March Update

It's that time again!  March has not been nearly as exciting in the weight loss department as January and February were.  There are a bunch of factors contributing to this:
- I haven't been as diligent at counting my calories;
- I've had some "binge" days;
- It was my birthday at the end of February and then it was time to celebrate the end of our busy season, and then there were people up from the States to visit for work and we had to go out;
- I've hit a plateau after losing so much weight in 2 months;
- blah, blah, blah.

Either way, I am down 34 lbs since starting my weight loss journey in January.  I think that's pretty awesome!  I've been feeling not so awesome lately though since I've been gaining and losing the same pound for the last week or so.  I've also hit a slightly awkward phase with my wardrobe where some of the clothes that I thought were really cute and I looked good on me a month ago now don't fit me the same way.  This is excellent, don't get me wrong I'm totally stoked that my clothes are getting too big, but it took me 15 minutes and about 10 outfit changes to decide what to wear to work this morning!  That's a little ridiculous for me :)  I know, boo-hoo for me.

So what happened to me after work today made me feel pretty great and was just what I needed.  I was walking up to Wal-Mart to pick up some gauze for Jay's thumb and some milk and was totally in my grocery shopping mode (sort of like "in the zone" and super focused on the task at hand).  After crossing in front of an SUV to reach the storefront I heard a "woo woo" whistle behind me.  I glanced back and the driver had the window rolled down and was looking at me (he was about my age and not terribly hard on the eyes).  I was shocked and glanced around, but there was no one else there, so I can only assume that the whistle was directed at me.  WHAT?!?!?!?!?  No one has ever whistled like that at me.  Granted, I did have a pair of my Yummy Mummy heels on, and I have my new haircut, and I had my sunglasses on, and I was wearing work clothes instead of yoga pants and flip flops ... but I'm still shocked.  So I smiled, continued walking into the store, commenced to giggling like a little school girl and did the only sensible thing ... I called Kelly and told her that I didn't know what to do with myself!

So the moral of my day is that although I'm not feeling like my hard work is paying off what matters most is how you I see myself (even if I do need to look through someone else's eyes every so often).

And here are the new pics from today.  I apologize that I'm not looking very modelesque.  Paxton wanted to stand right in front of me in all of them so I kept moving him and Jay kept taking the pictures before I was posed again.  My hair is also messed up because I'd gone for a massage prior to my trip to Wal-Mart.  Gah!

Me in my heels! 

Without the jacket 

And for comparison:

January 2011 

January 2012 

February 2012

So I decided ...

... that since my body is looking different that I needed to do something with my hair.  And today was the day.  I went and got it hi-lited and a bunch cut off.  It's probably going to take a few days to get used to it, but so far everyone seems to like it.  What do you think?

And on a side note, apparently I am some sort of an albino.  When I got my hair done today, the stylist said, "I really like the blonde on you.  It adds some color to your face."  That's the same thing the stylist said when I went brown last year. 

So the only conclusion I can come to is that my natural hair color drains all color from my face therefore making me an albino :)

You think so, eh?

Jay's got a pretty decent head cold today so he's not feeling too awesome.  While we were attempting to watch a movie (as much as you can with a 2 year old flitting and stomping and careening around the house) my Mom called.  At the exact same moment Paxton started crying up in his room so I headed up to see what was going on.  Apparently it was nothing major because he stopped crying as soon as I asked him if he wanted to talk to Grammy.

Anyway, while I was on the phone Jay relocated to our bedroom to wait until I was done and Paxton had found him there.  I went in to lay on the bed with them, and that's when the comedian arrived.  Paxton informed me that he wanted to "sleep in the big bed with Daddy."  So I asked him, "where is Mommy going to sleep if your're in the big bed?"  "You go sleep in my bed." he informed me with his most serious tone.  Jay and I looked at each other and started laughing.  In the meantime, Paxton cuddled down under the blankets and when he saw I hadn't immediately gone to his bed he repeated, "Mommy.  Go sleep in my bed!"

Well, alrighty then.  I'm guessing it's not going to be too comfy since Paxton's still in his crib!  What a goofy boy I have!

Weight Loss Update

It's been about a month since my post about being back on the wagon with the whole weight loss thing so I figured it was about time for an update and some new pictures.  For those of you on Facebook, you probably saw that I'm down 25 pounds since starting January 7th.  Well, I was down 25 pounds.  I did gain back about 2 pounds over the weeked from all of my birthday celebrating, but I've lost 1 of those pounds again ... so let's just stick with 25 pounds for now, ok? :)

So, I'm pretty excited about being 25 pounds lighter than I was 2 months ago.  It's feelin' pretty good.  I will admit, I don't really feel more energized or anything like that, but I attribute that mostly to having to get up at 5 am to exercise and also to all the OT I've been putting in at work lately.  Hopefully starting next week I will find some energy since our work rush will be over (for me anyway).

Some of you have not seen me or pictures of me since my last post, and I'm sure you're dying to see this new me.  So, without further ado, here's what I look like lately:

Not the most flattering picture, I know.  However, apparently that is what I look like.  "Why do I think I look like this?" you might ask yourself.  Well, let me explain.  Apparently all 25 pounds that I have lost have been in my face.  That's right.  IN MY FACE.  All of it!  I know that when you first start to lose weight, seeing a change in your face is normal.  However.  As mentioned above, I haven't just lost a few pounds, we're getting into significant weight loss at this point.  So last night, Jay and I went out for dinner for my birthday with my parents and Kinsey.  We left Paxton with Jay's Dad and step-Mom since we were going to Coco Pazzo and didn't think Paxton would want to sit still and eat with us ('cuz that's how he rolls).  After dinner we went to pick up the Monkey so that we could meet back up with my family for ice cream so they could see him for a bit.  While we were there, Roseanne commented something to the effect of, "You've lost more weight."  To which I replied, "Yes.  I've lost 25 pounds now."  And her response ... "I can really see it in your face."  Yup.  So apparently since the human head weighs 10 pounds (which we learned from the little boy in Jerry McGuire), at the beginning of January my head weighed somewhere around 35 pounds.  I can only conclude therefore that I now look like the guy above.  Geesh.

But in all seriousness, here are some real pictures of me from Sunday:

Not sure why I have crazy eyes here.  Maybe it's just my shrunken head. 

And for comparison:

Good times :)

I mean this in the nicest possible way

Dear Paxton,

Thank you so much for helping me create such a fantastic memory this morning.  I'm sure I will treasure the mere thought of this day for years to come.  It really was a truly fabulous way for me to start off my day.

I will admit that hearing you stir at 5:40 this morning as I was getting on my elliptical was a little disconcerting.  Having you resist any and all attempts from me to explain that it wasn't time for you to be up for the day yet and to soothe you back to sleep for the 20 minutes after that just added to the magic of the experience.  But the icing on the cake has got to be when I left you in your crib so that I could go exercise and you proceeded to cry and scream "Mommy!" for 35 minutes straight.

I appreciate that you love me and want to spend time with me.  It warms my heart and makes me smile just thinking about it.  However, you and I both know that the spare room downstairs is not child friendly and that if I'd taken you with me, you would have spent the entire time putting handfuls of dog food into the water dish so that you could watch them "grow."  Hopefully you found some value in this experience as well and the next time you want to be up before the sun has even thought about showing its face you will reflect on this precious memory and let it soothe you back to sleep.

All my love,

Mommy

P.S.  I already get up at 5 am so that I can exercise and shower before you wake up.  I will not be getting up any earlier than that.

On the Wagon ... Again

No, this is not the Christmas blog I promised (it will come ... I promise).  This is about my New Year's resolution.  I, like so many other people, have resolved to lose weight this year.  This is something that is near and dear to my heart (among other parts of my body) and something that I've struggled with for most of my life.  I've discovered what the problem is ... everything that is delicious is packed full of calories because that's where the flavour is hidden! : )  That's not the only problem (sorry if I'm repeating myself from my post about this last year when I decided to work on a new me).  I also have a metabolism that's slow like molasses in January, I really don't have a lot of hobbies that involve physical activity, I have a husband that can just think about it and lose 5 lbs so he doesn't care what he eats, I have a job where I sit at a desk for 8 hours every day ... as you can see there are a lot of reasons.

So what makes me think I can succeed this time?  Well, I believe I've found something that works for ME.  I've tried different things in the past to lose weight that have worked for other people I know, but none of them have worked for me.  So, at the beginning of the year I was talking with some girls from work about losing weight since it's a goal/resolution we all have for this year.  One of the girls told me that she'd downloaded an App for her phone that counted calories for you.  At first, I was like, "Well that just sounds like waaaaaaaay too much trouble."  But my friend explained that this App has a HUGE invntory of nutritional information for food and even has a scanner feature that lets you scan the barcode on your food and then it will find that information for you itself.  Well, that was pretty impressive for me.  So I thought, "Well, it's free so really what does it hurt to try it out."

So on January 7th I started using "myfitnesspal."  If you're interested in checking it out but don't have a smartphone, you can can also use it online at myfitnespal.com.  After inputting my personal info, the app calculated how many calories I'm "allowed" in a day and I was off.  Now, here's why I think this particular "program" is working for me.  I worked OT on the 7th and a few of the girls wanted to get A&W for lunch.  I love me a Teen burger and onion rings so I tagged along for the ride.  Well, wouldn't you know that my new "pal"contained nutritional information for A&W?  Here's what I learned: a Teen Burger and a small fries (I decided to go for fries instead thinking they'd be less calories) contains 760 calories.  Yes, you read that correctly.  That is just for the burger and a SMALL fries.  That does not include a beverage. 

Entering that into my "diary" was my "aha" moment.  I thought to myself, "Well no wonder none of my dieting has ever worked."  You see, as I've said before when discussing losing weight, I am VERY good at rationalizing why I should eat something, especially when it falls into the delicious category as described above.  You know, loaded with calories.  One of the main ways I rationalize is when I have exercised.  I figure that since I burned x amount of calories on my eliptical in the morning I can eat that burger, or chips, or whatever and it won't matter because they'll balance each other out.  Right?  WRONGO!!!  So when I "elipticize" in the morning, I have my eliptical set at resistance level 15 (and it goes up to level 16).  I run for 33 minutes which allows me a bit of a warm up and cool down at the end and I usually burn around 600 calories doing so.  So in this example, the Teen burger and small fries contained more calories than what I'd burned off, and that was only 1 meal!  So that's not including what I'd eaten for breakfast, what I'd eat for dinner or for snacks.

Anyways.  I've stuck with this calorie counting regime for 3 weeks now and I've lost 13 pounds!  That's pretty exciting for me!  Another reason why weight loss hasn't worked for me in the past is that I get frustrated when I don't see results.  It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself, "You didn't put it on in a day/month so it's not going to come off in a day/month."  (And I will once again say that putting it on is so much easier and fun than trying to take it off!)  I need to see some sort of result that my hard work is paying off.  And this time I am seeing it!  I have become slightly obsessed (I have some OCD with inputting things into my phone) with what I eat and measuring things out, but it's working.  Eventually I think I won't need to be quite so meticulous with my measuring as I get more used to what "1 cup' or '1 tbsp' looks like.  But in the mean time I am driving my husband (and I'm sure my friends) a little crazy.

I also really like that I can eat whatever I want with this system.  Now that doesn't mean that I should eat whatever I want.  I got all cliche on Jay when I was explaining it and did use "It's a lifestyle/mindset change."  It's not about denying myself (which really hasn't worked for me in the past).  It's about making different decisions.  So, if I want to have some chips, I can have them.  But instead of eating the whole bag, I only eat the 16 chips or whatever is in a serving.  Or I can opt for baked chips which have fewer calories.  Or, if I know that I'm going to eat out for dinner (like last night when we went to Cheesecake Cafe) perhaps I have something that's lower in calories for lunch like a salad.  Or, rather than ordering a burger and fries from Original Joe's (which has their nutritional info online) I ordered a chicken quesadilla and spring mix salad.  I also really like that you can add recipes into the app (or online) and it will figure out how many calories are in a serving.  This is really great for me since we do most of our eating at home and from scratch.

Anyway, that's my pep talk for the day.  It's working for me, but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone.  If you want to try it out, good for you.  If you don't, that's fine too.  It hasn't been all sunshine and lollipops and I have gained back 2 pounds that I'd previously lost during this 3 week stretch.  The important thing to me is that I didn't let that stop me.  I kept on keeping on and lost those 2 pounds again as well as 2 additional ones!  I know that there will be fluctuations and plateaus in my weight loss future, but I'm feeling good about the success I've had so far and looking forward to the day when I can say that I've achieved my goal.  Look at me being all "glass half full."  I've added a tracker to my sidebar that'll keep track of my progress, so feel free to check in on me from time to time.  And I'm feeling brave, so here are some pictures:

This is me on January 28, 2011

This is me last Saturday, January 21, 2012.

Oddly enough I was wearing the same shirt (not on purpose) 

Side view (there is sucking in involved.  I'm not that brave!) 

Me in a jean jacket that Kelly gave me over a year ago.

I can finally do all of the buttons up!

And here's my new motto (which you might have seen on Facebook last week):

Suck it up today, and one day you won't have to suck it in!

Thirsty Bears

I know I haven't blogged in forever ... again.  I've been super ridiculously busy with work this month and will likely continue to be super ridiculously busy with work until the end of February.  I will endeavor to get some pictures and posts up, but in the mean time here's a video of Paxton being cute today.

Apparently his teddy bears and ALL of the pieces from his safari puzzle were very thirsty : )