Holidays Mini Fitness Challenge

I am hosting a family "More Fun for the Holidays" mini-fitness challenge!! For those of you who don't know, I have a friend who has been hosting online fitness challenges for a couple of years. I did my first one earlier this year and took 2nd place, lost 20 pounds and felt great (until I put some of that back on between challenges). I convinced Mom to do another one with me this fall. I petered out, but Mom did great! She lost 16 pounds, came in 2nd place, won like $85 for her efforts and feels fantastic! So, in talking, we don't want to lose the momentum over the holidays (my friend's next challenge starts Jan 3), so we decided to do our own mini-challenge. She and I are in, but we thought we'd invite any of the rest of you to join in. So, the rules are below. If you want to join, post a comment to this blog post and I'll invite you to be a contributor to the blog. Then, you start keeping track of your points starting this Monday, and post your points next Monday and so on. (If you want to see the original challenge, you can go to my friend's blog here.)
So for those of you who want to join in, the challenge will run from Monday, November 29 through Sunday January 2nd. The rules are as follows:

Anyone who wants to compete for the $$ must contribute $10 to the pot. You can mail me a check, or send it via paypal, but I need to receive it by December 15 if you want to be included for the pot. If you get it to me by December 5, you'll get 5 bonus points. Since this is a short challenge, we'll do winner-takes-all. (Unless we get a lot of participants, in which case, maybe I'll make a 2nd prize of 10% or something).

Each day you can earn up to 10 points. Each week you can earn one bonus point for losing weight (one point only, not one point per pound) and one bonus point for posting your weekly points on the Flog. Here is how you earn your 10 daily points. You get one point each day for each of the items below:

1. Keep a food journal
2. Drink 8 glasses (8 oz) water a day
3. No sugary treats (except one FREE treat per week!)
4. Exercise 30+ minutes
5. Eat 4 fruits and/or vegetables per day
6. Do not overeat at any meal or any snack (use your judgment - honesty is essential for this to work)
7. No eating after 8pm
8. Read scriptures 20 minutes (includes General Conference talks)
9. Take a multivitamin or calcium tablet
10. Gratitude Journal - Write 2 things you're grateful for.

Again, this is all on your honor. There are no police, but you need to be honest with us and yourself for this to work. On the treat point - since it's Christmastime, we're allowing one free treat a week. This is not a free day where you eat all the treats you want without losing a point, it is ONE treat, on ONE day during the week for which you will not have to lose a point.

Let me know if you have questions or if you want to join and let's get started! It's really a great fun way to make better habits and feel great about yourself!

Procrastination

This evening I ate without being hungry because the curried cauliflower was calling to me . . . and I didn't want to unload the shopping bags or do the dishes. I'm a procrastination eater.

Things I hope to do some day when I am thin:

1) Squat down and stand back up again without using my hands for support.
2) Ride a horse (without feeling bad for the horse)
3)Run up and down the stairs.
4) Heck, walk up and down the stairs without hearing my knees crackle.
5) Stop taking blood pressure medication.
6) Buy clothes from a "normal" size store/department
7) Triathalon

Surrender

I surrender. It is with much angst that I joined weightwachters today . . .

Goodbye to the Holidays

As is obvious from the dates of these entries, I ate through the holidays completely unchecked by the flog . . . . oops. Well, I’m not one for New Years resolutions, but now is as good as any time to pick up and do this again. I’ve invited my sister-in-law to contribute as well. Perhaps I’ll invite others and we can all flog together. So, here goes:

Wed, January 2, 2008

8:30 Breakfast was herbal tea and 2 c tomato soup (I’m getting a cold). (ss)

10:30 1 cheese stick (p)

12:30 1 grilled ham & cheese sandwich on whole wheat. 1.5 c butternut soup with a scoop of yogurt. (sssspp)

5:30 pm 2 c chicken chili with cheese & yogurt, 2.5 corn muffins, carrots, celery and ranch yogurt/cottage cheese dip. (ssssspp)

This day was alright. Granted I’ve got a bit of a head cold and don’t feel much like eating in general, but if I can keep up on my flog, I’ll do just fine.

Over the holidays I appear to have breached 270 yet again. I started seeing my food therapist about a year and a half ago when I was at 282. I got down to about 247 when we moved after about 7 months (35 pounds!). Now, nearly a year later, I have put back on over 20 of those. This will stop. The scale is now headed back down!

Thurs, January 3, 2008

I have two pair of size 22 jeans and one size 20 I’d bought a year ago. Now none of them fit. I just went and purchased two more pair of 24s so I have pants to wear.

9:00 am 1 cauliflower egg w/cheese and 1 piece ham (I mix cauliflower puree into my scrambled eggs—lots of Vitamin C)

1 piece banana bread and 2/3 c smoothie (with soy protein and flax—good for you!) ppss

11:00 2 oz Tofu with soy sauce (pp)

12:30 1 c pasta with ricotta and1 c chili (sssspp)

3:00 1 pc banana bread (s)

4:30 ½ banana (s)

5:00 1 very large fish taco salad (sssppp)

8:00 pm 1 wedge of Elliot’s leftover quesadilla (sad but true)

9:45 pm 1 c pasta with ricotta (ssp)

Sunday, January 6, 2008

(yes, I skipped most of the weekend . . .—let me try and re-cap—Friday’s dinner involved orange chicken and broccoli—brown rice, that was a healthy choice. Saturday involved a turkey burger for dinner with yam oven fries and then several chocolate covered peanuts and a piece of chocolate while playing games late into the night—see why I conveniently left out Friday and Saturday?)

1:00 pm (it was fast Sunday, I only made it until the bad pot luck after church . .. )

1 meat ball, 1 piece of something resembling turkey or chicken, 2.3 c rice, 2 little smokies, a couple of slices of cheese, a few beans, a bite of corn, some really nasty sweet potatoes with water chestnuts (??), a cup of punch and a piece of chocolate pie. And no, it wasn’t worth it.

3:00 ½ turkey burger leftover.

5:30 2 pieces lasagna, 1 c salad

9:00 2 chocolate covered pretzels.

I have to say that just in doing this pretty well this week, I’m already “down” a couple of pounds—granted it’s mostly water from the water I was retaining after salty, fatty snacking all through the holidays, but it makes me feel great knowing that just being accountable to the “flog” (and my new “floggies” Rebecca and Bob) helps and I can make progress. I love Rebecca’s moral victories. I realize I’m not alone and I think I’ll post my own. Today’s moral victory—I’m posting this at 11:30 pm and thinking about having a snack before I turn in, but I think I won’t. Someone on some TV show the other night, having lost like 150 pounds said she began to ask herself “how will I feel 5 minutes after I eat that?” every time she wanted to eat something. Tonight I can say that if I had that snack, in 5 minutes, I would be lying in bed, not feeling so good physically or emotionally. So, I think I will skip it.

The past few days have felt like a few weeks..

The title of this sums it all up. This is exactly why I have never lasted long at changing my eating habits. The days feel excruciatingly long. For some reason, all of the work makes me think I should be loosing a lot more weight a lot more quickly. Here goes my eating log for the past few days:

Wednesday- boiled egg, plain wheat toast, and orange juice for breakfast
water, left-over pizza and meatballs for lunch
cheese stick and water for a snack
chicken breast, potatoes and ceasar salad for dinner
moral victory of the day: I threw away the coupons for Arby's!

Thursday- oatmeal and water for breakfast
chicken breast and leftover sausage dip w/wheat thin chips for lunch
water and turkey for a snack
small handful cashews
steak, brown rice, beans and ceasar salad for dinner
I also snacked on some of the beans while they were cooking
moral victory of the day: threw away the kids leftovers

Friday- boiled egg, plain wheat toast, and orange juice for breakfast
water and 100 calorie pack of snacks for early snack
chicken breast and leftover potatoes for lunch
samples from Costco (can anyone resist these?!?)-hummus and laughing
cow cheese both on crackers, plain turkey breast
slimfast shake, cheese stick for afternoon snack
salmon, leftover brown rice and beans and salad for dinner
confession: I finished Brysons mac 'n cheese :(
moral victory: I didn't finish Sydney's mac 'n cheese :)

Saturday: 2 scrambled eggs with peppers, onion and cheese for breakfast
water, wheat toast
steak salad with pecans and crasins, leftover sausage dip for lunch
snacked on teddy grahams while out shopping
turkey wrap for dinner

Well, as you can see I didn't do incredibly good or bad. I just need to throw the unhealthy leftovers away!! Hope you all had a successful week.

Confessions of a Licker

I'm a licker. This realization hit me tonight as, after my husband (at my request) kindly did the dishes, I suddenly felt compelled to jump in and finish them before he set the pan in the sink to soak. Why? So I could lick the spoon and the pan . . . I'm not proud of this, but it's true. It took great strength to stand there and watch him put the pan under the faucet. It was like saying goodbye to a dear friend. I couldn't figure out why he didn't have a great urge to lick it as well. I think next time I'll pretend I'm him and don't have that urge and see how it feels . . .