Break up buddies

I'll be honest. (As usual).

I have been considering weight loss surgery. Specifically, The Lap Band. And again, to be honest, if I had the $14, 000 I would do it tomorrow. However, this post isn't really about that. Through researching the Lap Band, I stumbled across some a-frickin-mazing bloggers, and I thought I'd give 'em a little shout out.

If you're interested in learning about WLS, or you're just looking for some fun, fresh new blogs to read, check out the following peeps:

Catherine at Chronicles from Band Land.

Breanne at Lady Lap Band.

Lap Band Gal at Lap Band Gal!.

And one of my personal favorites, Amy at Once Upon A Time in the Land of Cheese and Sunkist.

Of course, I always have my favorite fitness bloggers to enjoy, too!

If you don't know Jack Sh*t, then you don't know... well, jack sh*t!

And a personal friend of mine who is (literally) kicking ass and taking names: Nicole at Future Healthy Girl.

So take a few minutes, head over into their little worlds and see what kinds of fun they've got going on!

Fresh and Fu-ull of Life!

The old bloggety blog here is going to get a design update soon! And not the rinky-dink job I did using blogger's design tool, either.

Nothing but the best for you guys. Nothing but the best.

A big shout out to my pal Tricia over at Tricia Nae Designs who is going to take on the task! Go visit her and get yourself a fancy-schmancy new blog 'do. (But let her get to mine first, she's a busy lady. lol) 

I'm sure it will be a while before Mr. Blog here gets his new digs, but I'm super excited that it's in the works.

Have a great Friday, lovelies!

47:30

Yes, it's unbelievable to me, too! But I have witnesses! :-)

Thanks for all the support, you guys! I can't believe I just did that!

I'll blog more about it later, but now I totally need a nap!

Well,

Blah.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Words of wisdom

I was an English major. Then I became a Communication major. To say that words are my life would be an understatement. I talk - a lot. I read - a lot. I use song lyrics as blog titles, for Pete's sake!

(Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mrs. B...what's the point?)

I have an affinity for elloquent speakers. JFK? Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt? Barack Obama? They move me. So now, I'm channeling my love for wisdom and elloquence by posting some of my favorite motivational and weight-loss quotes. I'm posting them here, and I will also post them on the side of the blog, so that they will be there to motivate for all eternity. (What? You think that's stretching it a bit?)

I found some of these through one of my awesome BHM ladies, and others, I found myself.

I hope you find some inspiration from them, as I have. ("Finish strong" is my mantra during the last few minutes of my workouts!)

Jillian Michaels:

• "Finish strong!"
• "Fitness to me isn't about a crunch or a push up - it's about taking your power back."
• "Unless you puke, faint or die - KEEP GOING!"

Unknown Author (if you know who said these, let me know):

• "Nothing worth having comes easily."
• "Never exchange the thing you want most for the thing you want in the moment" -BHM Misha's WW Leader, Phil. Thanks, Misha!
• "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels." - Weight Watchers - thanks Lyndsey!

Well known personalities:

• "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Never, never, never quit." - Winston Churchill
• "We can do anything we want to, if we stick to it long enough." - Helen Keller
• "The future depends on what we do in the present." - Mahatma Ghandi

People I've never heard of, but I liked what they had to say:

• "Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality." - Ralph Marston
• "One way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life." - Cyril Connolly
• "You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be." - David Viscott
• "Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." - Jim Ryun

And a Japanese Proverb thrown in:

• "Fall seven times, stand up eight."

Do you have any great motivational quotes that you'd like to share with the rest of the class?

"If you start me up, start me up, I'll never stop..."

("Start Me Up" by The Rolling Stones)

Oh, so much to talk about! Let's start with the weigh-in first. Now that I'm doing the 20/20 Challenge, my weigh-in's have switched to Fridays. And on Friday, I weighed...

254.7!

That's a 3.3 pound loss last week. And I have to say, it's all because of the BHMs. I started last week thinking, "okay, a new weight loss challenge, whoopie." I was still running really low on motivation and just generally not caring about the whole diet thing. Then, I met the girls, and I realized that these women are taking this very seriously. I quickly realized that if I was going to do this thing, I needed to DO this thing. These 5 other women are in it for the long haul, and I need to be to. Ladies, you were/are just what I needed to get my mojo back! Thanks!

So, with their help, I lost 3.3 pounds, and I want to get to that 5 pound mark by Friday. As silly as it is, I just really, really want that "I lost 5 pounds" blog button on Ashlee's site. LOL. Whatever keeps you motivated, right? Speaking of silly motivation, I bought stickers yesterday for my weight loss chart that Ashlee's friend Emily made us. Basically, there's a spot on the chart that lists out the numbers 1-20 in 1/2 pound increments, and you are supposed to put stickers over the pounds that you lose. I bought those little tiny circle stickers that teachers use. They say things like, "Way to go!", "Good Job!", and "You did it!".

I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty fun to cover up 0.5-3.0 yesterday. What can I say, I'm a kid at heart.

Okay, on to last weeks goals:

Plan a dinner with The In-Laws: (0/1) - yeah, I didn't get to that.
Make a dentist appointment: (0/1) - didn't get to that either. oops.
Do a good deed at least once daily: (1/7) - I didn't realize how hard it would be to find good deeds to do!
Take Metformin daily: (5/7) - pretty good...could be better.
Test blood sugar in AM daily: (3/7) - yeah, I'm really sucking at this testing thing.
Test blood sugar after dinner daily: (3/7) - see above
Stay under 2,000 calories daily: (6/7) - pretty darn close to rockstar status there.
Conquer the Dreaded Steps of Doom every day this week: (4/5) - so close! Damn you, Wednesday!
C25k Week 1, Workouts 1-3: (3/3) - Heck yeah, baby! Easy peasy...
Do three hours of cardio: (240-180) - Serious Rockstar status! One hour more than my goal!

I am really proud of those last four. Even though I fell a tiny bit short on the calories and DSoD, I accomplished the whole first week of C25k and even added more to the workout than what was required. I didn't have to work out yesterday, but I did. (Granted, I wasn't running any marathons yesterday, but I was moving my butt. And that counts for something.)

And now, current events:

Zumba is tonight! I am beyond excited! I just wish it wasn't Monday, and the days didn't drag by while I'm at work...5:15 here I come, baby. I'll let you know how it goes!

The Hubs starts back to school tonight, and I'm super struggling with this. The upside? I'll be bored without him, so I shouldn't have a reason not to get my butt on that treadmill. The downside? I've only got a husband on the weekends now. We need to get this first week under our belts and see how it goes. Wish us luck!

We're going to a cook-out on Saturday at Tonja/Jason's house. I need to figure out what I'm going to bring - I was thinking maybe a fresh fruit platter or something else healthy like that. The good thing is that four out of six of us at the cookout are on diets, so there should be lots of good, healthy stuff to pig out on. But, then again, there will also be margaritas. Hmmm...

Guess that's it - I've got to start thinking of this weeks goals, and then get to work.

Have a great week, all!

I love charts...

But I can't figure out how to make one in blogger. Bah.

At any rate, I'll post the contents of my latest and greatest chart: my tracking sheet. I basically made a chart that shows the date of an event in the future, how many pounds I should have lost by then (at 1-2 pounds per week), and what my scale weight should be by then.

Hopefully, this will give me an at-a-glance look at whether I'm staying on track with my goals or not. (I'd better be!)

So, this is not what my chart looks like, but it is what it says:

5/18:
Event: The Biggest Loser Final Weigh-In
Pounds Lost: 7-14
Scale Weight: 244-251

5/23:
Event: Family Wedding
Pounds Lost: 8-16
Scale Weight: 242-250

5/29:
Event: Camping Trip with The Hubs, The BFF/BF, Tonja & Jason
Pounds Lost: 9-18
Scale Weight: 240-249

6/7:
Event: Mrs. B.'s 1st Ever 5k Race!
Pounds Lost: 10-20
Scale Weight: 238-248

7/4:
Event: Friends' Wedding
Pounds Lost: 14-28
Scale Weight: 230-244

8/7:
Event: Ash is Fit's 20/20 Challenge Final Weigh-In
Pounds Lost: 20-40
Scale Weight: 218-238

9/12:
Event: Tonja & Jason's Wedding
Pounds Lost: 24-48
Scale Weight: 210-234

10/18:
Event: Our 1st Anniversary
Pounds Lost: 29-58
Scale Weight: 200-229

So, according to my calculations (math was never my strong point) it's still possible to get to my original goal weight of 200 or less by our 1st anniversary. I'm feeling a little uneasy about the probability of me averaging a 2 pound loss for the next 29 weeks straight, but I'm sure as hell going to try! It would be such a bummer to get really close and not make it there!

Tonight is my 2nd night of c25k workouts. I'm going to wait about another 1/2 hour before I do, since I ate not too long ago, and I don't want to re-visit my dinner. I was really proud of myself on Tuesday for finishing the whole c25k 1st workout - I even threw in an extra minute of running and 4 minutes of walking at the end! I don't know if I'll be able to do that tonight though - I definitely noticed that the Dreaded Steps of Doom were harder to conquer today...we'll see how well my legs hold up tonight.

In other news - I love my BHM ladies! We added another hot mama into the mix - welcome Tricia! That brings us up to 6, which is one of the largest groups Ashlee did, I think. The BFF's group is only 3 people. Anyway, I really enjoy our email chats and discussing The Biggest Loser, our husbands, and the eerie similarities we all seem to share. It's really kind of amazing we all ended up in the same group together - we couldn't have been better matched.

Aaaand...our first 20/20 Weigh In is tomorrow...eeek!

Rock on Team BHM - we're going to kick some bootie tomorrow, right?!

Right.

Okay guys, I think it's time to go from couch to 5k...wish me luck!

I'm off my rocker...

...and in my running shoes!

We're doing a 5k, kids! The BFF and I are starting C25k this week, and we are signing up for this 5k in June. I can't believe it!

And the best part? Most (if not all) of my BHM Mamas are doing their own C25k programs and signing up for a 5k in their areas, too! I am so psyched for this - I just can't even imagine how good it's going to feel to cross that finish line in 11 weeks...

Now all I've got to do is be able to run 3.1 miles. Easy peasy.

(Right!) But I'll get there, kids. I'll get there along with The BFF and The BHM's. We can do this!