I Choose My Choice

You know what they say. Life is all about choices. And losing weight is really all about choices. Well der. Of course you're going to lose more weight if you eat veggies, fruit, and complex carbs instead of cheesy bacon ranch fries (mmmmmmm). So, this is a posting about choices. Because over the past two weeks, I've made some choices I'm extrememly proud of .... here are two of them.

Let's start off with the ones I'm proud of. Might as well revel in my shining moments first. Let's see... first there was January 19th. I got up on time, got dressed, and was out the door to work on time (a victory in itself)! I drove by McDonalds and was craaaaaaving a McChicken biscuit and diet Coke..... but the line was long and I had oatmeal in my pocketbook and decided not to make myself late to work getting a biscuit. I got on the interstate and starting thinking..... I have a Starbucks giftcard. I could go to the one by the office. I could call by boss & see if she wants a coffee too (she's an addict!) and then I could justfy my being late. Well, I talked myself out of that, too. I hadn't been on time for work in months. I was going to take this small victory, eat my oatmeal, and bathe in my success of the day. And I am so proud a I did. I was on time for work and saved myself several hundred calories for breakfast. WooHoo!

Next success to talk about: January 28th - Moe's: Moe's very well be the happiest place on Earth. Well, that's a stretch. But it's delicious. I haven't had Moe's in probably... oh... 9 months, maybe longer. I love Moe's. This particular day, I was craving chicken nachos from Moe's. I could almost taste the cheese. My mouth was watering. I was torn... be good, be bad.... be good, be bad. I called my husband, and of course his answer was "good, always good". The girl in the cube beside me suggested to be good for lunch, and then splurge on dinner. I finally resigned myself to be good. I ate my Healthy Choice cafe steamers lunch... the Mediterranean Veggies one. It was tasty - nothing compared to Moe's but still not bad. I paired it with a creamy cup of Yoplait peach yogurt. Yeah boy, am I glad I did that. I just looked up the nutritional information on calorieking.com. The calorie count for the Billy Barou with ckn at Moe's is a whopping 1,495 calories. Holy Moly, that is all you need in a day. Meanwhile, I sat at my desk writing this blog, hoping to get back into this, and consumed a mere 395 - 175 from my yogurt and 220 from my healthy choice. I am feeling a little cocky. And slim.

I still have days I make horrible choices. My choice today of having a chicken philly with waffle fries may not have been super, but I balanced it with a grilled chicken ceaser for dinner. I had a Cherry Coke Zero with dinner, but I had two glasses of water with lunch. Moderation and balance. Moderation and balance. This shall be my mantra.

Next hurdle to tackle: adding excercise in.

BL Week 1 & 2

So, our very own Biggest Loser competition got off to a great start. On January 6th, 2011, we all scampered into the bathroom, scale and change of clothes in hand. We agreed before Christmas break that we would each wear leggings and a university t-shirt to be "even". We were praying no one from the other office suites would come into the bathroom. So, armed with a clip board and a excel spreadsheet I made, we dutifully wrote down what each weighed. To my surprise, only 34 lbs separated the heaviest from the lightest - I thought it would be a much larger spread (I seriously under-estimated what one friend weighed, she looks so tiny!). We set up a bi-weekly weigh in schedule, so we all set off determined to see less weight on the scales in two weeks.

The Monday (which happened to be MLK, Jr. day) before the impending Thursday weigh-in, we had a last chance workout, just like they do on the NBC tv show. We met up on campus with one of the cops who we're friends with. He is a personal trainer and agreed to work with us, so we were thrilled. He worked us! We did cardio and weight training, and I left feeling pretty good, especially considering I had to wake up and drive to campus by 9 am on my day off!!

On Thursday, we all delayed weighing-in as long as we could. Talk about anxiety. We made sure the halls were clear and scampered back down to the bathroom, changed clothes, and had a staring contest until someone finally (graciously) volunteered to go first. The scale flashed while it was calculating (OoOoOoOo).... DOWN THREE POUNDS!! Cheers were shouted, congratulations all around. Our first victim contestant succeeded... would we all?

One by one, the rest of us climbed on the small, white, potential harbinger of bad news. One by one we were greeted with happy news! The first three of us who climbed aboard the small white tile of doom lost THREE POUNDS! We're awesome. Finally, it was the final turn. The results: SIX POUNDS! Way to go! Our first w-i, and we were tremendously successful. We happily changed back into work attire and giddily went back to the office. Week 1: Major Success.

So, here are my stats for week one:

Weight lost: 3 lbs

% lost: 1.23%

BMI: down .5

Hoping this momentum continues!

What the what?

Wow. I haven't written since 2009. I'm either a bad blogger or a bad dieter. I'm going to go with both. I never did do that fad diet that I said I was going to do, although I did make the soup..... which is still in my freezer. I guess that means it's been in the freezer for 16 months. I should probably throw that away. Hm....

I'm still struggling with losing weight. I start something & I'm really good at it for a week and then kerplat. I'm back to binge eating and eating a ridiculous amount of calories a week. Since 9/09, my weight crept up about 10 lbs. SERIOUSLY?! Ugh. For a while, J and I weighed ourselves religiously each morning and wrote it down on a sheet of paper taped to the bathroom wall. This was both encouraging and depressing. On the days that my weight went down I was ecstatic.... however, it made me terrified to ever eat out, thanks to the 5 lbs that Olive Garden was guaranteed to pack on. But we got lazy and that hasn't happened in a long time.

I also joined a fitness thing at work, but I was traveling a lot for work and once I forgot my sneakers so I couldn't log my runs, and blah blah blah, I dropped the ball and didn't work out the prescribed number of times that month and was kicked out of the program. LAME.

Well, I've determined 2011 will be my year. And I won't be alone. I have an amazing support team. I have joined ranks with three other fabulous ladies in my office who want to lose weight in 2011. And, my loyal reader, money is on the LINE! We created our own Biggest Loser contest. We are weighing in twice a month and it's $10 a weigh-in. The person that loses the highest percentage of weight at the end wins the pot. We are encouraging each other, making sure we stay on the straight and narrow, and we're in it for the long haul. Round one started in January and will go through May. We may do another one from May-December; we'll see how the first one goes! Wish us luck!