Riestrella- Good for you for stopping those lazy days! I wish I could do the same thing. Exercise doesn't really affect my weight loss, but it makes me feel better as a whole.
I'm waiting until Black Friday to hopefully get all my Xmas shopping done on that day! Just need to figure out what to get everyone.
Omg! I'm number 1 in the 20-somethings chart! That's never happened!! I know it's not going to happen again since this week was a huge WHOOSH but still, I'm super happy.
Today is an exercise day, think I'm gonna run since I see blue skies. Another 2 mile run, but after that I'll be increasing my distances.
Eating has been a lot better, mainly because I'm researching my Mum's meals and making sure not to over eat if she makes something fattening. Last night was moussaka, which is predominantly fat. I ate half of the portion she gave me and felt absolutely fine with not finishing it off. I think she thinks that if a meal is homemade it means it's healthy, but sometimes it's just as bad as eating out!
I'm seeing 164 lbs/165 lbs as my normal weight now, which is amazing. Sometimes when I drop suddenly it will bounce back and average out. After seeing 167/168 for a long time it's so great to see my work is paying off. I think I might actually reach my goal for this challenge! I remember desperately wanting to get out of the 150's...but now I want to be in them! Weird how that works.
-------------
claygirl - It's not as bad as it once was, I graduated just as the big recession hit so it took me 6 months to find a job. Even then, it was just a cinema job, so much for a degree giving me a one up in the job market. Right now, it's still tough, but I think there are a lot more options than what there once was. I also see a few jobs that offer training so don't expect people to be qualified. Where did you spend Christmas in the UK exactly? I do love Christmas here, mainly because it's home to me! Christmas in Japan LOOKED amazing, but had no soul since they don't really celebrate it properly.
Wow, I don't know how you deal with your Mum, no offence! I say that because my Mum has a very short fuse about some things, she used to blow up very easily over nothing. She's gotten a LOT better as the years have gone on, but every now and then she'll get moody for no reason and hold a grudge like a Japanese ghost. It's horrible to deal with, but your situation sounds more difficult. Have she ever taken any mood stabilizers to calm her mood swings? Because no one should have to live with that much emotion both for herself and the ones around her! :S
How long once you cut veggies do they stay fresh for? I want to make vegetable juices but I find the process of cutting them up so tedious to the point where I don't even make them. I thought perhaps I could cut up everything I need at the beginning of the week, put them in baggies and then juice them each day. Would they stay fresh this way? Hang in there, just keep going and you'll see results! I'd say if you've been 100% on plan for about 3-4 weeks and you still haven't seen a budge then it might be time to re-evaluate your plan.
noname - 2-3 times a week sounds fine! Is there a reason you're cutting back from exercise other than you're not training for something? Or is it just a way to ease the pressure up a bit? Ugh, I hate when my boobs get sore too, I have big boobs so they feel like 2 cement mixers when they get all swollen and sore for my period. I can't stress how amazing it is that your boyfriend wants to lose weight with you! My Mum has always been up for weight loss but my Dad is really against it. He hates eating healthy and will always be on board to order a takeaway or eat something unhealthy if she falters. I hope his surgery goes well! I would lose my jsa if I got a seasonal job, if you work over a certain amount of hours you automatically get cut off so I'd have to go through the whole process again. I did look into sorting through post, but they have already hired their Christmas staff! Oh well, I'll keep my head up!
izzy - Hey, whatever works for you is fine! If you see success in your methods then I wish you nothing but luck on your journey. That's a shame about Zumba ;_;.
angie - It's been a learning process to let go of the schedules and timelines I set for myself! I actually set myself a date I wanted to be at my goal weight by...that was 2 years ago! It just goes to show you can't predict what happens and trying to be too strict is doing you no favours. Late night snacking, that's always a killer. Right now I live in a house with 2 floors, so if I'm upstairs I tend to be less inclined to go down and make something.
Draconic - I think exercise helps me more mentally than it does physically. I'm less likely to overindulge on food if I've been on a run since I feel like I don't want to erase the hard work I've put into running. Good luck, I hate sales! I've seen some crazy footage of Black Friday...I'd be too scared to do it!
Last edited by Riestrella; 11-10-2014 at 07:40 AM.
Rie We did xmas and new year in London, we had a great time, it was beautiful. I wish we could of seen more, but we were only able to see London and Cambridge.
My Mom is quite difficult. She used to be on cymbalta for her depression, but if made her gain a ton of weight, and even more unhappy, so she got off of it. Now she does mostly pilates and get messages to keep her healthy. She's not a very introspective person, and I think if I suggested she get some meds to feel better she might rip my throat out, so I'll leave her to it.
I keep my veggies cut in the fridge for about a week, I go through them pretty fast though. I've looked up how to store different ones, and keep them in the crisper (half at high humidity, others at low depending on how they last longer). Also, my mom got me these things on HSN called "green boxes" that are supposed to keep veggies and fruit fresh longer? Seems to work for us.
As far as my plan, it has stalled lately. I added exercise, and I've been eating around 1350 cals a day (measured out) but if I'm not hungry I will eat less than 1350. I exercise for 30 minutes at least 3x a week. Any advice on that would definitely be appreciated.
I got on the scale this morning and it read 189, and i was surprised, but there's no way that's right. I checked the scale and shifted it, and... we're back to 198. again. Hopefully it will come down soon! I'm tired of seeing the same numbers for all eternity! I did work out yesterday, so maybe it's water.
Rie - I guess I'm not really cutting back, I'm just not adding more. 2-3 times per week is about how much I do when I'm not really challenging myself lol I had set a higher exercise goal this month because I thought I was being lazy, but a) it was making me really hungry and b) I just do NOT have the motivation right now! So I'm scrapping the goal and sticking with the status quo. That's unfortunate you can't get a seasonal job without losing your benefits. I believe that's how it works here, which is a shame because I know most people would just be happy to be doing something instead of being home!
Claygirl - How long have you been stalled? I wouldn't make any changes unless it's been almost a month. Change too much at one time and you just risk making it worse! I hope the scale catches up with you soon. What a tease for the scale to mess up on you like that!!
I am no where near ready for Christmas. I can hardly even wrap my head around Thanksgiving this year. I'll likely be spending it apart from my boyfriend since he will be on call for work and unable to travel, and I will be going to visit my dad's side of the family in New York. My grandparents has been in poor health this year so I decided it was best for me to go, even if technically I should be with the bf's family this year (we try to switch every other year). But we'll be eating at a restaurant for Thanksgiving since no one on that side of the family has the space to host us all At least I won't have to worry about over eating? Just wish we could transport my parent's house to NY so we could all be together and have some good homecooked food!
claygirl-I'm sorry the scale is being difficult. I've had many stalls this past year. Stick with your plan and eventually the weight will come off though. Consistency is what is key and you seem to have a good plan. Since your scale was giving you a weird reading do you think perhaps you need a new battery or scale? My scale was acting so weird and it turned out to need a new battery. Now its very consistent. So many things can mask weight loss, I know how frustrating it is but hang in there
izzy-glad the new counting bites plan is working well so far.
Rie-Awesome job this past week! You are owning this challenge! I knew you would too Good job looking up your mom's meals and keeping to smaller portion sizes. I know a lot of people think home-cooked=healthy but that's simply not true! Just curious, but have you thought about cooking dinner maybe once a week to learn some healthy recipes and introduce your family to some healthy meals? I know some mom's are weird about that(like my mom) and I forget if you've mentioned if your mom is too....just a thought though. Hope the run went well, seems like this exercise plan is working great. Keep it up and I know you'll make your goal for this challenge
noname-That's too bad that you and your boyfriend will be apart for the holiday I'm sorry to hear about your grandparents, mine too are starting to decline. That sucks you have to go to a restaurant! Hopefully you can all still make the most of it though. Is it at least a good restaurant? Maybe you and your boyfriend could celebrate your own mini Thanksgiving on a different day? Just something small, cute, and relaxing so you still get to have the feeling of the holiday.
Finally over the food poisoning from the weekend. Very terrifying experience, especially all the convulsing and shivering It sucks having so many food allergies, I'm getting scared about eating out at all now anymore. My sister(who's a nurse) thinks it was salmonella. And then it feels like some gluten injested too from all the residual stomach issues and massive bloating. Sigh. Weight was up 4lbs today even though I didn't eat too badly this weekend. TOM is also here! lol Not starting out to be the best week.
At least this happened now and not next weekend when I have my performance! Oh I went dress shopping Sunday and got a beautiful dress for the performance. I'll include a pick I snapped.
I have all my food prepped for this week and logged everything into mfp through Friday. Crossing my fingers for a new low!
Dottington - I must have missed your post earlier. I'm glad you're feeling better! Food poisoning is the worst, not that I have to tell you. Your dress is beautiful and you look amazing in it. Impressive that you have your whole week planned! Wow. Really good idea
My boyfriend just went into his wisdom teeth surgery. Hoping all goes well should be easy peasy.
We had a yummy dinner last night and I ate very well (as in, yummy not so healthy food!) yesterday but the scale still managed to go down a pound. Not gonna argue that! Think I will have no trouble eating light the rest of the week. Maybe I'll finally reach my 50 pound lost benchmark that I have been so close to for months.
199 today... I've been losing the same 3-4 pounds for months now. The last few months though my cycle has been quite rough. I've been gaining weight during ovulation (with spotting, nausea, severe cramping, pain) and my TOM, and it just seems like I only just get back to my previous weight a few days after my TOM. It just happens over and over again! I spend more time feeling miserable. I'm not on any kind of BC (my husband and I want to start trying to conceive early next year). I'm not exactly sure what I should do next, but counting calories at 1350 calories a day and working out every other day doing cardio at least 30 minutes I should be losing weight right? Unless I need to work on something else. Anyone else have this problem?
Need to workout today since I felt kinda crappy yesterday and skipped it. Since the weather looks grim I'm going to do a total body circuit T25 video. Those ones are the worse...I hate planks/push ups I have such measly weak shoulders/arms! Last night my Mum went absolutely crazy with my portion size, she served me curly fries, baked beans and salmon. The fries took up half of the plate!! She said they fell out in a frozen clump, but I couldn't help but feel a bit insulted since it's very well known I'm trying to lose weight. Needless to say, I ate half of what was on my plate, the salmon was really weird tasting too but I tried to get most of it down. Today I'm going to be cooking dinner, she's thankfully left me a recipe that looks healthy. It's like a chicken stir fry with vegetables and based on the recipe it's low in calories and fat so I'm thankful. A typical week is 3 healthy(ish) meals, 3 unhealthy meals and 1 reaaaally bad meal. At the weekend they always make bacon sandwiches too which I love but always decline since I don't want to start my day with bread and greasy meat! But it's hard to say no...
Today I went to the job center and it went fine, at one point there was an announcement that we would be having a 2 minute silence since today is Remembrance day in the UK. It was actually quite nice that people obliged since the job center is notorious for attracting knob heads who are living off the benefits. I'm booked in to see an adviser next week about going on a course that would give me a qualification in microsoft office for admin work.
I did end up eating at Subway...I felt like I wanted to give myself a little treat so I did. Whereas once upon a time I would have ordered a foot long I ordered a "6" (more like 5) inch sandwich instead. I've been doing this the last few times I've been, a foot long is just too much food! I know that eating at Subway isn't great, but I'm proud of myself for being able to say no to the bigger sizes since I know most of the time it's a case of my eyes being bigger than my belly.
I've ordered my boyfriend a nerdy flask from etsy, he always said he wanted one but it would have to be subtly nerdy, so I ordered him this one: https://img0.etsystatic.com/021/0/68...68552_gbqv.jpg Instead of putting his name on it I got "Winter is Coming" put on it. I think he'll like it! We both love Game of Thrones and watch it together, he loves wolves and his favourite house motto is the Stark's.
------------------
claygirl - I'm actually going to London in the New Year for the first time in 10+ years as a tourist. I've visited a few times to get things sorted for visas so it'll be nice to actually see the city as a visitor. I can't wait! Yeah, I can imagine bringing up going on medication would be risking a huge confrontation. Thanks for the veggie tip, I think I'll start doing that for my juices!
Hmm, what sort of exercise are you doing? Do you feel like you're really pushing yourself to your limits? Are you drinking plenty of water throughout the day? Are you eating things that a bit high in sodium? Your calorie intake could be a little low...but not by much. How often do you eat in a day? Sorry for asking so many questions, but it will shed more light onto your situation!
noname - I see! I think if you do challenge yourself to workout more and you feel yourself getting hungry, definitely listen to your body and eat something. But 2-3 times a week is absolutely fine and you seem to be doing great with your diet plan since you're losing. I'm sure your boyfriend and his family understand why you're not spending it with them this year. I can imagine it being weird having a holiday meal out instead of at home, it would be like my family not having Christmas dinner in the kitchen! I'm going to spending Christmas next year with my boyfriends family...how did you find being away from home for such a family orientated holiday?
You know sometimes when I've been so good with exercise/eating for weeks I lose barely anything, then I eat a really unhealthy meal and see a drop! Bodies are so strange that way!
Dott - Thanks! I feel like I've jinxed myself though and my progress will stall for another month now I've said that I think I'm doing well! My Mum tends to do her weekly menus without consulting anyone, so I would have to pester her to let me help make the menus and I imagine she'd conveniently "forget" to include me since she's a bit of a control freak like that. To her credit sometimes she does make healthy meals, it's just the portion sizes that she's crap at/eats it with loads of condiments and with bread. It's so weird, sometimes she'll make a salad with our dinners and then my parents will make sandwiches out of the salad. I think I'll look into some healthy meals and start asking to cook more though, it's a good idea. So sorry you experienced food poisoning...it's so awful. I think it's best not to take the scale too seriously until you're completely back to normal. That dress is GORGEOUS and looks amazing on you. I love that colour! It suits you really well!
Rie That flask will be so cool! I bet he will love it. My husband and I are also big game of thrones fans. We are both reading "A Dance with Dragons" now, we want to be all up to date for the next season in april. Such a good show, great books too. Between George rr Martin and Moffat though with Doctor who, we feel like all our favorite characters are doomed to a horrible death.
As far as diet and exercise go, I get on the elliptical 30-45 minutes on an interval setting. By the time I get off I'm sweating, and shaky-legged, breathing heavily, so I think it's making an impact, definitely not easy for me yet. I drink 100 oz of water a day, I also drink diet soda though, so I maybe getting way too much sodium, I need to track it better. During a day I usually eat 5 smaller meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks, but I don't eat too much more at regular meals). Sometimes I'll only eat 4 times. I try to eat based on how hungry I am though. If I'm not feeling super hungry I may eat less than 1350 calories. When I exercise I don't eat back my calories "burned".
claygirl - I finished the books earlier in the year for the same reason, but I was quite happy that I hadn't reached the part in the books where the purple wedding happens, so I got to be surprised by that! I think the show is definitely heading into its own direction now since Martin is taking so long with the books. So I like the show and the books as their own separate thing now.
Are you able to do any other exercise other than the elliptical? I think the best thing for you perhaps would be to keep your body guessing with exercise. Try mixing up your exercise either by day or during the same workout. Try 15 minutes jogging and 15 minutes on the elliptical. Adding days where you focus on strength and not just cardio might help you too.
I think the diet soda is no doubt affecting your weight loss, all those sweeteners are not good for your body. I know it's a hard habit to break, believe me I went through a crazy soda addiction at one point in my life, but I think it's something you should do. It may be low cal/sugar free but with all the other crap that's in there it's just not worth drinking. You can either try going cold turkey or try noting down how much you drink per week and cut back 10% each week.
I also would recommend eating back the calories you burned, maybe not ALL of them but if you're exercising for 30+ minutes and you're still sticking to the 1350 amount then you're probably not getting enough fuel. I know it sounds strange but if you think about it if you're eating 1350 but burn 400 that means you've pretty much only eaten 950 calories in a day - it's not enough! To keep your metabolism burning you need to keep throwing logs on the fire.
Last edited by Riestrella; 11-11-2014 at 03:37 PM.
Hi all, I forget I was also doing No Weigh November, so I am going to enter my weight in the spreadsheet until December as 193lbs, which is where it was last time, until December, where hopefully it will start changing.
I'm using No Weigh November to help reset my view of the scale and my body, as well as hopefully get me into the habit of only weighing once every week or two, rather than every other day.
So far it's killing me to not know, but that's part of the challenge!
Hi all, I forget I was also doing No Weigh November, so I am going to enter my weight in the spreadsheet until December as 193lbs, which is where it was last time, until December, where hopefully it will start changing.
I'm using No Weigh November to help reset my view of the scale and my body, as well as hopefully get me into the habit of only weighing once every week or two, rather than every other day.
So far it's killing me to not know, but that's part of the challenge!
No problemo, if you feel like you won't forget to put your weights on the spreadsheet then you can enter 193 for the next 2 weeks. But if you think you might forget, then please add a note in the cells that you're not weighing in for and say you're on a scale break. Either way, if I see 2 blank cells I will move you to standby since I just zone out when I do the charts and don't look at names!
Scale breaks can be a blessing, I took one because weighing in was driving me crazy and making me eat more. Good luck!
Hey everyone! Hope you're doing well! I lost 2 freaking lbs this week, this is madness! 4 lbs last week and this week 2 lbs? I know that it will slow down soon, but I'm so happy to see myself getting closer and closer to the 150's after being stuck in the 160's since the beginning of the year. So happy!
Rie Well, I have given up diet soda as of yesterday... I've been thinking about doing it, just never actually committing to it because I love it. But, I need a new vice to tackle, and this is the BIG one for me. I hope that cutting it out of my diet will help both my health and weightloss. I'm still hovering around 198 right now. I can mix up my exercise too, I use the elliptical a lot because I like the distraction of playing video games while I work out. I can start running outside again or doing yoga (I definitely need to work on more core/ab strength). I will experiment with those changes over the next month and see what happens. I've also started eating back a few of my workout calories like you said, but not all, because I'm not convinced I even burned that many, and I just don't know how accurate myfitnesspal is on calories burned.
As far as soda, I've been reading about it more to help myself to quit. Some people are adamant that it's fine, and other people are adamant that it's not. I'm going with not, because I do get headaches, and my teeth are very sensitive, as well as stalled weight loss. I did get some La croix sparkling water (only drank 2, mostly tea and water) yesterday to replace the "bubbles" craving. I checked the ingredients to make sure no fake sugars are in them. I ate normally yesterday, didn't work out though (break day!) and when I went to bed I actually couldn't fall asleep I was so hungry, which never happens to me. I didn't eat more because I thought if I did I might binge. I ate 1350 calories and didn't do any excessive exercise, the only difference was not drinking diet soda. I wonder if my body was confused because it thought I was going to get big doses of sugar (fake sugar) and freaked out a bit when I didn't. I feel like the research on diet soda is so... speculative at this point. Most of the research is all correlation, not causation (which bugs me as someone who did a lot of research in school). For now I'm just going to listen to my own body, and see what happens!
That's a shame about Zumba ;_;. 
At least I won't have to worry about over eating? 
Just wish we could transport my parent's house to NY so we could all be together and have some good homecooked food!
Good job looking up your mom's meals and keeping to smaller portion sizes. I know a lot of people think home-cooked=healthy but that's simply not true! Just curious, but have you thought about cooking dinner maybe once a week to learn some healthy recipes and introduce your family to some healthy meals? I know some mom's are weird about that(like my mom) and I forget if you've mentioned if your mom is too....just a thought though. Hope the run went well, seems like this exercise plan is working great. Keep it up and I know you'll make your goal for this challenge 
