Not going well...

Oh boy. So I really fell off the wagon the past few weeks. I just got SO stressed out with the changes at work and people not doing what they were supposed to.. and planning the farewell party for our department... etc. It was crazy. I tried to stay away from sweets... but I could not stop with the soda. And the gym... all the sugar made me lethargic after I was done working and I just could not get motivated. All that's over now and I have made a goal this week to sit down and plan when I am doing what. I stick to things better when I am writing it down.

We are stopping Nutrisystem after the food we have runs out. It just got boring really fast and it started to taste all the same. I need some variety in my life. That's another thing that was stressing me out... how much I didn't like the food anymore and how I was going to tell Mike... and I missed cooking. So, we are going to do portion control on our own.

Hopefully this week goes better!!

Monday Review: week 6 (or so)

So, yeah... it's Monday...How did we do? Well, on my end, I did ok with the exercising. I actually took the early morning walk with the kiddos in the jogging stroller and, when we stopped at the playground to give them a break, I even did some pull-ups (chin-ups? what are they called?) on the monkey bars. Yay. However...the eating. Oh, sweet Jesuits, the eating. I'm a little stressed out trying to get ready for our trip and when I'm stressed, I tend to make myself sick gorging on sweets. 'Cause nothing calms the nerves like a sugar coma, you know. The sheer volume of soda, candy, treats and popsicles I ate this week...ugh. I need to go lay down just thinking about it.

My new goals: Lay off the sugar!!! No, really, put the soda down and back away, slowly...

Keep up the good exercising vibes.

Meal Planning Chart

A friend of mine was asking for new meal ideas on her blog which got me thinking about the menu planning chart I made a few years ago. My mom and I used it all the time (when I was living back home) and now she's just using it on her own. Unfortunately I haven't felt motivated to do it for myself. Cooking for just one person is strange to me (mom still has three to cook for) although my daughter will be with me for the next six weeks (starting July 1st, yeah!) so I'll get back into the swing of things having someone other than myself to cook for.

Anyway, here's the meal and menu planning chart I made, hosted at lds.about.com which is the website I'm the guide of. It's the first link and is in PDF format. The file also has a second page full of meal ideas that you can print on the back.

What meal planning tips do you have?

Skinny Jeans

I think that every woman has that one piece of clothing that makes her feel amazing, if only she can fit into it. Television weight-loss commercials show woman after woman squealing with glee after squeezing back into her "skinny jeans". I don't have a pair of jeans or really any particular article of clothing, but for years, whenever I felt wretched and troll-ish, I would snuggle into one of my husband's dress shirts. Something about the way they fit made me feel small, delicate, and sexy. I'm sure I looked like a big frump, but I felt terrific. Until, one day after my second child was born, I fastened the buttons and saw the fabric stretching to reach. What a horrible day! So, for almost three years, I have avoided those shirts like they were the plague, not wanting to feel that way ever ever again. One day last week, though, I was feeling miserable and just needed a pick-me-up, so I pulled on one of Bob's shirts. And it fit! Well, not "fit" exactly, it was just big enough that I felt tiny and small enough that I still felt like a woman and not a little girl. Yay! That's progress that I can really embrace:)
So, what's your equivalent of the "skinny jeans"?

Is it Monday already?

So, my eating has been hit or miss but my working out has been nonexistent at this point. I'm really blaming work right now. I'm a school administrator and the end of the school year is simply crazy!!!! Plus, I just feel swamped and overwhelmed. I barely have any me time and I'm just waiting to get through the end of the week.

Dh and I had a heart to heart talk this weekend and he said that he's tired of both of us being fat. Now, he does 99% of the cooking and will make healthy stuff for us as long as we're on the South Beach together but other than that, his theory is that we should just work out more. Now, I know from my experiences that even when I do work out pretty hard, I'll lose weight but when I watch what I eat when I work out, the weight comes off even faster. So, I did *ask* him if he minded if I did some of the cooking when I'm off :-) It's hard because it is one of the things he truly enjoys doing but I think I'm going to work on getting together lots of healthy things prepped during the day so he can still grill them when he gets home from work. That way, it's a win-win situation! We will eat a lot of salads around here but sometimes, you get tired of eating salads iykwim!

So, I keep saying that work and being tired is getting in the way of exercising but I know if I exercised more, I'd be less tired. . .sigh, baby steps. . .this didn't all come on overnight and it's not all gonna vanish overnight either.

Rachel's Before and After

I'm finally ready to post my before/after pictures. My wonderful mother and aunt Linda took pictures of me (and I took pictures of them) at the Idaho Botanical Garden last week and they turned out wonderful. It was so much fun!

If you missed reading about my history with weight gain/loss you can read it here: Rachel's Story. Now, without too much more delay, here are my current before and after mug shots.

09-1997 (age 22 at 162 lbs)
With my mother.



03-1999 (24 at 135 lbs)
Sorry, mom, it's not a great pic of you 'cause you were crying!



NOW PREPARE YOURSELVES!

08-2005 (30 at 183+ lbs)
Can you see my underlining unhappiness? Like the chocolate milk? This really is a bad picture of me too, but then, I don't think I took very many "good" pictures after I was married.




05-2007 (32 between 165-175 lbs)
This is when I hadn't even known I'd started to lose weight.




06-2008 (33 at 144 lbs)
Don't I look great!?





Now, I still want/need to lose some more weight, but I am SO happy with my progress and how great I look. It's wonderful to feel good about oneself instead of suicidal.

Something Stinks!

And it's not me! Since yesterday something in or around my apartment smells like cooked ground beef that's gone bad... at least that's the closest thing I can relate it to. I can't find out where it's coming from and it's making me sick. At first I thought it was a neighbor cooking something but now I don't know because the smell hasn't gone away. The smell has even set off my gag reflex a few times. Ugh!

I've gone foot by foot throughout my apartment and everything smells normal when I get up close. Plants smell like dirt and, well, plants, the garbage smells like garbage and isn't even stinky, the bathroom has a range of nice smells from all those scented products I use, and the kitchen smells clean. I can't figure out what it is and it's making me crazy!

The only good thing about this is that I doubt I'll be able to eat anything with ground beef in it any time soon... and my desire to eat is at an all time low. Ugh, what a nasty way to stick to a diet.

Update: Okay, I figured it out. The smell WAS coming from my kitchen garbage. I didn't notice it when I first checked it out because the source's stink wasn't that strong, maybe it was building up over time. Yuck, how embarrassing.

The only time I want to smell something that stinks is when it's me- because I'm exercising!