Perking Along, Hot 100 Update

Thanks to all of you for your encouraging comments re my last post.  I was a little discouraged in face of my plateau, but Karen got it right in seeing through to my optimism.  I still know I'm going to do this.
That said, I did have a rocky couple of days here, perhaps "changing it up a little" from my toe-the-line diet and exercise regimen of recent weeks.  A little bit of exercise and a few "splurges" diet wise.  Enough of that.  Starting with dinner tonight (my crock pot osso bucco) I'm back on the wagon.

To help focus on this, I've include a couple of pix:  The first is from 2006, the second from earlier this month.  The difference is 40+ pounds.  I see it most in my face.  Also in my forlorn hope that wearing all black would give me that "slim look" I was hoping for.  [The curl to my hair must be applied daily and is not a function of my weight!] Am I the only one who buys things in two sizes??  The one that fits, and the one that I hope will be my size later?  I loved that blouse and am glad that I have it in a size that fits me now, too.

Here's my Hot 100 Update:

My goals:

1. Reach my goal weight by Jan 1st by following the WW CORE plan, weigh & record my weight each morning, attend weekly WW meetings.
2. Exercise at least 6 out of 7 days with varied exercise including at least 2 strength workouts and 3 cardio workouts each week averaging 60 minutes per session.
3. Keep my house and my body chocolate free.  This includes dark chocolate, chocolate chips, chocolate candy bars and any baked goods that have chocolate in them.

How I did:

1. I attended my WW meeting which confirmed my suspicion that I am stuck on a plateau.  I will continue to eat on the CORE plan and WI every morning and attend my meetings and hope that I (or my weight, anyway) falls over the edge of the plateau soon.
2. Yes.  This is done, though cardio was harder to keep up with as my running was blocked by my hurt toe.  I am going to try to resume running tomorrow morning.
3. Fail.  Chocolate was one of the splurges I had today.  Steve encouraged us to modify our goals, and I am going to take his advice and modify this goal to allow myself 1 oz of chocolate per day.  I kept up the ban for 5 weeks, but I think having this moderate amount daily will help me outlast this weight loss plateau and the upcoming celebration season.

Hot 100 Update

Thanks for all your thoughtful responses to my post yesterday. It's very helpful to hear what you have to say about these things. That's what I love best about blogging--the exchange of ideas.


I did my Praise Moves (yoga) today and must say I'm really enjoying it. I think it's helping me be much more mindful of my posture during the week and I know that my muscles rebel less from my cardio during the week when I use some of the stretching exercises I've learned. PM lasts an hour and a quarter and it's one of the highlights of my week. I'm going to run out tomorrow and buy myself a mat as I've been using DH's mat for the past several weeks. 

For your viewing pleasure, little E and I had lots of fun playing dress up, assembling  a Lincoln Log cabin, and playing with a very large doll house at the new Mount Vernon education center while our friends toured the rest of the center. Baby J napped in his stroller.

Can you believe that we're already finished with two weeks of the Hot 100 Challenge?  That means it's time for another update.


My goals:

1. Reach my goal weight by Jan 1st by following the WW CORE plan, weigh & record my weight each morning, attend weekly WW meetings.
2. Exercise at least 6 out of 7 days with varied exercise including at least 2 strength workouts and 3 cardio workouts each week averaging 60 minutes per session.
3. Keep my house and my body chocolate free.  This includes dark chocolate, chocolate chips, chocolate candy bars and any baked goods that have chocolate in them.

How I did:

1. I have 16 pounds to lose in the next 12 weeks.  Still doable, but a bit more pressure.  I stayed the same this week.  I ate more or less OP all week, and attended my WW meeting a day late.
2. Yes.  Six out of seven days.  Three cardio, and three strength workouts this week.  
3. Uh oh.DH found some forgotten chocolate that I had stashed away long ago.  Not his fault. But I had a run in with some dark chocolate chips.  I ate them all, fortunately only about 16 chips.  I'm pretty sure that our house now chocolate-free. I will do better.  

Hot100 Update--Week 1

Today is rainy and gray with a tropical storm dropping buckets of rain all up and down the east coast.  I'm going to insert the ultra bright Hot 100 logo to add a little warmth and color to my day.  Yesterday was the end of the first week of the challenge.  There are only 13 more weeks left in the year to reach my goals.

Okay here are my goals:

1. Reach my goal weight by Jan 1st by following the WW CORE plan, weigh & record my weight each morning, attend weekly WW meetings.
2. Exercise at least 6 out of 7 days with varied exercise including at least 2 strength workouts and 3 cardio workouts each week averaging 60 minutes per session.
3. Keep my house and my body chocolate free.  This includes dark chocolate, chocolate chips, chocolate candy bars and any baked goods that have chocolate in them.

Here's how I did this week:   (hint = :D )

1. I started with 17 pounds to lose.  I lost 1 pound at my WW meeting.  I followed my plan and tracked my weight each morning. Now I have 16 pounds to lose in 13 weeks. Doable, no?
2. I exercised every day this week if you include one 45 minute Wii tennis match (and I do).  I did 3 strength training sessions and 3 cardio sessions and my workouts averaged 60+ minutes.
3. Not that I wasn't tempted by the evil bakery ladies who purposely baked chocolate chip cookies while I was grocery shopping and fanned the air so that a very sinful, come-hither aroma wafted all over the store, but I remain chocolate free.

I'm going to post this early today (10 am).  My posts usually take several hours to appear to you all for some reason.  Don't miss yesterday's post, if you haven't seen it!  UPDATE:  Of course this one shows in the blog roll in just 45 minutes.  Go figure!

Take Care!   Good Luck in the week to come for all my fellow-travelers.

Hot 100 Goals

One hundred days seems like a long time, but I know from experience that without mindful attention those days will fly by.  I don't intend to let that happen.  I am going to use those days, all one hundred of them to further my progress towards my goals.  The Hot 100 count down starts day after tomorrow,  and I have been thinking about my goals.  Here they are:

1.  I will reach my official WW goal by Jan 1st.  My WI is tomorrow and I'll post again to give you the exact pound total I am going to lose.  [Right now it's 19, but I'm expecting that number to go down tomorrow.]  I will weigh myself and record my weight each morning.  I will follow the CORE (Simply Filling) WW plan.  I will go to my WW meetings, weigh in and stay for the lecture every week.

2.  I will continue exercise for at least 6 out of 7 days every week.  I will vary the exercise to include running, biking, strength workouts, Praise Moves (yoga), and Kettle Bells.  I will have at least 2 strength workouts and 3 cardio workouts each week. My workouts will average 60 minutes per session.

3.  I will keep my house and my body chocolate free.  I will not buy, eat, or bring into my house ANY chocolate.  This includes my beloved dark chocolate with orange, chocolate chips, chocolate candy bars (Almond Joy--are you listening?), or any baked goods that have chocolate in them.

It's not too late to join this challenge.  What are you going to do with those last 100 days of this year?

Do you believe in Magic?

With a nod to the wonderful Lovin' Spoonful for their great oldies hit,  I'm hoping for a little bit of magic. My WI is tomorrow and my scale is doing its best to prepare me for the probability that I'm not going to lose or even maintain.  In fact, it's not only my scale auguring bad news; my food journal, too, is doing its best to show me, in black and white, just why I probably won't lose tomorrow.  I'm in Trouble.  Trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "C" and it stand for CHOCOLATE!   Yes, I've gotten into some Trouble with my old nemesis, chocolate.

It started with a picture.  It seems to me that several of you (yes, you--all you slim, successful, sensible, talented, bloggers that I follow) have built in a dark chocolate snack often luringly featured in a photo in your posts.   Well, I'm trying to learn to eat the way I plan to eat for the rest of my life.  I like dark chocolate as well as (or, truthfully, much better than) the next person.  Dark chocolate is actually good for you. Why don't I add in some dark chocolate to my daily menu too.  So a week or so ago,  I bought a small, 3.5 oz bar of dark chocolate with orange peel added in.   I portioned it into 4 pieces (less than an oz is a good portion size, no?). The first bite was heaven.  Absolutely amazing.   I had one each day for four days.  I lost at my WI last week; my clothes are fitting better.  This is great! I thought, all this and chocolate, too!  


So, when the chocolate was gone, back I went to Whole Foods.  They have at least 12 linear feet of aisle space devoted to chocolate.  I couldn't find my wonderful dark chocolate with orange.  So I got another kind--well, I got two other kinds, trying to find the one closest to my beloved orange bar.  And when I got home, I tried kind #1, but it wasn't nearly as tasty as, "orangie," so I opened up kind #2 and tried it, too.  No good.  But not so "no good" that I didn't have 1 oz of each kind for the next 3 days.  And then I went back, still in search of my long lost "orangie."  


This time I ended up buying 3 bars.   Well, there's an inevitable sad ending to this story.  I woke up this morning and weighed myself.  I compared it to my weight on the day before WI last week and, instead of a nice drop in weight, this week's weight was UP!   Then I really WOKE UP and realized how foolish I've been.    Sigh.


I'm destined to fall victim to the First and Second Laws of the  Law of Physical Diets as knowledgeably enumerated by Charlie in Back to the Fridge this morning:

Law I. Weight returns at five times the velocity at which it was lost.
Unfortunately, most of us are all too familiar with this law. In some ways, this seems impossible. “How can it take five days to lose two pounds and only one day to get it back!? That’s not fair!” Well, unfortunately, life isn’t fair and this is just the way it works. Why? Because you can’t eat fewer than zero calories per day but you can eat five thousand or more if you really put your mind to it. What to do: If your diet is going well, here’s a helpful tip: don’t blow it. How? Well if I knew that, I’d be king of the world.

Law II. Any dietary straying, no matter how seemingly insignificant, causes instantaneous Diet Reversal.
Oh, we’ve all experienced this. You do well all week long then on Friday night you figure you deserve a little treat. So you have pizza. Oops. Does your body forgive you? Are you allowed to take a mulligan? Of course not. What to do: Giving yourself a food treat for losing weight is a lot like winning a Million Dollar Bake-Off and then shredding the check to celebrate your win. What’s wrong with you?

Go to Charlie's post to read all FOUR laws.  He's a gifted writer and quite insightful about this whole weight loss scene.

I've learned my lesson--yes, a little (<1 oz) chocolate is okay occasionally, and NO, don't go tasting every chocolate bar on earth trying to re-create that first, great bite of "orangie." I'm the 'sadder but wiser girl' today.     but I do believe in magic . . . .  




tune in tomorrow.

So sorry

I'm sorry if it was your car's tires that found the chocolate I threw out of my window when I was driving yesterday. Here's what happened.

My day started well. I did my C25K, folded a couple loads of laundry, and visited my father at his nursing home. Then I turned my attention to my dinner preparations. I needed to make a special dinner, a picnic dinner, because we had tickets to The Mikado at Wolf Trap. I decided to go to Whole Foods, a splurge, price-wise, but worth it for the freshness of the vegetables and the variety of great, unprocessed foods. I had decided to make a wonderful green salad. I found everything on my list (spring greens, a perfectly ripe avocado, tomatoes, radishes, corn on the cob, a bit of flank steak, two summer fresh rolls, snow peas, and some dates) except they didn't have any pine nuts. I love toasted pine nuts. I went to another high end grocery store, just to find pine nuts. I picked up a beautiful potted lavender on my way in the store, but they too were out of pine nuts. I was feeling frustrated and gave in to check out aisle temptatio

n and bought a small bar of dark chocolate (good for you, right?). I headed for yet another grocery store (I really do like pine nuts) and reached into the bag with the chocolate bar. It was a beautiful little package. I opened it and saw it was divided

into five sections. I'll have just one section, I thought. Three sections later I came to my senses. STOP this . I didn't trust myself to just leave it alone on the seat. I couldn't throw it in the trash because I was driving. Instead, I opened my window and threw the last two sections out the window. It was a warmish-hot day, I wonder if there was a lovely little puddle of expensive dark chocolate on the street as the day wore on.

Anyway, the rest of the day went really well. I got the salad all prepped (everything chopped and ready in separate little baggies) I got the picnic packed (tablecloth, plates, forks, the food, a big bowl). We got to Wolf Trap (a National Park center for the Performing Arts just outside Washington DC), had our picnic, and enjoyed the show. The tickets were a Christmas present from our son and his wife. The seats were front and center in the orchestra. The night was perfect--the performance was in a large hall with the sides open to the air.

Today's run was not perfect. I ran just after noon and it had gotten hot and muggy. I knew right away I was going to have a hard time. I had to walk during one of the 10 minute running sections. I'm going to repeat this day on my next run. And I'm going to remember to get out there early to avoid the heat. I have upped my weekly runs from 3 to 4 during this C25K. I'm wondering if the added day is a good idea. I've read that older runners shouldn't run more than a few days a week. I mix up my exercise with biking, weights, a little Wii tennis, and the running. I'm going to try to listen to my body and see if I still feel good about 4 days.

On my short term goal of drinking 8 cups of water, I have to admit I haven't done perfectly this week end. Yesterday I intentionally stopped drinking so much so I wouldn't have to get up during the show. I only had 5 cups. Today, I came downstairs to discover that my son had preempted my (big) pitcher with orange juice, so I tried to just remember to go to the water in the door of the fridge. I'm a few cups short now, but I'm drinking and will get them all in before I sleep. I've laid down the law that the big pitcher is MINE.

The morning scale is telling me good things these days. I weigh myself every morning, first thing, and write down the weight in a journal. I like it because it shows me trends. I've run across weight loss blogs where the bloggers record their avg weight for the past seven days (or something like that). I confess that I've got a nerdy love of numbers and graphs.