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!

Project Kick A$$ June

So May was something of a disappointment in the weight loss department. I think it may have been a bit ambitious for a stress eater to expect big results during the month I returned to work. But one big thing changes in June. My husband, a teacher, begins his summer vacation!!! And the kids are staying home with him.That means no more mornings of trying to get lunches made, bottles prepped, kids fed and dressed and out the door. No more evenings of rushing to wash bottles and diapers and wondering if my daycare provider will judge me if my toddler skips a bath tonight. No, starting next week, I get 8 weeks of only having to get myself out the door in the morning.

That eliminates a lot stress and frees up a lot of time. So, I plan to give June my all towards fitness and weight loss.

Running:
-Finish C25K and up to 3.1 miles. When I get to the last week of the C25K program and am running 30 minutes, at my current pace that will not be 3 miles. I'm pretty slow right now, averaging about an 11.5 minute mile. I'll get faster when the weight comes off but for right now, it is what it is. So I'll keep working to do 3 miles runs.
-Run 45 miles in June.

Eating:
-Eat at or under calorie goal 85% of days.
-Track food 90% of days.
Perfection isn't going to happen.

Push-ups
3x15 every other day in June starting June 4 (I just decided on this today)

Also, I took an official before picture. Sidenote: I love these pajamas. They are Majamas and are nursing pajamas. They are so comfy I truly never, ever want to take them off.

Note to self:

1. Do not pack you gym bag before you have had coffee in the morning.

2. Try folding and putting away clothes so that you aren't scrambling to find two matching socks from a basket full of clothes.

Otherwise you end up canceling you lunchtime run because these are the socks you brought.

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: 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.

It starts with one step

For most of my adult life I have been a runner. That was my preferred exercise. While I might not have loved every run, I did love running. I loved racing. I loved, especially, training for races. Planning and mapping out a training plan and sticking to it totally gave me a happy. I was always training for a 10 miler or a half-marathon. As a result, I stayed in pretty good shape.

Not me

Then I had a baby. Now, I wish I was one of those women who could keep running and exercising throughout pregnancy, but two pregnancies have taught me that I am not. I came out of my first pregnancy 30 pounds heavier than I had gone into and it took me a year to get myself together enough to do something about it. In February 2010, I started the C25K program. It was a bit of blow to my pride to be starting from scratch but I easily went through the program, losing about 25 pounds (with dieting) along the way. By May I was running 5 mile runs and then at the end of May, boom, I was pregnant again.

Fast forward 10 months and I once again laced up my running shoes and started Day 1 of the C25K program. I was slow. I felt heavy. I felt old. I felt great. So great that two days later I did it again.

My eating isn't great but I am running. It's the first step on the long journey back to fitness.

Old, fat and out of shape

That is how I feel today. It's not a bad thing. It's just a reminder of where I am.

Today I am 6 weeks  post-partum which means that my excuse for not exercising has gone away. I'm actually really glad because I've been itching to run. I started at the beginning. Day 1 of week 1 of the couch to 5K (C25K) program. During those first few jogging steps, I practically creaked. I could feel every excess pound on my knees. I could feel the muscle atrophy of 10 months of no exercise. But after a few minutes I got going and really enjoyed it. I was slow. I was tired. But I felt good.

I have a long way to go before I have any real level of fitness. And longer to go to resemble the fitness level, I had for most of my 30's. But step 1 is done and I'm that much closer now.

C25K
W1D1
1.5 miles, 30 minutes
180 calories

Fat Friday

Lawd, I am having trouble getting on the weight loss wagon. I am knee deep in diaper laundry, covered in spit up, and sleep deprived. It's hard to feel like doing something healthy and good for me. Despite nursing a little beast that weighs 13 pounds at 5 weeks, I have not dropped a single pound since the initial post-partum drop. That leaves me about 19 pounds over my starting weight. Which was about 35 pounds over my ideal weight.

Nursing makes me hungry. What's more it makes me hungry for sugar, precisely Pretzel M&Ms. Eating those by the handful is not, I repeat, NOT good for weight loss. So I am going cold turkey on sugar. No sweets for a week. I have an addiction and I need to break it. I am on day 2 and it hard. I want goodies!!!! Though it is easy now that I am home from the delicious aisles of Wegmans. I am hoping this will help get my glucose levels evened out and cut my carb cravings so I can focus on protein.

In better Fat Friday news, on Monday I will be 6 weeks post C-section, which means that, with the Docs OK, I can start exercising. I can not wait to start the C25K program  again. I completed it last spring before I got pregnant and laughed at the idea of hard exercise. I am so ready to be a runner again. finding time is going to be a challenge but I will do what I can.