Spring!

Now that we are a week or so into Spring, I figured I'd jot down the reasons that I love spring:

1. warmer weather and typically not as much rain (although this week is putting that comment to the test)

2. flowers -  I love spring flowers - tulips are my FAVORITE!



3. Longer days - I love having dinner and it staying light outside longer if we want to go for a walk or if the kids want to hang outside for awhile.

4. cheaper clothes - I like to change up my wardrobe in the spring/summer and feel that I can do so each year . I tend to buy quality pieces in the winter that will last me years, but the spring is for buying this years trend of top, shoe etc.

5. spring hockey - I love spring hockey! The kids start this week and this marks the beginning of our social time! All of our closest friends are involved in spring hockey, we travel with them, get together each weekend... a ton of fun! And the hockey is getting much better in my mind as well!

6. No jackets - I love not having to wear a jacket  to work in the morning - or maybe a light jacket/shell

7. BBQ! - more food from the BBQ. Love my bbq chicken, veggies etc.



8. NHL Playoffs!!!  - I'm a hockey nut!



Spring... I've missed you!

Quickie update

Just a quickie...

WI yesterday - down another 1.5! Woooo, which gets me to 15 lbs... I know it should be more, but I'm good with it as long as the scale keeps going down down down.

I'm starting to finally see a difference in the size of my clothes but I won't  do measurements until 20 lbs, so hopefully in the next 3 weeks.

C25K rocks! Start week 4 tonight. I'm excited and still a little shocked that I get excited about running.

Spring break for the kiddies so I'm in and out all over the place, but keeping track of points along the way!

Need to start thinking of my new goals for April... I have many.

Back...

I've been away for a few days - not physically away, just mentally. I've been on plan the whole time, and not that I needed a break or anything, I just really had nothing to report or write about.

Although I do have to admit that I find I'm more committed when I do update on a regular basis.... keeps me accountable I guess.

Still "running' - will be nice when the day comes that I can remove the " " from that word. I don't think I can count it running until I'm have a warm up a run and a cool down, rather than the interval stuff that I'm doing now.

Started week 3 of C25K. Although the 3 minute runs were tough, the day itself was easier because there were only 4 runs rather than the 6 from last week or the 8 from the week before. The nights have been warmer so I haven't been wearing a jacket when I head out.  I think I will need something to hold my ipod, otherwise I will have to lug it around in my hands, and I do prefer my hands to be " free" when I run. There I go with the " " again.

Still loving my path along the farm roads although the farmers are starting to do their spring fertilizing so it's a bit stinkier this week than it has been in the past.

WW is going well. Down a 1.5 from last week - basically just losing and gaining the same 2 lbs. Maybe I'll see a break this week! Let's hope.

Have to also check on my March goals to see how I'm doing. I still have to go bra shopping...

Later..

Hope you remembered to wear Green today Mom!

A big shout out to my mom in heaven today. Mom was Irish, through and through. The title of this post is a little funny because I honestly cannot remember too many days when Mom did not wear green. Whether it be a green shirt, scarf, jewellery, what have you... it was green!

St. Pat's day is just another day for me. Growing up in canada we celebrate it  (by wearing green) but we don't do the big hoopla that much of the Eastern coast does.  There are a number of pubs around town that will serve green beer and have the usual crazy drunkenness but it's not really the norm, or my norm.

Our tradition growing up was to wear Green on a day like today and mom always made us encouraged us to wear a pin that said 'Kiss me I'm Irish' . I hated wearing that pin because somehow I thought that gave anyone the right to come and kiss me - which never happened by the way!

So in honor of my momma ~ I'm wearing Green today. I'm not wearing the pin cause, well, I just didn't have one on me.

Start of week 2

I don't think it's fair for me to say that I love running, because let's be honest - what I'm doing is not really "running". Out of 30 minutes, I'm actually only logging 9 minutes of actual run time! But I have to say I LOVE it.

I'm not particularly good at it or fast at it. Actually I'm downright slow and so happy that I'm doing this on my own because if i were doing it with someone else, I'm pretty sure I would push myself and end up injuring myself.

I started week 2 yesterday. I was a bit hesitant about starting it because the run intervals went from 60 seconds to 90 seconds but honestly, it wasn't that bad. I think the thing that also helped was that there were only 6 rather than the 8 intervals that existed in Week 1.

I still feel pressure when I see a car driving towards me. If  I'm in the middle of my run, I don't want to stop, I have a nagging feeling that if I stop running when the driver can see me, somehow I'm a failure. Which is stupid... but that's how I feel. Thankfully, I run in an area where few people drive or live. I sometimes see a person walking their little dog or workers travelling to and from the farms in their big trucks, but otherwise, it's just me.

I've adjusted my running style to a mid-foot land rather than a heel-toe land. This seems to really help prevent shin splints but I think it slows me down a bit.

It's fun though.. I look forward to the day when I can run the full 5K without stopping or thinking I'm going to die, but baby steps.

Weight is the same.... but we won't talk about that today.

:) Peace out!

Gained.

nuff said.

Up 1.5 lbs which is just stupid. I did it to myself. I didn't track this weekend at all. Or very little

Let's hope this week is a better one.

Epic Failure.

Finding distractions

It's been a very tough weekend, food wise. Needing to find myself more distractions so I don't always turn to food. It does appear that my reason for eating is purely out of boredom. I don't eat because I'm sad, or mad, or stressed. I eat because I'm bored!

Friday night we went out to visit with friends and dinner was somewhat point friendly and so was the 1 glass of wine that I had planned to have with dinner. We saw friends there and when the boys started to flex their masculinity, it flowed over to shooter competitions and before I knew it I had 2 maybe 3 shooters. Those had not been planned.

Saturday started off ok - as it was another busy saturday, ate well until night time. Then the boredom set in. I had been in the house doing pretty much nothing since about 1pm and by 8, I was sick of sitting in the same spot, doing the same thing.

Today - gobbling up everything it seems. Started ok with a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and sliced bananas and a cup of coffee. Went out to watch Big N's game and when we returned I was starving. Ate a bowl of chili and rice, edamame pods, 4 cookies and a purdy's chocolate bar. And I could eat more.

Part of the reason why I decided to update my blog today. Maybe by writing about it, I will avoid the temptations.  I have laundry to do, bathrooms to clean but still I think about food. UGH!

And the scale is not moving. No surprise really as I have been somewhat off plan all week.

I did run though. C25K week 1 complete. Start week 2 on Tuesday.

Stop looking at me!

Look at those little beadie eyes... staring me down.



Fine, I'll eat you....and your friends too!!

It's gonna be a bad friday.

Creamy Chicken SOUP day!

mmmm Creamy Chicken soup day! So excited....

It's also W1D2 of C25K tonight. Hope the rain holds off. I'm still a bit stiff from Tuesday's run so I'll have to do extra stretching before and after I head out. I remember the last 2 times I did C25K, day 2 of each week was hard. So I'm fully expecting tonight to be a challenge.

Weight was static today at 196.5 - I'm pretty sure it's to do with Ovulation time. Read a few snipets on the internet this morning that both Ovulation and TOM cause bloating and water retention. I have noticed that I have not be visiting the bathroom as much the past few days even though my water intake has been the same. We'll see! Better be the case.

Dinner with pals tomorrow night that I'm looking forward to. Haven't seen them since Christmas. Not sure what to have, I'll have to check out the menu later. No nutritional info on the website, so I'll be doing this by guess.

Report coming tomorrow about my "run"!

W1D1? Cross it off baby!

I did it! I completed C25K W1D1 and then when I got home after doing a few minutes of much needed stretching, I did W3D2 of 200 situps. It had been awhile since I had last done them.

Felt AMAZING! I have to admit, it was the perfect day. It was a bit crisp outside, but not cold and sunny. I went out at 4:30 and was home by 5:15. My iphone app says that I did this:



I have no idea how accurate these numbers are but I'll take them. I figure it's kinda like my scale. Might not be accurate, but as long as I use the same tools to measure my progress and see progress, I'm ok!

I felt exhilarated after my "run" - walk/run. Looking forward to Thursday - actually want to do it tonight but I know it's important to have a day of rest. And my groin is a twee bit sore today.

No movement on the scale, but that's ok cause it's only Wednesday.

(added piece - the miles is wrong it should be 2.3)..still not bad.

Patterns

When the boys were in Grade 2, they brought homework home about Patterns.  They would walk around the house and study the walls, the floors etc to find patterns. I'm still not sure how this applies to math but I went along with it anyway.  Since I started WW I decided to keep track of my weight on a spreadsheet. I usually only update it on my official WI day, but in the last week or so I've been tracking daily and guess what, it seems like I have developed a pattern of sorts.

Last month, approximately 2 weeks following my TOM, I had a gain. My take on this is ovulation time, and I think it's happening again this month. I had a dip in weight on the weekend and now I have slowly started to creep up again. And for no real reason. I'm not eating more, or differently than before, I think it's just a hormonal thing.

I've also noticed that my weight dips on saturdays/sundays and then starts to rise again mondays to wednesdays and then starts to dip again. I actually look forward to plotting my weight fluctuations over the next few months. Maybe, somehow it will help combat the terror I feel when I see the scale notch up one or two lbs. Or maybe not.

On another note - I had a STRONG urge this morning to exercise. I know weird right!?  So tonight I will do W1D1 of C25K. It's lighter longer in the days right now and with daylight savings coming this weekend, I will have many hours after work to fit in a light run.  I'm excited. Gonna put together my playlist this afternoon and then head out when the kids are home from school.  My original thought was to start at W2, but I think that's a little ambitious right now. Figure I'll do W1D1 today and see how it goes.

Wish me luck - I'll report back tomorrow how it turns out.

Way too old for this stuff

This weekend was ok. Big N is still sick (took him to the doc on friday - results tomorrow) but he kept us pretty close to home for the majority of the weekend. Lot's of tv, cleaning, puttering. We had tickets to the annual school dance for saturday night and could not decide whether we would go or not. Didn't feel completely comfortable about leaving the boys at home when Big N was not well, but also looked at the fact that the dance was literally 2 blocks away. Could be home in a jiffy if required.

Decided that we would go for a few hours, have a couple of drinks, say hi to friends, spend some money on things we don't need and go home.  10pm max!

Drink specials of the night were martinis (lemon drop, cozmo, crantini etc), beer , sangria (not going there), or wine. I decided to get a couple of crantini tickets and then decide later if I wanted another drink.

The first one went down too fast. So I jumped in the line up for #2. The line took 25 minutes. Seriously! So they decided to move the beer/wine people to another line as the martini lineup was going to move slower. Finally got my drink and slurped that back quickly too.

We are in trouble now.... There was an option at the cash bar to buy tickets for single drinks or if needed you could use 5 wine tickets to purchase an entire bottle. Sounds like a plan. I'll get the bottle, bring to the table, and all can partake!

So - 2 martinis and 1 bottle of wine (less one glass that a friend had), I was stylin!

We got home about 11:30 and I felt fine for about 20 minutes and then the tummy started churning. Oh gawd, I'm gonna be sick. And Yep.... sick.

and the next morning. Sick and a headache for most of the day. What a waste of a sunday. I'm too old for this stuff.

did not weigh in this morning because I didn't like the number... AGAIN. I think I'm going to officially move my weigh in day to tuesday.

Back to work now... and my celery sticks.

Fresh Start Friday

Been a little off plan the last couple of days. Not so much off plan but definitely more tempted than in the last 2 months. And unfortunately, have fallen into those temptations a few times.

Cookies, Atkin's coconut bars.... not good.

So dipped into my weeklies a bit this week and I can tell on the scale. Just finished my lunch which was a japanese box lunch at our favorite Japanese place. It consisted of:

3oz chicken - or there abouts. I ate about 2 oz.

3 pieces of tempura (veggie)

2 pieces of cali roll, 2 pieces of salmon roll, 2 pieces of tuna roll

miso soup

sunomono salad - didn't eat this.

AND A WHACK of SALT/SOY!  mmmmm good

Time for water and time to stay on track for the weekend. Wanna be at 194 by monday. We'll see.

:)

Ta Da....

It's cute right?  It's even cuter now that I'm out of the salon and no longer sitting next to Kim Kardashian look alike. The SPITTING IMAGE! I wish I had the guts to take a picture... but I didn't.

Lunchtime - cottage cheese, veggies/dip, wasa crackers and almond butter... MMMMM not.

Crushin' on Oz

I have a secret crush on Dr. Oz. Ok - maybe not so much a secret anymore.  A few weeks back when I was sick, I took to watching him and found that each episode I watched, I learned something. I'm all for educational programs ya know!

So I started to PVR his afternoon show. S thinks I'm nuts, but whatever, I'm crushin on him. Leave me alone.

Yesterday's episode was about his quest to help a 31 year old woman that is over 700lbs. She graduated high school at over 500 lbs so this has been her life. She was on the Dr. Oz show because she wants to do something about it. What I loved about this episode was the frank discussion with her that her medical numbers/results from her blood work are astronomical. Death sentence numbers. And he was frank about it. No pussy footing around with her, she needs to do something and do something now.  It was a good episode..

We'll see what today's epi brings!

In other news - today is haircut day. Not sure what I'm going to do with it.... but here is my before (god what a bad picture)... but before pictures are always bad...



But I think my hair is worse... flat boring.....blah.

Hair at noon - will take an "after" AFTER.

peace out!

Coming clean

So in my last post I mentioned a Sausage McMuffin. Yes, I ate a Sausage McMuffin. It wasn't planned. I didn't go out and buy it with the intention of eating it. Here's the story:

Every Tuesday morning big N has early morning practice. That means he leaves the house at 5:20 with dad. Sugar and I pick him up at 7:00 when the practice is over and as a treat I thought I would pick them up breakfast at McDonalds. Sugar ordered his big breakfast.  I ordered Big N gets 2 Egg/Sausage McMuffins, a carrot muffin and a chocolate milk. 

Don't bash me because I feed my kids this. They don't eat it that often and seriously, they are more fit than I ever have been or dream to be... I digress.

Well after I picked up big N from practice, I normally drive them home, where they proceed to get ready for the day and head to school. I drop them off and head to work myself. When we got home yesterday big N turned to me and said that he was not feeling well so that meant me switching up my day to work from home. 

He had a tummy ache and felt dizzy so he was not hungry, had a shower and went to bed. I dropped Sugar off at school at 8:45.  At 9am I stopped in the kitchen to put the coffee pot on and saw the bag sitting there. At first I thought, nah... it's not even going to be warm anymore. But then I thought, well I can heat it up for a few seconds in the microwave. So I did. I threw out the egg, (cause Ew) and proceeded to warm that bad boy up. It was a little soggy when I removed it from the microwave and I remember saying to myself, this is not going to be good. And it really wasn't. I ate it all though. I'm not sure why...

After I ate it I figured out the points for it. 10 PTS! look see for yourself:



and honestly, about 30 minutes after I ate it my tummy started doing flip flops and I had multiple trips to the bathroom. I will spare you those details.

So it was gross - I counted the points though. I'm pretty sure I won't do this again but kinda felt I needed to come clean with it.

So there ya go. Enjoy this little cartoon I found today - Pretty much sums it up!

Obsessive Compulsiveness

I worked from home yesterday because big N was sick. I love working from home because I save the 2 hour round trip commuting time, I can throw in a load of laundry and I typically eat a bit healthier when I'm at home. 

This was all true for yesterday with the exception of the McDonald's Sausage McMuffin in the morning. We are not going to talk about that though - not now anyway.

One problem when I work from home is my obsession with the scale. I will weigh myself each and every time I go to the bathroom. If I am drinking a lot of water (which I'm trying to do these days), I can be in there every 2 hours sometimes more often. That's a lot of times to stand up and down on the scale.  I hate this about me, but it's just something I do.

Am I the only freak out there?

This morning though the scale did move to a brand new value that I have not seen in awhile, it was very exciting. I'm not writing it down on the blog though, but I do have it in my little notebook here as motivation to keep going.

Also need to make a note to myself to buy a new set of batteries for the scale... for backup just in case !!

Squueeeee...

oh and the Sausage McMuff had me in the bathroom for a whole different reason yesterday... not doing that again anytime soon!

March Goals

I have a few goals for March and figure if I write em down - maybe I'll actually achieve them!  

1) Lose 8 lbs!

2) Start one exercise and do it 2 times a week

3) Clean out portion of closet and donate clothes that are too big or too ugly!

4) Put aside $300 for N's Calgary trip in April.

5) Take body measurements by end of month!

6) Buy new BRAS!!

shhh, although it's not really a secret..

That I need new bras!!! It's a good thing I guess that my boobs are shrinking, but not a good thing in that I need to now go to the store and get a better fitting bra. It's one of the things I hate shopping for most, other than a swimsuit, cause that is the absolute worst, isn't it? 

Ok - Hair cut on thursday, I'll go bra shopping on friday - or maybe after work tomorrow. I still need to find something to wear to the dance on saturday too. I think it will just be my fall back black pants and a blouse of some sort. I don't really feel like dropping a bunch of money on an outfit that might (hopefully) won't fit me by the start of summer.

Down 1 lb. Which is a bit better from the stalemate of yesterday. So 196. Feels good. Hope to be 194 by next monday... we'll see.

I was 201 on Feb 1st and I'm 196 on March 1st... hmmm gotta kick myself into gear here!