New Year, New ME Weigh-In: Week 33 Post-Op VSG

2014 – a new year, a fresh start full of new beginnings. 2014 is going to be MY year to shine. I’m vowing here and now that I will reach my goal weight in 2014. What an amazing accomplishment it will be! To achieve my goals, I’m going to focus on the basics – eating well, drinking lots of water, taking my vitamins and getting in 5 workouts a week. Sunday weigh-ins will keep me accountable through the weekend. My resolution throughout the year is to keep focused while enjoying all the “newness” in my life. My Sunday progress updates will be called New Year, New ME Weigh-Ins.

(I won’t be able to weigh in tomorrow morning because I’m staying overnight at my cousin’s house in SF so that we can do the Hot Chocolate 5K EARLY in the morning. The race starts at 7:30am, but we have to be down at Golden Gate Park by 6:15am. Ugh! Still, it’s going to be really fun, and I’m looking forward to it).

Week 33 was back to work for me, and boy, was it a crazy one. Meetings, lesson planning, quiz creating, former student visits (which I love!), chaperoning two basketball games, and of course teaching. I get tired just thinking about it. I’m proud to say that through it all, I got in all of my planned workouts, ate great, and even fit in time to read & comment on blogs, read books, and keep up with some of my favorite tv shows.

So, what did the scale show?!

When I weighed in this morning, I was 196.2, which is a loss of 3 pounds this week, and a loss of 80.8 lbs since surgery! I’ve lost a total of 118.8 pounds from my highest weight!! I have 46 pounds to go to my ultimate goal weight 0f 150 pounds.

This week was as busy as a week can be, yet I kept to my workout schedule, which I’m really proud of. Something has definitely changed for me – I used to force myself to get my workouts in, and now I actually look forward to them. One thing that helps me make sure I stay on track with my workouts is that I continue to take Carina’s advice and plan my two rest days on weekdays. It works perfectly because I can fit workouts in much more easily on the weekends. I’ve been enjoying the combination of going to the gym to do my run/walk intervals on the treadmill and using my hybrid at home to do either elliptical or recumbent bike. Now it’s time for me to really incorporate strength training. I’ve begun researching on sites like Blogilates and Tone It Up (have you seen their goofy show on Bravo?) to figure out a plan that will work for me. I’m giving myself the goal of doing 3 days of strength training a week, beginning this upcoming week.

My food was really outstanding this week, and I think that made a huge impact on this week’s weight loss. I stuck to my protein shakes for breakfast, made gorgeous salads for lunch each day (more on that in a minute), and had rice + protein for dinner most nights. Snacks were Dannon Light & Fit Greek yogurt and IPS Chips. If you’d like to see my food diary, ask to be my pal on MyFitnessPal.

I wish I’d taken a picture of my salads, because they really were that nice looking, but just try to imagine, if you can. I started all the salads with a bed of 1.5 cups of baby spinach and then I varied the toppings:

• tuna w/ pickles and light mayo
• chicken salad w/ hard-boiled egg, 1/8 cup chopped nuts, light mayo
• 2 oz chicken breast, hard-boiled egg, corn, & light ranch dressing
• hard-boiled egg, garbanzo beans, beets, and light ranch dressing

Not only were these salads full of protein and low on carbs, but they were also really filling. I’m going to continue the salads this coming week because they worked so well and were so easy for me to put together ahead of time.

For dinner next week, I’m planning on making a batch of my delicious HG 10-Alarm Turkey Crockpot Chili tomorrow because I’ve been craving it. I love that it’s a spicy bowl of comfort food that is really low in calories and high in protein. I won’t eat that every single night, so I’ll vary it with a shrimp stir fry and probably bacon-wrapped scallops.

I’m feeling really great about my progress, and continue to find small moments of pride throughout this journey. They help keep me motivated, focused, and excited to see where I go from here.

Until next Sunday, my friends. I hope the scale treats you well, and that you have a wonderful week!

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New Year, New ME Weigh-In: Week 32 Post-Op VSG

2014 – a new year, a fresh start full of new beginnings. 2014 is going to be MY year to shine.  I’m vowing here and now that I will reach my goal weight in 2014.  What an amazing accomplishment it will be! To achieve my goals, I’m going to focus on the basics – eating well, drinking lots of water, taking my vitamins and getting in 5 workouts a week. Sunday weigh-ins will keep me accountable through the weekend. My resolution throughout the year is to keep focused while enjoying all the “newness” in my life. My Sunday progress updates will be called New Year, New ME Weigh-Ins.

Week 32 was my second one on Winter Break, and again, I enjoyed it to the fullest.  This week was a great combination of relaxing, getting out and about, and hitting some milestones. Oh, and there was also an unfortunate hair incident, but we’ll get to that in a while.

So, what did the scale show?!

When I weighed in this morning, I was 199.2, which is a loss of 1.8 pounds this week, and a loss of 77.8 lbs since surgery! I’ve lost a total of 115.8 pounds from my highest weight!!  I think most of you have read by now that on New Year’s Eve day I hit Onederland!!! It was so fantastic to reach that goal this week.  Then, of course, came NYE evening, and I definitely indulged and was up a bit on the scale for a couple of days, but I’m happy to be back down (and a bit below what I was on Tuesday).  It feels great every time I get on that scale and see the 1 in front of the numbers.  I have about 49 pounds to go to my goal weight, which is something I seriously can’t believe.  (From now on I’m going to start logging how many pounds to go to that goal, too).

I finally caught up on a bunch of blog posts that I wanted to write, which made me feel really good going into this 2nd semester of the school year.  One of the things that I want to make sure to do in this new year is to get out and about so that I have plenty of things to post about on this blog.  My social life has been pretty active lately with friends, and you might’ve read that I have a coffee date later this week with a guy I met on Match. Another “bloggy” thing I need to get much better about is reading my blogging buddies posts.  I just need to commit to the time, because I really enjoy reading everyone’s posts and I love commenting, too.

One not so great thing that happened this week was a very bad haircut. You can read the deets on the post, but I will say that going through that experience really showed me how far I’ve come in terms of my self esteem.  I’ve always thought of myself as a confident person, which I have been. But since losing weight, I feel beautiful about my body, which is something I haven’t felt before.  I like seeing my small waist, and don’t mind my bigger hips & thighs, because the hourglass is finally more proportioned.  The terrible haircut brought me back to the way I felt about myself all the time when I was morbidly obese, and I hated reliving that.  The other getting the bad cut did was forced the change that I think was inevitable.  I loved J’s personality, style, and manner when she did my keratin treatment, and I think subconsciously I knew I would eventually make the change to start seeing her as my main stylist.  So, while I wish I hadn’t had to go through this hair drama, I guess the end result is a great one. J is going to be my new stylist, and I’m so glad.

I hit a bit of a milestone in fitness week.  I started C25K, Week 5, Day 1, which had 5min run/3min walk intervals.  I did it with no problem, and felt good about the pace I was running (4.5mph, which is slow for most, but great for me right now, although I do want to get faster with time). I saw that Week 5, Day 2 jumped to an 8-minute run, and I made the decision that I was done with C25K.  I’ve read quite a bit about the benefits of run/walk intervals, and I have no real desire to run continuously.  My dad has bad knee problems (3 orthroscopic surgeries, and 1 knee replacement), and years of obesity hasn’t helped strengthen my knees.  Right now I feel absolutely no pain or even discomfort with my intervals, and I don’t really want to push it.  So, I think I’ve graduated from C25K.  I still want to do intervals, though, so on the advice of a friend, I bought a Gymboss interval timer.

You can see that I’ve set it for 4 intervals of 5/3 splits.  I did it for the first time today, and it went really well.  I feel strong during the running portions, and although I’m not quite ready to move faster just yet, I can see that coming little by little.  I have the Hot Chocolate 5K in San Francisco next Sunday with FaveCousin and a friend, and I can’t wait to see if I can get a new PR.

Oh, and just in case you missed it today:

Bring on Carolina!!

Until next Sunday, my friends. I hope the scale treats you well, and that you have a wonderful week!

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