Motivation is a dish best served cold...

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I CAN'T find the motivation to want to lose weight.

I'm so disgusted at my size and I absolutely HATE how my fat rolls pooch out over top of my jeans like muffin tops with acne scares. I hate it when I run up the stairs at work and can feel my flab just flabbing away.

But I keep eating.

And not exercising.

Every day.

What is wrong with me??

Why can't I snap out of this??

I thought after I'd come to the reality that I've only lost 2.5 pounds over the past 12 months, that would be the slap in the face I need to get me back on track. I mean, I've never, not for one week, stopped dieting. I still have perfect attendance at Weight Watchers. Sure, I've taken a few no-weigh-in passes this past year, but I've stayed on plan the majority of the time. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I've sacrificed and "gone without" for a whole year and I'm basically back where I started. Why would anyone, in their right mind, do that??

It baffles the mind!!!

But here I sit with a full tummy of cheese coffee cake and still no exercise this week.

When am I ever going to find the motivation to lose weight again?

How am I ever going to find the motivation?

What is wrong with me?????

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Happy Birthday to me! Now get up and do something with it!

Yesterday, I turned 43.

Wow! What a mouthful!

I had a great day, too. It started out wonderful because I lost a pound. A whole pound! I was so excited and SO surprised.

I always weigh myself at home before I go to weight watchers each Saturday morning. Last Saturday morning, I weight 169.0 lbs. Yesterday morning, I weighed 169.0. So I was fully expecting a break even or maybe even a slight gain. So I was thoroughly shocked when Barb said I lost a pound! I squealed!! Couldn't believe it!

I had stuck to my eating plan, for the most part. I sprinkled exercise very lightly throughout the week. So I wasn't expecting anything great. I would be satisfied with a break-even.

My husband has renewed his weight loss efforts which is helping me stay focused on my eating and exercising. Although I know I really need to step up my exercise MUCH more than I'm doing now. I'm convinced if I can just workout regularly, the pounds will just fall off. Or at least the inches will fall off. I'm so tired of carrying all this extra skin and flab around. And I know the only way I'm going to get rid of the flappers is to exercise hard. Not just cardio (but I do need to continue doing that too) but hard, muscle aching exercise. I just need to find the will power to do it on a regular basis rather than sporadically and haphazardly.

Where do I find that will power?

I get it for short spurts at a time, but it never stays for long.

Lose For Good!

Weight Watcher's Lose-A-Palooza is a one-day online social networking event taking place only today to help raise awareness for the Lose For Good™ campaign!

For every accepted mention or acknowledgment of “Lose For Good” made today via blogs, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, Weight Watchers will make an additional donation - up to $25,000 - for just one day of social media activity. This donation is on top of the $1 million Weight Watchers is hoping to donate to Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger as part of the 2009 Lose For Good campaign!

Here's how to get involved:

TWITTER:

• Tweet #LoseForGood: Share how you are supporting the good with all your Twitter followers. Tweet about the way you’re helping the fight against hunger and be sure to include #LoseForGood.

• Multiply the good: Follow @sharestrength or @acfusa to fill your Twitter stream with good, and then retweet.

• That’s right, each #LoseForGood Tweet and follow to @sharestrength and @acfusa today provides $1!

FACEBOOK:

• Become a fan of the NEW and official Weight Watchers page! And don’t forget the Weight Watchers Supermarket Foods page.

• If you’re already a fan, just post a “Lose For Good” related comment OR “Like” the updates that they'll post throughout the day.

• Become a fan of their awesome charitable partners – Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger!

• It’s that easy. Join fan pages, comment on our statuses and walls, or simply ‘Like’ updates to our fan pages and you’ll be participating in Lose-a-Palooza and helping fight hunger!

MYSPACE:

• Participate on the following pages by posting a comment including “Lose For Good” or become our ‘friend.’ Simple ways to help Weight Watchers contribute $1!
• Weight Watcher's MySpace page.
• Share Our Strength MySpace page.
• Action Against Hunger MySpace page.

BLOGGING:

• Write a blog post about Lose For Good (like this one), including the phrase “Lose For Good” and encourage your readers to get involved by visiting www.LoseForGood.com.

• Comment on a blog post (like this one) about Lose For Good! Be sure to have your friends show their support by commenting on your post – every comment relating to “Lose For Good” helps Weight Watchers donate $1!
  

• In the new Weight Watchers Community, write a blog post about Lose for Good and they’ll make a contribution to the fight against hunger. Remember to use the words “Lose for Good!”

So let's go people! Spread the word!!!

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Progress is sometimes a kick in the pants...

Okay, first things first... I lost 1.6 pounds last week!!! YAY!!!! That's 2 weeks in a row, now, that I've lost weight! I'm so excited!!!

I was really aiming to just break even. All week I kept losing a pound then gaining it back then losing it and gaining it. By Friday, the pound had stayed off. Then by Saturday morning, when I weighed in, I'd managed to keep it off plus another 6th of a pound. So YAY!!

I really think that hard workout that I did on Wednesday really helped out (or was it Thursday?). Anyways, I need to do that again this week, but more often. I was going to workout again at lunch today but couldn't. Had an errand to run. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it tomorrow either because my pup has something wrong with one of her ears (she keeps a lop-sided head and keeps shaking her head alot). So I'll take her to the vet tomorrow during lunch, but I hope I can workout on Wednesday and then maybe again on Thursday or Friday. I'll let you know how it goes.

Now onto something a little more depressing. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the 50 Million Pound Challenge or not, but I signed up for it at the beginning of the year. I haven't really done anything with it, but at the time I signed up I had high hopes of joining a community of people geared to losing weight. I guess that's what I have Weight Watcher's for, so that's probably why I never really got into it that much. Anyway, they sent me an email the other day reminding me to stop by their website to update my progress. So I clicked the button that went to their website and it asked me to log in. So I did. And the first thing it says is to enter my current weight. So I did. Guess what it did next??

It kicked me in the gut!!

Check it out... this is what it said:





How depressing is that?!?!

I don't even know what to say about that. I really don't want to focus on it too much, but man what a blow! I mean, I lost 1.6 pounds last week and 1 pound the previous week. So sometime between Jan 20th and 3 weeks ago, I lost a whopping 4/10th of a pound.

Ugh!

Keep your mind out of that self-defeating attitude, Cara! You don't need to keep dwelling on your failures! Please help me stay focused on my recent losses and my recent exercise victories (ever how small they both are).

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First time in my life...

I did something today that I've never done in my life...

I exercised on my lunch hour.

I've never figured out how people can exercise their way through lunch time. Me? I usually eat my way through lunch. Where is there time in there to do anything else? But I felt so darn guilty for not exercising this morning that I just HAD to try it.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

I have to come home every day for lunch to walk the pups. So that takes up about 10 or 15 minutes. It's about a 5-8 minute ride between work and home so that ate up about a half hour of my lunch hour. So I did a Jillian Michaels' Shred workout that was 28 minutes. Then I fixed a sandwich to take back with me to work.

I actually made it back to work in exactly an hour. Whew!

I really worked out hard, too. I turned the ceiling fan on high and worked out right under it so I wouldn't get too sweaty. I didn't want to take a shower before I headed back. That's another thing that's always stumped me about people who work out at lunch. How do they have time to shower before coming back to work? I just towelled off and deodorant'ed up real good and went flying out the door back to work. I didn't feel gross when I got back to work, either.

Actually, I had worked out so hard, I couldn't make it back up the stairs at work. I work on the 3rd floor. My legs were like rubber. Plus, I was wearing my new 3" heals.

Did I tell you I bought my first pair of high heal shoes in like 20 years? When you're "top heavy" it's hard to walk in high heals. At least it always has been for me. But when I went shopping for a new pair of shoes a few weeks ago, I tried on a pair that was really high. I thought they'd be too high, but when I walked around in them I felt fine. I didn't wobble or anything.

I tell you, though, I feel like a teenager learning how to walk in her first pair of high heal shoes, though. I have to learn how to do this all over again. I feel silly. But great at the same time. What a milestone for me!

Oh, back to the lunch time workout, the next time, I'll fix my sandwich before I leave for work in the morning so I can eat at my desk before I leave to come home for lunch. I didn't run out of energy half way through the workout, but I was afraid I was going to. So next time I won't have to worry about it.

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ONE pound at a time...

First things first... I lost a pound at weigh in on Saturday!

Yay!!!

Finally!!

Now if I can just keep that pound off. I'd like to lose another one by Friday, but my goal right now is to just keep that one stinking pound off.

This past weekend was amazing! I had such a relaxing enjoyable time. Just hubby and I, around the house. We haven't had a weekend like that in months. Got some yard work in (burned some extra calories, yay!) and finished unpacking the living room and got all the pictures hung. Now the bedroom still needs to be finished, but that's what next weekend is for, right?

I didn't exercise in the official sense of the word, though. Cleaning, unpacking and gardening was the extent of my movement over the past 4 days. I woke up at 6:30 am on Sunday to go for a 2-hour bike ride. But I couldn't get my lazy butt out of bed.

Then on Monday, I had resolved to doing another Cardio X P90X workout. I set my alarm for 6:00am. I sat up in bed and then got really mad at myself because I wanted to go right back to bed. So I got up and put my workout clothes on and made my way to the living room. But darned if I could make myself work out. I just sat there on the couch arguing with myself. I knew I would just hate myself if I didn't workout. But I could not bring myself to actually doing it.

So there went my chance of working out 3 times this week. Because I know me and I know I'm not gonna want to exercise for 3 days straight.

So my goal, now, is just to exercise ONCE this week!

Tomorrow morning, I will work out!

If I can say that. And say that out loud here. Hopefully it'll help me be able to actually do it.

My food intake has been reasonable. Sure I splurged a little over the weekend, but not too bad. I was able to keep that pound off all weekend. I didn't gain an ounce. That's saying something, you know. Because usually by the end of the weekend I'm up 2 or 3 pounds. But I'm proud to say I held the weight gain at bay.

And I don't know about you, but I can't wait for The Biggest Loser to start next week. Come on!! Can't wait to start the journeys with them.

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I did it! I worked out!!!

Just wanted to post a quick one. I promised myself I'd blog every other day. And today is the "other" day. But I don't really have alot of time today to blog.

I wanted to tell you that I did the P90X workout yesterday morning. I'm so happy that I actually did it!! I have to admit, the website looks a little intimidating. But the workout I did wasn't really all that bad. The workout I did was called Cardio X. It's a low-impact workout that combines plyometrics, yoga, kenpo and core. It really uses all muscle groups but it didn't feel like it worked me out too hard. That is, until I woke up this morning and ached in every muscle in my body. I'm sitting her in pain. :)

I burned 800 calories! Not bad! It was a 45 minute workout. I think I'll try doing it 2 or 3 times a week to see if it will help kick start my losing.

Speaking of losing, I've been following the plan all week but still haven't budged much. I actually gained a pound yesterday. Oh well. It'll all work out in the end, I'm sure. I just gotta stay focused on what I'm doing and not the results for now.

I'll try and check in tomorrow to tell you how weigh-in goes in the morning.

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No excuses... I'm gonna do it this time

My days have been going a little better lately. I've been comfortable with the itsy bitsy splurges I've been allowing myself. I don't want to restrict myself too much or I'll be right back where I was for the past month.

Last night we went to TJI Fridays because I had a buy-one-get-one-free entree coupon. I got their Shanghai Salad which was romaine and cabbage shreds with diced red peppers, celery, green onions, peanuts, and cilantro tossed in a barely-there ginger dressing and topped with Chinese noodles and 4 crispy pot stickers. Oh My Gosh was it delightful. It felt so light. And the pot stickers were the perfect accent. It helped me feel like I was eating a hearty meal but I really was just eating a light salad. It was a little on the spicy/zesty side so that was good too. Helped burn a few extra calories from my insides being on fire. :)

I'm really trying to stay focused on how I feel and not so much what I eat but I'm not sure how good it's going. I really need to switch my mentality from "ooo that tastes so good" to "that was so satisfying, and, oh, yea, it tasted good too". It's so hard though. It's like, I know what I need to do, and I know how to do it, but it's just so hard to actually do.

I haven't exercised since Sunday. I have a good excuse, though. Okay, first of all, I have no excuse for Monday morning. I was going to get up early and do a Jillian Michaels Shred workout. I set my alarm for 5:15, woke up, then went right back to bed. Lazy!

But Monday night I got up from the couch to walk into the bedroom and noticed my hip felt a little sore. I thought I just sat on it wrong or something. Then I took a few more steps and the pain stabbed me in the hip. I have no idea what could have happened while I was sitting vegging out on my couch, but it did it to me good. I couldn't sleep Monday night because no matter how I laid, my hip hurt SO bad. Then walking around all day yesterday was not fun at all. I wore flats to work and couldn't take the day off because it's the day before proofs (the day when all the editors pour over all the pages in the magazine go give them one final approval) and had WAY to much to do to get ready for today.

So I hobbled my way through Tuesday and Tuesday night was about the same. I felt like a cripple. Excruciating pain whether I sat still or stood or walked around.

Then this morning I woke up healed.

Weird.

Yea, weird.

So that's my excuse for not exercising yesterday or today. And I'm sticking to that excuse for all I can use it for. :)

So tomorrow morning I have no excuse. I will commit, right here and right now, to getting up and doing a Shred workout.

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