I know I haven't been checking in here much. Life and all that you know LOL But I am so, SO happy with my scale report today. I'm down 12.5 lbs!! From my highest ever weight in 2005 I'm down a total of 28.5 lbs. I lost 16 lbs in 2005 and I have managed to never gain any of them back :D So I need to remember to celebrate that!! I tend to want to shove that highest ever number far back into the depths of my mind and never think about it because it's awful to look at that high of a number and think of being that fat. It's awful to look at the numbers I'm facing NOW and realize how big they are. But I have to remember them so I can remember that I AM doing well. I have never hit that high weight again. Never come close to it again. That's a pretty big accomplishment.
I'll just keep plugging away, doing my Wii Fit, walking my new doggies (we just adopted two chocolate lab mixes from a shelter - full of energy, less that one year old doggies :D) and moving myself and my weight downward :)
Yay! Stepped on the scale today and I'm down 8 lbs :) It's coming off slowly, but at least it's coming off!! I'm keeping up with the Wii Fit and still really, really like it :) And this is even AF's week to visit so I'm happy to know that I've lost some even with her around. I'm trying really hard to not weigh every single day. I do go ahead and weight on the Wii Fit when I get on it, but I'm not using that as my 'official' weight so it's easy to bleep over that if I don't see what I want LOL I have a delicate balance I have to find with the scale. I can become obsessed with it and feel like I have to weigh every day - or even multiple times in ONE day....bad, bad, bad, I know - and as we all know our weight can fluctuate so much from one day to the next for so many reasons it can become a real emotional battle for me. And weight loss itself is a HUGE emotional battle for me as it is. So I'm trying hard not to step on that scale every day. But I don't want to go down to only once a week either because that can also backfire on me. I can talk myself into things or thinking that I'm not eating 'so bad' since I don't have to face the scale for a full week or 'hey you worked out for an HOUR, you deserve a treat' those kinds of thoughts creep in and sabotage me.
So I'm stepping on the scale only every few days, no more than every other, and so far that's going well. I'm trying to make one or two small changes at a time until I feel like I've got a handle on them. I hope that continues to work!
The weight is coming off slower than a snail's pace. I hate that. But it's unfortunately the way it works for me :( I can feel a difference in some of my clothes though, especially in the butt and thighs. I'll just have to continue paying attention to those cues and measurements and not depend on the weight so much. It's just so darn hard when I have SO much weight I need to lose!! Sigh.
I'm still enjoying the Wii Fit. I use it at least 1 hour a day, most days it's over 1 1/2 - 2 hours. I would never, ever exercise that long with a traditional method. I'd be counting the time down until I could quit and be ready to give up less than 20 minutes in. So having this still be fun after 10 straight days of exercise is big deal to me. And I know with all the fitness related games out there if I do get tired of the standard Wii Fit and Fit Plus exercises I can simply buy a new game to add variety. It's nice to challenge myself to see if I can get more reps or get a better score etc in depending on what I'm doing.
I'm so glad we decided to get the kids a Wii for Christmas. I bought a bundle that included the Fit Plus and I am absolutely loving it. I had already started losing weight w/no dietary changes just by playing the Wii once or twice a day with the kids. Now that they are back to school I started using the Fit yesterday. I can really feel it today - not in a bad way, but in an I know I worked out yesterday way :) I know better than to go by the weight on the Wii Fit - I'll use it as somewhat of a guide, but my clothes are going to be different every day, I'll be getting on it at a different time every day depending on my schedule and what not, but it said I was down .4 pounds since yesterday. I'm not big on the point anything pound losses :LOL 1/2 lbs maybe, but not .3 pounds, .2 pounds, .4 pounds....if others want to trust in that, that's fine. But to me I can pee out .4 pounds - or get rid of it in other ways I won't discuss here :) so I don't put much stock in those kinds of weights. BUT, I stepped on the scale - not a first morning weight, but according to it I'm down 5.5 lbs from my weight in December. I'll take that :)
I've always known that I'm not doing horribly with the food. I mean I have a DH who is a type 2 diabetic, has high cholesterol, has high blood pressure, has a family history of heart disease - his dad died at the age of 64 and his brother died at just 43 - so I try my best to keep our diet healthy. But this past year I gained weight I had lost the year before. Because 2009 was one big hectic, frantic, nerve wracking mess and I didn't get any consistent exercise. I've always said that I can eat the same and gain weight if I don't move. I know there are a lot of people who don't believe that. Doesn't matter to me. Especially now that I am proving it's true. I've changed zippo with my diet. All I'm doing is playing the Wii and not for extraordinarily long periods of time - I don't have that kind of time LOL
I'm not big on making resolutions. Like most people, they seem to fizzle out and fade away after a couple of months of trying to keep them going. But I'm going to do my best to make 2010 different :)
My main resolution is just to stick with it when it comes to weight loss and exercise. The end of 2008 and most of 2009 has shown me things I already knew about myself, but in a big way. Beginning at Thanksgiving of 2008 we seemed to go into a never ending year of turmoil skipping from one catastrophe to another. I already knew I was an emotional eater and I knew if a roadblock was thrown up exercise would go straight out the window. Boy did it ever :( It was not even hit and miss in 2009, it was miss, miss, miss, miss, ding, miss, miss, hit, ding, miss, miss, miss, miss.....you get the idea LOL
So, I know that with parents who are not getting any younger (they were our first stressors at the end of 2008 with dad ending up in the hospital and having very complicated surgery and us nearly losing him and with that went a very long, drawn out recovery), kids - 3 of them, ranging in age from 16 to 11 to 6, a husband who not only works full time 50+hour weeks most weeks but we also operate a farm (grain operation) and then just add in all the little daily things that pop up for a SAHM that I'll never have a 'normal' day or a set in stone schedule I can stick with. So it's going to have to be the baby steps I mentioned yesterday.
First baby step is just to get back into the routine of exercise on a daily basis. I realize there will be days I will have no choice but to miss, but overall I want to exercise more days a week than I don't. Baby step #1. Baby step #2 is to keep up eating as well as we can. DH is a Type 2 Diabetic. I'm not perfect in this area, but I do my absolute best to make sure our meals are balanced in a way that is healthy for him. Funny how I'm able to do that so much easier for him than if it were me that were diabetic. (That'll be a baby step later in the year, I promise :) )
Once I feel comfortable with baby step #1 (baby step #2 is pretty well ingrained, just need to keep it first and foremost as always) I'll move on to more baby steps. Some of the baby steps involve getting other areas of my life under control. Overall I'm a pretty well organized person. I can think my house is a wreck, but give me 15 minutes of decluttering and it's a pretty clean place. But there are the projects that could help out with my weight loss efforts that keep getting pushed to the back burner that I need to tackle. And the biggest one is organizing my recipes. I've been "working" on this for at least a couple of years and never found a good solution. I think I have a plan of action laid out now and am going to work on it as soon as I'm done blogging here actually. I've found some small binders that will fit on the shelf of my hutch in the kitchen were I keep my cookbooks. Each binder will hold recipes for certain categories (ie one binder will be devoted to main dishes, another to salads, soups, veggies and sides etc) I know once I can actually FIND all my recipes again it will make meal planning a lot easier. And if meal planning is easier, I have a plan of action for those nights when my 6 yo DD has ballet and we don't get home until late and I end up grabbing pizza or something equally diet smashing on the way home just to get some food into my kids before we ram through homework, baths and put them to bed. If I can get a plan of action and have at least some meals planned out and ready to go for the nights I know are going to be hectic, life will be so much easier in so many ways. That's the biggest place I've struggled this past year. Most of my weight gain is from not exercising. I know I can't lose if I don't exercise. It just doesn't happen for this body. But I also can't lose if I'm always stressed and thinking about food every waking hour trying to come up with something fast and easy (which w/o planning almost always equates to not so healthy) to fix for supper. So baby step #3 is organize my recipes which I really think will make steps #1 and #2 fall into place so much easier for me.
So those are my big resolutions as of now. I'll add more as the year stretches on. I don't want to lay too many in front of me right now. I tend to get distracted and try to shuffle priorities. These 3 are the biggest priorities I have right now. Meal planning, exercise and eating healthy. Once those feel like they are 'set' I'll pick another one or two to add to the mix :)
Well, I've not gained everything back, but I've gained too damn much :( 2009 has been a hellish year and I've got to get back on track. Exercise has been sporadic at best. And w/o exercise I have no hope of losing an ounce let alone the massive amount of weight I desperately need and want to lose.
We got the kids a Wii for Christmas. My kids aren't video gamers at all. They've never had an interest in any gaming systems. But we decided to get the Wii Fit package for them and a few games. They love it and so do I. So far we haven't had time to try to Fit (our basement just flooded, yet another gift from 2009 lol - and that's where our Wii was located, we've moved it upstairs until we can repair the basement but there's just not room to do too much up here :( ) But I can 'feel' the bowling I've been doing with the kids and I've had a loss of 3 lbs w/o changing anything else. Just reinforces my knowledge of my body. It doesn't matter how perfectly I follow an eating plan, if I can't get myself moving I can't lose weght plain and simple.
So with the start of a new year I'm starting over again. But I can't look at it as again. I'm just starting over. Making tiny steps in the right direction one small change at a time. I know my ultimate goal is so far off I don't even want to think about it. So I won't. Right now I'm just working on 5 lbs at a time. Just give me a five pound loss and then I'll move on to the next five pounds. Tiny, baby steps.
I think the scale must just be out to get me. But I'm not going to allow it I decided this morning I will still use the scale every morning (if I remember, getting up before 5:30 doesn't always lead me to be the most clear thinker at that point LOL) but if I get a number that just doesn't seem right or I plain just don't like, I'm ignoring it.
I know myself well enough to know if I allow myself, especially right now when I'm just starting to get everything back in order again after life being so chaotic, to not step on the scale because I don't like the #s it's showing me, I will use that as an excuse to eat what I shouldn't eat, to not exercise 'just for today' and on and on. So I just have to muddle through until the scale decides to give me the information I'm waiting to see So, I'll step on it at least most mornings and go from there. But I won't allow that # to ruin my day or my outlook or my plans to get this weight off. I will happen. I've lost weight before. It's always been just this hard and it always will be at least this hard. That's the weight loss hand I've been dealt and work with it I will.
So, today I've gotten my workout in I'm trying to put in 45 minute cardio sessions absolutely any time I have the chance. I'm doing the 4 week makeover dvd 3 times a week and then cardio on the other days (usually Friday ends up being a day off for me because I help out in my DDs kinder class for about 2 hours). I just have to push myself as much as I possibly can and get this darn weight loss moving again!! I'm sick of feeling so dumpy and fat. I've lived this way too long and I'm ready to remember what it feels like to NOT be fat again. I've been so overweight for so long I doubt it'll even be remembering. It'll be finding it all out again as I go.
I just have to keep plugging away and it'll happen. I tend to have zero patience with weight loss. Like everyone I just want it now. I wish I could see a big difference now. I wish I could see the number on the scale I want to see now. But I'll get there. One day at a time.
I'll start with a positive note :) I did the workout today that I missed yesterday. WHOO!! I can really feel it when I'm done. Not in a bad, I-can't-walk-I'm-so-sore way or anything like that. Just a deep I can feel my abs and other muscles have worked good way.
I'm just really at a point where I'm not sure how to hit this anymore. Nothing seems to be working. I know I need to give it more time, that I've just really begun getting the workouts in consistently again. But I want the weight off NOW like so many of us do. Sigh. Weighing daily has always helped me in the past. Always. It keeps me on track and focused. I can deal with each days fluctuations, I just use the weight on Friday generally as my actual weight to let me know how I've done over the period of a week. But my weight is just bouncing all over right now :( I've never had this problem before and I'm not sure what's going on. I'll be down 4 lbs and then back up a pound and then up 3 lbs and it just keeps going back and forth within this window of several pounds up and several pounds down.
I know a lot of people will say STAY OFF THE SCALE, and for them, yes, that's probably the answer. Staying away from the scale is the worst thing for me though. It lets me get my mind away from what I really need to do and I can gain 10 lbs in a very short period of time if there's a part of my brain that thinks, 'hey, we don't have to step on that scale so none of this matters'. So, for me, the scale is a very, very important tool. I don't obsess over the numbers, I use them to keep me in check and keep me in bounds. I REFUSE to allow myself to start gaining again (well, any more than I've gained during the time dad was in the hospital and the 2 months following that when exercise was non-existent for the most part). I don't have the money to buy new clothes period, let alone going UP again. I will NOT go there ever, ever again. Ever.
So, I've got to figure out what is going on. I'm going to give it a week and hope that it's just the shock of doing this new workout to my body and it's confused :) If the scale isn't starting to get into a more normal mode I'll have to look deeper.
Ugh, never seems to fail, I have exercise all laid out and the day gets shot to heck. My plan was to get the kiddos off to school and do my new 4 week fitness makeover workout and then Dh was supposed to get up and we had to make a run to Northern Indiana for some parts for a couple of tractors. Normally DH wouldn't be awake until 9am or after so I had plenty of time in my 'plan'. Ha! DH couldn't sleep this morning (he works nights) so he came out to see if I was ready to go earlier when I wasn't even 1/4 of the way through my workout. GRRRR!!
Sigh. But I needed some things too and with gas prices and not knowing how stable his job is right now we don't make any unnecessary trips, so I stopped the workout and grabbed a quick shower and off we went. We were gone by 8:30 and didn't get back until after 2pm, it's nearly a 2 hour drive one way to the place we had to get parts from. So, by the time I rush around and get him a lunch made to take to work and he left it was nearly time for the kiddos to get home and I didn't have time to squeeze that workout in like I had 're-planned' when my first 'plan' fell apart. Bah.
But.....all was not lost We have had beautiful, warm, sunny weather the past two days. So when the kids hopped off the bus I was already outside doing some more cleaning of flower beds. I went in the garage and grabbed four badminton rackets and a bunch of birdies and we all went out back. We had a BLAST!! No net up yet or anything, we were just bopping the birdie around and it was hilarious because the wind was really strong this afternoon and the birdie was so not going where anyone aimed it LOL Took a LOT of extra running just to even get near the birdie. Wasn't a lot of volleying back and forth, but definitely a ton of running and laughing. My stomach actually hurts we had so many laughing fits We ended up playing a kind of modified keep away because my younest (DD, 5 yo) wanted to play but can't quite manage the racket yet LOL So we'd try to keep her from getting the birdie as long as we could and let me tell you, she may be small but she is FAST!! ROFL
So, I didn't get my 'planned' workout in. But I did get a workout in after all :) So, tomorrow, for sure, no matter what I WILL do my dvd I intended to do today LOL It may even be better this way giving my muscles an extra day of rest. My legs are still a little.....eh, I can't say sore by any means, but I can tell they've been worked, which is a good feeling :)
With my blogging at least. At least I'm doing better with the exercise!! And it has surprised me what spurred that on more than anything. I've been doing fairly well since mid-January when things settled down somewhat with my dad and he was doing much better, but I just couldn't get back in the zone where I was consistently exercising every single week. I'd have a good week, then a bad one, then a decent week, then an iffy one. I just couldn't find my spark. It's hard for me to find a spark to exercise anyway because I don't like it. I never will like it. It doesn't make me sleep better. It doesn't make me feel better. I don't get any of those 'feel good' endorphins so many speak of after exercise. I'm just freaking glad its OVER. I do it because I know it is the only way I can ever hope to continue to lose weight. Period. I will always dislike it, but I do it because I have to.
A month or so ago I got a free issue of Fitness magazine in the mail. One of those "introductory" issues you know. I flipped through it and really liked it. I've been trying to read Oxygen and Self but they just don't reach me. I love Oxygen and everything they have to say in theory, but there's no way I can ever get to a gym (distance and cost) so much of it just doesn't apply to me. Fitness seemed more geared to the average person who wants to learn more about nutrition and exercising but doesn't have a load of cash to drop on a gym membership and only has time for simple, yet results attaining, workouts. The price was reasonable, so I subscribed.
Last week I got my first issue and inside the package was a free workout DVD. So I'm thinking, sure, a freebie workout dvd, it's gotta be lame. But, I need a spark, remember. So I shove it in the dvd player on my computer (I do all my dvd workouts using my computer because the family room has more room for me to move and we don't have a TV in here The dvd claims if you follow the exercises for 4 weeks you'll have noticable results. I always take those claims with a grain of salt. If I were smaller I might buy into them more, but at my size it takes a lot to achieve a noticable difference in my body. But I follow along with the workout nonetheless. It's a circuit style workout. All that is needed is a set of 3 lb and 5 lb dumbbells. I have those. Whoo!! Each exercise is done 3 times with a very, very short resting between each set. Each set something is changed just a touch in the exercise to make it more challenging. As I'm doing the workout I'm thinking to myself "this isn't going to work, it's not that hard I'll never get results from something like this" I certainly broke a sweat and a few of the moves I was thinking, geez that's tough, but overall I just couldn't see how this could be a 4 week makeover as the title claimed.
And then.....I woke up the next morning and oh, my, gosh, YEOWCH!!! My legs hurt, I felt it in my stomach, I felt it in my shoulders, every move I made I could think back to the workout from the day before and think, yep, that's from XYZ exercise. I mean I have done weight lifting in a gym before, I was trained by a woman who was in the Army. She was hard core and worked me hard. But even with all we did back in the day, I never, ever felt shoulder exercises. Ever. And with this...I did!!
It may sound silly but having my legs ache every time I tried to sit down or get up from a seated position, having my stomach muscles ache when I moved certain ways or coughed, feeling muscles in the front and back of my shoulders that I've never felt before was really motivating for me!! So I've decided I will definitely do that workout at least 3 times a week as suggested and we'll see if I have noticable differences in 4 weeks I hope I do. I'm not counting on that being my reward. I know if I keep up with it for 4 weeks, even if I can't really SEE the differences in my body I will be able to FEEL them. I wasn't nearly as sore after doing it yesterday. I still feel it in my legs the most and in other areas some, so it's doing it's job. I just have to do mine and stick with it. And get cardio in on the days I'm not doing the 4 week makeover workout. And so far I'm doing well with that :)
I decided this morning I will still use the scale every morning (if I remember, getting up before 5:30 doesn't always lead me to be the most clear thinker at that point LOL) but if I get a number that just doesn't seem right or I plain just don't like, I'm ignoring it. 
So, I'll step on it at least most mornings and go from there. But I won't allow that # to ruin my day or my outlook or my plans to get this weight off. I will happen. I've lost weight before. It's always been just this hard and it always will be at least this hard. That's the weight loss hand I've been dealt and work with it I will.
I'm trying to put in 45 minute cardio sessions absolutely any time I have the chance. I'm doing the 4 week makeover dvd 3 times a week and then cardio on the other days (usually Friday ends up being a day off for me because I help out in my DDs kinder class for about 2 hours). I just have to push myself as much as I possibly can and get this darn weight loss moving again!! I'm sick of feeling so dumpy and fat. I've lived this way too long and I'm ready to remember what it feels like to NOT be fat again. I've been so overweight for so long I doubt it'll even be remembering. It'll be finding it all out again as I go. 
The dvd claims if you follow the exercises for 4 weeks you'll have noticable results. I always take those claims with a grain of salt. If I were smaller I might buy into them more, but at my size it takes a lot to achieve a noticable difference in my body. But I follow along with the workout nonetheless. It's a circuit style workout. All that is needed is a set of 3 lb and 5 lb dumbbells. I have those. Whoo!!