becomingkate

 Grades are in! I got an A in History, a B in Math and a B+ in Computers. I couldn't resist and I e mailed my math professor last night because I was dying to know how I did on my final. I got a 90. Woo! I guess I really didn't need that tutoring I canceled. (thank you spikesgirl58 for making me feel like it was okay to cancel it ;))

I went to Spin again today and enjoyed it, however my seat came loose partway through the class and I didn't want to get up to fiddle with it so I just kind of had to hang on extra tight. I'm sure it would be okay to get off and tighten it but I felt insecure like I'd be a distraction. I'm going again tomorrow night. I actually felt like I've already improved--I can pedal standing up in spurts already, and I couldn't at all in my first class.

I've also worked on upping my steps and I've gotten 10,000 steps both yesterday and today. I found that because my stride is so short, it actually only takes 4 miles for me to get 10,000 steps (I think the average person takes 5 miles).

I'm not supposed to weigh myself for a couple more days (I do it once a week) but I sneaked a peek today and I've already lost a couple pounds. My period came and went, so I probably lost a couple pounds of water weight.

 So, I joined a spin class place.

I'd taken spin once before, but it was through a gym membership and all I remember about it was that I tried to push myself too hard, couldn't move the next day, and never went back. There are two LA Cycle places in my town with plans for a third...I don't really understand that, because the two classes I've been to weren't full, but maybe they are going to have more class slots. I noticed that they are mainly very early morning and late afternoon-when late morning or early afternoon are better for me. Still, I can sometimes make it to a weekend one or 8:30 before my 11:00 class.

Anyway, I am very unathletic. I can't stick to anything fitness related to save my life (literally), as you might have read from past posts about treadmill attempts. I have a treadmill. But it's so boring. I've tried music, watching tv, and audiobooks. Nothing holds my interest. So after driving by these spin places for goodness knows how long, I decided to try one out.

I liked it. I signed up for another class for the next day. I signed up for more. I look forward to it. Who even am I???

The cool thing is, although you're in a class, it feels very personal. They turn the lights out and it's blacklit. The music is loud and generic enough--at my first class I didn't recognize any of the songs but at the second one they played more familiar Top 40, but they are remixed so the beat is always up. I don't know if LA Cycle creates the remixes or if the instructor makes her own...The instructor is up on a raised platform and she has a mic, she is shouting out instructions like when to go faster, increase resistance, pedal standing up (still working on that one) or use the dumbbells. Once in a while she says things like "You got this!" And you can go at your own pace without feeling like you look stupid.

There are three types of classes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 25/25 which is 25 minutes cycling and 25 minutes of mat exercises. I have the 45 minute one tomorrow-I tried the other two also just to figure out which one I like. The 25/25 one feels a bit long, and I can do mat exercises on my own.

I've realized I really let myself go. And I kind of resent those around me for not being concerned about that, other than my father asking me one day "So...how's your health?" I mean, I don't want people to be like "OMG you got fat!" But honestly...I did. And although I've been maintaining for months now, I know I need to lose a lot of it. And I hope spin will help a little. It's certainly better than my current couch potato lifestyle.

PS, I looked into how many steps you should take a day, and the general number people strive for is 10,000. So I go looking at how many miles that is, or how long it takes...and it's 5 miles, or an hour and a half of walking. Um...no. Yeah I know you can break it up, but that's still very ambitious.

I'm down 4 pounds since Christmas. I hope that's actually a reflection of my efforts and not just natural weight fluctuation. I've been trying to eat better during the day. I track my food on Lose It again and it really helps me see what I'm doing wrong. Sometimes I don't even record the whole day's food, I just see how I'm doing at the start and then I can usually estimate my calories. Today my stomach was upset so I actually didn't eat anything until dinner time. Bad idea, I know. I've also been trying to drink more water again.
My husband's cholesterol is a bit higher than it should be, so I've been buying low fat cheese, sour cream, etc. I made Zuppa Toscana the other day which usually calls to be finished with heavy cream but I just put 1% milk in and my husband didn't even say anything. I should have been making it low fat all along, lol. I also used turkey sausage and I couldn't even tell the difference.
I'm not even exercising yet, so I hope that if I actually am losing weight just by going low fat and low carb, that if I get the inspiration to exercise again, that will help even more.

 I feel so blah. I'm realizing how much weight I'm gaining when my clothes don't fit anymore.  I'm constantly tugging down my shirt or hiking up my pants and trying to adjust my posture so I don't look fat, or worse, pregnant.  Ugh.  I've really got to move around more often.  It's really sad that there's a treadmill in the house and I don't use it.

I had a draining day, not because I was busy but because I spent 4 hours at a kid's birthday party and hardly spoke to anyone.  I didn't know anyone.  They had nothing to do to entertain the parents while the kids played in the bouncy house.  I mean I don't expect a party for the parents but if the party is at the residence there better be something, at least a magician so the parents can kind of enjoy that.  Not just sit and watch the kids play outside.  We've had parties at the house, but they were 2 hours.  

I took my son to the family therapist today and he told her he thinks I should see "someone like her" ie a therapist. LOL.  So even my son thinks I'm the one with the issues.  He is sort of opening up to her, but when he gets home he tells me "some kids are like this, mom" like there's nothing he can do to adjust his behavior, and I know there is, because he doesn't misbehave for anyone but us and occasionally my MIL.

He said "When you punish me I love you a little bit less every time" and "punishing doesn't work so you shouldn't do it".  Ha!  If I didn't care, I wouldn't do it.  I would probably just leave.  But I care, and I want this kid to grow up right so I keep trying.  I keep telling myself one day he'll understand.  If he's still speaking to me by then.

 BTW, I didn't think of this before, but if you have a hard time reading about dieting or eating or anything to do with food, I'll be using the "optimistic weight loss plans" tag on all these posts about what I'm eating (or not eating), so you can skip them if you need to.  Not sure if that's an issue for anyone, but just in case.



I ended up skipping the shrimp because it's still frozen and I didn't feel like thawing it, plus I bought extra fish so I just had some of that with breadcrumbs and a little butter and mayo, and roasted asparagus.  My son didn't finish his fish sandwich so I have half of that to have tomorrow.

Gosh I am hungry, and I feel like I need a drink.  I must be bored.  My husband says no drink this week.  It must be a sign of a problem that I have a hard time going a few days without one.  I think I'm just bored.  I watched about twice as much tv as I usually do today, because I wasn't keeping myself busy by eating.


Imagine if I spent that time cleaning..hmm.

 Day one of operation: weight loss wasn't really day one.  I decided today's my cheat day, which was probably a bad idea since I'll be bouncing around the house by myself for the rest of the week with nobody to tell me what to eat.

I decided on Burger King because I wanted to try the chipotle whopper and loaded tots, and I have to say they weren't really worth it.  Chipotle is supposed to be spicy and it wasn't, and the tots were mushy instead of having a little bite to them.  Oh well.

I went on the treadmill for half an hour.  I tried to listen to the Zombies, Run! 5K app but I need to make a music playlist to play during it because when you just put it on random you can't skip any songs.  So I turned off the app and just put my music on shuffle so I could skip things. It worked well and I think I pushed myself, because my legs hurt already.

My husband said he was fine with eating lots of fish, so I guess that's what I'm going to focus on.  Maybe try that Mediterranean diet.

 I got asked to work all this week again.  Mornings too.  Groan.  Why couldn't I say no?  I couldn't even say no for Wednesday afternoon.  My son has a half day but they especially want me to work that day because a new kid is joining the bus and they want to make sure there are no problems.  So I called my mother in law so she could get him off the bus and take care of him until I can come pick him up after work.

I really don't want to do this full time again.  It makes me anxious to see this long week stretch ahead of me instead of "Okay. I'm working today and that's it" which is usually what I can convince myself into thinking, if they don't tell me ahead of time that they need me all week.

For those of you who got graze.com codes from me, I just got an e mail that they are sending the packages out in a timely matter but that they are getting held up in the mail.  

I had another of the snacks today and it was decent.  I'm not a huge fan of the sweet snacks but I don't want to X them all off either because that wouldn't leave many snacks left.  Because I chose the low cal plan I get fewer options to begin with.  So I'm eating things I wouldn't think to buy at the store and I guess that's a good thing.  What seems to be the deal is that their snacks are mostly little assortments of pieces of things, so they take longer to eat even though it's only a small handful.

Plus now that I'm working again I won't want to eat much for fear of upsetting my stomach.

I'm not sure if I'll do the writing prompt today. I feel like they either inspire nothing or bring up the same topic over and over.  Maybe that's my problem and not the prompt's problem, though.  Either way I'll probably wait until later.  I have to leave in half an hour anyway. Some good healing vibes for my sensitive tummy would be great :)

Just for the record, my resolutions are to continue to try to be nice to my husband and son and also maybe lose some weight along the way.  If I could eat less when I'm stressed instead of eating more, I'd be all set!

I'd also like to be a little better with the way I write.  Less peppering with "LOL" and "like", and just...better writing.

I plan to stay here at LJ as long as possible, because I am resistant to change.  I have no idea how DW works.  If the creepy comm has to move to DW I will obviously figure it out so I can mod over there.  

Last night my husband was playing world of warcraft and I was tapping my fingers at 11:50 while he was still on.  We usually watch the ball drop.  So at 11:55 I went to watch it on my own and he came in a couple minutes later.  Unfortunately our cable box then reset and we missed the ball drop by about 10 seconds.  So we stayed up until 1 and watched Nashville's lame little music note drop.  LOL

Another new year off to a dubious start.  Did I tell you guys about the time NKOTBSB was in Times Square on NYE?  We watched it on TV and it should have been the most awesome NYE ever but we had a dumb fight about sex (long story short-he loves it, I hate it) and ruined the whole thing.  I'm really sick of my holidays being ruined or cut short.

Not much new on the front with my son. We got him registered for K the other day, after having to drive to Dorchester (part of Boston) for his birth certificate. My husband and I both thought we had a copy in our possession but come registration day we found we didn't. So I had to drive up and around the city in circles looking for this place that was not well marked and wasn't even where my GPS said it was. But all is well now.

I'm afraid to weigh myself, so I am going to try eating WW meals for lunch and dinner, a sensible breakfast (cereal and berries, or a couple scrambled eggs with cheese, for instance). That should leave me with plenty of calories for snacking at night which I cannot seem to get a handle on. WW calories are 6-7 points each and I think I have 19 points per day to play with plus the extra weekly points. I'm going to try that for maybe 3 weeks and then weigh myself. Hopefully that'll be less scary. I already know I've gained back the 20 lbs I lost last year which I'm really disappointed about.

I keep telling myself it'll be easier to eat sensibly when I don't have to drive my son to and from preschool at lunch time and pass by every fast food place in town. But I'm sure I'll have some other lame excuse next year.

I always fall into the same patterns. I get super psyched about my new idea for losing weight, be it going low carb, or running on the treadmill or just trying to eat sensibly. I think, what can go wrong? I go easy on myself, I allow myself to cheat. And I still fail. I'm getting sick of it.

I'm going on a cruise in June and I'm in my cousin's wedding the week after that. I really want to look good for both. But the instant reward of crappy food seems more enticing at the time.

First off, I have to confess whenever I see the words "Herp derp" I LOL forever. Extra LOLing if a picture or gif is involved.

Ok I really have nothing else to say but I can't just leave it at that...

Oh! My cousin is getting married and she asked me to be a bridesmaid! I'm so excited! I think I'm more excited about this than my own wedding. There are a bunch of bridesmaids and a maid of honor of course. I'm a little bit afraid of being left out of the loop, though, because they all live in the same area and I'm about 2 hours away (with a small child who's not in school all day, to boot) I hope they keep me involved. Although it would be cool to just show up and look pretty, LOL.

So now I have an extra motivation for my weight loss. Plus she's not getting married until 2012. I think they really planned it right. Get married near the end of the world so you don't have time to get sick of each other. :)

I'm sort of at an impass, here, with my diet. It seems like if I avoid one bad thing I find another. I thought I was doing great, keeping my carbs down and boosting my protein and then I found out I hadn't lost any weight in a week. My trainer thinks I'm eating too much sodium, so now I have to watch that too. It sucks. Thank goodness for myfitnesspal.