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Feb 22, 2010

Gaining Ground

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I managed to erase the gain I had from Blissdom this past week with a 2 lb loss, putting me back at 187 lbs. While I’m glad for this loss, I’m a little upset that I wasted two weeks essentially going nowhere with my weight, and that my obsession with food got the better of me at Blissdom.

Food and I have a long, sordid history together. My mom was a single mom who worked all the time. While I had a babysitter in the very early years, I soon proved myself to be trustworthy and safe enough to not burn down the house after school until she got home, and so many nights I was alone in the house. This mean dinner often consisted of something easy to make – either a sandwich or something I could reheat in the microwave.

So most nights dinner would be a monstrous plate of reheated spaghetti, reheated mac ‘n cheese, or a ham sandwich with a pile of Doritos as a side. In the summertime, I nearly lived off of the freeze-n-eat popsicles in the heat. And let’s not even discuss how many trips I made to the golden arches. Vegetables and real fruit (as in, fruit that wasn’t already in a can in heavy syrup) rarely touched my lips.

I don’t blame my mom. She worked hard, and had a kid who was a real pain in the ass to deal with. Picky eater doesn’t even begin to describe my eating habits. But somewhere in college I became aware of a whole new world of foods, and suddenly my tastes changed and things I once thought gross were delicious.

Example: I always gagged at rice as a kid (maybe one too many viewing of The Lost Boys?), but now? I love rice. White rice, brown rice, jasmine rice, you name it – rice is yummy. Same is now true for broccoli. And seafood.

My hope is that I can reduce the amount of processed crap that my family eats, so that maybe my daughters will find good foods that they like instead of convenience foods with little redeeming value. Of course, this is no longer the 80’s – when Twinkies ruled the world – and we all care a little bit more about what’s in our food now. I’m sure my mom never would have bought a lot of that junk if she knew then what she knows now.

Here’s hoping to another loss this coming week, and that I can continue to make baby steps to get rid of the majority of junk in my diet.

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Feb 14, 2010

Eating My Way Through Blissdom

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OK, so my weigh-in this week wasn’t fabulous. I gained two pounds. Not a disaster by any means, but still not a welcome sight on the scale.

I can assign some of the blame to the incredible food at Blissdom. While I rarely ate an entire meal that didn’t consist of small bites of food carried past me on a tray, those small bites added up. Truthfully, the alcohol calories probably did more damage than the food.

While I was expecting a little bit of a gain, two pounds was a bit of a surprise. When you factor in that the Opryland Hotel is roughly the size of a small city and required a half-mile walk to get anywhere, two pounds seems a little unfair. I’m sure I burned some calories with all of that walking – sometimes in heels!

So this week’s plan is to get back on track. Drink more water, watch my portion sizes, and all that boring stuff that actually works. I had a great time at Blissdom, but that’s no reason to eat myself back into the 190’s again.

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Feb 4, 2010

And The Numbers Keep Going Down

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189.2 last week.

This week? 187.0. Another 2.2 lbs gone!

For those keeping track, that’s 6.3 pounds gone in less than a month. And it means I’m rockin’ the Loser Moms weight-loss challenge.

I was going to complain that working the night shift is my greatest challenge to losing weight, but I’m starting to think that it might be helping in some ways. When I was at home 24/7, I also had 24/7 access to my fridge and the contents within. It was so easy to grab a snack, and then another, and then finish my daughter’s snack…

Now, three nights a week I work for 12.5 hours, and during those hours I’m lucky to get a chance to sit down and eat one meal, and otherwise only grab a few snacks here and there. I pack my own lower-calorie snacks to avoid the expense and calories of the vending machines. The day I work, I sleep for part of the afternoon, meaning I often skip a meal so my midnight “lunch” isn’t my fourth meal of the day. When I’m done with work, I sleep most of the next day, thereby skipping breakfast and lunch. I try to keep track of how many meals I’m eating each day, but sometimes one gets missed. And if it’s a busy night at work? So much for that meal I planned on – I’m lucky if I can drink a cup of soup or shove a granola bar in my mouth.

So maybe night shift is helping my weight loss. It’s still killing any ability to workout regularly each week, but if it’s preventing me from overeating, I guess that’s not a horrible thing.

Here’s to not screwing it all up by overeating at Blissdom this weekend!

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Jan 27, 2010

Week 3 Weigh-In: How’s it Going?

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Well, I seem to have totally missed last week’s weigh-in. I mean, I weighed in, but didn’t get a chance to update here because I was spending the week caring for a very sick little Mira.

Last week, my weigh-in showed I was at 191 lbs. That was a loss of 2.6 lbs for the week. I’d like to credit my stellar eating and exercise habits, but I think a lot of that weight loss was due to being pinned down by a feverish, sleeping toddler, leaving me unable to get to the fridge.

So this week, I wasn’t sure what I’d see on the scale. I’ve been doing OK on eating, but thanks to my insane work schedule I do end up eating a lot of convenience foods, and often those foods are late-night runs to fast food. (Look for a new post soon on the perils of night shift on a diet.) And then there was yesterday, when I came home from a particularly awful night of work where I didn’t get a chance to eat, and found half of a Papa John’s pizza in the fridge. You should know that poor innocent pizza didn’t suffer as I devoured it quickly at 9am. Add in a bowl of misery ice cream last night (did I mention work has me a little stressed?), and I was sure I’d see a bad number on the scale this morning.

I nervously stepped on the scale this morning and held my breath as the numbers flashed up and down to settle on my true weight, then exhaled quickly just in case oxygen does carry some microscopic weight to it that we might not know of. The number finally stopped flashing.

Drum roll, please………

189.2  (!!)

Folks, I haven’t seen the 180’s since before I was pregnant with Cordy. That’s five and a half years.

I’m thrilled to be even further away from the 200 lb mark. When I crossed back under it last year, I vowed to never see my weight start with a 2 ever again, and the further I go away from that 2, the more confident I feel that I’ll keep that vow.

This also means I’m now less than 20 lbs away from my wedding dress weight. I always said I’d love for us to renew our vows someday in my old wedding dress. Should we ever decide to do that, I might just be able to zip that thing up again without splitting a seam.

So my grand total of weight loss thus far is 4.4 lbs in two weeks. It’s nothing spectacular, but slow and steady wins the race, right?

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Jan 14, 2010

A New Year, A New Blog, A New Weight

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Last year I found myself depressed by my weight, wanting to do something about it before going to BlogHer in July. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone, and several others banded together to support each other in our efforts to shape up and feel good about ourselves in 2009. I did it by my Hot by BlogHer challenge, and by joining up with the Shredheads.

Overall, I lost 20 pounds last year before BlogHer – not a bad effort for five months! I felt so much better about myself, too. But after BlogHer, I came home to a new full-time job, with new full-time exhaustion, and most of my exercise habits slipped away as sleeping became my top priority. I kept some of my eating habits, but I’ll admit even those suffered when your job doesn’t give you a set lunch break and you have to grab something on the go most of the time.

So of course, when the new year started, I knew I wanted to get back on track again. I don’t have as much leisure time to exercise when I want anymore, but I know I’ve got more weight to lose and I want to get motivated again. Hence, this new blog: Losing My Hind. I could have gone back to Hot by BlogHer (and may bring that up as a challenge again), but I wanted a blog that didn’t have a time limit, so I could use it year round.

Thankfully, I’m still not alone in my goals. The Shredheads are going strong, and Loser Moms just gave me an ideal jump start: they’re having a Biggest Loser challenge, where $$$ is on the line for the winners. Sure, a smaller dress size is a great motivator, but a little cash to buy new dresses is a powerful motivator as well!

Yesterday I began the Loser Moms challenge, which involved my first weigh-in. I hadn’t stepped on the scale for awhile, and was worried I’d crept back over 200 – something I vowed to never do again. The scale gave me my starting number:

193.6. Woo-hoo! I already feel like I’ve won, considering my lowest weight last year was 192 pounds. Sure, I haven’t lost anything since BlogHer, but it means I really haven’t gained, either. I’m hoping to lose at least another 20 pounds this year before BlogHer, and hopefully at least 10 for the Loser Moms challenge.

This time, working a full schedule (on nights, no less: 7pm-7am is murder on your metabolism and circadian rhythms) will make it difficult to do a structured, formal weight-loss program. Weight Watchers was great, and I still believe it works well, but I need even less to think about at the moment. Instead, I’ll focus on smaller portions, less processed foods, and lots of whole grains, vegetables and water. Exercise will be sporadic on my days off, although some nights at work could probably count for exercise.

I’m ready – let’s do this!

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