Yay!

Down 2.4 pounds at last night's weigh-in!

I am very proud of myself. I wanted to cave and eat a ton of junky comfort food yesterday. I didn't. I still want to run to food for comfort, but I won't. Instead, I will spend time with my mom. Comfort her in anyway I can. Give my dad a break from being her caregiver for a few hours. I will spend time with my sister; who is way too young to be losing her mother! I whine that I'm 31 and too young to be losing her. My sister turns 23 on Thursday. Mom was able to see her baby get married in December. We all wish she could be here to meet her baby's babies. I'm willing to bet my sister will have that granddaughter my mom wanted so badly.

And after I spend time with my favorite women, I will go straight to the gym. Today is a cardio day. I will hop onto that treadmill (or elliptical if none of the treadmills are available) and I will run. I will run until I cannot run anymore. I will run until my thoughts are more straight. I will run for mental comfort. I will run until my legs and feet are too sore for me to run to food for comfort.

Then I will run home to the comfort of Hubby's arms.

I will find comfort in other ways than food. Then maybe next week I will see another 2 pound loss. After all, summer is fast approaching. I would like to fit into my summer clothes from 2 years ago. I didn't wear them last summer since I was 6, 7 and 8 months pregnant then. I'd love to pull out those shorts and have them fit. Or better yet, be too big and have to go shopping!

Stress eating

I won't! I won't! I won't! I will do my best to stay strong.

Everyone has stress in their lives. It's a part of live. We can't avoid it. But we can learn how to deal with it.

I am an emotional eater. Always have been. When I'm happy; I eat. When I'm stressed; I eat. When I'm sad; I eat. When I'm pissed off; I clean. I'm sure my house would like it if I were pissed off more. It's hard to keep a spotless house with the amount of kids I have around here. But that's a different topic. 

Right now, I am stressed out. I am sad. I am so low I wish I could just crawl into a hole and cry; hide away from the world. But I can't. I have responsibilities. Like I said, I have kids. They need me. 

So here I am trying my best not to run out and buy chocolate. I'm trying not to throw my hands up and order pizza for dinner.I'm doing my best to stay motivated to get my wide butt to my meeting tonight. 

It's easy to tell someone who is upset to just stay busy to keep from eating. 

It's not to easy to go so sometimes. 

Why am I stressed out? Why am I upset? Because I'm about to lose one of the most important people in my life. My mother is losing her battle with cancer. We've been helping my mom and watching her fight with this dark disease for four long years. In February we were told there is nothing more the doctors can do. All they could do is to do their best to keep her comfortable. 

How does one keep it together when their father calls to talk about funeral arrangements for a person who isn't dead yet? How does one keep it together when that father spends 5 minutes crying on the other end of the phone because he knows the end is painfully near? How does one not turn to the comforts of comfort food in times like this? 

All I can say is I will try my best to eat good foods to help fuel myself. I think I will be needing a great amount of strength, mentally and physically, over the next days or weeks. Healthy foods will help. Junk food will just weigh me down. 

All I can say is that this sucks.

Very little bit

Down 2.8lbs on the scale last night. I'll admit it...I was thinking "if I didn't eat that chocolate bar I could have been down 3."

(photo source)

Over all, a loss is a loss and I am happy about it. I'll take every 0.1 pound loss that I can. In the long run, those tiny ounces will add up to my ultimate weight loss. They'll help get me to my goal.
Healthy meals planned out for today. Lunch is a yummy salad. Dinner tonight is spaghetti squash with homemade sauce. Strength training tonight at the gym after Monkey #1's soccer practice.
My challenge today will be this afternoon. My van is going in for some repairs. I have all three boys with me today. Monkey #1's school doesn't do full day kindergarten yet. He's on an A day, B day schedule. He doesn't go to school Tuesdays or Thursdays and every other Monday. The repair shouldn't take longer than an hour or two. There's not much around the repair shop. My plan is to take the boys over to McDonald's to get them a smoothie (small smoothies are $1 this week). My plan of attack is to bring my own water with me. And maybe an apple.
If I really want a smoothie, I will tell myself I can make my own at home tonight post workout. Then I know what's going into it. Plus I make mine non dairy. I use coconut cream instead of milk or yogurt. I know what fruit is going into it. And I can use honey or stevia instead of sugars if I want it sweeter.
I'll focus on my goals instead of thinking about what I might be missing. 

Seriously?

Did I just eat a chocolate bar? On weigh-in day?
I'm obviously not feeling right. I can't even get to the gym before my meeting to "burn off" those extra calories.
I am a creature of habit. On weigh-in days I am known to eat nothing but fruit and veggies with the odd deli ham or egg thrown in there. I eat light so I feel light on the scale.
I know it's a little crazy, but it works for me. I also try not to weigh myself here at home on weigh-in day. Home scale and meeting scale can be different. Why torcher myself?
Now I'm panicking! I never indulge on weigh-in days. Never! It's going to play on my mind now. Did I not lose weight this week because of that chocolate bar? Would I have seen a bigger number if I had not eaten that chocolate bar?
I know, logically, it won't make a difference. If I've lost, I'll see the number I should be seeing. If not, then the scale will tell me so.
Still, in my crazy mind, this is going to haunt me today.
I do only have myself to blame. I didn't have to eat it. I've been baking the past two days. Making treats for my parents to hand out to helpful neighbours. I've made beautiful rainbow cupcakes with homemade lemon butter cream frosting. rainbow sprinkles and a cherry on top finishes off each little gem. They're adorable. I also made a small cake for my boys with the leftover cake batter. I topped their cake off with cotton candy (at least that's what I was going for. I don't eat cotton candy so I hope I got it right) frosting and blue star sprinkles.
Once I was done all my baking, I helped myself to a Hershey chocolate bar with almonds. I had it just in case I decided to break it up and use it somewhere in my baking.

It was good. But it was not worth the guilt.

Okay. Lesson learnt. I won't do that again. Moving on.
Tomorrow I make better choices and push myself during strength training.

 

Side note: I scrapped the other day. And it felt so darn good.

 

 Can't believe my Monkey #3 is 5 months old. Almost 6! He'll be 6 months on May 1st. I swear time is flying by even faster than it did with the other monkeys.

Sore and Tired

My head is saying: Go to the gym today!

My body is saying: Go back to bed!

I am sore. To be expected. I worked muscles I've never used in the past. They're going to be sore. I move stiffly with pride today. Knowing it will get easier in the future. And when it does, I'll push myself to be sore again.
I'm also tired today. I'd love to place blame on Monkey #3; but he slept pretty good last night. I was only up with him twice. Once was for an hour. He woke up as soon as I put him back in his bed repeatly. I think he might be teething. He's always been a mommy suck; his suckiness ( <-- is that a word? It is now) has been in overdrive over the past week. He clings to me like there's no tomorrow. Thank goodness for infant carriers! I just strap him in and wear him to get things done.
My tiredness does not seam from the baby. I couldn't sleep last night. My mind was racing with my growing to-do list. It's huge right now. I could use help, but there's no one to turn to right now. Hubby is working tons of overtime right now. He has this huge job at work. He leaves for work early and comes home late. He's even earlier or later when he adds CrossFit into his long days in the city. He's on weekend two of working both Saturday and Sunday. He's expecting to work every weekend for the next four to five weeks.
Normally when Hubby is working so much, I turn to my parents. I've always been able to count on them to help me out somehow. Watching the boys, helping run an errand. They've always been there for me. Unfortunately, my mother is slowly losing her battle with cancer. It's been a 4 year fight. I'm so proud of how far she has come. She was told she would not survive her treatments 4 years ago. My mother, the fighter, shocked her team of doctors.
Her body is now giving up. She's had radiation, chemo, surgeries, gamma knife treatments and some experimental drugs. The tumour in her brain is growing at an alarming rate. There isn't anymore the doctors can do for her but try to keep her comfortable.
My dad can't leave her side. She can't do anything for herself anymore. If he's not with her, homecare is. If homecare is not scheduled to be there and dad has to leave, I go over. We've had four scares over the last three months. Each one landing her in the hospital for 3-7 days.
So I can't fall back on my usual backups.
Now to sit back, look at my long list and allow myself to say "if it doesn't get done, that's okay." Because it is! The baking I promised my mom doesn't get done today? That's okay. I'll do it tomorrow. The laundry doesn't get folded and put away? That's okay. The kids don't get fed? Just kidding. That's not on the list, and it will get done. I love my little monkeys too much.
Maybe I'll even push the list aside for today to sneak in a nap during naptime. Then I'll have no excuse about being too tired to hit the gym this evening.

Personal Training Session

Today I had my first personal training session.
Um...

Ouch! 

 

(photo source)

 

 

PT (personal trainer) is a retired hockey player. He was on a farm team down in Texas when he had too many head injuries. So now he trains. He's a great guy; very motivating.

We went through all the machines in the gym first. Just to make sure I know how to use them right. Then we built a program for me to follow. Something to get me started on my journey.

I used muscles today that I haven't used in a long, long time. I'm a little sore right now. I'm going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow. But it's a good pain.

I say that now.

We'll see how much of that pain is "good" when I'm running up and down stairs during potty training tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I don't get another session with PT until next month. He's there if I have any questions, so that's good. I'm looking forward to pushing myself for the next few weeks so that when I do get to train with PT again, I can show him what I'm made of. Of course, he's just going to push me even harder then.

Bring it on!

One week in on my gym membership. Four days burning calories. Planning on going again tomorrow...

Am I turning into a gym junkie?

Or am I just off to a over zealous start?

Time will tell.

 

 





Accountability

I'm not really a blogger. I just don't take the time.
I'm a mom of three young boys.
I'm busy.
I'm a scrapbooker. Did you know that? And I love it.
But I don't get to scrap as often as I'd like.
I'm busy.

And so are many, many other people who are busy too. I can be busy and blog; even though I'm sure no one is reading my rambles. And that's okay. It's about accountability.

I started my weight loss journey after I had my Monkey #2. He was born in 2010. For the next year and a half, roughly, I struggled to lose weight. I did it by changing my diet. It took me a long time to lose weight because I still had too many "cheat days." And I didn't exercise much. Old me would argue and say I did exercise. I moved. I did walk. And I did have work out DVDs. I would only allow myself to sweat 1-2 days a week.

We all know that's not enough.

Fast forward to November 2012. I had my third little Monkey. January 2013, I rejoined Weight Watchers. Accountability.

Only I struggled still.
I wanted to eat like I did while pregnant. A little chocolate everyday. Toast every morning. No measuring. I made some healthy choices; just not enough. Since January I have been yo-yoing with the same 2-4 pounds. And I'm tired of it.

A light bulb finally went off in my head. Exercise. I need to move. A lot. I need to sweat. A lot. I need to give up my daily chocolate and have just weekly chocolate. Because I'm not willing to give up my favourite treat for good. Nor should I have to. I need to re-teach myself that treats are called treats for a reason. You don't have treats every day. They are no longer special if you do.

So what's a fat girl with a mission to do?
I joined a gym.
My first day was just this past Tuesday. I nervously went in; swearing up and down that everyone was staring at me. They weren't. But it felt that way. I got on the big machines and prayed I wouldn't fall off and cause a scene.
And what happened?
I ran.
This was huge for me! I'm not a runner. As you may have guessed from my hate to sweat statement above, I am a sit-on-my-butt-er.
I ran 3.2 miles (5km). It was not easy. There were brisk walk breaks. But I ran more than I walked.
And I am/was so proud of myself.
I went back the next day.
I ran 3.6 miles in 35 minutes.
No idea if that's good or not, but it's my start.

Hubby, who is big time into CrossFit and has lost 65lbs, is my biggest supporter. I'm very lucky to have him. I told him my newest goal. To run the Disney Princess Half Marathon.

(photo source)

 I would love to be able to run 2014's race. But financially we can't do it. Maybe 2015. And since that's so far away, I'm sure I'll find races closer to home to "practice" for Disney.
Maybe goal is the wrong word since I know it's so far in the future. Dream? Wish?

So the moral of my ramblings today is: no matter how "busy" I say I am, I will take the time to go to the gym. I will take the time to plan and track my food. I will take the time to blog to be accountable for my actions.
And hopefully my blog posts will in better form in the future.