Well, this week I didn't lose any weight but I also didn't gain any. Hopefully this upcoming week will be different and I will actually lose some. I thought that I ate really well last week so I am a little disappointed that I didn't lose any but at the same time, I did eat out for every meal and had ice cream twice (though not that much). Since being back I have been eating lots of fruits and veggies and cooking every night so hopefully I will reap the benefits soon.

Even though I didn't lose while I was on the road, I did maintain and I felt better overall. I tried to pick healthy options and I always ordered a house salad as a starter but only used oil and vinegar as the dressing. I think that helped because then I didn't fill up on bread and I was getting some healthy fats in the oil (which I used sparingly). For the first time in a really long time I felt like I was able to make good choices while traveling. That gives me hope that if I can lose weight on the weeks that I am home then maybe I can at least maintain it while I am on the road. We will see how it goes.

Better

This week I have been much better. I don't know it if is because I have been so busy at work or because I have made a real effort but whatever it is, I have done better. I went to the grocery store and got mini wheats and fruit. I still drink my latte in the morning but I snack on mini wheats and fruit. I have been looking up where we were going to lunch and eating the healthiest thing that they have caloriewise. I also always order a side salad and get oil and vinegar as my dressing but only put a little on. So far I feel like it has worked. I haven't worked out at all though. I brought all the stuff but then I have been busy and my neck has been bothering me, that makes it hard to do a whole lot with weights and stuff.

I hope that my weigh in on Monday will show my progress and I am in town for the next 3 weeks with access to more healthy food and the gym :-) I am pretty excited about it. Unfortunately I am going to be on the road a bit more than I had wanted to be so I am glad that I have been able to eat better on the road.

Good news/Bad news

Bad news is that I didn't lose any weight last week. Good news is that I didn't gain any weight last week. I am over the whole 'wanting to eat everything in sight' thing and am back to being rational about it all.

I am traveling for work for the next 5 days but I am going to set a goal of getting all my water in and eating at least 3-5 servings of fruit and veggies per day. I also have a new protein bar that D gave me that I will probably try out later this morning. So far, so good, I had an apple with my breakfast latte.

I am a little worried about the restaurant choices in the town I am going to because it is a really small town. When my employees travled there most of their receipts were from fast food. I am going to have to try hard to get all the healthy stuff in :-). Mentally I feel like I am ready again after my little relapse.

Today Went Better

I was pretty good today. The one disappointing thing that happened was that I went downstairs and got a cheese omelet in the morning. I thought 3 eggs, some cheese, and some oliver oil couldn't be that bad, right? WRONG. it was over 500 calories and 42g of fat according to the website of the company that runs our cafeteria. That sucks. I have no idea what they put it that mix to make it that fattening and I thought I was being all healthy. That has happened to me a lot in the dining room so I have decided that they just don't have any healthy options other than fruit for breakfast. I will be purchasing cereal like whole grain cheerios to bring next time I am in town. Live and learn. Plus, hopefully by the next time I get here I will be eating healthier.

The good news is that I have been writing down everything I eat so I am going to add up the calories. I did that for yesterday and I had eaten 2425 cals...YIKES!! That is about 500-600 above what I normally eat or at least normally since I started to try to eat well.

This is harder than I thought...or at least the traveling part is harder than I thought.

I took some before pictures today in my studio. I took them in a tank top and jeans because that is my favorite outfit and what I really want to look good in. I might get brave enough to post them but it might not be until I have gotten some progress under my belt :-)

Not Getting Better

So, yesterday was hard and today hasn't been much better. I feel like I just want to eat everything in sight. I know that part of it is the fact that I am a woman and one week a month I literally want to eat everything that I can get my hands on. I haven't really ever come up with a good way to control it and I am not sure I will ever be able to...I know you are supposed to eat less sodium and that should help so I am trying that and I have eaten a lot of fruit so that at least if I am eating a lot it will be somewhat good for me. UGH.

Tonight I had dinner with the girls....Mexican. Normally at Mexican I will pretty much polish off the cheese dip on my own and will be stuffed afterwards but I feel like I did a little bit better tonight. I didn't do so well to say no to the cheese dip (good job D, you were so good) but I did eat less. I also tried to be somewhat healthy with my meal choice of tacos and a side salad. The dressing was really spicey so I didn't eat a lot of it. I didn't do as well as I could have by eating ahead of time but I don't really have anything here to eat ahead of time.

I am starting to worry that I will not lose again this week and might even gain. The thing is, I could use the excuse of being out of town but I just can't. Half my life is spent out of town and I have got to learn to do it. I feel like I am making better choices but still not the best choices.

The other day a friend of mine told me that she learned to stop eating when she was full. She said it was harder than dieting and I believe her. I really struggle with that. I hate leaving food on my plate and I eat fast so I always feel like I should keep eating when other people are still eating. Obviously these are some of the additional obstacles that I need to cross and I hope that I can. This has not been as easy as I thought. The first week was easy but not being home and in my comfort zone has been hard.

The good news is that I did go to a spin class today so that is at least a few hundred calories that I burned....and I had a few servings of fruit today which is more than I normally have. Baby steps....

Long Day

Today was a bit hard for me. I feel like all I have done is eat all day. I haven't added up all the calories yet but most of it was fruit so hopefully it will not be too bad when I do add them up. I am hoping that it is just the fact that I go up super early today that has made me so hungry. I also meant to go to the grocery store tonight but I didn't get a chance to so now I don't have any snacks for tomorrow. I am going to try to go in the morning when they serve breakfast and get some fruit and stuff. We will see :-) I just really wanted to complain because today was a hard day eating wise and sadly I didn't work out either :-(

On the bright side, I ordered chinese tonight and I got steamed chicken and veggies with no sauce really...it was actually pretty good so I was glad that I chose the healthy thing :-) Baby steps.

Vacation was harder than I thought!

So, as you can see by the ticker, vacation didn't go as well and I had hoped that it would as far as eating goes. I will say that I did pretty well on the snacking and stuff (cause I was prepared) but it was really hard to find healthy things to eat in the national parks. It was a lot of burgers and sandwiches that you would think would be healthy but then it would come out with all this butter and stuff on it. I knew that I wasn't making the best choices but at the same time, we were walking A LOT and it was only 1 week into my plan so I didn't feel like I really had a good enough handle on it all to be really good on vacation. I am done with that now and I am moving on though. I am hoping that I didn't really gain all that weight back because sometimes when I fly it distorts my weight a bit. I know that is an excuse and notice that I still recorded the weight but I can still hope, right? I will be out of town for the next few days so I will not be able to weigh in again in the morning until next Monday.

One thing that I did think a lot about on vacation is the amount of processed food that our country (and I) consume. Nearly everything at the restaurants in the parks was processed or prepackaged or what not. It isn't good for us! I don't do that too much at home (except when I lazily use the lean cuisines at lunch) when I am cooking and making an effort so I think that I am going to try to incorporate that idea into my diet. I am going to try to really cut out a lot of the processed foods that I eat. I started thinking about it and I really do eat more that is processed than I thought I did. So, over the next few weeks (the next two being out of town) I am going to try to reduce the amount of processed food and really pay attention to what I am eating and what is and isn't processed. I plan on going to the grocery when I get back in a couple weeks and trying to find somewhere here that I can get some fresh food (I miss you Dekalb Farmer's Market). Hopefully the next two weeks will go better than the vacation week went. Plus, we need to have a break every now and again, right? If I only ate really bad for 4 weeks a year I would be in great shape overall. I also tend to think that as I get healthier I will automatically make better choices (at least that is what I hope).....here is to hoping.

1.8 down, 18.2 to go!

I weighed myself this morning and I was down some more. YAY! I am excited that my eating well and working out is paying off! I do not feel well at all today. I am not sure what the deal is but I think that it might have been something I ate (which was a salad from Wendy's last night...I know, fast food but it was a side salad). Anyway. It hit me all of a sudden this morning and I haven't really felt the same ever since. It worries me a bit since I am going on vacation tomorrow but hopefully it is just a one day thing.

Due to the fact that I haven't felt well, the only thing I have eaten today is Honeynut Cheerios. I ate lots of them (like 3 cups at different times) but it is the only thing I have eaten. I am going to try to get some bread for some toast tonight and hope that will help.

So, in prep for vacation I looked at the towns we are staying in and there were some regular restaurants (where I know I will have ok options) and there were grocery stores. We also have a hotel room with a fridge so that is good. My plan is to take fruit from the breakfast bar (apples and such) every morning and to use the trail mix that I made out of healthy cereal. The goal is really just to not gain any weight while on vacation. I doubt I will be able to lose any...wish me luck!

Week 1

I am not quite finished with week one and I have already had a couple of hard times. Yesterday I did the whole ice cream thing..bad calories and ended pretty high for the day but not terrible....really....

Last night I had packed my little frozen pizza for lunch today to take to Craig's house. When I got to his house though Chloe was playing in my bag (it was unzipped) and I didn't want her to get out anything that would be bad for her so I zipped it up. Well, this morning when I went to get my clothes I realized that I had also forgotten to take out the pizza...oops. Not sure if those are still good. It was out of the freezer for 8 hours, but I am sure it took a while to thaw. Anyone have any idea? Anyway, that left me in a pinch for lunch today. I saw a sign for this store that I remember Craig and I going to once and it was sort of like Whole Foods on steriods so I decided to check that out. I even went to the healthy food section and started looking at some of their frozen pizzas and they were worse for you then the lean cuisine ones....hmmm. So, I decided to get the macaroni lean cuisine and I just ate it. Not too bad. I can't say that it has tons of nutrition in it but at least I am full without many calories.

I am going to try to stay away from frozen foods but they are sort of my version of fast food right now. I was so tempted to go by Wendy's or McDonald's or something today. I figured that the frozen food (and 300 calories) was much better for me than nuggets and fries. Baby steps. At least I don't have the urge to snack on everything in sight today. That is another baby step (or just a good day I guess).

I am going to skip the gym tonight. I have pretty much worked out every day since last Tuesday and I just feel like I need a little mini break. Plus, I walked a fair distance at the mall today so I am going to count that...and I have more errands to run tonight.

Tipping off the wagon....

oops, I had some ice cream tonight. I have had one of those days where I just wanted to snack all day. I am not sure what happened....it might have been that I was stuck in traffic this morning and got to work really late so I was a little off on my morning snack...or it could just be one of those days. I did refrain from eating everything in sight today but I couldn't do without the ice cream. My tongue was a little tender from the sunflower seeds so it made it feel better...

I did go to an awesome new workout class tonight though...I will definitely be going back to that one! I also have a feeling that my body will be hating me tomorrow!

Ever have those days when you just want to eat everything?

I can't believe it is yogurt...

Yogurt and I have never really gotten along very well. I don't particularly love the texture of it and it seems to have a funny aftertaste to me so I don't really eat it that much. However, with this new healthy kick and it being good for you and the fact that I saw a coupon in the paper on Sunday and then it was also on sale at the grocery, made me feel like it was a sign. So, I have decided to try it again. I don't really like the fruit flavors that much but I got the yoplait cinnamon roll and boston creme pie (you know those awful commercials..ugh). I had to think of something to deal with the whole texture issue (yes, I am a baby) so I was going to do granola but that is really fattening so I started thinking about other ideas and settled on oatmeal. SO, last night I had some boston creme pie yogurt with half a cup of oatmeal mixed in....it wasn't so bad. I had it for dinner last night because I wasn't that hungry and figured that the protein in the yogurt would be good for me after my spin class. It was pretty good for a 250 calorie dinner with good for you stuff in it. I might have to do it again. It also is a pretty good snack (depending on how many calories you want in your snack). The yogurt without the oatmeal was only 100 calories and probably much better for me than any 100 calorie pack I can think of :-) I will consider this a victory.

Other than that, I continue to drink the water and I seem to feel a difference (or it is all in my head, who knows). I made a rule that I can't have any diet soda for the day until I have had 64 ounces of water and for the last week I have stuck with it! I have also continued to chomp on sunflower seeds during the day but now my mouth hurts from the salt so I must find some that are not salted...anyone have any ideas on that one?

Next week is vacation and I am not going to kill myself on vacation. I will eat healthy as much as I can and just try not to gain any weight. Other than that I am going to enjoy myself while I am gone. Hopefully that will be enough.

Time to go get another bottle of water.....

.4 lbs down, 19.6 to go

I survived the weekend! YAY! I drank all my water (minus a little on Sunday but I was really close) and I curbed some of my normal tenancies.

On Friday I ate less pizza because I had a veggie snack beforehand.

On Saturday at brunch I had turkey bacon, buckwheat pancakes, and sugar free syrup.

I also bought some fruit this weekend to snack on and cooked a yummy dinner last night.

I was really happy to see the scale move at least a little...I know it is not much but it is something and you have to start somewhere. Today I have been snacking on sunflower seeds...those are a bit addicting though so I need to curb that a bit. I also bought some cereals to make some trail mix for our trip next week, I hope that will help too. And finally, I got a little notebook and I am keeping track of all the things that I eat...even if it is only a little grab here and there. We will see how this keeps up....

Today is a spin class at the gym.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.