Life is Good!

Tuesday after work I wanted to go to Rite Aid but didn't have a car so I decided that I was going to walk there and then walk home. I have walked that much through out the day but never that far. It took me 37 mins to get to Rite Aid and then 40 mins to get home. I might have been walking slower on the way home because I was tired. But I did it! I am very proud of myself. I was pretty tired when I got home but it felt good and I felt accomplished. It's good to challenge yourself every once in a while...keeps things interesting.

This week I have done very well to stay below my daily weight watcher points! I have also exercised everyday as well! One more day until I weigh in! I went to a guest lecture today at SU. Her name is Marion Nestle and she has written several books like, Food Politics and What to eat and several more. I looked up her books on Amazon.com and found some great deals on them. I would highly recommend them. She has some great insight on how food is marketed and how it is could be one of the causes of obesity in the United States. I am soo interested in Nutrition. I maybe an IT student but I wonder what it would take to do a duel major?! I don't know...that maybe too much. I think I want one degree for now...maybe I could go back for a second degree?! ha ha Just me, dreaming out loud!

I wore one of my new outfits today that I bought last week. I got some great complements today!! Like 3 or 4 people said that I am just melting away! I said, Ya?! That's my plan! I hope to keep motivated into next week and work as hard as I have this week! I am feeling really good this week and love feeling this way! Well rested and just Feel Good!! Life is Good!!

Feelin' Gooooood!

I have been feeling great this week! Better than I have in a month! I wonder if my eating the right amount this week is really effecting my body that much? I was only able to walk 30 minutes yesterday. Mother nature did not agree with me. :( Both at lunch and after work it was raining. I had my umbrella and could have still walked but it was also a little chilly. I was a little angry at myself for not still walking. Plus, I had to baby sit after work and needed to be home as early as possible so that I could relieve the other person because they needed to be somewhere...but then they didn't go. Ugh! Nothing worked out toward exercise yesterday. :(

But, today is a new day and I walked to work this morning and will walk home today! It felt great to walk today! No sore muscles and it was a bit chilly out so it was great walking weather! I don't have to watch the baby after work so I will be able to walk no problem. But I have my class today so I take my lunch hour to go to that and can't get that extra walk in. :/ Oh well.

I also am wearing new clothes today. I Love wearing new clothes...it's like the first day of school! ha ha I went clothes shopping last Wednesday and bought 3 pairs of pants and 3 tops. I am in-between sizes right now and my legs seem to be shrinking faster than my stomach, so it is hard to find clothes that actually fit and of course not all clothes fit the same. But it is nice to be getting smaller! :) Sometimes I wish it would fall off faster but I am doing it the healthy way and letting my body adjust slowly. I learned in my Nutrition class over the summer that 2 lbs a week is the fastest you should lose it. Up until now I've lost an average of a lb and a half a week. :)

Lastly, I want to make a little plug to the “Lose For Good” campaign and ask that you please get involved by visiting WeightWatchers.com/LoseForGood. Lose-A-Palooza is a one-day social media event created to encourage participation in the Lose For Good® campaign to benefit "Share Our Strength" and "Action Against Hunger". For every accepted mention or acknowledgment of “Lose For Good” made on September 14th through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and check-ins via foursquare, Weight Watchers will donate $1 – up to $60,000 – to Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger. Please help, it's very easy! :) You can start showing your support by commenting on this post. :) Thank you!

Having a Great Weekend!!

Last blog I made some goals for myself and I am happy to report that I am doing very well so far!! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I have stayed within my weight watchers points and didn't go over. I didn't snack on Friday at work! It's soo hard when there is almost always food sitting around there. Either snack foods that someone brought in to share with everyone or left over food from meetings. And where do they leave the food? In the copier room right near me! It's soo easy to snack and just eat something because it's there. But I resisted on Friday! :)

Today was Football Sunday! :) Last year, at this time, we made all sorts of fattening snacks and ate them all day until we were overstuffed. Today we made queso dip that we love and used to eat but used low fat Velveeta cheese instead so it was less calories and we ate the dip with baked tortilla chips. :) As another football snack we had peel and eat shrimp with cocktail sauce. Yum! For actual lunch we made pizza with Boboli Whole wheat crust, boboli sauce, turkey sausage, turkey pepperoni, veggies, and part skim mozzarella cheese. :) Very tasty. We ate soo differently compared to last year!

I also walked Fri, Sat, and Sun. :) Yesterday, we went on a long walk. Before we started eating better and walking we set a goal for ourselves that we were going to walk up this hill on SU campus called Skytop hill. Well, we did it! We walked from home up skytop hill and down the other side back home. It took us just over an hour...about 70 mins. My legs were burning all the way up but it felt soo good when we got done! This morning when we walked, our legs were sore from yesterday, but we still walked about 25 mins. :) A short walk is better than none at all. It is going to be a wet week to walk...but I hope to get some walking in each day...at least an hour. Will just bring my umbrella. :)

Now it is the end of the day and I still have 4 points left over for the day. :) I am working very hard this week so far and will continue to do so thru the next 4 days of my WW week! :) Wish me luck! Will blog again soon.

It's been a while!

Wow, it's tough working 2 jobs. Lately, I have actually been spending more time interacting with real people rather than my friends and family over the internet. That's a big switch for me. I spent a lot of time at the NY State fair the past week and a half. I worked there a total of 30 hours and also spent some time enjoying it also. That means I ate meals there a few times too. One of my favorite things to eat there is from the fried veggie stand. I like the fried zucchini and mushrooms the best but I usually get the combo basket which also comes with onion, cauliflower and broccoli. Fried veggies are 5 points a cup. So it's best to eat these in moderation. I also like the chicken pitas that you can get from the greak food stands. I get it with only a little of the sauce. It tastes like ranch to me but its made of yogurt. I also like the mexican food place in the international building. I got a chicken taco salad from there too. It doesn't come with dressing, but with sour cream instead. The only bad part of that is the taco shell...I just try to not eat all of the taco shell. :)

This past week was also my anniversary so we ate out and I got steak and lobster and a dry baked potato with sour cream on the side. So I have been doing my best to make the best choices I could while eating away from home. It has also been difficult to walk while working the 2 jobs. I used to walk over an hour and a half a day but with being so busy lately its more like 30 mins a day. But when I worked at the fair I was on my feet the whole time and running around stand to and from the grill...so I was moving a lot to make up for the not walking. I also started my fall class last week. So, that is 2 days that I do not get to walk on my lunch break.

Now that my life has calmed down a little this week and I am only working 1 job everyday and my class is 2 days a week during my lunch hour I need to get back to where I was before I started working the fair! I need to work hard on eating more meals at home and walking more each day. I miss water aerobics too. The class doesn't meet during August and September. I signed up for the next session but it doesn't start until the last week of September. Not walking to and from work and during lunch during the fair has made me feel a bit lazy and not wanting to walk.

So today is the start of my new week. I weighed in this morning and lost another pound. Last week while working and eating at the fair I lost 2. I am now up to 57 pounds total! :) So I did OK for not being on my normal schedule! But I feel I can still do better! I walked to work this morning and I am going to walk at lunch. I can't walk home because I have to be somewhere right after work but I plan to walk this weekend...hopefully both days!

My goals starting this week are:

1) Get back to my old walking schedule I was doing before the fair!
2) Eat at home more this week...get back to cooking more and not eating out soo much.
3) Concentrate on my daily points and try not to go over as much. I know that I have the extra 35 points a week just for that reason but I feel I am using them too much.
4) Work on blogging more. Every other day, if possible!

So, I start my new WW week with determination and am looking forward to a great week! I am going home to TX for Christmas again this year. I would love to be able to say that I've lost 70 or 75 lbs when people ask me how much I've lost!? :) That is my BIGGEST goal! I want to lose another 13 - 18 pounds by Christmas! That gives me 14 weeks to do it! My current average weight loss per week is 1 to 1 1/2 lbs. So I think it's doable. And if I stick to my goals I've set for myself going forward then I will have no problem!! I CAN DO THIS!!

I know I need to lose more than 75 lbs but I like to set short term goals for myself...long term goals sometimes seem unattainable. I am going to take this journey 1 week at a time!!

Learn from my mistake

Last night we were tired and didn't feel like making our lunches so we decided to just pick up food for lunch instead of bringing our lunches.

Well, today was a very busy day at work. I had a meeting first thing in the morning where they served breakfast, and I had decided last night that I would just eat something there instead of bringing something from home. So, I didn't do too bad with my choices. I choose a bagel w/ cream cheese and fruit. Good choices right? Especially since they also had muffins, scrambled eggs, and bacon! I probably could have eaten half the bagel because it was huge but of course I didn't because it tasted soo good!! I usually have weight watchers plan bagels. The WW bagels taste good, especially with the laughing cow light garlic and herb cream cheese on top. But I didn't have that today because I was lazy last night. Today I ate 8 1/2 points (normally I eat 4 or 5 points) for breakfast.

For lunch, I decided I wanted to stop at Subway after I ran my errand at lunch to pick up a sub and baked chips. Well, I ended up not going to lunch until after 1 pm and my errand took longer than expected so I ran out of time and couldn't stop at Subway. So, at 3 pm I was starving and had to have something delivered! I didn't go completely overboard...I ordered from Jimmy John's which is a sandwich place on campus that delivers super fast. I could have probably made a better choice when choosing my type of sandwich but of course I wanted to order my favorite sandwich. I ordered the beach club on french bread. It comes with mayo normally and did exchange that for mustard, so that's a big points savings. The sandwich has turkey, provolone cheese, sprouts, cucumbers, lettuce, and avocado spread. I could have gotten whole wheat bread and no cheese. That would have saved a few points but as I got it, it was 10 points. And then of course I ordered a bag of my favorite chips, jalapeno chips, 5 points for the bag. So, I normally eat 7 points for lunch when I bring my lunch, today I ate 15 lbs for lunch! Eeeeek!

So now for dinner I need to eat lighter. Luckily, I ate lunch later so I shouldn't be that hungry tonight. We are going to have these turkey sausages that are filled with cheese (3 points) on whole wheat sandwich thins hot dog rolls (1 point). :)

So, this is what happens when you don't bring your lunch or plan your day. Especially if you run out of time and don't eat lunch on time and start to get over hungry. You make choices based on taste and speed not calories or point values. I didn't over do it too bad but it just shows that you can eat soo much better when you bring your own healthy food from home and plan!

My legs are feeling better!

Well I walked to and from work yesterday (in the rain) and my legs were ok. On the way to work my legs felt fine. On the way home, about half way, my legs started getting sore. It was just sore and not the pain like I had last week...so that's ok. I didn't walk at lunch because the weather was very dark and dismal all day. On my walk to work this morning my legs felt fine and also during my walk at lunch. So, my legs seem like they are back to normal. Maybe I just over did it a little last weekend?! Who knows.

The dreery weather yesterday really put me in a yucky mood. I didn't feel like walking or wanting to do anything. What am I going to do when its winter and snowing every other day! I'm going to need some motivation! Any ideas of things I can do to motivate myself? I hope that going to see my family at Christmas time will help me keep working hard and be my motivation.

I thank God for my great support system at home! Helps me keep going for sure! I wish I had more friends here in NY that I could do weight loss activities with though. It's tough moving to a new place and not knowing anyone but family. Even after 5 years in Syracuse I still don't have many friends. Thank goodness for the internet...helps me keep in contact with people in TX. :) I share weight loss pictures on facebook...it helps me see the change in myself easier also. It's like looking at myself through another set of eyes. It's very gratifying to see the results! :)

Update...

I re-weighed myself this morning like I mentioned I was probably going to do. I did give my legs a rest...I have not walked since Friday morning. I think that the swelling and water retention around my muscles went down! When I weighed myself this morning I weighed 3 1/2 lbs less than I did on Friday morning!! So, instead of gaining 2 lbs like I originally thought, I actually lost 1 1/2 lbs!! :) So my average weight loss remains the same...1 1/2 lbs per week!

This picture was taken this afternoon! I bought these jeans this week at Old Navy. I can actually fit into jeans bought at a "normal sized person" clothing store!! I am still in a plus size but I am still very excited! I bought my UT shirt I am wearing during my last trip to TX to visit my family. I bought the largest size it came in because I really liked the shirt (It says "Keep Austin Weird" on the back) but could not fit into it! I tried on the shirt today and can FINALLY fit into it!! YAY for small triumphs! :)

My next goal is to become comfortable enough with myself to actually say how much I weigh...I am not quite there! :-/ Soon I hope!