Goodbye SparkPeople! Hi again, WW...

Yes, I will be back on WW now. I liked Spark People, I wanted it to work, but I think it's my own fault that it didn't work, for me, as well as I would have liked. I loved that I could eat peanut butter without having a serious cut in my points. I need the good fat, but I'm not content with a pb&banana sandwich being 9 points on WW, I'll get my good fat in other ways.

I know I went to Olive Garden this past weekend, but I thought I did good. And yes, I may have snuck some fries in last night for dinner, but I only ate half of them. I'm just frustrated right now and I'm sick of tracking what I eat.

The reason behind this switch was my WI this morning - I maintained. Now I had/have (not sure if I still do) a goal of being 150 by Christmas. I started the month of Oct. at 165, I figured 5lbs./month and I could easily get there. Well I forgot to factor in my fantastic week of the month where I gain or maintain because of my "being a woman", if ya know what I mean. I'll keep going, but I'm frustrated. I've been running this week, too, and maybe I just didn't drink enough water or something. I want to have a bangin' week, I haven't seen one of those in a month. I need to track everything, honestly, and truthfully. I've been planning my meals out, mostly, and sticking to them. I've been getting all my GHGs in.

On a side note, the hubs didn't get paid for his overtime he worked last week, and we're just barely making it by, and it's his birthday and I really wanted to go out to eat tonight, but he said we don't have the money, but it's his birthday! I know he just has to talk to the accountant, at least I hope and think so, and they'll pay him for it. What a crappy Friday, is it time to go home yet?

As for this weekend's plans, we're going to my cousin's house tomorrow after Chuck gets off work. At least I'll be able to get a run in either tonight or tomorrow, and I can eat a good, healthy breakfast and lunch before who knows what I'll eat for dinner. Sunday is Chuck's birthday, so who knows what I'll eat then, too. I just need to be smart, and make a conscious effort to stay on track.

I'll probably post tomorrow and do a monthly recap, not so excited for that, I don't think I've done very well.

Running Update/Thoughts on WI tomorrow

Just a quick update - last night I ran 20 minutes STRAIGHT! I finally realized it, I need to eat something before I run, the whole running at 5:30am was not doing me any favors. And pace. This is a no-brainer, if you run too fast, you won't be able to keep your stamina up and you'll run out of steam. With this in mind last night, I had every intention of just doing Week 5, Day 2 again, and fully completing it, but I thought that I could maybe do Day 3 - the dreaded 20 minute run. I figured I would just run as far as I could and if I did Day 2, that was fine, but if I did Day 3, that'd be even better. It was even better. I ran almost about 1 1/2 miles I think, and was so stoked about it! I know I can do this 5K!

Now, tomorrow is my WI. I'm totally not sure what to expect. I haven't really tracked on WW--I've been using Spark People to track, and I've stayed within my calories/fat all week, except for Monday, but I only went over by a little. It was by no stretch of the imagination a binge. I also burned over 1,000 calories with my running, walking, and playing tennis. With all that laid out, I should lose, but I might be building muscle, and therefore the scale might not reflect what I've done. Also because I'm doing SP instead of WW, I think I've used more points, but we'll see.

I think I'll keep tracking with SP, maybe through next week, and see if it has any impact on my weight loss, and we'll evaluate it from there. I'll let you know what the verdict is tomorrow morning. Now I'm going to find something to do during my 2 1/2 hr. super boring, dumb, computer class where everyone else has laptops, except me. Awesome.

I can eat Red Robin and STILL stay within my daily calories?

Yes, you read that correctly. It's a friend's birthday today and she wants us all to go to Red Robin. Red Robin has to be my almost favorite restaurant, I have quite a number of favorite chain restaurants, but anyways yes, Red Robin. Yum! I normally get either a Whiskey River BBQ Chicken Wrap, a Whiskey River BBQ Chicken or normal burger. I love the bbq sauce and most of all, on the burgers, I love the onion straws. I wanted to plan this one out, I know that last time I went to Red Robin, I ended up eating 37 points, and I did not want to do that again. I'm going to get a Whiskey River BBQ chicken burger with no mayo, no cheese, and no tomato. That cut down 300 calories. I added it in my SP, along with everything else I'm eating today, and I didn't go over my calories! I was so excited, I thought I'd for sure go over, but the only thing I went over in was calcium. Super excited! I might steal one of the hubs french fries, but I will stick to my burger and enjoy the delicious fried onion straws.

Over the weekend I kept tracking mostly on SP, but along with WW. I keep using weeklies, which is what I know they're there for, but I normally don't use them during the week. It's hard for me to see them going down when I'm not really using them for anything really bad for me like I'm used to. I guess this is how I should be breaking down my weeklies and dailies.

Yesterday the hubs and I went to church, followed by a trip to Lowes. Why Lowes you ask? Well two reasons: 1) I love Christmas and they have Christmas decorations out, and 2) I don't feel compelled to buy anything there. I wanted to get out of the house, really I wanted to go shopping, but I know we have NO money for that sort of thing. When I go to Lowes or Home Depot, I can dream. I know we're going to build our own house, and I can dream of the huge kitchen that I know isn't really realistic. We walked around Lowes, dreaming of our house, and then we went home and watched football.

I ate pretty well this weekend, I even ate when I wasn't hungry, which I know I need to work on, but it's so hard because when it's dinnertime, I want to eat something. Saturday I made choc. chip cookies, so I munched on a few of those throughout the weekened, tracking most of them. I had a ballin' C25K day on Saturday, and we played tennis last night. I even got a compliment out of the hubs! He told me that I looked skinnier than the last time we played tennis :) He knows the way to my heart. I can tell that I have a lot more energy now when we play than when we started playing. I actually run after the ball now, and not walk. I can also pick the ball off the ground without using my racket to push myself back up. I'm impressed with the change that I'm encountering, and I'm proud of myself, super proud. I know I can keep truckin' and I'll get to that goal weight, whatever it may be.

WI Friday & update on C25K and SP v. WW

And I'm down! Yay! I'm down 3 lbs. since my WI last Friday, and I'm down 0.6 lbs. since my last real WI. Again, I don't really count last Friday as a "real WI" only because I knew I didn't drink my water, salty foods, TOM, etc. I knew I didn't really gain those 2 lbs. I'm a little bit weary about my goal to be down to 150 by Christmas. I thought 5 lbs/month was totally doable, but when I factor in my usual gain due to TOM, I'm not so sure I can do it. I'll keep trying, of course, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't get to it.

I'm going to try to get more exercise in, too. I still am feeling awesome from my completed day of C25K last night, and I know I need to continue with the program. It's working, I just need to find the time to do it. Over the summer, I got up at 5:30am and did it. That's when it was coolest, and I didn't mind it. Now I still don't mind getting up at 5:30am, but it is so dark! During the summer the sun would start to come up as I was finishing up, but now it's pitch black, and a little bit too cold to run/walk.

With that said, I'm thinking that maybe I could go out in the eveing. Monday and Wednesday preferably, but that always depends on how my homework goes. Tuesday and Thursday I don't need to be at school until about 8:15, so realistically I could get up around 6:30, it would be a little lighter, and do it then. Really, I think the honest answer is that I'm going to have to just work the week and see how it goes. If I know I'll have a lot of homework Wednesday night, then I'll hold off until Thursday morning to go out. If I have time, I'll do it Wednesday evening.

Update on SP vs. WW: I'm still stuck. I know that I need to pick one, tracking on both is driving me up a wall, I think. I tracked all my food on WW and I was perfect on my DP. I tracked the same food on SP and I'm under my calories, fat, carbs, and protein - what the heck? So I picked my favorite snack - an apple and PB and added that in, and I'm perfect on SP, in the range of everything. Now the dilemma: should I track that apple and PB for 6 points on WW? It's a new week, and I have my weeklies that I can use, but that's 6 points - that's a lot of points. Maybe I should just focus on SP and not WW, but I know WW works, and it's so hard!

Who else is having this dilemma? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

WW or Sparkpeople?

I'm loving my day off. I was debating on going to work tomorrow. I know we could use the money, but I feel like today is my cooking day, and tomorrow is my homework day. That's what I think I'm going to do.

Speaking of saving money, I feel like I can maybe, maybe, maybe quit paying for WW and switch to Spark People. For those of you who don't know, Spark People is a free weight loss website. You can tell it how much weight you plan to lose, and it recommends a certain timeline for that. Instead of doing points, you track calories, fat, carbs, and protein, among whatever else kind of nutrients you would like to track. It lets you know if you've gone over your nutrients or under them. I feel like it's more realistic than WW is. WW is definitely easier, but if you want to find out what you're putting in your body, then Spark People is the way to go.

The only hesitation that I have with dropping WW is that it's so much easier to do it when you're going out, all you need is calories, fat and fiber. With that said, Spark People is free, which sounds better than $17/month, obviously. But in order to add something to Spark People, you need all the NI, not just those three things. Another thing that I am annoyed with is that I would have to transfer all my recipes to Spark People, it's just easier to keep the points.

I know that a lot of people on the 20's WW board are switching to Spark People because it teaches you a lot more, which it definitely does. That's the only problem that I have with WW is that the smaller the points value, the more you can eat, but you might not be eating real food; a lot of chemically altered food is super low in points, and people eat it because of that, but it's not teaching you anything. I love to cook and I want to eat healthy and teach my family to eat healthy, too.

So I'm still stuck between the two. I can do both, and I have been doing them both, but I've been more continuous with WW than Spark People, mostly because if I make a recipe that I already know the points for, then I don't have to worry about adding the recipe to the recipe builder, I can just add the points and be done, while I can't do that on Spark People. I think I'll keep doing both, and we'll see about switching to free Spark People.

If you've done Spark People - what did you think?