Sarah - Week 7

Hello again!

I have a lot to write about, but I think I'm going to do it after the new year. I'm just going to briefly pop in and update you on my loss for the week! I lost a solid 2.4 lbs making my grand total -21.4 lbs!!

We're only a few days away from the holidays (aka the hardest time to diet and when most people gain 10 lbs) being over and we still managed to lose weight! I'm super proud of us.

Picking up Cati's slack

Well, Cati sucks at life...mostly at posting in blogs.

I had a sort-of epiphany yesterday that was a little frustrating. It had nothing to do with only losing 1.8 lbs, I'm proud of that much and I know that I need to be dieting healthily or else I'll gain it all back when I get to my goal or have a ridiculous eating disorder and have to be on intervention. The reason why I'm not seeing much of a significant change in my body is because all I've done so far is lose the weight that I gained in college. I've finally gotten back to where I was before I discovered power hours, monkey boys, and pokey sticks. This is the weight that I think I've been seeing myself as, in my mind's eye, even though I've been grossly more.

With that said, I think that in the next 10 lbs, I'll get that BAM and start noticing the difference. I'm only 6 lbs to my first goal, just being overweight not obese, and 6 lbs to halfway to our main goal, 50 lbs. I'll also be a little over a third of the way to my final goal that I try not to think about too much. I'm getting excited for the new year and the new me that's coming with it!!

PS I'm so jealous of people who have ellipticals with TVs attached to them! Today I ran at my parent's club for a full hour just because I was so engrossed in Wife Swap. Maybe I need to invest in buying some hour long shows and uploading them to my crackberry.

Sarah - Week 6

Well, Cati sucks at posting. I'ma kill her.

This has been a really tough week. I went home on Thursday and it was allll going out to eat and being with people and not watching what I was doing. It was also all about being snowed in so much that I couldn't make it to the gym. However, I have to keep looking at how much I would have gained in that situation if I hadn't been on this diet. I'm nervous because this week is going to be pretty similar including going out to dinner tomorrow, hopefully chinese and a movie on friday, and then a potluck on saturday. I'm definitely going to the club on thursday and saturday, though, which should help things a bit. I have to remind myself that these 3 weeks are the holidays and losing any weight or even staying the same is still a triumph.

With that in mind, let's look at this week's stats. I lost 1.8 lbs making my grand total 19 lbs!!! I'm inching my way to 20, hopefully next week will be the week! I can't believe how far we've gotten in our goal. There are 2 months until THON, 8 weeks of weigh-ins. If I lose 2 lbs a week for those 8 weeks, I'll be around -35 lbs and I'll DEFINITELY want to make it back to SC...because of that and because I freaking love THON...I hope I don't come across toooo self centered, haha.

Happy Holidays!!

Sarah - Week 5

Another great week! I'm down another 3.8 lbs bringing my total to 17.2!! I'm getting closer and gloser to half-way and my first goal. Sometimes I worry that I'm losing too fast but I don't feel like I'm starving myself or not eating enough. I ate out 3 times last week! And we made latkes on saturday. I'm just making better choices, I guess. (Like yummy strawberries and lite cool WHip for dessert) This should be a little bit of a tougher weekend because I'm going home for hannukah and my camp reunion which, I'm sure, is going to have a lot of restaurants included.

Though I'm noticing a difference (mostly in my nice pants for work category...I'm in dire need of a new pair that fits), I don't feel like I've noticed a huge one yet. As I said, last time, I wasn't noticing a huge difference and then one day BAM it hit me. The biggest places that I'm noticing a difference, as gross as this is, is in my back fat and my muffin top. Gross, right? Anyways, I'm glad to see them go and I'm looking forward to waving bye bye to some other trouble areas.

Obesity...and beyond!!

So I just got home from the gym and I'm really happy with my new elliptical work out. I'm doing a 5 minute high intensity/5 minute low intensity workout and it's going really well. 5 minutes is great, because when it's getting really tough during the high intensity there's usually only a few minutes left. Other than that, I'm just plodding along, everything is the same old same old.

When I was walking back to our apartment, I started wondering about an intermediate goal to set between now and the 50 lbs (perhaps this has something to do with being a booty call for someone who was once on the shmashmazing shmace). I've decided to make my foray into the world of just being overweight my next goal, as opposed to right now, when I'm categorized as obese. I used a nifty BMI calculator and futzed around with some weights and figured out that 174 lbs is that next goal. I'm not sure how much I weigh right now, seeming as our weigh in is tomorrow morning, but I'm calculating that as about 10-15 more lbs to go, hopefully on the lesser side of that scale.

SHOCK! If you can do math, I've basically spelled out to the world what I weight right now and basically what I weighed in the beginning. Oh well, I'm starting to get a lot more comfortable with this diet...we've made it past a big stretch and it's basically second nature now. I'm crossing my fingers for tomorrow!!

PS 18 weeks until the blue/white game. If I keep going at a rate of 2 lbs per week, I'll have almost reached my goal weight!!!

Cool pool party

So I have some spare time at work and figured I would stop Sarah from wanting to kill me for never updating the blog.

Last week wasn't great. I was only at -1.4, bringing me to a grand total of -12.0. We've been on this diet for 33 days also, so I'm quite pleased with the results so far. This is my worst showing yet on loss though. I could have very easily gotten discouraged, but really I think it helped me to want to have a great week this week. Which I'm pretty sure I will. I would loveeeee to be able to be at -15 for Christmas, which I'm quite confident I can do.

I'm nervous about this unreal Holiday Party I'm going to on Saturday. Outside of the non-conventional relationship of the hosts, I already know there is going to be massive amounts of food and none of it is going to be good. Not to mention that Saturday morning is usually mine and Sarah's gym morning, which we won't be going to. I'm just really going to need to have a good Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so help even things out. And practice the fine art of portion control. And drink a lot of diet cokes to keep myself busy.

I also had a really good work out on Saturday, with my best showing yet of 500 calories burned on the elliptical. It was a little hard to get through, but I'm glad I started playing around with the settings and levels. I think that's gonna open up some new doors.

I'm also trying to download that 8 minute abs video. If not, I think I'll try to go to the library and rent it? I really want to watch a video on crunches and stuff. I'm not convinced I'm doing them the best and most correct way possible, so I figure a video will help remedy that situation. But I also don't want to buy one, because Lord knows I wouldn't watch it more than just the one or two times.

I think so far I've had a really good week. The latkes were awesome, and I didn't feel like I gorged myself on them. We'll just breeze by the fact that they didn't stay down, but even outside of that, I'm feeling good. I'm looking forward to WiW (That's Weigh-in Wednesday. Similar to WoW? Yes, I believe so.) this week. See you in 43 hours, blog.

Sarah - Week 4

Well hello! We've been pretty bad about updating the blog recently, but we've also been exhausted and working and traveling (as we ususally are). I definitely had a challenging week - mostly made by my ridiculous fear of having two "bad" weeks in a row. I need to realize that I can make good decisions and not starve myself all the time and still lose weight. If I'm too extreme, I'll gain the weight back as soon as I'm done "dieting". On the other hand, I know myself and once I start going downhill and back to my old habits, I won't be able to get back on. I'm already starting to feel this about going to the gym. Thankfully we bought an excersize DVD that's almost as good as running away 500 calories on the elliptical.

That brings me to my total loss this week of 4.2 lbs!! It's a little more than my aim per week, but if I factor in my 1.2 lb loss from last week, I'm safely in my 2-3 lbs a week goal. This loss brings my total loss to 13.4 lbs. Not too shabby for just over a month of dieting. Though I'm starting to feel like my clothes are getting baggier, I haven't physically seen a big difference. I think that once we get to like 25 lbs (hopefully by the beginning of Feb-ish) we'll start to notice a major difference.

I'm hoping to have another great week so that I can guilt-free enjoy Max Brenner (!!!) in Philly next Thursday night. More to come, especially about my Hannukah traditional fried food fest (mostly just tons of latkes, YUM) on Saturday.

Mmm TJs Tasting

Today was glorious. I've been looking at all of the yummy holiday items for what seemed like years at TJs and wasn't allowed to eat any of them. Finally I made it to the best day of all: the Holiday Flyer tasting. I knew that just one tasting could do horrible things for my diet, so I went into it with a game plan.

Usually, I wouldn't eat anything all day so I could like stuff myself with a million goodies at the tasting. Today, I ate a little bit of oatmeal at lunchtime at school (aka 10:30 AM) so that I wouldn't be ready to eat a small horse once I got to TJs. It was probably around 1-2 points worth. When I got to the tasting, I took a small plate, only tried things that I hadn't ever had before (with the exception of ONE parmesan puff because I've been DYING for them for weeks) and only small pieces at that. I also stopped eating something if I didn't like it (like the ratatouille puffs...they tasted like cardboard). I left feeling full like I had just eaten my regular lunch and definitely not stuffed.

I feel really good about myself...and I got to eat all of the food that I was craving for weeks.

Things I don't have: A best friend anymore.

I suppose that's not really true since I'm actually updating the blog. I have to stop feeling like the blog is my old LiveJournal.

(Also, I just looked at that again, and I accidentally wrote "Thins" not "Things." Freudian slip? A good one.)

So, I never gave my Week 2 update, and here we are at Week 3. Week 2 was good to me, coming in at -5.0; and today was -3.4, bringing me to a grand total of -10.6! I'm really excited about that. I was nervous because of Thanksgiving and all ant not really going to the gym that much, but I guess it turned out okay. The gym is definitely the hardest part for me. I'm really excited for this work out video that Sarah bought today though. I'm gonna do it tomorrow

Sarah's been talking recently about how she's itching for the light bulb to go off that she's losing weight and realizing how much she's changing, which also got me thinking about it. I have a feeling that my light bulb is on a dimmer switch. I'm in the process of uploading pictures on Facebook right now, and I looked at a photo from 2 months ago and I look ridiculous. And that's when I realized that you sort of can tell. Specifically that I don't have a double chin anymore, which I don't know if I knew how bad had gotten.

I don't know if anyone has ever said to me "have you lost weight?" I'm dying for that. Someone I haven't seen in a few months. I'd like to wait to see them maybe until January to really have them say that. But I also realize that I think I'll have to wait longer than I'm hoping because I had gained so much recently that I'll be going back to my "usual weight" by dropping these first pounds.  Not that my usual weight was any good. 

I know it's important to keep lots of short term goals to build to the long term.  I know that I want to lose more than 50 in the end, because that 50 is going to lead me to a less unhealthy life, but still not really where I want to be.  I want to just speed up the next 5 months of my life.  I'm somewhere among anxious, excited, and overwhelmed.

Sarah's goal is a bikini.  My goal is American Eagle jeans.  So random, I recognize.  Not even something that's going to show any of the goods off really. But I think back to a few years ago (when I used to fit in them) and how much I liked them.  And you know how there's always stitching on the pockets?  I always recognize it.  Like, I just want to walk into the store and buy a pair.

In conclusion: Adios, chins; Hola, pants.

Sarah - Week 3

sooo I've lost another 1.2 lbs, bringing my total loss to 9.2

I can't help feeling un-excited in this number, because I've set a goal of 2 lbs per week, but I have to keep reminding myself that most people GAIN unsightly amounts of weight during the holidays and I managed to lose some. I know that next week will be right back in the normal groove of weight loss and exercise and things will be right in the world. I need to still be proud of myself for what I've done.

Speaking of the gym, I've decided to push my days there up to 4 days a week (totally doable) but today just happens to be an off day for the gym AND TJs. This is very very exciting!!! Anyways, off to work!!