Catching Up

So I was bad and didn't post for a few days. There isn't much to update you on, although I am guilty of some crimes against my healthy diet.

On Sunday, I did my scheduled workout AND hiked for a few hours with my family. Since we didn't really plan well for lunch, all I ended up eating for my healthy meal was an apple. Although I made up for it in calories later with a snack :/

Monday, I ended up cheating a little on my healthy meal by eating some of my leftover chicken parmesan along with my green smoothie. Chicken parmesan is obviously not very healthy.

Today was probably my biggest failure. I haven't been getting good sleep lately because my cat has the habit of waking me up in the middle of the night. It literally makes me want to scream and Iam coming up with ways to get around the issue. Anyways, I woke up feeling extremely sluggish and actually went back to sleep after breakfast, which was a leftover cinnamon roll and two sausage patties. When I woke up from my nap, I was going to workout first, but ended up cooking myself up a really crappy meal, consisting of a steak and cheese microwavable chimichanga and about 15 fried pickles that I baked in the oven. I hated that I did it. I kind of made up for it with dinner by baking chicken in the oven and baking some broccoli in the oven. However, I did have a good heap of stuffing on the side, which sort of took away from the rest of the healthy.

My other crime I committed yesterday was that I drank a whole cup of soda at Jimmy John's. I just really wanted a flavored beverage and I was afraid getting tea would keep me up at night (although my cat covered that area anyway). It was a really poor excuse. Fortunately, it seems I have only cheated on the "no soda rule" once each week, which isn't the worst thing in the world.

As for my workouts, I'm still getting them done everyday, but my lack of sleep has made it harder to give good energy to each workout. I have a plan tonight to try to trip my cat up from scratching on my door by putting a sheet over it that sort of billows off of the door. I'm hoping it will confuse her enough to keep her away. I think I'll also keep the door to the back porch open since she loves to go out there. As you can tell, I'm getting a bit desperate in my attempts to keep my cat from waking me up at night. Because honestly, your sleep effects your health so much. Not just with the theories on how it affects your metabolism, but also in your energy for the rest of the day. And energy is not only needed for workouts, but also to make healthier meals. I don't know why, but even if I can make a healthy meal fairly easily, if I'm tired, I crave carbs and bad food all the way.

So you see why it is so crucial for me to get a good night's sleep. I'll update you tomorrow on whether my plan for tonight worked out.

TTFN

End of Week 1!

Today is officially the last day of my first week to a healthier, happier life! I feel great. Even though I technically have a "rest day" today on my workout calendar, I snuck in one video from Blogilates because I just really wanted to try her new Love Handle Hysteria video. Love handles have always been one of my biggest problems. Even with having a flat stomach in high school, I still had a good chunk of meat on each side of it. I think it partly comes from having a big booty; it just kind of spreads to everywhere near its core.

Another reason I really wanted to do at least one video today was because I'm kind of afraid that if I even stop for a day, it may encourage me to take another day off and then my whole calendar is ruined. It's happened before when I've gotten on workout frenzies. I know I should give myself a break, but I'm not really that sore and I only limited it to one workout. As long as I stay safe about it and don't try to injure myself with pushing too hard, I think I should be just fine.

So along with today being my break day, Fridays are the one day a week I'm allowed to weigh myself. Last week I started at 172.4 pounds and today I weigh 171.2. Is it what I had hoped to see? Not exactly, but I still lost a little over a pound! And any progress is solid progress. Who knows? Maybe that was a solid pound of fat I lost! Being a little more strict with my diet definitely would have helped that number, but maybe instead of amping up to two healthy meals this next week, I can spend more time focusing on all of the rules established for my healthy meal of the day.

For example, yesterday I ate this:

It was good in the sense that I ate tuna with raw carrots and broccoli. The down side is that I added a little over a tablespoon of mayo to the tuna. The dip I dunked my carrots and broccoli in, I'm not exactly going to knock. Yes, it is processed, but it's greek yogurt! I can't really feel too awful about that. But the mayo was definitely bad. So next week, I hope to entirely eliminate those "baby cheats" in my healthy meals. So that's my food plan for next week.

Next week's workout looks like it's going to be pretty interesting, combining workouts I've already did with a few new videos thrown in. I'm thinking I'll wait til the third week to start adding in extra videos that aren't scheduled.

Getting back to my progress for this week, I want to say that my tummy looks phenomenal! I was really starting to develop a gut in the past couple of months and now any skin barely hangs! No more tucking my fat into my jeans! And part of it goes to eating a little better and doing lots of ab workouts, but the other part goes to something Cassey taught me. In all of her videos thus far, she's talked about "pulling your navel into your spine" for proper form. She says it also engages your abs further and kind of trains your stomach to appear that way all the time. Now I've heard a lot of this before from her and other philosophies, but something clicked about actually doing it myself during the workouts. I found it really did make it harder to do the workouts while trying to maintain this part of your form. And I really kind of do think it is "training" my abs and tummy to stay in that fashion. In the last couple of days my jeans felt loose around my waist again! And it felt awesome! I didn't feel like a stuffed sausage!

So even though I've ranted about girls sucking in their stomachs before just to try to "appear" thinner, there really is more to it, I've found. Cassey's amazingness strikes again. I don't know what it is about her, but she is truly becoming one of my heroes!

Soon I will be figuring out my healthy lunch of the day. Hope it goes well!

TTFN

Day 5 - Happy Hump Day!

Felt a little under the weather this morning but still felt chipper and clear-headed! Melatonin works its magic again. I figure I'll try going without it Saturday night to see if I've gotten back into the habit of sleeping through the night.

So I went straight into working out this morning and phew am I sore! My booty is feeling it from yesterday's exercise and my abs are aching from today's workout. The soreness is starting to build up for the day-to-day so I'm getting a little shaky after each workout. But I definitely feel like my muscles are building and my pants feel a little looser in the tummy area already! It could definitely be partly my imagination or my pants just stretching out from use, but I'm hopeful it's starting to go down!

This morning I ate some leftover fries (not awesome), but I purposely didn't use any ketchup or any condiment to add more calories. I also had half a pomegranate, which was deliciousss. I think for lunch I will sauteed some spinach with garlic and onion and a can of tuna. I know I shouldn't add mayo to the tuna, but it tastes so dry without it. I think I will just measure out only a tablespoon so that I keep it to a minimum. I'm thinking more and more about adding one more workout to each day starting next week and I think I'm gonna commit to it.

One thing I'm not so sure about is committing to two healthy meals a week starting next week. I talked about it on here before. But I'm not so sure I'm ready for it because I'm still kind of struggling to keep up with the one healthy meal a day, haha. But hopefully I'll get there. I can't wait to finally take a look at the scale on Friday also. I doubt there will be much difference, but I'm super curious to see the number. I just can't let myself get discouraged if the number on the scale doesn't change at all. I have to keep in mind of how great I'm feeling and that I need to stick with this to continue feeling that way.

Until tomorrow!
TTFN

Best I've Felt In Quite Awhile!

So I've been having trouble sleeping for quite awhile lately. I think it's a combination of stress, the lack of sleeping hours that comes with working two jobs, and everything else involved. Last night I finally broke down and bought some Melatonin. One thing is, I hate taking pills. I don't like the feeling of dependency on medication at all. But by this point I was desperate for some relief from my waking spells all night long. I woke up this morning with the clearest head I've had in quite awhile. I woke up not feeling like I immediately wanted to go back to sleep, and that's amazing. I don't remember waking up at all last night.

I'm sure the fact that I only have one job now and don't have to wake up early anymore helps. And probably eating a little healthier and working out more consistently factors in as well. But whatever it is, it's making me feel 100x better!

The funny thing is, I feel like I might be developing a little cold. And yet, even with that, I still feel amazing. So that speaks for itself. I just made this all natural cold remedy and it's actually working pretty well! If you wanna try it, it is: 3 cups of water, 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of honey. It doesn't taste too bad at all! I just boiled it on the stove. It says to drink periodically throughout the day, but I'll probably just drink it slowly all at once.

Because I felt so awesome waking up, the first thing I did this morning was workout. Today focused on legs, which is my weak spot, as I've mentioned before. I had to stop a couple of times during the workout because it hurt so much. Hopefully my muscles develop there fairly fast. Maybe I'll throw in another session or two next week.

I ate some plain Greek yogurt mixed with a fresh chopped up green apple, some granola, two teaspoons of honey, and a few raisins. I wanted something savory, so I ate about a 1/2 cup of the black beans I had leftover from yesterday.

For lunch, I plan on eating the rest of my leftover green beans from yesterday, the rest of the black beans, and maybe a can of light tuna. It depends on how hungry I am.

But I'm going to say goodbye now! I've got a list of productive things to do today, like FINALLY updating my resume, shopping for my brother's birthday gift, and applying to a few jobs online.

TTFN

Day 3

Just finished my scheduled workout! They are still feeling fairly easy, although The workout's involving my legs are pretty difficult. I guess that struggle comes with being a bottom-heavy kind of girl.

I've also worked out my finances now that I', gonna have a lot less money coming in with only one job. I haven't updated my resume yet, but that's planned for tomorrow. My room is also clean and organized, so I feel like overall I've had a pretty successful day so far! Now I've got work until midnight, so it will be a fully successful day at whole.

For my healthy meal today, I had black beans sauteed with some olive oil, onions, and garlic. I also had fresh French green beans cooked the same way. I used a little butter with both, but now more than a tablespoon and a half between both. The amount I made was also for two full meals, so it divided up the butter I had further. The only way I marred this meal was when I put 1/3 cup of shredded cheese on my beans to perk up the flavor. This is what it looked like!

Yummy, right?

I've also noticed something else that's going to become helpful with tamping down my overeating. The workouts are pretty ab-intensive and challenge my them everyday. So my abs just keep getting more and more sore and staying fairly contracted. Since my abs always feel tight, it seems like it's making me feel fuller faster because my stomach can only extend so much before pushing on my sore abs. So hooray for sore abs!

Glad to say that I didn't struggle as much today overall as I did yesterday. Let's hope I can keep it up!

TTFN

Setback

It's hard to say, much less believe, but I've already had a day that was a total loss. I started off with a huge headache today upon waking up. But it was nice because my mom made pancakes and bacon, i.e. a non-healthy meal. I went pretty much immediately back to sleep after I ate (already a bad sign).

I slept until about 10:30, until my mom woke me up to run a couple of errands with her. We went out to lunch at O'Charley's, which I've never been to before, so I decided to get a yummy fried chicken sandwich since they were known for their fried chicken. I only ate half and decided to save the rest, which was a good move, but it still wasn't a healthy meal. Then I topped off that with 2 Dunkin Donuts doughnuts >:(

When we got back home, I took ANOTHER nap.  My headache finally started to cease after that nap, but then I went right into making dinner because Beef Rose takes about 2 hours to cook. Dinner wasn't that healthy either because it was red meat, butter, wine, pasta, and a lot of other unhealthy things aside from the mushrooms. I also had the other half of my sandwich as a snack just a few minutes ago. AND a Ginger Ale when I'm not supposed to be drinking soda .__.

On top of all of that, I didn't do my scheduled workout today. If it wasn't for my killer headache, I think today would have gone a lot differently. But it's still an excuse, even if it's fairly valid. So tomorrow will be damage control. Instead of starting the calendar over (that one whole day... haha), I'm just going to go straight to Day 2 as if today never happened. Getting back on the wagon is all I can do. And fortunately, its' easier to keep track of my diet and exercise during the week.

The only thing I'm weary of is having my "day off" on my workout calendar on Saturday instead of Friday now. But I'll make it work!

Sorry to have such a disappointing post today. But I can only let it inspire me to do better the next day instead of destroying myself with guilt and letting it discourage me.

I also wanted to mention that I've decided to only weigh myself once a week, maybe on my "rest day" so that I won't get too obsessive and discouraged about not losing weight every single day.

Hopefully this is the last failed day I'll have. At least for awhile.

TTFN


UPDATE!!!

I just convinced myself to do the scheduled workout today as a last ditch effort and it worked!! I'd really like to thank this blog in part. I think admitting my guilty day in writing honestly pushed me to put in some last minute effort. And I even did it with umph! I don't know if I would have been able to do it if it wasn't an ab-focused day. Ab workouts (though I don't really have any), tend to be the ones I'm best at. I don't think I could have gotten through a set of cardio or anything else. But none-the-less, I at least got in my workout and I'm right on schedule again.

Hooray for last-ditch efforts!

TTFN

The First Day of My Journey!

Get ready, this post is all about embarrassing measurements and humiliating photos. So they always say it's easier to see how far you've come when you look back to where you started. In order to see the progress of my weight-loss journey, I figured I should document a bunch of details about where I'm starting out at.

I'm 5'6'' and officially weigh 172.4 pounds. My first blog post had me at 174, so I guess my initial freak-out was over some bloating, but 172 is still not a very good number to be at. I'm still well overweight by anyone's standards.

 Here are some embarrassing photos I took just moments ago on my Mac's PhotoBooth:

Excuse my extremely pale skin, but I've learned to embrace it. The face shot isn't exactly the prettiest either, but I really wanted to see if I could get my face to thin out just a bit. Anyways, I'm not the heaviest person ever, but you can tell by the photos that I could definitely use some work. Especially with just tightening up the skin in quite a few places. (Lol at my degree lying on the floor in the background. Go Hokies!)

So now for my measurements. I looked up a few sights on weight-loss to see where to measure yourself to track weight-loss. I found a decent description of how to go about it on this site: http://www.ivillage.com/how-do-i-take-my-measurements/4-n-142316 . I really wanted to try out these measurements because people so often say with getting healthy and fit, you can't always notice it on the scale. So these are the numbers:

Bust: 99.5 cm
Chest: 83 cm
Waist: 78.5 cm
Hips: 116 cm
Midway: 108 cm
Thighs: 70.5 cm L, 71.5 cm R
Knees: 47.5 cm L, 47 cm R
Calves: 39.5 cm L, 38.5 cm R
Upperarm: 34.5 cm L, 34.5 cm R
Forearm: 25.5 cm L, 26 cm R

For the most part, I'd really like to see all of the numbers go down a bit, but I'm really more focused on my tummy, butt and thighs above all else. I decided to go with centimeters rather than inches because I thought I'd get a more accurate reading of whether I'm going down in size or not.

I've also officially printed out my Blogilates Beginner's Workout Calendar! Here it is taped to my desk that I use everyday.

I figured it was better to put it on my desk than my wall since I have to sign it everyday. I haven't started my first workout yet today because I'm waiting for my breakfast to settle. Started off the day fairly healthy so far, btw! I ate a fresh orange and 3 slices of thin fried ham. I'm not counting it as my "healthy meal" for the day because the ham is processed deli meat from a container, but the portion size is much smaller than I usually go for. Normally I would make myself 5-6 slices of fried ham with my breakfast in the morning. The slices are pretty thin, but it's still more than a person should be eating. That's my biggest obstacle... getting past my over-sized portions.

But I have a healthy lunch planned which consists of sauteed chopped spinach with onions and garlic (about a cup) and a 3 oz piece of baked salmon with dill and lemon. It's going to be delicious and I'm honestly looking forward to it. And no processed food! Go Lauren!

However, my healthy lunch will be slightly off-set by my unhealthy dinner of Papa John's pizza, but it's game day people! My Virginia Tech Hokies are playing against Duke and we are ranked #14! But I will try to cut some calories by only eating cheese pizza and limiting myself to 3 slices. Three slices doesn't really sound like I'm limiting myself, right? Well, as I've been preaching - baby steps, people. I'm sure I could eat a few more slices than that if I really wanted to.

Now I'm off to kill my very first workout day! Wish me luck!

TTFN



Didn't mean to extend this post but I thought I'd share how my first workout and healthy meal went! From now on I think I'll try to refrain from posting entirely until after I'm done with both. Here's a photo of my healthy lunch!

It was very yummy, but I definitely expect to be hungry an hour from now haha. Got to get used to those pesky smaller portions. I'm definitely an American girl when it comes to my portions!

As for the workout... phew! I didn't really work up a full on sweat, but I definitely struggled a bit. All of the moves were fairly rudimentary, but the amount of reps you had to do was the hard part. Those legs circles and triangles were killer! Especially on the second leg. I normally amp it up a little with my own personal workout plans, but I want to do the first week with only the pre-scheduled workouts to see how my body responds soreness-wise. Plus it looks like she really only goes easy on the first couple of days. We shall see! Until tomorrow...

TTFN