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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Does This Forklift Make Me Look Fat?

Not much to report this week for BlogapaLOSEa: I did lose 1.5 lbs & I'm proud of myself that I'm continuing to lose, and have modified my eating habits to do so. I really thought that I would have gained by now, especially since I haven't been exercising as much as I want to be. I know a big part of it is that I've all but stopped drinking soda; I was actually irritated when we went to my husband's company's open house on Saturday & the only drink choices for lunch were soda. Seriously, how hard would it have been to have some bottled water too? Then again, the lunch was hot dogs & bagged chips, so there wasn't anything healthy about it. I only had a hot dog & approx. 1/4 can of soda. We headed over to the Spoonbread Festival after that & I smelled all sorts of wonderful fair/festival foods that I very much wanted but managed to restrain myself from purchasing. (FYI-for anyone who doesn't know what spoonbread is, it's essentially undercooked, slimy cornbread & tastes nasty, IMHO.) One of the guys Hubs works with told my 4 y.o. daughter that she needed to get a fried Snickers bar when we went to the Spoonbread Festival. Mmmkay...I love Snickers bars, but that sounds unappealing & like about a gazillion calories. Not that my lil' girl needs to watch calories-however, the mental image of her w/a fried Snickers bar & the cleanup afterwards...*shudder*

OK, so here are 2 pics. Bonus pic since I didn't post one last week.



*No, I don't use the forklift to shovel in my food.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Virus Detected

I was supposed to post my BlogapaLOSEa update on Monday or Tuesday, but have been feeling kinda' crummy this week. Apparently, so are many of the people around where I live, since we had to wait over an hour at Urgent Care last night (and that was just to be called back to a room-we waited another 20 minutes to be seen.) On the plus side, my 4 y.o. daughter & I don't have ear infections or the flu, we have "a virus" that has been going around. I suspect my 17-month old son may have it too, since he had a massive diaper blowout on Tuesday-the same day I was in/out of the bathroom all day-not that you wanted to know. And, when you're already feeling like crap, the last thing you really need is the sight & smell of it everywhere. Since I'm not allowed to bathe my children by myself, I had to call hubs at work & have him come home to give the boy a bath, then go back to work. FYI: The reason I'm not allowed to bathe my kids by myself is that I'm an epileptic & have had some issues w/my seizure control this year. I can only change my son's diaper on the floor, I can't take a shower unless someone else is home, and I haven't been able to drive since May-but barring any more seizures, I'll be allowed to drive again at the end of this month...at which point it becomes a matter of how I feel about it. Whether I feel I'm ready. But I digress...

OK, so from Wed 9/9-Mon 9/14 I lost 5 lbs! That makes a total of 7 lbs so far. I've been really good about drinking water, to the point that when I tried to drink some ginger ale on Tues. to settle my stomach, the carbonation actually upset it more. I had Hubs help me load a bunch of music onto my MP3 player to walk/exercise to and that has really been great, but I still have plenty of room so if anyone has any suggestions feel free to suggest! I prefer something w/a good beat to keep me going, but there's always a need for cool-down songs too. And I'll listen to almost anything; here's a sample of who I have on there so far: Alanis, Live, Motley Crue, Metallica, KC and the Sunshine Band, Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, GNR, Rick Astley, Sublime, C & C Music Factory...and more. As far as the actual exercise goes, I've been using our elliptical, treadmill & recumbant bike. I will start adding in the Ab-lounge & some other toning/strengthening exercises with time. As it gets cooler & less humid, I also plan to walk in my subdivision more. I had an awesome walk Sat. evening-Hubs got the kids ready for bed & I did 2 rounds. My subdivision is great for walking because it's essentially a big loop w/a smaller loop in the middle, and it's hilly (is that even a word? Spellcheck isn't yelling at me...) so you get a decent workout.

We went to Fazoli's for dinner last Sat. since kids eat free on weekends. Fazoli's is very generous w/their portions, so I've never needed to get anything larger than a small spaghetti w/meat sauce & usually can't finish the whole thing. Of course, I usually also eat 3 or 4 of their incredibly yummy garlic butter breadsticks and get a large Coke. I went in with a better mindset this time: I asked for a to-go container & immediately put half of my order of small spaghetti w/meat sauce in it. That made what was on my plate a more realistic portion size. I got a large drink, but it was ice water & I only ate 2 breadsticks. Then Hubs, daughter & I all shared a piece of chocolate cake. Miss Thing had devoured her dinner & was digging into the cake at warp speed...but then, she has the metabolism of a hummingbird on meth.

We picked up a digital kitchen scale at Meijer on Sun. It's a Taylor/Biggest Loser brand & the one I had actually been looking at online. This will help w/my portion control & also with some of the bulk shopping separation we do. Speaking of The Biggest Loser, Hubs & I watched it for the first time ever on Tues evening, and I just have to say Bob is an idiot & Jillian is an evil shrew. During the 1st weigh-ins, Bob was making all of these exaggerated horribly shocked/disgusted faces. They cut to a clip of just him after the heaviest woman was weighed, and he said "476 pounds?! Oh my God, this girl is big!" Um, no duh, Bob. Why do you think she's there?! And I seriously just wanted to punch Jillian in the throat. Screaming & swearing at people, calling them lazy & pathetic-it doesn't seem helpful or inspiring to me, it seems more like some of the obnoxious jerks I went to high school with. I had a conversation w/my best friend about it on Facebook & told her that someone screaming at me wouldn't make me "want it" more & that she needs to have more respect for the people she's working with. However, I'm thinkin' we'll be watching again.

**As of right now, I don't have a picture for this week since I've been feeling ucky. I managed a shower this evening, so if I manage a pic tomorrow, I'll add it.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

I vill crush you vith my tree-trunk legs!

OK, so whose bright idea was it to start a weight-loss challenge the same week that there would be hardcore PMS?! Oh yeah, that would be me-there's obviously something not right in my head (duh.) Actually, that's not too far off...with PMS came a cluster migraine and NO desire to exercise! On some days I barely had a desire to lift my head up, but I have 2 small kids to take care of so I sucked it up & got on with my day. We did manage to get started digging out our exercise equipment & I hope to be able to be using it by this weekend. We also did something I've been wanting to do for a while now: we made our hamburgers this weekend out of 1/2 ground beef & 1/2 ground turkey. They still had the beef taste to them, and I'm just not ready/willing to go the full turkeyburger route. Tonight, we made tacos & did the same thing, and honestly, I would never have known there was ground turkey in there if I hadn't cooked it. I've also been trying to make healthier choices in terms of my snacks-and actually remember to eat snacks, since I tend to get kinda' headachey & mean when I'm hungry. (Those of you who just said "How is that different from you any other time?" STFU.) I've been really good about drinking more water, but old habits die hard: We went to Steak 'n' Shake & when the waiter asked for our drinks, I automatically ordered a coke-even though that's not what I really wanted. Oh yeah, and drinking more water means I have to pee...A LOT! The last thing I started working with over the past week was portion sizes. This is something that has always confused me; for example, a serving of meat is supposed to be 2-3 oz or approx the size of a deck of cards. I *know* the servings of meat I eat are bigger than that, and certainly the servings of everything else I eat are bigger than they're supposed to be. So, this past week, instead of eating meals on a dinner plate, I used a lunch/salad plate. I thought that until I can figure out the correct (or closer to the correct) serving/portion sizes, at least this would help keep me from putting too much on the plate! Hubs & I are thinking about getting a digital kitchen scale if we can find one at a reasonable enough price.



So here's this week's picture. I wore tighter clothes this time so everyone could get a good look what I need to work on-especially my short, stumpy lil' tree-trunk legs. I should have rolled up my sleeves so you could see my flabby upper-arms, but you get the idea. I would actually be pretty happy if I lost some boob too...I know that's not what most women want to lose & is the 1st thing they usually do. However, I'm tired of hauling these things around. I lost A LOT of weight in college (went from sz 16 to sz 6) and didn't lose a bit of boob. Man, was I pissed! Anyway, my progress for last week: Lost 3 lbs, then gained 2, then lost 1-so, I guess we'll call it even at lost 2 lbs.