Wouldn’t you know it…the day after weigh in and this morning I see 249.5 again (That’s another 1 lb. loss since yesterday if you are counting…)

I am seriously attributing this past weeks loss to portion control. I know I was under a TON of stress last week, and that caused my appetite to be absolutely gone. My mom would make me stop to eat at work (she’s my boss, in case you are new here)…I don’t think I hit 20 points one day last week. One day was only 11. I’m not worried though, because it won’t last…my ‘time’ is in about a week…so we shall see.

I can tell you though that seeing as how the stress affected me so badly last week, it did get me one week of no sweets or anything and I have no craving what-so-ever for anything like that. My biggest craving right now is peanut butter. I found these awesome Quaker rice cakes (the full-sized ones, not the tiny snack ones) and they are peanut butter and chocolate chip. They are 1.5 pts. each and I have been putting 1 TBSP of peanut butter (2 pts.) on it, and that along with 1/2 cup of vegetable soup has been my lunch for probably the past 4 days at least. Something about the peanut butter also (probably the high protein content) keeps me satisfied longer. I don’t get hungry. I will seriously get home after work at night and only have used 8 points before dinner - the lunch I just mentioned and my cup of Special K redberries w/ milk in the morning. Today I’m at 9 points because I had a WW english muffin this morning with my cereal for 1 pt. Ooh the craziness my life has become. English Muffin.

I seem to have lost my humor in the past couple of posts, but let me assure you, once the stress is gone, I will feel more like my old self. Right now I guess it’s just stick to the facts…and as they are, they’re working for me!! I’m even noticing the loss in my clothes fitting right again. Add to that my constant thirst for water, eating low in my points (except for yesterday which I failed to mention I tried to eat a normal dinner last night of pork chops and saurkraut and mashed potatoes to eat a bit higher point of a day and ended up sick from the heaviness of the potatoes. I haven’t had potatoes in forever.) and exercise that has gotten in whenever I have managed, and it’s a great start to another losing week!

Lippy’s fix-her-parts STILL have yet to arrive at my house. I’m IRRITATED with Sears.com. Well, I actually ordered the parts over the phone because they will let you do a check by phone with them, and she told me it was showing an arrival date, to me, of last Friday. LAST Friday. It’s Tuesday. Far as I know they aren’t there. They shipped out on the 16th. Yeah. And I called them yet again last night and they don’t have a tracking number. It’s been 8 days since they have shipped out, and you don’t have a tracking number yet?? C’mon Sears people. Hopefull they will be there when I get home tonight and since Clint will be getting home before me, maybe he will make my day by already having her all fixed when I get there. He’s good like that

Work stress has finally lifted just a bit. I am not kidding when I say last night was the first night’s sleep I have had in 5 days. I close my eyes to try and sleep and I see numbers from work, and just cannot get it all out of my head. It’s been awful. I haven’t been able to eat much, sleep much. Hopefully after today it will get better. I don’t think my body can take much more. To top it off, now I’m coming down with something. My throat is killing me, I’m all stuffed up…just crappy.

Ok. The negative it out of the way. Here’s the good side of it all.

I lost 4.5 lbs. this week!!! Scale was 250.5 this morning! I had seen 249 at one point this past week, but I will take the 250.5 with no worries

I will try and update more here as soon as I can. Right now the long hours (full week last week plus 8 hours on Saturday and 4 hours yesterday) and stress have just had me down. I have been doing my workouts whenever I can sneak them in. I had 2 days last week that I didn’t do them, but as you can see from my weigh-in, even a few times a week helps!!!

Just in case you thought I have gone AWOL, thought I should post…

Everything is still going really good, except for the fact that Lippy’s fix-her-parts won’t be here until at least tomorrow. I’m having withdrawls big time. Can’t wait to have my girl back. I have also missed out on the past 2 nights TBL workouts. Not by choice. And the guilt is killing me. Seriously. But tonight I tackled the ‘Boot Camp’ workout on the DVD. The other night I was saying how the ’sculpting’ workout didn’t seem like a workout cuz I wasn’t out of breath, that kinda thing. Well, the Boot Camp?? COMPLETE OPPOSITE. I was DRIPPING sweaty when it was done. I pushed myself HARD tonight and really got through it all. There was only one time that I stopped 2 counts before the group was done.

I am sitting here with a glass of water that I swear weighs 20 lbs. I’m shaking so dang bad trying to drink it.

So the reason for the last 2 nights of missed workouts. Work. Stress. Long hours. Period. Not MY period, just those 3 things, period. Work has been unbelievable. I actually left there in tears yesterday. It was THAT bad. I’m not a drama queen. For me to get that stressed and upset it very unusual, and I just couldn’t do anymore. It’s all mental stress. Even today was alot but I handled it much better. The hours I have been working are long, I even missed getting Abbie off the bus yesterday because I left work so late. No I didn’t make her sit outside in the snowstorm till I got home. Luckily we have wonderful neighbors that have kids Abbie’s age and she yelled across the yard for Abbie to come over there when she got off the bus and kept her for me till I made it home. Today, Abbie stayed out of school because she’s sick, so she got to go to work with Megan and I, and I was there for another long day today. Tomorrow will be normal hopefully.

I swear mental stress is worse than anything physical. It just makes me DRAINED. One good thing I am feeling tonight though, is, working out really does relieve stress. I feel so much better now that Bob kicked my butt in Boot Camp. Damn he’s a cutie.

Evening update ~ I have updated my challenge page, my weight page and all of the ’stat’ information on my main page. It is all actual numbers now. I hadn’t changed anything at all over the Christmas holiday. I had gained during that time and lost a few then gained a few back. Played with it like it was a yo-yo. Now I have officially lost 3 lbs. of it again and will continue to. So instead of the 49 lbs. I was down, now I’m down 42. How many times can one person lose the same weight over and over?? I’m so glad that I have jumped into this challenge with Jenn and Elizabeth. I needed something so badly to get me back on the ball and stop the messin’ around. Tonight was the first night of tackling the High-intensity workout on the TBL dvd and it was AWESOME. This was the same workout that I posted about on the first day that I received the DVD. The one where I said I didn’t even make it 10 minutes and thought I was going to die and find my body parts falling off as I stumbled for the bed??? That is THE high intensity workout. Obviously it’s not the best workout to start off with, but in the month since I received the DVD and only doing it seriously and steadily for the past week, tonight I did the whole 20 minute workout. I can feel the tolerance level in my body changing. I’m able to handle more of a workout and my breath and heart rate recover so much quicker than before I started this challenge.

As I was doing the workout tonight, it came to the cool down / stretch and you rest your hands on the top of your thighs, and I did a double take and kept squeezing the top of my leg. My hand goes OVER the top of my leg now. Not lays across the width of my leg anymore, but my fingers actually BEND and wrap OVER my leg. It’s getting THINNER. Damn good feeling!

Morning post ~Weigh in day…I was nervous. I had lost a bunch the first couple of days, then saw the scale creep up a little even though I was eating good and working out EVERY FRIGGIN DAY - GO ME!!!

So I went from nervous to super happy I lost 3 lbs. this week I haven’t had a chance to update my workout chart and all, but I have been at it every single day New workout starts tonight, I’m excited to see what it’s like…I will update everything tonight when I get home…Jenn and Elizabeth, I’m coming to see what your weigh in was like too!!!

R.I.P. Lippy (2005-2006)…

Well, at least until possibly next Friday. I mentioned how it was making a clunking noise. Well, the crank in the back end broke. Completely. Clint took it apart and checked it out and found it. We got the part ordered through Sears.com, but it won’t be here till Friday. If you ask me, I think Lippy is being awful dang whiny. Just cuz she’s been having to run with me everyday. She was just looking for a way out. Sorry sucka. You get your few days break, lady, but after that, you’re MINE.

I blame Clint. She ran just fine for me till he had to start trying her out. She was loyal to ME. Not some sweaty stinky man. MEN. Either way, I have to figure out a way to burn over 500 calories per day now without her. I’m scared. I rely on her, as she allows me to burn calories so quickly.

I guess I should mention here, for those of you who are new, Lippy is my elliptical trainer. Lippy for short. I had someone comment last week sometime that they didn’t know what Lippy was, and thought it was one of my kids at first Nope…she’s my butt kickin’ elliptical.

I updated my challenge chart with yesterday as my rest day and the Strength & Sculpt workout today I love the sculpt one for sure, not many lunges at all…thing is, especially now without Lippy, I don’t feel like I got as good of a workout. Only because it’s not an aerobic workout. It’s strength training with weights. I know that doing the low-intensity workout the other days is plenty every week, but I don’t feel like I really worked out good enough unless I’m catching my breath and sweating.

Clint got called into work tonight. I got all changed and ready for him to take my pictures, and he had to leave. Abbie tried her hardest to do it for me, but they are too far away/missing my head/missing my body/too dark…that kind of thing in all of them…so tomorrow, that’s my objective. PICTURES. Mind you, they won’t be posted here until after the 6 week challenge is over and there is a picture to compare it to to show what the 6 weeks did for me, but I need them taken. Jenn sent me hers confidentially already. Hmmm…wonder if I could do a little blackmail??? Whatcha got Jenn???? Muwahahaha….

Here’s to hoping the Lippy-fix-her-parts come sooner than next Friday.

Anyone else getting the shakes when staying off the scale for more than 24 hours??

I didn’t get a chance to update my TBL challenge chart, but last night is going to be marked as my ‘rest’ day. It was not a ‘do nothing’ night by any means, but I started a project, and didn’t finish until late (like after 9:00 p.m.) so I decided to finish up and sit and finally watch this past weeks episode of TBL. I DVR’d it, so I got to enjoy it in peace last night

So, Sunday will not be my rest day. I will be one workout off from you girls, Jenn and Elizabeth, until Sunday, then we will all be back on the same page again

The project I was doing last night was working on the girls bedrooms. They have separate bedrooms. Right next to each other. Well for the past week and a half, Abbie has wanted her mattress in Megan’s room so they can ‘camp’ together. So Abbie was sleeping on her mattress on the floor right next to Meggie’s bed and Meggie was in her bed. So Clint and I started talking about it and mentioned to them that if they wanted to put their beds in the same bedroom and have the other bedroom be a play room, we could do that. Abbie wasn’t too crazy about it at first, she was worried they wouldn’t know whose toys were whose, or that she couldn’t still get private time in her room to play, but we sorted it all out and they wanted to do it. So last night for over 4-1/2 hours, I did this. By. Myself. All the toys that were in Abbie’s room were moved to Meggie’s bedroom, Meggie’s bed and dresser were brought into Abbie’s room. So I still have some organizing to do in the new toy room, but for the most part it’s done and they loved it last night. They must have laid in there in their beds last night for 15 minutes talking and giggling. Sweet sound.

So tonight I need to finish up organizing, but I will definitely have time for my workout. So last night wasn’t a lost cause for exercise when I was moving furniture and toys and vacuuming and all that.

I am so proud of myself this week. The workouts and eating and everything have been amazing. I just feel so great. I can’t get over myself. If I didn’t have Jenn & Elizabeth doing the 6-week thing with me I definitely think I would be done for…so thank you ladies!!! Karen ~ The only thing you need for doing the TBL DVD is small hand weights. I have a mat I use for floor exercises, but it’s not a necessity. And even the weights aren’t..you could use some bottles of water or soup cans if you wanted. There’s no equipment needed. It’s all lunges and jumping jacks and lunges, and cruches, and lunges, and LuNgEs, and LUNGES…your butt will hate you. But it’s so worth it.

The nutritionist for The Biggest Loser was on the Today show Wednesday morning and said something that I loved hearing. You always hear that 1-2 lbs. of weight loss per week is where you should be. The healthy amount. He said on there that when you are eating properly, and really working out as they do on the show, 1 lb. a DAY of weight loss is not a bad thing. If it were more than 1 lb. per day, he would say ease up a bit. I thought that was great. Especially when you are 100 lbs. ore more overweight as I was when I started this, you KNOW you can lose more than that so easily when you first start out doing this. And truthfully, how long are the huge losses like that going to last??? So have at it people!!!!

I updated my challenge page with todays workout. I did my TBL workout, and got on Lippy for 11 minutes and she started making a weird thumping noise in the back end. Lost is on tonight, so Clint wants to wait till tomorrow night after work to see what is wrong with it. I got 11 minutes in on it and burned 198 calories. Not too bad for a small amount of time and a small additional exercise along with my Biggest Loser one.

Still not much to talk about tonight I guess, everything is going really well though…food, water, exercise, everything…I have taken a ‘no-scale’ vow, so I can’t get on until Monday.

Not a real exciting day, so I’ll leave you with this…

I updated my Challenge page for todays exercise/workout. I kicked ass boo-tay (for Jenn) today. I did my TBL workout as soon as I got home (40 minutes), then I went for a 2 mile walk OUTSIDE…so nice (33 minutes), AND I did 30 minutes on Lippy. I earned a smooth 12 activity points

Two posts in one day. One way to tell I’m on track.

Today was an inspirational one for me. The changes I’m making in myself seem to be trickling down the family line in my house. I did my The Biggest Loser (which will be known as TBL from here on out) workout DVD and started with the very first workout, which is described as being a warm-up, then a low-intensity (my ass) 25 minute workout, and then a 10 minute cool down/stretch. (The link above, for ‘Challenges’ is now updated for this along with an explanation of the new challenge I’m doing along with Jenn from Against the Odds (her link is on the right)). They describe the workout as low-intensity. I friggin can’t wait to see what part of my body falls off when I do the high-intensity.

You know when you wear courderoy pants and they have the ’swish swish’ sound? Tonight my ass is making the ‘damn damn damn’ sound with each step I take. I have learned today that there are more ass muscles than I had previously known existed. Just wanted to see how many times I can successfully use ‘ass’ in this post.

So, to explain the Monkey see, Monkey do, title and the trickling in the family…

I did my workout…we made a wonderfully delicious and healthy dinner…shish-ka-bobs on the grill. This was our first attempt at these, and they were un-freakin-believeable:

They had lean stew meat (from our own cows…the dead ones of course…sorry that was bad), potatoes (which I didn’t eat), red peppers, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. Man were they unbelieveably good.

Then, after dinner I’m cleaning up the dinner dishes and the usual house mess, when I hear Lippy. I had assumed it was Abbie as she loves being on Lippy. Nope. I walk in my room where Lippy lives and there is Clint!!! I was so excited! Of course, he’s skinny and in shape anyways, does like 70 flights of stairs per day (not exaggerating) at his work, but I was just so tickled that he saw me working out earlier and took it upon himself to give it a whirl. He did awesome And can I just tell you that it made me feel even better about my workout on Lippy when the man who is in such great shape got off of her and was soaking wet and couldn’t do the intensity on her as high as I keep it set for myself. Makes me feel like I AM getting in shape

Then we go out to the living room and this is what we find:

How friggin cute is that???? Meggie doing crunches with Nubby (the ball). She’s only 3, mind you, but to see that what I do makes a difference with everyone else in the house has really motivated me.

One thing I absolutely LOVE about TBL DVD is…these are REAL people. They are not skin and bones, they smile when they are having fun, not because they had Botox and their faces are frozen in a smiling position. They don’t have perfect balance. They don’t keep in perfect rhythm with each other. They DO struggle!!!! It was awesome! I feel so intimidated even in my own living room working out with little skinny minnies that do it perfectly with the perfect smile on their perfect face while moving their perfect bodies just perfectly. gag. This DVD is REAL. When I’m burning and can’t take anymore, SO ARE THEY.

I’m telling you, for those of you who talked about Matt being a cry-baby on the show, do this workout. I swear to you, while doing the lunges (Jenn you were SO right) there was a moment where I literally could have just cried. It hurt SO badly and you want to keep going, but your body just won’t let you.

/ end commercial

I just coughed and my tummy cried. I’m gonna hurt tomorrow.

Have you ever watched WE (Women’s Entertainment) channel on TV??? I was watching it the other day and saw a preview for a show called ‘Secret Lives of Women’. There are several topics this show covers but this one in particular was on eating disorders. So I DVR’d (like TiV0) it so I could watch it later on.

One woman was an overeater. Would order enough food for 5 people from a fast food drive through and eat it all herself in her car while washing it down with a Diet Coke.

Another lady was Anorexic. She has really low self-esteem, you could tell, and her husband was a jerk, but that’s beside the point. If she didn’t feel she did something well enough that day, she would punish herself by only allowing herself a glass of water for lunch.

The last lady was what they call an exercise bulemic. She would binge and then exercise for 3-4 hours a day just to burn off what she binged on.

What struck me when I watched this show, that I never thought I would realize, is that I had something in common with every single one of the women. No, I don’t order through the drive through in extremes, in fact I haven’t had fast food in so long that I couldn’t even tell you the last time I got something. But there were other things about this woman (who has lost a ton of weight now, btw) that were so me. Even the anorexic lady. I could sense her low self-esteem and know EXACTLY how she felt. I go to extremes as she had, but for some reason I still have the weight. The exercise bulemic was alot like myself also in the way that she CONSTANTLY thought about the calories she was taking in. Every bite. Every glance at food, she knew the calories in it and how long she would have to work out to burn it off if she ate it. These three women were all so different from the next in so many ways, but it all felt like me. Me in the fat suit, me the boney skinny woman I know is in here somewhere, and me the exercise-aholic that can’t get my mind off food and calories.

It has seemed to consume me as of late.

I did work out yesterday unlike I had in a very long time. I did 16 minutes on Lippy, and then 16 minutes of various cardio and weights. For those 16 minutes I did 1 minutes of jump rope, 5 minutes of crunches on my exercise ball and 3 arm exercises with my 3 lb. weighted balls while on my ball, and then 10 minute The Biggest Loser workout that is in the new book.

I bought the book (The Biggest Loser diet/exercise thing (that’s not the actual title, just don’t have it in front of me)), by the way. Love. It. It’s got awesome tips, exercise and food ideas, a great workout to follow and some great recipes. It’s amazing!!

Well, I am working from home today, so I need to get some more finished, and then work out again…

Oh one last note. I’m done with coffee. Holy Moses. I got SO friggin dehydrated after about 2 weeks of drinking it…of course I had lowered my water intake because I was drinking coffee more, so I’m sure that didn’t help, but I have gone back to water. Water. WATER.