The Biggest Loser & Meal Planning

Good Sunday evening readers!  I hope everyone has had an enjoyable weekend and if you've experienced some rough weather lately, or will be, that you stay(ed) safe.


I have two really exciting things to tell you about; 1. The Biggest Loser competition at work 2. Meal Planning.

1.  My employer is hosting a Biggest Loser competition for the second time now.

The point of the program is to obviously be a motivator for weight loss for the employees at the company.  But it also part of the Wellness program so completion, with some success, of the competition means those on the insurance through the company earn so many wellness points towards their reduced rate (I think?).  I don't really pay attention to that part of it as I am still being insured under my mom's plan so I don't need the wellness points.

I did not participate in the competition the first time it was offered but decided to after my mom mentioned it to me Wednesday night last week.  I was pretty excited about the program because not only would it give me accountability with weekly weigh ins but it would also serve as motivation because of the great opportunity for prizes.

I'm talking weekly Target gift cards for $100!

The grand prize is AN ALL EXPENSE PAID TRIP FOR 2 TO THE HARD ROCK HOTEL IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC!

How absolutely freaking awesome is that right?!

Well, sadly my excitement for the program dwindled when I got the rules for the program.

Thanks to my part-time employee status at work I am not eligible to win the weekly prizes or the grand prize for being The Biggest Loser.  I was pretty fired up about that when I heard the news from my mom.  I thought about emailing the director of benefits in HR (who's been organizing the competition) because it doesn't seem fair that just because I'm part-time that the weight I lose should deserve any less of a reward.  So far I haven't gone through with the email though.  I haven't even really begun to type it up, only thought about it in my head.  I doubt I will write and send one but it still makes me pretty fired up that now this program will serve as no real motivation for me, other than what I'm already motivated to do.

Moving on though...

2. Meal Planning

I forgot to mention my mom decided to sign up for The Biggest Loser through work as well.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to bring up meal planning and actually measuring the servings we are going to eat.

I printed off two SparkPeople articles I thought would be helpful to us and let her read them.  Friday night we sat down and planned out what we would eat for the whole week.  Saturday we went to the grocery store and stuck to the list I had prepared the night before other than a few things for my dad and brother who are not watching what they eat as closely as my mom and I are.

So far so good!  We have the plan and today we stuck to the plan for the most part.  We ran into trouble at dinner when I found we didn't have broccoli in the freezer like we had thought and we decided to not have potatoes.  But other than that today was pretty awesome as far as sticking to the plan.

Now, the trick for tomorrow is for me to wake up when my alarm goes off (no snoozing) so I can prepare and eat my breakfast along with grabbing my lunch for at work.  My mom and I made Beef Noodle Soup today to serve as some of our lunches for the rest of the week.  I have never tried it before so I really hope I like it!

Because of the meal plan, and wanting to know how much I'm really eating, I've been pretty involved in the cooking process today which is awesome.  Definitely need to gain some skills in the kitchen so I can handle cooking completely for myself when I'm no longer in mom and dad's house and am on my own.

It makes me feel pretty darn good to finally be planning and measuring my meals!


I'm off to do some homework I have been avoiding all weekend.  Wish me luck!

You can't sip whiskey gotta drank it!

When I was trying to come up with a title for this post my new favorite song popped into my head and I thought it was kind of fitting.  The title comes from Justin Moore's song Hank It off his album Justin Moore.

So it's been a while since my last post about the Good News & Bad News.  A lot has happened and I'll do my best to summarize all of it without boring anyone to death.

First of all, that good news that I mentioned in my last post that I kept a secret from y'all will be revealed this weekend.  Get excited because I know I am!

Three days after my last post I celebrated my 21st birthday.  My parents and I were on the road so when we had the opportunity to eat a Red Lobster we jumped on it.

[caption id="attachment_195" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Red Lobster's wait staff singing Happy Birthday to me."][/caption]

Wow I don't know how I ever let myself leave the house like that.  Yikes!  But anyways, I ordered my first legal alcoholic drink and was carded for the first time, enjoyed some awesome shrimp, and some awesome dessert.  Red Lobster apparently does nothing but sing when it's your birthday.  No free dessert or anything, boo!

I went out with only my mom and my aunt that night for drinks.  We ate dinner at Texas Roadhouse and bar hopped our way home.  No, I didn't enjoy 21 shots but I still had a good time.

Following the birthday weekend I only had a three-day work week as it was time to hit the road to Country Fest 2011.  I don't want to say too much about it now since I have a post in the works with pictures!  But you can read about who I got to see here.  I will share that I fell in love with Justin Moore after seeing him at Country Fest :)

I came back to work on Tuesday, nothing exciting happened that week.

This past weekend I did some fishing with my dad, some farm work, and a lot of reading!  Oh yea, I got a Kindle for my birthday and have been loving it.  I just wish they had more free books haha!

Now it's Thursday night and I've been hoping and thinking it's been Friday pretty much all week.  Like I mentioned earlier my secret can be revealed this weekend and so of course I am looking forward to the weekend more than usual.  Anyone want to take a guess at what my secret is?

In a nutshell these past couple of weeks have been full of fun and not so much healthy living.  That's all changing this month though.  I've once again recommitted to leading a healthier lifestyle and using www.sparkpeople.com to help me.

What's coming up:

Surprise Revealed

Country Fest 2011

I'm getting back into the blogging world so if I've been missing from your comments section be prepared for me to make a comeback!  And if you're a reader of my blog I hope you come back too!

 

Update

Well I have some pretty freaking awesome news for you bloggy friends...Duke has been improving since his visit to the vet on Tuesday!!!!  You have no idea how happy this makes me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts this week!!  I feel so blessed to have such awesome readers, and dare I say friends, who are there when I need them for their support and prayers!

Tuesday he was re-checked by the vet and had full blood work done to check everything to make sure there was nothing else going on with his body.  The disease he has become a bit more serious though as we were informed that it's a lot like lymes disease was about 20 years ago when it was first discovered; information and treatment plans were always changing so they don't know how exactly to treat or how serious the disease is.  The vet informed us that they have lost dogs from this disease.  Scary stuff!

He was prescribed a steroid medication to start on that night and he's been improving ever since.  My mom called to give the vet the update (as we were told to do) and tomorrow we are lowering the dosage from 1 and 1/2 tablets to 1 tablet every 12 hours for two days and then to a 1/2 tablet.  If he would start going backwards in his progress we go back to the dosage that was helping.  We have to call again on Tuesday to update them on how things are going.  Fingers crossed that things keep improving and soon my family has our dog back!

Due to the crazy emotions throughout this week and caring for Duke I've been a bit distracted in the evenings so I haven't been writing as I would have liked to.  I thought summer would lead to consistent posting but so far not so much :(  I'm going to work on that!

On the weight loss front...

I've determined that losing weight on my own, away from Sparkpeople, just isn't working for me.  As of Wednesday I've logged in every day, been tracking my meals as much as I can (which really isn't very much), and while I haven't "officially" worked out yet I have been thinking about it a lot more than I had been.  I really want to make progress this summer and not look back.  It feels like forever since I've felt good about myself and where I'm at/headed.

Anyways, that's a brief update of what's going in my life.  I'll bore you ( ;) ) with more posts soon!

New Goals

Sorry for the non-existent blog posts lately.  Procrastinating on school work has just caught up with me recently so I've been super stressed out.  I have no excuses though, I brought it on my self.

But in other news I have set some new mini-goals for myself.  I used a handy-dandy tool on Spark that helps you figure out how much weight you can lose by a certain date to come up with these goals.  I know I want to lose weight by my 21st birthday which is June 18th so I put that date in and that I wanted to lose 1 pound/week.  Spark's calculator says I can be 179 pounds by then if I work out 3 days/week for 30 minutes/day.  The next goal date I gave myself was September 6th when I start the fall semester of school.  Spark says I can be 168 pounds by then.  And the last goal date I gave myself was Christmas.  According to Spark I'll be able to be 152 pounds by then.  Only 2 pounds away from my goal of 150 pounds!

If I lose more than 1 pound/week I'm definitely OK with that (of course!) but I would really like to lose at least 1 pound/week.

Now my plan of attack to lose that 1 pound every week will look something like this:

• Nutrition ~ Watch portion sizes, eat more fruits & veggies, drink 8 glasses of water, limit soda (HUGE battle for me), limit desserts or at least portion sizes of them


• Fitness ~ Cardio 3 days/week (walking, running, EA Active), weights 4 days/week (one day each: full body, upper, lower, core)

I know I have made plans before and just not followed through but I'm getting really frustrated with myself for doing absolutely nothing to achieve my goals to live a healthier lifestyle.  I'm going to work on channeling this frustration into motivation to follow through with this plan.

No more putting it off!  I will start this afternoon when I get home from work.  I plan to run as much as I can for 1.89 miles with my dog Duke.  Tomorrow will be a day of weights (I forgot what part of the body it is though lol) and Friday I will hit up some cardio again.

I can do this and I need to not use school as an excuse.  School should be an excuse to work out as I am currently stressed out about it and working out will be a good stress reliever.

I'll do my best to check in and update y'all with my progress soon!  School isn't over for me until May 19th so bear with me until then if my posts are scarce or super short.

Until next time...

How Bad Do You Want It?

Hey there blogger friends!  I hope you all had a fantabulous weekend!  Hopefully you had good weather.  Wisconsin's weather got a little crazy yesterday.  It was cold and raining/snowing.  Today sounds like it will be our last nice day with a high of  45*F until Thursday.  Tomorrow is supposed to only get up to 36*F and is going to be ice to rain with wind and Wednesday isn't going to be much better (probably worse actually) with a high of 28*F and a wintery mix to snow with wind.  Winter just does not want to let go yet I guess ;)

Enough about the weather...

Nikki recently wrote an amazing post about weight loss (read it here) that got me thinking about my own weight loss journey, or lack there of.  It was specifically this line that made me think, "But before anyone ever starts a weight loss and exercise program, you have to want it."  I question whether I really want to change my lifestyle and lose weight.

If someone randomly asked me if I wanted to lose weight my answer in a nanosecond is yes.  There is no doubt in my mind that I want to lose weight.  As Nikki also wrote, "I was unhappy, unhealthy, and out of shape." only I am unhappy, unhealthy, and out of shape.

So why am I questioning if I want it?  Because I am heavier now than I was in 2009 when I first decided to lose weight.  I have made no progress in my weight loss.  If I want to lose weight why haven't I committed to eating healthier, and exercising regularly?  That is exactly what I ask myself every time I look in the mirror.  To be honest I don't know why I haven't committed myself to changing my life for the better, or I at least haven't figured it out or admitted it to myself.

I apologize if I sound like a broken record whining about not losing weight when I'm not doing anything to change that.

As you all begin to know me better and better you will start to pick up on the fact that I relate things in my life to songs, a lot.  Of course this situation is no different.  The song that I think fits this situation in my life really well is How Bad Do You Want It? by Tim McGraw.  It is exactly what I need to ask myself...how bad do I want to change my life for the better?  Obviously the more I want to change the more dedicated I should be.  Right now I'm a bit off-balance, I'm not as dedicated as I should be.  I am going to change that, I want to be balanced.

I am a member of the weight loss site Sparkpeople but lately haven't been using the tools available to me.  To start the process of dedicating myself to weight loss I am going to re-set my account on Spark so I can start fresh with my nutrition and fitness log and my goals.

Here are some goals I have for myself with re-setting my Spark account, and with re-dedicating myself to losing weight.

• Nutrition ~ I will do my best to log everything I eat.  I always struggle with logging meals at home because I do not measure my food.  It may sound stupid because my family supports me but I do not want to measure my food in front of them.  It makes me feel awkward just thinking about do it in front of them.  So, I will do my best to estimate.  I will work on eating smaller portion sizes and limiting my junk food, including soda.


• Fitness ~ I will commit myself to 3 days/week cardio of at least 30 minutes and 2 days/week strength training of at least 15 minutes.


• Blogging ~ I used to try to blog on Spark but since starting this blog I think I will not set a goal to blog in both.  This blog will be my primary blog with maybe occasional posts on my Spark blog.  I am going to commit myself to blogging 5 days/week.  I am not going to specify what my posts have to be about; they could be nutrition, fitness, or just my life.  This is basically what I am doing now so it will not be something I need to change other than making sure to blog at leat 5 days/week.

Well there it is, my plan of action.  I am going to re-set my account on Spark tomorrow morning so I can start fresh with a new weigh in.  This does not mean I am putting off what I can do today.  I will begin to work on my nutrition and fitness today, not tomorrow.

I can do this.

I want to do this.

I will do this.

Until next time =)...