Sunday weigh in 2/23/14

Starting weight: 249.8

Current Weight: 237.8

Total Lost: 12 lbs 

Goodness, I wish spring would get here at last! I am so done with it being dark in my room at 7AM! Husband was still sleeping so we have another dark shot this morning. (Which is probably for the best since I am in major need of a pedicure!)

Anyways, here is my Sunday weigh in! The pounds are still being burnt off, but maybe at not such a rapid pace as last week. I am still down there, working out everyday. Some days I have only been able to fit in 45 minutes, some days an hour to an hour and a half. Because I am only doing it every other day, I am still on week one of Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30.

The most exciting thing, other than the almost 4 lb loss, is all the information I have learned about eating properly. I have been really focused on different grains I can used besides wheat. There has to be something more nutritious out there besides "all purpose flour", you know? And there is! :) Been working on a post for a few days about this very thing, which is why I have been so quiet, and I am hoping to post it today.

So, in conclusion, weigh-in Sunday is a success!! I am going to keep doing, keep striving and I hope you do the same! Post your weigh in stats here with mine and we can celebrate together :)

When do you exercise?

For the past two weeks or so, I have been heading down to my basement to workout at 7AM. This is quite an accomplishment for two reasons. One, I love my sleep. I can sleep for ten hours and feel like I could sleep more. I love having dreams and feeling snugly under my fleece blanket. The cares of the day slip away as I slumber and don't come to bug me again until morning. Sleep is my friend. Two, not only do I love my sleep, and feel that 7AM is a sacrifice, but I also have to take my teenage son to Seminary each weekday morning at 5:45. This means I am up at 5AM and I don't return home until 7AM. My normal routine used to be that I would go back to sleep as soon as I got home from taking him and get a few more hours sleep before our homeschool day began, but no longer. (I know some of you are thinking, spoiled brat! It's the beauty if homeschool.)  I have found that staying up and exercising just works best for our scheduling. But don't think that I am not having the same conversation with myself each morning.

"I can exercise later, lets go back to bed!"

"No, no, let's just get it done, we can nap later."

Every day there is a different excuse my brain comes up with, but every morning I fight it and keep going. 

So what about you? Early riser like me? Late owl? What kinds of things do you do to make sure you do your workout? Any tricks? Whatever your goal is, persistence is the key. Comment and let us know what your goals are, and how you fit exercise into your routine.

Sunday Weigh In

I can't even tell you how excited I am at the progress I have made so far. When I saw last week how large I had gotten, I knew I had to put 100% effort into getting it right this time. I have exercised everyday but Valentines Day. (too insanely busy) I have eaten as clean as I could this week. Next week I will be even more on my game nutritionally, and even better the next. This is a process of growing. Like Jillian says, this isn't about perfect, it is about effort. I am happy to see the rewards of my effort!

Starting weight 2/9/14: 249.8lbs

Current weight 2/16/14: 241.6

Tools That I Use: Part One

Valentines day was yesterday and I hope that everyone had a lovely time with the people they care about. Valentines can be a beautiful day full of love and caring and happy feelings. But for some people, it can be the opposite. Loneliness, regret, self-loathing can all be felt more intensely on a day that celebrates love. It would be easy to give in to those feelings and to stuff them down with the nearest box of chocolates. There is no end of temptation down every aisle this month. I myself went a bit crazy yesterday and had one too many of the beautiful sugar cookies my mother-in-law made. And the chocolate cake she made. And the pancakes of love I was served for breakfast. You get the picture! 

Even the most motivated of us can slip and fall. That us why I am typing this post from the seat of my exercise bike while I still have air to do it. I want you all to know that mistakes don't have to keep us down. There is always a new day!!

Every once in a while, I want to show you all a product or maybe a service I use to help me achieve my goals. The first one is something a few of you may already be familiar with. It's called MyFitnessPal. You can use it on a regular computer but I use mine more often from my iPhone app. This is a program that us 100% free and quite simple to use. It allows you an easy way to keep track of your calories. They have a ginormous (yes, I said ginormous) list of products already entered into their system. It's as easy as scanning your package or entering in a description. Here are a few screen shots of myomere to give you an idea.

So here is my launch page. It gives me my calorie goal and the ability toscroll through   friends posts. Having friends here is vital. I tried to do it alone and it was miserable and boring. But when I can see the success of my friends, it makes the process more enjoyable. Please feel free to add me. Mine name there is cbellanger.

Here is an example of my diary page. You can add just about anything. You can make a new recipe if you can't find what you like. I added the Doro Wat that way (which was insanely spicy!!) that post is for another time, ha!

I strongly urge you to look into this tool. There are many, many ways you this tool to help you on your own progress. I am now officially out of typing breath so I will leave you to your day. Keep working, and never give up, you can do it!

My Starting Stats

I wanted to post my stats here so that you all would have an idea where I am starting at. I will update my weight weekly and my measurements monthly. So here they are:

Starting weight : 249.8 lbs

Height: 5'9"

Biceps: 17"

Bust: 44.5"

Chest: 40"

Waist: 46.5"

Hips: 53"

Thighs: 29"

Calves: 16.5"

As you can see, I have a lot of work to do. My arms are as big as my calves for Pete's sake! Those I inherited from the Texan side of the family.

My routine for the rest of this month is as follows.

MWF exercise bike for 45 minutes, increasing resistance as I go.

Strength training with free-weights and resistance band  for 20-25 minutes

TTS exercise bike for 45 minutes, increasing resistance as I go.

Ripped in 30 with Jillian Michaels, 20 minutes

In another week or so, my treadmill will be delivered and then I will be adding a 1 mile circuit of that to every day. I will increase the distance and speed as I progress. Still just too cold here to be out running. Our sidewalks still have over an inch of ice.

So, that is my plan. Tomorrow will be day 4 of it, a Jillian day. I am so very sore from Tuesday's beating. But I have made it successfully through her 30 day shred last year so I know she won't kill me despite her beat efforts :) Let me know what your workout plan looks like. What works for you and what doesn't?

Inspirational Words

"Transformation is not a future event, it is a present activity. That is why you must bring everything that you have to give in every moment. And it doesn't have to be perfect. It's not about perfect, it's about effort. You bring that effort every single day...that's where transformation happens. That's when change occurs."

Jillian Michaels

My First Post: A Transcript From the Seat of My Exercise Bike

(This was recorded on my phone during the first part of my workout yesterday. Only when I ran out of breath did I run out of words.)

Hi, My name is Christina, (Hi Christina) and I am done.

I am done with being fat.

I am done with feeling bad.

I am done with feeling guilty.

I am done with letting myself down.

That is what I keep doing. I am sitting here on this exercise bike, 249.8 lbs., .2 pounds away from being right back at my highest weight.  I am full of anger. A couple weeks ago I was at the store, shopping for clothes, something not many plus sized women enjoy. I had a job interview and after having been a stay at home mom for 7 years, I badly needed new interview clothes. At one point last year, I had owned some black pants that would have worked. They had been a bit loose, a size 24, so when I started losing weight to a point where I could be pround of myself, I got rid of them. Some women keep their fat clothes. I felt that keeping them would give me an excuse to go back when I felt like I didnt want to do this anymore, whenever I felt like it was too hard, or that I was ok with being ten pounds heavier.  I donated all my larger sized clothes, so I would know I had to be on a continual downward slope if my clothes were to continue to fit. I walked into the Kohl's, my final store, determined to find something. I had been looking for a skirt, but so far I had only found tops, They fit, but I could see the fat bulging around my waist. I settled on some black work pants and found them in 3 sizes: 18, 20 and 22.I thought, I am just going to try them and see what happens. I am in an 18 now, right? The size  18 didn't even come close. I had a 2 inch gap where I was struggling to button them. A that point I just stopped. The emotions flood over me. What have I done?

What had I done? I got sick sick in October previous to a 5K run I had been training for. I was doing good, kicking some butt! I had been working out and seeing progress for 10 months. I had gotten to my lowest weight in 15 years, 224 lbs. I had lost 26 lbs of myself, down 3 sizes. I was in a euphoria of self love. The illness was lingering, lasting almost two weeks. At first, I found myself making excuses.

I missed the race, I can take a break from training.

My chest is still hurting a bit, better take it easy for a while longer.

It is WAY to cold outside for a run.

I will get on the exercise bike later.

I can go a bit over my calories, I will just maintain where I am at.

There is too much holiday craziness right now.

I don't have time.

Christmas comes and by this point I can see what is happening. I can't ignore it anymore. At first my metabolism was still kicking and I was sticking to my portion sizes. All that extra muscle I put on was keeping the extra pounds off. But eventually your body realizes somethingis different. "Must be time to hibernate," it says, "time to store it all." I could see  it but I still didn't do anything about it. I kept postponing. I knew then and I know now what exercise does for me, but it was so much easier to make excuses.
Exercise is really hard.

I don't have the time to devote and hour to exercising.

 I don't even have a half hour.

I just dont have time.

And that is the problem. I got into the mindframe that I didn't have time for me. I wasn't seeing it right. I did have time to exercise, but I didn't have time for me. I was putting myself right back on the backburner like I always had before. The kids come first, my husband, friends, cleaning the house. When I do things for myself, I feel guilty. It isn't that anyone else makes me feel guilty, I do it to myself. January comes, nothing. The very end of January comes, I gathered the courage to weigh myself and I am blown away by the number. I had gained 15 pounds. I though you have to do somethiing, you are out of control, you gotta get on this girl! But it's all good, I can still get this. So I started exercising again. I was on this right? Not right, because what I started doing was exercising 45 min a day. But I didn't watch what I was eating. I had been using FitnessPal app to count my calories, but had deleted it out of guilt mid-Jauary. I put it back on my phone and logged my foods. I was logging 1000+ extra calories over everyday.  I was ok with it, because I thought I was at least doing something by tracking. I didn't need the extra food I was consuming, I just wanted it.

How does the story of the dressing room end? I sat in the dressing room and I wept. Sobbing, tears streaming, breath catching, I tried not to let the women in the others stalls hear me. This was a pity party for one. I didn't try on the larger sizes. I simply got my clothes back on, got my coat, wiped my tears and I left. I found my one fat day skirt and I went to my interview. It still hurts. I worked for year, learning, growing, exercising and trying new things. Instead of just jumping back on the train after my illness, I sat back and did nothing. I was so easliy defeated and it amazes me, how easy it was. Here I am on my exercise bike, 5 months later, and I have gained it all back.

So why a blog? Why am I doing this? I don't want any other woman to go through this. It is heartbreaking. I know there are women out there doing this right along with me. We are killing ourselves to lose some weight. We feel so good about ourselves when we do it and then we quit, because maybe the short term goal was met, or it becomes too hard. Maybe we dont have anyone to push us on to the next step,  maybe we plateau or we lose confidence. It may be that we stumble over an unexpected roadblock.  Some days we just can't and that is okay, but the problem is when we don't start again. When we don't jump right back on the horse. Never give up!

I cant be upset at anyone but myself for this.  I choose my path, not someone else. This is why I want to do this blog. I want to inspire myself and somebody else. I want to be held accountable. If I can get folks to read this, which I hope they do, I will feel like, I gotta do this, I gotta pump these girls up, I gotta pump myself up. This woman or man is struggling, floundering and they need someone to boost them up and to tell them that they can do it. We all need someone to push us along. We all need that before and after story, to see that someone else did it and so can I . It takes time, this is no dexatrim, slim fast quick fix. This is about dedicating our lives to being healthey and strong and happy. I want to be happy. I dont want to go to the store and feel bad about myself. I dont want to have to buy the wrap around sweater to hide myself, cause you know what? I am awesome. I am a pretty cool person. And I want that to be the first impression people get. I want that to be the first impression I get, when I am look at myself. I want to look at myself and just see awesome. I dont want to see  all this weight holding me back. I am tired of being so negative. I want future me to look back in a month, two months, a year, even 5 years to listen to this and know I didnt give up, I kept working and I did it. There's not going to be anymore crying in dressing rooms. No more misery and sadness. No more I can,t do a chin up, no more I cant's at all. Time to get out there, kick some butt and take some names. I am done letting myself down. I will and I can!

Please, check back often. I promise that my posts will not all be this long. I feel very passionate about helping all of us move forward with our individual goals. Passion makes me long winded :)