March 23, 2011 By thea
It felt good to get back to it. My mood has improved dramatically over the past several days, in no small part to my March race.
I feel like I’m getting myself back to the spot I was physically a few weeks ago…which has helped my desire to fuel my body…and my desire to sleep…and my desire to have some reading downtime during the day.
It’s all connected, yo.
Food – 5 Fruits and Veggies every day, and pre-packaged snacks can’t have more than 5 ingredients. I got no less than 4 servings every day, and managed to get that 5th serving in a couple of days. I did much better with the snacking this week, too…4 out of the 7 days! Let’s pretend I didn’t makeout with peanut butter and pretzels one night, m’kay?
Fitness – 30 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week and 10-15 minutes of strength type stuff 5 days a week. I had a total of about 1.5 hours of cardio in this week, spread over 3 days and only 2 strength sessions. Better than last week but not where I want to be.
Fun/Focus – Read 1 or 2 chapters every day and get 7 hours of sleep every night. I got 5 chapters in this week, and I’m back to sleeping 7 hours EVERY NIGHT! Yay for antibiotics!!
March 16, 2011 By thea
What goes up must come down, right?
As amazing as Week 1 was for me, Week 2 was equally notsogreat. It wasn’t horrible, mind you. I didn’t go stark raving mad. I just do nearly as well.
Fine, I’ll just say it. I hardly met any of my goals. You happy?
A lot of obstacles stood in my way this past week. Some of them I put there myself, some of them got dropped in front of me. Either way, I didn’t handle the disruption very well.
Food – 5 Fruits and Veggies every day, and pre-packaged snacks can’t have more than 5 ingredients. Ummm, no. I got 3 F/V in every day. I even managed to get a 4th in on one day. I tanked on the snacks. Big time. I didn’t meet that goal once this week!
Fitness – 30 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week and 10-15 minutes of strength type stuff 5 days a week. Ummmm…no. I got 30 minutes of cardio in twice. In 7 days, I worked out twice. So sad. And I got ZERO strength sessions in. Zero. Sigh.
Fun/Focus – Read 1 or 2 chapters every day and get 7 hours of sleep every night. I only got about 4 chapters in this week. My sleeping has been abysmal. I’m not sure what the exact problem is, but I am hardly sleeping at night. And I’m a zombie during the day. I’m going to bed on time, I’m just not sleeping. It really sucks.
And so begins a new week. I’m going to make an effort to make it better. I’m the only one with the power to do it.
March 9, 2011 By thea
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to say this, but I’ve had a STELLAR week. WOOHOO! That was a long time coming.
It was tough, but I just buckled down and did it. Every day I had a choice. Hell, every meal I had a choice. And I think I did pretty daggone good.
Food – 5 Fruits and Veggies every day, and pre-packaged snacks can’t have more than 5 ingredients. I had 5 F/v on 3 days, 4 F/V on 3 days, and 3 F/V on 1 day. That’s a vast improvement over my 2-a-day habit. And I did not have one single snack all week that had more than 5 ingredients!
Fitness – 30 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week and 10-15 minutes of strength type stuff 5 days a week. I got 30 minutes of cardio in on 3 days and I got strength in on 4 days. Perfect? No. But progress!
Fun/Focus – Read 1 or 2 chapters every day and get 7 hours of sleep every night. 6 chapters read over 7 days and I got 7 hours of sleep EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Not all of it was restful (stupid head cold), but I was in bed for 7 hours. That’s huge.
And can I just say that my partner, Jen, is amazing? We have been e-mailing every day and I just love talking things out with her. So much of this journey is about SO MUCH MORE than food and exercise, you know? It’s good to hash things out with someone!
March 2, 2011 By thea
I kind of disappeared at the end of that last challenge, didn’t I?
NOT TO BE REPEATED THIS TIME, I ASSURE YOU!
So, I’m super-duper excited for this challenge. I have an awesome partner (everybody say hi to Jen…. HI, JEN!) and we are going to tear this challenge UP!
I’M IN LOVE WITH MY CAPS LOCK TODAY!
Anyhoo, Jen and I are choosing to not focus on that pesky little number on the scale for this challenge. I’m still cruising along in Maintenance Mode and Jen has kicked her scale to the curb because she’s focusing on her overall health.
As a team, we decided we would each come up with three goals for our self: a food goal, a fitness goal, and a fun/focus goal. Of course, we each picked more than three. : P
Here’s mine: Food – 5 Fruits and Veggies every day, and pre-packaged snacks can’t have more than 5 ingredients. Fitness – 30 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week and 10-15 minutes of strength type stuff 5 days a week.
Fun/Focus – Read 1 or 2 chapters every day and get 7 hours of sleep every night.
So there you have it! It’ll be a challenge to find pre-packaged foods with 5 ingredients or less, but I guess that’s the whole point right? I’m challenging myself to pay attention to what goes into my mouth. I already know of one cracker that only has 3, and I was a little crushed to find out that my favorite snack has 7 (I thought sure it only had 5), but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.
August 4, 2010 By thea
O.K. So I’m a little late to the game.
Again.
That’s par for the course, people.
Anyway. I have goals, oh yes I do! I love a good goal. Don’t you feel like you are kind of wandering aimlessly without a goal. It’s like shopping without a grocery list, and we all know that THAT never ends of well, right?
For the next 31 30 28 days, here are my goals…
- Miss no more than 4 training sessions over the next 30 days.
- Only snack on foods with 5 ingredients or less.
- Be in bed for 7 hours a night.
I am going out of town next week and then we have visitors the week after that so I am going to need some REAL motivation to keep going on my training.
I’m a sucker for a good snack. But I don’t snack enough on simple stuff. So I’m going to limit my snacks to fruits, vegetables, or minimally processed foods. The one exception to this will be the fig newtons I eat during long bike rides and bike/run workouts.
Pretty self-explanatory. The kids aren’t the only ones who need to start practicing getting up early for school. : )
As always, I my ongoing goal is to stay in my magic weight range of 153-157. My weight last week was 159, but I had a triathlon plus two birthdays so you’ll have that.
This morning I weighed in at 157. Back in range, woohoo!!
Wanna follow along? I have a goal tracking spreadsheet, dontcha know?
January 27, 2010 By thea
I feel pretty good about myself, thankyouverymuch.
Despite spending last week in Disney World (and subsequent confessions), I weigh LESS than I did two weeks ago. I seriously couldn’t ask for much more than that.
Besides doing my best to stay on top of my goals (although I had a few slip ups last week), exercise is definitely becoming a more routine part of my life. On top of the running, I’m throwing in some yoga every once in a while and I’ve also started doing the Hundred Push Ups program again.
Is it wrong to see something as a necessary evil yet kinda enjoy it all at the same time?
Another thing that has helped? I’m getting more sleep. Thanks to my husband (I should probably write a post on that), I am in bed before midnight every night now. That makes such a huge difference in how I feel every day.
Anywho, this weeks weigh in puts me at 4 weeks on my maintenance ticker (see it over there on the right? I thought a butterfly was fitting).
One month down. Eleven to go.
Bring it.
January 13, 2010 By thea
After getting a solid 7 hours of sleep last night (a rarity these days), I stepped on the scale and hesitantly looked down.
You see, I’ve had a less than stellar week. I slipped up on two of my challenge goals and does anyone else think that Christmas candy rivals Halloween candy in terms of sheer volume?
I may have indulged in a Hershey Kiss. Or 50. Some may have been slathered in peanut butter. I’ll never tell.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that while I gained, I am still in my healthy range….so it’s all good.
I have a bit of a challenge on the horizon. My family leaves on Sunday afternoon for vacation. We will be spending a week at Walt Disney World and I’m a little nervous. I hope I don’t let myself go too much. The resort has a 1.5 mile running path so I’m bringing all of my running stuff. I just need to actually…you know…RUN!
January 5, 2010 By thea
O.K. I seriously laughed out loud when I saw the new button for this! NO BULL! LOVE IT!!
So when I got up this morning, I could really only think of one thing I needed to confess. I feel like I’ve been doing pretty good, actually!
But my sleep habits are abysmal. I get about 5 hours of sleep a night. Which is very hard to function on the next day.
When I was out of town last week, I never stayed up past 11:30pm. I was in bed on most nights by 11pm. Then the first night home, I was up until 12:45am. Then it was 1am. Last night was 1:30am.
Good times!
And you know how when you are tired, it’s a little harder to make rational decisions?
Say, you know you should get a salad or grilled chicken sandwich from McDonald’s.
But instead you get a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Fries and a Diet Coke?
With a side of Cinnamon Melts.
So, I guess I should confess that my lunch choice today was less than stellar, too.
But other than that I’ve been really, REALLY good. HONEST!
December 14, 2009 By thea
I haven’t confessed my sins in a while, so now’s the time. There’s only 8 minutes left in this day so I better get crackin’. Make that 7 minutes.
- I haven’t been logging my miles. I know there’s no way I could even come CLOSE to what others have been logging…but at least I could have tried.
- I haven’t counted a single WW point since…um…Thursday? Toying with the idea of not counting but still doing WW. Haven’t decided yet. Kind of tired of counting points.
- I still stay up to late.
- I made a dessert (technically, Dave made it, but whatever) this week that called for 2 sticks of butter and 4 eggs. Basically it was a yellow cake with a chocolate chip cookie crust and then smothered in chocolate frosting. I only had a teeeeensy bite…and I hated it. So, of course I had another teeensy bite.
- I don’t push myself enough on the treadmill. I feel like I run too slow and quit too easily.
- Despite all that, I feel as if I may just have a loss come Wednesday.
That’s all I’ve got. Can you remind me if I’ve forgotten something?