And the holidays have begun

Happy Thanksgiving! This year, I am thankful for all my friends and family, and a job that I love.

How was everyone's Turkey Day? Mine was pretty good. Ryan and I host dinner at our house usually, but this year, my sister, Bug, is tethered. (Don't ask.) So we decided to cook dinner at my mom's house so she could take part. We watched the Lions lose to the Packers. We watched Nightmare Before Christmas. Bug made Oreo balls, which chug on the opposite track of my weight loss train, but I didn't care. Those bastards are a pain to make, so I know I'll never be making them. Friday, and the rest of the weekend, we just laid around. I screwed around with my Cricut a little bit. And today is my last day off. Boo.

I did not hit any of my goals last week. I did not do a single crunch or push-up, and did not go to the gym. I barely tracked my food intake. But I'm not beating myself up about it. It was a holiday. And...I really tried to not go totally insane just because it was a holiday. And it must have worked because I weighed myself this morning for the first time in 8 days, and I was 305.4. Yay! Down 4 lbs!

Goals for this week:

• same as the goals for last week :)
• gym x2
• no fast food
• no pop
• 10 push-ups and 10 crunches before bed

Sunday Funday

::sigh:: Sundays are love/hate. They're usually so lazy, their purpose is for lounging around the house, catching up on laundry and DVR. But I hate them at the same time, because Monday morning is right around the corner to yank me out of bed and prop me up at a desk.

Ah well, this week is short. Work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then off until the following Tuesday. Our Thanksgiving luncheon at work is on Wednesday. We're having Mediterranean food again this year. It was delish last year, so I'm excited. My mom is coming over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Bug will still be tethered, so she'll be at home, but she's alright with us sending her a big plate of food home.

Veronica and I got crafty on Friday and made a dog bed for Roman. While I was at work, she bought a 3"-thick piece of foam, and a piece of plywood cut to the same size as the foam. We went to Joann Fabrics and bought some really cute fabric with some dog bones on it. We stapled the fabric around the foam and plywood. Super easy, and really cute. My craftiness carried over to Saturday. I went to my mom's and we went back to Joann for...something to do. I ended up making these:

It took forever. Each letter was cut and glued individually. And even with a ruler, some of it's a bit crooked. But I am basically obsessed with them. I think I'm gonna follow this trend and make some more for when my "library" (spare room) is finished.

Goals accomplished:

gym 2x √

no pop √

no fast food √

Goals for this week:

gym 2x

no pop

no fast food

10 push ups & 10 crunches before bed every night

Current weight: 309.2

Bye Fred!

Well, Fred is gone, and not a moment too soon. I ate for shit these last few days, however, I still attempted to be mindful of what I stuffed in my mouth. Honestly, I don't think I was TOO far over my calorie allowance each day. And when I jumped on the scale a few minutes ago, it said 309.2. So another pound bites the dust.

This week is Thanksgiving and I'm a little leery of what is going to happen that day, food-wise. Ryan is an excellent cook, and I usually overdose on mashed potatoes. I'm going to try to keep it to a minimum this year, but most likely will not track what I eat that day. We'll see.

I'll probably post another entry tonight at some point. Didn't want anyone to think I had given up on this blogger business.

Another successful gym day!

3:36am...my alarm went off AGAIN this morning. Honestly, who in their right mind gets up this early? I snoozed it for a bit, and got up.

The hardest part of the whole process is getting out of bed. As long as my bag and lunch are packed and ready to go, all I have to do is get up. Oh, and seeing this as I'm getting dressed is hard:

*Ryan curled up with Maverick, Jake and Ape curled up together at the foot.

Anyway, the gym went like this:

Treadmill - 36 minutes, 1.87 miles, 312 calories

(Goal of burning more than 290 calories: √ )

Arm extension, 5 resistance, 30 lbs, 3 sets of 12

Arm curl, 5 resistance, 30 lbs, 3 sets of 10

Overhead press, 5 resistance, 30 lbs, 3 sets of 10

Row, 5 resistance, 50 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Pulldown, 5 resistance, 50 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Chest press, 5 resistance, 30 lbs, 3 sets of 8

I was really tired by the end. I have zero upper body strength. And, I was right about Blood Red Fred. Right after I hopped off that treadmill. So I sort of phoned in the last bit of weights. And I skipped abs because I was cramping up like a mo. I'm not beating myself up, though. I feel good.

As for intake, I've eaten the same thing all week for lunch and snacks. Tonight's dinner was a little higher in calories, but I did not (and will not) have dessert, and thus did not (and will not) go over my calorie limit! I count today as a success. And it's been 3 weeks since I've had any pop or fast food. High five!

In our meeting today, my boss asked for volunteers to plan our Christmas/holiday party. The amount of changes going on in our office are starting to become palpable, and I had wondered to myself if this would happen. 3 coworkers and I volunteered. We're having a lunch meeting on Friday to throw some ideas around. My favorite one that I've come up with is a casino night. I found a really cool website that rents craps, roulette, poker, black jack, and slot machines. They provide dealers and set-up/break-down. I'm really hoping this idea catches on.

Anyway, I'm off to play some Plants vs. Zombies, then hit the hay. Despite today being a total success and feeling great mentally, my crampy abdomen and whining ovaries are forcing me to rest. Goodnight.

Pain...so sore...

3:36am - my alarm went off. I snoozed it a few times...and then said to hell with it. My thigh muscles hurt so bad, I thought they were on fire. I eventually shut my alarm off all together and snuggled up with Maverick. I don't feel bad, though. I still have 5 days to complete (or surpass!) my goal of gyming twice this week. And when I'm finished here, I'm going to pack my bag and my lunch.

Onto today's intake. Not spectacular, but actually not terrible, either. I overdosed on chips & dip at dinner. And then I ate two pudding cups instead of one. I tried to be as accurate as possible when logging my food. Ryan made Foreman-grilled hamburgers, but they weren't weighed, so I had to guess. I still was only 35 calories over my 1984 calorie/day allotment.

I wanted to go totally insane and eat all the chocolate in my house. And come to think of it, I've been having some serious ovary pains all day. Guess it's almost time for my monthly friend. Let's just call him Blood Red Fred. That bastard.

Plan for the gym tomorrow: another 35 minutes on the treadmill. Goal is to burn over 290 calories. Even if it's 291, I will have succeeded. Then gonna give my jelly-legs a break and work arms and abs tomorrow.

I really need to update my Zune. I hate doing it because the Zune software is a total SOB and slows my whole system down. Blah. I don't think I'm doing that tonight. Off I go to pack my bag instead.

<3

I feel great today!

3:36am - the terrible sound of my alarm wakes me from a not-so-deep sleep. My bed, husband, and dogs are so warm and snuggly, I never wanna leave. But I drag my carcass out of bed anyway, and get dressed (after several snoozes, of course; the gym doesn't open until 5am on Mondays).

My bag is already packed, lunch already made, Zune charged up. I haul ass to the gym and make it there by 5am. (It's 7pm as I write this.)

I see a few people already inside workin' on their fitness. I throw my 1000-pound Burberry gym bag in a locker, grab my Zune and cell, and hit the treadmill. I decided to do a program today, because I never seem to push myself hard enough. I select weight loss, enter in 310 lbs, cautiously looking around, making sure no one around me saw that. I press start and off we go. The weight loss program took me on varied speeds and inclines. Several times, I pussied out and adjusted the speed to something a little less deadly. And then, the weirdest thing happened. I ACTUALLY JOGGED! I haven't jogged in Lord knows how long. I did it for a whole minute. Then slowed down, and let the sweat pour out of me. Then after a couple more minutes went by, I did it again! And then three more times, all one minute each! I was raining sweat and breathing like an asthmatic, but I was so proud. During my jogging spurts, I would focus really hard on either the song playing on the Zune, or the news on the TV in front of me, and just say, "You got this Schmidt, you're fine, only 30 more seconds." That 35 minutes went by so quickly. Phew. The distance was 1.7 miles and 290 cals burned.

Feeling totally elated, I decided I would work my legs next. Legs are my favorite to do, because I can do the most weight on them. Probably because they're used to carrying around this ass. I did the following moves:

Leg press: 10 resistance, 150 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Leg extension: 5 resistance, 70 lbs, 3 sets of 10

Calf extension: 5 resistance, 70 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Hip abduction: 5 resistance, 70 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Hip adduction: 5 resistance, 70 lbs, 3 sets of 15

There's another leg machine, I can't remember what it's called. I can't do that one by myself because I can't get my legs in it properly. Soon though.

Then back extension: 5 resistance, 70 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Abdominal: 5 resistance, 90 lbs, 3 sets of 15

Then I hit the showers, got ready for work, and headed out. As soon as I got to work, I rushed to boot up my PC to track my fitness activity on livestrong. Because they don't have an android app. Dislike. Of course, livestrong did not have my exact work-out pre-loaded, so I had to fudge it a little, which I actually think took my number of calories burned down a little, but that's ok. I'm really trying to be as exact as I can, and I'd rather underestimate than overestimate. This way, I don't go over my calories on accident later, thinking I burned more than I actually did. But according to livestrong, I burned 416 calories. And then I got this little guy to post on my FB, letting the world know of my endeavor and new way of life:

I felt great all day.

The granola snack I made last night was literally one of the best ideas I've ever had. It was so delectable, I could have eaten it all day. Also, the cajun seasoning on my chicken was phenom.

For some reason, carbs are still the predominant part of my diet, even though I ate a lot of veggies today. I was not aware that veggies had so many carbs. But then, according to livestrong, I've only had 40% of my carbs today. So I'm still working out the kinks, I guess. It's better than McDonald's carbs, I'm sure.

It's 7:30pm, and I can still eat 1182 calories. I will not be doing so, however. And I didn't starve myself either.

I drank nothing but water all day. I had 1 cup of toasted oats (Meijer's version of Cheerios) at 8am, my granola snack between 9:30-10am. Grilled chicken, peas, green beans, and carrots for lunch at 11:15am. One cup of peas, green beans, and carrots again at 2:30pm, pork loin, peas and carrots for dinner at 6:20pm. Hershey kisses for dessert between 7-7:30pm. All of which is tracked in the above screen shot.

And I'll do it all again tomorrow.

Excited

I know I seem totally bi-polar today. I don't care. I'm really excited about my blog. It's making me really excited about my weight loss journey.

Something I really need to get used to is actually taking a little bit of time and cooking my lunch and dinners. I loathe cooking, so this is a hard step for me, but I know it will be worth it.

I've noticed by tracking my food intake that I eat a lot of carbs.

So I decided at least for a little bit, I really need to strive to cut carbs out. I usually make chicken, veggies and rice for lunch. I'm cutting out the rice, and doing an extra serving of veggies. In doing so, I can make sure I get my greens in!

Lunch for the next 3 days:

Left to right: Mrs. Dash chicken, Mrs. Dash extra spicy, and Cajun flavoring

With carrots, green beans, and peas.

I keep hearing all these commercials advertising whole grain. Apparently, eating whole grain is good for you, and is heart-healthy, so in an effort to raise my grain intake, I bagged up 1-cup servings of Meijer-brand Cheerios. Another snack I came up with today is high in whole grain. It's not very original, but it's so delish.

I bought a box of Heartland original granola cereal and a bag of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips. I took a 2/3 cup of the cereal and mixed it with a handful (~24 chips, which is the serving size), and threw it in a baggie. Delicious. A little high on calories, but I figure I'll eat this as a morning snack, and get a larger dose of calories earlier in the day. Chocolate and granola combined is 390 cals. And this does not really go hand in hand with cutting out carbs, however, you can't win 'em all, I guess.

(Serving size was 1/2 cup)

I gotta get my bag packed for the gym tomorrow. I'll post an update tomorrow night to let you know how it went.

<3

Today sucked

Ugh, I hate today, and it's only 4:15. I woke up feeling great, and now I just feel like crap and I'm just a blubbering mess.

Ryan and I woke up, snuggled in with the dogs, and watched Gnomeo and Juliet in bed. When it was over, we got up, took a shower, and went downstairs for breakfast. We alternated watching TV to playing games on our computers. (He played Modern Warfare 3, I played Plants vs. Zombies.) Then I decided I wanted to rearrange the living room so we can put up the Christmas tree.

Now before I continue, let me just say that I can't stand the holidays. I hate that it's this big gift-giving monstrosity. A big aspect of my loathing for holidays, is that my family is small, and we've never really done anything big. Plus my family is broken, and I just have a lot of issues with it that we'll save for another day. On with the story.

I rearrange the living room in a trial setting, and call Ryan downstairs to get his opinion. He hated it, and gave me a really shitty attitude while we were discussing it. My feelings were hurt, and I acted like a child, and threw a tantrum. I'm tired of constant shittiness from other people, especially my husband, for Christ's sake. Then he apologized, we ate a rather large snack, and watched some TV. I decided a switch of games would be fun, so I turn on the Xbox. But our receiver is so ghetto-rigged to our other electronics, that I can't figure out what source it needs to be on, etc. (Insert more electronic jargon here.) So I call Ryan back downstairs to help me with it. He starts talking in geek language and using terms I don't understand, so I blankly stare at him and ask, "What?" He then grabs the remotes from me, grits his teeth, and starts the explanation again. I then burst into tears and ask why he's being so mean to me today. He apologized half-assed, and here we are. I'm very emotional today for whatever reason. And then I fell off the wagon, so that did not help matters much at all. I'm already over my calorie intake and haven't eaten dinner yet. So I popped a phentermine, and will finish out the day with cotton chops and feeling like I'm on cocaine. I'm so tired of feeling worthless and gross. :(

Ok, that's enough. I got it all out. This blog is supposed to be positive and up-lifting, not sad. I will make good (if any) food decisions for the rest of the day, like forfeiting my Sunday night TV snack. Luckily, Once Upon a Time is good enough to keep my attention without food. :) And going to the gym tomorrow will make me feel good all day, and get this goal underway.

How about a funny pic to make me feel better? This one always make me laugh (thanks, Failblog):

Update, 5:28pm: I turned on the space heater, took a scalding hot shower, used my peppermint foot scrub, and gave myself a mani/pedi. I feel a hundred times better.

Several days later...

A few days after my maiden voyage into the world of blogging, I have returned with an update. My scale now says 310.2. 3 lbs in 5 days? Maybe. Dysfunctional scale? Maybe. Who knows for sure. But either way, I'm happy. It's been over two weeks since I've had any pop or fast food, and this week I started tracking my food/water intake.

I was bad on Friday. Not so much with the food intake, I was bad with tracking it. I spent all day at my moms, etc...excuses excuses. So anyway, here's the screen dump of my week. I did not include today, obviously.

I also got these cute little badges for my FB:

(I got the Rookie Food Tracker Badge for tracking 5 days in a row. Even though I did not track my food on Friday, I did track my water intake. :D )

Next week will start another goal: gym twice a week starting 11/14. I prefer to grace the gym with my awesome presence first thing in the morning, around 4:45-5am. This is a challenging feat, however, but I'm going to try to go in the morning both times this week.

Another goal I would like to work on is doing basic calisthenics throughout the day/evening, especially when I'm lounging around catching up on DVR. These would include the following:

• Pushups
• regular crunches
• bench (chair) dips
• stretching

There's plenty more where that came from. I stumbled upon a website called military.com/fitness. There was an article (see link) that was called "Lose the Love-handles". Ok great! I'll get workin' on that.

In other, non-weight-loss news, Ryan and I went to Meijer today and decided we need to walk up and down the toy aisles. Now those who know me are very aware of our wishes not to reproduce, so this time of browsing was just for us as adults reliving toys that we loved. We looked at all the Harry Potter Legos and Pirates of the Caribbean Legos, and I had never wanted to drop so much paper on Legos before in my entire life. Legos were always awesome of course, but these were so cool and so detailed. Then of course, we made our way into the Littlest Pet Shop aisle, which is probably my favorite aisle in Meijer. They had a corgi who was adorable.

Now I'm not a kid who plays with toys anymore. However, my reaction to the toys next to the Littlest Pet Shops sounded like...a 5 year old's high-pitched squeal. A tiny (literally) thing called a Squinkie. Maybe this is the new fad? I'm not sure. But I would have loved these when I was a kid.

They are about the size of a quarter, and just so freakin' cute, I could just die. Also, they have the Disney princesses, and I about died from cuteness over the Little Mermaid set.

Anyway, onto more of an adult topic. Are any of you out there watching American Horror Story on FX? So addicting, but I absolutely love it! And Whitney, of course is rapidly becoming one of my favorite shows. Whitney Cumming's chemistry with Chris D'elia is perfect, and he's totally gorgeous, of course.

Glad you took the time to read this super-spesh entry in Befriending the Scale.

Letting go

As I'm settling in to start this...flooding of thoughts onto keyboard, I'm looking at my arm fat and thinking "good Lord". That right there is the last of my self-loathing.

The whole purpose of this blog is to break through all the negative thoughts and feelings encasing me in this seemingly unbreakable shell.

And to start, here's a list of positive things I've started lately:

• quit smoking (~6 months ago)
• quit drinking pop (12 days ago)
• quit eating fast food* (unsure of exact date, but at least 12 days ago; no one wants a burger, fries, and water, so this one was incidental, but I will be sticking with it)
• tracking food intake on livestrong

I have the BFF helping with some of these things also. Teamwork really is an excellent thing in most regards, but in the last 12 days, the fact that we're doing this as a team has helped curb some intense cravings and near-misses.

So here's some honesty, and something I do not want to post, because it is quite humiliating. But, if I'm to track anything at all and be honest with my readers (if any), I must post it. Ugh.

Current weight as of 11/8/11, 7:50pm: 313.6

Now that we got that shit out of the way, here's some goals!

• bring that number down to an even 3 bills by 1/1/12
• continue no pop until 1/1/12 (re-assess goals then)
• continue no fast food* until 1/1/13 (Ryan and I quit fast food for a whole year about 5 years ago - I'm 100% we can do it again!)
• gym twice a week, beginning 11/14 (my OCD self just cannot start a cycle mid-week)

*Subway and Jimmy Johns are not considered fast food and will not break any on-going streak.

The next update will give an update on how these goals and changes are going. And after updating everyone, I'll be giving myself a giant pat on the back for continuing to be so awesome at this cold turkey business.

Soundtrack for "Letting Go":

• Awolnation - Guilty Filthy Soul
• Craig David - Fill Me In
• Craig David - Last Night
• Craig David - 7 Days
• Craig David - Rewind