The Ramblings of a Wannabe Healthy Girl

Hey all!!! First I want to thank everyone who commented and told me not to beat myself up over one bad day, the sentiment was much appreciated and helped me realize that one bad day does not have to spoil a whole week. In fact I think it's made me make an extra effort to do even better this week both with eating and working out. Thanks also to Karen @ muffin fixation for pimping me out and attempting to get me some more followers. I'm slowly working my way up and am anxious to do a giveaway.
I've been able to get in some great long walks with my son this week. My daughter started day camp and since my son is still in a stroller we can walk much further and faster without her than with her. I believe that at this point we've already clocked 16 milestotal for MTW. Tomorrow will possibly be a day off from working out as I'm headed to the beach with Theresa from Always a Bridesmaid since my son will be spending the day with my mother in law. I'll try to get a walk in tomorrow night with the kids but it most likely will be a short one. I think at this point my legs will be thanking me for a night off.
The scale has been working its way back down to the area of my last weigh in and I'm hoping that I can still pull off some kind of loss on Sunday for my weekly weigh in. I'm still aiming for 174 by July 16th and that will be tougher to do with no loss this week.

Last but not least I'm joining in on the Fat to Fit Blog Hop this week. Come on and join the party :)

Yesterday I had a good weigh-in in the morning as I mentioned in my previous post but I'm pretty sure I completely and totally already ruined any chance of this Sunday's weigh in being a good one by my actions yesterday.

I went to a bridal shower where I started by taking one glass and then a second of champagne punch(mistake #1), there were better options ie. bottled water, coffee etc. but I chose what was probably the worst option there. I then waited a bit and sauntered over to the appetizers choosing one coconut shrimp, a tomato/mozzerella slice and a antipasto skewer (mistake # 2), I hadn't even been hungry and certainly could have skipped one or all of these items. Shortly after the "real food" came out. Salad with lite balsamic dressing (my one good choice) chicken marsala (booooo), lasagna (double boooooo), mixed veggies dripping in butter and roasted potatoes (again boo)(mistakes 3,4,5 and 6). I also had a slice of cake. Maybe I should be proud of myself for skipping the eclairs but I'm not.
So all those mistakes I probably could have handled and moved past but folks I had yet another event planned in the evening.

Today's hubby's 33rd bday so last night we went to my parents house for a family cook out to celebrate. I made a carrot cake (hubs fave) and the menu was cheeseburgers (I had 1), hot dogs (again I had 1), cheese tortellini (I had a small scoop), macaroni salad(I had a small scoop), salad (I had a large scoop) are you noticing a trend? I ate some of everything there including a few chips and dip, cake and ice cream and who know's there's probably something else I'm forgetting......all this equals a complete and total FAIL ----- of epic proportions. I honestly didn't even finish tracking my food yesterday because I got to 2500 calories and quit. I didn't even want to think how high the number really must be.

I'm trying to not let it get to me and have went back to positive habits today, eating within my calories and taking my son for a combined 95 minutes worth of walks today, but the scale doesn't look pretty and I'm pretty sure there won't be any kind of loss this week. Honestly at this point the scales showing back around 181.5 and I'll be absolutely thrilled if I can get it back down to the 170's by Sunday.

Soooooo the plan is waterwaterwater, as musch exercise as I can get in and healthy calorie intake for the rest of the week.

Wish me luck......

P.S. I'm hoping to get my followers up because I've got a few things I'd like to do a giveaway when I reach 25 so if anyone has suggestions on how to gain some new followers please let me know :)
Thanks!

Thats a 2.4 loss from last week and I got to says goooooood bye to the 180's. I'm looking forward to hopefully welcoming the 160's hopefully before the end of this challenge
Exercise - I ended up with 255 minutes of activity. I know I could have upped that a bit more but just wasn't feeling into it this week.

Looking ahead, my daughter starts day camp this week, which leaves me and my little guy home together all day and ensures we can get in some nice long walks this week. I think we'll probably log a solid hour a day at least and I have at least two gym trips planned this week so hopefully I'll see a solid loss next week even though TOM is on its way. I have a mini goal in my mind of 174 by July 16th and I still think thats entirely possible. And of course my goal for this challenge was 19 lbs to be down to 163 which is probably stretching it a bit but thats why it's a challenge right?

Miss E at This Time... tagged me in the Funky 5 Meme and I've been so busy I didn't notice till just now. Here goes..................

My Funky 5

Where were you five years ago?

Five years ago I was pregnant with my first child and had just found out days before that she was a little girl.

Where would you like to be five years from now?

I hope to have finished my degree and be working doing something I enjoy as opposed to be in a job just to make ends meet. I also hope to be at goal weight so that I can enjoy doing things with my family.

5 Things on My To-Do List Today
Write my paper for class tonight
Figure out what to make for dinner
Go to Walmart
Pick up Ariana from daycare
Go to the gym after class

5 Snacks I Enjoy
Peanut butter and bananas on an english muffin
Quaker Creme Brulee Quakes
Grande Non Fat Mocha - Starbucks - I know technically a drink but with the calories I consider it a snack
Cucumbers with Italian Dressing
Apple Slices with Cinnamon and Peanut Butter

5 things you would do if you were a billionaire?

Renovate my house to add a bathroom and make it so the kids had their own rooms as well as creating a mancave for the hubby.
Pay off all my family and friends mortgages.
Travel the world.
Pay for my children to attend better schools.
Create more help for the people that need it in this country as opposed to taking care of all the rest of the world.

And the 5 I'm Tagging

Theresa at Always a Bridesmaid
The Road to 28 -----who has incidentally just hit her goal weight !!!!!
Jen at 40 Weeks/280 Days to a Healthier Me
Simone at In[Fat]uation
Lindsay at PriorFatGirl-Lindsay

The past couple days have been a bit trying. I've been hungry alot more than I had been over the past few weeks and I'm trying my best not to do any munching but I haven't been completely successful, although I have stayed within my calorie guidelines for the day.

Yesterday I had planned on stopping by my inlaws with the kids to bring over my father in laws birthday cards and let the kids wish their pepe a happy birthday and then be home for lunch. Before we headed over my mil called and asked if we'd like to join them for lunch , so we did. My inlaws are both thin but they don't really eat the healthiest meals. For instance lunch yesterday was hot dogs, kraft macaroni and cheese and garlic and olive oil pasta roni. I had a hot dog, a smaaaaaalll scoop of the mac and cheese and a smaaaalller scoop of the pasta roni. When I got home to enter my food, I was in shock. I can't believe that there's seriously almost 300 calories in a 1/4 cup of macaroni and cheese. After entering my 600 calorie lunch, I was glad I had skipped breakfast.

A couple hours after my unhealthy lunch while I was writing my paper, I got that munchie feeling and instead of grabbing an apple I decided to grab a slice of the srawberry bread I had made a couple days previous and had resisted up till then. Oh yeah and of course I wanted a little butter on it....so on top of my ridiculous lunch, I chose a 300 calorie snack.
Dinner was better, salad, potatoes and pork tenderloin.

And I did go to the gym last night after class and do 45 minutes on the treadmill at 3mph with a 5% incline for a burn of 328 calories, which at least covered my afternoon snack.

Ok, enough moaning about my crappy food choices, I'm doing better today and am hoping to walk with the kids this evening and possibly head to the gym after the hubby gets home at 9.
So onto the NSV - Last night I got an email from Old Navy with a 20% off code good yesterday only, so I went to their website and ended up ordering a few smaller shirts and a couple pair of size 14 shorts, not knoing if they were going to fit me, though I know that the size 16's I bought in April for my Florida trip are getting a bit baggy. After dropping my daughter off at daycare I headed for Old Navy to try them on and they do indeed fit which is fabulous and now I know I'll have some new shorts that actually look good on for my trip next month. Very excited about this!!!

Yesterday went by in a blur, between working around the house, spending time with the kids, grocery shopping, school and going to the gym, there wasn't a whole lot of breathing room for me. I'm very proud of myself for going to the gym last night after class ended at 9:30 for two reasons. The first is that I was exhausted and in the past would have used that as an excuse and the second that I forgot my lock and also in the past would have used that for an excuse to hightail it back home to the comfort of the couch, but thats not my new style, lol. I headed to the gym, changed and stashed my bag in a locker figuring if someone wanted to steal my clothes, then they could have them since everything valuable was on me.
As I was leaving the locker room I stopped to wash my hands and the girl standing next to me happened to be a classmate from the class I just left. The background on the class is that it's an English class at the local CC and becuase it's summer session a good portion of my classmates are college kids either making up credits they failed this year or trying to ramp up for next year, which also means that the majority of them are at least 10 years younger than me. So this girl says hi to me and then proceeds to say,"I'm so exhausted, I'm just going to do a weak workout tonight", I smile and nod and we both leave the locker room. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "hmm sure weak workout, she'll probably be here working out alot harder than me for a lot longer" Well she did the treadmill for maybe 30 minutes and left. I did 15 minutes on the elliptical and another 40 on the treadmill. When I got on the treadmill all I was thinking was how bad I didn't want to be at the gym, but I wasn't going to let her workout longer than me. In my mind me and the skinny little college girl were in competition, and there was no way I was going to let her "win". I figure anything that drives me to workout is good even if it's slightly insane imaginary competitions in my head, right?

I'm not sure what exercise will be today. Probably a walk with my kids, perhaps so they can get an ice cream cone and some "Just Dance" on the Wii after they go to bed. I swear I love this game, it's so much fun you don't even feel like you're working out, but the sweat I work up is a pretty good indicator just how hard I am actually working out.

I'm really tired but want to make sure I get some kind of activity in. I know it's going to be a late night, the hubby's going fishing and I have 2 -2 page papers to write that are due for tomorrow night. So tomorrow is guaranteed to be a tired day too. I was hoping the exercise would help with my energy level but so far it hasn't helped at all. Any suggestions for an energy boost?

So week one of the Summer Slimmin Challenge has come to a close and I have to say I did quite well on my goals.

In the last week I've logged 355 minutes of exercise. I was aiming for 45 minutes a day six days a week which would have been a total of 270 so I actually exceeded my goal, yay me!! Considering 3 weeks ago, I may have been getting 60 minutes a week I consider this a huuuuugggge accomplishment.

Goal # 2 was to track my food daily - accomplished this one too, I tracked everything and stayed on target all week. I even tracked the whopper junior and onion rings I ate before class the other night, even though I didn't really want to admit to it.

I decided to move my weekly weigh-in's to Sundays so it would coincide with the challenge and while I did lose, so I am working toward my goal for the challenge, I didn't lose nearly as much as I had hoped. But a loss is a loss right?



I've decided to add one more goal onto this challenge for my self and thats to drink more water.

It seems that every blog I read where the blogger is successfully losing, they are drinking there water everyday. So I'm adding in the drinking water goal. My goal is to drink 100 oz of water a day. I starting workin it yesterday and let me tell you, I haven't peed this often since I was pregnant, but I'm pretty sure after a few days that will regulate itself, or at least I hope it does.

After already taking a walk with the kids this morning, I headed to the gym for a little cardio. After my workout I decided to check my weight on the scale in the locker room assuming since it's like a doctors scale it had to be more accurate than my 17.99 home scale. So I hop on, adjust the weight thingies and lo and behold it weighs me in at 174. Ok so thats 8lbs less than my home scale. I had a good workout but it certainly wasn't that good. Now I confused as to what I actually weigh. I think I'm going to keep tracking on my home scale, just for the ease of it but in the back of my mind for vanity, I think I'll call myself the real number. Kind of like the weight you put on your drivers license vs. your real weight.
In other news I've decided to change my weigh in day to Sunday in order to coincide with the check in day for the Summer Slimmin challenge I'm doing. Hopefully I'll see some good progress in the scale.
It's a nice day here, I think I may take the kids for a walk to get ice cream later, for them, not me. It will be a good excuse to add some more exercise into my day as roundtrip it's just under two miles, and they're certainly not going to complain about ice cream.
I feel like I'm finally getting used to this exercise/activity thing. I'm actually starting to look for reasons to go walk places and be more active. It honestly feels really good.
Between the exercise and the food tracking, I feel like I've finally figured out the tools I need to stop being the fat mom and become milf material.

I decided to join in on Diminishing Lucy's Fat to Fit Blog Hop once again, since I found so many new blogs to gain inspiration from last week. Come and join me!!

I decided to jump onto the Summer Slimmin Challenge, a little late but better late than never. The rules and info for the challenge is posted here. It runs from June 6 - August 6, plenty of time to make some real progress in our goals and there's several options to choose from.


My goals for this challenge are to lose 19 lbs. While that may seem like a very random number, losing 19 lbs would get me to the point where my bmi is just "overweight" as opposed to "obese". That would be huge for me, or as the case may be I would not be so huge for it :)





My next goal is getting some form of exercise for at least 45 minutes a day 6 days a week. This is a big one too, I need to get a routine going and I've read it takes 6 weeks to make something a habit so these 8 weeks should be great for making exercise a new healthy habit.



My final goal is to track every bite of food that goes in my mouth. I've learned from experience that I need to do this because I need to keep myself accountable. It's the only way I'm going to lose weight, I know that about myself.

I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone does on their chosen challenges this summer, looking forward to seeing lots of success stories and of course smiling photos!!

As I mentioned before I started my first college course in over 10 years on Monday night. I'm taking an Eng. Lit course and because the semester is condensed into 8 weeks instead of 16 I had a 2 page paper due tonight. To most people 2 pages doesn't sound like alot, but when you haven't written a paper in 10 years, it's not as easy as it sounds. Luckily I have a good friend that teaches both high school and college level courses that was willing to proof my paper before I handed it in tonight. She's awesome. She gave me a lot of help with my punctuation and sentence structure and I'm hoping that as a result I do well on it.
I've been on target the last two days with both eating and activity although I did have a whopper jr from bk tonight for dinner since I was in a rush before class. Even with that I managed to have a 100 calorie deficit for the day. Yay me!! I took a long walk with the kids and my mom yesterday, plus a short walk earlier in the day with just my son and today as the sky was threatening rain, I headed to the gym and did 45 minutes on the treadmill at 3.5mph.
The scales looking good, not that I'm peeking or anything ;)

Tonight I'm blogging while watching what is usually one of my favorite shows "The Next Food Network Star" and so far I'm pretty bored. Usually I pick one of the contestants by the end of episode one but no one's really jumping out at me. I'm a little disapointed but not going to let it spoil my night.
My success today is coming in 110 calories under my goal for the day. I don't know how the calculations are done, but livestrong.com gives me 1708 calories a day for my activity level in order to lose 2 lbs a week. It sounded high to me at first but based on what the scale tells me it seems to be pretty realistic.
I wasn't hungry at all today which is always a good thing. I would have liked to get more fruits/veggies in my meals for the day but what's done is done now, so I'll make that a goal for another day.
Breakfast:
1 Thomas English Muffin
1 tbsp skippy reduced fat peanut butter
1/2 med. banana
8 oz. 1% milk
372 calories

Morning Snack:
Medium Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee
1 tbsp cream ------ I usually get skim milk but they made it the wrong way :(
2 splendas
119 calories

Lunch:
Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli
280 calories

Afternoon snack:
Ritz Crackerful
130 calories

Dinner
1 Perdue Perfect Portions Italian Seasoned Chicken Breast sauteed in 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp butter with half a chopped tomato and 1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese over 2oz. Ronzoni Smart Taste Penne
434 Calories

Evening Snack
1 Thomas English Muffin
1 tbsp Skippy Reduced Fat Peanut Butter
1/2 Medium Banana
262 calories

Grand Total 1597

I'm glad the eating went well since the exercise did not. I didn't actually do anything today. The last two days have been so gray and there was never a time that I could look outside and think I'd be able to take the kids for a walk without the chance of getting drenched. But tomorrow I plan to do much better on the exercise front. It looks like tomorrow morning will be clear and low 70's so I'm going to get out there in the morning and take a hour walk with the kids. I'm also possibly going to go to the gym when my class gets out tomorrow night at 9:30, but thats going to depend on how much work I need to get done by the next class on Wednesday night.

Tomorrow is my actual weigh in day. I've been cheating and looking just about every day. I know some people say not to do that but it works for me, though the only one I really count is the Monday one.

Until tomorrow, sweet dreams.

Headed out of the house today for a hair appointment and birthday lunch with mom, her's not mine. It was nice to get out of the house and leave the kids with the hubby for a few hours. So after hitting the salon to get sufficiently blonded for summer my mom and I headed over to try the new Longhorn Steakhouse for lunch. I've never been there but was pretty happy that after checking my livestrong app, they had quite a bit of the menu choices already loaded in there. I ordered a side salad with fat free ranch and the Sierra Chicken as my entree. The chicken was really yummy, nice and moist and the tomato basil "salsa" reminded me alot of a bruschetta type topping. I did have one slice of the bread that they bring you, and actually just realized now that I forgot to track it :(
After lunch we headed to Macy's to look for dresses for 2 weddings that we have coming up this summer. I had already bought a pair of shoes at TJ Maxx a few weeks ago after being spurred on by the ones I saw in Keelies post
a few weeks ago. Mine are very similar to this but without the bow. Some seriously hot shoes, I know :) But buying a dress to go with a certain pair of shoes tends to narrow the choices down. I knew I was looking for something black, and kind of slinky...or at least as slinky as you can get in a size 16. You can see the dress I ended up with here. Looks really good with my zebra slingbacks and makes me feel pretty cute amnd as an added bonus with coupons it came to less than $50. Not too shabby

So while I had a pretty good day I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get any exercise in. I had planned to take the kids for a long walk but got home later than planned and the sky was pretty grey and with the tornado warnings in place figured we'd sit today out, so my goal for tomorrow is to get some exercise in. As of right now with the forecast for tomorrow it's looking like I may have to do some dancing on the wii. I absolutly love Just Dance for the Wii. I don't think I've ever had that much fun exercising before and with the sweat I work up playing I know I'm getting a decent workout. Anyhow it's getting late and as I've mentioned before my monkeys wake up pretty earlier so until tomorrow....remember every day is a chance to make a positive change.

I decided to join in on this blog hop, I'm always looking for new blogs to follow for inspiration and maybe you are too.

So tonight didn't go quite the way I had planned. I had logged my food based on what I had planned to make for my dinner tonight and it was looking veeeeerrry good for today, until I spoke with my friend who decided she needed some cheering up and wanted to come over.
We decided to take the kids out to dinner to a local chain restaurant and I needed to find something on the menu that would be suitable for both me and the little guy. I ended up ordering chicken parm. I know not exactly the healthiest choice, but it was something he'd be sure to eat and that I would eat too. Of course I also ordered a martini with dinner since I don't get to have them very often. Total for the day shouldn't be too too bad. We'll see what the scale says in the morning.

Ok so it's been way too long since I've written anything here, but I have been keeping up with other peoples blog and I have to say there's some very inspirational things going on out in the blogosphere. We got back from a trip to Disneyworld, where I didn't pay any attention to dieting, but did some heavy walking everyday about 3 weeks ago. We all had a great time, but upon coming back I wasn't really in diet mode and it actually took me till Tuesday of this week to get back on the wagon.

I'm tracking food everyday on my livestrong app for my blackberry and that seems to be working so far. I've also been tacking a 1 hour walk with the kids each morning and upping my water intake to try to get back on track.

I leave for my yearly weekend in Ogunquit, ME with the girls and sans kids or hubby on July 16th and my goal for now is to weigh 174 when I leave. That would be approximately 11 lbs in 6 weeks. I think that's a pretty reasonable goal.

I'm starting back to college on Monday, just one class for the summer, going to try to turn my brain back to somethng usable form the mush it's turned into from being out of work since the end of January. Even though it's only one class it's going to be a big change to my routine.