Day 57 - Stresssssss

I might've fallen back into old habits today... I have only eaten about 900 calories today and it's 9:22PM. This is mostly due to all the crap I've had to do today. I ate 3 meals and 1 snack. So I'll eat another snack before bed and probably call it a night.

Today was my day off. One day a week I get a day with no work or school. But it's never a day off. It's a save-everything-I-have-to-do-till-this-day day. Had to goto campus for some research stuff, did some cleaning around the apartment, hung some pictures, went to the bank, dropped some packages off at FedEx, took a short 30 minute walk, and did laundry. 3 loads of laundry. How does 2 people accumulate SO MUCH laundry in a week??? uggh.

So I feel like I have to talk about this smoothie I just made. Honestly, I made it because I wanted something heathy to boost my calories for the day. Here's the recipe:

1/2 Cup frozen strawberry & banana pieces - 45 calories

2 Tbls Hershey's SF Syrup - 15 calories

3 Tbls 0% Fage Greek Yogurt - 25 calories

4 Tbls Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk - 5 calories

All together, around 90 calories. Made almost exactly 8oz of smoothie... which is about perfect for me. Much more than that and I get tired of drinking them.

It was pretty delicious. Nice and think and chocolately. I couldn't taste a ton of strawberry, but you could tell it was in there... I wanna experiment with adding spinach to my smoothies. Or maybe flax? Just boost the nutritional value of them, really.

So like I said, I walked like 30 minutes tonight. We have a ton of wooded trails and cross country trails on campus. I picked one of those and walked it. It didn't seem like a long walk, but it was getting dark before I knew it. It's in a wooded area, so it's mostly dirt and natural stone. It was pretty hilly too. It was nice. I think that's where I want to do most of my running. It'll be nice and shady and kind of away from everyone. Seemed peaceful. I'll make my running time my zen time.

I have a statistics test tomorrow that I need to review for. I hate stats soooo much. I'm pulling a good, solid B out of the class right now. And honestly, I hate it so much, I'll probably continue being satisfied with a B. As long as it doesn't get any lower than that, I'm happy. I'd kinda prefer a B+ though... haha

I hope everyone is having wonderful weeks! For those of you that get to enjoy time off on the weekends, only 2 more days! (:

Here's to hard work and determination,

-E

Day 20 - Hot, sweaty, and kinda anxious...

Hello everyone!

I haven't updated for a couple days. I didn't stop for any reason in particular... Just nothing special to really note. I worked all week. I stayed at or below my calories for all 3 days and 2 of the 3 days I did some kind of exercise. Not a ton of exercise, mind you. But anything is better than nothing!

I feel like I have a bunch of things I wanna talk about! Let's see if I can organize them into coherent thoughts...

For you calorie counters out there... I have fallen head over heels for an app I have had forever and only just recently started using. It's called "Lose It!" I have an iPhone, so I know it's available for the Apple devices, Android I'm not so sure. But it's definitely worth a look! At first, it seems like a run-of-the-mill food logger. However, it has so many features I just adore.

First, you can set up a weight loss program. So I put in my sex, age, weight, height, and my goal weight. Then it asked me how much  I want to lose per week. Then it calculates an estimated goal completion date based on all the info. It gives you the number of calories you should eat per day to achieve your goal.

Next, it keeps track of your calories every day, shows you where you are in reference to your daily calories goals with a little bar graph. I'm going to attach a screen shot, since it's sooo cool and all.

The thing I love, is the ease it makes logging food. If you are eating fresh foods, then obviously you just search for the food in their HUGE database and enter how much of the food you ate. But! If you are eating ANYTHING with a barcode, all you do is scan the bar code and it instantly recognizes the food, as well as the entire nutritional info and how much is in each serving. It makes logging in a meal as easy as taking a picture of a bar code. Pretty much amazing.

You can also input exercise and it keeps track of that in your daily food log as well.

For those of you interested in things other than calories, it keeps and daily tally and weekly average of all your nutrients. I like to watch my fiber, carbs and sodium as well.

And of course, a fitness app isn't complete without a weight tracker. You can track your weight as often as you like and it plots it on a line graph for you. Which I also love.

OMG INSERTING PHOTOS IS ENTIRELY TOO HEAD-ACHY!

Now... I apologize for the crappy quality. But I saved them as gif's and this is what I got. I just wanted to share my awesome APP with all of you. I really do love it.

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Now... back to talking about things. I also dusted off the ol' elliptical today. I know, I haven't mentioned it. I have a home-elliptical in the corner of my living room that I hadn't used in months. It's a shame, I know. And for a long time, including just recently, it has made me feel worthless and lazy when I looked at it. So tonight I decided to do something about that! And I hopped on it. For exactly 16 minutes. That was about all I could do. It was on medium intensity. But it certainly worked me out. According to my app and the elliptical I burnt around 230 calories in 16 minutes. That makes me really happy. I'm sweating up a storm right now, too.

I never use exercise as an excuse to eat more though. That's one thing I don't like about this app. I think I want to stay under 1500 (usually more like 1350) AND exercise. It doesn't make sense to me to eat more because I've exercised. Then, what's the point?

Tomorrow is my weigh day and I am SO anxious. I try not to get so excited... on the chance I don't change or god forbid GAIN! But I wanna see those numbers go doooown! Hopefully tomorrow is the day for that! (:

Also, and  it may be in my head, my work clothes are starting to feel just a teeny-tiny bit looser. It could be in my head, but either way it's very encouraging and makes me wanna keep going.

I'm a little more scattered brained than I originally thought. I can't think of a single thing I wanted to talk about. Geez... Brain fart. Oh well. I'll think of it later and I'll definitely include it tomorrow with my weigh in. Which I'm hoping *fingers crossed* will be down. 2 pounds would be incredible.

OH! I remember... This is what happens when I get bored, and thinking about my weight, and have access to Excel. Observe:

Oh geez. It's tiny. Click on it. I think that remedies the problem.

I don't know if I'm setting myself up to fail, or if this is a good, goal setting, motivational tool. But... but enjoyed making it. And it's pretty sweet, IMHO. (;

Okay. I'm done for the night. Time for a shower and a little How I Met Your Mother on Netflix!

Here's to hard work and determination,

-E

Day 15 - I'm all sweaty!

I finally did it. I decided to toss in a little exercise to my day-to-day. I was really worried I would try to do too much at once, which is why I was waiting to add in exercise. I know it SOUNDS like an excuse, but I really don't think it is. I just didn't want to overwhelm myself, panic, and quit.

So it isn't much, but I went and bought Just Dance 2 for my wii. I know there's Just Dance 3, but I liked the songs on 2 more. I just finished playing for probably an hour. It was two soild 30 minute stints. I would have probably played more, but my video-game geek came out while I was doing it and I decided to play the same songs over and over to get the best score, all the while driving bf completely insane. haha Sooo I gave him a break and quit after an hour.

It doesn't SOUND like it'd be much of a work out, but it is! My arms and calves were definitely burning and I am all sweaty! But it feels good. I googled around, and apparently you burn about 190 calories per 30 minutes of dancing with this game, which suggests I just burned around 380 calories. I call shenanigans. Does anyone know if there's any truth to that?

Also, intake was pretty much amazing today. No cheating. All on plan. I'm a happy camper. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm feeling really good about this, this time around.

So tomorrow is my suuuuuper long class day. Class from 9am - 9pm with a couple short (45 mins - 1 hour) breaks in between. I hate Thursdays. But it must be done. I won't probably post tomorrow unless I have something mind blowing to say. Like I wake up a size 4. Or something equally ridiculous. (:

And in my next post I think I'm going to bombard you all with photos. I was searching for the perfect *before* picture for when I hit goal. (Yes, I'm a planner... Just wishfully thinking ahead) I came across a TON of old pictures. Some of me at my heaviest. Some of me at my thinnest. It's pretty crazy. So I felt like scaringsharing those with you. Hooray!

I'm going to go catch up on Grey's Anatomy and the Office, since I always miss then on Thursdays and those are my SHOWS! Sadface.

I hope you're all doing amazing!

Here's to hard work and determination,

-E

Day 1: Admitting I have a problem

I’m going to skip the traditional introductions here and just jump right in. If you’re interested in learning a bit about me, I suggest the aptly titled “A little about me” tab at the top of this page.  (:

It seems to me my weight fluctuates in extremes. At my lowest adult weight, I was around 162. At my highest, 235. I’m 5′6 and have been since I was 18. According to that wonderful BMI chart, I have never been a healthy weight. And while I make no habits of doubting the great minds that designed it, I’m not sure I believe I should ever weigh only 114 pounds. But as I type this, I wonder if that’s not just another excuse.

My ultimate goal is to weigh around 150 pounds. I haven’t weighed myself in several weeks, so I’m not sure exactly how much I have to lose. But I do know it’s quite a bit and will take me a while. Starting tomorrow, or in a few days, I will begin weighing myself weekly. I just have to set a day of the week and time of day I can commit to.

I love lists, and feel most productive when I’m making them and adhering to them. This is a collection of reasons why I want to lose weight (including, but not limited to… I’m sure I’ll leave something out).

- I would like to avoid all the nasty diseases I will inevitably inherit if I remain unhealthy and overweight. These include diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. Cancer may not be directly linked to obesity, but it runs rampant in my family, and the healthier I am, the better chances I feel I’ll have to avoid it.

- I want more energy. It really pains me to admit I’m 22 years old and I feel like an 80 year old woman sometimes.

- I want to see if losing weight has any effect on my asthma. At 19 I was diagnosed with adult-onset asthma. A complete shock to me. I would love to minimize my symptoms, if at all possible.

- I want to improve my upper gi health. I’ve been on acid reflux medication for several years and the only times I remember not needing it is when I weighed less.

- I want to be lean, fit, and flexible. I want to appear strong, not marshmallowy.

Now for the less noble, but equally important reasons…

- I have noticed I have two “go-to” pairs of jeans. There’s no two ways about it… they are my fat jeans. I want to be able to comfortably and confidently wear ALL the jeans in my closet, even the tight ones.

- I want to shop where ever I want. I don’t care if it sounds shallow, I want to shop at the stores that stop at size 12. And I want to choose clothes based on how they look, not always how they look/fit.

- I want the first thing I assume people notice to not be my weight. I don’t want to be described as “the bigger one” anymore.

- I don’t want to avoid having my picture taken anymore

- To be able to wear shorts confidently

- To be able to wear a swim suit confidently

- To be able to feel comfortable, instead of bloated and big all the time

- To feel sexy taking a bath or sitting in a hot tub.

- So I can finally get a short haircut and not worry whether my head will look like a giant melon.

- To be able to sit with my legs crossed for long periods of time

- To be able to walk in heels for long periods of time

- So people believe I am the intelligent, capable person I know I am, and not someone who is fat and unhealthy and unable to take care of herself.

- To simply feel good about myself.

- And finally, to be able to tell people I was there once, and that they can lose the weight too. I want to be an inspiration to others.

Alright! I feel like I’ve written a book.

I’m not sure I like this layout, yet. The colors are kinda meh and I’m having issues with formatting.

I feel like this was a successful first post. My subsequent posts will be able food, weighing myself, fitness techniques I’m utilizing. This will be a place for accountability. And a place for new ideas to jump start my weight loss. I’ll see you all again very soon! Good luck, everyone.

Here's to hard work and determination,

-E