D37RS

I realized that I haven't really written that much lately other than my weigh ins. So, I felt like it was time to set some goals.

I have done pretty well with my water goal (though not in the last couple days). I only had one diet coke the whole time I was on the road...unheard of for me and it was during the same meal as the cheese fries...guess I just needed a break :-) I want to continue to drink water and to make sure I get plenty of it.

My next goal will be a weight goal. I would like to lose 10lbs by my vacation in May. I think that is a pretty reasonable goal. It is less than 1lb per week. Of course, with the travel I might have to lose more in some weeks if I just maintain on the road but we will see. I would really like to look good in the pics we take this trip.

This week has been a very strange week for my body. I feel really heavy this week (pillsbury dough like) and have had a lot of snack cravings (though I can count on one hand the number of times I actually felt hungry). There have also been several nights where I literally could not drink enough water...I would have 60oz right before going to bed and not even get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. That is not normal. I also noticed this morning in my spin class that although I didn't feel as though the class was any harder than other classes I have taken, my heart rate was extremely elevated the whole time and I burned 50 more calories than normal. It was only my second spin class of the week with the other days spent on the treadmill so I am not sure when the heart rate sped up. Hmmm. I guess people (and probably girls especially) have different weeks with their body but it just seems really off.

I do not expect a loss this week and with the amount of water I drank (and seemingly retained because I have not been using the bathroom more so it must be staying in my body) I am sure I will have a gain. I go out of town Tues-Fri and then have a guest in town Fri-Mon so it will be a challenge but I am going to try my hardest to stay on track next week. There were a couple days this week where I didn't track at all and I don't think I am to that point yet. I will at least track next week. I do expect it to be a fairly easy week for staying on plan though...I will have 3 dinners out of town. I know where one is and I can pretty much just eat veggies galore there so that will not be an issue. One of the other ones is a work function so not sure where that is and the final one is a dinner with friends where I am sure we will find something healthy...lunches will be easy as there are plenty of on point options and breakfast is never a problem. I am not sure how much I will be able to work out but hopefully the eating right part will help enough this week.

I will report in tomorrow with my weigh in...not expecting much though...probably a gain.

Weigh in

Today was my weigh in day so I got up and weighed this morning. I did gain .2lbs but I am actually pretty happy about that (not the gain but the fact that I pretty much maintained and at least I didn't gain a lot). I ate pretty well all week minus the one day that I had cheese fries (and a lot of them). I also had a beer almost every night because it was just that kind of week. I think that had I been able to work out more than twice or if I had been able to make it to my spin classes on Saturday like normal I would have done even better. I also found that walking on the treadmill is the perfect exercise for me on the road. If you do it at an incline then you burn almost as many calories in an hour as you do in a spin class but it seems less strenuous so i am more like to do it. The only days I didn't work out were the days when I didn't get back to the hotel until after 11.

This was the first trip that was longer than a couple of days where I ate like a vegetarian. After reading "eating animals" I just couldn't bear to support any form of factory farming which is where most chain restaurants (which is mostly what is in Florence) have. Since I couldn't eat meat I was a little worried that I would be hungry. I am happy report that baked potatoes are my best friend. The baked potato gets a bad rap (or potatoes in general due to them being a carb) but they are pretty low in calories and very filling. Plus, the skin has lots of good stuff for you in it and I love them. I mostly ate that and salad for lunches. Dinners I tried new things like minestrone soup, which I didn't think that I would like and then japanese veggies at the japanese steakhouse. I also snacked on trailmix between meals to help keep down the hunger (though it was barely a problem). Overall I was really proud of myself. I could definitely tell that my stomach got full faster than it used to so I still think that I am on the right path with my eating. It just takes time.

I am now home this week so the plan is to be really strict again to try to get off another pound or two before I go out of town again for a few days and have visitors here. Hopefully if I can lose when in town and maintain while on the road I will eventually get there :-)

Weigh In

Well, as predicted, I did not lose this week. What was not predicted was the fact that I gained 1.6 lbs. I can't decide if it is was 1. a real gain but I don't feel like I hate over 4k more calories than I burned this week, 2. It is that week every month where no matter what I will weigh more or 3. whether my last two weigh ins were a little low because I had drank the night before and drinking dehydrates you. Whatever the reason, I was not too happy.

I have definitely learned that traveling is one of my trigger points to eat more than I should. Let's face it, even though the food might not make me FEEL so good, it is designed (by scientists) to taste good to me and it does. When I am out of town it is usually more stressful than when I am in town. I am not sure why this is but I find that I am a lot more tired, I am running around and time slips away from me. All this seems to contribute to me eating mainly when I am starving and have to take whatever is available instead of carefully planning it all out. So, in order to try to fix this, I am going to bring snacks for tomorrow with me on the road and then tomorrow night we are going to go to the grocery store to get snacks for the rest of he week. I am not sure exactly what I will get but the goal will be to keep me from getting to the point where I will eat more than I should. We have already picked out our restaurants and I know some of the food will be tempting, plus it is my first time trying to travel without eating meat. It will be quite a challenge.

The other thing for next week is to make sure I leave work at a decent time and go down to the hotel gym for an hour before dinner. I have already told my employee traveling with me that this was my plan and she wanted to join (she just had a baby) so I think that the plan might stick. I am just a little worried because I have to get up so early tomorrow and I am already worn out from last week.

Wish me luck :-)

D23RS

Well, today was not the best of days. I woke up a little hungry and ate my normal breakfast but still felt really hungry. That is pretty unusual. Usually I don't feel hungry after breakfast and I don't until around 10:30 or 11 when I have a snack. Hmmm. It seems like through the afternoon I was hungry too even though I ate all the normal stuff for the day (and even a little extra because of being so hungry this morning).

Tomorrow I leave town until Saturday. I will still eat most meals at home tonight (not sure what to do about dinner yet since my flight leaves at 7 but gets in at 9, maybe a big lunch and a bar??). I have been pretty good on the points for the week (minus today) so I should have a few saved up that I can use this weekend.

Next week I am pretty worried about. My senior and I have picked out the places we are going to eat (sadly it is all we have to look forward to on the trip) but when I looked up the nutritional facts there were very little items that didn't contain meat (and I really want to avoid it if possible at all) and most of the items that didn't contain meat were very high in calories. I can't eat just lettuce and vinegar and oil for all my meals. I looked up the veggie burger for Ruby Tuesday and it is 923 calories!! That is 20.5 pts on WW and I only get 21 for a whole day! I think that includes the cheese and mayo (and I don't eat mayo) but still. That is a lot of calories. Anyone have any suggestions? We are eating at the following places:
Ruby Tuesday
Outback (there is a salad I like here that comes with chicken salad and isn't too bad caloriewise so will be better without chicken salad on it)
Zaxby's
Random "All-American" type place...I can get a side salad and baked potato there
Japanese Steakhouse - I plan on just getting the rice and veggies..still high in calories but I don't normally eat all of it.
Red Bone Alley

I know that I can maintain because I have done it for the last few trips but after looking up the restaurants tonight, I am not sure that I can lose. So, it will be ok in the future once I reach my goal weight but it sort of sucks when I am on such a roll.

I look forward to any suggestions :-)

Weigh In Day

I haven't been as good about staying with the blog again, but today is weight in. I am down another 1.6lbs. That is 3 weeks in a row with a loss and down 6.4lbs since Jan 1st. I am pretty excited about that.

I have worked out quite a bit this past week but I also have gotten better about only eating the amount of points that I should eat for the week and it is getting a lot easier. I am still eating unprocessed and wholesome foods.

I am a little nervous about next week because I travel again. I am going to try to make sure I get a lot of exercise in before my trip and then eat healthy while I am there. It might not be so bad since I will only be gone for 3 days. The week after I am going to traveling for 5 days so that might be a little tougher but I have tried to plan out where we will eat for most of our meals (though subway is out now because of the processed meat) so I am hoping that will help. I also booked the hotel that has new treadmills (just installed in Dec) and they have TVs attached. I am hoping to get in an hour walk before dinner each night to try to keep up some of the exercise.

D14RS

Weigh In Day. Never thought I would get excited about this but I am now that I had a good result this morning. I lost another 2lbs (down a total of 7 since I started). This is a victory for a few reasons. 1. I lost weight for the second week in a row (don't think I have done that since I started this journey). 2. It means I kept the loss from last week off. 3. I didn't really have to stop eating anything that I normally eat (I ate everything the same, but I just measured to make sure I was only eating a serving and also made sure that I stopped when I was satisfied and not full). 4. I had a total of 5 beers this week so I didn't have to sacrifice my social life (as minimal as it is here, I was proud of this fact...especially since it is the most beer I have had in a week in gosh knows how long).

This past week I just really made sure that I counted everything that went in my mouth. It was my tough week of the month and so I made sure I counted the multiple servings of cheezits that I snacked on and the two Reese's cups that I ate one day. It really wasn't that bad. I did exercise a lot this week. One hour of spin class gives me 7 pts and I had a total of 36 pts by the end of the week. That is pretty good. You can use the pts to eat more food (which I usually have to do because I get so hungry when I exercise more) but this week I still had 29 of those points unused (though I usually will still lose weight even using all of them). That means that had I not has any of the beer, I would have been within my points. Quite an accomplishment over past weeks and proof that you don't have to eat low fat, fake food (though some of what I ate was) and you can eat wholesome food in moderate quantities and even enjoy yourself and still lose weight. YAY me!

In other news, I contacted the farm that has the cows that are grassfed, here to ask them how much room the 1/4 of a cow would take up in the freezer (we have a whole fridge/freezer downstairs that we never use so why not use it) and to see if they ever had any beef any other time of the year. Well, it turns out that they still had some 1/4s left this year (since they just did it all in dec and since they process all at the same time but didn't sell it all) and so I have emailed her back to get our 1/4 of a cow! I am super excited about this meat. It is probably some of the best for you meat you can get and it is actually a good price. It is $5 a pound which is about what I pay at the local grocery for some of their no hormone/no antibiotic beef (though it is probably still factory farm beef with animals treated bad and with them eating grain), but it is less than I would pay for more quality cuts and a little more than I would pay for ground beef (by only $1 a lb). It kind of sucks to have to go and get the meat because it is far away but it is only a once a year thing so I can suck it up. I am pretty excited about taking these steps into eating beef that is even better for us and not having to sacrifice it because of the factory farming practices.

Now to find some chicken and eggs (actually, I found an egg share that I might join. you get a dozen every other week and it is cheaper than in the store for cage-free which I learned really doesn't mean much). Oh well. If you are interested in finding local meat in your area that is healthier you can go here and search by state. If you are interested in finding a CSA (fruit and veggies) then you can try here. I am not an expert but the more I read, the more I learn.

D11RS

So far, so good this week. The last two days I have done an hour ride on my bike (at 500 calories burned each time) and then today I am going to a spin class at the gym and possibly staying for a yoga class. I have been wanting to retry yoga for a while because I did it at one time and found it very relaxing and I like the stretching. I would like to try it before they start charging for the classes (that still makes me so mad). Then I plan to do a short ride tomorrow on my bike (about 30 mins) and the two spin classes on Saturday morning. Then it will be time to weigh in again.

As I go on this adventure to lose weight (but also a journey to get healthier in general) I have been reading a lot of books. The latest one that I read Eating Animals has pretty much made me decide that I am no longer going to buy meat that is not raised on a true farm. The book is pretty much an advocate for vegetarianism but I just am not sure I could do that. I don't think that I like enough things that have protein in them but that aren't meat. He also makes the point of if you are going to buy meat, know where it comes from. I have found a farm near here (about an hour and a half drive) that raises cows on their farm (they actually have online pics of them in the pastures and stuff) and then you can purchase packages (some small, some larger) or a 1/4 of a cow. I am considering doing this. Unfortunately it is not available until next Nov/Dec because that is when the cows are ready. Until then I think that there is another farm that comes to a local market on Saturdays that also raise their cattle themselves so I can do that. Their prices are not as good but it shouldn't be about money. I am also considering doing an egg share (like a crop share but eggs, need to research how many you get at a time though because we don't use a ton or maybe I should find more recipes with them in it). Did you know that most chickens that lay eggs only get a cage the size of a piece of paper and the ones they raise for meat COULDN'T walk around, even if they wanted to? That breaks my heart. The book is really sad but I highly recommend it because it really does make you think. He also makes the point that once Americans start demanding that animals are treated better, it will happen. Money talks and that is why I can't give them anymore money (and yes, I know I am only one person but I will feel better and maybe one of you will read it too). I also have decided that I am going to be a vegetarian on the road. I have no way of knowing where the meat that restaurants are using comes from (unless they make a point to say it is grass-fed or organic or something) or if it is even meat. I think that this will be one of the hardest adjustments that I will have ever made. I seem to eat chicken at every meal on the road. Who knew? I am going to really try though so if anyone has any advice, let me know. I am not trying to lecture anyone and everyone has to make their own choices in life, but if learning more about where your meat comes from, this is definitely a good read.

Next up on the list is Good Calories, Bad Calories (thanks Drena) and then the Omnivore's Dilemma (which is actually references a bit in Eating Animals.