Fat Friday

Hello!!!

It's been a good week here in the land of Cochranicity. I have for the first time in a month practiced a little self control when it comes to eating. July was what it was and now I'm done. The damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. I'm up 2 pounds from the end of June.

This week I've managed to go for a couple of runs and I did something that I have needed to do for a while. Something I've known, I needed to do but been resistant too. I gave up refined carbs. This is not a no carb thing, there is still room in my life for whole grains, fruit and veggies but refined and processed carbs are a no go for me. They are my drug. They my meth. Sugar is heroin injected straight into the vein. Giving them up is a little like detoxing, but 5 days in the cravings have subsided and I feel wonderfully physically. No more highs and lows as my insulin levels vary.

The other thing that gives me less options when it comes to mindless snacking. It is easier for me to tell myself that I can't have any Doritoes ever, than to try to practice moderation. These are the foods that send me on binges.

Like I said, it was what needed to be done and I am finally ready.

It's not so hard right now. It's summer and fresh fruits and veggies are abundant. Fall will be more of a challenge with pumpkin flavored everything and chilly days that long for comfort food. If I slip, it's not the end of the world. It will happen. I will move on.

I also found this photo from a few years back. I was working out everyday and eating clean, like I am trying to now. I look at this to remind myself what hard work and discipline can lead to (minus the irreversible effects to 2 pregnancies one of which resulted in a freaking 11 pound baby). I can do this. I have done this.



What healthy change did you make this week?

FAT Friday:6/22/12

It has been so hot here this week that I have been running at 5:00 AM. That sounds worse than it is. I am used to early mornings. My daughter got up between 4-5 every morning for a year. We are early morning people. I love working out in the morning. I love to have it done before the rest of the day gets in the way. Unfortunately, it is only during the summer, when Scott isn't working that I have the time. 

I'm linking up with Ginger for her FAT Friday series

You know I like to get to the nitty gritty first.

I am down another pound this week. Honestly, I am lucky to have lost it. I wasn't great this week. I wasn't awful, but I wasn't great. I had a real problem with night time snacking. I always struggle with the desire to have snacks after the kids are finally in bed and I can relax a little. It has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with wanting to treat myself at the end of a long day. 

In more important news, I am now a three time graduate of the Couch to 5K program. I finished it up a few days ago with a 30 minute run. I am still a little shy of 3 miles so I'll keep working up to 3 miles and then settle in a that distance until I run the    5K in August. Then I'll start working on adding mileage with the Frederick Half Marathon in May as my goal. Hopefully, I'll be carrying around significantly less weight by then. 



Next Week's Suggested Topic:  Summertime=Vacation Time=Overindulging= FUN Possible Derailment!  What summer vacation(s) do you have planned and how to you plan to be proactive in staying (mostly) on the healthy living train?

I was just thinking about my upcoming vacation. In 4 weeks, we will be heading to Virginia Beach where will be staying in a house with my parents and my sister's family. I'm finding that it is a little less stressful to go to the beach fat because I'm not trying to drop as many pounds as possible before hitting the beach in my bathing suit like I would if I were thinner. No, at my weight, a couple of pounds isn't going to be the difference between a bikini and one piece. Let's face it, after 2 kids, one of whom was almost 11 pounds, my stomach is never going to see the light of day again. So I'll just put on my lovely Land's End swimsuit and enjoy playing on the beach with my kids.

But that's not what the question was. It is going to be hard to stay on track. My mom is a wonderful cook but doesn't have low cal repetoire. She is old school Southern. With my sister there, hopefully we can help steer the meals toward the leaner side. Grilling is going to be the way to go, I think. I don't really have a plan yet but I'm working on it. I may have to volunteer to do the grocery shopping (ugh, I HATE grocery shopping) in order to have the right kind of foods on hand. 

I will definitely be going on a few runs while I am there. With so many babysitters on hand, I have no excuses not to work out. My sister is a runner too, so I'm hoping we can go on some bonding runs together. She lives in California so we don't see each other very much. 

Whether, I stay on course or fall off miserably, it is going to be a great, relaxing vacation and I can't wait.

See you next week. 

FAT Friday: Patience is a virtue

This mornings weigh-in showed a 0.4 lb loss. :sigh: Thank god I am not looking for a quick fix, because I would have jumped off the train by now. A loss is a loss but it was still a little disappointing (not enough to ruin my Friday or anything though).  Since I started making a real effort 6 weeks ago, I am down 5.4 pounds. That is less than a pound a week. It is all about the big picture though. At this rate, 6 months from now I can be 30 pounds less than I started.

And really what are my other options other than to have patience.

• I could give up. Guaranteeing no weight loss but probably weight gain. No health benefits. Model bad eating behavior to my children.....Not an option.
• I could drastically cut calories. Sabotage my milk supply so that I couldn't feed Landry, not only denying my child the best food source available for him but also cost my family money by having to buy formula. Also, try to fool myself that hunger is a "sustainable lifestyle"...Not an option.

So I just keep plugging away. I am eating in a calorie range that is comfortable to me. It's not too restrictive and as long as I don't eat junk, I am never hungry (well not for long anyway). I'm keeping my goals in the forefront of my mind and for once they are not (entirely or even primarily) appearance related.

I want to live to 100. For reals. I didn't have my children until my late 30's, if I want to see them become adults and have time with my grandkids, I'm gonna need to stick around a while. I'm finally old enough that I do have to think about the health consequences of being overweight. My mother's family is obese and they have high blood pressure and Type II diabetes. I don't want that crap. I want to be an active parent and a spry senior citizen.

healthawarenessfoundation.org

 Yeah, it's like that.

Speaking of slow and steady. I am on the last week of the C25K program. Two runs to go. I should finish it up on Sunday. I am excited, primarily because that means I can use a different program for measuring my runs. The C25K app measures the warm up and cool down walking and I don't like having that in my time and pace measurements. Also, I am dying to try out Zombies, Run.

I'm planning to run a 5K in August and then set my sites on longer runs. I have my sites set on the Frederick Half-marathon in May. I used to run it every year but due to pregnancies and births, I haven't run since 2008. 

Till next week then, when I will be a 3 time graduate of the Couch to 5K.

FAT Friday:6/8/12

I'm linking up with Ginger over at (not)Just Another Mom of Twins for her F.A.T Friday series.

This week I am down 2.2 pounds!!! Almost as much as I lost the entire month of May. I'm not sure what the difference is. I have eaten slightly better and my runs are becoming more significant and therefore burning more calories.  Also, I just think maybe (hopefully) my body is getting on board. 

Also exciting this week, I seem to have picked up some speed during my runs. I was averaging around 11.5 minutes/mile during the running portions and now seem to be at about 10.5. The first day it happened, I thought it was probably a GPS fluke (they are not perfect) but it happened again the next day. I have never been a fast runner, even when I was in great shape I averaged about a 10 minute mile. Respectable but I'm never gonna place in a race. My fastest race ever was an 8K in 45 minutes. I nearly died when I saw that time. I still am not certain they measured right. Anyway, yay for increased speed! 

This week Ginger asked:   What “triggered” you to take control of your weight and start on the road to healthy living? If you're already "there" what keeps you "there"? 

Right  now is a continuation of where I left off last year. In February 2011, I was fat and had been for over a year. I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant with my daughter and just couldn't seem to get myself together enough that first year of motherhood to do anything about it. At tried and failed several times but always found myself reaching the M&Ms to deal with the stress of being a working mom. At the end of 2011, I got pregnant again and though elated, I was unhappy to be going into pregnancy 30 pounds heavier than I started my last pregnancy.  Unfortunately, I miscarried that baby. It was tragic but we were determined to try again.  I decided to make the best of a bad situation and use the time until I (hopefully) got pregnant again and get in the best shape I could. I didn't know if I would have a month, a year, or a lifetime. 


So in February 2011, I started counting calories and by the end of May I had lost 23 pounds. Then on Memorial Day of that year, I found out I was pregnant again. I hoped that I could limit my weight gain to 20 pounds but I gained twice that. After having the baby and dropping all the water weight, I settled in at about 20 pounds more than I had started the pregnancy. It was disappointing to see all that weight back but I was thankful that I had lost it in the first place or I would have been looking at 50 lbs of gain in 2 pregnancies.  Anyway, after allowing a couple of months for my body to heal (c-section) and my milk production to stabilize, I was able to pick up where I left off. It honestly surprises me that I was able to get back on the wagon so easily. Especially, since my stresses are double. I don't really know what it different about right now than times in the past,  but I am ready to finish what I started a year ago. 


I'm excited for a new week!

FAT Friday: Goals

I'm linking up with Ginger over at (not)Just Another Mom of Twins for her F.A.T Friday series. 

 First things first.  1.6 gain on the scale this week. I didn't really expect to lose. We were out of town for the weekend. I didn't practice great self control  and I didn't really do great for the rest of the week. But I didn't lose control so I am surprised to have gained.

Additionally, for reasons I haven't figured out, my milk supply has dropped drastically this week. I went from  pumping well over 20 oz in 3 pumps during the day to struggling to get 15 oz and a baby who is getting frustrated at the breast. That basically happened overnight. It is distressing for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'm not benefitting from as many milk making calories.  I'm trying to fix it though and counting calories may have to go on hold until that situation is resolved.

So. May.

                       May 1                                                     June 1

Weight          229                                                         226.2
Waist            38.25                                                      37.75
Most recent run: 1.74 miles in 30 minutes                 2.69 miles in 35 minutes


I am pretty disappointed underwhelmed with my results from the month. I'll admit I have half-assed it, but still at my weight, with breastfeeding and it being the beginning of focused efforts, I thought I would drop more pretty easily. Like I have in the past. In the past though, I guess I have been able to get a lot more exercise in.  How sad is it that I have re-started enough times to know how it should go.

Oh well, June is a new month and I am going to try to really tighten up my eating.

But I did make big strides in running. I'm on week 7 of the C25K program and currently running 25 straight minutes. My fitness is improving even if my weight isn't plummeting.


F.A.T. Friday topic for this week:
Do you set short term and/or long term goals? Are they visual?  Do you "allow" yourself a reward for reaching a goal?  Have you reached a goal recently?  Please share!

Ahh, the answer to this question can be best answered by viewing one of my beloved spread sheets. Spreadsheets are my not so secret lover. 

 So yes, I do set short and long term goals. If you don't have a goal, how do you know what you are working toward? And I do reward myself, though I don't set my reward too far in advance because what I want can change drastically over the course of a few months. As you can see i have my goals broken down into stages. The first stage is to lose the weight, I gained with my second pregnancy, stage to is to lose the remaining weight from my first pregnancy and so on. 

What I don't do is put time limits on my goals. I'll never put a goal of "losing 15 pounds by June 21". Adding a deadline to weight loss goals only adds another way to fail. A way to fail  even if you have succeeded.  If I only lose 13 pounds by June 21, I could easily get down on myself for not meeting my goal even though I should be celebrating losing 13 pounds.  So goals? Yes! Deadlines? No! 

On to June and hoping I can get it together this month. 

Fat Friday: 5/25/12

I was all set to post today about how frustrated I was that I am doing the right things but losing no weight. Because yesterday, the scale showed a big 0 for weight loss this week. I was going to talk about how I kept myself going by thinking about the reasons for eating healthy besides weight.

But this morning the scale was kinder and had me at a total of 1.6 pounds down since last Friday. That's a total of 4.4 for the month of May so far. I might have a chance of reaching my unspoken goal hope of 5 pounds this month.

Honestly, I thought I would lose more. I thought with nursing, toddler chasing, baby hauling and C25King, I could lose more but I am averaging 1-1.5 pounds a week and I have to be happy satisfied with that. And to be perfectly honest, I really wasn't doing everything right this week. I had a couple of days that were well over my calorie goal. I had movie theater popcorn. I had a cupcake. I'm not beating myself up over though the way I would have in the past. I understand my limitations. I'm trying to live a life while dropping pounds. I'm just trying to be the best me I can be on any given day. And some days the best me needs cupcakes....and wine.

Every time I eat now, I ask myself, "Do you want Caroline to see you eating like this?" If the answer is no, I TRY to curtail myself. Sometimes the answer is yes even when it isn't the healthiest choice. Yes, I want her to see me having a treat of a cupcake on our special mommy-daughter shopping day.  It was a special occasion.

I really worry about passing my eating issues onto her. Landry too, but her more so because she is a girl and girls just struggle with this stuff more.  I'm trying to be very conscious of my actions. The other day she was crying because she had hurt herself and as I was comforting her I managed to stop myself from offering food as a means of comfort. It was my first instinct. Food makes you feel better. But I stopped. I offered her more hugs and asked if she wanted to work a puzzle together. That worked. At 2 years old, time with mommy is better than food. I wish it could stay that way forever.

I'm still rolling through the C25K program. I'll be doing W6D2 today during lunch. I am not really getting in much exercise other than that. I would like to but I just can't find the time. I guess if I really wanted to, I would find the time. I'll get there.

This weekend, will be a challenge. We are headed to my brother-in-law's house for the weekend and there is always a feast and good times. I'll try for moderation. That's the best me I can be in that situation.

Fat Friday: Closer than I was yesterday

I am down 3ish pounds since May 1. 

Things are going well. Two and a half weeks of eating well are paying off. Slowly but surely. I'll admit that I hoped to see a big loss the first week or two but it has been more moderate. That's OK. As much as I would love the great motivation that comes from a big loss, it is more important that I am doing the right things. And I am for the most part. I give in here and there but have basically kept the calories under control. I'll be happy though when I lose enough that a day of water retention can't make the scale fluctuate back up to my starting weight.

This weekend will be a challenge, dinner out tonight, a birthday party and dinner/movie with girlfriends on Sunday. I go to the movies so rarely that I will be indulging in some popcorn. It's not an everyday thing. It's barely a once a year thing. Hopefully, I'll be able to pass on the birthday cake (Birthday parties are constant when you have kids.There will always be more cake.)

I'm doing better at exercising than I could have imagined given the lack of free time I have these days.  I have found the time to go during lunch and I am on Week 5 Day 3 of the C25K and I've gotten some walks in. I tried to do yoga in my office today but it is about one foot too small for me to manage it. So I went for a walk instead.

One thing that has helped me this week:
-Planning my food in advance. I log everything in my lunch box plus my planned dinner into MFP in the morning. That let's me know how much wiggle room I have. Planning out my meals when I am not starving is key.

One thing that has hurt me this week:
-Co-workers bringing in delicious Krispy Kremes. I only had one but it's not something I would have sought out to eat had it not been right in front of me for an hour during a meeting. Worse, it put sugar into my system, which led to me wanting more sugar.

Here's hoping for more loss over the next week before the challenge of going out of town for Memorial Day weekend. 

Fat Friday: Getting into the groove

I am now  just over 1 week into being back on track. That's not a long time but it is something. Sometimes just getting through those first few days is a huge hurdle.

I hope I have found a calorie range that will let me lose weight and maintain a good milk supply for nursing my little guy. You would think it would be easy to lose weight when nursing such a big baby but it is so easy (for me, especially) to overeat when I am not tracking. I weigh everyday and honestly nothing is happening yet. I am sticking with it though. I don't feel like I can eat less and still maintain my milk. Unfortunately for my weight loss goals, nursing Landry is priority one. I am determined to get back in shape though. I do not want to be a fat mom.

Going back to work this week has been good dietarily speaking. I have not reached for chocolate when I was missing my baby (and oh, I have missed my baby). I really didn't know how things would go but I even managed to get in a day of C25K training in during lunch on Wednesday. I am going to try to get another run during lunch today.

I've joined The Last Mommy Standing challenge on the Mommy to Wowwy team on SparkPeople (YARAC211) and it is proving to be a good motivator. We weigh in every week and as long as you lose or maintain you are still in the game. I am determined not to go out early. Healthy competition is good for me, even if I am the only one paying attention to it.