Weight Loss - Month 1 Summary and Progress

Like most people, I have started off many new years with the intention of losing weight. I have yet to ever stick to my goals and have any success whatsoever. This year IS my year, I started thinking about this a couple months before January and when the year started I sat down and spent a considerable amount of time creating a journal to help me track my goals.

In my journal I am tracking my "Ultimate Goal" which is to have lost 36 pounds by my Birthday on May 6th. Each month in my journal takes up just one single page. I do not obsess over my journal, instead it is there for me to log my weight once per week so that I can see if I am tracking for my goal, or if I need to push myself a little harder during the next week. I also have set a slightly higher goal for the month, one that will make me push myself just a little harder and if this goal is attained each month I get an extra reward.

For January my goals for fitness were simple: Exercise 3x a week.

My diet goals:
1.) Track ALL food intake using MyFitnessPal
2.) Reach my 1200 calorie goal each day
3.) Take a multivitamin each day

Weight loss needed to reach my "Ultimate Goal" : 8.48 pounds

Actual weight lost: 9.2 pounds

MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

My reward for reaching my goals and attaining the proper weight loss to reach my "Ultimate Goal" this month was a new pair of shoes and a workout outfit. If you remember my "Poo shoe" story from my first day going to the gym you know I already purchased my shoes, they're wonderful and comfortable and do not make my toes go numb like my other pair of shoes did...lol.

My "Pushing myself" goal was to lose 10 pounds, which I did not. I'm definitely not dissapointed in myself at all. During the month of January I battled the flu, the stress of my husband leaving to go back to Japan, the stress of being home alone with the kids, and the evil demon that is BROWNIES.

I have to also take into account the fact that I didn't get started on my month until January 5th, which did affect how much time I had to reach my goals this month.

But I lost 9 pounds. 9 pounds!!! I also have lost 2.5 inches off my waist, which is my most problematic area. I am hoping that I don't look 6 months pregnant when I relax my belly in the near future...lol. I burned over 6000 calories last month by walking with the kids, playing Dance Central 2, and during the last part of the month getting a gym membership and going every other day so far for a total of 5 trips.

I've added many new friends on MyFitnessPal, which is a FREE service for those of you who are trying to reach health and fitness goals. We are all cheering each other on, and the constant contact with my friend Kelly Brown is really helping us both out as we talk about our food, exercise, and our shame when we cheat :)

Also helping me out is my memo board I have at eye level when I sit down at my computer desk. This was the suggestion of another wonderful friend and I currently have notes with my weekly goal, and where I started the month at. My FAVORITE note on the board is the one that says where I will be at the end of the month if I reach my goal. Just seeing that number will motivate me each day.

At the end of February if I meet my goals I will be at a weight I have not seen since before I got pregnant with Hailey. I'll be able to retire my jeans, which are already getting loose, and pull out the brand new pairs of jeans and cute shirts I had purchased to wear to PAX Prime that year I came home thinking I had the PAX flu and ended up with an adorable new addition to the family instead.

If you are my friend on facebook you probably have noticed that I am posting a lot of stuff about diet, food, etc. I have quite a few friends that are also working towards fitness goals and I find that posting my frustrations, or fun new foods I find that work for me, and boasting about my success at the gym, really helps keep me motivated. So I hope that everyone understands that and isn't bothered by it too much.

Feel free to cheer me on and post some motivational comments on this blog. I really did work hard this month and I know that I'll have to work even harder this month to keep the momentum going. I'd love to hear your stories about your weight loss, past or present, any tips you have, favorite low calorie foods, snacks, drinks, fitness tips,ANYTHING you think will help.

If you don't feel comfortable posting your comments below (or don't know how to...lol) Email me at Jaxboxchick@gmail.com and your words will just be for me.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting me through this!

Push it Real Good!

I'm still going strong with the weekly Dance Central Challenges. The week 3 challenge has been posted and you can find all the details at The Married Gamers in Kelly's most recent blog. I will admit that I have yet to attempt the challenge. It seems pretty hard, if anyone else is out there reading this and wants to try it with me, I could really use some more cheerleaders or people doing it to motivate me. Kelly and I plan to attempt it tomorrow, but we'll see.

I did do amazing things today. I had everything ready to go get my gym membership this morning. Coffee pot was full when I woke up, clothes were laid out, Hailey's diaper bag was packed. The only thing I forgot to do was poop check my gym shoes. I had barely gotten out of the neighborhood when I smelled something not quite right. At first I tried to pass it off as manure, they are redoing all the flower beds in our neighborhood and I figured that was where the smell was coming from. After a while I realized the poo was coming from my shoe. There was NO WAY I was turning around and going back home.

So, I tossed the poo shoes into the back of the van, and stopped at Dick's Sporting Goods on the way to the gym. There's me with a baby on my hip, strolling into the store in socks. I got some new shoes that are WAY more comfortable than the old ones I've had for years and was on my way to the gym. Things were going well, Hailey strolled into the Kid Zone without a care in the world. I took my tour, and was getting ready to complete my paperwork when the crazy people in the Kid Zone at Lifestyle Family Fitness center decided it was time to vacuum. To make a long story short, Hailey didn't like that very much. I finished my paperwork while standing up and bouncing Hailey to calm her and didn't get my workout in.

No way was I quitting there. I waited for Hannah to get home from school, she was late...lollygagging around with her friends (which she is now on restriction for the rest of the week for) and we immediately hopped in the van and headed back out to the gym...again...for the second time in one day. Hailey was hesitant and apparently fussed the whole time, but her sister was there with her and she was fine. I got in a great workout and felt so amazing and proud of myself. We got sushi on the way home and I still had calories left for the day on MyFitnessPal. WOOHOO!

I was still on a rush from my workout after dinner so I fired up Dance Central 2 on the Kinect and did "Can't Get You Out of My Head" thirteen times and issued the challenge to Kelly Brown. Hannah stuck with me for three times on the song and then quit and told me I was crazy. Hey...I don't waste motivation, it comes so rarely for me.

I'm loving these Dance Central challenges and hope they keep them going past this month. If not, we will have to start getting creative with new challenges and maybe even incorporate some other games into the mix.

I was supposed to write today for The Married Gamers, but I used all my motivation working out so tomorrow I must, I must, I must. But right now I'm enjoying the glass of wine I earned today (and I'm still under my 1200 calories for the day)

I did play the Resident Evil: Revelations demo on Nintendo 3DS today, well partially...it freaked me out and I quit for fear of having bad dreams...lol. But I will get that done and write a little something about it this week...I promise...no really, I mean it this time...lol.

My neck, my back...

Yesterday I finally got started on the Dance Central challenge for week 2. If you want details on how you can participate in this challenge check out the article on The Married Gamers. Kelly Brown is the one who is writing about and participating in this challenge and we have been challenging each other and cheering each other on. This week we are supposed to dance the same song THIRTEEN times in a row! And while I don't completely blame Kelly Brown for the fact that my back is screaming at me today, I do like how gaming can help friends accomplish their fitness goals even if they are on opposite coasts. I see what you did there Dance Central, I'm so on to you!

I selected Cascada's Evacuate The Dance Floor for my torture yesterday. I figured since it was a one bar song on difficulty that it would be easy, so I did the challenge on the "hard" setting. What I did not anticipate was that that one evil move (can't remember the name) would have me sweating and dying. After the first song I immediately changed clothes. You really do need to wear comfortable workout-style clothing when doing this. You don't want to be hitching up your pants or trying to recover your bra strap while focusing on the moves. So I paused and tossed on some yoga pants, sports bra, and a shirt I didn't mind stinking up with sweat...and yes...I got sweaty.

My first playthrough was pathetic, only scoring 175K. However, by the 6th time I was getting the moves down a little better and found my score had gradually progressed to a mildly impressive 488K. Practice makes perfect right? It never went higher...lol. The score started dropping as I got exhausted. The "freestyle" breaks were spent catching my breath and dashing to chug water. The only thing that got me through was knowing that Kelly did her song 13 times in a row, and if she could do it then I could do it and I was NOT giving up. I gave it one final push on the 13th and last time and got 4 stars and 444K. Not great, but much better than my first attempt.

What throws me for a loop is the way they track how many calories you burn. I worked out for 25 minutes. I'm sweating and panting, and had to pop some aspirin last night because my back was so sore and they're telling me I only burned 125 calories?!?!? OH hellz no!

So I hopped on my iPad to the myfitnesspal app that I love and adore and have been using daily and did a search for general aerobics. 25 minutes is 221 calories on there and that sounded better to me so that's what I logged for my cardio for the day on my diary.

I will do my challenge again today. Kelly said the Lady GaGa song Marry The Night is a great arm work-out and that she was able to do it on Medium, so I'm going to try to one-up her and do it on hard.

I need some help picking my song for Friday though. I'll give you all three choices (in order of increasing difficulty) and let you guys pick, just leave it in the comments section:

Sandstorm - Darude

I Know You Want Me - Pitbull

Fire Burning - Sean Kingston

You have until noon tomorrow (Friday) to cast your vote!

And finally I want to add a little blurb about MyFitnessPal (yes again). I made some chili yesterday in the slow cooker and finally took advantage of the feature on MyFitnessPal that allows you to figure out your calories for a recipe you create. All I had to do was scan the things I used in my recipe. So using my iPhone, I scanned the lean ground beef, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, seasoning, etc and it gave me not only accurate calories to log per serving, but the proper nutritional value for my batch of chili. I found this super helpful and look forward to using this feature more in the future.

I still find the iPhone easier to use for scanning. I can never remember where my camera is on the back of my iPad...lol. But I still like the layout of the iPad a little better for other things. If any of you are using or want to start using the app make sure to add me "Jaxboxchick" and we can cheer each other on.

One of those days.

Today was one of "those" days. I can't say I had a bad day, nor can I say the day was great. It was just one of those days where you find yourself sighing a whole bunch. I can't properly summarize it in a dozen facebook posts, nor is it really interesting enough to blog about. However, this being my personal blog, I can post uninteresting things :) So hah!

I'll put the interesting stuff first though so you can get that and move on if you'd like. The Dance Central Challenge I've been doing with Kelly Brown from The Married Gamers is on week 2. For details about this week's challenge and info on last week's (if you missed it) click on the word here. This weeks challenge is to do the same song 13 times in a row and is appropriately titled the Unlucky Challenge.

I attempted to do last weeks challenge and I will openly admit that I only did it ONE time. We're supposed to be doing it three times a week. I'm a lazy bum and I'm not denying it.

I'm also behind on this week's challenge, but at least I have a good excuse. I got an icky stomach flu. Good for my weight loss goal for the week, but not so great for the Dance Central challenges. I tried to do the 13 songs tonight, but only made it through the song 6 times. Exhaustion and frustration at my oldest daughter made me throw up my hands and give up. I WILL try again tomorrow.

Hannah, who for the most part took care of me while I was sick has reverted back to her evil ways today in full form. For those that don't know her, she's a bit of a hypochondriac. I'm SURE there are things that are wrong sometimes, but she's SOOOO dramatic about them. She can't sleep, because she itches. So I'm trying to keep her rubbed down with lotion, because it's probably just dry skin.

Today she comes home and asks me to check her for lice. I almost die, because I've had enough of that for one lifetime. I do not find buggies, but I do find lots of poorly washed hair and tons of flakes. I've shown her enough times how to wash her hair and aside from doing it myself every night I'm not sure what else to do, but every day it's something...grrr.

Also, I'm really frustrated because I was sick. I had all these plans for a "me day" on Monday with my friends and that got cancelled. I really dislike being sick, and figured I should be done with it by today and back to normal, but my body had other plans. So hopefully if I get another good night's sleep, hopefully without the strange dreams about me being part of a Charlie's Angel's style group of crime-fighting women (that was weird last night) I'll be back on track tomorrow.

Monday was supposed to be my day to get a gym membership going too, something I've been putting off for months and talking about just as long. I'm ready to get rolling on my goals for this year, although being sick really did help me stay on track :) My goal for tomorrow is to at least try to get out of the house and do at least a mini-workout.

What else was I frustrated about? Oh yeah, Hailey is on day three of not napping until late at night and I think it's my fault though so I can't complain too much.

Anyhoooo, as I expected this was an entirely boring blog. But it gave me something to do, because going to bed at 8pm is entirely too early. Bug ya later, hope you're having a good one, and blah blah blah.

New Year Update - Part 1

I have been sitting here for the last few minutes just staring at this screen, wondering how to summarize all the excitement and changes and ideas I have for 2012. I've come to the conclusion that if I were to attempt to do this all in one big blog update that it would be a million pages long and no one would read it. (Not that any of you actually read through all this crap anyway) So I am going to do this in "parts".

Since I haven't posted in over a month I'll just sum up the holidays for now and say they were great. Bill came home from Japan for a couple weeks, we had the family over for Christmas Eve and had quite the slumber party, waking up Christmas morning and enjoying it with Bill, the kids, my parents, my sis & hubbie, and my grandmother. Christmas should always be like that :)

I finished up my AA in teaching in December too. Because of all the stress and exhaustion and flat out almost losing my mind I am taking a couple semesters off. This is the first time that I can remember where I don't have work or school and can focus on myself and my family and I am LOVING IT!!!

So, my Part 1 update has to do with what I am planning to do with all of this "free" time. I say this in quotations because I do still have a toddler to chase, and a house and kids to take care of while hubbie is away in Japan. My main goal is to take advantage of this time and focus on my health and fitness, and the overall improvement of the way I feed myself and the kids. Moderation isn't a word I use very often, but I'm working on finding a good balance between the right foods and making the fun foods a special treat instead of an every day thing around here.

I'm actually starting to properly use an app I've had on my iPhone for quite some time now. It's myfitnesspal and it is a free app for iPhone, iPad, and online as well. It makes tracking your goals and the foods you eat incredibly simple. Now that I have an iPad 2 (thanks Bill!) I downloaded the app for it and it's my favorite! However using it with my iPhone is the best because you can use your iPhone a little easier to scan your foods. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

With this app you can hop online and set your weight loss goal. Then using any of the versions you can easily track your foods during the day. There is even a scanner on your phone or iPad you can use so when I make a salad I can just scan the salad, my dressing, and whatever else I use, select the correct serving size, and it enters all the nutritional value for me. It keeps track of everything all day long and provides a summary so you can track your carbs, sodium, etc and see what you need more, or less of as you go through your day. The iPad app does everything the iPhone does and offers even MORE features like a pretty little pie chart that shows you how your nutrition is tracking for the day.

My absolute favorite thing is that you can add your friends and see how they're doing and cheer them on as they complete their diary each day, drop weight, or just give them a "good job!" when they burn off a ton of calories at the gym. Oh, and when you DO exercise those calories you burn off go back into your ticker for the day and can be used for even more snacking, or maybe even a glass of wine at the end of the night. I'll let you check out the rest for yourself, but for a free app it's amazing and definitely a valuable tool. If you use it or plan to add me as a friend: Jaxboxchick

Ok, now that I've got my food tracking I had to address the whole exercise thing. My original thought was that I would get a gym membership that provides child care. I'm still planning to do this later this month. I think it would give me a nice break each day from Hailey (especially since I have NO babysitter close by) and get us both out of the house. For now, we've been taking walks up to the big park in our neighborhood which is a good 2.25-2.75 mile walk depending on which way we go. I push Hailey in the stroller and the kids take their bikes or skates. We've also been doing some Dance Central battles in the house.

The other day I noticed a great post on The Married Gamers about a Dance Central Challenge that Kelly Brown is participating in. Check out the link for all the details. Basically Dance Central is busting out some fitness challenges every week. I came in a little late to the game this week, so in order to get my 3x in by Friday I started last night and need to do the challenge three days in a row. This week you're supposed to do 10 songs in a row by a certain choreographer.

I did this last night on EASY and almost died. My wonderful son hopped in for the last four songs to help encourage me and keep me going and we really had fun doing the challenge. My body is screaming at me today, but I plan to stick with it and try to do all the challenges this year. You can find these challenges each week at DanceCentral.com. Let me know if you're participating and we can cheer each other on.

I think this is good enough for now...lol. Look for more in the next couple weeks from me, I've got a lot more to say...as always...