Week 3 Meh/Chip Challenge #4

199.2, a loss of .9 from last week and UNDER 200!!!  And this isn't going to be one of those flitting fakeout numbers either.  I will never weigh 200 again in.  my.  life.  And I'm back on weekly weigh-ins.  I've lost for 3 weeks in a row, but the pride is tinged by that one stupid time I weighed on in the middle of the week and saw 198.  Feel like I've been failing ever since then, when really overall I've been consistently moving in the right direction.  Next mini-goal is 191, which moves me out of obesity range and into sexy overweight territory.  

Choco challenge:  Check, barely.  I didn't start until Wednesday and was 3 miles short as of Friday morning.  Choco let me substitute 15 minutes of yoga for one mile, so I squeaked through.

Chip challenge:  Big fat no.  I was definitely more conscious of fruits & veggies, and a couple times I grabbed an apple instead of cheese & crackers for a snack, but I don't think I hit my 4 even once.  I'm not so bummed that I didn't get all my servings in, but I am bummed that I didn't keep with the "not an option" nature of our challenges.  Oh well.  Right now it's all about calories, no matter what food they come from!  And I know that more calories means less food.  Eventually I'll get the hang of it.

CHIP CHALLENGE #4

The scale has been driving me nuts the past couple weeks, and it's easy to get fixated on those stinking digital numbers.  This week's challenge should be easy, even though it's something I always put off. . . we are taking measurements!  From this point forward we'll do this at the beginning of every month so we can track inches as well as pounds.  Bust/waist/hips/arm/thigh (<- just pick a side).  You're welcome to measure anything else you want to track, but these are the basics.

 

Week 3 was So-so. Choco Challenge 4!

Week 3 Results:

I am wicked impressed with this week's result. I fully expected to lose next to nothing. I am 166.8 this morning. That's 1.6 pounds down from last week. I have 2.7 pounds left to meet my "Lose 20 pounds" goal.

As far as Chip's challenge for last week goes, I tried. I could have tried harder I guess. I did eat at least 2 servings of fruits and veg every day but I didn't always get in 4. To be honest, I couldn't remember if it was 3 or 4 and every time I got round the computer to have a look, I forgot.

Even with my own challenge, I was slipping. I started off strong and then I just sort of put it off. I ended up doing a 3 mile walk yesterday. It felt great though! I do love it when I work out, I just don't love actually getting up to do it. LOL


Week 4 Challenge:

This week I am challenging us to a daily 60 second plank. If you can already do a plank for 60 seconds on your elbows, then do a straight arm plank for 60 seconds a day.  I'm choosing this one because someday I would like the arm and core strength to do a real push up. GO! GO! GO!

Week 2 Boo! Choco 3

Week 1 Results:
I am down 2.4 pounds from last week at 168.4lbs. Holy Hannah! That's like a week one dieting loss for me. Alright. From the weight standpoint it's not a BOOO. It's more a boo to myself. I did great with water. I really didn't love all the bathroom running but it must have been often because I had WAY more steps than I normally get. lol

I didn't follow my Chip Challenge to the letter. I don't know if my life can be built that way. It would be totally awesome if it was! Trying to coordinate and coheres 3 other humans into doing what I want isn't always easy.  I did make far better choices than I would have otherwise. I was still doing battle with Aunt Flo and I did NOT eat like 80 Snickers bars.

Week 3 Challenge:
 I don't know why I totally spaced out on this week's challenge. Since Cousin Chip STOLE my challenge idea for this week. STOLEN! I have to come up with something really torturous to get her back.
Our challenge this week is to complete 6 Leslie miles.  It can be 3-2 miles or 6-1 miles. Either way, we're walk, walk, walking this week. I'll let you know if I'm completing a 5 mile on Friday night!

Week 2 Results/WTH/Chip Challenge #3

Officially, from this morning's scale reading, Chip is sitting at 200.1, which is down 2.5 from last Saturday.  Which, whatever, that's great.  But Chip is less than pleased, seeing's how (yes, Chip is a little hillbilly) she had a kick-ass week and was 198 at her sneak peek WI on Wednesday!!!!!!

I don't know.  I guess here's where daily weigh-ins would be good, because you see weird fluctuations for what they are and don't flip out over them.  But I still think it would drive me even more nuts in the long run to step on the scale every single day.  I think I'll continue weighing on Wednesdays as sort of a midweek checkpoint.  I guess Tuesday would be the exact middle point, but I'll give myself a little extra grace after the weekends.

On to challenge results. . .

Water:  Check!  This one was a big eye-opener for me.  Water has never been a problem for me.  I'm the one who's up to use the restroom every hour because I'm constantly drinking water.  (After the morning caffeine, of course.)  Except, somewhere over the last year, I haven't been.  I didn't realize how out of habit I had gotten until I noticed myself in the bathroom so many times last Saturday and thought "Ohhhhhhh."  So I thank Choco for bringing this to my attention, because I would've gone on thinking about how awesome I am at hydration and not ever worrying about it.  I did meet the challenge, but there were a couple days of chugging it in the evenings.

Organization:  Not so much an official check, but definitely a check in spirit.  I didn't follow my plan to the letter, but I made healthy choices.  AND, I graduated from the notebook to an official calorie-counting app, AND have been faithfully using that app every day!  Which is huge.  The part I followed of this challenge was the "it's not an option" part.  Even if I wasn't eating what I had planned, I still stuck to one portion of whatever I was eating because it wasn't an option not to.  And that will stay with me, I think.

CHIP CHALLENGE #3:  FRUITS & VEGGIES!
4 servings/day!  (See, I'm not even going full-scale USDA on this one so it should be totally easy.)  We know why, blah blah blah.

Week 1 Results/Chip Challenge #2

Week 1:

202.6, a loss of 1.2.  Yahoo!  But seriously, please can next week be THE WEEK?  I really would very much love to never write a "2" at the beginning of my weight ever again.  At the very least, I'm saying it's happening in August.  Period.

I met both challenges, though I struggled more with the exercise minutes.  Tracking definitely helps me stay in that accountable mindset, and since I'm doing my simple notebook method, there is NO excuse.  I don't even have to take the extra step of figuring out calories or doing a search for a particular food or multiple ingredients.  I just list "chili" or whatever it is and move on.  I reserve the right to get back into a more specific app at any time I want to feel more hardcore, but for now this is what's keeping me tracking.  At the end of the day, I put a star by my favorite food of the day.  With one exception the entire week, the star always goes to "real food" (ie not chips or dessert) eaten when I'm truly hungry.  Go figure.  

I squeaked in my 150th minute at nearly the last minute.  I skipped a couple days midweek, which meant that I had to have a marathon cardio session Thursday night, double yoga yesterday morning (I had been doing 10 minutes, upped it to 20), and I was still 9 minutes short going into last evening.  15 minutes walking around an outdoor shopping center with my friend took care of that.  Whew!

WEEK 2 CHALLENGE:

Organization, friends!  It's the golden key to successful weight loss.  By the end of the weekend (bonus points for the end of today), we will have planned our meals for the entire week and bought groceries for said meals.  We will have chopped whatever veggies we need to chop and portioned anything that needs to go into baggies.  We will have arranged a schedule so we know when we're working out and what we're doing.  (Although walking is different because that fits in wherever it can.)  We will have workout clothes laundered and ready to go.  

During the week, we will simply follow the eating plan/workout plan we have laid out!  It's on the calendar/list, so it's not an option NOT to do it.  If a different situation comes up (ie friend invites us to lunch), we'll roll with it because we're not letting our weight loss plans turn us into antisocial weirdos, but we will make healthy choices wherever we go.  

Week 1 Results!

Week 1 Results:
I am back down to 170.8 lbs! I am totally psyched about this. This! Even with Aunt Flo knocking at the door. The downside was that I was SO HUNGRY! It felt as though every hour was a constant battle with thoughts of "should I eat something?", "should I wait?"
Tracking was definitely the only thing keeping me from binging on corn chips and snickers bars. I did so well with putting everything down, even if I didn't want to that if there's something missing from my tracker, I genuinely forgot it.
Exercise was easier for me than the tracking. I had my full 150 minutes in with time to spare. In reality, more than enough time to actually get another exercise session in but I was feeling so tired, I was in bed by 8:30 a couple of nights. I think I might have come up 16 minutes over the goal.

Week 2 Challenge:
This was a really hard choice. I spent half the week just thinking about what I should do next. A challenge to eat more fruits and veggies? Tracking again? Exercise again? Then I started thinking about those things I just forget about and the one thing I always forget is water. I fill myself a 32oz. jug of water, drink a few sips and it just sits there while I wonder how the heck I can possibly be so thirsty.
Our challenge this week is to drink your 64oz. of water daily.  It can't be in the form of Diet Coke because I would totally try to drink it all that way.  I will allow coffee, tea or crystal light.   

The Glow

The Glow is the natural enemy of The Blerch.  The Glow makes The Blerch so mad that it chokes on its Cheetos.  But The Glow doesn't care about The Blerch because it's too busy glowing.  It's the feeling you get after a workout.  Endorphins and accomplishment.  It's the feeling of going to bed knowing that everything you put into your mouth today was healthy.  It's the feeling of loose jeans.  Loose jeans that were tight not so long ago.  The Glow plays hard to get, but makes it worth your while.  The Blerch makes it easy, but you hate yourself in the morning.  We want The Glow.  We crave The Glow.  WE DESERVE THE GLOW!

This is the remix. . .

I see Cousin Choco's 2-pound gain and raise her 1.4.  Which is my way of saying that I gained a nice luscious 3.4 this week.  Not even a whole week, since I've got a new weigh day.  (I figured Saturdays are good to match up with our new challenges.)  203.8.  The period tracker on my phone perkily reminds me that there's "1 day left!"  So that explains a little bit.  However, I take full responsibility for all my tortilla chips and Tastykakes.

Moving on.

I've been looking back over this blog, old journals, other blogs, trying to make some sense of my teeter-totter ways.  I'm looking at what has worked and what hasn't, what has excited me and what has frustrated me, and here's what I came up with. . .

*Most successful (ie something I stuck with longer than 4 days) tracking method has been pen and paper.  In January I simply wrote down everything in a notebook, and at the end of the day I put a star by what my favorite thing had been.  I learned a lot about my eating habits that way.  Going back to it.

*Organization/preparation are my friends.  Without them, I will fail.

*I vacillate wildly between two schools of thought:  Hardcore Calorie Tracking and Namby Pamby Intuitive Eating.  The NPIE method resonates more deeply and I believe it's ultimately where I'll find my success.  But I've got to bring enough of the HCT mentality into it to be stricter with myself about what I'm choosing to eat.

*PHYSICALLY FEELING GOOD is important!  And wonderful!  And when I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I feel good!  Cousin Chip isn't as crisp as she used to be.   (. . . long pause taken while Cousin Chip brays like a jackass at her own hilarity. . . )  (. . . no, no, still laughing. . . )  And the body is definitely a lot more sensitive with old age.  I can't eat Cheetos and then go skipping off to listen to my NKOTB tape with no ill effects.

Chip Challenge #1

Okay, even though we will be busy with all that tracking, we are getting in 150 minutes of exercise this week.  Doesn't sound like much.  It's 5 days of 30-minute sessions, 7 days of 22-minute sessions, 3 days of 50-minute sessions, an entire week of mini sessions wherever you can get them, or one really hard day.  Choco hasn't been sending so many walking updates lately, and Chip has been flat-out sitting on her ass until Choco kicked it at the end of this week.

150 minutes.  We take them where we can get them, however we can get them, in whatever breakdown we want, but the bottom line is that they're in before next Saturday morning.  It's not optional!

The Grand Plan™ and nowhere to hide.

I came up with a grand plan. I was feeling into losing weight and I had to open my big mouth. I don't know why Chip didn't stop me. She could easily have been all, "woah, woah, woah there, killer".  She didn't though which is why I'm coming to you live at 6:they-have-this-as-a-time-on-a-Saturday in the morning.  Honestly though, I'm usually up before now but I don't have to think of things to write so it's rough.

Let's see. Here's the state of the union as it were. After a fairly good stretch of saying eff it, I'll just eat a small bit of that, it's finally caught up with me. I have gained for the first time in a while and I have to admit, the job was done spectacularly. Not only have I put on a pound, I've done 2 pounds. I'm at 172. I hope it's like water or PMS or ... constipation. LOL Probably not though. I have not been tracking my food properly.

Back to The Grand Plan™. It was born in a series of text messages as follows:

Cousin Choco: Happy lunchtime!
Cousin Chip: How did you know I'm having chips and salsa again?
Cousin Choco: What? No TastyCake?
Cousin Choco: I forgot I brought my lunch and I'm halfway to Panera. Do I go back for the frozen pizza?
Cousin Chip: LOL It's not dessert time yet. Nah, it'll keep until tomorrow and Panera has tons of healthy stuff! 
Cousin Choco: And cookies! lol
Cousin Chip: Well, true. lol
Cousin Choco: No cookies then. Ask me tomorrow how my Leslie (This is what we call our Walk Away the Pounds videos.) went tonight.

Cousin Chip: Okay. I'll do one out of solidarity, booooo

Cousin Choco:

Cousin Chip: Eeeeeeee! Okay :-)
Cousin Choco: I know right? We SHOULD be able to lose 30lbs. by then.
Cousin Choco: You can do more Miss 5lbs in a week.
Cousin Chip: LOL I always get a big number my first "on" week.
Cousin Choco: Okay. A challenge. 30 weeks. Every week we each pick something and each have to follow both to the letter. What do you think? Maybe we have to blog about it on Saturdays.
Cousin Chip: That's good!
Cousin Choco: Each one will only be a week long unless we want to continue it. Saturday to Saturday so we can lament the new challenge and talk about the old one in one post.
Cousin Chip: Yes, that's perfect. 30 weeks!


Here it is. My challenge for both of us is complete tracking.  Every single, solitary morsel of food that goes into our mouths will be tracked. 

It sounds simple but it's SO hard to do. Good luck and Godspeed.