Gained a half a pound

I needed a cute picture up here to brighten my day. So here is a cute puppy that looks really bored or maybe giving someone those cute puppy eyes that say PLEASE can I have what I want.

So I did my weigh in this morning and I was a half a pound up. I had an idea the was coming. I ate like crap Saturday and some of Sunday. I didn't go over my weekly points but I didn't do any real working out either.

So today I still have like 6 daily points left and I have 6 activity points. I walked the dog myself for an hour today and then with my hubby we went out again for almost anther hour. Plus I played a few minutes of Your Shape we got in from Gamefly. I wanted to try it before we buy it and already it works much better than the other game.

 I plan to play that tomorrow before or after my shift tomorrow. It depends on how I feel when I get up and what the weather is like. If I am really tired when I get up then I will wait until after my shift. I only work from 11-2 so I can fit it in. If the weather is  pretty good again I need to take the dog for another walk without the hubby. She has decided since I have not walked her all winter she is the boss. She is not behaving for me at all when we are out so It is back to a training collar of some sort so she can learn to listen to me again. I can't be dragged around by a German Shepherd it makes for a difficult walk.

This week I am prepared for the days at the end of the week when my fresh veggies and fruit might go bad. I got plenty of fresh for most of the week but if they don't last I also got a bunch of frozen. I went to Sams and saw they had giant bags of the few veggies I like and of fruit like strawberries, blueberries and a mix with papaya, mangoes and pineapple with no sugar added. If they are not super sweet I can add a tiny bit of sugar but I shouldn't need to. I can also make my favorite syrup and pancakes where I just put my choice of fruit in my food processor and then pour it into a pan with 1tablespoon of sugar and heat and serve. I have a whole wheat pancake mix that needs used.

So this week is off to a great start. I work a lot of short shifts and even twice in one day but I think I can get a work out in a few days this week and if it stays above freezing I can take a lot of walks with my hubby and Asuka the German Shepherd who wants to pull my arm off so she can go swim in all the giant puddles. I should have some weight loss this week if I keep on task with my eating and working out.

The has been one thing that has really been bothering me and I think I may have solved the problem last night. I can't seem to fall asleep no matter what time I go to bed I have not been able to fall asleep for at least an hour. I took a night time cold medicine pill to see if it would help. It did I was out in about 20 minutes. So next time I go to the store I will get something for sleep. I don't want to keep taking cold pills but I need the sleep. So I am going to try to go to bed around the same time every-night and get up around the same time everyday. Hopefully once I develop a pattern I won't need to take anything. If I still can't fall asleep right away I will go to my doctor and make sure it is safe to take the over the counter stuff for long periods.

Work, Work and More Work.

My week has been a little strange this week with all the extra shifts I picked up. I had trouble organizing my time around my shifts. I work at home so I should have done better. It was my first week without an overnight shift. My 12.5 hour shift is a day shift now. I liked it much better and I have been sleeping better.


This week went well except that I didn't organize my free time as well as I should have. I had plenty of time to work out and get blogs posted and clean but I just didn't.  On a typical day I only work 3-4 hours so if I were to organize my time I could get a lot more done. 


Lets move on from my first mistake this week to the second one. I did very well on my eating plan until yesterday. As I said I was home working a 12.5 hour shift and the phones were ringing a lot more than my overnight shift. I got hungry and I had nothing planned for dinner and not much healthy left for the week. My back up Smart Ones pizza was not going to be enough and I was all out of lunch meat and veggies to snack on. I was not prepared and I let myself get so hungry that I ate 5 pieces of the pizza I ordered. I ordered thing crust but I am kind of sure that was a mistake this time. I might have felt full faster if I had ordered regular crust. 


For God only knows what reason I still didn't feel full. I didn't eat anymore because I knew I was being ridiculous as it was. I finished a little over half a medium pizza and I am have no idea how many points that is but I am just going to say it is all my weekly points and maybe then some. I ordered pizza because it could all be done online between calls. I didn't have to put any calls on hold and my hubby would be up by the time the pizza guy came to the door. I should have ordered Chinese but every time I tried to do something for myself a call came in and I value my job over my growling stomach.


So now I know that I need to have something that is super easy for dinner on Saturdays. I was up at 6am and I am hungry for dinner much earlier than usual. So if need be I should run to the store midweek for some extra veggies to snack on (some of mine went bad by then) and something for dinner. I either need to find something healthy that can be thrown in the microwave or something I don't have to cook at all. 


Aside from the two big mistakes this week things were great. I earned extra money and before yesterday I was doing great on the diet. I have not weighed much this week so Monday will tell if I made a huge mess of things or not. I would be happy to have maintained my first weeks weight loss after what I did yesterday.

Weight Watchers Working With my Lifestyle

Well things are looking good here. I have been working this morning on a survey for a side project I am working on with my mentor and another nice woman.

I just thought I would stop in and post an update. I have been doing very well on my diet. I was really hungry and yesterday and I felt like I ate a ton but because I made good food choices I stayed with in my daily points.

I have picked up a quite a few extra day shifts now that my 12 hour shift is a day shift. I had a very stressful and busy day on Monday. We had an ice storm and many people with power out. I had a lot of calls from people needing somewhere to stay. It was one of those days that was super rewarding because I really did get to help people. I don't mind the stress when the results are great. I say this to say now that I am getting good sleep I like my job again. I am going to pick up more shifts and may not be able to update this site daily.

I am still trying to organize my time so that I get a work out in 3-5 days a week but I this is the area I have the most trouble with. I have been doing well planning my weekly meals and buying healthy snacks but now I really have to get on the ball and get the activity in. Once the weather breaks most days I go for an hour walk with the hubby and dog. There were a few nice days last week that I went out but after the ice storm I have not been outdoors much.

I think I am going to start looking at it as some activity is better than none. I might start with a 20-30 minute workout most days then work my way up to a longer workout. I am still loosing weight without a lot of working out and I am thinking once I get closer to healthy weight exercise won't be as hard on my knees and my bad hip. I weighed in on Mondays and was down 4.5 pounds and I am trying not to weigh everyday again. The first week it felt good to weight everyday because I was down a good .5 pound a day. I know from experience the first week sometimes two I loose a bunch and then I get discouraged the next weeks because I only loose maybe 1.5-2.5 pounds or sometimes less. So I am really trying not to get obsessed with the scale.

I do want to say when I first started the new program I thought they were just changing the plan to make people buy new stuff. I was mad that my old cookbooks were worthless and everything else I bought less that two years ago was worthless. I thought they did it to get more money and I am sure it helps with revenues. I also was not sure the plan would work for me because my success on it the last time was minimal.  I was wrong. On the old plan I could eat a lot of high sugar, low fat stuff and now they have a higher emphasis on the sugar or carbohydrates. So sugary and starchy things which I tend to gravitate towards are much higher in points.

It is working and I am very happy about it.

Applebees and Weight Watchers

Yesterday I am searching around  the Weight Watchers website and I see someone talking about Applebees. They said they have a complete list of nutritional information for all there food. So I go there and find a few meals with very low points value but what I really wanted was a steak. I found an entire steak meal for 10 points and one for 13 points. I decided it was time to break out the gift card we received for Christmas and head out to dinner.

The 13 point meal also had veggies, potatoes and a few shrimp. It was amazing and I didn't go over my daily points. Here is what I ate yesterday:
Breakfast
1 banana
1 cup 2% milk (in my coffee because I need calcium but don't love milk)

Lunch
2 oz. ham
2 pieces of Pepridge Farm very thing whole wheat bread
1/4 oz of Cheese
16  Ranch multigrain chips

Snacks
Yo Crunch parfait
Weight Watchers oatmeal raisin cookie

Dinner
7 oz steak with garlic sauce and shrimp
Steamed Potatoes
Steamed mixed veggies

At the end of the day I used 29 points. I went to the grocery store yesterday and got fat free milk and a ton of veggies and fruit and some Weight Watchers 1 point cheese slices. Lunch meat seems to be the way to go for lunch so I picked another lean meat so my points would remain low.

I want to stay in my daily points range as often as possible and stay away from using my weekly points. I have been working it so that I eat something like a yogurt for breakfast and then if I am still hungry I have some fruit. So if I eat my daily points and I am still hungry I know it is better for me to use my weekly points than to feel like giving up on my diet. If I am not hungry there really is no need to eat something else. Knowing that I have days when I am not really hungry and days when I am ravenous and want to devour all the contents of the refrigerator I realize it is better just to play it by ear.

I am loving this program though as long as I plan well I can have just about anything I want. I only cook dinner for my hubby because we live on different shifts. For him the meal I cook is lunch. I can plan meals for him if he wants something really bad and eat a Smart Ones pizza or something. I can also plan higher point dinners if I plan the rest of my day around low points. Tonight we are having omelets I will be having mine with 1 egg and 2 egg whites, mushrooms, onions, WW cheese, with a tsp of olive oil to cook it in. My hubby chose his own filling and he will use regular cheese and full eggs.

So things are looking good as long as I can stay organized and keep my meals planned. I am fed up with how overweight I am. Healthy weight range for me is 106-132 and I am in a hurry to get to the 132 mark as I know I will feel much better then. That is about 20 pounds away so I am hoping for a good 2 pounds a week of weight loss. That would be 10 weeks from now putting me at my first goal (Healthy Weight) by the end of April. My ultimate goal is to stay between 115-120 all the time this way I never go over my goal weight and if I do I know I have to get back on track.

Encouraging News From the Scale Today

I know I said I was not going to weigh in everyday but I tend to like to the first few weeks of any diet plan. So I started Monday at about 155 maybe a half pound lighter and today I weight 151.5.  Even if I didn't loose a full 3.5 pounds because of daily fluctuations I did loose some weight. That means the workouts and the diet are working. My official Weight Watchers weigh in is Monday. I have like 30 of my weekly points left and a bunch of activity points.

The new WW plan does seem to frown on a lot of sugary carbs. I think the plan is better than what I was on before as it helps make healthier choices without sacrificing many of the foods I love. I was extremely aggravated at first that my favorite yogurt was 6 points. I found one for 4 points and just ate fruit with it since that is 0 points.  I have a yogurt to try today with a low amount of suclarose in it that is only two points. I don't know if I can eat because I get migraines when I have any of those sweeteners. I figure since it is one of the last ingredients I might be okay. Splenda or suclarose are the only sweeteners other than sugar that I seem to be able to tolerate in low amounts.

For some reason today I am not super hungry. I had a banana for breakfast with a cup of milk that I put in my coffee. I don't love milk but I need the calcium so I put it in coffee. I plan to have the 2 pt yogurt for a snack soon and that will add up to only 5 points for today.

Lunch will be a sandwich on very thin whole wheat bread with 2 oz of ham and a tiny bit of cheese served with 16 ranch flavored multi-grain Pringles. That meal is 8 points. I have fruit to snack on and I hope to go somewhere for dinner tonight. I am thinking Applebees as they have WW meals....well at least they did last time I went there.

The scale was not my enemy today.

I was down another half a pound making it 153.5 today. I don't want to make a habit of getting on the scale everyday but some days I just feel like I could be pleasantly surprised.

I am meeting a friend for lunch today so I have not had a lot of points because I am not sure what I can eat when I get there. I did however pop in the step video Kim Kardashian: Fit In Your Jeans by Friday: Butt Blasting Cardio Step and it made me realize how horribly out of shape I am. It looks easy and I am pretty sure to anyone who works out on a regular basis that it is. I did a little over half the video and I was dripping buckets of sweat and felt like I might pass out.

So I got about 30 minutes in and I am hoping to get a walk with the dog and hubby in this evening since the weather is starting to cooperate. I still can not believe that I am this out of shape maybe I will have to do the video again with out a step and just pretend it is there until I get all the moves down and can do them without passing out.

So after lunch with one friend I get to hang out with another friend and then I have to make it home in time to walk with my hubby. I have such a great day planned for today. Hope you all have a great days as well.

Off to bed

Well I am off to bed here in a minute hopefully going to bed by 11 I will be asleep before midnight and able to get up by 8. I need to get up early because I have lunch with one friend and then I am going to another friends house to hang out for a bit.

I had a great work out today and I really want to get one in before I go tomorrow. I did an hour on the elliptical and I really kept my heart rate up most of the time. Sadly I just barely made it through the hour without passing out and I only got 3.1 miles in. I have not been pushing myself hard enough. I need to work harder during my workouts.

My food plan was not derailed today. We had veggies to munch on at the meeting I had today and I have even been able to use up some of the not so good food in the house by planning it with my points. I want to get to the store either tomorrow or Saturday because I need much more fruit and veggies. I want them to snack on because most don't cost points. I know this means I will probably have to go to the store several times a week until late spring but I will just have to suck it up and do it.

I hope the scale gives me better news next time I weigh in but that remains to be seen.