TOTAL POUNDS LOST (Season 5): 34.9

Friday, September 25, 2009

Week 6 RESULTS

Nice job Ali!!!

Only 2 more weeks! How close are you to reaching your goal! You can give up anything for just two weeks right? So give it up and in two weeks you can celebrate!!! I haven't had sugar in 3 weeks and it has definately paid off! And when I reach my goal that will be all I eat that day!!!Jocey

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Weigh-in Week 6

Hi everyone! Happy Thursday. Don't forget to weigh-in and leave us your weight and/or points!

Carrie

Friday, September 18, 2009

Week 5 Results

I am so sad to be posting results without everyone's weights this week! I hate doing that. But here it goes anyway...

Team A:



Awesome job Ali, we almost caught you that time. One of these weeks I might try to beat you...maybe. :) Good job!

Team B:




Holy percents! Jocey, how did you DO that? Awesome job! Everyone near the top is up there for the first time this round, and I know it took a lot of work! (or illness, haha Mom...) That is really exciting. I love to see how the husband/wife teams typically perform well together. That proves that it is a team effort as a family. I know it is something that you can do on your own, but it so wonderful to have support (or competition) in the same house!

Three weeks left everyone, keep it up!
Carrie

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Weigh-in Day!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Mine has been crazy and is promising to get crazier. Don't forget to weigh-in tomorrow so we can post results on time. (Jocey, I think I'll be ok to post this week, but I'll let you know if that changes.)

Thanks everyone!
Carrie

Speaking of Biggest Loser


Did anyone watch BL last night? I was sobbing. I always get all emotional when I watch BL, but last night I was especially emotional. Good thing my husband was downstairs playing Halo while I was having a sob fest for 2 hours. It's totally motivating to see these men and women change their lives and transform themselves. Every episode I recommit to working harder. My moto is if they can do it, so can I.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

A little insight

This little contest has been so aspiring to me! The last week I have had many people tell me how good I look. I don't know if I'd go that far to say that about myself. I'm still getting used to this me. But, I'm not gonna lie. It's a little embarrassing. But you know what? I worked hard. I ran, I sweat, gave up foods I really enjoy, ran and sweat some more. I have found in the last few years that when I get to my goal weight I don't keep it up. I always keep exercising, but then I start eating the foods that put me in my fat jeans to begin with. I'm pretty close to my goal weight now and this time I'm going to keep it up. It's going to feel good to buy a pair of skinny jeans to wear with the new shirt I decided to buy myself this past week. Who's with me?

Friday, September 11, 2009

Week 4 Results

Nice job Ali! She sure sets the bar high!
Alright everyone, this is the half way point. So take a look at your goals and decide now what you need to do to get there. I wanted to lose 10 lbs, which means I have a hard road ahead, but I can do it, and so can all of you!(Jocey)

Nice job Kasey!!!
May I add nice job to Heidi for reaching -10lbs!
And to Jimmy for reaching -20lbs.
That is incredible and very exciting! Thanks for bringing it!
This is so much fun, and if it hasn't been, then try a little harder this week to get motivated and I promise it will be worth it!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

healthy recipe

OK, so normally I hate salmon, unless it's raw and rolled up into a sushi roll (super yum!), so I thought I would hate this recipe. Turns out, I like canned salmon too. Go figure.


Salmon-Salad Half Sandwich

What you need
3 oz. canned wild salmon
1 tsp. light mayonnaise
2 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped bell peppers
1 slice whole-wheat bread
arugula
red onion

What to do
Mix salmon and mayonnaise together; add lemon juice, bell peppers and chopped celery. Place salmon mixture on bread for an open-faced sandwich; top with arugula and red onion.
Makes one serving.

Nutritional info: 260 calories, 9.5 grams fat, 7 grams fiber, 21 grams protein, 23 grams carbohydrates

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Weigh in Reminder!

Hey everyone! Don't forget to weigh-in tomorrow (or today, depending on when you get the email.) I hope you all had a great week.

Carrie

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Week 3

Hi guys! I'm going to make this short and sweet because I want to go to bed. Thank you SO much for all weighing in today! I think this may be the earliest I've ever gotten results out! I'd like to excuse Evan and Lindy, they are out of town and can't get to their scale this week. Here are your results...

TEAM A:




Great job again Ali! Good luck cutting back on those servings, Ali. I feel your pain.


TEAM B:



Awesome, Jimmy! I was going to say something to Heidi about almost making it, but since she lost to her husband, it can't be that bad. Or maybe it is! :) Good job to both of you!

Thanks again everyone. You are making this a great round and I love all the participation! I hope the results were a little easier to read this time. I'm playing around with ways of doing it to try to make it better. I was doing it using a "screenshot" before, but I think different computers have a different quality for that and this laptop I've been using isn't so great. I'm going to try one more thing next time and see if its the way to go. But until then, I hope you can read it a little better.

Good luck this week everyone!

Carrie

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Weigh-in Week 3

Hey everyone! Tomorrow is the weigh-in! Please leave your weight/points as a comment here! I hope you're all as prompt as you have been. (Even those of you who are out of town-hint hint.) ;)

I'd also love to hear how some of you are doing with the goals you set at the beginning or recently! Maybe some new goals like some of you post...

Carrie

Comments

Hey guys! I just updated who receives emails for comments from the blog and who gets them forwarded from me. I guess I had a bunch of people from last round getting all the emails! Poor people! (Because we're really chatty this round...) Anyway, a bunch of you will start receiving emails straight from "Skinny Jeans" when people leave a comment, so that's cool. As I've said before, if you find these emails annoying, please let me know. Especially if you're really good about checking the blog and don't need them. I know they are really good for me, but I'm kinda runnin' the thing.

Thanks!
Carrie

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Free Day - a short story (relatively speaking)

I don't know about the rest of you doing this point competition, but I've been looking forward to Monday since...well...the last free day on the calendar! It's an unfortunate fact that once I get a little taste of sugar (especially chocolate...ohhh especially chocolate), my system grabs hold of the general idea and begins to
crave
crave
crave
for days to come after I indulged! The first week of the competition, I didn't eat ANYTHING "bad" and I felt awesome. I felt motivated, I didn't feel deprived, I worked out like a mad woman and I sat at the good side of a mood swing the whole week.
Then the second week came and I did...okay. I let myself have a taste of this here, a bite of this there...and by the end of the week I found myself taking down five cookies in one sitting. Frozen cookies at that. Because my mother-in-law made cookies she makes the BEST cookies. So, since I was refraining, I put five of them in a little baggie and froze them so someday I could unfreeze one of them for a free day when I wouldn't lose points for it.
Yeah, it didn't quite go like that. I wanted all five of them and I wanted them NOW.
This last week, I have been making more of an effort again but those thoughts of chocolate are swirling around in my mind constantly, being whipped up into a frothy chocolate mouse...being melted down and hardened into candy bars...finding their ways into things I happen to be eating ("I wonder how chocolate chips would taste on this salad?"...)
It's sad, really. But I refrained, knowing full well I had a free day coming up where I could have myself a taste of my obsession and not pay the price for it.
Well, maybe a quarter of a pound gained but at least not five points lost!

So, Monday rolls around and I giggle to myself throughout the day...when I am forcing down raw veggies and chugging water, I'm thinking about that lovely window of time later in the day when it will be my time to indulge. Picturing a quiet moment after the kids are in bed and I can lose myself in something rich and decadent while my husband watches something on the discovery channel, the baby monitor silently scans from room to room, and I am curled up on the couch in comfy pajamas, ignoring the toys and crums of the day surrounding me.
This is what had me giddy through half the day.

Mostly because I was ignoring reality.

Here's the thing - - we don't keep sweets in the house. I have three children - 4, 3, and 2 and there is really no reason whatsoever that I should trash their bodies with junk. So, I don't. It's as simple as that.
This unfortunately interferes with the fact that I still like to sometimes trash my body with junk. Darn double standards.
So, on a day like Monday...when I fully intended to have a little sumthin-sumthin, I must rely on my dear husband to swing by the store on his way home from work. Because, to be honest, I rarely venture out with my children by myself. Maybe when they're older. Maybe when they were younger. But somehow, right now, we've landed at just the perfect combination of ages/phases/personalities that taking them out is a real venture into you-know-where.

I love them.
I just don't take them out by myself. :)

And this would especially be true if I took them to a grocery store and tried to pull off buying something sweet for me and letting them witness it when, frankly, they are not going to get any.
MY free day treat.
So, I mention to my husband over text message that I am looking forward to some chocolate that evening.
...
"Do we have chocolate there??" he says
"Um...not yet." I says
"That's what I thought" he says
and then
"I know just what you need."
(having been through pregnancies with me, he really does unfortunately know where I turn when I need a fix)
...
Ooh, I was getting excited.
It's sad, really.

So, on we go throughout the day, the deliverance of the chocolate at least arranged.
Though my mind was a bit troubled, knowing that I still wasn't quite set up for guaranteed success in the snacking department...
JC would get home from work at about seven or seven thirty, depending. The kids go to bed by eight. But I always hate to cut their short time with daddy any shorter, so it's more like between eight and eight thirty on these late nights.
Skipping ahead, I knew I wanted to be in bed by ten thirty. We had started staying up really late for a while...not collapsing into bed until close to midnight EVERY NIGHT for way too long. When he's getting up for work at five thirty and I'm being dragged out of bed around six or six thirty by at least one child, I just knew we needed to sleep more if we wanted to be healthier and happier. SO, for this round I chose a set, earlier bedtime as my "addiction," or behavior that I wanted to change. For every night that I go to bed by ten thirty, I give myself the allotted five points. It has made a tremendous difference, I must say. So anyway, I knew that I wanted to be sure to be in bed by ten thirty, as is my usual goal. (I make an exception and go ahead and eat the points on Friday nights because that's our date night, whether in or out, and we want the extra time together).
So, once the kids are in bed Monday night, I saw myself having a window of time ranging from eight thirty to ten thirty to eat my treat.
That's a pretty good size window.
But then...oh yeah...I need to actually eat it before nine or I lose points for eating after nine. Big points. So, okay, just that one half hour there.
But shoot, I say to myself...I workout after they go to bed. The latest I'll get started is eight thirty...the shortest my workouts ever are is an hour...so then I'm looking at...nine thirty...can't eat that late...
Hmmm.
OH! I get excited, realizing that I can eat between bedtime and the start of my workout. But actually...once I thought about it...I always feel sick if I eat anything too close to my workout. Plus, if I do any yoga at the end like I like to...downward dog becomes upward chocolate free day treat...we don't want that...
Huh.
It was looking like I had some prioritizing to do.


Let me go ahead and skip to the end of this story - -
It was 9:05. I had just finished a forty-five minute workout. Barely landed past the cut-off.
But my four year old was still getting out of bed wanting to chat, be comforted, be put back in bed, etc. So by the time I was actually eyeing my now late-night treat, I decided I might as well shower so as to fully enjoy the experience free from workout grime.
So I did.
Then I was staring at a kitchen counter that held a Snickers Dark (oh yum), a Twix, and Reese's cups. Because the gas station by JC's work had these on buy two, get one free, so he brought home options.
Hey, I may not have been going high class with my snacking on this particular night but I didn't care!
Now to choose...
hmmm...
The problem with me is, I'm an all or nothing kind of girl. Black and white. Angelically good or fiercely evil.
Can you guess which direction I chose that night?

. . . . .

About midnight, tossing and turning in bed, feeling upset that I had been in bed since, you guessed it, ten thirty and not yet felt settled enough to sleep, I couldn't figure out why tonight I couldn't get to sleep! Seriously, since starting my earlier bedtime, my body responds so well to just dropping into bed at the end of the day and easily drifting to sleep...so this night was rather frustrating.
It wasn't long before I made the connection.
I guess there is a reason late-night eating, especially sugary late-night eating, is counter-productive in a healthy lifestyle. Not only do the pounds pack on that much faster but you just. can't. sleep.
As I continued to wake up randomly throughout the night, feeling restless, unrested, and grumpy, I kept thinking about my day and how truly un-worth it that three candy bar indulgence had been. Also, being a bit delirious, I began imagining how I could write a book about the experience.
Instead I decided to write this post. The world thanks all of you for bearing the weight of my snacking lesson so they don't have to.

What I learned is this - - don't put twinkies on your pizza!
Wait...no...no, no...that's not me, that's someone on a movie...

What I learned is this - - there really is sense in all these things we do to try to improve our lives! They all work together to keep us on the right track. At least for me...once I sacrifice something, I end up losing out in other areas!
Evenings are full of:
Time with family.
Time working out.
Time connecting with husband at the end of our long days.
Early bedtime.
Oh, and...shower somewhere in there...
(please note - my house is still a mess. I never clean at night)

All of this leaves very little time for snacking.
And maybe that is the way it should be!

Next free day that falls on a weekday (anyone in favor of moving all free days to weekends??? haha) I think I will have to plan ahead a little better.

Now I understand why women in books and on tv always have a secret stash where they keep their chocolate.
After all, that is what nap-time/rest-time/at-least-put-a-movie-on-and-lock-yourself-in-the-bathroom-for-five-minutes-time is for, right?

Speaking of rest times, ours is over which means I can no longer sit at the computer...bringing this to a far-to0-delayed end.
It also means I used rest time to write this out instead of the million other tasks that beckon to me at this time of day.

But hey, at least I wasn't snacking!

-Mandy

Go Free

I'm a soda drinker. Blah blah blah I know it's bad, even diet, but I like it. It totally helps me curve my sugar cravings. I have alot of those. Hot Tamales anyone? Starbursts? It's bad. So, what I do is have a Diet Dew instead. It works for me. I have been trying to lose these last 10 pounds for a few weeks now. I eat good, well most of the time, exercise my buns off and I'm barely budging. UGH! I talked to my doc yesterday and he said caffeine has a negative effect on weight loss. He's told me before, but I just didn't believe him. So this week I decided to test his theory and I'm going Caffeine free. Still gotta have something to help curve my sugar cravings, but I'm trading in my Diet Dew for some Diet Sprite. Maybe one day I'll give it up completely, but I'm not there yet. I'm hoping this will kick me into a Big Loser this week!