A great and funny article I saw today: The 27 Rules of Conquering the Gym. I wish I still had a gym membership. I did in high school, and I really loved it. I don't know that I would have the confidence to go now considering how much more I weigh now than I did then, nor do I have the funds, so it's not really an option right now. Plus, the gym that I really love is really far away, so I don't know that I'd be able to motivate myself to go.
It's end of day six, and I must say I've done pretty well this week. I've pretty much stuck to all my goals. I've lost 5.2 pounds! I know a lot of that is water weight, but it was funny to see my animated Wii Fit character tell me it was worried about me for meeting my goal too quickly. I know it will slow down, as it always does.
To the best of my knowledge, I've stayed within (or very very close to) my calorie limits. I did allow myself to go slightly over a couple days. I am still counting this as staying within range, however, because I've ended up working out a lot more than I thought I would - in six days I've racked up 226 fitness minutes (my minimum goal was 90) and, according to my heart rate monitor, burned 1,437 calories. And when I went over, the reason was because my body was actually physically hungry. Some of my workouts were hard, some were easier, but it's felt really good to do it again.
The only day I'm unsure of was yesterday when my family and I went out to dinner at Otto's (a decent steakhouse here in Madison) to celebrate my mom's birthday. I had to completely estimate the nutritional information. There weren't a lot of "safe" looking items on the menu, but I ended up getting a grilled duck breast salad with a pomegranate vinaigrette. It was pretty delicious! And unlike most restaurants, the salad wasn't enormous enough for three meals. It was nice to leave a restaurant feeling satisfied and not bogged down by eating too much crap.
The hardest part so far? Avoiding alcohol. The idea of ordering wine last night with dinner was so tempting, and typically on Friday nights when I hang out with my dad I have a couple drinks at his place. It's been such a standard way for me to unwind after a long, awful week at work, so it feels odd not to do it.
I've also started drinking at least 64 oz of water a day. It hasn't been hard at all - as long as I have my water bottle by me I've been really good about it. Haven't missed a day yet. I've logged into Wii Fit every day to do the body test. I'm not quite keeping up with my St. John's Wort but only because it has been giving me VERY vivid nightmares and disrupting my sleep. I've lowered my dose a bit and hopefully that will help.
Emotionally I am pretty strained; work is awful and our huge change is coming up next week - where I essentially have to say goodbye to the people I've come to know so well over the past year and a half when my very, very small team moves to the main building of our office. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I'm trying really hard to not think about it so I can enjoy my weekend, but it's going to be really tough. I'm also on the hiring committee for a new position opening up and it's been overwhelming for me to go over all of the applications in addition to my normal workload (which is the workload of at least 2 full-time people.) Work has been such a source of unhappiness for me, and the thing that has made it worthwhile has been the people I work with. Everyone keeps telling me to find another job, but it is SO hard right now. Also, with all of these massive changes, they really need me there. i'm hoping that it gets better once these changes are made and that my job becomes less stressful, but it just depends. So I'm going to have to just suck if up and get through it, and hope that the changes the agency is making are indeed very positive, and that in a couple months from now maybe I won't be so stressed, and maybe I'll even have met some new friends. A positive bit of news is that I am going to Florida the first week of February, so I get a nice vacation. My grandma has a condo down there where she lives most of the year, and she gets really cheap flights on certain days with a specific airline, so last year and this year for Christmas she is paying for the flights to my sister and me to come down. I'll need some sun by then, though it's been unseasonably warm here this week.
Tomorrow morning my mom and I are going to go to the Taste of the Market breakfast, where volunteers prepare an awesome food using local winter vegetables. It looks like this year the menu includes a spinach and egg bake and root vegetable hash. If it isn't too crowded (I went last year and it was super busy, but we are going early) I might pick up some produce since the farmer's market runs at the same time. I tend to buy the same vegetables every week - standard stuff like baby carrots and broccoli. I buy so much out-of-season produce, and I should change that. I'm going to try to look for pomegranates because I just got a recipe from SparkPeople for a pomegranate chicken salad.
One thing I'd like to work on this week is healthier snacks. I tend to nibble on stuff after dinner, and I'd like it to be healthier. I know that even though my box says Kashi on it, my crackers and baked pita chips are still junk food. I miss spring and summer fruit; I really hate citrus so there isn't a whole lot for me to choose from in winter. I have, however, been freezing bananas to turn into "ice cream" again. I used to do that and man it is so good. I love to stir dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans into it, mmm.
It's end of day six, and I must say I've done pretty well this week. I've pretty much stuck to all my goals. I've lost 5.2 pounds! I know a lot of that is water weight, but it was funny to see my animated Wii Fit character tell me it was worried about me for meeting my goal too quickly. I know it will slow down, as it always does.
To the best of my knowledge, I've stayed within (or very very close to) my calorie limits. I did allow myself to go slightly over a couple days. I am still counting this as staying within range, however, because I've ended up working out a lot more than I thought I would - in six days I've racked up 226 fitness minutes (my minimum goal was 90) and, according to my heart rate monitor, burned 1,437 calories. And when I went over, the reason was because my body was actually physically hungry. Some of my workouts were hard, some were easier, but it's felt really good to do it again.
The only day I'm unsure of was yesterday when my family and I went out to dinner at Otto's (a decent steakhouse here in Madison) to celebrate my mom's birthday. I had to completely estimate the nutritional information. There weren't a lot of "safe" looking items on the menu, but I ended up getting a grilled duck breast salad with a pomegranate vinaigrette. It was pretty delicious! And unlike most restaurants, the salad wasn't enormous enough for three meals. It was nice to leave a restaurant feeling satisfied and not bogged down by eating too much crap.
The hardest part so far? Avoiding alcohol. The idea of ordering wine last night with dinner was so tempting, and typically on Friday nights when I hang out with my dad I have a couple drinks at his place. It's been such a standard way for me to unwind after a long, awful week at work, so it feels odd not to do it.
I've also started drinking at least 64 oz of water a day. It hasn't been hard at all - as long as I have my water bottle by me I've been really good about it. Haven't missed a day yet. I've logged into Wii Fit every day to do the body test. I'm not quite keeping up with my St. John's Wort but only because it has been giving me VERY vivid nightmares and disrupting my sleep. I've lowered my dose a bit and hopefully that will help.
Emotionally I am pretty strained; work is awful and our huge change is coming up next week - where I essentially have to say goodbye to the people I've come to know so well over the past year and a half when my very, very small team moves to the main building of our office. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I'm trying really hard to not think about it so I can enjoy my weekend, but it's going to be really tough. I'm also on the hiring committee for a new position opening up and it's been overwhelming for me to go over all of the applications in addition to my normal workload (which is the workload of at least 2 full-time people.) Work has been such a source of unhappiness for me, and the thing that has made it worthwhile has been the people I work with. Everyone keeps telling me to find another job, but it is SO hard right now. Also, with all of these massive changes, they really need me there. i'm hoping that it gets better once these changes are made and that my job becomes less stressful, but it just depends. So I'm going to have to just suck if up and get through it, and hope that the changes the agency is making are indeed very positive, and that in a couple months from now maybe I won't be so stressed, and maybe I'll even have met some new friends. A positive bit of news is that I am going to Florida the first week of February, so I get a nice vacation. My grandma has a condo down there where she lives most of the year, and she gets really cheap flights on certain days with a specific airline, so last year and this year for Christmas she is paying for the flights to my sister and me to come down. I'll need some sun by then, though it's been unseasonably warm here this week.
Tomorrow morning my mom and I are going to go to the Taste of the Market breakfast, where volunteers prepare an awesome food using local winter vegetables. It looks like this year the menu includes a spinach and egg bake and root vegetable hash. If it isn't too crowded (I went last year and it was super busy, but we are going early) I might pick up some produce since the farmer's market runs at the same time. I tend to buy the same vegetables every week - standard stuff like baby carrots and broccoli. I buy so much out-of-season produce, and I should change that. I'm going to try to look for pomegranates because I just got a recipe from SparkPeople for a pomegranate chicken salad.
One thing I'd like to work on this week is healthier snacks. I tend to nibble on stuff after dinner, and I'd like it to be healthier. I know that even though my box says Kashi on it, my crackers and baked pita chips are still junk food. I miss spring and summer fruit; I really hate citrus so there isn't a whole lot for me to choose from in winter. I have, however, been freezing bananas to turn into "ice cream" again. I used to do that and man it is so good. I love to stir dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans into it, mmm.
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