Hello Weight Watchers My Old Friend, I've Come to Talk With You Again

"...because a vision softly creeping, left it's seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within the vision of obesity."

I can't tell you how sacrilegious it felt typing a parody of such a classic song. LOL! So, as you may have guessed by the title, I am back on Weight Watchers. I'm not even going to try to remember how many times I've tried before now. I'm going to just devote a little bit of myself for trying to make this the last time.

I apparently have like hobby-ADD. As soon as I start focusing on one interest, all other interests go flying out the window. I'm pretty cyclical though, so I always end up coming back around to them. I'm going to do my best (with this blog's help) to stop that pattern though. Surely I can focus time and energy on more than one thing? I know it's a little late in the year, but today I wrote up a list of goals for 2013. It includes sections for Health, Faith, Career and Finances.

Health:
my weight is a pretty obvious one here
blood pressure
cholesterol
BMI





Faith:
I don't really run around announcing this (the world is a cranky, cranky place just looking to pick fights), but I'm a Pagan. Truly a Tree Hugging Dirt Worshiper. I think that because my faith is something I try to keep close to the vest, I don't spend nearly enough time participating in it. Even if it means coming out of the "broom closet," I want to be more in tune with my spirituality. So, to that end, I've been trying to make a point of celebrating the Esbats and Sabbats this year. I've also been trying to make myself meditate (I can't tell you how challenging this is for me), and I've been mostly failing at doing daily devotions.

Career:
I have hated my job almost as long as I've had it (ten years next week). It's time to put up or shut up when it comes to career unhappiness. I can stay where I'm at as long as they'll have me (we're constantly under threat of layoff) and make a pretty penny with decent benefits. Or I can figure out what the hell I want to be when I grow up and take a leap of faith (in myself, not so much a religious leap of faith) and venture into unknown territory. I think about this daily. I need to stop thinking and start acting. Unless I'm thinking while running, then I can accomplish Health and Career objectives in one go! ;-)

Finances:
As part of any career leaps of faith, I need to get as debt-free as possible. Especially when I'm under constant threat of layoffs! I need to get my credit card and student loans paid off. I seriously have less than $10k of debt left (not counting our outrageous mortgage). I just need to finish it off.

Okay, so it felt good putting it all in writing. Now if I lose my piece of paper, my goals will live on in internet infamy. :-)

So - tracking! I created a new Weight Watchers profile Sunday night at 11 (LOL), so my new tracking date is Sunday. Obviously I did not track food and/or beverages I consumed Sunday. But I have been tracking every bite and sip since! So far so good. Let's do it for real this time, shall we?

Goal: 130
Current: 172

The Quiet Killer

I found this "Quiet Workout" the other day on Pinterest and then tried it Tuesday afternoon. I am STILL sore. I remember thinking during the workout, "Yeah, I'm sweating, but I don't really think this is actually doing anything for me." HA!! Let me tell you, if you need a quick 10 minute killer workout (that's also QUIET), look no further!

For whatever reason I can't get Blogger to accept the picture of the workout, but if you Google "back on pointe quiet workout" you should be able to find it.

Ladies of Craft Beer

Ironically, my first day back on the blog was my worst day "on program" since I started back. LOL! Last night was the Houston Ladies of Craft Beer 3rd Thursday meetup. The four beers I consumed seemed to loosen me up enough that not only did I eat a pork banh mi, but I split an order of pork fries as well. :S No more goodies for me this weekend! Now I need to spend the weekend eating right and getting in some exercise. It was good to see the ladies though. I hadn't seen one of them in two months. Was good to catch up.

Hi. Remember Me?

I'm not dead. Nor am I at my goal weight. In fact, I lost all momentum and climbed back up to the 160s. There is a part of me that is deeply ashamed of that. BUT! One thing I have learned that I think is truer than true - the way that you talk to yourself completely impacts everything you do. If I beat myself up, I will hurt myself. The best I can do for myself is get up, dust off, give myself a hug and start the journey from where I'm at. So this is me doing that. Welcome back. ;)

Two months ago, Hubby found out he had really high cholesterol, incredibly high triglycerides and moderately high blood pressure. All of a sudden, he had an epiphany. He wanted to get healthy. His only stipulation - I can change the way we eat and he will exercise, but I'm not allowed to change the beer. LOL! I can live with that. The journey (all one and a half weeks of it so far) is very different with a lifemate who is participating. He's asking questions and counting calories. He even has his own SparkPeople account!!

One of the things Hubby and I are trying that really seems to be helping is eating our biggest meal of the day at lunch instead of dinner. It is such an easy change to make! By eating our biggest meal in the middle of the day, we give ourselves longer to digest. With a small dinner, we're not still ridiculously full at bedtime. And it really seems to be working. This small change and tracking food and exercise on SparkPeople are working.

1/7/13:   168
1/14/13:  164.8

Need to Remember This

It's my choice. I'm the one in charge. The only one who can stop me is me.

Wow...I Suck

I'm so sorry! I can't believe I haven't been on here since College Station. :( Since then, I have run another 5K (3 minutes slower), hurt my leg and recovered for two weeks, kept (mostly) to the eating, and dropped another 6 pounds. I broke the 150 mark yesterday by .4 pounds. This morning I was a solid 149. Committing to never going back over 150!! Today is also a run day! :) I have restarted the C25K program, this time concentrating on going faster during my runs. Whereas I started the program last time at 4mph and was up to 4.8mph when I finished, this time I'm starting at 5.5mph during the runs.

I am still not back on WW proper. I'm trying to get used to using SparkPeople, which was recommended on a blog I love (Runs For Cookies). I really like Spark, in that they have way more foods in their database, but I'm not a huge fan of their recipe builder. Most of the time, I don't want to actually put in a recipe, I just want to find out what the calorie count, etc is on the completed product, and each serving. SparkRecipes actually wants you to put in the directions, etc for the recipe.I guess I just need to commit a whole day to putting our favorite recipes in there so I can access them easily.

So, I know I've said this before, but I'd really like to recommit to this blog! I don't know what's wrong with me that I'll spend 5 hours surfing Pinterest, but can't give 10 minutes to update the blog. The blog helps with accountability! So let's take it one day at a time, okay? :-)

Weight: 149lbs

College Station 5K

What an amazing time we had in College Station! Kris, Sara and I got ourselves into all kinds of trouble and had a great time relaxing with girl time. :-) I seriously hope we make an annual pilgrimage to C-town for the Rock the Casa 5K. What an amazing time!

The race itself wandered through a neighborhood beside the sorority row. Every now and then, cars would be heading towards us, but the cops did a good job of keeping us safe. The most notable thing about the 5K was the enthusiasm of the group putting it on. The Theta girls (and I'm assuming their boyfriends) lined the roads with signs, ran with speaker-backpacks playing good music, and cheered like crazy for their runners. There was never an opportunity to contemplate not finishing, because there was always someone there screaming for you. Seriously a great event I'd like to repeat. And that being said, I PR'ed!!!!! :-) My time on this run was 34:14!! That is 10 MINUTES and 20 seconds off my previous run. Holy moly!! I know there is still a lot of room for improvement, but I am pretty damn happy with those results. :-) Hoping the Yuri's Night 5K coming up this Saturday will be just as awesome. :-)