Drum Roll Please! 198.8

GUESS WHAT?!?! this is what I saw when I weighed myself this morning. I know I haven't been blogging.. but I still have been striving towards my goals... this was such a HUGE goal for me.. and I can't remember the last time I was under 200lbs.. but I think it was probably about 6th grade! that's pretty amazing! I was excited.. but honestly forgot about it until around lunch when I again thought "wow" and then thought.. "huh I don't really feel any different" like I expected that the world would change or I'd suddenly be the most breath taking woman in the world LOL. regardless 90.2lbs total weight loss is a big number.. and something I'm proud of-- only 23.8lbs more until my goal weight of 175lbs.. where I'll assess if I want to continue to lose weight or simply be happy where I'm at there :o) thanks for sharing in the good news of this big day with me :o)

P.S. I never realized how "fat" my feet look-- I have a wide foot and apparently my toes are spreading and getting twisty.. lol here's to almost being 30!

223.2 - The Battle Continues

I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Christmas/ New Year. It's time to get serious again about blogging-- as I have been serious about weight loss again for about a month.

For Christmas I asked for a new scale-- this one is supposed to keep track of your body fat % and your water % as well as your weight. I've come to find out that the body fat % and water weight are actually not very accurate. Imagine my shock when just after Christmas I jumped on the scale to see that I weighed 228.8lbs a nearly 14 lb gain over my lowest weight last year.. AND that my body fat is 42% and my water is 40%-- as these past 4 weeks have gone by my body fat and water weight have stayed in the same 5% weight with the body fat and water % inversely proportionate to one another. SO I took a test @ the gym and it turns out my body fat is only 26.6% (sigh of relief)-- which still technically puts me in the obese category-- but much closer to "overweight" than the scale is reflecting.

So with that being said.. I'm in 2 biggest loser contests-- one at work where there is a 1st and 2nd place winner-- 1st place recieves $165 and second place $110-- I'm currently in 2nd place. The bigger contest I'm in is at the YMCA where there is only one winner-- to the tune of $575-- I would LOVE to win both-- but our second weigh in isn't until next week @ the half way mark.

This brings me to a little bit of frustration. I have hired a personal trainer (YAY!! I've never had one before) and have worked out with her 3 times (we're meeting twice a week) and on my own I'm hitting the gym every day-- I do cardio for 35 minutes - 2 hours/ day (and when I meet with my trainer I'm with her for an hour + at least 35 minutes of cardio on my own). It's very frustrating that after almost 4 full weeks I'm only down 5.6 lbs.

I am using a new program on my iphone (which incidentally you can also use online if you don't have a phone with applications) called "My fitness pal" it's soooooo much better than the old program I was using, lose it! where it simply didn't have enough food brands stored. My fitness pal is great because I think I've only come across one item of food that wasn't in there in the 4 weeks I've been using it. It also allows you to record your cardio/ workouts AND gives you a break down of your nutritional facts (along with goals of how much of what you should be eating) . All in all it's a great program.... BUT my beef with it is because I work a desk job.. it told me I should only be eating 1300 calories / day-- BUT I wans't losing any weight that way so I concluded on my own (and with a little research) that I should be eating at least 1560 calories/ day to lose weight (Jillian Michaels says your current weight X 7-10)-- so by this calculation the minimum calories I should be eating right now to lose weight would be 1562.4 and the max 2232. So right now I'm getting in about 1600 calories/ day and burning about 300- 900 calories / day at the gym. I've only been on this higher calorie diet for 3 days and I've lost .4 lbs in that time.


So that's where I'm at right now! How are you guys doing on your weight loss? Have you worked with a trainer before? What kind of results did you see? How are you figuring out your calorie intake?

Smooth out the Start of your Day 229.5

As promised here is the first of a few "diet" foods I find utterly delicious. Every morning for the past 4 weeks or so I've been having a smoothie for breakfast. I've been using Yoplait Smoothie blends-- I especially like the strawberry, mango and pineapple -- The directions call for the entire bag and 1 cup of skim milk (this is 2 servings). Since I'm a single gal I only make half the bag and put 1 cup of Light Vanilla soy milk (I've been switching around brands but find that the Silk brand *with the vanilla taste* to be the best)-- by using a whole cup of soy milk I'm making my smoothie thin enough to drink directly from the cup -- and to be honest if you only used half a cup of milk or *given liquid* you can barely get it to come out of the blender. Now for an added diet boost I've been putting a shot of Acai Berry juice (I use Genesis-- a little pricey around $7.00/ bottle-- BUT I'm still on my first bottle and I've been making these for a month) it-- all in all this works out to be exactly 16oz and around 200 calories.

Now my brother is also on a diet and he actually buys the individual frozen fruits-- he's trying to stick with fruits high in anti-oxidants such as blueberries -- he'll blend about 4 fruits (all in 4 oz increments *he actually bought a digital scale to weigh it out*-- he also uses soy milk and a shot of Acai or pomegranate juice-- his is less expensive to make overall (and since it's twice the size of mine ends up being 400 calories)-- I found that I like the yoplait for the chunks of yogurt they have in there already-- it just takes less effort and in my opinion tastes better. -- honestly the yoplait smoothie is not that expensive. The 2 serving bag runs about $2.60-- soy milk runs around $3.00 so for a daily cost it's about $1.75.

What's great about a smoothie in the morning is it's less mess, I can drink it while I'm getting ready for work.. takes literally 1 minute to prepare-- AND boosts my metabolism with the fruit. Next post will be what my AM snack is.. and it's super yummy! Stay tuned. :o)

OH update on the biggest loser-- even though I've "Gained" 1.4 pounds this week (which honestly I think is water weight) I'm still in 1st place! that's 1st place 3 weeks in a row! Yay!

The Biggest Loser! 227

Ok-- so you've probably thought that I fell off the bandwagon-- to be completely honest I did for a while. I got my weight down to 227.5 and then from about Halloween to New Years I ended up putting about 9 lbs back on

About 3 weeks ago my work decided to do a "biggest loser" competition-- I knew it was time to start back on the track-- a little disappointed that I had a) not lost any weight in a long time and b)put back on weight. -- there are about 20 people who each put in $10 -- the pot will be split evenly between the top 2 losers in June.

I was reluctant to go back to the gym -- only tonight did I drag myself there for the first time in MONTHS (what a waste of money @ $48/ month)--

ANYWAY the first week I was in 4th place-- the past 2 weeks I've been in 1st place-- I have lost 7.8 lbs (according to the work scale) and I've done that all by keeping track of my calories on my iphone ap "Lose it!" -- it works pretty well-- it was a tool I used before but for whatever reason (maybe the upgrade) it seems to be more accurate this time around

Tonight I went to the gym and walked for 35 minutes-- burning 360 calories

Here recently I've also found several excellent foods I'm going to share with you in the next few posts.

You guys are my accountability so I'm going to try and be better about posting now-- even though my life has in fact sped up instead of slowed down over the past few months.

The jewelry website isn't up yet-- I'm meeting with my friend this weekend for a few hours to try and get it close to up and running-- I doubt we'll finish it this weekend but I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I'm ALSO in the process of looking for a new home-- I want to get one before the deadline for the tax credit which is April 30th (for a contract) and I think June to close. So wish me luck, send a few prayers my way and we'll all get through this together.

Tomorrow I'm going to post a couple of photos of me in my new SEXXY jeans and tell you about where to get them etc. I'm so excited about them-- but that my friends is a story for tomorrow! :o) Until then!