Day 74 - Finally Lost Some Pounds!

Thursday, 5/21/15, 8:13am

This morning I was thinking... Am I going to weight the same 158-159 pounds in a month, two months, six months...? It's frustrating when you are really doing all you can do but your weight isn't dropping. At that point your only two choices are to: 1) Give up and gain all te weight back and continue gaining weight; or 2) Keep doing what you're doing and just see what happens. Since eating unhealthy is just not an option anymore (most of the food I wouldn't eat now even if I could) my only really choice has been to keep going. 

These thoughts led to another question: If I weigh myself every day (like I have in the past) what would I see? Would I see my weigh go up one day and down the next or would my weight just stay the same? In the past when I weighed myself daily I would see the scale go up a few ounces one day and then down a few plus an ounce or two the followif day. Instead of logging the constant flucuations I would only log my weight when it had dropped below my previous recorded weight. This let me see how my weight was going down over the course of a week and month. 

I curiously stepped on the scale this morning wondering if I had:

a) Gained weight 

b) Was at the same weight

c) Lost an ounce or two

I was ecstatic when I saw that I had lost over 3 pounds!!!  My weight is now 155.0 pounds. 

Finally!!!

Day 60 - Morning Check-In

Thursday, 5/7/15, 7:13am

Today is day 60 and while I've been looking forward to this day for a long time I am filled with mixed emotions. 

At this point I'm not sure if the new scale I bought is busted or if I really just gained 1.5 pounds this past week. I understand that weight can fluctuate but according to the scale I have only lost about four pounds in 60 days!! I have been diligently tracking my calories and entering them into my daily food journal using MFP and on top of that I have been exercising 3 to 5 times a week. At least once or twice a week I even do a three hour workout at the gym!! I'm seriously busting my butt so I'm really confused at why the scale is not budging. I lose a pound one week only to gain it back the following week. 

I hate to be a broken record, but last summer I lost 28 pounds in sixty days so these 4 pounds in the same amount of time seriously doesn't make sense. I understand that muscle weighs more than fat or that you can plateau for a week or two. But let's be honest... this has been going on for over a month now. This isn't caused by muscle weighing more than fat and isn't caused because of a plateau. I've been changing up my workouts, I've been increasing the intensity, I even went on a 9 mile hike two weeks ago...  What more can I do??

As much of a bummer as this is I'm not going to let it affect my progress. I made a decision two months ago to change in the way my kids and I were eating. This is not a decision I made lately and it is not something that I'm going to stop doing just because an annoying ass scale won't budge. All I can do at this point is to keep doing exactly what I've been doing and just hope that it pays off in the long run.

I always seem to fall apart after day 60 and I now kind of understand how that could happen. It's so easy to lose motivation or to be discouraged when you're not seeing the results that you think you earned.

I believe what is important is your mindset when you start your healthy lifestyle. If you go into it thinking that it's a diet, one you have to follow to lose weight and then can stop once the weight falls off, you are setting yourself up to fail. In the past I always saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Every pound I lost was not only getting me closer to my weight loss goal but getting me closer to the day I could go back to eating "normal". I would think I was in it for the long haul but in reality I couldn't wait to  go back to normal eating. Normal eating didn't mean eating donuts for breakfast every morning but it did mean having them once in a blue moon. It also meant having food with more fat, basically a less restrictive diet. But mostly I don't think I was looking forward to the day where I woulmdy have to keep track of EVERYTHING I ate. I wouldn't have o count calories. I wouldn't have to research 

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. :)