Good morning! I did better this week. That’s what I’m holding on to right now. Not great, but better. Better is good. Better can be the start of an upswing.

Monday, I didn’t exercise, but I did physical therapy.
Tuesday, my right hip was hurting really bad, so I didn’t do treadmill, but I did physical therapy.
Wednesday, I did 35 minutes of treadmill. Yay! And physical therapy.
Thursday and Friday were just physical therapy.

I’m still eating a lot of veggies. I’m revving up. I intend to exercise today, which will be twice for the week. I’ll take it. And next week, it’ll be better.

How are you doing?

My friend Katie, who posts here, continues to look great. She is swimming in her clothes, buying smaller sizes, and she said the most inspiring thing last night, so I thought I’d share… She said that when she signed up at Curves, her ultimate goal seemed unobtainable. But now, she feels she can really do it. I can’t hardly imagine anything more exciting than that. I think that for me, I’m dealing with some mental things that are acting as stumbling blocks. I think I’m afraid of failure, so I’m not trying as hard. It’s ridiculous. Thank you, Katie, for making it real. And good job!

I sincerely miss how good I feel when I’m exercising more, and eating really well. I want that energy and optimism back. There is no sane reason why I’m not doing it right now. Just the typical opposition that we all fight when doing something important with our lives.

UPDATE- I did it! 50 minutes on the treadmill! I feel soooooo good! Now I’m cleaning the mess Nate made in the garage so I can do weights next week.

Good morning! Another pathetic week for me. I have my list of excuses, as usual, but to say it outright, this week was a bust. Now, in my defense, I made efforts to eat healthy. Like, on the drive down to Oregon and back, I made sure to pack healthy food and snacks as opposed to fast-food-gut-bombing-it. I was so glad I did. No exercise occurred, however. And I am menstruating, which has to count for something! (I told you all I wasn’t pregnant).

This week! This week will be better! I’m going to do mahhhhhhvelous THIS week! I swear. I realize I’m going to have to prove it to you, because you’ve heard this before, and I will.

I’m still 218.5, which can only mean I’m losing muscle mass. But I can fix this.

How was your week?

And thank you all for the info on the parsnip yesterday! I had no idea it would be such a popular topic. I enjoyed reading all of your emails and comments. Thanks!

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad week! And I had just set a new goal, too! I haven’t exercised a lick, and I’ve been eating Valentine’s candy instead of meals. Not intentionally, it just happened that way. I did liberally share the chocolate with the girls, so most of what I ate was the fat free, sugary crap like gummy hearts and oversized conversation hearts, but bad, bad, bad.

Blah. I’m not being too hard on myself, but I am annoyed.

Fortunately, I haven’t gained any weight. This amazes me, but I’ll take it. So I’m still 218.5. It is my intention to kick by butt into gear this next week and do really well. The hard part is, I’m spending most of next week at my mom’s in Central Oregon. Vacations are never good for “diets”, but my mom eats healthy, and she has a treadmill now! Woo-hoo. So I have no excuse! The problem is that two of the four days I’ll be gone will be spent driving. You don’t burn many calories doing that, so my goal is to make sure I get treadmill time on both of my travel days. If I do it before I leave, both times, I’ll feel better and be more likely to get it in than if I wait and try to do it afterwards.

My body is doing way weird things right now. I think I might be premenstrual. First of all, I’ve been a bit snappy with family. Secondly, I’m literally BUSTING out of my bra. Hate it. Third, I feel puffy all over, and I’ve been unusually hungry for awhile now. No, I’m not pregnant. I think I’m just gearing up for a particularly hormonal cycle. I usually don’t have premenstrual symptoms, I’d say I only get this way, or some form of it, two to three times a year. Maybe eating all that blasted candy has magnified the situation. I feel yucky.

But we always try to end on a positive note over here, so while I totally sucked this week, and despite the fact that I’m going on vacation next week, I am optimistic that next week will be better.

(And I’m going to cheat here with some knitting content and tell you that I’ve started knitting my first pair of Koigu socks! I’m loving it. They are soooooooo pretty! This pair is for my Grandma, if she likes them, and I want one, too! I’ve finished the cuff to one, and am 2/3 done with the second cuff. Then I’ll move to one heel, then the other… one instep, then the other, etc. Soooooo much fun! Why did I think I don’t like socks?)

How was your week? I saw Miss Katie last night at knitting group, and although I didn’t notice, because I am lame, Julie brought to our attention that her (being Katie’s) jeans were practically falling off!!! Hooray for Katie! I’m so excited for you! You look lovely, girl. Keep it up. :-).

Good morning! I have a new goal to announce. I desperately want to be under 200 pounds by the time I’m 30. This means I have essentially 14 weeks to lose about 20 pounds. I am 218.5 today. I wanted to be thin by the time I was 30, but that isn’t possible at this point.

Can I do it? I have no idea. On the one hand, sure. It isn’t unthinkable to lose a little over a pound a week. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve lost that amount of weight in that short a period of time before. But that is my hope and my goal. Once I reach 200 pounds, I’ll be halfway to my ULTIMATE goal, which is 145 pounds, plus or minus.

This week started out well. I did 50 minutes on the treadmill Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday night, I also did a yoga class at church. I don’t really know what happened to the rest of the week, honest. But there wasn’t any exercise to speak of. I’m eating very well, however.

Anyone have a guess as to what this is?

Open sesame-

Mmmmm. Home grown alfalfa sprouts! These are SO good. I like to put them in burritos. If you put the cheese and sour cream between the cold sprouts and the hot beans, they stay crisp and yummy. That’s my favorite thing to do with them. Other than that, they’re always good on salads and in sandwiches. But the burritos….. Mmmmmmmm.

Now I’m going to shower and get ready for my spinning class! Let us know how your week went!

Good morning! I did pretty good this week, although the scale doesn’t acknowledge it. I exercised Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Additionally, I did weights on Wednesday. It felt good. I ate pretty well this week, with the exception of Tuesday evening, when Nate came home with Thai food and eclairs. I have no regrets. It was glorious. Overall, I’m very happy with my week.

On Thursday and Friday, I made the conscious decision to spend my exercising time knitting, because I wanted to get the Kathmandu shrug done before today. Well, I didn’t get it finished. We’re just about to head into Seattle for our big date. I am hurriedly working the last inch of garter stitch on the edge in an effort to wear it anyway. Today, it’s going to be a smart looking stole, wrapped around my shoulders, secured with a pin. Tonight, the garter stitch edge will be frogged, and the shrug knitting will continue. I may have difficulty frogging, because it looks really darned cute as a stole.

How was your week?

I’ve been taking it easy this week, not only because of my injection on Monday, but because I’ve been sick. Right now, I’m hoping that the pain in my right ear doesn’t become an ear infection. I don’t need one of those.

My back is feeling really good, for the most part. I don’t think it’s going to hinder my exercise like the last injection did. So now, I’m just waiting for this illness to pass, then I’m gonna hit the treadmill and the weights.

I feel optimistic. I’m ready to get going again. The end of last year was difficult, and I’ve been stagnant for awhile. Now, I’m chomping at the bit.

I made the yummiest chili on Wednesday, and I experimented. I used cracked wheat instead of the ground turkey I would normally have used. I cooked the wheat in chicken broth first, then fried it up with onions and garlic as I would have with meat. Then I added everything else… 1 chopped bell pepper, 2 c cooked black beans, 2 cups cooked great northern beans, 2 29 ounce cans of diced tomatoes, 2 T chili powder, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1 tsp cumin, some tabasco, and cooked it for 30 minutes on a low simmer. Yum, yum, yum. The wheat didn’t taste like wheat, but added a fabulous texture. And I was loving the cloves. We had it with cornbread, which I would have tried making with soft white whole wheat flour, but since I was sick at the time, I didn’t.

How are you doing?

Hmmm. It hasn’t been a great week for me. Like, at all. I think the stress of the appointment on Wednesday wiped me out, and I spent Thursday recovering, and since the week was already toast, I didn’t bother with Friday. I ate rotten. I didn’t exercise outside of letting loose at the disco Thursday night. I am drinking lots of water, so there’s something. I’ve been eating more salads, and on Thursday I took my vitamins. Does that count? Sheesh. Boom. Blah. (OK, that was kind of funny).

Monday is my second injection, and for those of you who remember, it took me about a month to recover from the last one. I’m hoping that this time I’ll at least do some light treadmill right away. I want to start seriously progressing again.

If I recall correctly, some of you have asked about recipes. I’m sorry to have dropped the ball. I’ve typed out some of my staples. Click the link at the bottom of this post to see them.

For more fabulous recipes, I highly, HIGHLY recommend this cookbook. We bought it at Barnes and Noble. Amazon also carries it here. This cookbook taught me how to cook. It has a full meal, including side dishes, for every day of the year. It is divided into days, (for example FRIDAY, July, week three), and it has weekly shopping lists that you can tear out of the back of the book. These are healthy meals. When I first started using the cookbook, I followed it day by day, but I’ve cooked so much of it now, I just go back to my favorites. They are easy to follow. They are healthy. He uses whole grains, lots of vegetables, and lean meats sparingly. Seriously, this book is amazing, and extremely practical.

Anyway, click the link for the recipes. Like I said, I did lame this week. I hope some of you did better.

For those of you wondering, yes my website had problems yesterday. It was up and down all day. What can you do? I also had quite a problem getting my site-related emails a week or so ago. It was really frustrating stumbling across new comments, and wondering how many more I had missed. If someone hasn’t been responded to that was expecting it, please try me again. It seems like things are working right now.

Well, I had a really great week. FINALLY!

Monday, I did 50 minutes of treadmill.
Tuesday, I didn’t have a lot of time, so I went out to do weights and realized that my Christmas stuff was still semi-packed and scattered all over the garage, so instead of kicking it out of the way, I actually put it away. That took all of my time, but now my garage is nice and clean again.
Wednesday and Thursday, I did treadmill again for 50 minutes.
Friday I did treadmill and WEIGHTS! It’s been too long since I did weights. For a long time after my injection, I felt much too fragile to do weights. Then we were well into the holidays and there wasn’t much time. Then there have been some sick weeks. Anyway, I’m glad to be back!

I’ve started doing my abs on the big exercise ball. I’m liking it. I’m also happy because being able to do them that way means my back is stronger. I still have to be careful, but it’s stronger. Hooray! When I first started physical therapy last year, we couldn’t find ANY form of ab work that didn’t hurt my back. Finally, he had me do some sort of twisting thing with the side pulleys on my weight system which worked them, but not to the extent that I wanted to. So this is progress.

I have eaten very well this week, and I’ve been drinking a LOT of water. I had a couple of splurges, like a yummy confection at knitting group on Thursday. No regrets. Unfortunately, after knitting group last night, I was starving, so I hit Arby’s on the way home. I ate too much, and I ate it late. So the scale isn’t quite as pretty today as it could have been. Monday, I was 221.5. I went down every single day. Yesterday, I was 217.5, and very happy about it. I did great all of yesterday until the gut bomb dinner at 9:30, so I know it could have been better, but this morning I was 219. Not bad. I’m still down 1.5 pounds from last week. And I’m under 220 again. I’ll take it.

How are you doing out there? Jenny got a treadmill! Hooray for Jenny! We wish you the best!

Good morning! We have a million things to do today, well not really, but we are running late, so I’m going to be brief. This week completely sucked for me. As mentioned in my post yesterday, I have felt awful all week. I have been in no condition to exercise. Unfortunately, I was in no condition to put any effort into eating well either. (How’s that for an excuse?) So, to sum it up, I ate like crap and didn’t exercise during the first week of this new year. On the plus side, it can only get better from here, eh?

So you all will have to be the stars of the show this week. How did it go? How are you doing? Anyone have a stellar kickoff to the New Year?