Back in the Saddle

I did not start the year off very well. I broke quite a few of those resolutions that I wrote about. But I am not going to dwell on that. Instead, I am going to be happy that I started back on plan today. I'm writing down my food and keeping track of my points. And I went to the gym today during preschool and had a good workout.

For lunch I had the Roasted Garlic Chicken from Lean Cuisine - only four points. I really like Lean Cuisine meals - they are my favorite of the diet frozen meals. The spinach side dish is yummy! My favorite is the Rosemary Chicken, although I have a hard time finding it.

New Year's Questionnaire

Finding Radiance posted a little new year's questionnaire and I thought I'd answer it too...

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Lost 25 pounds (technically, I've done that before... but not for years)

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I did pretty well with not bringing soda into the house. I listed my 2009 ones in the post below.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
I had a niece born this summer.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Luckily, no.

5. What countries did you visit?
Did not go outside of the USA.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
A trip alone with my husband.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 28th - when I decided I'd had enough and started tracking my points with WW.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Doing something for myself and putting myself first - something I have a hard time doing.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Spending way more money than we brought in.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A wii

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My 8 year old ran a 5K and my 3 year old started enjoying preschool.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Some of the politicians as they campaigned.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Into the mortgage.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Having a little time to myself when my little one started preschool.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Kid Rock's "All Summer Long"

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? The same
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner by 25 pounds
c) richer or poorer? Poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercising.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With family.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Still in love with my husband.

22. What was your favorite TV show?
Lost, Top Chef, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No... actually, maybe one of my neighbors that I had words with. Although I don't think it's really hate - just strong dislike.

24. What was the best book you read?
Twilight

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
???

26. What did you want and get?
Too many things to list.

27. What did you want and not get?
A lottery win (guess it would help to play!).

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
None come to mind.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 37. Can't remember exactly what I did.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If I had won a bunch of money.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
A year of not fitting into the clothes in my closet and doing something about it instead of shopping for bigger sizes.

32. What kept you sane?
My family, although they drive me insane some of the time

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Obama

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The whole election.

35. Who did you miss?
My sister, who lives too far away

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
The only person that is going to change anything for me is me.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
???

Three Pound Holiday Season

I got on the scale today and it became official... I gained 2.8 pounds in the past 2 weeks. I haven't tracked my points since the Friday before Christmas and it showed. Although, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I figured it would be at least 5 pounds. And I'm still at the 200 mark, which was my Christmas goal. However, gaining those 3 pounds made me think how quickly and easily it would be for me to gain all the weight I have lost in the past three months. And I'll bet it would take far less than three months to come back on.

I've read a lot about resolutions on other blogs and have been thinking about mine.

1. Make my WW 10% by Valentine's Day. My 10% is 195, so with my little gain, I need to lose 5 more pounds. Totally doable in the six weeks before February 14th.

2. Stay off the soda. For New Year's 2008, I vowed not to bring soda into the house. And for the most part, I was successful in keeping that resolution. I do allow myself soda when I am out and at other people's houses.

3. Exercise more. Go to the gym at least once during preschool time per week.

4. Pay down debt.

5. Plan meals more and eat out less. That will help to stay on plan and to save money.

Happy New Year!

Points Counting Break

I know it's not good, but I haven't tracked my points in five days. I don't think I've been too bad, but I know I'm most likely going over my points. I have weighed myself every day and am on track of where I should be. Not like I've gone completely crazy and gained five pounds. I'm going to figure out my points today and will hopefully do that same tomorrow. Christmas will be hard and so will the following days while we travel out of state to my in-laws.

But I'm still here... still trying to watch what I eat. And I promise myself that I will get back on the wagon.

Merry Christmas to all!

Note to Self

When you eat the way you used to, you will get a tummy ache. You will not feel well and it will not be pretty.

A Hard Weekend with Eating

I went out both Friday and Saturday nights this weekend. And some of the activities while going out centered around food. And I did not make the best choices. Although when I look back to it I see that I could have done much worse.

On Friday, I got together with some girlfriends. We went to dinner - I had fish and chips. Chips meaning fries. And I ate the whole thing. The movies were our next stop. We saw "Four Christmases", which I really enjoyed. It was short (like 80 minutes) and I wasn't really happy about spending $10 for the movie. Really... $10? When did movies go up to $10? I obviously haven't gone to a movie at night in a long time. The good news is that I didn't have any snacks at the movies. After spending $10 for the ticket, I wasn't spending any more money. And I was stuffed from dinner. After the movies, it was on to Bonefish for drinks. I had a delicious mojito - mmmmmm.... And no dessert for me!

On Saturday, the family went into the city to see it's Christmas tree with some friends. Then out to dinner. Unfortunately, the "restaurant" was really more of a bar and there wasn't much on the menu that was good for you. I ended up having french onion soup (which was sooo good) and ate some of my daughter's turkey club (just ate some of the turkey). What did me in, though, was the two ciders I had. And I happened to glance at the label when I was almost finished with the second one... 200 calories. Yikes!

So when I weighed myself on Sunday (yes, I still need to work on not weighing myself every day), it said 202. The positive is that today, it was back down to 199. So that's good. I need to work some to lose a little more this week. I'd like a bigger cushion between my current weight and 200. And I have two (yes, two!) cookie exchanges this week. I plan, though, to bring the cookies home and stick them right into the freezer until I take them out when we have people here for Christmas.

New Decade... New Century

Okay... I'm going to admit my weight. I feel comfortable, because really, no one who reads this knows who I am. Are you ready for it... I now weigh 199.2 pounds. That's right... I'm out of the 200's. So there. And let me tell you, I never thought I would be so happy to weigh 199 pounds.

My Christmas goal was to weigh less than 200 pounds. And I've done it, thank you very much. Now my Christmas goal is to still weigh less than 200 pounds on Christmas. Then I'll come up with a new goal to work towards after the holidays.

A little recent weight history... I've weighed more than 200 since at least 2006. I weighed 192 when I got pregnant in April 2004 (which, by the way, was what I weighed when I gave birth the first time). When I gave birth nine months later, I weighed 212. Which was the heaviest I'd ever been. I lost quite a bit of that weight soon after giving birth - I imagine I was down in the 190's by March or April. I don't remember the weight creeping back on, but I know it did. I went for a check up in November 2006 and weighed 207. And my doctor told me that I really needed to lose weight. But I didn't. Instead, I gained about 15 pounds in the next 22 months. And then my highest weight ever was 222... which is what I weighed in August of this year when I decided I needed to do something about it. I lost 5 pounds over about 7 weeks or so before I joined Weight Watchers. And now I've lost almost 18 pounds on WW.

I did manage to exercise more this week than last. I went to the gym during both preschool days and walked on the treadmill. Actually, yesterday I even ran a little. It was only three minutes out of thirty, but it's a start. I've also walked a lot doing more Christmas shopping (will it ever end???).

Uh okay...

I just plugged in my weight info in the online Weight Watcher and got this message...

"Please note: You're probably excited to be losing weight, but you're losing faster than is recommended. Although it's normal to lose over 2 lbs in 1 week, if you lose more than an average of 2 lbs per week over a 4-week period, this could pose health risks, such as heart irregularities, anemia or loss of muscle mass. Please slow your weight loss; your doctor can help you do this if you're not sure how."

Hmmm. I'm not losing more than 2 lbs per week. My weight loss over the past 4 weeks has been high 1's pretty much. Three weeks ago, I didn't weigh (Thanksgiving) and five weeks ago, I did lose 2.4. I thought I was doing well. Do I need to be worried that I'm losing too much? It's not like I'm bringing in Biggest Loser numbers.

I Feel Sick

Tonight I took the girls to the Christmas party at my grandmother's senior apartment complex. There was lots of food and I ate way too much of it. And now my stomach is killing me - I've already been into the Tums. I went in thinking that I would be pretty good, but I wasn't. The only way I could have really been good was not to eat anything - there wasn't really much that was good for you. Luckily, I did get a trip to the gym in earlier today and I hadn't used many points before the party.

On a positive note... I have been fitting into clothes that haven't fit in quite a while. My husband gave me pjs that I couldn't even get past my hips last year - I'm wearing them right now. My wardrobe has expanded without me having to buy anything... all things that have been in my closet which I haven't been able to wear for the past couple of years.

A Little Closer

I'm down 1.6 pounds this week. That puts me a little closer to my Christmas goal. In fact, it makes it so I have one more pound before I reach my goal. And I'm confident that I will lose that one pound in the next three weeks. I know it's going to be a little harder this month than it would be other times of the year.

I mentioned to my husband yesterday that I wish I had more time to exercise. My husband works a second job during this time of year (don't feel sorry for him... it's his choice and he loves it. It's not for the money) so he doesn't get home at night until a lot later than usual. And with a 3 year old, I don't get a lot of alone time to do what I want by myself. I do get preschool time, but that's only six hours a week. And lately, I've been using that time to Christmas shop by myself. I guess I do get a little exercise by walking around all those stores... although not enough to get my heart rate up.

Okay... so I'm full of excuses. I'm going to make it my goal to exercise more this week than I did last week. Shouldn't be too hard since I only exercised once.

I've been reading on a couple of blogs that Weight Watchers is launching a new plan this week. Can't wait to hear more about it. I am having some problems with the WW web site - it's not saving my Plan Manager. Anyone else having the same problem?