Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Lost. Unfocused. Overwhelmed. Frustrated.

My emotional state right now is not great. I work three jobs. I'm tired, stressed and frustrated with so many things about each of those jobs right now. Mostly little things, but little things that add up. And weigh on my mind. So I don't sleep well. Then I don't feel well. Then I don't eat well and I certainly don't exercise well. And I get grumpier. And more stressed. And this endless cycle repeats, day after day, until something snaps me out of it.

So I'm stressing right now and not eating well. Not exercising at all outside of riding a few times a week (which has been sporadic, at best, other than my lesson). My weight has gone back up a bit, which pisses me off. I know better than this, but anger at myself doesn't help me -- just pushes me to say screw it and walk away.

But I will NOT walk away this time. I will work though this. I don't know how and I don't know how long it will take me. But I will reach my goals. All of them.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Week Three, here I come!

It's officially been two weeks today. Two weeks of trying, failing, succeeding, feeling good, feeling bad. Two weeks of real life, where I've managed to make some small changes, to incorporate some ideas into my routine.

What has worked:
1. Taking water with me for the drive to work. For some reason, if I'm in the car, I can drink water. Dunno why, but hey, I'm not complaining. I get 24 ounces in on the way to work, and I'm almost half way to my 8 cups for the day.

2. Tracking what I eat. I mentioned before that I use Spark People to track. It's easy, fairly convienent and has a pretty wide variety of foods already entered. I haven't needed to enter many of my own, which is nice. And a neat option -- they also have a recipe calculator where you enter your recipe ingredients/amounts and how many servings it prepares, and voila! calories and nutrients calculated.

3. Working out. Ok, so this has kind of worked. I have been riding 2-3 times a week (good cardio, also good upperbody/core workout thanks to the Smirk pony who can be a little bit of a pain in the rear), and have been trying to walk/jog/skate 2 times a week with the hubby and dogs.

About the gym membership.... I have one, but don't use it often so will probably cancel it in the next few weeks. We started out the year doing pretty well at going 3x/week after work but recently that's becoming increasingly hard as we've both become busy with some projects outside of work (church, photography, etc).  So I think our plan is to cancel the gym membership, save the $75/month and purchase some of our own (small) equipment and maybe a bike for me. Hopefully that will work out!

What hasn't worked:
Confession: I made cookies yesterday. And ate batter. And cookies. I'm still not thinking healthy yet. If I'm not on guard 24/7, I slip into my old habbits. Like yesterday. And like a few days ago, when I was feeling sorry for myself and let that influence my choices. I'm still not out of the mindset of feeding my emotion, feeding my issues.

So, with all of that in mind, here are my goals for this week:

1. To be mindful of what I'm doing, and why I am doing it. I read somewhere this week that someone asks herself "Is eating this going to make today a better day?" before she picks up a cookie, or a brownie, etc. So true!  There will be pie and cookies and all of that good stuff tomorrow. and the next day. and the day after. There's no reason I need to eat that today (or even tomorrow!).

2. Continue to exercise. I would really like to be consistently working out 5x/week in some form. Last week I worked out 4x. I'm planning for 5 this week! :)

3. Continue to track every. little. bite.  There have been a few days the last two weeks that I haven't tracked, for various reasons. If I can't get near a computer to track this week, I will write down what I'm eating. No excuses!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Yay!

Just quickly had to blog two exciting (if small) successes already this week:

1. I managed to get all of my water in Monday and Tuesday (and am half way through todays!). Bringing it in the car with me on the way to work really helps!

2. I ran last night, the first time in a long time. Well, running might be a strong verb for what I did -- jogging is probably a little more accurate. BUT, I jogged 1.5 miles without stopping! And probably could have gone a little further, but at that point, Annie was completely pooped out (Jared did a few skating sprints with her at the beginning of our run.... not so helpful for the endurance!).

So yay! for small successes.... because they lead to larger ones. :)  Happy Wednesday!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Week one update

Well, it's the end of week one. I definitely had some successes, and I most certainly had some less than successful days! So here's how I faired on my goals:

1. Weight loss -- I'm down two pounds this week! I fluctuated a lot, and was actually down 4 pounds at one point, but am rounding out the week with a wonderful 2 pound loss. It's very motivating! I tracked probably 75% of what I ate this week using sparkpeople.com, will do this more in the upcoming week.

2. Exercise -- Okay, so I was a slacker here. I definitely did some exercise, but not nearly as much as I wanted/planned. I rode Monday and Wednesday, and lifted on Tuesday. Thursday-Sunday? Not so much. Although, I did shoot a wedding on Saturday, which means that I was on my feet and moving for about 10 hours, so that's got to count for something! That also means that yesterday I was exhausted and therefore a total slacker. :)

3. Water -- Again, I had some good days, and some bad days with this. I had one day where I got all 8 cups of water. I think planning better is the key to this - if I have water to drink on the way into work, that helps.

Goals for this coming week:

1. Track everything I eat. Not just when it's easy or convenient (or I'm procrastinating doing something else, ahem).  


2. Go to the gym at least twice, and do cardio and lifting while I'm there. No slacking! Ride at least three times this week too. :)


3. Water, water, water!


4. I had another one for here.... but I can't remember! 


Here's to a great water-drinking, exercising, food tracking week! 

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Day one, gone

The first few days of any diet are always the easiest for me... I'm super motivated, I usually have found a new website to play with (ahem, www.sparkpeople.com) and I can stay on track. So yesterday was pretty easy. I tracked everything I ate, stayed within my limits, and exercised. Oh, and can I just say that I love that riding counts as exercise? It's so much more fun than the gym, even though I know it's not nearly as good of a workout (i.e. I'm not sore the next day, and normally I don't get as winded while riding as I do on a treadmill/eliptical). BUT, it still counts, and on the little Smirk pony, it's more of a core workout than riding most horses! So my 2-3 rides a week definitely count as workout time.

The one goal I did not achieve yesterday was getting in all of my water. I planned a little better for that today, and brought an extra water bottle with me to work. I plan to drink one bottle during lab meeting and at least one more during the afternoon. I'll try to fit in an extra this evening -- after I hit up the gym! I'll be meeting the hubby at the gym after I teach this afternoon, and the plan is to do some lifting and cardio.

My challenge for tomorrow is that we are going out to dinner, to Outback. I LOVE Outback (well, steakhouses in general).  In prep for this, I am going to plan out my meal in advance, look at their menu online and choose something healthy -- and then hold myself to it.

For now, I'm headed back to my morning tea (peppermint tea with splenda -- no caffeine, no calories!). Have a lovely day!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Hello, world!

and welcome to my blog... I'm pretty new to this right now, but this is a place where I plan to keep track of my life, the lifestyle changes I'm wanting to make, and my general thoughts and opinions. I was inspired to start this blog, and really to get my butt back on the track to a healthier lifestyle, by my friend Sara, who blogs with Losing it in Ottawa. I'll be back later with more about my plan for this space, but for now, I want to lay out my goals for the whole world to see -- because I'm counting on all of you to help keep me accountable!

My goals:

1. Loose weight - target weight is 140.  I'm at 158 right now.

2. Exercise more! I want to work up to working out five times a week. Gonna be tough with my schedule, but I know I can do it.

3. Drink more water. I'm horrible at this -- I'll drink anything to avoid drinking water....

Okay world. Here I come.....