We didn't go to the gym this evening, but knew we needed to exercise. I was starting to slide deeply into "I do not want to exercise" mode when Josh suggested a walk outside. That peaked my interest as I really didn't want to move the coffee table for a DVD or in the mood to do the wii fit and frankly there wasn't much that appealed to me. That is not a surprise though.

We put on our shoes and headed up our rocky driveway and I started huffing and puffing. Why am I breathing so hard? My body started to heat up and I felt the familiar pressure of my body exerting itself and willing against my weight to keep moving. I kept wondering, why is this so hard? I make it through an hour on the elliptical without much problem.

We kept going, slight inclines and I break a sweat. I'm pushing myself up and down the hills as we walk. It feels nice, the wind is blowing the air is cool and warm. I feel like I weigh 5,000lbs. and then it accures to me that when I exercise at the gym a machine is holding my body up and I am moving. It burns calories, it get my heart rate up and it is exercise, however, walking and dare I say jogging is really hard for me. I felt how out of shape I really am on the road with just my body to move my body.

I power walked pumping my arms vigorously in the air, gasping for air and dripping for sweat. I. am. out. of. shape. Obviously.

I'm home now, the sweat is drying and my legs are tingling. I'm ready to keep going. Tomorrow I'll be back on the road.

with good intentions. I mean well, really I do, but it's really no wonder why I weigh 286 lbs. It's really not. Last night I got out my binder and wrote down my goals, really mapped out the next 9 weeks and everything I need/want to do. Where I want to be. I wrote specific goals starting with today, get up 6am exercise, eat breakfast, tend to daily work stuff, eat lunch, take a photo of myself, strength training at the gym, etc. You get the idea. I even wrote out meal ideas that are healthful and satisfying so there would be no question as to what to eat today.

So what happens? I get in bed around 10:30 (because I'm apparently on old person time) set my alarm for 6 am and go to sleep. I wake up at 4AM. yes, 4 am and proceeded to clean for two hours. Dishes, putting gifts away etc. 6am rolls around and I'm exhausted so I go to bed. I tell myself "only for an hour". I wake up and I can just feel that its later than 7am. The light outside is shining in a way that makes me cringe. I look at the clock and its 11:45 am! what!

For me, sleeping past 8am is unheard of. Sleeping past 9 is a travesty. I feel like I lose my entire day otherwise. My schedule is totally thrown off and I'm annoyed. And instead of just picking up where I left off I feel like I've just picked around on my to-do list not knowing where to start.

I ate really well today and had a nice salad for dinner:

This salad made up for my over sleeping issues today. It was completely comforting. Baked chicken in ginger marinade, spinach, freshly grated parmesan, lettuce, diced green apple, a few chopped walnuts and a drizzle of Newman's lowfat ginger dressing. So good. I am not a fan of low fat dressings, but after having this at a friends house on Tuesday I was converted and went out the very next day and picked up a bottle. 35 calories per serving compared to my usual 160 in ranch. Make this sometime, you will feel good about it.

It's now 6:22pm and I still need to exercise and IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN (yelling at myself here.) I need to go to bed decently eary tonight because I start working 7 hours a week tomorrow doing (im told ) website maintenance and graphic design. I'll be in a real office, with real people, wearing business casual attire. scary!

I have about 4 1/2 hours before bed (possibly 5 hours) and I need to: clean up dinner dishes, put the living room back together, work on tomorrow's blog posts, exercise with billy and jillian, update resume/print, shower, take incriminating "before" photo of myself, update food eaten today in (blog) log, pick out clothes for tomorrow, pack gym clothes (going to gym tomorrow when i leave) and lunch. Here we go! See you tomorrow!

Let me just say I had great intentions yesterday and somehow the day passed by and I got a lot done, but didn't exercise! Good intentions for sure. I got a lot of cleaning done, caught up on some work, made two nice meals and then after dinner I felt horrible. It wasn't setting well, so I went to bed. Lesson learned? Exercise in the morning! Anything after that (IE: going to the gym with Josh) will just be a bonus.

I've realized, much to my surprise that I am more of a morning/afternoon person when it comes to getting things done. Once its dark outside, I pretty much do nothing. With that said I did exercise this morning and did 40 minutes of tao bo boot camp one with the resistance bands. I loved it, much like I love most of the tae bo videos and really think I can do version two soon. Version one was a little slow and really good for someone who has never done tae bo before.

Before I exercised this morning I felt my mind battling against me. Telling me not to do it, it would take a lot of time, it would be hard, it would make me tired, I didn't have enough energy for it, etc etc. I told brain to shut up and really wanted to check this off of today's to-do list.

How do I feel after? I feel accomplished, proud, energetic and actually way better than I did before I started.

Yesterday's food:

Breakfast: whey protein shake w/ 8oz skim

Snack: string cheese

Lunch: turkey and cheddar panini w/ spinach and honey mustard (pictured below)

Snack: two SF fudge pops

Dinner: spinach lasagna (one serving) w/ 2 slices of garlic bread

water to drink with everything.

This was really good! Its hard to go wrong here though: ciabatta bread, turkey, cheddar, spinach and honey mustard. I pressed the sandwich on my cast iron with another skillet to flatten it out.

So far today I've eaten a chocolate brownie clif bar and water.

We got about six inches of snowfall yesterday here in Virginia! I love snow! So strange that its supposed to be in the 60's this coming weekend.

Here is yesterdays food for Krissie's Official QuestionsForDessert Food Journal Challenge.

This is what I ate: (click here for disclaimer)

Instant pho (bo). Jean emailed me asking about the instant pho and here it is. We just stocked up on this stuff Saturday at the local oriental market in blacksburg. I love it, and only eat it in the mornings. I have no idea why, but it calls to me in the morning. It is so good! The noodles are real pho noodles, not the curly ramen noodles and the flavor is really good. 195 calories a packet and satisfies Josh's pho cravings. The closest Vietnamese place is over an hour away. ahh country living!

This is abad picture of the lasagna I made yesterday afternoon. I made it with ground chicken, whole wheat noodles, part skim riccotta, RF provolone and homemade sauce, in an 8x8 pan. I had this with a salad (not pictured) for a late lunch and then again for a late dinner. Kaye mentioned on my last post having a hard time stopping when full. I have this same problem and ate too much lasagna yesterday. This is struggle for me, but I make sure I drink lots of water while eating, something I have to do anyway and I eat slower than usual.

And then I had about 2oz. of cheap yellow tail cabernet

Yesterday was day two of my Bridal Shower Challenge. And I did the Biggest Loser BootcampJosh did this with me and it was really a great workout for both of us. We did bootcamp 1 and 2 plus the warmup and cool down for a total of 45 minutes. I loved that the time was broken up and couldn't believe that 45 minutes had past, it felt like 10 minutes. It was also really entertaining and I felt like I was working out with Bob.

Speaking of Josh, he has lost over 10lbs since January! He isn't overweight, but gained about 10 lbs. after we moved to VA and is now back down to 163. He eats oatmeal pretty much every morning and always goes to the gym with me. Go Josh!

This is what yesterday looked like for me, I hope you can read it Basically I followed my hunger throughout the day and wrote down what I ate. Today, I'm going to work on the same thing (eating only when hungry) and focusing on what my body wants to eat rather than what my brain wants to eat.

There were times yesterday when I was eating to prepare for hunger. Such as eating lunch because I didn't want to be hungry for the gym and I didn't want to go so soon after eating. So I ate, even though I wasn't overly hungry. Which is tricky. Sometimes I find that I will eat anyway if I feel like I haven't eaten enough. I really wanted fruit yesterday, but we go through fruit so quickly in our house that its hard to always have it. We go through bags of apples, oranges, grapes and bananas weekly, so a trip to the store is in order.

While making dinner I kept tasting and tasting and by the time it was ready I wasn't physically hungry anymore, but mentally felt like I hadn't eaten, so ate. I did eat though and will work on my dinner-making tasting.

We went to the gym yesterday and did strength training A and followed with close to an hour on the elliptical. I will take my jeans photo today as well.

We got back last night from a really nice trip to Asheville, NC. We ate some food, drank, bought books, listened to midnight farmers, ate Indian food (of course) and drove on the blue ridge parkway. Saturday was spent walking and more walking and even a small bit of getting lost (on foot, sorta drunk) on our way back to the hotel. Note to self: your GPS only works for driving

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I had intended, but here are a few.

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I've come up with a new way to track my weight loss progress while going through some old clothes last week. At some point about five years ago I was a size 20 and I had a bunch of clothes in the size, but eventually sold them except for one pair of old navy jeans. I don't know why I kept them, possibly out of hope to someday wear them again. I tried them on and I couldn't get them up past my hips/upper thighs.

I knew they obviously wouldn't fit, but I had a visual of the weight I've put on and kept on since that short stint in the 240's. I was sad that I filled out places that didn't even exist at one point. Its a weird feeling, and sometimes easier to see numbers as something totally different than actual space that fat takes up.

Today, I'm going to shoot a picture of myself in those jeans exactly how they fit right now. And each week I'm going to continue taking a photo of myself in them until they fit and I can wear them. I know fitting in them is about 40lbs away from now. My goal is to fit into them by mid-summer. Its not that I'm partial to the jeans, they have a hole in the knee (due to an unforunate fall on my way to philosophy class, my junior year) , but that size is where I want to be next.

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Exercise Schedule for the week

Monday: Gym time, strength training A + at least 50 minutes of cardio

Tuesday: Biggest Loser Boot camp DVD + brisk walk outside (morning time)

Wednesday: (morning) Biggest Loser Boot camp (or tae bo)

Thursday: Gym time, strength training B + at least 50 minutes of cardio

Friday: (morning) Tae bo DVD or biggest loser boot camp

Saturday or Sunday: Go to gym on one day, take the other day off

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Wednesday I'm joining in with Krissie and her offical QuestionsForDessert Food Journal Challenge! I'm really excited and love food photo journaling, plus I'd like a subscription to everyday food.

There are some days when I feel like I have absolutely nothing to write about. I've been doing this for over two years now and surely there are times when I just don't know what to say. When I am struggling, I write about that and its much easier to write introspective entries when I'm figuring things out than it is when I'm just doing what I need to do.

We went to the gym Monday and did strength training A and then the elliptical for about 40 minutes. I really pushed myself on the elliptical, music really helps. I've also been trying out the treadmill on the high incline which is really intense. I didn't exercise yesterday and plan to do one of my DVD's today. The scale has been the same and/or lowering.

Eating has been good. I haven't made an effort to count calories, even though I do a bit in my head out of habit and to keep some food recipes I make in a good portions. I made pizza yesterday with 1 cup of cheese instead of my usual two and making an effort to spend time on projects (IE: my new etsy shop) that make me feel good and lift me up. Its really nice to do things I'm proud of that take my mind away from eating. Last night for example, I ate two slices of pizza (400 calories) and a salad. My brain was telling me to eat more, I had two slices left. But, instead I realized that I wasn't hungry so I didn't and life went on.

Happy Saint Valentine's eve! Do you guys have any plans for tomorrow? Originally we were supposed to go to Asheville, but had to postpone until next weekend because of some unexpected events we have to go to. No big deal, instead we're driving to Roanoke, staying the night and eating Indian food.

After Monday my eating improved so much and I've been feeling a lot better about it. Just get back up, its all you can do, right? I went to the gym Sunday, Wednesday and going again today. The weather has been incredible lately which is making me sad that I'm not taking advantage of it with a walk outside. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly paranoid about walking out on our road. I shouldn't be. We live in a realtively remote road (I think) but people drive really fast here and there are a lot of blind curves. I should hear the car coming though. I'm rambling, but I know that if I really wanted to walk I would have walked, so its just an excuse.

Have you tried the new banana nut cheerios? Those things are so dangerous for me, I got called out (ahem, Josh) for eating the whole box in three days. They taste just like banana bread or fresh bananas in cereal. So good, if you try them, don't say I didn't warn you.

eating less and exercising more. Since writing <this post> I've made a lot of changes in how I eat and track my food. I am way more accountable and accurate with my calories, and have increased my gym time considerably. I'm no longer guessing how many calories are in what I'm eating. I'm up to working out 4 days a week, still two days shy of my 6 days a week goal, but I'm getting there.

Sunday I did cardio and strength training, tuesday I did cardio, thursday I did cardio and strength training and today I'm going to do cardio again. Another reason to not get tripped up by the scale especially when exercising is that my weight always fluctuates up the next morning.

I feel different, and I don't want to get too relaxed with telling myself "I'm doing great!" so soon because I've been here before and those feelings tend to lead to a relaxed attitude with eating and exercise. I start thinking I have total control over my cravings again, and start thinking about all the junk food I could have in moderation. But, this is my first week in and instead of congratulating myself with food like I've done in the past, I need to keep going. Put my head down and keep running.

How did my eating change this week from last week? For starters, I've kept it as simple as possible. Instead of making complicated dishes, I've made relatively simple, filling, low calorie meals that I like. I know what I have to eat in the house and have a few go-to meals and snacks in mind so I'm not wondering what to eat or how many calories it has. I try to eat things that are high in protein, fiber and good carbs and low in calories and refined sugars/flours. I will say that have a mental list of go-to meals makes the calorie counting process less tedious.

I was eating meals with 500-700+ calories and found 300-400 calorie meals to replace them that are equally as filling. Last night I made turkey meatloaf and kept a tally sheet beside me to keep track of the calories going in. After I had the total calories calulated, I divided that number by four and divided the meatloaf by four so I'd know exactly how many calories were in a serving. I know that sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn't.

Sometimes I get hard on myself for not consistently sticking with my diet and exercise plans, but each time I start over again I've learned something knew. Over the past two years I've documented my feelings and eating patterns in this blog so much so that I can pinpoint exactly where my weaknesses are. Being able to recongnize these patterns is helping me now. I know that there are subtle ways that I sabotage my success and I can finally see them and change them.

I know there are foods that if I bring home, I will overeat them. I know that once I start losing weight, I want to congratulate myself with food. I know that at this point I may start getting bored or feel like I'm not doing it the right way. And now I see this, which without past "failures" I wouldn't have noticed before.

I say all of this to say that if you are reading this and you are down on yourself because you were doing so good at one point with weight loss, or lost weight and put it back on. That you can learn from those experiences and build on them. Look at yourself and really make note of where and how you got off track. We can only change our habits by realizing we are doing them in the first place.

I finished my morning exercise about an hour ago and I wanted to make a post for myself as a reminder of how good I feel after I exercise. I did 55 minutes of the Billy Blanks' Total Body Fat Blaster and I loved it!

I've had these DVDs for years and have honestly not picked them up in such a long time. My favorite form of exercise is cardio kickboxing classes, I feel like I get a really hard workout and I'm less likely to get bored.

I also like Billy's positive messages that really stick with me throughout the day. At the end he says "repeat with me. I am where I am today because my mind brought me here. I will be where I am tomorrow because my mind brought me there." or something like that.

Post exercise note to self: I didn't over think the process of exercise this morning. I got in the shower, put on my exercise clothes, sneakers and moved the coffee table out of the way. This workout is really challenging even without the resistance bands so I was sweating within the first five minutes. I felt really tired and sluggish for the first 15 minutes, but kept going. At the 30 minute mark, I felt tired, but it was getting easier. Billy's encouraging words really helped me to stick with it and keep going. At the 40 minute mark I was starting to look forward to the end. At the 50 minute mark the cool-down began and I felt energetic and happy. It felt really nice to me that I worked out for 55 minutes and stuck with it. It was also nice to get it out of the way so even if I don't do anything else today exercise-wise I know I did 55 minutes this morning.

I also feel like I could go to the gym later if I wanted to or do wii fit, because this morning exercise has put me in workout mode where it doesn't feel like a burden to go to the gym or do more.

I've been making a real effort to eat more protein. Yesterday, was mostly veggie burgers (11-15 grams each) and this morning I had an egg sandwich with veggie cheese. I'm going to write a post soon about vegan cheese because I surprisingly love it.