Wednesday weigh in week 85

Well my computer wasn't working at the time so I decided to use my phone. Needless to say this post is going to be pretty short ;-)

I have done one week of my August workout challenge. 

Yeah. 

I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. 

Either that or I might lose 10 or 15 pounds this month lol!

I think I will go for the latter. That's the goal anyway. I mean whose bright idea was it to do 200 squats all the time? 

Oh yeah. That would be me. 

Everything else seems to be going great. I'm still a little concerned that I might be doing the crunches wrong. But I have completely surprised myself with the fact that as of this morning I can do a 30 second plank. Oh. My. Goodness. That's huge! I mean who do I think I am? Hahaha. I have to repeat it tomorrow so I will see how it goes. I barely made it to 30 seconds this morning. But I knew even if I couldn't get to 90 seconds like the goal is, that I will go for as long as possible each day. 

So. I have been sweating like crazy and making sure I get my workouts in. Week one is done and now and I am on to week two. 

I found a little program that I can watermark my pictures. I got a little weirded out by a comment on a picture once and haven't posted a lot. So I might be silly copyrighting my picture but there you go. 

So this is the August workout. From Hell. Haha. That I created for myself! 

Wednesday weigh in week 83

Oh hey, looks it's WEDNESDAY and I am posting! Haha. I will have to set a reminder or something for the summer to remember to post, since I'm not weighing in.

I guess I don't really have too much to report since I only posted on Monday. I'm still plugging away with my squat challenge. I'm getting super excited about almost finishing this. Haha. And today ended up being a rest day, so I didn't have to wake up to do any squats. Tomorrow, however, I have to do 175. And really that's technically over 200 because of the double squatting! LOL! And I really prefer just to do them in the morning and my yoga, simply so they are out of the way. I had waiting on Monday to do them when we got back from the beach and it was almost 10 at night before I finished with everything. Geesh. I'm not planning on doing that again. Done, out of the way and showered. That's how I prefer to do them!

I think I'm getting antsy about not weighing in however. I reallly wanted to weigh in this morning, and that's kind of weird. Haha. I guess cheating at the beach was a bad thing. Although with the way I've been eating, I don't really want to know the last couple of days. But then again, I kind of do.

I went shopping for some shirts yesterday and came home empty handed. I didn't want to spend the money if I wasn't completely in love with the shirt. Which I suppose is good for me? I mean yeah, I'm trying to watch my money, but it's so dang hot right now, that I am looking for some more tanks and I'm not finding them. And I fall back into the mentality of 'but I am going to lose weight and I won't even be using this shirt next year.' So I walked away. I wasn't entirely happy with the shirts that I could have gotten and I didn't want to go up any bigger in size. I ended up getting some bras that were the same size even though I should have gone up a band size, but they didn't have any. So um any waist whittling exercises that work quickly anyone? Haha. 

I'm thinking for August that I'm going to come up with my own challenge. I really liked the idea of having a workout set up and just doing it. And that the squat thing was so simple. So I'm gonna go explore pinterest a bit and see if I can come up with something to do. Something that incorporates more working out, and not just squats ;) Although I am surprised that I don't actually mind them. Of course the ones with the kicks I kind of mind haha. But only cause I have to do more. And I will see what comes of 200 squats every time would do. I mean it takes me about 20 minutes to do them without an additional workout. Oy. I can see how people easily can do 2 hour workouts LOL. I just have to find a way to do it and do it in the heat. Maybe I will have to do an am/pm kind of thing. I will have to see.

So I guess I'm off to figure something out :0)

30 day Squat Challenge week One

Woo-hoo! Week one done for my squat challenge. I did *drum roll* 345 squats this week. I did them every day and even had a rest day. I like this because it's 3 days on 1 day off. It seems very manageable. But the weird thing is. After the 3rd day, my legs weren't sore any more. Um. Is that right? Does it only take that long? I'm either doing them completely wrong, or I'm doing some serious stretching right ;)

The good thing is I also did my Yoga stretching video every time I did the squats. First I was starting off doing it before, to get my legs warmed up before I did the squats. Then the last couple of days I have done it afterwards. But it's a nice addition I think to my challenge. Only 3 more weeks to go.

Yes I took my yoga mat to my friends' house when I went to Portland on a quick road trip. I did my squats and yoga in her living room! And I plan to do the same when I go to the coast next week. Going to be a little trickier to do it privately with 21 family members in the house. But I will find a dark corner somewhere ;)

I had a somewhat little non-scale victory this week :) I think for the first time in my life, I walked away from homemade ice cream on the 4th of July. In fact I wasn't overly "horrible" with my eating that day. All in all I ended up with 12 cups of water, a shaved ice, and 2 homemade coffees--meaning no milk :) Well and food too. But I didn't overeat while I was eating. And truly the only reason I walked away from the ice cream was because I wanted to be at home before the fireworks show started. Because the fireworks show in my new town just happens to be right up the street, all I had to do was go stand in my backyard. Perfect view. Kinda nice ;)

So here's to week 2 of the challenge. 415 squats this week. Sounds kinda scary when I look at it that way! Haha..I just realized it makes no sense for me to get to 200 squats the first time and then not keep doing them for a week. Maybe I will have to add a week of 200 a day challenge just to keep it up!

Have you ever done any crazy challenges?

30 day Squat Challenge

Oy. I think sometimes I'm a little bit on the loony side. Me? Take on a 30 day squat challenge? I. HATE. squats. As in like, generally refuse to do them. So naturally as I'm dinking around pinning things on Pinterest I came across this challenge: 30 Day Squat Challenge

The thing I liked about this thing is you aren't doing the basic squat 200 times. I mean how boring is that? I like that it's 5 different kinds of squats that you do in a rotation and work your way up to 200. Ahem. I mean over 200. Because naturally you will see in 2 of those squats you add a back kick and a side kick and you have to do 2 squats to equal one rep. Sneaky little FitSugar ;) AND the fact that you have a rest day every 4th day. So you do squats for 3 days and have a rest day. Nice.

So yesterday was Day One. I lined up my yoga mat and did my favorite 20 minute yoga stretching youtube video. Not gonna lie, it's the only yoga I do, then I watched FitSugar's instruction clip on how to do a squat correctly. Now honestly to me, this was the best instruction on how to do a squat that I have seen and it helped me greatly. I'm pretty sure that if I do a squat like that every time I'm not going to hurt myself :) You can watch it in the clip on the challenge page. It's in the basic squat section.

 And then I did my 30 squats for the day. Huffing and puffing, and not sure I did it right but decided that today I'm gonna need water. Haha. And I'm not really setting a time limit on anything. It's not like I am trying to hurry these. So if it takes me an hour, it takes me an hour. The point is to do it.

So why would I take on a challenge to do something I hate? Good Question! I have no idea. Well I suppose I have a little idea. I wanted a challenge so I could complete something. And now I'm smacking my head and my poor thighs for picking this one. But I need to get myself back on track with working out and I thought a challenge would be an excellent way to do that. And I can do this pretty much anywhere. And since I am going out of town twice in July I don't have to pack anything up to take with me. (Well except for my yoga mat, I think I'm gonna take that!) And by the end of it hopefully my knees and ankles will be a bit stronger and can handle more walking or running. That's really what I was looking for, something to strengthen my knees and ankles. And then I realized today that duh, July has 31 days in it. So by the end of the month I will be ecstatically done!!

And by then maybe I will have a nice little strength training routine come up with and I will continue to do squats on a regular basis. Maybe not 200 a day? Or every other day or whatever? But who knows? Maybe I will come up with a crazy LOVE for squats.

Other than that, I am still trying to reign it in. My no scale summer is a slow go. No I still haven't weighed myself but I haven't been 100% on track either. Last weekend was a busy full of coffee weekend, and no it wasn't soy. So by Sunday morning my heart literally hurt from all the caffeine I had. Because in any of that did I mention the word decaf at all? Nope. And I have learned my lesson once again and the word decaf will roll off of my tongue once again when I order coffee.  And I am going to take July to also ween myself off of dairy and gluten once again. If I can't go completely gluten free I will at least go mostly gluten free. At least 2 meals a day. But the goal is to go completely free by the time I am back to school. It just means a lot of separate cooking.

And I have heard the best way to get rid of stiff sore muscles is to go and workout again. :0) So that's the plan. Gonna hit day two of challenge here shortly. 50 squats, here I come!

What's your favorite challenge that you have done? Exercise or food wise? I wanna know!

Two weeks

Oh boy, I tell you what! Nothing screams extra motivation like realizing that the wedding you are going to next month is um, FORMAL! So that means I have 6 weeks. 6 weeks to lose weight before the wedding. I mean, I'm really glad I figured this out now so I have a better idea of what to wear, it just makes the entire process a little harder now trying to find a formal outfit and shoes.

Shoes. hate. me.

Literally.

I have super wide feet. I have to buy EE shoes. Do you know how hard it is to find those that actually look good on your feet? Oh and that don't cost a fortune? So I got on Zappos and found this super cute pair of shoes, and they were EE so I bought them on Saturday. I have no idea how but they got here today and they look HORRIBLE on my feet. Too long in the front but too tight on the side and squished my toes up where there would just be no way I could walk in them. Plus they looked so bad. I knew it the minute I tried them on. Luckily zappos has amazing customer service and I will be able to send them back free and try to get some new ones ordered. Thanks Zappos.

But the whole wedding thing led me to actually start this two week workout thing I found on Pinterest. It's basically 30 minutes of walking a day with 5 strength training moves. And some super lucky people lost up to 12 pounds and 22 inches doing this with a 1600 calorie a day diet. Now I haven't actually tried to count calories in a while. With not being able to eat all the foods that I am allergic to it kind of became why bother. I didn't want to know how little calories I was eating. So I don't think that's really a problem. But I should start to try to track again just so I know, but it's just complicated.

So at any rate I did my first day of the 2 week workout tonight. I finally got started right at 7:00. I procrastinated long enough. It took me right about 45 minutes and then I did my 20 minute stretching yoga video afterwards. I am really anxious to see what it does! I had mom measure me and I weighed myself this morning, so we will see what the next two weeks brings. I'm sure it will be full of me doing these workouts the wrong way. But they way I see it, if I'm doing something it's better than nothing at all right? Looking at a sheet of paper and trying to do the workout is so hard for me. I'm sure I got part of the movements right..but the other ones I might just be doomed with.

But it's a start.

I can tell you one of the things I absolutely want most with my weight loss is for my feet to shrink. I want me feet to be back at a normal size. I long and pray for the day when I don't have to buy my shoes online and pray they fit. I long to be able to walk into a store and try a pair of shoes on. Even if they were a normal "wide" width, I think I would be happy. They at least carry those in the store. I mean I can go buy running shoes from the runner's store, but I would love to be able to go try a pair of shoes on and have them fit! That is definitely one of my huge weight loss goals.

But for now...me and zappos are friends ;0)

Wednesday Weigh in Week 44

My oh my. Are we getting closer to the end of the year or what? My calendar tells me I only have 10 more weigh ins to go until the end of the year. My new goal is simple. To be under 200 pounds by then. I mean as long as I can manage 2 pounds a week I am basically there. If I have two 3 pound weeks I am golden :) This is where my last minute-ness starts to kick in and tell me to get moving. But I am moving :)

See? I manged to lose another pound :) I really don't know how? I'm thinking the apple cider vinegar pills might be helping. But at any rate! I'm taking it. So I have 23 pounds to go before the end of the year. That's a good mini goal.

I'm pretty sure when I came up with this Bloomsday goal that I wasn't thinking I would get sick right away. But here I am still sick :( I stayed home from work again today since I woke up hacking up my lung :( Needless to say the couch and my bed have been my friend today. As well as my neti pot. I think this sickness is the first time that I've actually seen liquid snot coming out of my nose. I mean it's quite amazing! TMI I know. But I'm certain it has helped me avoid a full on sinus infection. I don't quite know what's up with this cough. But it's gonna have to go!

Yesterday I started my Couch to 5k over. I was so sure I was going to be running in full on rain but by the time school ended it had cleared up a bit. It was still cold!! But rain clouds on one side of me and sunshine on the other. I had some sprinkles going on but I finished Day one! I surprisingly don't feel as out of shape as I was expecting to be. I think I'm gonna pick up pretty easily on it again. And hopefully fall into a good rhythm. I am however going to have to seriously be looking at ways to strengthen my knee. I never did do a good job at my physical therapy after my surgery when I tore my ACL/Meniscus. I don't have my full range of motion back. I don't know if it's possible. But I want to try. I need to feel like I can trust my knee and not think it's going to give out on me at any given time during my run. Any suggestions would be welcomed :0)

Today I cheated just a little in my workout. I know 3 days in and I think I'm cheating. I totally counted walking around Walmart doing my grocery shopping as my cardio for the day. But hey. I'm sick. And that was an outing! I walked around the store for almost an hour and had to put things in and take things out of the cart and car. Good grief! And then I did an arm workout video that I found on Sparkpeople's youtube page. I like that I can find a short (9 minutes!) video to watch to help me start toning up my arms. I'm not very consistent at strength training like I should. But that is one of the goals for this training plan is to add in strength. And it will probably increase as I go. I am actually weirdly looking forward to doing some yoga as one of my training days. I think it's going to help me gain some flexibility and take away some stress. And I know I'm not going to be able to do everything right away, but it will increase. And I'm only going to be doing it once a week anyway. So I am gonna start with a 20 minute thing I found on youtube. I'm impressed that Youtube has all these videos! Haha..it makes it easier to try things before purchasing them for sure!

But I have worked out for 3 days in a row! And that is helping me get back into the routine of things!!