I'm a TEEN Again!!! :)

Greetings from Florida!  Well, not really.  But, San Diego has been Florida West this week.  Ugh!!!  Sooo stinking hot and humid.  HUMID and gross!  It doesn't sound like it is going to end anytime soon. :(  This weather makes me want to do NOTHING!  Even the dogs can't stand it.  We open the front door, and they are like....Oh HELL No!  We'll hold it mom and dad.  Yeah, sure you will!

I had a horrible night sleep last night.  I stayed up until 12:30am on the computer.  I finally dragged myself to bed and the girls heard me, jumped up, and wanted to get into bed.  Okay, fine.  We climb into bed and I'm in a great sleep, for about an hour. When one of them jumps off the bed.  Then starts growling, because she wants to get on the bed!  I get up, help her.  Back on the bed we go.  About 20 mins later, I hear dogs around the neighborhood barking.  I'm like, oh great.  Please don't hear them.  Tooooo late!  Both jump off the bed, running around the room, barking and woofing.  Back on the bed.  Let's jump off again, cause this is fun to keep making mommy get up at 2am!  This goes on for another hour.  I finally fall asleep, they are calm, and then they hear hubby get up to use the bathroom.  Oh heck, off the bed and here we go again!  I finally told hubby you deal with them, and I went out on the couch and tried to sleep a little more.  At 6am he finally walked them, now they were happy as apple pie!  Mommy goes back to bed, only to "oversleep" and be rushed for the 8am grooming appointment.  Oy vey!  Girls, please let mommy sleep tonight or there will be deadly consequences!

Sooo, had a GREAT WI today!!! :)  I lost 4.4 lbs!  Woo hoo!  I am 0.2 lbs away from having lost 60 lbs since January.  That also pushed me over an interim goal and now I'm a TEEN again!!!  I have not seen the two teens since 2008!  217.  I like the sounds of that.  It is totally doable to be below 200 by the end of the year, which makes me SUPER EXCITED!!!  Hubby had a good WI too, down 0.8 lbs. :)  I've been mixing up my workouts a bit, 40-60 mins of different interval walking on the treadmill at between 3.0 and 3.5 mph and 2% and 6% incline.  I throw in some elliptical for 10 mins when I'm bored.  To celebrate today, I headed straight to the gym and did a 5K.  Thank gosh for air conditioning and BIG industrial fans!!  I have made a pack with myself that when I hit 200, I will start focusing on weight training more.  You see, I HATE weights.  I don't know why, but I really find it soooOO boring.  I can walk for hours, but do weights for 20 mins and somebody shoot me!

I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday and long weekend!!  I'm going to be sure to get some more relaxing in, as I have a crazy September coming up with work travel, big offsite meetings, etc.  I just want to get through this month in one piece.  Then it's time for some fun in October with not 1 but 2 BON JOVI concerts and a conference in Virginia followed by a weeks vacation with hubby to see DC for the first time.  It's all good............ :)

Cheers to you and hope you are keeping on track and reaching for your goals!

Jessica

Well Poooo, Up 0.2 lbs. Whatever!! :)

Happy Sunday!

I hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend!  It's been a pleasant and relaxing weekend.  Finally caught up with my friend Fri night as it had been FOREVER!  Sooo good to see her and chat. :)  Saturday, I just had a lazy am.  Hubby went with me to the WW meeting which was nice.  He had a great loss, 2.2 lbs!  Yay, him!!  I couldn't tell what would happen with me.  Had a great week, worked out a lot, but who knew.  Well, POO on the scale!  Up 0.2 lbs.  I was up 0.8 lbs last week post the trip.  Was okay with that.  I guess up a pound total from traveling is not bad. Think my body is a little delayed at times in gaining or losing.  My WW friend had a nice loss though.  You go girl!!! :)  After the meeting we stopped by to see my friends who had just moved close to where our meeting is.  Was sooo great to see them and the new place.  It's very cute and cozy, and they are doing very well! :)

I didn't let the gain derail me, so went straight to the gym.  My knee has really been hurting the last few days from PT.  The therapist went all out this time and I think it was too much.  My knee just ached.  In fact my entire leg hurt.  In light of this, I thought I would go easy at the gym.  I always think that! :)  But, then something kicks in and I'm off.  I did an interval 5K (up and down hills) at various speeds over 3.0 mph and finished in 57 mins!  Then, I walked like 10 more mins.  Why?!  I was pretty sore after, so took some advil.  That helped a lot!  Just had a lazy night at home which was nice.

Slept in a little today and I felt much better.  The leg/knee didn't hurt at all.  I ran my favorite weekend errand: over to Torrey Hills to hit up Vons, Bruegger's Bagels, Starbucks, and Dirty Dogs.  I can get so much done in an hour!  I love Bruegger's Skinny Cut Light Smoked Salmon Sandwich.  Yum!  Add my Ice Grande Nonfat 3 pump Mocha with foam/no whip, and that is a blissful weekend breakfast treat!  I am about to head off to the gym.  Don't think we'll do a 5K, but that's what I always say.  haha! :)  Then, hubby and I are going to the movies to see The World's End.  It looks very funny.  I love British movies.  I never watch the VMA's, as I stopped watching MTV like in the early 90's.  BUT, I heard there may be an N'SYNC reunion tonight, therefore I gotta check it out.  I know, I'm weird.  I wasn't a huge N'SYNC fan in the day, but I did go to their concert at the Stadium.  Did I just admit that?!  That was nuts.  Almost got in a brawl with some women.  Seriously, security was called!  C, do you remember that?! :)  I'm safer at a Motley Crue concert than I am N'SYNC! :)

Well, hope you all enjoy a fabulous Sunday and a great last week of August!  3 day weekend next weekend...... Hip Hip HOORAY!!!! :)

Cheers,

Jessica

Challenges, Schmallenges!!!

Well, Ugh!! Thank gosh I don't do a lot of travel for work, because it is one thing I have yet to Master in this journey of weight loss and quest for health! For 4 days, all we did was EAT!! Well, and SIT!! Here's how it went:

Monday - TOM arrived, just in time to join me for my travels.  :(  And it was a BAD one!  Extremely bad back pain, very very heavy..... I'm convinced things have changed and I may have a fibroid.  It could explain how I became anemic out of the blue.  Well, I see the gyn soon so we shall find out.  Anyhoo, I get to deal with this on top of EVERYTHING else this week.  Boo.....  So, up at 3am to leave for a 6:30am flight. Ate a regular breakfast at 4am. Actually felt okay and wasn't too hungry. Ate an apple around 10am. Packed a healthy lunch, but by the time I got to eat it (now 3pm East Coast Time), it was warm. A warm tuna sandwich and yogurt (oopps!) that the TSA made me throw out. At this point, skipped the lunch and checked in to the hotel. What? You have to give me a large chocolate chip walnut cookie? And it's warm?! Why sure, I'm STARVING! Then, met up for dinner with colleagues at 7pm. I actually did pretty well. One bit of appetizer, fish dish with veggies, a few bites of dessert, and a sip of wine. 

Tuesday - Was a disaster! Ate breakfast at the hotel at 7am (omelette, potatoes, bacon, toast). Then, got to meeting to only find THEY had ordered breakfast for us. I resisted for several hours, but then complete boredom and overwhelming tiredness set in. The carbs were calling.... Slice of pound cake. Then, it was lunch. Sandwich, chips, pasta salad, cookies, and REGULAR Coke! No one believes in Diet out here! Next, the 3pm slump set in and coffee and a brownie sounded great! At 6pm, it was straight to dinner with 10 people. You know, one of those fancy let's order everything on the menu, wine and cocktails flowing, and desserts all around to share! I was full. No, I was OVERFULL!! NOO, I WAS ILL! A bad bad sign when things are spinning and the stomach is turning. I sooo wish I had my adjustable bed at this moment! Had a horrible night sleep because had to sleep sitting up due to acid reflux, was in pain from being so full, was wide awake because all of my body's energy was being spent trying to keep everything down and digest it!! Ugh, tomorrow can't come soon enough!

Wednesday - Not again, will we have a day exactly like Tuesday! At least this time I learned fairly quick! Usually I repeat Tues for the whole trip and then wonder why I'm up 10 lbs! Sooo tired from no sleep. But, ate a very light breakfast at the hotel. Coffee at the meeting and a 1/2 danish at 11am. At 1pm, time for lunch: small sandwich, water, salad, large cookie. Ignored the candy! 5pm drive back to the hotel. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way back. Ice coffee and a chocolate cake donut. The thought was better than it was! Way too sweet and the donut just wasn't very good. Soo disappointing. :( Skipped the invitation to another dinner out at a fancy restaurant, and went to the gym at the hotel. :) 40 mins of walking. It was painful. But, glad I did it. Except now, it was 9pm and I am hungry! Ordered room service, except they don't have great healthy stuff at 9pm at night! Grilled cheese sandwich and fries. Not a great choice. Gosh this sucks. Not full like last night, so hopefully sleep will be a bit more restful tonight.

Thursday - Slept better last night except for loud tv's blaring on either side of my room!  Vowed to make this a pretty OP day. Most of the group had left already and we were to leave at 6pm, so there wouldn't be as much available food. Or, so I thought.  Did a light breakfast at the hotel. Stopped at Dunkin' Donuts (again!) on the way to the meeting.  Why?  Because it was there.  Not a good answer.  Got a different coffee and donut this time.  Coffee was still WAY too sweet!  Boo......  Got to the meeting, and they had brought in all sorts of Starbucks pastries.  Go figure.  Ignored them.  Before I knew it, it was time to order our lunch.  All they do is EAT back here!!  I ordered a Philly chicken cheesesteak.  Why?  Because it seemed like the thing to do.  Not a good answer.  It was HUGE!!!  I ate half and threw the rest away.  It was now time to head to the airport.  I was getting a little hungry so I got a pretzel before the flight.  On the flight I ate the donut I had bought earlier that day.  It was better I must say.  Got home around 10pm and went straight to bed, skipped dinner.  Friday it is completely BACK ON TRACK and hit the gym! 

Friday - Oh holy heck do I have to go to work??!!!  I am soooo tired.  I have a sinus headache from HELL!!!  And, I'm starving.  Stopped at Starbucks to get espresso but that was it.  Managed to stay on plan Friday.  The headache finally went away in the afternoon.  Then, I had to go to my first PT appt for my knee.  I think it helped.  Then, made my way to the gym and did a 5K+!  Didn't expect to do that, but I felt pretty good and heaven knows I needed the exercise and calorie burn after all that!  AND, TOM has finally left town!  Woo hooo!

Saturday the scale will be what it is going to be, and then MOVING ON.  It's only a blip, a pebble in the road. Step right over it and keep on going!!! It does not define you, you are not a failure! Vacations and work travel are hard. I will have to keep trying to find a way to be successful with them, but there were a few tiny victories along the way. Just need a few more, and then a few more, and eventually it will be success! :)

Step over those pebbles in your path and keep on going! 

Cheers,
Jessica

3AM is going to come too darn soon tomorrow.......

Hi Y'all!
Hope you had a great week and wonderful weekend!  It has been soo pleasant here as far as summer's go.  I'm not complaining one bit!  I love this weather compared to "real" summer heat.  Which I may get to experience all too soon.  I have to get up at 3am tomorrow because I have a 6:15am flight to Philadelphia for work.  UGH!!!  Gosh I hate these early flights!  I'll be there most of the week visiting several of our different vendors as we get ready for our big clinical trial study starting up in September. It is surely a crazy time right now at work!  I'm hoping I can get a little exercise in there and eat reasonably well, but the food is all catered each day and then we have a dinner out every night.  Yikes! I'm glad the last 2 weeks have been successful in terms of WI!

So YES, I lost 3.4 lbs this week!  I was actually pretty surprised.  I stayed on plan but I changed up the exercise.  I didn't do a Sunday workout because I went to see Sister Act the musical (entertaining!), and my other workouts during the week weren't as "hard" but I did do interval hills for the first time.  Guess it paid off!  I've lost now 56.4 lbs since January and 64.4 lbs since last year! :)  WOW, I can't believe it!  I'm 1.2 lbs away from the two teens!!! :)  I have not seen that number in SOOOO very long!

Also, I went shopping today to get a few new items for the trip and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I finally FINALLY dropped a size and sometimes 2!  You see, in this whole time that I've lost this amount of weight, I have not really been able to go down in pant size.  Sooo frustrating.  My body is just like that though.  My pants grow 3 feet long and the crotch hangs down to the knees and the legs are huge, but the waist is exactly the same....... so same size pants!  NOT ANY MORE!!!  Was able to go from a 24 to 20, and in some cases from a 1X to XXL! :)  I also bought my first pair of jeans (with a belt!) since I was probably 16!!  You see, if you know me or have noticed, I NEVER wear jeans.....because I don't OWN a pair of jeans!!  I'm hoping being this much thinner will make the airplane ride more comfortable tomorrow.

Hubby lost 1.8 lbs this week, so he's continuing to do awesome!!!  He's started exercising everyday now which has helped.  In last week's blog I was saying how I didn't have any vacations planned or things to look forward to lined up.  Well, that changed quickly!!  Thank you to my friend Joan for sending me some conference information about a conference in VA in October!  I jumped on it, booked flights, booked the house/dog sitter, hubby and I put in for time off, and we are going to VA and DC for a week!!  I can't wait.  I've never been to DC or VA, and am thrilled we are going in the Fall and for our anniversary!  A week ago I had no vacations planned and couldn't figure out where to go.....hmm??!!! Funny how life works! :)

The other big news this week is that my sister got engaged over the weekend!  They were at a big outdoor 3-day concert in San Francisco and he asked her there.  I haven't heard all the details yet, but I saw the ring and I approve!! :)

I also figured out why the cravings were soo bad last week.  Partly the "nothing fun planned issue" but mostly TOM was coming. :(  Of course, it has to be here while I am traveling!  :( I've also been having some bad back pain for the last several days.  It's different than my "usual" back pain.  Right now my back is on fire from my waist up to the middle of my back.  I've been icing, taking ibuprofen, and muscle relaxants.  I do hope it gets better, or certainly not worse during this trip.  A little nervous.

Well, it is now an hour closer to that 3AM wake up call, so I better hit the hay.  Hope you have a wonderful OP week and fabulous Monday!  Be good to yourself. :)

Cheers,
Jessica

Where does the time go??!!

Hello To Y'all!

I can't believe I missed a blog entry last week and now it's the end of this week already.  Good grief!  Where does the time go?!!  I've always said (especially with this weight loss journey) that time flies and it WILL fly, with or without you.  So you might as well be on the losing end of things as it continues to go by. :)

So, to get things up to speed: I stayed the same wt last week.  I was okay with that after 2 weeks of good losses.  Hubby got within 0.2 lb of his big milestone.  Soo close!!  He wanted it soo bad.  To wait another week, patience.....  Last weekend I got the bright idea to do a 5K on the treadmill all at 3.5% incline.  The last 15 minutes sucked, as my heart rate was at like 160! I feel uncomfortable when it is that high.  But, I did it 2 minutes faster than the formal 5K.  Woo hoo!!  

We had several birthdays at work last week, so I was designated Sprinkles Cupcake picker upper.  Yikes!  Never gone into that store and not bought 1 (or 2 or 6!) for myself.  The first run, no problem.  Just got 2 for the coworker.  In and out.  The second run, had to get a dozen for my depart.  NOW I wanted one.  I did have one that day, and it was freaking awesome. Lemon Meringue Cupcake.  Just like the pie! Yum!! Later that day we were having cake as well (oh, and my boss brought in pastries for breakfast!).  In a split second, I almost gave into the WHAT THE HECK, just go for it!  What saved me was that I looked at the cake and it was from Vons.  Yuck!  Now if it had been Costco or a bakery, that could have been another story! :)  But, I skipped it. :)  I had already eaten my breakfast by the time I saw the pastries in the am, so saw no need there. :)  We also had a day where there were 10 boxes of bakery donuts.  My work is a food fest some weeks!  I had been resisting the donuts for weeks and weeks.  Finally looked up the points, and it was 10 for one. Hmm, not really worth it. So, I took a 1/4 of a chocolate cake one.  Enough for 3 bites. Know what? 2 was ok, because it was not yummy!!! :( So disappointing. But at least I only wasted 2.5 pts and not 10! :)

I've been pretty busy and stressed with work the last several weeks.  9-11 crazy hours/day, 8 hours of sitting in meetings, too much to do.  I long for the good boring days of old!  It's going to be this crazy through Sept, possibly Oct.  I have to muster up every ounce of energy in me to make it to the gym after work.  I've been getting home to eat dinner around 8:30 or 9pm at night.  Poor hubby is the single dog parent holding down the fort lately, picking up the slack.  I have to travel to Philly for 4 days next week.  For MORE meetings and driving to 3 different companies.  Sure hope it is not brutally hot or humid.

So with all this work, stress, and lately not much fun/relaxing on the weekend (house stuff, errands, gym), I am in a RUT!  I sooo need a vacation but don't have time to figure it out or then take it before October.  Boooo......  I need to find something local and just take a long weekend away from it all.  I want to go on a week long spa vacation out of state (like Utah), but that will probably have to wait until the Fall.  I've noticed when I get in a rut and don't have anything exciting going on or planned for the future, guess what, all sorts of NOT SO GOOD FOR ME YUMMY FOOD start calling my name! The cravings come back. Everything looks good. I want variety. I want excitement. I want to feel "GOOD". I want a pick me up! I WANT TO EAT!!  Helloo over eating and binging! I've been fighting it off the last several weeks, but it keeps coming at me and I keep ducking. Like a video game, asteroids whizzing by!  I don't know how long I can keep this up. Really need to book the vacay's!

So, it was a good WI this weekend. Lost 1.6 lbs. Yay!! :)  Wasn't sure how it would be as I felt like I was getting a bout of diverticulitis again this past week. :( Hubby blew past his milestone and lost 1.6 lbs too! :) Soo proud of him!

So, time is gonna fly by. Will you be onboard towards your goal?! :)

Cheers!