Life Update.

I feel like I have a lot to tell you my lovelies, well a ton of different topics to talk to you about. I might be breaking this up into smaller posts that I'll write today and then I won't have to worry about writing a post every day Monday - Friday. Sound good? Good.

This weekend was really good. I'll talk about that in another post when I can find my dumb camera cord so I can show you all the pictures. We were working on our lot, which will be given to us by Mr. Skinny's grandparents. It was Pop Pop Skinny's dream to have us home again and living out on our lot, so this weekend was a little bittersweet for us all. Knowing that Pop Pop would have loved seeing us home and working on out lot was hard, but it's exciting to be getting closer to actually having a lot for our house. It's getting there!

Second update? Running. Since I last blogged, I ran 3 times, all were pretty good runs. On Saturday I ran 2 miles straight! No walking breaks at all! I'm trying to trust my body and push myself, but not push myself too hard in case I am pregnant.

Speaking of that, I have a somewhat personal question for you ladies who have had kids. When do I take the pregnancy test? I have 3 of them under my sink. To be honest, I don't really feel any different than my normal self, but I've been googling "early pregnancy symptoms" like mad, hoping that I could come across one that I could say I was feeling. I know you're supposed to wait until after your missed period, but I have no idea when mine is supposed to come since going off the Pill! Before I started birth control, my cycle was around 5-6 weeks, ish. So should I play it safe and wait for like 7 weeks before taking it? Or go by how I feel?

I'm really trying not to stress, I know it doesn't help the whole process. Honestly, I don't even normally stress, and I really don't think I am. I'm just curious, and a little anxious about not knowing. It doesn't really help that for the first time ever my entire family wants to go on vacation next summer and we're already looking for a place to stay in VA Beach. Mr. Skinny and I want to go really bad, but we'll have to see when we get pregnant. My brother is graduating next year, so he gets to pick, and he wants everyone to go together. My family doesn't know we're TTC, so we can't really say anything. I just hope that we don't book the house before we know if we can go or not. I think I would be okay with taking a pretty small baby to the beach, but I wouldn't want it to be too soon.

Oh, and last by not least, we have our first Non-Scale Victory is quite some time! I was trying to think of something to wear to work last week and remembered these jean bermuda shorts that I had. I dug them out, and tried them on and look! They don't fit! It was a wonderful, wonderful feeling, for sure!

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When did you take a pregnancy test?

When was your last NSV?

Another Exercise Victory!

For the first time in a loooooong time, I went to the gym after work yesterday. It was probably the first time since the first week of March. Yes, it's been that long. I wanted to start running again, so I looked up the couch-to-5K program. If you want to start running, and don't know how - this is the program for you. It took me 6 months to almost complete it last year, from May to the end of November, running my first 5K in December. Although I wasn't completed trained for it, I ran it anyway, and really thought I did my best.

When I went to the gym last night, I knew I wanted to run, I really want to become a runner, although I don't know when that takes place, or what the prequisites are. I'm determined, even if I never achieve the dream of running a marathon, I want to be a runner. Okay so I looked up the couch-to-5K plan, and I was going to start the whole program over and try to train myself to run faster, but I stepped on the treadmill with an open mind of what I was going to do.

I started walking, before I knew it I walked .5 mile. Okay, time to run. Now, when I first joined the gym, I "ran" at a speed of about 4.3 - yeah, not really running. I'm sure some of you walk at 4.3. In my defense I do have short legs.

Anyways, I started running after walking .5 mile. I thought I'd run about .25 and walk .5 and repeat. Nope, I ran .5! Another great thing though was that I can now run at the speed of 5.5 - that's huge for me! I actually got tired at one point and put the speed down to 5 and I couldn't do it, it was like an awkward run/walk/skip thing. I also ran 0.05 mile at 6! I know, I know, it's like 30 seconds, but still, that's something, right?!

The best part was I continued the pattern of running 1/2 mile and walking 1/4 mile 3 times for a total of a 3.3 miles! No, I lied, the best part was finishing up a 5K (3.1 miles) faster than the time of my actual 5K in December!!!

I was SO excited at this! I could have jumped, skipped and hollered out of the gym I was so excited. I beat my time by like 30 seconds, but still. Also, I took walk breaks, and not just for 1 minute, but for about 5 minutes because my walking speed was about 3.5. This is SO encouraging for me, I know that I can keep running now, and someday consider myself...

.....a RUNNER!

When did you first consider yourself a runner? What was your last "exercise victory"?

I went for a run!

Attention everyone: we have an exercise victory! I went for a run! Now, after not running in probably over a month, and prior to that I wasn't really working on my "running" I was pushing my way through 4 miles on the treadmill, walking most of it, I finally went out yesterday after work. I must say, I'm really proud of myself. I can still run for 5 minutes straight! Yes, I walked most of my roughly 2.3 mile outing yesterday, but I still got out and tried to run again.

Back in December I ran (most of) a 5K, and I thought that I would always be able to run a 5K, even if I didn't keep running. Yeah, dumb thought, but that's what I thought nevertheless. Now, almost 4 months later, I miss that running. It took me from May to December to almost finishCouch-to-5K, a program for people that need a training program to get them running. I know what I did wrong, I did the program by time instead of by distance. I have short legs, and I can't run a 10 minute mile quite yet, and that's how the C25K program is designed. That's why I didn't do the best I could at the 5K, because I trained wrong.

Looking back, it's nice to know what I did, and I want to get into running again. I should get myself up in the morning and to the gym for my workout since I don't really have a lot of time with my school schedule. But who honestly wants to get up at 4:30am and go to the gym? I'll have a lot of trouble convincing myself that I want to do that. So it's going on my list of things that I want to do once I graduate and get my life back. I know, that's a terrible plan. So with it getting warmer, hopefully I can convince myself to get back out and running again. I'd love to run a 5K and a 10K, I think I can do that, even if I can't get myself to run that daunting 26.2 miles eventually, but who knows what I can do once I put my mind to it. I know I don't even know.

How did you start out running? Did you ever loose interest in it? What's your favorite exercise?

Office Christmas Party

...yeah, and I'm in charge. Oh yeah, I get to pick out the games, and make sure everyone signs up to bring food. I'm pretty proud of myself though, in regards to eating. I tried to track, I really tried to, but it's all casseroles, and souflees, and I'm not even sure what's in some of these things. I saved 19 WPs for this party, still have my 6 APs I earned on Friday, and had 16 DPs left (already tracked dinner). Even after tracking, I still have 9 WPs left, and I didn't touch my APs. I'm going to the gym after work today, already have my gym clothes, and I'll be earning some more APs.

Quick weekend recap: My parents came down on Saturday, we went to Red Lobster, but I got salmon and crab legs and didn't use any butter, but I did have my baked potato with sour cream and butter. Shame on me! Ate some of the appetizer, but I tracked what I could. The hubs and I got our Christmas tree! We decorated on Saturday night, along with a few glasses of wine. We went shopping yesterday and spent money we don't have. Come January 1st, we're done spending unnecessary money (more to come on that with my New Year's Resolutions Post).

Happy Monday everyone!

I did it!

I would like to announce to the world that I signed up FOR A 5k!!!

I am super excited about this, and I am not worried at all that I can finish this 5K running the whole time. I know that 13 minutes of straight running probably isn't the same as a 5K, but I still have 6 weeks to train for it. This is totally new territory to me, I'm going to run a race! The hubs said that after I finish the race, then I can consider myself a runner. Oh man, I'm so estatic to take on that label. If you would have told me a year ago that I would have just signed up for a 5K - I would have laughed in your face.

This journey is taking me so much farther than I ever thought possible. I'm not even at the weight I was last summer, but I feel so much better than I did last summer. The hubs doesn't even remember me being at that weight, and honestly, neither do I. It was just a number on the scale, it meant nothing. I wasn't confident enough to wear a bikini at the beach, and I think I'm in a smaller jean now than I was last summer, and I'm still 13 lbs. more than I was.

My body is changing, my mindset is changing, and I think it's great. This journey is slow, but it is so worth it. Trying new foods, exercising, it's great. I'm glad that I can take care of myself and make myself healthier. Obesity runs in my family, and I'm determined that it stops with me. I will teach my children how to eat healthy, and love exercise and be healthy. I do not want to be a negative statistic: another American who is obese and has children who are overweight. I want my kids to be happy and healthy.

Rant over: but I'm still signed up for a 5K!!!

Attention: We have a NSV!

I am so proud of myself! I actually completed a full day of C25K!! Now I know that it's not a huge deal to some people, and honestly, I've done days that I couldn't finish and I would continue onto the next day anyways, even though I didn't successfully complete a day. But I did it! I can say that I totally completed Week 5, Day 1 successfully. I ran a total of 15 minutes, and walked a total of 16 minutes, burning around 170 calories.

My food today was not the greatest, but I'm kind of confident that the scale will be going down again tomorrow. I snuck a peek earlier in the week and I was down 3 lbs. from last week - see I told you that it wasn't my real weight - which is awesome.

I was within my points this week, I tracked just about everything, but I definitely did not overeat and not track it, that's for sure. This morning while I was at school I sit at a table on the second floor of our campus center, right above the fast food place. Well today, I smelled bacon. Now I don't normally crave bacon, but this morning, I just had to have it, so I gave into the craving and got a bacon, egg and cheese wrap. I could have made myself a better one, but that's okay. I tracked it, and I went over my points today, but only by a few.

I'm supposed to be in class tonight, but I came home instead since the hubs had a rain day, well afternoon anyways, so I came home to relax with him.

I'll update tomorrow after my WI - keep your fingers crossed!

Fair Update

I'm not gonna lie, I think I did great at the fair! I tracked everything and I ate what I wanted! It was wonderful! If you remember my post from yesterday, I knew I wanted to eat a crab cake sandwich and cheese fries, which I did, and they were delicious. But I forgot about a gyro - omigosh, I LOVE gyros. I made a deal with the hubs, we'd split a gyro, and we did. I was so proud of myself. The only other thing that I had was 1/2 of my husband's large homemade root beer, man was that good. Normally I don't like soda, mostly because of the fizziness, and this one was not fizzy really at all, so I was chugging it down like it was water, but I tracked it, and that's all that matters!




I feel like this is a turning point in my weight loss journey. I *can* live a normal life and eat what I want and loose weight, I just need to track. It clicked! I need to plan and know what I'm going into, there's no reason for me to not eat a gyro at the fair, but I can share it instead of eating the whole thing myself. Really I didn't need to eat all those cheese fries either, but I had no one to share them with. Hubs had an apple dumpling and he's a skinny little thing so when he's full, he's full and there's not shoving any more food in him. But I really needed my cheese fries, so I tracked it all.

This weekend we'll be eating at home, because the end of the month is always the tightest part of the month for us, so I'll be cooking in this weekend. Hubs is working today, so I'm home alone. I *should* be working on my paper, and going for a run, but what am I doing? Watching food network. I know, not the best idea. Oh well. It's too hot to run. I slept in this morning, and it's too hot to go out now, so maybe I'll go out tonight. Oh wait, it's hot all day. Yeah, forget that, I'll drag hubs out of bed with me tomorrow to run with me. Maybe I'll do my walk away the lbs. this afternoon or something when I need a break, or a way to procrastinate. :)

Back to procrastinating...

Happy Saturday everyone!

Huge NSV! I tracked a weekend!

Seriously, I don't think I've ever tracked a weekend. Last summer when I lost 25 lbs. I never tracked. I worked a physically hard job, and lost 25 lbs. really without even trying. I could earn up to 15 APs a night just by working. Weekends were my time off. Having that as my habit, this year when I started WW again, I continued not tracking weekends. I know that's where I'm having problems, and why I've been stuck at the same weight for almost 2 months.

But this weekend was different. I had a plan. I tracked everything! I am SO proud of myself. I keep praying that I have like a 3 or 4 lb. loss so that I can see what WW does work, I know it does, but if I tracked all weekend and don't lose anything, it's gonna be really hard to keep going and track weekends.

Friday night I planned out what I was going to eat. We stopped at Sheetz on the way up to PA, and I got a 6 inch turkey sub w/ mustard and no cheese, fries, and a salad with ranch dressing. Saturday I had a Clif bar for breakfast, and I stopped at Sheetz for lunch and got a Cuban sandwich and a banana, and dinner I made a WW dinner for my parents. One thing I didn't plan was ice cream. Mr. Hubs has been craving ice cream from a local ice cream place all summer, so we had to go there. My initial plan was to have Chuck go with his friends and I would stay home and talk to my parents, but I was kidnapped, no, really. My husband called and said we're picking you up, we're in your driveway. I was annoyed, but oh well. Yesterday I had my oatmeal for breakfast before church, but my in laws decided to make another breakfast before we went hiking. That breakfast consisted of basically fried potatoes, eggs, turkey bacon andbuttered toast, but I tracked it all! We went hiking then, and I earned 9 APs! We took sandwiches, and I made a turkey sandwich on an Arnold's thin bread with mustard, and I did have a pack of crackers, but I tracked it. This is huge for me. I never track weekends, and I'm so proud of myself that I did.

Hopefully I can get a few runs in this week, and I do have my yoga class, too. I'm really praying for that scale to go down this week, and I'm praying that if it doesn't, I'll still keep tracking.

On a side note, I think my mom and I are going to NYC in November to see the Rockettes! I'm so excited!! My mom has been wanting to see them forever, and we finally get to go! It's a bus trip, my parents only live about 2 1/2 hours from NYC, and I'm super excited to go and see the Christmas tree outside Rockefeller Center!

I'm ready to face this week, minus the test, quiz and paper that I have this week. My plan is to work on my paper today since my bosses aren't here. I'm really going to try hard to get it done, that would be a huge weight off my shoulders. We didn't get back until really late last night, like always, so we couldn't go food shopping last night, and I have barely any fruits/vegs to eat today. I'm planning on going after work, and I need to finish my paper so I have the time to go.

Happy Monday everyone!

weekend update along with a few non scale victories!

I had a good, but not very productive weekend. I need to take advantages of the weekends that I'm home and do homework, but no, what did I do? Procrastinated. Go me. Friday night I have a few friends over and we watched movies and drank, nothing dramatic, but I wasn't counting points as I was shoveling pizza, brownies, ice cream and wine into my mouth. Saturday morning I made everyone scrambled eggs and potatoes - totally felt like a mom, it was awesome!

After the girls left, hubby and I cleaned up, and went shopping. Now, if you've been following for awhile, you know we're pretty tight on our budget, I've been trying really hard to keep a tight food budget, and not spend any extra money. When I suggested that we go to the outlets, I asked if I could buy a few things, and Chuck said it was okay. I got super excited. I had three things on my wish list, a brown sweater, jeans, and possibly shoes. What did I come home with? A trench, a sweater, 2 shirts, 4 tank tops, jeans, a pasta pot, an egg flipper, and a scrub brush. Yeah, not so much everything on my wish list. I got the jeans I wanted. The sweater I got wasn't a brown one either. That's a huge fail on my part. I could blame Chuck and say that he let me do it, but I knew better.

Anyways, it was done, and we went to Bob Evans for dinner. I got chicken parm, with a salad and had one roll. I was so beyond stuffed by the time my chicken parm came out, I only ate about 10 bites, but it looked like I ate nothing! I don't know why I was so stuffed. All I had all day was the eggs and potatoes that morning. So that was a NSV.

Another NSV - the jeans I bought from Levi's were a size 6. Last weekend I bought a size 8 - I originally wore a size 10. I thought I would use the size 6 jeans to motivate myself to lose more weight seeing as I've been stalling forever it seems, but it's my own fault. Anyways, I tried the jeans on once I got home, just to see how they fit and holy cow, they fit! Not like super comfortably, but I can get them up and buttoned! That's a size 6!!! I don't even know the last time I wore a size six. I should have gotten a size 4, wow, I can't even fathom fitting in a size 4. Maybe next time...

Yesterday, we slept in, even though we should have gotten up and gone to church, we're both not big fans of change, which is why we still haven't found a church in our area. It's easier to watch Charles Stanley at home then it is to meet new people and find a new church. I told him we have to find a church before we have kids. After a while, we went grocery shopping, and we went to Target where I finally got my brown sweater, along with yoga pants, and some luna/clif bars. We went to Walmart, too, and I finally kept the food budget under $100! Yay me! That's another NSV - we're up to four NSVs if you're keeping count. ;)

I finally started on my homework around 2pm, and read for religion and anthropology, then I made dinner - tacos! - and we decided to go play tennis. I remember when we started playing tennis, I would walk to get the ball, not give it my all, and no way would I really run after the ball. While we were playing, it hit me - I was running, sprinting to hit the ball back, running to pick up the ball when I missed, and it felt great! Another NSV - that's 5 NSVs in one weekend!

After we played for 45 minutes, Chuck and I decided to run, it was so cool out, and it was just perfect weather. Now my husband is 6 foot, and I'm only 5'1", so he has these monsterous legs compared to mine. He's naturally more in shape than I am - construction worker - and can run faster, but we actually ran together. We've decided we're going to try to run together Mon/Wed/Fri every week. That way I don't have to get up at 5:30am everyday to run, seeing as I don't like running when it's quite that dark. And it's getting cold in the morning, not cool, which is the reason I was doing it this summer, but cold. We'll just play it by ear, and I really hope that we can run together, I would love to have a running buddy, someone to motivate me and keep me accountable. Maybe I'll keep getting up in the morning and I can do my 30 Day Shred which I haven't done in literally, more than a month.

One last minor NSV - I had one taco for dinner yesterday. One taco! Granted I was kind of munching all day on Tositoes and salsa/cheese, but I only had chips, leftover chicken parm, and one taco yesterday. I think that's pretty good for me, don't ya think?

All in all, other than spending money and not being productive school-wise, it was a fairly awesome weekend. I'm ready to keep loosing weight this week, especially with Chuck to help motivate me and keep me accountable :)

Have a great Monday!