Well, I'm definitely the one in charge of my mental state this month. NO EXCUSES plan is in full effect. Not going to let things slide- the stress isn't going to go away- still have my production #s to make by the end of the month, still have the house/land stuff happening...and the refinance...so none of that is going to go away. Can I manage it a lot better than I did last month? you betcha! I'm not working as hard as I did in March or April, and it showed on the scale.

Another realization- not stepping on the scale has been a way for me to "ignore" my lack of effort. So I need that daily, or 3 times a week reminder that I'm moving in the right direction, even if it's .2 pounds at a time. I ended up right back where I started- the whole month of May was a wash. Bleah.

So...this morning, didn't get my full exercise in because I was sleeping (not giving an excuse, just acknowledging that I am still overtired from the stress, but going to make up for it this evening.

Food today-
Breakfast:
1 peach cottage double
1/3 cup soy smart start

Lunch:
1 low fat tortilla
3/4 cup lean taco meat
1 oz skim shredded mexican cheese mix

Afternoon exercise:
at least 1 mile WATP
considering an upper body workout as well

Dinner:
keeping it light again- probably another evening of chickarina soup with extra water for volume & that "full" feeling.

Good news for the day- the sodium & crap is working itself out of my system- 3 pounds of that crap is already out of me as of this morning's weigh in. Not taking this challenge sitting down. No way!

Now that I got a chance to read & catch up....

Ann and Lenna- welcome to the group! We've got some amazing chickies here- they truly are wonderful. Make yourselves at home & enjoy!

Julie- I also miss the chickies when I can't get here....I'm totally addicted to this site & my chicks The whole not weighing blew up on me- not sure I could handle another whole month of not knowing, therefore, not caring/worrying/focusing. LOL- your inner girl scout must be ready for that hiking!

Maggi- good to see you sticking on with us! Yaaaay!

Lucy- awesome with the icky green dress! I swear, you're shrinking as I write this....I'm green with envy, girl! Kick tushie- you sure are making it happen...I bow to the exercise fiend in you...

ok- 20 minutes to kill before I can call it a day- have to hit the potty after chugging this last glass of water! :O

Catch you later, after exercise & dinner, just to be accountable.

peeking in after the first exercise- I played the WATP DVD on my computer...no excuse to sit here if I can be up exercising, too!

Elisha- sorry I missed your post- took me nearly an hour to get it written at work, and I didn't check for anything new before I posted. Good to see you with us for this challenge!

I did 1.5 of the 3 mile WATP tape...and this room is MUCH warmer than our master bedroom, where I usually do my working out. Broke a sweat before getting past the half mile mark. Really drippy right now, but that's a great thing- I forgot how good it feels to move this carcass. Kick butt.

I'm going to cool down a little, play 1 game while that happens, and then go do upper body stuff, and then think about dinner- I think it will be the soup, and some fat free cheese, or turkey pepperoni to get the extra protein in.

Have a wonderful evening chickies! It's so good to be back on track!

Reading all the posts has me motivated!

Jennifer...you go girl! Glad you are getting back on track after a suckie month! We can just write it off! I weighed today and am back at 169! Yea! So even though I'm not down, I'm down! LOL! Yep...I'm gonna kick some serious girlscout butt with the hiking this summer! Food looks good, girl! You're doing great today!

Elisha...glad you are with us! Nice to see familiar "faces"!

Lucy...way to go on the icky green christmas dress! Is this the one for the wedding? Hope you are feeling better. I still have a cough after 3 weeks of this stupid virus! Yuck! But I am feeling much better andhave my energy back, so that is a good thing!

Lenna...great to have you here with us. Hope we can help...and I'll just bet you ARE a "sweet person"!

Maggi...You are kicking some serious butt girl! I hope I can be focused like you this month. That's my goal...focus, focus, focus!!!

OK...food today was ok. Had what I planned for lunch PLUS half of a fish stick! Didn't get in as much water as I would have liked but sucking it down now! Had a yummy grilled cheese burger with 1/2 bun, onion & salad tonight for supper. Helped hubby plant some flowers in pots and DD helped too tonight! Fun!

Felt good to exercise this morning, but man it's hard to get up that extra half hour early! Waaaah! Tomorrow I think I am going to attempt the bike once again. Haven't been on it in weeks! I'm sure it misses my big butt!!! LOL!

That's about it! Hope everyone has a wonderful evening! Jennifer, could you send me the avatars? Did you post a link somewhere and I didn't see it???

Julie

Hi All,

Checking in.

Did my 5 mile up and over the ridge - 7 switchbacks - with only 3 pauses to catch my breath! And in about 90 minutes! phew was i ever glad when I was done. Saw some turkeys, lots of squirrels and lizards, blue jays and some hunting hawks. Quite a lovely hike.

What does WATP mean?

And I am at the computer with only an ice tea! I have been very good and kept away from all of the munchies today. No eating at this computer for me! I took a postie note and wrote FOOD with a big circle with a line thru it and put it on my laptop.

Bought a ton of flowers and plants and plan on gardening the rest of the evening and tomorrow - (I bought a lot of flowers!!!!! LOL)

Julie: I was born in Detroit! Where are you thinking of hiking? I remember some really wonderful areas like the Irish Hills and So many great state parks! The hiking bug didn't bite me until I moved out here to Northern California. It is so very beautiful out here and the weather is incrediable - even their so called winter!

Lucy: what's the ugly green dress for?

Well, Good Luck everyone - I will check in tomorrow again.

I guess i have to add a note to this in order for it to be submitted!

Hi everyone!!

Well I'm just popping in to let you chickies know that I'm here and of course I'll be joining in!!!! I have no idea what my goals are for this challenge as of yet, I probably wont be able to think about them until I get back to SC and get my life back on track. But here's a list of things that will probably be most important.

1. Lose 10 lbs before July 1st
2. Stay on plan, low calories, low fats and sugar
3. Exercise twice daily
4. Try to be a better, more positive person

Well, I gotta go start cooking breakfast for my dad!!

My Love to you all!!
Jay

whew! Ok, just finished another 1.5 miles of the WATP (Walk away the pounds for abs) 3 mile DVD. It is definitely tougher to do it in this room without the ceiling fan on hurricane force cooling me off. Hopefully that burns a lot more calories...lol

Today we go deal with the finance part of the new house- we have 2 appointments- 2 different banks, to see what they can offer us. I'll lay everything out on the table for them....and then see who gives us the better options and terms. My stomach is in fricking KNOTS over this. I swear, fussing & obsessing better burn calories.

Oh...news...I am only 3.6 pounds away from a new middle #....and I want this, big time! Before my birthday- that would be the best present I can give myself...continued loss, and better health- by my birthday next year, I want to be pretty close to my goal.

Food today:

Brunch at 10:00am
3 slices light oatmeal bread
2 tbsp reduced fat peanut butter
1 tbsp sugar free grape jelly

Drinking pineapple orange crystal light...the water here sucks, so I've gotta kill the taste.

Getting ready to hit the shower, and get ready for the rest of the day. Please cross your fingers, send positive vibes, good mojo, and whatever else you can think of my way.

Julie (and anyone else interested) here is the link to the 4th of July avatars....http://www.boomspeed.com/jenr/july.htm. It's also at the bottom of the very first post to the challenge. Hope there's one you like!

Jaymi- while you are away, just stay positive & do the best you can. We'll all be waiting for you to get back home & get back to your routine. Glad to see you sticking with us! We're happy to have you around!

Time to de-skank...lol...catch everyone later on!

All -- The ugly green dress is for my best friends' wedding -- I'm a bridesmaid. Honestly. It's the most horrible, ugly dress I've ever seen. Btu at least my butt fits into it, now, and my stomach is SO CLOSE!!

Jennifer -- Let's go with your vision of me shrinking, kay? Yesterday got out of hand and I'm gonna stick with "still shrinking"

Had a horrible day yesterday, over all. Everything was just screwed up and bad, and blah. Lots to deal with financially and with school and everything -- just too much pressure and stress, and I broke down and made myself sick from being so upset. Managed not to puke at all, though, which is awesome if you know my stomach like I do. It is bleeding again, so I have to take it easy on the spiciness for a few days, but I'm okay, now. Glad it's over with, for sure.

Today = hot. Already. 8:38 a.m. and it's almost 70 degrees outside already. BLECH. Not another scorching summer!! nooo!!

Another crisis this morning, too... hubby forgot my tapes to be returend and i ran out into the parking lot after him but he didn't see me and he drove away. Now I have to wait until he gets to work, and he'll have to drive the whole hour back and get my stuff taken care of because i have no car.

Blech!! So today will be better, though. I know that already.

First off, I'm going to clean this house like mad this morning, get everything all taken care of. Then scan the tapes, then workout, then grab a quick lunch & head to do my tapes for the day. After that, work on making dinner (Tacos tonight because last night things just sucked and i felt horrible so we had macaroni & hceese from a box.. yay).

Ummm other than that, here's the stats

Food -
B - 2 rice cakes w/ peanut butter on them and an apple
L - can of tuna & some boiled broccoli
D - spicy taco meat w/ refried beans, cheddar & some rice, perhaps. (I don't eat the tortillas)

Workout
20 min ellipitical
30 squats
500 situps (normal kind)
50 balance-ball situp thingeys
5 min upper body workout with the weights

Other than that, no idea. I think that's about it. But I'm also going to be cleaning the entire fridge out, vacuuming the whole house, washing windows, doing floors, dusting, laundry, bathrooms, cleaning out the closets.

Oh, yeah. I think we're moving into a 1-bedroom here instead of a 2-bedroom, for the sake of simplicity. ANd for cheaper rent. Either that, or find somebody to rent out the 2nd bedroom until March of next year, which I'm not very keen on. I prefer my privacy and whatnot.

Okay, off for breakfst and to work out. Woohoo!

On another note. Stuck with the slim fast yesterday. No exersice. I fell and cut the bottom of my foot. I'm fixing to attemt to take a walk and see how bad it will feel. So here's hoping!! And I'm gonna try some situps, maybe 50?? (I'm working my way up to 500!!! hahahahahahhahah)

Lenna

Lenna -- I used to do thousands a night when I was in high school -- for fun. I got bored and just sat in my room listening to music and did situps. I'm a freak. You really have to just contract your ab muscles and do slow and steady situps when you do. If you can do 5 of those without having done situps in a long time, and your stomach doesn't hurt, then you aren't doing them the right way. I have abs of steel under 3 extra inches of icky fat. You'll get up to 500!! Just keep working!

Also -- crisis averted. husband has taken care of tapes, I am no longer worried about getting fired for missing my deadline. Yay!

Half of the house is totally done. Woohoo!! It's only 9:43? I feel awesome. Have an awesome day chickies!

Well, I'm gonna try for 50. Will be happy with 10!!!! Everytime I start back up on my journey to unleash the thin woman within, I always realize, how totally out of shape I am.

Here's a question - shin splints - any advise on how to prevent? I went for a walk today (yah me!) and by the time I was out of the apt complex I already had em.

*crashes and burns* FAFSA **** has returned. The flames of stupidity based on the taxes from 2002 are all around me and if someone at the college doesn't show up with a freaking fire truck, I am going to burst into a million grains of salt and put it out myself. (Yeah, if you followed that, congratulations. haha!)

I did a good thing. I made brownies for the hubby (this morning we got off to a bad start with the whole almost-missed-deadline thing and he has to work late because of both of our mistakes but I feel bad...) to make up for having a bad morning, and I made buttercream frosting from scratch for him, because I am the most awesome wife EVER and I only had 2-3 tiny little finger-poke tastes to see if it was to the right consistency or not. You really can't test that stuff w/o tasting it, ya know? Yeah. And I don't really like brownies, so I'm not too worried about eating them, haha!!

No dice on switching apartments. Jerks... I hate our management company here. They SUCK.

I am so tired. I can't keep my eyes open. I'm gonna finish up my stupid tapes, here, which should take me another hour or so, and then go vegetate and take some caffeine and sudafed. MUST. KILL. COLD!!

Water is good. Almost done w/ 3rd bottle right now, and I always drink at least 1 with dinner (more tonight cuz it's spicy!! WOOWOO!) so I'm on track with that. Did 12 min on the ellipitical today. Maybe I'll go hop on for another 8 to finish off that 20 min goal, maybe not. Stupid freaking TOM started today. AGAIN. FOR THE FIFTH STUPID TIME NOW. *grinds teeth* What the ****, ya know? What the **** indeed.

I think it's time for me to rearrange the living room, or at least most of it. Perhaps later... if I can move myself that long.

Right now - going to make more sugarfree jello for evening snacks (almost no cal and won't get me wound up!) and then do my tapes, then die on the couch.

Hey... quick question.

I have heard about these "ab belts" that people have been using. What the heck are they, and where the heck do I find one?! My abs are my big issue right now and that's the one part I seriously need to kick before mid-July.

I checked on e-bay but all I found were those freaking electronic things taht shock you, and that's not cool.

Anyone????