Not so good really

Okay, so I've only lost 8 pounds total since April of 2007. I was down 14 at one point and gained some back. I guess I should be happy that I even made the effort, otherwise I would probably weigh even more this year. However, I had planned to have lost 30 pounds by now. I have certainly fallen short. Oh well, new year, time to start again.

I had a bunch of (high fiber) spaghetti for dinner, probably not so good. I had cereal this morning and nothing else in between. I know I need to eat more often and smaller meals. I'm trying to drink more water too. There was a time when I never had less than 64 oz a day. Now I'm struggling to get that much. I know it will take a lot more discipline than before. I'll just keep trying.

Food journaling

I decided it would be good to journal my food and activities.

Breakfast
Scrambled eggs 1/4 cup (I don't think they're real eggs, not sure what they are)
Bacon 2 slices
1 slice of wheat toast with some hotel butter on it
12 oz bottle of water

Snack til lunch
I like to have some fruit to munch on during the morning, it gets me through until lunchtime.
Small Banana (I walked and even ran a little on the treadmill last night and my calves were hurting. I get charlie horses sometimes so I figured I needed some potassium)
Grapes & Grapefruit slices (I actually just got this because I had to use a credit card to pay for the banana and I felt bad to just put <$1 on it so I got the bowl of fruit too)
24 oz of water

Planned late lunch
Salad - lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, pecans (1 tblspoon), balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Leaving at 3:30pm to head back home to Atlanta. Yay! I'll probably stop and pick up dinner for me and Jason around 7pm, maybe pizza, maybe chick-fil-a, dunno. Chick-fil-a has the fruit cups, but I love their waffle fries. I've done good all this week, maybe I can splurge a little. Diet Dr. Pepper, chicken nuggets and some fries.

Tuesday night I worked out for an hour and a half and last night I worked out for an hour. I have a treadmill at home. I'm going to try my hardest to get on it at least once while I'm home this weekend. I want to exercise at LEAST 3x a week from now on. My pants feel looser, but I think it might be my imagination. I'll weigh myself tomorrow morning when I'm at home and see if I made any progress since Sunday. 160s here I come.

Am I eating healthy?

Food for today:

Breakfast -
1/3 cup scrambled eggs - eggs from the hotel, they might be fake eggs, not sure
2 slices of bacon
1/3 cup of hash browns
3 medium strawberries
1/4 cup of grapes

Snack -
Quaker Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal

Lunch -
Turkey chili

Snack -
Medium Apple

Dinner -
Salad: lettuce, 2 cherry tomatoes, a few carrot slices, tablespoonish of pecan pieces, balsamic vinaigrette dressing
raw broccoli (1/4 cup maybe), ranch dressing (1tblspoon maybe, i can't eat broccoli without it)

Fitday.com says this equates to 1032 calories, that doesn't sound like much, but thinking in a WW point sense, I definitely used them. I never realized WW restricted my calories so much. I ate 42% fat, 41% carbs, and 18% protein. I was trying to do 30/55/15, so that's pretty close for a try, I suppose. Probably too much fat, should have cut out the ranch dressing and pecans. It's funny how those little things make such a big difference, those things that give the yucky stuff flavor, sigh. Next time I should add the food to fitday.com before I eat it, that way if it throws off the percentages too much, I can modify it. That's hard to do after you've eaten it. haha. I wish fitday.com worked on my Smartphone well enough. Since it doesn't, I would have to go to the cafeteria and see what they have, come up to my desk, put it in, and then go back down to get the food. That's a lot of trouble.

I worked out for an hour and a half last night. I walked on the treadmill at 2.8mph for 60 minutes with 5 minutes cooldown and then I did 25 minutes of weights, arms and legs. I did some crunches when I went back to my hotel room, while I watched The Biggest Loser. That show can really help motivate you. I watch them work out and they're sweating so hard, I never sweat that much. I guess you don't doing 2.8mph. Haha. They are running on the treadmill. I can run for about 10 seconds and then I have to stop. They're bigger than me, how do they do that? Maybe I just don't have someone pushing me. I was 174 on Sunday, that's 4 down from about 4 weeks ago when I started exercising, so I guess that's okay. I wish it were closer to 2lbs per week, but at least I'm seeing some improvement.

When I get into the 160s, I'm going to treat myself to a nice haircut. Yay.

Impatient

So I've been exercising and attempting to eat healthy the last month or so. I've lost 4 lbs. When I did weight watchers I would lose 1-2 lbs a week, so I guess that's okay. It's on the low end, I think though. I'm giving myself until May 1 to lose 40 lbs though, I won't make it at that rate. My husband says that if I keep exercising I will increase my metabolism and the weight loss will increase. I read about how to increase your metabolism and here are some things I'm trying to do in order to increase it:
1) exercise daily,  morning and night if possible. I read that after exercising your body will increase the calories it burns for up to 12 hours. They say that if you exercise for even 30 minutes morning and night that you will burn calories 24 hours a day
2) eat 5 or 6 small meals a day. I read that it keeps your body burning calories all day
3) incorporate some weight training into exercise. muscle burns more calories at rest so the more muscles you have, the better your metabolism will be.
4) I also looked into what percentages of fat, protein and carbs your body and metabolism needs to work properly. So I'm trying to eat 55% carbs, 30% fat and 15% protein. The carbs need to be good carbs of course, carbs from fruit, etc. Foods with a low glycemic index.

Other than that, I'm trying to cut out all the junk I used to eat. Sweets and fast food mainly were the worst. Well, I can't really say ALL. I have something little every once in a while, but it's always in moderation.

I'm so stuffed. . .

I just stuffed myself on sub-par appetizers. You'd think that if it didn't taste great, I wouldn't stuff myself with it. I guess that's what makes me a foodaholic.

My coworker and I are going to go down and workout for another 30 minutes or so, even though it's 9pm. I worked out for about 30 minutes this morning. We might even go to the pool if it's not too cold.

A little disheartened. . .

So I got home from my business traveling yesterday. I weighed myself this morning and hadn't lost any weight at all. I know it was just one week of exercise, in fact, it was really just 3 days of exercising, but I guess I thought it would have done something. I worked out Tuesday and Thursday for at least an hour and a half and I worked out Wednesday for at least an hour. I tried to eat a better too. I don't think I normally eat really poorly so I didn't change that too much. I just tried to do better at dinner, eat less really.

My husband says that if I just keep it up and be consistent that the pounds will start coming off and I will increase my metabolism and they will continue to come off. I sure hope he's right. I hope my slow metabolism doesn't beat out my endurance when it comes to dieting/exercise.

I think I might be leaving this assignment in the next couple of weeks. Who knows where I'll go or what kind of exercise equipment I'll have access to on my next assignment. I think I'm going to try to get some beginner-level workout videos that I can play on my laptop in the hotel rooms. If I can find something I can do in my room, without equipment, then I can continue exercising despite my hotel situation.

I woke up at 10:30 this morning and didn't eat anything until about 4pm, not because I wanted to do that, I just didn't want to stop and get fast food, so I waited until I got home to eat anything. I had to go grocery shopping. I picked up a couple of Luna bars, thinking I could eat one on the way home since I was so starving. I knew I couldn't wait to cook something when I got to the house. It was called chocolate peppermint stick. Man, it was pretty good. The flavor reminded me of Baskin Robbins Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, but it had the consistency of a granola bar. It was weird, but pretty darn good. Maybe it was because I was starving. I dunno. It was only 98 cents to try it. They sell boxes of them 6 bars for about $5.89 or something like that. They might be a good bar to take to travel. It had 9 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber. They are organic. It had 180 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 26 carbs - 9 were "sugars" and 14 were "other carbs." I thought whatever carbs weren't fiber, were sugar. What are "other carbs"?? Are they bad, are they good? I have no idea. Anyway, I'm not sure how good (or bad) these are for me. I should go get my points meter from WW and see how many points they are. Once I know that, I can decide if they're worth it to purchase some for one the road eating.

I hope I don't screw this up

For breakfast I had a small fruit cup with grapefruit and grapes. It was so good. Then I had a small bowl of grits too. I should have brought my weight watcher books with me so I could know how I'm doing with my food.

For lunch I had broccoli and cheddar soup. It tasted too good to be good for me. Then I had a salad and raw broccoli. It was really good. Then after work I went to the concierge lounge at the Marriott and I ate 3 small chicken kebobs (probably 1oz or less each) with some kind of asian sauce and 1 chicken finger (no sauce), and 2 of these tiny egg rolls things (it's all appetizers, all the time up there). They brought up fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies while I was there. I had half of one of those, they were big though, that's why I had half. Two of my coworkers ate the rest.

Then I went to the gym! Yay! I worked out for at least an hour and a half. I did 50 minutes on the treadmill (I'm working up to an hour) and then about 15 minutes on weights and the rest of the time on the bike and doing crunches. I'm going to try to get up in the morning and do 30 minutes on the treadmill. I was really tired last night after working out and didn't get up this morning and work out like I wanted to. I wonder if it matters whether I do it at night or in the morning, is%2

A new week! So far, so good!

Schedule today:

6:15am - 30 minutes on treadmill

7:00am - eggbeater omelet with cheese, 3 strawberries, 1 slice of bacon, small box (1.3 oz) of frosted mini wheats, 2% milk (small school-sized container)

11:45am - WW chicken fried rice - 3pts, salad with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, pecans, vinaigrette dressing (1tbs), raw broccoli, 1tsp ranch dressing

7pm - one chicken finger, salad with vinaigrette dressing

8pm - 1 hour workout, 45 minutes on treadmill, 15 minutes on weights 

I am unbelievably proud of myself for waking up early to workout. I honestly don't think I have EVER done that. I am not a morning person and it took so much willpower to get up and do that. I went to bed at 1am, so I did that with 5 hours of sleep. I know that if I put my mind to it, I can do everything. I just need to stop giving up! I'm worth it, the food isn't!

Good luck everyone!

I was so close. . .

I was so close to the 160s, then I fell off the wagon. I don't have a WW membership anymore and I'm traveling a lot for my job and haven't been exercising so up went the number on the scale. Things have died down a little with work so now I have some time for myself again and I'm recommitting myself to creating a healthy body for myself. This week is a new week and tomorrow is a new day. I can do it!

I'm going to try to wake up at 6am every morning and work out for at least 30 minutes at the hotel gym. I figure that's a good start.

WW is not just counting calories

Someone commented on one of my posts saying how WW is stupid and why would you pay someone to just count calories. Weight Watchers' points are calculated with a combination of calories, fat and fiber. We do not count calories. That would be silly if that were the only facet of the plan. There are other pieces to the puzzle that Weight Watcher provides. There are 8 Good Health guidelines that they believe will help you lose weight and be the healthiest you can be. They are all important to not only becoming slimmer, but also becoming HEALTHIER!

The support from the WW message boards and weekly meetings are also invaluable. Statistics show that women lose weight better when they have people that are losing weight with them. It makes sense. It's much harder to do it on your own.

I've been eating a lot again today. I was supposed to eat light since I'm going out with some friends tonight. Oh well, I guess these are what the flex points are for.

I am beginning a new project at work on Monday so I'll be out of town Sunday night through Thursday night of next week. I hope I'll be able to stay on plan and eat healthy even while traveling for business. I've heard it's difficult. I have trouble staying on plan when it's the weekend and I'm at home. I can imagine it will be hard when I'm eating out every night with work buddies.

I will, of course, have internet access though so I will keep journaling and blogging. That should help.