's frame, the handlebars make my hands go numb, my seat kills me, etc. It's not fun to ride that bike anymore. So in $272.75, I will have my brand new bike!
I'm planning on riding it to work a few days a week and riding it in the mornings or the evenings on the days I don't ride to work. I'm also expecting to ride it for short errands, such as stopping at the grocery store for a few things. I'm going to check into saddlebags for it, too.
I have a 15 year old sister who is going to spend the ngiht with me this evening. I came up with a great idea: make strawberry lemonade.
So I cut up strawberries and put a little bit of splenda on them to make a sugary juice to add to the lemonade. After a few hours, I took a fork and crushed the diced bits of strawberries.
Then I came up with a brillant idea: add the strawberries to iced tea! Talk about a low-calorie sweetner! The strawberries aren't so low calorie, but they count as a fruit serving AND if you use splenda, there's really not too many extra calories to worry about! (it's good, BTW--I'm on my second glass...)
One thing about me, Mandy, that may really hurt me on my path to re-weight loss: my love for cheese. I love cheese: may it be cheddar, montery jack, mozzerella, gouda, swiss, feta, bleu cheese, whatever. If it looks like cheese, I'll eat it.
I work in a grocery store. There is a specialty cheeses section. I LOV E cheese!
My co-worker (actually, now she's my boss) suggested taht we go in together on a wedge of $19.99/lb cheese. I agreed--the wedge she found was a mere $8.04. The cheese was Wensleydale cheese with blueberries. I'd never heard of Wensleydale cheese before that day--but she'd pointed it out to me before. So we cut up the wedge and shared it with others. I am sure that the two of us ate the majority of the cheese. It was delicious. It was full of flavor, and to be honest, ti was rich like a cheesecake--but without the sugar.
So yesterday, I buy another little wedge of the Wensleydale cheese with blueberries and a box of Wheat Thins--the big ones. I chop up the cheese and eat some of it.
This monring, I wake up and I eat some more--but this time, it was for my breakfast.
So almost all of this .54 lb wedge of cheese is gone. (Which means I've now eaten about 8 oz of it, right?) I am trying to look on the bright side: at least the carbs are almost non-existant. My doctor told me to stick to about 25 carbs per day when trying to lose weight.
Is it wrong of me to be in love with cheese? I told myself "NO!" when my head came up with the brillant idea to get some wine to go with the cheese...
I have been home from my weekend trip to Lake Tahoe for about an hour now. I feel really good. The reason? I didn't stuff myself!
I went to Lake Tahoe to see Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in concert, and I went with my mom. My mom knows how hard it is for me to keep weight off and to LOSE it, so she was "sort-of" a good trip buddy. I usually go on trips with my boyfriend of seven years, who eats like a racehors and always seems to be hungry.
This time, I went with my mom, and even though she still steered me towards some things I KNOW I shouldn't eat, she was good for me. We split an appetizer platter at Applebee's on Friday night and an appetizer platter at the Hard Rock on Saturday night. After Saturday night's dinner, my stomach was mad at me. My mom apologized and said that she was sorry for steering me toward fried foods, which though I love, they make my stomach churn if I eat more than one or two servings of fried foods in a week.
So anyway, I got home, and after spending 16 hours road-tripping (and only one serving of candy all weekend), I've lost 3.4 pounds since I've come back--and it hasn't quite been a week yet!
So...other than some other things that have been bad for me today, that made me remember to be happy. :D
I graduate in December. I just finished the absolutely most stressful school year in my life. I have been "watching my weight" a lot lately--as in watching it go up, up and up.
I am making a pledge to myself right now--since I have about 15 pounds off from when I started in Feb. 2007, I AM going to keep this 15 off. My panic button weight is now set at 190 lbs. I passed that 14 lbs ago.
My goal is by the end of the summer, I hope to fit nicely into the clothes that are hanging in my closet. This doesn't mean that I have to look spectacular, but I will not feel like a fat old cow when I go through my closet looking for things to wear.
My school year consisted of six eighteen hour days this year, with TWO internships and 20 credits both semesters; in addition to 9 credits in summer school for the summer of 2007. I stopped exercising becuase I coudn't find time to get it in. I ate whatever I could get my hands on, reverting back to my poor habits that got me in the 200 pound club once again.
Anyway, I'm feeling ridculously down becuase I found the tape measure the other day. Though I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, I measured myself. I knew it was not going to be good, but the hard numbers really gave me yet another newsflash: my hips are over 6 inches bigger than they were in August last year. No wonder why my jeans never stretch out and my shorts and capris from last year aren't being worn.
Let's see if I can get this weight-loss back on track. I CANNOT allow myself to do gain more weight--or to stay at my current weight.
At school today, my linguistics teacher gave her public service announcement in class.
I learned that she's a TWO time breast cancer survivor. She caught it both times at stage zero. They found it in a mammogram. She was lucky enough to have found it before it needed anything other than a small surgery. She has had a masectomy.
She also asked us to think of six women that we love. Then she said one of those six women will get breast cancer Who do you want to have breast cancer? Can't decide?
Women age 40 and older should have a mammogram every year. Every woman should have an annual breast exam by a healthcare professional and conduct monthly exams on herself. Do yourself and your loved ones a favor, get checked.
I fell off the Fat-wagon with that missed doctor's appoinment.
I'm stil struggling to stay on it. I KEEP falling off! With my eliptical being inaccessable for a month, (we got a new washer and dryer and we had the old one in front of the eliptical until my aunt FINALLY came to pick it up), I got lazy. Yes, I could have gone for walks, yes, I could have gone to the school's gym. But I didn't.
I missed my doctor's appointment this morning. I got a reminder call LAST WEDNESDAY for my Monday morning appointment. Isn't the point of a reminder call so you don't forget about it? Well--I think getting a reminder call on Wednesday morning for the following Monday is stupid. Stupid! Between Wednesday's "reminder" and Monday's "missed appointment," I worked five shifts at my job.
It's weird--they usually call me on Friday afternoon if I have a Monday appointment. If I have one in the middle of the week, it's usually the afternoon before the day of the appt. Oh well. I guess I should call them to reschedule. When I realized I missed the appt., it was about three hours after it was scheduled.
I'm really thinking about hitting the pavement with my resume to look for a new job until I graduate college. I am getting frustrated with my job to the point of anxiety about my job hours after I have gone home for the day. I don't think I need that much stress in a job I am not planning staying at for an extended time, (one year left to go, and I am outta there...)
Geez. I am at 177.4 right now, which means I have 2.4 pounds left before I hit my second goal of 175 lbs! When I hit this point, I will only have 20 pounds to lose! Yay!
I got my hair done today. My hair dresser and I did something different this time: we used a darker brown for my base and did a brighter red for the weave. It looks fabulous! I told her that she made me beautiful today!
I saw some girls that I know from school yesterday at the store. One of them hasn't seen me since May, and she said that it took her a minute to recognize me! Double yay! My mom even said that she hasn't been seeing me as much as we usually see each other this summer, and when we were at my cousin's wedding, she kept looking at me because she was amazed to see how much weight I've lost. I hope Dave feels the same when he sees me after two months!
I also did something pretty dumb today: I mowed the lawn at 1pm, when the temperature was over 90. I was sweating pretty badly and I actually had to take a break before I did the entire lawn. LOL I should know better, but beause I usually mow it in the evening, I don't experience the sweatiness often when I mow.
I'm in a good mood--I start school (Boise State) on Monday, and school starts (my charter school assignment) on the Tuesday after Labor day for my student teaching.
I am 179.2 right now. My next goal is 175.0. I have 4.2 pounds to go!
School is starting in about five days (on Monday). I am really excited, but I am also nervous. This year, I will be in the classroom all year, then I will do my student teaching in the fall, and I will be a teacher! This is ten years in the making! I'm excited because it will finally be done, but I am nervous because I don't want to make really bad mistakes, (even though I know mistakes are unavoidable).
I have been without a dryer since the middle of July, and yesterday, I bought a new set! Our current set is an old Kenmore set, and it works great when it works. But since Dave's been deployed, there is no one to fix the dryer. I have been rallying to get a new one for quite a while, because I hate it when I have to re-start the dryer and re-start the dryer to get the clothes dry. Sometimes, it will take all day to do three loads of laundry! I got the Kenmore HE5 set in champagne. I wasn't going to buy that set, rather a cheaper Kenmore frontloading set when I walked into Sears yesterday. I ended up seeing a returned set that was marked down $600.00 off sale price. Since I had already looked at the sets onine, I knew this set was the cream of the crop, and for about $1600, it was in my budget of what I wanted to spend for the new set. It gets delivered tomorrow, and I am really excited! I cannot wait to try this new set out! It sure will be nice to do a load of laundry without having to stand over it and continue to correct it when it goes out of balance. LOL. I literally have to stand over the washing machine we have now when the spin cycle's going because it won't correct itself when it goest out of balance. The high spin cycle should cut my drying time, too. I have always said that I need two dryers and one washer to keep up with the laundry. Hopefully this will be the answer. One thing that isn't really great about this washer and dryer is the fact that I just stocked up on regular laundry detergent. I have about a six month's supply of regular laundry detergent, and I was told to use the HE detergent to make sure I get the best results. I think I will give the regular stuff to my mom because she has a regular front loader, and she's helped me out a time or two...(she said she was going to pay me for it, but I am not going to allow that).
