Day 49 - Weekly Update

Sunday - 4/26/15

It has been about five days since my last post but that's not because I fell off the wagon, it's just because I've been extremely busy.  I was so excited that I dropped 3.4 pounds this week I used it as motivation to keep going strong.

Because I was so busy this week I was only able to make it to the gym on Monday. Tuesday was a day off because I had to be at work so early and didn't get off until 6:30pm.  Wednesday I had a client in the morning so I was planning on going to the gym afterward.  My appointment took longer than expected which meant I didn't have time for the gym.  Instead, I went on a run and tried out my new water bottle and my new wireless headphones (which I love!!).

On Thursday I went for a great run in the morning because I didn't have time to go to the gym before or after work.  Friday was another day off because I had a busy work day at my office.  I FINALLY got caught up with work.  And lastly, Saturday, I decided to take the kids on a hike on Mount Tam.

I had wanted to go for a nice long hike all week.  We've been hiking the previous two weekends but each of those was only about two miles long.  This weekend I wanted to go somewhere really far from society, somewhere really beautiful and quiet, and somewhere we could go for a 4-5 mile hike which included uphill portions to get better exercise.  I looked up some trails online before going but couldn't find one that showed the distance.  I decided to just head out and explore the trails once we were out there.

We left the house around noon.  We stopped at Bordenaves to get some fresh sandwich rolls for lunch.  We then stopped at United Market for some fresh fruit (apples, strawberries, and raspberries) and some deli turkey and cheese for our sandwiches.  We arrived at Muir Woods and started our hike around 1:00pm.  I bought a trail map and picked a trail that headed up to the top of the mountain.  Mount Tam is a huge mountain so I was pretty sure we wouldn't make it to the top but that didn't stop us from trying.

We hiked for about an hour and a half taking a break for snacks halfway during our trek up the mountain.  At about the three mile mark I checked the map and found what looked like a perfect trail that would lead the way back down the hill.  The kids were a little tired and wanted to go back down the way we had came.  I on the other hand, didn't want to double back and instead wanted to take a new trail down.  I decided to take the TCC Trail I found on the map, a trail that would cut across the mountain and lead us back down the other side of the creek.  The TCC Trail looked like it was around a half mile long which would give us a little bit longer of a hike back than just doubling back and heading down.

We started on the TCC Trail and kept going.  After about thirty minutes the kids started asking to stop for a snack break again.  I just wanted to get back to the main trail that would head back which I figured we would arrive at any second.  We kept going, and going, and going.  We finally ran into some people on the trail who I was able to ask about this "TCC Trail" we thought we were on.  According to them, we weren't even on the TCC Trail yet.  They said the trail was just around the corner though.  I assured the kids the TCC Trail was short and that we would be on our way back down soon.

We finally made it to the actual TCC trail and I was stoked to finally cut across and then be back on the main trail to head down.  I figured the half mile TCC trail would take us about 15-20 minutes to cut across.  After about 45 minutes though we still hadn't made our way to the main trail.  The kids at this point were getting really hungry so as soon as we came across a bench we took advantage of the opportunity and sat down for a rest break and a snack.

I didn't want to stop for too long so after ten minutes we packed the snacks up and headed on our way.  Another twenty minutes passed and we were STILL on this TCC Trail.  At this point I was getting really stressed out.  I pulled out my phone and kept checking for a signal.  Finally, a signal came up and I was able to pull an actual trail map up.  I saw that we were on the TCC Trail and that we were getting closer to the main trail.  What I also saw was the the TCC Trail wasn't a half mile short cut but instead a THREE MILE trek.  At this point it was too late to turn around so we had no choice but to keep going.

In the end, the 4-5 mile hike I had planned on going turned out to be a 9 mile hike!!!!  I couldn't believe my 13 year old and my 7 year old hiked for 9 miles.  They are freaking rock stars and I super proud of them.

Today is Sunday and the kids and I are a little pooped.  I am not sure what we'll do today, my plan is to just play it by ear.  If it's warm enough we may go to the pool, otherwise I'll probably just grab a book and some magazines and go lay out in the sun in my backyard.

Tomorrow (Monday) I don't have any clients scheduled and instead plan on being at my office.  This is great because I can go to the gym!  I think I'll go to the office early and go to the gym in the afternoon but we'll see how that goes.

For now, I just want to enjoy the rest of the weekend with my beautiful amazing kids.

Daily Goals - Tuesday 4/21/15

Monday (yesterday's) goal: Go to the gym. Don't go over daily calorie limit. 

Monday Summary: I went to the gym for about three hours. I've been doing an hour of the elliptical which is burning 600 calories and I think I may be overdoing it because when I leave I am exhausted. I realize now that I should probably go to the gym after work instead of before, at least if I want to get any work done. 

I was under my calorie goal 244 calories! I am allowed 1200 but burned off 596 calories (according to the FitBit). This left me with a total of 1796 calories that I could consume yesterday. I ate 1552 which left me with 244. 

I ate more than usual because I burned a ton of calories at the gym. I also didn't realize that those subway sandwiches have around 350 calories. My microwave meals have less and fill me up longer so I may try one of those after going to the gym next time. 

For snacks I ate: 8 pretzel nibs (before my workout), 30 grapes (after my workout), a bowl of Special K cereal (about an hour after eating the Subway sandwich because I was still hungry), 4 Tootsierolls (an hour after the cereal). 

For dinner I cooked sirloin steak, brown rice, and green peas. The steak was so good I ate around 6-8 ounces. I at so much steak I barely had room for peas and zero room for rice. I was fine with that since my body obviously needed protein. The only issue is that I didn't think about how much fat was in the steak. I am normally okay eating it (while taking the Alli) because it's such a leav cut of meat. But I also always eat around 4-6 ounces which is a lot less than I ate last night. So far I feel fine. Let's just hope it stays that way. 

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Tuesday (today's) Goal: A FitBit friend invited me on a challenge today to hit 10k steps today so that is today's goal.

Since I'm working at a client's in Lucas Valley all day (10am-6:30pm) I knew I wouldn't be able to exercise today. It will be extremely hard to hit 10k steps today but if I'm creative I might be able to do it. This way, I'll get in some exercise. :)

Look What I Found!!

While organizing some drawers look what I found!

My old FitBit!!  I am so excited! The clip portion broke off but I got it to stick back on for now. If anything I can just take it out of the clip pouch and put it in my pocket (if wearing jeans). 

I am so excited. I'm definitely using this today. I'm mostly happy that I don't have to spend $125 buying another pedometer. I even added one in my Amazon shopping cart yesterday. 

Even if I did order one it would take a few days to get and now that I found mine, I can start using it right away. Yay!

Weekly Weigh-In #1

+ 1.2 lbs 

I weighed myself again this morning, not that I expected a change, and I weighed 162.6. That means I gained 1.2 lbs in the past two days and it means I've only lost 1.5 pounds in 18 days. I don't understand. It's frustrating since I'm eating healthy and exercising regularly for one and a half months. As I've said before, the last time I did this I lost fifteen pounds in 2-3 weeks. I don't remember the specifics but I do know I lost almost thirty pounds in 60 days. I would be happy if I lost even half of that this go around but instead I've lost only one pound. It just doesn't make sense. I am still going to stick with it since I made the decision to permanently change my diet but it's very de-motivating (not sure if that's a word) working hard and not seeing results. 

Yesterday I decided to use My Fitness Pal more regulary to keep track of what I'm eating to make sure I'm not going over my daily calorie allowance. I was more focused on just eating healthy before and didn't want to focus on counting every single calorie. Besides, I've done this before so I was pretty sure I was right around my daily calorie limit at the end of each day. But now that the f'ing scale isn't moving I am going to start using My Fitness Pal again. 

Yesterday I logged my calories throughout the whole day and after dinner I saw I had 165 calories remaining. I decided to have two sherbert pop-ups for dessert. I ended the day with only 5 calories remaining (consumed 1195 calories out of my 1200 daily allowance). I ended up having massive cravings AGAIN so I had a tiny bowl of cereal which worked. That made me go over my daily allowance by 120 calories. 

Weighing myself sporadically is driving me crazy. Because of this I decided that the only two options would be to stop weighing myself entirely or to start doing weekly weigh-ins again. At this point it would be really hard to not weigh myself anymore. I feel like I need to see the scale start to go down before I could give up on weighing myself. Otherwise, I'll feel like I'm not losing any weight, since I really haven't. 

What's great with weekly weigh-ins is that I can look at what I ate that week and how much I exercised and correlate that to how much weight I've lost, or in some instances, gained. 

Daily Goals- Wednesday 4/15

Monday's Goal: stop eating dessert - FAIL

Tuesday's Goal: use My Fitness Pal to keep food and exercise journal everyday. 

Wednesday (Today's) Goal: start doing weekly weigh-ins again every Wednesday. 

Monday 4/13/15 Evening Update

Yesterday basically went as expected. I went to the gym, worked out for two and a half hours, went to the grocery store, picked up my daughter, and came home. I had forgotten my friend Mary was supposed to come over to touch up my roots with some warmer colors (she cut and colored my hair two weeks ago). I was also planning to cook a nice dinner for everyone since it was Mary's birthday last week. Because of all of this I didn't get ANY work done which is a bummer but I am stoked that I had an amazing workout. I burned 601 calories on the elliptical! 

For dinner I made some chicken with brown rice and asparagus. 

Tomorrow I am working in Luas Valley all day and will not be able to go to the gym. On Wednesday I may be able to go. I know I will have time to go for a run in the morning if I drop off my kids early enough. I just don't know if I'll have time for the gym. 

It's 10:30pm and I am exhausted from my extensive workout today. I skipped dessert tonight to try and calm down these sugar cravings I've been having. The cravings started right after dinner and have been getting stronger and stronger. I tried doing some breathing exercises to calm my system down but I don't think it will help. I'm craving an apple which I don't know if that's good or bad. I really don't want to give in but I don't know how much longer I can hold out. I even tried doing some research online but most of the sites I found suggested that you give in to the cravings by eating a tiny bit of a sugary treat. I don't trust myself to only have a tiny bit so I'm going to just try to go to sleep. 

11:30pm-update

My younger daughter just woke up and woke me up. She's back to sleep now but I am feeling extremely hungry now. I didn't eat that much today and I had a huge workout so that may have something to do with it. I know I'm trying to reason with why I should give into these cravings but I've woken up several times this evening and each time the cravings are worse. I really need to get to sleep so I'm going to have a bowl of Oatmeal Squares cereal. 

11:50pm- Feeling much better. Going to sleep. Nite. 

Sunday 4/12/15

Yesterday was a good day. I woke up, had coffee and breakfast (Trader Joe's granola w/almond cereal), did yoga for an hour, straightened up the house, and had some lunch (Thai chicken spring rolls). It was such a nice day out I decided to take the kids on a hike. I packed some snacks (strawberries, green grapes, protein bars, water...) and we headed out to China Camp beach where they have several beautiful trails. China Camp isn't my favorite place to hike but it was the closest. By the time we left the house it was already 2:30p, and I didn't want to spend an hour finding another place to hike online and then driving out there.

My older daughter did not want to go hiking. She is 13 years old and all she wants to do is stray home playing on her phone or computer. She complained while getting ready and tried to bargain with me by promising to not have any more screen time got for the whole rest of the day if i let her stay home. My younger daughter is the exact opposite. She is 7 and hates staying indoors. She loves being out and about even if we're doing something boring like errands. 

It took us about ten minutes to drive to China Camp and, once there, we had a little trouble finding parking. My iPad weather app said it was 73 degrees out, a beautiful day for the beach. We found a parking spot down the road which actually worked out quite well since there was a trail two feet from our car. The first few minutes of our hike was spent making our way to the main trail. There wasn't much shade on this trail and the path was thin and rocky. My older daughter complained about the heat. I told her to just enjoy the fresh air. I also explained that the sunlight and fresh air is good for her, something that she started to realize.

Once we were  on the main path my older daughter did a 180. The path was gorgeous and shady with a fresh breeze. The plants were beautiful shades of green and there were small colorful flowers sprinkled throughout. The air was amazing! It smelled so fresh and refreshing. I stopped to take a few deep breaths of air. The kids felt it too. My older daughter went from being grumpy and quite to excited and extremely chatty. We saw some hummingbirds, a large black beetle, and every few steps we took we saw lizards darting under some bushes or leaves. My younger daughter kept trying to catch a lizard but they were too quick. 

We took a side path that led up to the top of a hill over looking the bay. There was little shade at the top of the hill so we made our way down back to the main path where we found a bench and sat down to have a snack. My older daughter and I had fresh strawberries while my younger daughter had a kid's Cliff bar called a "Z Bar".

After our snack we kept going on the trail for a little while longer before turning back and heading down. On the way back to the car the kids wanted to stop at the water and dip their feet in but we didn't have anything to dry them with and we still needed to walk the five minute hike back to the car. It's such a rocky terrain that going barefoot wasn't an option. We decided to hold off on going down to the beach  and instead decided to get frozen yogurt on our way back into town. Unfortunately, while driving back I missed top he turn and we passed the market that sells frozen yogurt. By the time I noticed we had gone too far to turn back. My older daughter wanted a Slurpee from 7-11 so that's what we did. I got a rainbow sherbert fat-free push-up pop and my younger daughter got a glazed donut. Not the healthiest treat but since we don't do this very often I figured it was fine. 

The rest of the day is not very exciting. We went to TJ-Maxx because my grandma suggested I go there to buy some canvas storage baskets. We then went to Ulta to buy some makeup but they wee closed (since it was Sunday and 6:30pm). The kids had been so good i decided to take them to Toys R Us where I let them each pick out a toy. They both opted for stuffed animals. The older one picked a German Sheppard and the younger one picked a jaguar. The last stop was Whole Foods where I bought a sirloin steak for dinner. 

At home I barbeque the sirloin steak and served it with brown rice and green peas. Dinner was excellent. After dinner I was craving sugar so I ate a Sponge Bob push-up pop and then, when that didn't satisfy my craving, I ate a bowl of cereal. By the time I was done I was stuffed, too stuffed and I regretted eating the cereal. I have been over indulging with sugar lately and the cravings have started to get stronger again. I am going to have to dial it back down of else it will probably become a problem. 

On a side note, an old friend of mine asked me for drinks next Saturday night. I've known him for over fifteen years so it should be really fun catching up. He lives 45 minutes away though so I'm not sure what his plan will be. I haven't been out in over a year so it should be fun. :)

-Marie