Another Goal

So, my goals for this contest are twofold. The first, obviously, is weight loss.

The second is to get even more fit than I already am. I've signed up to do the Dirty Dash on September 17, which is a 10k race with obstacles. Why is it called the the "dirty" dash? Well, because the whole think takes place in the mud.

If that isn't daunting enough, I'm running with a team. So, if I'm slow and out of shape, I not only let myself down, but I let a bunch of my friends down. I need to be able to run 10k without struggling at all, and make sure I can do it with lots of hills, as the course is very hilly. The obstacles look fun. I am a little afraid of just how challenging it's going to be, but I think it'll be an absolute blast IF I have prepared myself physically for it.

I think I'll put a ticker on my page to count down to the race.

Starvation Mode- Myth or Reality?

The first week of the competition went great for me. I was psyched that I actually saw progress, and it was really great progress for me. I decided to take it up a notch further- I worked out even harder and longer. I was very very careful to keep my calories to around 1150-1400 a day, but mostly around 1150-1200. According to MyFitnessPal, I should be having around 1200 calories a day to lose weight. If I exercise, it gave me more, but I noticed that if I exercise, it gave me more to burn. If I didn't use it, it predicted faster weight loss. Awesome.

I was devastated to watch my weight creep back up each day. I worked even harder. It continued to climb. I didn't cheat at all. It still climbed.

Friday night, I grumbled about it to my husband, who went on about starvation mode, and he thought that was my problem. He told me he thought I should be using every single calorie budgeted to me, even the extra exercise calories. Then bragged about he gets twice as many calories as me. Meany.

Yesterday, I didn't go totally crazy, but I'm sure I went over on my calories by several hundred. It was awesome. I did feel a little uncomfortably full at the end of the day.

This morning, I was down .8 from yesterday.

This whole "starvation mode" in a way makes sense, but it also doesn't. It seems like it should be a simple math equation- if I burn 1500 calories a day just by existing, and if I only eat 1100 calories, I should lose weight, right? I can also see the body learning to conserve calories as a survival technique, but even so, it should draw from the abundant fat stores, right?

Apparently not.

So, this week, I'm going to make sure that I don't go below 1200 calories on a non-exercise day, and eat half of the exercise calories earned. We'll see how this goes.

Feeling down

I started the day on a high note. I set my alarm and actually attended a 5:30am kickboxing class. I grumbled the whole time, and I'm sleepy now, but I was proud of myself for doing it.

My weight was down from last week when we did the weigh in, and considering AF started today, I thought that was pretty awesome. I was feeling good that I'm about 10 lbs away from not being overweight anymore.

Then.

A friend tagged a picture of me on facebook from Saturday. I look fat in it. Not chubby, fat. And, to make matters worse, I'm eating, which, I'm sorry, but NOBODY looks good when caught on camera with a mouth full of food. Nobody. See evidence piece #1: Katie Price. A gorgeous young woman, but this is not a good photgraph.


Even when I weighed 100 lbs, I had chubby cheeks and a double chin. I don't expect that to go away unless I go get lipo or something, but it's still awful to see evidence.

Now, I'm seriously contemplating untagging myself so I can pretend I never saw the picture. Gah.

Saturday

Saturdays really are probably the toughest day of the week, diet wise. I volunteer in my gym's day care every other Saturday; that way, I get free daycare for my kids the rest of the time. When I go in, if it's not too busy, I can work out for 30 minutes. Sometimes my partner isn't there, so that's not possible.

After daycare, I rush to a standing lunch date with my mom, grandma and sisters. We go to some local fast food place, which one varies from week to week. It's a fun time, but since I got MyFitnessPal, it's been slightly traumatic to discover just how many calories these Saturday lunches contain. I thought I was making fairly healthy choices, and I was. For fast food. I knew that fast food is much worse than regular food, but it had never quite clicked with me. MFP says I can have 1200 calories a day, and most value meals are more than that.

Sometimes, we'll go home afterwards and cook there. Sometimes we'll get together with friends, which means a restaurant meal. I'm a notoriously picky eater, and hate fish. It seems like the healthy choices on the menu are fish. Yuck! Now that I can see calorie/fat counts prior to ordering, it helps guide my choices, but eating out for two meals in a day pretty much sends me way overbudget on my calories for the day.

Yesterday, I was really, really good. Because we were helping my grandmother build a shed, there was no lunch out. We had sandwiches at grandma's house. We were supposed to go out to dinner with friends, but they flaked on us, so we got a rotisserie chicken, which is pretty healthy.

What I struggle with is lifestyle. I don't think I'm willing to give up my Saturday lunch with the girls. It's been a tradition ever since I remember, and I love getting together with family. It seems like too much of a burden to expect one person to cook, and going out for lunch once a week doesn't seem like it should be nixed. I'm all about balance in life- I need to LIVE. If I can't find joy and be happy with my lifestyle, I won't keep it up. This, like my occasional can of mountain dew, makes me happy. It's not worth the sacrifice to keep it up. So, how to make it work in a healthy lifestyle? I think I should continue to check fat/calories in each meal and make appropriate choices- find the healthier things on the menu. Drink water instead of a soda (usually really easy, as I don't care for most soda). Don't eat the entire portion. Go for a run in the evening to counteract some of those calories.

And so it begins

Here's my start weight.

I am going to work really hard to lose weight in a healthy way. I hope that the scale reflects the effort I plan to put into this, and that I am down to my goal weight (125ish) by the end of the competition.

a new competition!

My friend Kari decided to do another weight loss competition. Since I had fun with the last one, i decided to get in on this one. I'll admit I'm a little apprehensive that I wasted my money because the weight seems to come off me so sloooooooowly. Hopefully this will encourage me a little bit, and who knows, maybe the weight will come off faster.

As a re-introduction to myself, here goes:

I'm Wendy. I just turned 35. I've been married for almost 16 years to my high school sweetheart. Together we have four children, ranging from 4-12. I work as a realtor, and am a girl scout leader in my spare (ha!) time. I never gave the slightest thought or worry about my weight growing up. As a competitive gymnast, I was always thin, always active. After my second child was born, I used Depo Provera for birth control, and for the first time, I found myself struggling a little with my weight. I stopped it after a year, but then I got a swing shift job, where I was spending 9 hours sitting down, late at night. I started drinking more soda, eating more candy, and before I knew it, another 10 lbs had creeped on. For the past 9 years or so, I've hovered between 145-155. I know that doesn't sound very big, but I'm only 5'2, and unfortunately, I carry most of my weight in my stomach/torso area, so it makes me look especially big.

I work out a lot- I typically am in the gym at least 6-8 hours a week. I think my downfall is my sweet tooth both for sugar/chocolate and for mountain dew. I enjoy reading diet books in my spare time. Many of them swear that I must have emotional issues that I'm suppressing if I'm overweight, but I honestly don't think so. I'm reasonably happy and satisfied with my life. Sure, I wouldn't turn down a million dollars, but I'm not too motivated by money. I have a great husband, great kids, great family, great friends.

Anyway, that's me in a nutshell.

Just a game

I'm down into the 140s.

What has been different this time? I've participated in biggest loser competitions before. I've counted calories before. I've even kept track of said calories on a website. I've quit soda in the past (not this time though). I've been so, so, so tired of my weight for years now, so that certainly hasn't changed.

So, what DID change?

I think it's a couple of things. First, I got an iPhone, so tracking calories became much easier- I was able to add things right as I ate them, and was able to see how many calories things had. This makes food choices much easier, particularly when eating out. Knowing just how many calories were in Carl's Jr fries made me realize I didn't like the fries enough to order them. I would often order a cheeseburger there, figuring it was "cheaper" calorie wise than chicken strips, since the burger wasn't fried. The chicken was significantly lower in calories though.

Second, I changed the calorie tracking program I used. I used sparkpeople for years. I do like how they keep track of how many fitness minutes you've done year to date. However, my friend Jackie told my about http://www.myfitnesspal.com

The above two has made me take all of the dieting stuff less seriously. I know, it seems like it would be counter productive. I've realized that I've started to see meeting my calorie goal as a game, like my stupid facebook games. I try to keep my calories around 1200 per day, and then I try to exercise most days so that I have a bigger debt.

The weight is coming off slower than I'd like, but, it IS coming off. And that's what is important. I stalled a bit in the beginning, but now it's steady. Very, very slow (we're talking SLOTH slow here), but at least it's going in the right direction.