Week of July 8th

What a difference a week makes… I feel like a totally different person. 

Two weeks ago I felt terrible, achy, nauseous, headachy. I wasn't sleeping right. I was depressed and anxious, and mostly just plain irritable. I know I can blame at least half of this on PMS, which I get pretty strongly (and never really knew until I started tracking my horrible moods.) 

This whole week, particularly this weekend, I have felt fantastic. Better than I've felt in a LONG time. I'm sleeping like a baby. I feel positive. I worked out five days this week, for a total of 222 fitness minutes. I ate very well. I didn't stay within my calories every day, but I listened to my body and ate when I was actually seriously hungry, and when I did go over my calorie allotment, it was only by about 50-100 calories. No binges. No alcohol. (Which is why I haven't any binges, I guess. I have such good self control when booze isn't involved!) When I went grocery shopping yesterday, I realized that I'd eaten every bit of produce that I'd purchased last week. 

Today my step aerobics workout just felt fantastic. I almost didn't do it because I was really sore from yesterday's circuit training workout and it's such a time suck (an hour) but I did it anyway and I'm so glad I did. It wasn't even that hard, but I burned 590 calories doing it. So worth it… it always is.

Haven't done a whole lot creativity-wise but I did have a fantastic night last night just working on my book. It cooled down considerably and I hadn't been outside for so long because of the heat wave, so I took my laptop out to the patio and listened to my headphones and wrote. It was really nice.

I'm excited to cook dinner tonight, I'm making a really simple pizza with whole-wheat dough, pesto, tomatoes, and fresh basil from my herb garden. I will probably roast some broccoli to go with it because I bought the pre-cut kind and that doesn't last very long.

Today I am 2.5 pounds lighter than I was last Sunday. For a total of 30.8 lbs lost so far. Here's my menu/exercise plan for this week. It's good to be back.

SUNDAY

White pizza with tomato and basil

Step aerobics, 63 mins

MONDAY

Veggie and Rice Burritos 

Cardio kickbox, 25 mins (morning workout)

TUESDAY

Leftovers

Cardio Blast, 35 minutes

WEDNESDAY

Jimmy John’s vegetarian sub

Rest day

THURSDAY

Thai Crunch Wrap with Chicken and Peanut Sauce

Gold’s Gym boxing, 40 minutes

FRIDAY

Teriyaki Tofu and Pineapple kebabs

Rest day

SATURDAY

Cashew Chicken and bell peppers

Frontside circuit training, 43 minutes

Mid-week update + progress pics

Thirty pounds gone!

I am really excited about stuff today.

I’ve had a great week so far. I really needed this – a fresh start, new goals, recommittment. That’s really all health is, I think… recommitting.  In the past, my biggest challenge has been my all-or-nothing attitude, the idea that if I have a couple bad days that I have to follow that with a couple bad weeks.  Why on earth do I do that to myself?!

As of today, I’ve lost 30 pounds this year. I finally hit that mark!

I still have a long way to go, but I’m happy today.

I was just briefly skimming old entries in this blog and I realized today that I have never stayed committed to a “program” for this long, nor have I lost this much weight. My junior year of high school, I lost about 28 pounds (but I didn’t have as much to lose back then) but I don’t think I ever got to that 30 lb mark. I stopped going to the gym after that, and I gained a lot of it back my senior year, and then I went to college and that was the end of any sort of healthiness.

I started and restarted my healthy eating all throughout college. Mostly I did okay., during the week. But then weekends came about and I drank myself silly and ate mounds of greasy Chinese and snacks at the bars. Part of me doesn’t regret this; I had fun. But I overdid everything. It was hard for me in school because I never had a car and it took me 3 hours to go grocery shopping with the bus system. So I didn’t get to stock up on fresh produce every week like I can now.

I realized today that if I don’t do this now, I never will. I’m as young as I will ever be. I’m single and I live by myself.  My social life is practically non-existent. I have access to grocery stores and enough money to buy good food. I’m not in school anymore, so I have no studying or homework. Basically, I come home from work and I have several hours to do whatever the hell I want. I’m an hourly employee, so I never get to work overtime, so I’m home by 5:15 or 5:30 every single day of the week.  I’m learning how to like my job, when before I just couldn’t manage it emotionally. What kind of excuse could I possibly have for not getting this shit done NOW?

I feel great this week. My body is so much happier with me. I’m avoiding alcohol like the poison that it is, and that has helped – I feel like even when I just have one drink, it disrupts my sleep and makes me feel like crap.  I’ve decided I’m not going to have a single drink in July, regardless of temptation or where I am. I’m not going to use social outings as an excuse to drink because I will undoubtedly start eating like shit. I think my job in the past few months has been helping with the majorly decreased alcohol use, in that I can see before my eyes, every single day, how much substance abuse costs. So many people whose entire lives are just torn apart by this. I think that can be hard to see when you’re a relatively healthy college student trying to de-stress from the week. When I was doing my internship at a rape crisis center (also working a paying job and being a full time college student and club involvement), I bought a bottle of booze and a Subway sandwich every single Friday night after I was done with my shift, and if I didn’t have other plans, would just sit there and watch TV and drink and try to forget about the week.  What a crappy way to live!

I’ve been sleeping beautifully despite my neighbor never sleeping. I had a friend over last night and she drank quite a bit but I just enjoyed the beautiful evening and listened to the fireworks and just had a great time.  I have tried to be more aware of the healthiness of my food lately. My meals themselves are pretty healthy – it’s the snacking that gets to me sometimes. I buy those Food Should Taste Good tortilla chips that try to trick you into thinking they’re healthier by their packaging, but I know that they’re still junk food. Same with my Kashi crackers and granola bars. I’m trying to focus more on whole foods. I’m probably still going to buy those “healthier” tortilla chips because otherwise I feel like I will just keep having cravings.

Summer is lovely because of the produce. My mom’s growing raspberries so I’ve been eating a lot more fruit. I love most veggies but I am not usually a raw fruit person because I don’t like tartness. But I’ve been eating tons of various berries this week  and they’re so good as an after-dinner dessert. I also am just happier in the summer, even when it’s really fricking hot, which it is right now… I need sunshine and daylight. Winter is usually pretty awful for me. I love these long days, and NO DAMN SNOW.

I took some progress pics today. These are from my beginning weight vs today (down 30 lbs.)  I’m wearing different shorts in the ones I took today but the top is the same. The 2nd and 3rd pics were taken today. The 1st pic was taken January 1st of this year.

I’d taken some pics at about 20 lbs down and hadn't noticed much of a difference at all, but I can see the difference at 30 lbs. I have a long ways to go, and I do think the 2nd and 3rd pics are flattering (I look a lot bigger than this in real life) but I'm happy with what I see - I was really surprised when I dug out this old picture from January.

46 pounds to go!

July 1st-July 8th

I've sort of disappeared from this blog for a couple of weeks.

I actually made it private for a couple days but then switched back because I figured I'd be too paranoid about internet security to write anything private anyway.

The last two weeks have been a couple of the hardest I've had this year. I'm trying really hard to get back on track. I don't really want to go into a lot of detail right now. I'm trying really hard to deal with some pretty major issues in my life. I know this will be easier if I am doing everything else right.

I've been pretty quiet about everything because that's how I deal with my stress; I bitch and moan about everything small in my life, but with major things I tend to shut down.

I'm going to the doctor in a couple weeks and it's a good thing. I passed out on my couch last week - like, fainted fainted - which is really bizarre. It's happened to me before, just randomly passing out, but I haven't done that in years. I'm really nervous there's something actually physically wrong with me. Because even though I ate terribly the past couple weeks and didn't work out, I didn't even gain weight. I shouldn't complain about that, but I know a lot of the time, weight loss is indicative of illness. Based on how poorly I was eating, there's no way I shouldn't have gained weight. I'm really freaked out that I'm diabetic or something. Or something worse. I'm usually not a huge hypochondriac but I've been so sick the past couple of years, no one my age should get sick as often as I do.

 I also haven't slept well all week. I think my upstairs neighbor is trying to kill me. She never ever ever ever ever ever ever stops walking!!! The past two nights, every single half hour I've woken up, I hear her creaky footsteps. Part of me thought it has to be her dog, because I really didn't think she was nocturnal, and no human just walks around their condo for hours at a time, but it sounds like a person, not a dog. I'm talking footsteps at midnight, 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m., then all morning. SHE NEVER SLEEPS!!!! When it's not footsteps, it's her tying up her dog outside and the dog just howls. I have a fan that I turn on when I go to bed for white noise, and I started wearing earplugs and I can STILL HEAR IT. Maybe it's a ghost. Maybe I'm hallucinating. I can't imagine this is a new habit for her, so maybe it's just my general insomnia and every time I wake up I listen for it. My lack of sleep is really getting to me. When I do sleep, my dreams are really intense, and I keep waking up from them drenched in sweat and I can't ever shake them.  I feel like I'm mostly in limbo when I'm sleeping. It's been really awful and is making me really cranky. I'm getting annoyed with almost everyone around me, so I've been sort of isolating.

Onto happy things...

Today is my half-year point and I'd hoped to lose more than 28.2 lbs by now but that's what I'm at and I'll take it. If I could get another 29 pounds by the end of the year I'd be thrilled!

I feel pretty confident about a new start in July. I do well with solid dates, big milestones, anniversaries.

I might start a private journal in addition to this one so I be more honest/straightforward/detailed but that feels a little like overkill. I do have a livejournal that I've been updating more frequently (its only viewable to people I don't know in real life) but I might need something more related to health. Don't know that I can manage 3 blogs, though.

Here's my meal/workout plan this week.

SUNDAY
Tempeh and black bean quesadillas
Step aerobics (63 minutes)

MONDAY
Chicken Caesar Salad wraps with cucumber
SparkPeople Cardio Blast (30 minutes)

TUESDAY
Leftovers
Frontside circuit training (43 minutes)

WEDNESDAY
Jimmy John’s vegetarian sub
Rest Day

THURSDAY
Wild rice casserole
Cardio Kickbox (25 minutes)

FRIDAY
Taco Salad (made with lean ground turkey and veggies)
Rest day

SATURDAY
Chicken satay with peanut sauce and broccoli
Backside (53 minutes)

Total minutes: 216

Well...

I haven't updated this week yet because I've been feeling awful. And as of yesterday morning I have declared myself officially sick. I'm getting pretty irritated by this; I feel like I'm always getting sick. I won't go into details of this particular illness... haven't had to take any time off of work, thank god. I'm hoping I feel well enough to go in tomorrow... Mondays are my easy days so hopefully it will be ok.

I started feeling crappy on Wednesday and I felt sort of okay until Friday evening. Wednesday night I went out with some coworkers after work. I had three drinks over the span of... 4 or 5 hours, and then when I got home I just felt crappy and I've felt awful ever since. I've been so fatigued I can barely get off my couch. I made it to the grocery store yesterday and felt like I was just in a bizarre daze. It was a short trip, luckily. This morning I went to brunch with my fam for Father's Day. I ate some salad, fruit and some potatoes but they aren't all sitting well. I have been sleeping realllllly crappily.

I haven't worked out since TUESDAY. Since Wednesday I was out with coworkers, and Thursday I wasn't feeling well, Friday I was at my dad's, and ever since I've been sick. It's really frustrating. My anxiety is skyrocketing because I've basically done nothing for two days except lay on my couch. I managed to tidy up my apartment just a little bit - it was a disaster.

I did menu plan. I'm not really nauseous, so I still sort of feel like eating, it's just that my stomach isn't... liking it. At all.

And because I got so off track this week, I think I'm going to start my weeks on Sundays again. It was nice to go to the grocery store during the week, but I'm finding I'm just not having time for it, so I think I need to go on Saturdays again.

So here's this week's plan. I didn't include workouts because I don't know when I'm going to feel well enough to do them. Hopefully tomorrow? I don't think I'll make it today, which sucks because it's when I get my longer workouts in.

Good news is that I did lose some weight, probably just due to dehydration, but I'm now down a total of 29 lbs -- sooo close to that 30 lb mark! I didn't do great on Wednesday -- I was gonna hold out on not getting any food but they ordered cheese curds and artichoke dip and... yeah. I wasn't great.


SUNDAY
Light Buttermilk Dill Pasta Salad

MONDAY
Portobello and bell pepper sandwiches

TUESDAY
Grilled zucchini caprese sandwiches

WEDNESDAY
Chicken Parmesan with broccoli

THURSDAY
Veggie sub (Jimmy John's)

FRIDAY
Leftovers

SATURDAY
??

Start of June 8th-14th

It feels like forever since I wrote last, even though it’s only been a week!

I felt like I didn’t do very well this week, but I think I did fine after reviewing my notebook that has my chart in it where I’m keeping track of my calories and exercise and moods. I had a couple bad days. I felt absolutely terrible on Tuesday – really nauseous and gross – and ended up not cooking; Wednesday I wasn’t feeling great either (and emotionally drained after Scott Walker’s unfortunate victory) and I ended up skipping my workout. But I still ended up managing over 220 exercise minutes. I only stayed within my calories 5/7 days – one day was pretty bad, the other one was just moderately bad. I would’ve liked to have seen 7/7 days considering it’s my first week that I’m doing this new “project” but whatever.

Amazingly, though, and I think this is due to bloating last week and whatnot, I’m down to my lowest weight that I’ve reached this year, and over 3 lbs down from the beginning of the week. Woo! 3 more pounds and I’ll have lost a total of 30. Which I don’t think is horrible, given that my goal for the year is 50 lbs. 

Emotionally I’ve been a bit of a wreck. I had some major PMS last week and I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping. Just generally anxious in general. It’s pretty annoying. But I know that I just feel way worse if I’m not working out and exercising so I just have to use that as my form of self-medication rather than alcohol or anything else!

Short post today as I’m writing from the end of my work day and need to go grocery shopping tonight. Here’s my menu plan and workout plan for the week!

FRIDAY

Pappardelle with baby spinach, herbs, and ricotta with a side of broccoli

Rest day (I might do my cardio kickbox, 25 mins, but I think I will be busy with grocery shopping and cleaning tonight)

SATURDAY

Chicken mole with tortillas, side of green beans

Frontside strength/circuit training, 45 mins

SUNDAY

Avocado, bacon, ranch and tomato sandwich with cheese, side of baby carrot

Step aerobics, 63 mins

MONDAY

Leftovers

Rest day

TUESDAY

Chicken and guacamole tostadas 

Backside strength/circuit training, 55 mins

WEDNESDAY

Tempeh and Black Bean Quesadillas 

Rest day

THURSDAY

Leftovers

Gold’s Gym cardio workout, 40 mins

Total minutes: 203

June changes

I’m making a couple changes here…

So yesterday was June 1^st.

I’m going to start my weeks starting on Fridays now. Partly because it’s the start of a new month, but also because I’ve decided to start grocery shopping on Thursday nights rather than on the weekends because the store I go to is too busy for my sanity on the weekends, plus I like to save my weekends for other things.

I did pretty poorly this week, again. I think I was waiting for June. I don’t know why I keep waiting for “perfect moments” to start something, but I do.

When I stepped on the scale yesterday morning I was surprised to see that I lost quite a bit of weight that I’d gained over last weekend even though I was pretty pathetic this week. As of today I'm down another pound so I'm at the 25 lb lost mark again. I don’t know if this is just a fluke or what. 

I’m doing a lot of thinking in my life, and am trying to find things that inspire me.

I’ve been pretty down and depressed this week, crying a lot for no reason, and I’ve really been struggling with self-worth and loneliness issues. (PMS is also a huge factor.)

I keep saying that I need to work on my mental health and I think it’s going to be a big focus for June. Of course, my mental health is extremely dependent upon my physical health and what I’m eating and how much I’m working out – I realized that when I was an anxious wreck all weekend because I wasn’t able to stay on plan. I’ve become inspired by some slam poets that I’ve discovered recently and it’s brought me back to when I used to write a lot of it (not good, but it was “healing”, anyway) so I am getting back into it and it feels good. I have this new journal that I just scribble in… poems from other people, poems I’m writing, random quotes. It’s kind of a mess, it’s not pretty and scrapbooky and organized like some people’s journals, but I like it that way because I’m sort of a messy person. I just wish I could deal with my anxiety! I have found some guided meditations on YouTube that I like but it’s so hard for me to lose myself in them. I do like doing my yoga videos and yoga on the Wii Fit, but I don’t find them incredibly relaxing. I think a lot of this week’s issues have been due to lack of sleep – I had terrible sleep all of last weekend and I’ve been going to bed waaaay too late this week.

For June I have printed out some forms that I’m going to write on every day and put them in a binder. I’m going to track the following things daily:

Weight

Total calorie, carb, fat, and protein consumption

Workouts (amount of time, calories burned)

Mood (probably on a scale of 1-10, or general notes)

Creativity (just a quick note on whether I did anything that day)

Alcohol and drug use (by drugs I mean caffeine or herbal stuff, nothing illegal ;))

When I did this before, in May, it was really helpful to be able to physically look at what I’m doing. I really enjoyed it.  I track everything on SparkPeople, but it’s nice to be able to see a brief record. I’m a very visual person.

So I went to the grocery store Thursday night and made up a menu plan. I had a really hard day at work yesterday and ended up crying for over an hour, which was truly embarrassing. It wasn't just work-related. Luckily my coworkers were sweet about it and whatever, but anyway. I got home from work, did my cardio kickbox, then watched some slam poetry on YouTube and went to bed fairly early. I slept for eleven hours, which was REALLY needed... I think that's been contributing to my hard time lately.I didn't really get much sleep last weekend. 

Today was a better day. I was still anxious and sad in the morning but I did step aerobics, had a good breakfast, did a little bit more shopping at Trader Joe's and then sort of helped my mom work on her garden (mostly just sat outside in the beautiful weather and took my mom's cat out on his leash.) Tomorrow I'm hanging out with my parents; we're going to go to either Devil's Lake or Blue Mounds and grill out and go hiking, which should be nice. Once in a while you just need your parents, you know? 

Here's my menu/workout plan for June 1st-June 7th.

FRIDAY

Teriyaki tofu and pineapple kebabs

Cardio kickbox, 25 mins

SATURDAY

Sushi bowls (rice, nori, crab, avocado, carrot, cucumber)

Step aerobics, 63 minutes

SUNDAY

Honey Garlic Ginger Chicken with broccoli

Hiking (not sure for how long)

MONDAY

Leftovers

Rest day

TUESDAY

Pappardelle with Baby Spinach, herbs, and ricotta

Gold's Gym 40 mins

WEDNESDAY

Jimmy John's

Rest day

THURSDAY

Rosemary chicken salad sandwiches and green beans

Frontside, 40 mins

Week 22

I'm really embarrassed to write this post, even though I know this blog isn't read by more than one person (me). I'm sort of embarrassed to write this to MYSELF. I sort of feel like I'm a parent lecturing a bad kid.

I did horrifically this week. I got a whopping (not) 68 minutes of fitness in. That's it.
I mentioned that I was having two friends come in and I thought I could really do okay with that and stick to my eating plan and maybe not totally knock out fitness altogether.
What I did INSTEAD was really ruin the entire week "because I'm really going to do horribly this weekend anyway." Since about... Wednesday? I think, I have been a total wreck, in regards to food, exercise, alcohol, and mental health.

My visit with my friends was fun, but really different than what I had expected. In 48 hours we consumed an entire bottle of Bailey's (them), two bottles of white wine, the good part of a liter of vodka (mostly me), a pitcher of strawberry-flavored margaritas (which they then followed by a shared 32-oz margarita), drinks here and there at restaurants. They had expected me to take them to the bars at night, and just "whatever's going on downtown" whereas I was thinking more about going to museums and Devil's Lake. We almost made it to a museum but we were in a two-hour parking spot near State St. and wouldn't have had time. But they started their days with Baileys in their coffee, and mojitos on State Street at noon. At night we drank tons, especially me. And I'd bought some healthy food and made a sort of meal plan and figured I'd cook at least a couple times for them, but instead we ended up going out to eat for breakfast/lunch every day (since we never climbed out of bed until 10:00 or 10:30 due to just general alcohol consumption and then by the time we were all showered and ready it was more like noon). On Friday night I had what I assume was a really high-fat wrap and tater tots, Saturday morning it was brunch at the French bakery and I had a sandwich with ham and swiss, steak fajitas for dinner Saturday night, and a burger and fries for lunch on Sunday. They were supposed to leave Monday, but decided early on that they wanted that extra day to recuperate, and I was first sort of disappointed but I'm grateful that it happened because I couldn't live like that for another day. I was getting kind of stressed because I really wanted to be a good hostess and I didn't feel like I was. I still had fun, but I'm left a bit confused about the whole experience. Part of it was also weather issues; when we were wandering State it started to rain, and yesterday was so hot that they didn't want to go to the lake, which really bummed me out. One of them is sort of naturey and I thought she'd really like it, but I was too hungover to hike and it would probably be really busy because of the holiday, but... I don't know, I just felt like a lot of time was wasted drinking.

So how much weight have I gained since last Sunday?
5.6 pounds. And judging by what I just described last week's habits as, I think it will stick.
I've been sort of a nervous wreck about this. It feels like so much work was undone. I was so anxious last night after they left, it was ridiculous.

But there's not much else I can do at this point except MOVE ON! I have bigger plans for June.
Today I'm going to try to get some good, real nutrition in my system... a green smoothie for breakfast, and I'm making a big salad for dinner with grilled chicken. My family doesn't do much for Memorial Day and if they are, they didn't invite me because they thought I'd be spending it with my friends, but I'm ok with that. I need this day to recuperate and clean, and I'm going to do my step aerobics workout.

I'll probably post more about my June plan later, but for now, here's my menu plan for the week. Since I bought all my groceries on Friday, I'm hoping they last...

SUNDAY
Frozen pizza

MONDAY
Blackened chicken salad with avocado and tomato
Step aerobics, 63 minutes

TUESDAY
Vegetable and rice burritos with quesadilla cheese
Cardio kickbox, 25 mins

WEDNESDAY
Crispy glazed tofu
Rest day

THURSDAY
Rosemary chicken salad sandwiches
Backside strength/cardio workout, 50 mins

FRIDAY
Jimmy John's veggie sub
Rest day

SATURDAY
Not sure for dinner... (grocery shopping day!)
Walk/run (if nice out), otherwise step aerobics (55 or 63 mins)

Week 21

Where did my weekend go? Seriously! It's been a good one, though, very productive. I spent it entirely by myself (aside from interacting with cashiers while doing errands), which is pretty rare for me, and got a lot done.

Weight-wise, I weigh a pound less than I was last Sunday. Actually, mid-week I hit my lowest weight for a total of 26.4 lbs lost, and awarded myself my 25-lb lost trophy on SparkPeople... but then managed to gain nearly two pounds so I'm at a total of 24.6 lbs lost. So close to that 25 mark!

I got in 204 fitness minutes this week, which surprised me. Mainly because I skipped one of my workouts so I felt like I was slacking, but then I made up for it by doing a longer one on one of my rest days. The whole week I felt like I wasn't doing well, but hey, a pound lost is a pound lost.

I usually do my longer workouts on each weekend day, but I felt really busy today so I just did my shorter, more intense one and moved my longer one to later in the week. I might do some Wii Yoga later just for fun, but I don't know if I'll get to it!

Yesterday I did tons of errands... went to the grocery store, Target, Walgreens, the craft store (which was closed) and to the fabric store (right next door). The last three were to try to find materials to make these silly "calming jars" which are essentially snow globes. I saw the idea on Pinterest and sort of loved it. Basically, I'm redoing my bedroom and it's sort of silly and whimsical and colorful...I have hanging lanterns and such... I'm trying to make it a real sanctuary, calming place with really nothing in except my mattress and pillows and blankets, but I have this ugly shelving unit that I can't get rid of since I'm renting so I put these snowglobe-like things on it. They're actually really fun... basically just full of water, food coloring, glitter glue, and glitter. Anyway, it was for some reason ridiculously difficult to find clear glue (I never did find it, but did find glitter glue) and I also couldn't find loose glitter at Target which was really annoying, and the craft store was closed already by 6:00, which was too bad because I could have made these nicer if I could find better glitter. The only glitter I found at the fabric store was large gold and silver flakes, but whatever. At any rate, that's one quasi-crafty thing I did this week. I also wrote in my book quite a bit which always feels good, it's pretty therapeutic.

Today I spent most of the day being pretty active. Though my workout was short (as I mentioned), I spent a couple hours trying to deep-clean my kitchen. My two friends are coming to stay with me this coming up weekend, and I couldn't be more excited. However, this means I'm also getting really neurotic about cleaning everything. I scrubbed out my fridge and microwave and stove, cleaned out all my cabinets and re-stocked them, ran cleaning cycles through my coffee maker (vinegar and water with two water rinses), did three loads of laundry, and tidied up the rest of the place. I'll need to do more before they get here, but it's a good start. These two particular friends haven't stayed with me before and they'll be essentially living here for 3 days so I'm getting a little obsessive. If someone's stayed with me before I don't really care much if everything isn't like, deep-cleaned, but... I want to be impressive the first time around. I don't get to be a hostess very often!

Since I'll have guests starting Friday I'm not really certain how I'm going to meal plan for the upcoming weekend. I'll have time to work out on Friday before they get here (I have the day off of work) but I'm not sure what they'll want to do.  One of them is fairly adventurous food-wise, but I don't think my other friend would touch, say, tofu with a ten-foot pole. I don't really know, though. So I don't know if I'll be cooking for them or if we'll just be eating out or what. Madison does have a lot of good restaurants but budget-wise I'm not sure what we'll end up doing. And I'm hoping to take them to Devil's Lake so I'm guessing I'll be able to get some exercise in, and I want to take them on other walks and stuff too so hopefully I won't slack too much on my fitness. And if I do? Well, I'll just hope I have fun and that it's worth it and that I'll do a good job again once they leave! It's Memorial Day weekend so I want to have some fun.

So here's my menu/exercise plan:


SUNDAY
Tinga de Pollo (chicken in tomato-chipotle sauce with pico de gallo and brown rice)
Cardio Kickbox, 25 mins

MONDAY
Teriyaki Tofu and Pineapple Kebabs
Rest Day

TUESDAY
Leftovers
Walk/run, 55 mins

WEDNESDAY
Roasted Vegetable Sandwiches
Frontside circuit training, 40 mins

THURSDAY
Something frozen
Rest day

FRIDAY
Not sure food-wise...
40 mins Gold's Gym

SATURDAY
??

Week 20 begins.

It's been a bit of a rough week. My emotions have sort of been on a roller coaster. I had a sort of tough time at work the second part of the week, and a lot of anger at a lot of people at work. Mostly frustration, but I really had to work to calm myself down. I don't have much of a temper and I never let it show (well, I whine EXTENSIVELY about it to other coworkers, but it's not like I have a temper tantrum.) I also was expecting a friend to come visit this weekend but he ended up not being able to, which really bummed me out. I'm also worried about my financial situation; I've been spending too much money and I just got a really expensive car insurance bill that I wasn't expecting (I didn't realize it was time to pay my 6 months already!!!) Anyway, I ended up not doing great this week. I only managed a total of 132 fitness minutes... I think this is only the 2nd time I haven't met my exercise goal. I skipped my workout on Thursday AND on Saturday... I rarely do that! I normally end up skipping one workout because I schedule myself for well over 175 minutes (my goal) so if something comes up I can miss a workout. But I almost never skip my Saturday workout because my weekends are when I do my longer workouts (Usually an hour walk/jog on one day and my step aerobics on another.) But yesterday I was just really busy and I never got around to it.

Mostly it's due to laziness, not injury. But my right foot... still... is giving me trouble. It doesn't help that while dissembling my bed last week, a large metal piece fell directly onto said foot, and now I have an extremely interesting bruise. I also managed to trip over a computer charger and fall into the direct sharp corner of a bookcase... my back has been hurting for a week now. I have a REALLY nasty bruise/scrape and it hurt so much the first couple days that I couldn't even sleep on my back.  I sure manage to injure myself extremely frequently...

Anyway, I had a really hard time managing myself this week. I drank to excess twice, and there was also a night where I majorly binged.

All of that said, though, I didn't make bad decisions all of the week and I managed to actually lose some weight, about a pound. I weighed in at my lowest since the beginning of the year today, for a total of 23.6 lbs lost. I think some of it was that I was carrying around some water weight last week, because I definitely expected to gain weight.

Had a couple outings where I was even proud of myself, actually. My parents and I went to Olive Garden on Friday (my parents are divorced but still get along so we usually do stuff for each other's birthdays, etc.) I managed to make a decent food choice there, though I really hate Olive Garden so nothing was super tempting! I avoided the wine, too.

Today I had a mother's day cookout with my mom's side of the family. I got up extra early so I could fit in my hour-long step aerobics, which I did. I really didn't want to go, because I haven't spoken to my sister in several months and hadn't really planned to. I initially was going to skip the thing entirely but my mom really wanted me there, and I didn't go to Easter which made her sad, so I sucked it up and went and it was fine. I didn't plan ahead for the brunch because I was told that there were going to be veggies and stuff there and I was planning on just nibbling on some stuff.

 Unfortunately there was really nothing healthy there. The only thing they grilled was steak - no chicken or anything. I had a very small portion of steak (I'm not a huge fan of steak anyway) and then some of the sides. They weren't healthy, but I tracked everything (was pretty generous with it too - I think I tracked more calories than I actually consumed). I had fruit salad (nothing added, just fruit, luckily), a very small portion of pasta salad (about a quarter cup) and potato salad (1/2 cup-ish). I again avoided the alcohol (some of my family can really put back the wine!) and all the appetizers (chips with guacamole, etc.) and avoided dessert. So I managed to stay within calories today, plus I burned 640 calories doing step aerobics this morning, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Trying to be more creative and stuff and take care of my mental health since I've been slacking on that lately. I have to remember to focus on it because it can get away from me quickly, especially my anxiety. I wrote in my book for the first time in a couple weeks last night and it felt nice. I've also been re-doing my bedroom which is sort of where I'm finding myself more broke than usual.

I started this grid for May where I track some stuff and I think I'm going to do it again for June but I'm going to alter it. Basically, I have a table in Word where I have one row for each day and I just answer basic questions as to whether I stayed within my calorie range for the day, whether I exercised, my weight, and what I did creatively, if anything. I think for June I will add a column for alcohol use and another for emotions, because I think it will be interesting to see how my emotions coincide with going over my calories. It's probably going to be exactly as I predict, but anyway, it's been a nice visual so far and I like to track my daily fluctuations in weight.

At any rate, here's my menu plan/exercise plan:


SUNDAY
Chipotle Sweet Potato, Black Bean, and Guacamole tacos with tomato
Step Aerobics, 63 minutes

MONDAY
Spring asparagus and pea pasta
Cardio kickbox, 25 minutes

TUESDAY
Baked herbed chicken Parmesan with broccoli
Rest day

WEDNESDAY
Leftovers
Gold's Gym Cardio Workout, 40 minutes

THURSDAY
Pinto bean nachos with bell pepper and veggies
Spark Cardio Blast, 30 minutes

FRIDAY
Jimmy John's veggie sub
Rest day

SATURDAY
Not sure on dinner
Running or step aerobics (depending on weather), 55-65 minutes

Start of week 19

Another week down!
I've done pretty well this week even though I went over my calories twice. I finally decided to adjust my calories on SparkPeople because I was just getting too hungry. And they have it adjusted based on only working out 90 minutes a week. So they had me eating between 1200 and 1450 per day and it just felt too low for me based on my weight and the fact that I'm working out at least 175 minutes/week. I did well on exercise, five sessions total, totaling 223 minutes for the week, 2,076 burned calories.

Weight-wise, I'm almost four pounds down from the beginning of the week, but since I'd gained weight, I'm still .6 pounds above the lowest weight I hit this year. I'm not complaining about that, though!

I took a progress pic yesterday to document 20 pounds lost but I haven't cropped it yet or even gotten it onto the computer and I have a guest for the weekend so I'm not going to post it right now. There isn't much of a difference as far as I can tell, but that's okay.

I'm still having problems with my right foot, and I don't know that it will stop if I keep using it. It was pretty bad while I was doing my step aerobics today. The top of my foot is really hurting. Le sigh.

Well, as mentioned I have a guest so I'm going to just post my menu/workout plan for the week.


SUNDAY
Rosemary chicken salad sandwiches with spinach and baby carrots
Step aerobics, 63 minutes

MONDAY
Baked chicken and avocado egg rolls
Rest day

TUESDAY
Leftovers
Cardio kickbox, 25 minutes

WEDNESDAY
Portobello and bell pepper sandwiches
Gold's Gym Cardio Workout, 45 minutes

THURSDAY
Leftovers or frozen Kashi pizza
Spark Cardio Blast, 35 minutes

FRIDAY
Jimmy John's veg sub
Rest day

SATURDAY
Not sure on dinner
Workout: walk/jog, 55 minutes