Cara's Weightloss Journal

Well, this was an encouraging weigh in this morning.

I lost 2 pounds!

I wasn’t surprised. I worked hard for it.

Last weekend, I gained 2 (or was it 3) pounds just in what I ate on Saturday and Sunday. If I hadn’t done that, I’d have lost 4-5 pounds this week. Well, actually I did. It just isn’t reflected in my official weigh in. I really didn’t go all hog wild last weekend, I just made a few small indulgences. But apparently, that’s all it takes for me now a days.

So my workweek started off great because I went running on Monday. And I made one small (though apparently significant) change to my weekly routine. I upped my water intake. I’ve been having problems drinking enough water throughout the day. I know WW says 6-8 cups of “fluids” a day, but most doctors I’ve talked to and read books about say drink half your weight in ounces every day. So if I’m 170(ish), I should drink 85 ounces a day. So this is how I accomplished my water intake each day.

I bought a 6-pack of 24-ounce water in sports bottles, the kind with the pop top where you have to squeeze out the water. And then bought a couple of gallons of drinking water (the water out of my tap isn’t the greatest). And I took a permanent marker and marked a big number 1, 2, 3, & 4 on each of 4 of the bottles and set them out in plain view in my kitchen. Then each day, I could visually see my water goal. I would take #1 and #2 to work with me and then when I came home for lunch, I’d usually drink half of #3 and then in the evenings the rest of #3 and #4. There was only one day that I didn’t drink all 4 (I only drank 2) and that was yesterday.

I’m not saying that drinking that much water caused me to lose 2 pounds (or rather 4 pounds, depending on how you look at it) but I’m sure it helped.

Although I only exercised one day last week, I did count my points and stayed around 22-24 points a day. It’s just so hard to stay down under 22 each day. I ate sensible food and reasonable portions and monitored my hunger. Last week at WW’s, we talked about monitoring your hunger. Where I have my most challenging troubles with that is in the evenings. I just want to snack on everything. But each evening, I kept placing my hand on my tummy and asking myself if I was craving or if I was really hungry. There was only 1 night I was actually hungry. The rest, I was able to resist the snacking and I was just fine with it.

I bought a bag of Dove dark chocolate and whenever I started getting snackie in the evenings and couldn’t resist it, I would go and get a piece of chocolate. ONE PIECE. They’re only 1 point. And they’re my favorite chocolate.

Yesterday was my triumph. It’s the day before weigh in and hubby wants to go out for dinner. We haven’t eaten out all week, so I cave in. Where do we go? A pizza parlor! Yes, pizza the day before weigh in. Ugh!

So I decided I’d order one slice of cheese pizza and a side salad with Italian dressing. Not the greatest, but a huge triumph because when the garlic bread hit the table, I didn’t have one piece of it. The salad was mediocre, but the slice of pizza was heaven. I’ve never had pizza at this place before (usually lasagna or some goopy pasta dish). But the pizza was amazing!

Then when I went home, I drank one whole bottle of water and nothing else (except the piece of chocolate).

So all in all it was a rather successful week.

Let’s hope I can do the same thing next week.

I’m down to the weight I was at the beginning of last October. So I’m slowly getting caught up to my lowest weight, which was 167.8 in mid-December. I’ve got 5 1/2 pounds to go to get back down to my lowest weight. I know it might take me another couple of months to get that much weight back off of me, but at least I’m headed in the right direction again.

P.S. I signed up for the 5K today. It’ll be next Saturday morning! Can’t wait!!!

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Well, to start with, I gained another 1.2 pounds this past Saturday.

I totally deserved the gain, though. I loosely tracked my points and did NO exercise whatsoever.

I WILL have a loss this week, though. (Or at least a break even.)

I’ve already started out great. Although all for my flex points are gone for the week (not intentional), I tracked every point I ate over the weekend and even walked 45 minutes on Sunday.

I got up early Monday morning and went running outside. YAY!!! It’s finally warm enough to run outside again. Well, it was 50 degrees, but that’s plenty warm enough, right?

I met a friend from work and ran with her. I’ve been having the hardest time exercising on Monday mornings. I don’t know what it is about Monday mornings, but that bed is way too comfy to get out of.

I ran kinda slow for the first 30 minutes (heart rate between 140 and 145) and then kicked it in gear and really pushed for the last 30 minutes (heart rate between 165 and 170).

I burned 1,050 calories!!

I’ve NEVER burned that many calories from one session of exercise before!

Ever!

One thing that might have helped was I set up my heart rate monitor last week so it is now linked to my gender and weight. I manually punched in my heart rate zones to be accurate to The Eat Clean Diet, Body By God and The Seven Pillars of Health, and alot of other articles and websites that have all agreed on the method of setting the zones. So it will be interesting to see what kind of calories I burn the next time I run.

That’s right, I haven’t ran since Monday morning. Yesterday, I have no excuse. This morning, I woke up from the absolutely most relaxing night’s sleep I’ve had in months. I’ve been so cold (constantly) lately and especially at night (well, especially all the time, actually). So last night I put an extra blanked, doubled over top of me, on the bed. I was so warm and comfy. Oh my goodness what a great nights sleep.

So this morning when the alarm went off, I naturally didn’t want to wake up. But then I laid there having an argument with myself. “Get out of bed, Cara!” “But it’s way too comfy!” “Get out of bed you lazy bum!” “But what if something happens to me in the dark?” The argument went on. I finally talked myself into staying in bed and not running because I was afraid someone would jump out of the trees and attack me. I even fell back asleep for a few minutes and actually dreamt that someone attacked me while I was running. Now I’m completely freaked out about running by myself.

Hubby promised he’d get up and go with me in the morning. I sure hope he does. I really need to exercise. So far, I’m up about a pound from last week’s weigh in. And I know if I don’t exercise, no amount of restraint and sticking to my 22 points is going to work.

P.S. I wore my belt again today. I just can’t resist wearing that thing as much as possible.

Oh, yea, and Laurie, if you’re reading this, I heard you have your own blog, now. I’d love to stop by and visit. If you leave me a comment, I’ll automatically be able to find your blog by clicking on your name. Or you can email the link to me (if you want to): carashow at gmail dot com.

I haven’t been posting much lately, because I haven’t really been up to it. I’m becoming disillusioned again by this whole thing. I haven’t been eating like I should. I’ve probably eaten an average of 24-28 points a day (I’m only supposed to have 22). I ate all my flex points before the weekend was up. I haven’t exercised to speak of. I did two “aerobic” workouts from FitTV on demand. Both were very fluffy and less-than exciting. I’ll bet I burned 100 calories each time I worked out.

It’s been WAY too cold here to run. Each morning was between 30-35 degrees. I can’t work out at the gym without hubby going (his membership, me his guest). So I really didn’t have any activity points to add to my overages each day.

I’ve felt good with myself this week, though. I’m not happy about my weight loss, or rather my lack of weigh loss, but with myself, I’m okay.

I put on a pair of pants today that were WAY too huge on me, but they’re the only ones that are “casual” that I could wear to the office and so I had to pull out a belt to help keep them up. The only belts I have are my size 26 belts. Being as I’m probably about a size 12, now, the holes were way too far out. I had to punch a new hole. Funny thing was, it was about 10 inches from the last hole I used when I was a fattie. I have to find a ruler or tape measure and measure the exact distance between the two holes.

Whatever it ended up being, it was WAY to huge of a belt. But I wore it anyways and showed it off to everyone I could at work.

I was proud of my big fat belt. It wrapped all the way around my waist and I had to tuck in into itself in the back.

It’s things like that, that make me remember why I’m doing all of this.

I really couldn’t believe that belt really ever fit me. But the evidence was in the stretched out hole that was 10 inches away from the new hole I punched this morning.

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Today was a great day in our nation’s history. I still find it hard to believe that we have a black man in the office of the presidency. Our nation has come so far. And we made a HUGE step forward today.

Here are some memories of today:

This last photo is quite amazing. I hope this works… you should be able to click on the photo and it’ll show you a larger view of it. It’s a view from space of the crowds that gathered on the Mall in DC today to witness the inauguration of our 44th president:

You know I completely forgot to show you guys what Audrey (a lady at my WW meeting) gave me yesterday. She knits and usually brings some knitting project to meeting with her. She knows I LOVE the cupcake so she knitted me a cupcake.

Isn’t it just the cutest thing????!!!!

She’s making me koala bear, now. She’s so talented.

Thanks so much for your encouraging comments yesterday. I wondered, too, if it wasn’t muscle gain, but I really don’t think so. Because I haven’t been in any pain whatsoever all week. No sore muscles or tired muscles. My legs don’t feel heavier or anything. It’s weird.

And you know, I don’t really feel like I’ve gained or lost anything in months. My jeans are a little tight on me, but I think they always have been. I mean, I’m only 6 pounds heavier than the lowest I’ve ever been. And when I was at my lowest, I felt skinny, but I think it was my mind playing tricks on me. I was so psyched that I was that low, I felt like the skinniest person on the Earth.

And I don’t really think that I’m supposed to be at 170. I really believe I’m supposed to be lower. I mean, I took a good hard look at my body yesterday. At the curves and bulges. And I really feel like I should be thinner. I mean, I know I’ll never be skinny as a model or skinny as I used to be when I was in my 20s, but I do have a bunch of flab left. I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to break this 100 pound barrier. Maybe it’s my mind that’s messing with me and not my body.

I mean, get this, after my 4.8 pound loss last Saturday, you know what the first thing is I did? I went and got a pizza. Mind you, I only had 3 pieces and it was Pizza Hut’s new whole grain crust Natural pizza, but it was still pizza. And of course, I can’t go to Pizza Hut without getting their garlic bread smothered in mozzarella cheese. But I wonder if whenever I have a good loss that my mind falls back on rewarding myself with food.

I’ve gotta work past this. I know I’ve made great strides in the past few weeks. I’m really looking at food differently. I’m trying so hard to look at it as sustenance with the occasional appreciation for the food God has given us. I still have my moments, but for the most part, I’m making much smarter decisions on my food intake.

Another thing is before I went to WW, I weighed myself at home and I was 172.8. Then at WW, I was 174.2. Usually my scale is up to a pound lighter than WW, but this was almost a pound and a half more. I’m not saying their scales were inaccurate, but I just wonder if either their scale or my scale is getting it wrong. Sunday morning, I weighed myself at home again and I was still 172.8. So who knows.

I just know that I haven’t indulged or splurged this weekend. I’ve written down everything I’ve eaten. And I can’t wait to get out on the road again tomorrow morning to go running again.

I just gotta put the scale behind me and do my best. I’m not a number. Right?

One thing I need to work on this week is my water intake. That might have been some of it last week, too. I’ll drink plenty of water while I’m exercising, but in between, I was kinda sparse. I know that makes a difference, too.

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