Finally Friday - TGIF!

I feel like this week has gone on forever. I also feel like I've been on an emotional roller coaster this week. I don't really know why, but I was so down, I'd be willing to say depressed, for 2 days, and now I'm all good. I'm just frustrated with a lot of things, but I know that everything happens for a reason, and God has a plan for it all.

I'm so happy it's Friday, and normally it's WI day, buuuut I've been having a problem with being a daily weigher and it's taken a toll on me, so I had the hubs hide the scale on me. I'm thinking of going to WI every other Friday rather then every Friday. I don't know if this will hurt or hinder me, but it's worth a shot. I still don't think I've lost anything, and I know it's because I'm not really tracking perfectly, I ate garbage this week, but I'm aware of that and blame my monthly present from mother nature for that. I haven't been exercising as much as I should. I wish I had the time to spend hours at the gym, but I don't. I have time to do about a 30 minute something in the morning if I choose to get up, and maybe a 30 minute walk, but only on Mondays and Wednesdays, maybe Fridays and the weekend. I know all this, but I still feel like I can't change anything. I want to be thin, I want to be healthy, I want to eat cleaner, real foods, but I'm stuck in a rut.

I confess - on Wednesday I wanted Kraft mac & cheese so bad, so that's what we had for dinner: Kraft mac & cheese with hot dogs, but at least I made broccoli with it. For whatever reason, I didn't buy enough food for this week, some of it went bad, and I had virtually nothing to eat for lunch or dinner yesterday since I need to take it to school with me so what did I buy? Chicken fingers and fries. Now my school doesn't really have any fast healthy options, no lie on that, so I gave in to the fried goodness.

This weekend we're going up to PA to see the family - both of them, mine and hubs'. I'm going to track, I'm going to tell Chuck this and he's going to help remind me to track. I have my dinner planned out for tonight, we're going to Sheetz because my hubby is cheap and eats 2 hot dogs for 99 cents, I'm getting a turkey sub w/o cheese and some lettuce, pickles and mustard. Maybe I'll steal a few of hubs' fries...
I'm taking packets of oatmeal to eat for breakfast tomorrow and Sunday morning. Tomorrow evening I'm going to make a WW meal for my parents - Pasta with tomatoes, herb and feta, which is originally Cappellini with tomatoes, herbs and goat cheese, but I changed it a bit. We're also going to have some asparagus and I might poach some chicken in chicken broth to mix in because I know my dad won't be very happy if there's no meat in this meal. So that's planned. The only meals I won't know will be tomorrow's lunch and Sunday lunch and dinner. Normally I eat like a pig on the weekends, and don't track, so I'll keep myself accountable and I'll be able to stay OP.
Sunday we're going hiking, kayaking and canoeing with my in-laws. I'm super excited for the kayaking/canoeing part. I'm not a big hiker, but I'll go along just to have some socialization. Hopefully I'll get some hardcore APs in, and I'll make up for whatever junk I'll be eating for lunch and dinner, although I'll try to be good.

Whew! I feel good now that I have a plan. That's what I need to do. No matter where I go, I can easily have a 3 or 4 point healthy breakfast if I take my cereal or my oatmeal. I can do this, I can beat this plateau (I know it's not really a plateau, but I'm calling it that to make myself feel better).

mini pity party

Holy cow, where did September go? It's halfway through the month already! I figured I would look back on my September goals and see where I am. I have a HUGE feeling that I'm failing pretty drastically. I've been feeling down this week, my weight loss has come to a stop, and I know that it's my own fault because I eat whatever every weekend.

I hate school, okay, I don't hate it, but I really don't like it. I've become a stronger Christian since I've been married and going to a very liberal school full time again just annoys me, no one has any values or morals. I'm trying to help my brother find a school and while I'm doing that, I find a school that I *should have* listened to my mom 4 years ago because she told me to go visit it. I *should have* gone there because it would have been awesome, they have a degree in peace and conflict studies! Seriously?! Why, oh why, didn't I listen to my mom. Now don't get me wrong, I've found my three best friends at my current school and wouldn't give them up for the world, but I would have loved to have gone to a Christian school.

Along with baby fever, I don't like going to school with women who think that I'm nuts for wanting to have kids at age 21 and not go back to work ever. I want some Christian friends that understand why I feel that way. On that note, one of my best friends just came back from Germany for a year, and she was opinionated before but now she's ever more opinionated. She really thinks I'm nuts for wanting to have kids, period. I feel like she never takes anyone else's opinion into consideration.

I feel like I need a change. I really wish I could go back in time and go to a Christian college. Then I'm trying to help my brother who wants to go to community college for two years because it's cheap, which is true, but I'm so against staying and home and going to school. I feel like you need to move away and be on your own, become independent and free from your parents. Make mistakes, learn from them. Eat chocolate for dinner every night without your mom telling you to eat your veggies. Student loans are NOT that bad. Yes, it sucks, but if you're smart with how much you take out, and get a work study job, you can do it. I'm trying to see if it really is a good idea for my brother to go to a community college, then I think that I'm trying to live through him to go to the Christian school that I would have loved to go to.

Pity party over, I hope. I need to get out of this funk, take every day at a time and make life a masterpiece.

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!

9/11 - never forget

I know that this post should have come yesterday, but better late then never, I think.

9 years ago, on September 11, 2001, I was in 7th grade. We were all at an assembly about some club that helped out the less fortunate. Of course, boring assembly, but it got me out of class. As the assembly was over, I walked back to my second period history class with Mr. Casagrande, on the second floor of the Middle School and there it was, on the TV - the towers were on fire. Now being in 7th grade, I couldn't fully understand what was going on, where these towers were exactly - in 5th grade, incidentally, when we went to NYC for our field trip, I took pictures of the towers and labeled them twin "stacks" in my photo album - and why someone would hit them with a plane. Mr. Casagrande explained to us that these towers were in New York City and someone wanted to target the U.S. and kill innocent people. We spent the rest of the period just watching the TV.

Once class was over, and we all walked out into the hallway, panic started to set it. Living in Northeastern PA, a lot of students had family that lived in NYC, and they didn't know if they were okay. The rest of the day, for whatever reason, all my classes went on normally. Mr. Casagrande was the only teacher who put the news on. I don't even think I knew that the Pentagon was hit until I got home and watched the news, not that I would have even known what that would have been. Our school was more focused on NYC, since we were closer. We were completely detached from the attack on the Pentagon.

As I got home, I met up with my brother, who was only in 3rd grade, and I don't know that he understood what was going on either. My dad picked us up at the bus stop and we talked about it on the 30 second drive home. I remember going home and realizing that my mom had no clue what was going on. She was a stay at home mom at the time, and didn't turn the TV on all day, so she didn't know anything happened. I just remember going home and all 4 of us sitting watching the news and what happened.

I wish I was older and had more of a concept of what was going on, but I was only 12 and had a limited amount of knowledge as to what was going on. I remember seeing the paper in the upcoming days and I remember seeing the ESPN magazine and seeing that nothing happened the week following. It was weird. I also remember finding out that the plane in Shanksville crashed, because it was in Pennsylvania, even though NYC was closer, the fact that something happened IN PA was scary.

Never forget those who were involved in the 9/11 attacks, I continue to pray for those who were affected by that day. Never forget those NYPD and NYFD who gave their lives to save just a few more people. Never forget those brave individuals who so courageously decided to stand up to the hijackers on United 93 and crashed the plane in Shanksville, rather than killing who knows how many people by hitting whatever building the plane was aimed for, possibly in Washington DC.

May God bless America!

weekend update along with baby fever

I had a wedding to go to on Saturday, I didn't eat like a pig, but I ate, and enjoyed the food. I keep wanting to slap myself in the forehead for doing this EVERY WEEKEND! Really though, I should embrace it, just know that I'll probably not track every weekend, but focus on eating real food, getting my GHG's and tracking really well during the week. I can still loose weight, it might not be as fast as I could, but slow and steady wins the race.

In other words, a member of my family is pregnant. I'm so super excited for her, but this puts baby fever in the foreground of my mind. I've always wanted to be a mom, always, and that is my number one dream job. Yes, you can think I'm crazy but I don't care about finishing school, I know in my heart that God created me to be a mom. It's interesting, we were talking about my sister-in-law going to get her Ph.D., my other sister-in-law is going for her master's and I'm quite content with my bachelor's degree once I have it in May. I just had a picture in my mind of my sisters-in-law and me in 5 years. I'll be chasing babies around the house, and I can just picture the one who is really just about a genius, giving some fancy talk about something smart, and I'll just have my kids. I don't feel resentful at all regarding that either. That's what I want to do.

Honestly, the only thing that is holding us back from having kids is money. And I HATE that money is the only thing, it's not that we're not ready to be parents, or we need to grow up first. We don't care about taking any trips to Europe and having just "us" time before we have kids. None of that matters to us. We just don't have the MONEY to do it. We know it's not smart to bring a child into this world without having financial stability. I got a refund check from my college, and that paid off one of our credit cards. We'll get another one in January which will pay off another card and we'll be left with just one more credit card. I'm despretely hoping that we can pay that off rather quickly and have kids. I know I'm young and we should enjoy our time together, but that's like putting off college, in my mind, because of something. This is my dream, this is what I want to do, this is all I want to do.

Anyways, all the more reason to stay on my WW journey and get down to a healthy weight so that I can be healthy for my babies and live until they're old and gray. If I don't think I need to do this for me, then I need to do it for them. Our baby bucket list includes paying off credit cards and me being at a healthy weight. I need to get down to the healthy weight before we're done paying off the cards, I don't want me to have to be waiting on me to loose the weight.

back to tracking...

Okay, so I gained this week. It's not a total shocker, I used the excuse of not counting points so that I could splurge on peanut butter, and trail mix. Oh, I had a piece of cake this week, too. I only worked out Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm still trying to find balance between everything, but I have the sweetest husband ever! Thursdays I have late class, so Chuck does laundry, feeds himself, and usually whatever other chores he can find. This is after he works a 10 hour day, outside, in the 95 degree DC heat. When I came home last night, he rearranged the furniture in the living room and put the desk in there so that I have a desk to do my homework on. He also bought me flowers! And they were pink - my favorite color! He's such a great guy, and I have no idea how I snatched him before someone else did.

Anyways, back to weight loss. After seeing that I DO need something keeping me accountable, that just wanting to loose weight doesn't magically make you loose that weight. With that said, I'm back to tracking. It was nice to not have to track for a few weeks. I didn't do terrible, I have my normal foods, I still got recipes off of WW and ate my veggies and such, but as I mentioned before, my downfall was peanut butter and trail mix.

After weighing myself this morning, I was determined to plan out everything, and I mean everything, that I'm going to put in my mouth in the next week. Okay, not everything, I'm still having trouble with weekends. This weekend I'll be at my cousin's house in PA, and we have a wedding to go to tomorrow, but I'm going to try to make healthy choices, really, I am. So I planned out what I'm going to eat for Tues - Fri of next week. I'm hoping that I can see the scale go down a few pounds, but we'll see.

Once I was done for next week, I decided that I was having fun, and that I really wanted to use a couple good recipes that I found, so I planned out the following week, too (not including weekends). Next weekend we're home, and I usually do really good at home. I have a lot of reading to do, and homework, so hopefully that will keep me on track. We might go out shopping on Saturday, so I'll have to watch myself if we go out to eat. I'm so sick of being stuck only having lost 10 lbs. since MAY! I should be down 20 lbs. I know it's my own fault, I'm just not staying on track. As others have said, "if you kind of do WW, it only kind of works".

Especially with me not working out as much as I would have liked, and I don't have the time to now, so I need to make sure I stick to my points and the weight will come off.

Another thing I did: I deleted all my previous history on the WI tracker on e-tools. Now when I had the idea, I thought it was going to be like starting fresh, like restarting WW on September 1. Nope, not so, it still has where I was when I started LAST YEAR! So now I just have a straight line for 15 months saying that I was stuck at 169.6 for those 15 months. Oh well, I'm just glad I can kind of start with a clean slate. All my food is planned out, and I CAN do this! I WILL do this!

"I can do all things through Him, who gives me strength."
- Phil. 4:13

i missed the hogwarts express again!

It's September first, and that means I've missed the Hogwarts Express again (yes, I know that Hogwarts is NOT real, but a girl can still dream, right?), and I'm stuck in reality, but it's a new month, with new possibilities, a fresh new start.

Another good thing about September is that I can start playing Christmas music. I know that it's only September, but for a girl who had a Christmas themed wedding, I'll play Christmas music as early as I would like, thank you very much! :)

I'm still on my "test" of succeeding at losing weight without WW, and I'm not doing very well. I think it's because I'm eating nuts and PB just about every day, and I know that I'm not eating lower points things to make up for that. I'm pretty sure I'll be facing a gain this week, which is proof that I NEED to count points. I was hoping that I could quit WW and not have to pay, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet.

Balancing school, WW, working and being a wife is hard work. I just can't find that perfect balance that I need in order to succeed this semester. I think I got spoiled because I was only working for the first 8 months of our marriage and I could come home and cuddle with the hubby and watch tv for 4 hours if I wanted. Now, I don't have time to do that, I have reading to do. Chuck knows that, and he's trying to help, but he doesn't understand the amount that I have to read every night to stay on top of things. I have really easy classes, I know I do, and I love that, but I still have to read just about every night.

I think I'll really plan out my meals for next week, including points values, that will be homework in and of itself. I need to lose this weight, my average weekly loss is 0.3 - 0.3! That's terrible! I can plan everything now, and I need to. I'm still doing C25K, generally, every morning, so I know that weight loss will slow down because I'm not exercising as much as I've been since May. So I need to be super consious about my food intake so that I can still lose weight.

Now to go over my goals from August and judge myself on them.

• Harder work ethic - I did okay. I'm not saying I did as well as I would have liked, but I think I'm working more than I was. Granted, some of that could be a result of only working 3x/week and I have to work during those three days to stay on top, but still.
• Better Christian - I like to think that I am, but I'm not. I'm not praying and turning to God as much as I should be. I'm not reading my Bible every day, only when it's convenient.
• More responsible with money - Honestly, I think I succeeded with this. I didn't buy anything for myself unless I needed it. I've kept food shopping as cheap as possible.
• Stick to a budget - Continuing with the last goal, I've done better, but not as good as I should be, I'll continue working on this, especially because we have less money to work with now that I'm in school.
• Continue C25K - Finally, an actual success. I have continued C25K, although I think I'm going to change it up to jogging for a certain length of time, straight up, then walking. I get so tired if I alternate walking and jogging, I'd rather just jog.
• Track weekends - Fail. Seeing as I haven't tracked anything since the beginning of August, this is a MAJOR fail.
• Meet GHGs - Another success. I've been very conscious about what I'm putting in my mouth, and I think this month I'm going to work on eating "cleanly"
• Workout 10x week - Nope, didn't meet this one either. I have made an effort to workout though, and that's more than I could say I did 6 months ago.

All in all, it was a pretty bad month. I started the month at 170.6 and ended it at 169 ish. That's terrible. I don't feel better than I did, and yes, the life changing is very much so sinking in, but I need to show it on the scale, stop eating everything all weekend and indulging in what I want to eat.

Now for September's goals

Non weight loss goals:

• Don't get behind on schoolwork
• Read my Bible and pray daily
• Keep on a food budget
• Be more outgoing, and don't be afraid to talk to people
• Be kinder to my husband, he's doing a lot for me, and sometimes I just take all my stress out on him

WW goals:

• Continue jogging - either C25K or just jogging
• Start weight lifting
• Track, track, track
• Eat cleaner foods. Stick to real food, not food products, even if it means sacrificing points to do so.
• Do pushups daily