Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and other great philosophers

"Thinking I will live another 24" <<Ice Cube voice>>

So ok, I bent the rules last week and and it was soooo good - but I don't feel good about it.  I did have a piece of Papa John's pizza. And shrimp tacos. With guacamole.  But I was twitchy and itchy and I really needed to! I'll tell you how I paid for the Papa John's later, two-fold.

Aww yeah!! Don't act like that
wasn't hot!
P.s. I DID have hair
under the hat.

The good news is it didn't totally derail me.  I did get back on track and was down over 2 lbs. this past week! I haven't seen under 250 lbs (as best as I can guess) since I graduated high school, eh-hem, 18 years ago. Damn. Even then it wasn't much under that.  As of last week I came in at 250.8/251.5 respectively ( 2 different scales ).  Hopefully one more week and I'll be under 250, and back in those horribly awesome bib-overalls, wearing Adidas Sambas, and listening to Gin & Juice (laid baaaack).  Interesting image, huh.  It's funny, when most reminisce about their back-in-the-day self it's much different - they want to get back to 120, or size 4. I just want to get back to 250. Dang.  No, I'm not really going to put the bibs back on.  I would, though, if I still had them.  I do have a picture.  I at least cropped the other two pour souls out. They'd kill me!  We'll see what the scale holds this week!

Let's move on to the gym.  We're getting there.  With every session comes something that I'm not so good at.  I get so frustrated! -But, I'm still here doing the best I can.

 ...Now, the punishment for for that Papa John's...


My training had a little unintended payback for me last Thursday.  Big A treated me to sprints (granted, my sprints are not as sprinty as others) alternating with walking around the building.  The good thing: he did it with me, rather than just watching me go in circles which was nice.  The bad:  I paid for that slice of pizza with every lap because the smell of that baking crust was overwhelming! Torture! I worked off the pizza, and saw how I can do much better with running. It was rewarding, and Thursday ended up being a good day after all.

I'm making progress - maybe I'll "see the lights of the Goodyear blimp, saying I'm a pimp" :) soon too.

Pound for pound...

Big A gave this to me a couple weeks back.  -A pound of muscle on your right. -A pound of fat on your left.  So, which one do you think takes up less space? A pound isn't always a pound.

Because I'm A Lady, Damnit.

I just submitted my miserable final paper for class, I had to miss my best-good friend's going-away bash, AND baseball; so I thought I'd write something fun! 

Things are great since my last post.  I weighed in Wednesday at WW and was down 6.2 pounds for the week! I'm now down over 30 pounds since the beginning of all this now.  I have to say my new food switch-up is working! I'm thinking that was the little jump start I needed.  Now that my um tummy has um adjusted to all of my new meals and I've figured out how to cook sweet potatoes (don't judge me man, I don't cook things) I've added some new vitamins and such.  I didn't want to do it all at the same time.  The problem over the past month or so was not that I wasn't working out, or sticking with my WW points plan, it was the I had figured out how to 'work the system' food-wise.  I was staying within my points (and still eating SOOO much better than I used to) but everything was packaged, processed, 100-calorie pack, frozen, blah blah blah. I had moved away from the 'real' food and hadn't even realized it (see post about those blasted gnomes). Lots of little pieces are coming together again to work for me- gym, food, support.

Now, in WW land, this was a really big week! With this loss I hit my 25 pound mark on their program and my 10% mark! -10% of my starting body weight is gone! You can't see me now, but I'm doin' the Roger Rabbit dance in celebration! It's almost as good as a fat-man touchdown dance.  I can do that too.

I'll also say it again - and you're all tired of it I know, but walking in to the gym was the best thing I ever did. EVER.  I'm moving right along with my training sessions and loving it.  We 'boxed' for an hour this week and let me tell you- you have a beer or something at the end of a crappy day that's fine, but knocking the hell out of someone or something really takes all of the crud away! Ok, so I know I wasn't really boxing like the big boys but it really does work.  Also, I'm sure I think I was hitting Big A harder than I really was.  I'll stick with my ass-kicking version. :)

So all of this is great, but I had a little ohh-la-la moment this week.  I've been sitting, crossing my legs all the time. What's the big deal? I am, after all, a lady, dammit, so I should be sitting with my legs crossed! Well here's the deal - I couldn't do that before.  I could put my foot up on my knee and that was about it.  I was sitting in the chair at the gym just as comfy as can be and I realized what I was doing. I almost teared up a little bit.  I'm so excited, I think I'm just going to go around crossing my legs willy-nilly everywhere! Look! Here I am crossing my legs at work. And here- there I am crossing them in the gym!  Now, the thighs are still full of thunder but we're working on that. 

Summer school for me starts tomorrow and I'll be taking 3 classes.  I have no idea how I'm going to fit everything in each day!


And finally - Happy Mother's Day to my momma! She just turned 60 and deserves a major award for dealing with me for 35 of those years.

Me and Momma Joyce in July 2012- We'll have to take a picture with the work-in-progress me . This is the most recent one I can find. 

Those darned gnomes.

Whether you'll admit it or not, you all know you have them in your house.  Underwear gnomes. Dryer gnomes. Sock gnomes. And...in my house...refrigerator gnomes. 

Those little bastards have infiltrated my fridge again.  If you read my older posts, I did a sweeping clean-up of our fridge and pantry a few months back and it was awesome.  Well, the little buggers have slowly been sneaking things back in there that just don't belong and they are totally sabotaging me.  They thought I wouldn't notice, I guess, because I'm still plugging along and doing well.  I looked and there they all were -  soda, bad cheese, whole milk, more bad cheese.  Those are all the things that 'I can have just a little of as a treat.' yet they kept hanging around.  I still haven't figured out how they gnomes got them from the store to the house in those tiny wheelbarrows.

So this morning, coupons in hand of course, we did a clean up again and went shopping for my new food adventures.  It was good and I saved $58 by the way!  I think I can do it.  It will involve, though, two things that I'm not so good at:  getting up early, and preparing the night before.  I spent about two hours tonight cooking some things and getting them ready for tomorrow and the rest of the week.  It's just a new habit, I guess, that will take some getting used to.  Just pray for patience for my poor husband who has to wake me up a little earlier in the mornings now.

Keep calm and don't eat the cheese fries...

This is one of those good news/bad news posts; though I have to remind myself that there really is no bad news as long as I am working hard.

Well let's start with the good news:
I was down 2 pounds at WW weigh in this week.  That was an unexpected gift because I didn't feel any lighter! (You laugh, but sometimes you do feel when you're a pound or two down.)

And now, let's call it the other news instead of bad news:
Big A and I had a date with the measuring tape yesterday.  We revisited the measurements and info. he took down in February to see how I had progressed.  I was disappointed.  I didn't cry.  I sure as hell wanted to, but I prefer to be a tough character if I can because all crying does is make my nose run.  Some numbers were better, some the same, and some a little worse.  Based on my gym work-ethic I just really thought I would have progressed a little bit more on paper.  
Bummed.  
Totally bummed.  
It didn't change anything.  I still want to do this, and I'm still working/going to work hard.  So what do we do? We're still going to work hard 3 times per week, and I need to work a little harder on my own (between work, homework, husband, sleep...). I'm also going to try a new food plan courtesy of Big A. I'm still a proud WW girl, and this new plan should fit just fine in my points system. I'll do yet another cleansing of the fridge and pantry this weekend and start from scratch on Monday.  This may be what I need for a new jump-start, especially after a lot of eating out this week.  

There's a little motivation for this new start too. Our gym is running a "biggest loser" style contest that started this week (that's why we started over with new measurements and such). I want to win it. Period.  Ask my husband, there's not much I like more in this world than winning.  We'll see - I'm going to bust my butt, though, that's for sure.

So I just need to remember that I'm doing well - and I've come a LOOOOONNG way since that first time I walked in the door of Anytime Fitness in January.  I feel better.  Measurements aside, my clothes are starting to not fit or fit differently.  I also worked out with person who is new to the gym this past week and, even though she is quite a bit smaller than me, I was able to spot areas where have improved a lot compared to someone just starting out.  (Thanks, Big A, for pointing that out to me.)

What else?

As usual, school is kicking my butt but my two classes end next Friday.  That means this coming week is going to be tough.   Whew!   Then I'll get a school break for a whole weekend before two more classes start up for eight weeks; oh yea, and then a third will overlap the last two weeks of those two classes. Good times. Deep breaths.