Red Lights: A Record of Life's Defining Moments

Falling Off Friday: Week 6 Check-in

Its been just over 6 weeks since I started on this weight loss journey and I am happy to report that this week I brought my total weight loss up to 19 pounds!  Still a long way to go (can't believe how much I let myself gain before finally taking charge) but feeling very good about the direction I'm heading in right now. 

The challenge for me will come in a couple of weeks when I start back to work and time is a bit more premium.  I do feel though that I've gathered enough good, healthy eating habits that I will be able to tackle it head on.

Falling Off Friday: Finally on Track...

I'm happy to report that I'm finally on the path to losing weight and now weight 5 pounds less than I did just 3 short weeks ago.  I'm happy with the start that I've made. 

So for the next week I will continue to stick to my food plan, journal everything that I eat, exercise daily and drink lots of water.  Hopefully I will be reporting new weight loss to you in a post each Friday :).

Falling Off Friday - Quest to Healthy Me Journey

With a couple of weeks of using my treadmill behind me, I have decided its time to really get to work on getting myself back to a healthy weight.  I have let it go way too long and now have nearly 100 pounds to shed!  Eeeekkk!

Here is a link to my Spark Page: http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage.asp?id=mom2mikey

My goals for this upcoming week include:

• Eliminate Diet Coke completely from my diet.  This week I have gone from drinking almost one 2L bottle daily to just one glass of diet coke a day.  I'm thinking that by the end of next week I should have that out of my diet.  Diet Coke is a killer for me as it always makes me so hungry for sweet things.  I know that eliminating it will go a long way to getting me back on track.
• Sticking to 3 meals and 1 snack a day.  I tend to do okay until after school and then start snacking and snack too much to be hungry for supper but then need to snack again later.  Need to get on a more rigid eating schedule.
• Drink more than 8 glasses of water a day.  Already doing this but I want to continue to do it.
• Get on my treadmill for a minimum of a half hour a day.  Although I'm going to add other exercise stuff in as I go along for now I'm sticking with this goals as I know it is one that I can achieve.

I will be putting in a weight loss ticker here each week as well.  Will have to do that after work though as it is time to get me and Mikey out the door.

Weight Watchers Online or In Real Life?

I don't have a ton of time to post this morning but want to get in to the routine of posting each day as much as I can.  I will be on a trip for the next couple of days so not sure if I will have time.  But today is the first Tuesday of the month and even if I'm doing nothing to try to lose weight, I can be making plans.  I'm trying to decide if I should just WW online or go to the local meeting.  My most successful weight loss as an adult has probably been through e-diets online when Mikey was still just a wee one so I know I can do the online thing - I just somethings think there is something to the weigh-in component of real life meetings.  The reality is that I would probably take Mikey with me to the meetings and he has always been good but it can be a bit of a task sometimes.  Meetings are at a decent and doable time given that they are only 10 minutes from where I live.  They were hard last time because it was about a 50 minute drive in to the city to get to the meetings.

Anyway... here is what I need to do in the next week:

• Join Weight Watchers and set a goal for how much I want to lose.  Break it down in to 4 month chunks so that I have 3 mini-goals throughout the year as well.  I would like to aim for being at my goal weight by January 1, 2008.
• Get my treadmill from my mom and dad's garage in to my basement.  Set up my downstairs TV so that I can watch TV down there.  While I'm at it, I want to buy some shelves and organize the rest of the stuff that I have down there so I have no excuse to get off the treadmill once I'm down there.
• Find my "Perfectly Fit" tapes and start doing the "Perfectly Fit Abs" twice a week. 
• I plan to get on my treadmill a minimum of 3 times a week and do the abs video a minimum of 2 times a week to start out.
• Aim to get in 8 glasses of water a day while on this trip.  Once I get back from the trip, I need to go grocery shopping and get busy with the no eating out goal ;).

It is not all in place but I'm preparing and its going to be a journey so it is one worth preparing for.  Now my friend is supposed to be here by 7 a.m. and its 6:40 so I need to go and finish getting ready and packing.

Weight Loss: Getting Back on Track

So I figure its time to start focusing again on getting my weight down to a reasonable number.  Since the beginning of the year I've done pretty good but for the last little bit I've lost my focus and although I've maintained, I don't want to do what I did last time I lost weight and just miantian for a while and then completely lose focus and suddenly have it all back on plus more.  So the plan is to start focusing again on eating right (using a lose version of Dr. Phil's eating plan) and then in two weeks to start going to Weight Watchers through the rest of this school year and the summer to try and keep motivated.  I did join e-diets for 3 months from January to March 2005 but by the end I wasn't checking in anymore so I did not renew my membership there.  It did serve its purpose for the time that I needed though.  I think its time for me to start going to in-person weigh ins now though.

Anyway the reason I'm posting here is because I will be adding a new "Category" to my blog to keep track of my weight loss, exercise and healthy habits so that I have one more place to be accountable.  So... here goes.  Yesterday I got outside for my first walk of the year with a friend and I'm hoping we can get out 3 or 4 times a week and will keep you all updated on that.

April 16 Exercise - 60 minutes walking
Total April Minutes - 60 minutes!