BB Journey Continues...

Two months into Beachbody and 21 Day fix. I am down to 334lbs, YAY!, that is 15lbs down and I am so proud of myself.

I still battle with my food love-hateship often but am winning more and more these days. I am even finding I prefer the healthier choices. Salads offer a huge variety of options for me and I do not have to feel like I always eat the same thing day after day. And Fruit, OMG fruit, it is like the sweetest most enjoyable thing ever. I have always liked fruit but often forget that it is there, it is sweet and it is healthy. I figure “oh if I’m going to eat something sweet and bad for me it may as well be ice cream or chocolate” but fruit is a great way to satisfy a sweet craving and still be fueling your body.

Shakeology is the best meal replacer I have ever found. A big part of that is because I really do not like the taste of whey protein and Shakeology offers vegan choices. Also though I enjoy the taste of it, the way it keeps me full for several hours and the energy I feel from not eating a mcmuffin and hash brown for breakfast! No more slow, sluggish mornings for me, well or days really. When I stick to healthier choices I notice that I feel less weighed down.

I am doing so well that I am going to be participating in the Race for the Cure Sept. 25^th!!!!!! I have never been able to walk for 3 miles without serious pain in my knees and days of recovery. I have 19 days left to get to the 3 mile goal but we have been doing 1.5-2 miles a day for about a week now and have minimal pain. If you want to donate please go here: http://colorado.info-komen.org/site/TR/RacefortheCure/DEN_ColoradoAffiliate?px=22572758&pg=personal&fr_id=6506

On a final note here are pictures taken Sept. 4^th, I do not see a huge difference but know that I will one day soon.

WW Wednesday

Down 2.4 this week, total of 9.6 so far! So the meeting was about goals, tips for making goals that you can follow through with in the short term. Basically I am already failing at that this week. Last night I ate an entire medium pizza and then today a giant sandwich from Snarfs. Not a great way to achieve weight loss. I honestly think that a huge part of the problem is that I am stressed lately. 

The whole idea behind WW new plan is that it focuses on doing the things that make you happy and when you are happy it is easier to make healthy choices. Lately though I am having a rough time with things going on. Money is always an issue but I think it is more the changes and living situation I am in.

See a year ago I was living in Georgia, renting a huge 4 bedroom house for 850$ a month. I had a great nanny job taking care of 4 of the best kiddos I have ever known. I also worked part-time at McDonald’s. I was fostering Chow Chows for a rescue and was just all around pretty happy. Then I found out the house I was renting was being foreclosed and I had to move. Well I could not find another house anywhere near that price range so I made the decision to move back to Colorado. Back in with my dad which in itself is a huge stress. He is not very clean, keeps almost everything (not like trash or dirty dishes but other things) and his house is quite small. The biggest problem is that even though I pay him rent he basically makes it clear that I am not really welcome and that I have no say in the common areas of the house. Unfortunately for me there is NO WAY I can currently afford rent out here either. 

Ok, sorry, back to the whole goals thing. Most of us joined weight watchers to lose weight so that would be the BIG goal, to achieve this we need to focus on much smaller goals along the way. Example this week my goal was to make healthy food choices (hence the failure since a medium pizza is not healthy). They had some great tips to use when setting a goal:

1.     Define success on your terms

2.     Think small

3.     Nail down the how

4.     Keep it real

5.     Be flexible

6.     Don’t compare yourself

7.     Use my success story

Well I define that I failed at my goal this week. A whole pizza is far off from the flexibility area of my goal. It is ok I am simply going to reinforce why I am doing this and try again. Failures will happen and some weeks I will gain instead of losing, the key is to keep at it anyway. Until next week remember You can do this!

WWW

This week I actually gained a pound :( it happens from time to time and I think a lot of the gain was because I have been worried about my dog, EJ. He hurt himself and is not healing well, a post on this to follow. Due to my weight gain I felt the timing of this week’s topic was perfect! It was all about loving yourself and being positive in your thoughts and actions.

As an example when you wake up in the morning instead of thinking “Ok Teresa you will NOT eat any sweets today” you think “Ok Teresa today you are gonna eat at least 3 fruits”. The idea behind this is that if you tell yourself a negative, you will literally spend the day thinking about that one thing. And for me at least it is true, when I try to force myself into something or think about one thing that is all I can think of all day. This makes it very difficult to deny myself something but easy to have something I approve of.

So Far my tracking is going fairly well. I am still working on getting better at tracking when I am at home. I am great at it at work, probably because my day is much more structured and planned out. I also notice I tend to drink less water when I am at home! My focus for this week has really been on just that, making sure I drink enough water during the day.

I am figuring that this week will not be a great week for me as far as my weigh-in goes but like I mentioned before that is ok. This journey is a work in progress and admittedly my focus this week has been on EJ.

The other thing that we talked about this week was our why and letter to ourselves on the day we decide to quit. I am looking for my original letter so that I can post it here but have not yet found it in all my many moving boxes! As for my why well I suppose that is fairly simple:

I want to like what I see when I look in the mirror but more importantly than all of that I want to be healthy, feel healthy and have energy. I often find that there are things I really want to try or learn but then the thought of getting up and actually doing it makes me tired. Yes I am lazy and Yes I procrastinate but I believe that a lot of that is because I simply run out of energy so quickly it seems pointless to try. My why is that I want to get out in the world and live!  It is all for me and no one else, because no matter what we do in life there will be someone that does not like you or agree with your choices.

I think that is where I will leave you this week. If you have never looked into Weight Watchers or feel like it is too hard, I encourage you to give it a try. Plus you can always check out a meeting for free and nothing is better than free :)

Weight Watchers Wednesday

SO I am in Weight Watchers, again. Some people may not openly admit such a thing but I am not ashamed of it. I joined in March of 2011 and can say that it has been a rough road (I weighed 341.6lbs at the start). I have had more ups in weight than downs lately. I have had times when I have not tracked or tried and weeks where I try but still struggle. In the end I had to quit meetings but still tried to make good choices. So far my lowest was a loss of 68lbs (YAY ME!!!) but I am currently way back up in Weight! (348.6lbs)

Things have been stressful lately to say the least and everything has contributed to this gain. I decided that I needed to go back to the start with Weight Watchers and signed back up. The first few weeks are always the hardest and most eye opening to me anyway. I realize just how much I over eat, how often I eat out of boredom and how inactive I am a lot of the time!

I joined online so the first technically week was before I even knew my beginning weight. I like to take this week to begin getting into the habit of tracking NO MATTER WHAT! It is sometimes hard to track because I know that the double cheeseburger, fries and chocolate frosty are way out of points and an awful choice. Sometimes however it is all you got and sometimes you simply get into the habit of eating that way. By taking the initial week to track everything before I even know my points balance I get into the mindset that writing it down is necessary. Also it helps me know that it is ok to get off path occasionally. I’m not the first person to think “Hey, if I don’t write that down it is like I never ate it, right?” Well that is so not how it works, lol.

My Weigh-in day is Monday but honestly I usually go in on Sunday. Now I am sure some are thinking so why not have your weigh-in day changed to Sunday. Honestly it is because I like to have the new tracking pages (which I made myself) and everything starts on Monday since the work week starts then. Basically I have the worst time tracking on the weekend because there is a lot less structure to my life those two days. So Monday is when everything starts for me these days, I used to go on Wednesdays in the good old days of Nanning and fun. Soo I am thinking that I will update on my weight loss journey on Wednesdays, making it Weight Watcher Wednesday (aka WWW)! For me the biggest thing to remember is the tracking, I know I have been talking a lot about that, but it is what helps me to make better food choices. It’s not that I don’t like the healthier foods or anything like that. Fast food, chips & cookies are just faster.

This really brings me to why I like Weight Watchers in the first place. It is ok to eat the things I like, just not to sit there and eat a whole loaf of bread or bag of cookies. My mom has always tried to “help” me lose weight by telling NOT to eat the things I love. Like Pizza. Come on who is going to never ever eat pizza again because they might gain some weight. Nobody, that is who, pizza is yummy. OK this blog is getting a bit long now.

When I went in for my first weigh-in on 1/17/2016 I was at 348.6- thus the starting weight has been revealed, *dun, dun, duun* Wow not the news I was hoping for, I knew I had gained but seriously! I did not allow that to discourage me and the next week on 1/24/2016 I had already lost a whopping 3.8lbs. YAY ME again!!! As I continue my tracking I have good and bad days but I write it all down and keep in mind what I want for myself. I look forward to this extraordinary adventure and how it will change me. Next WWW is all about fitness and my why...