Friday, February 19, 2010

Soooo sore

Ow, I made it to spin yesterday and wow am I in pain. Then again: Hooray! I went to spin yesterday! The funny thing is my legs aren't really sore... my butt is sore from the stupid seat and my neck and arm are sore from leaning over and supporting half my weight with my hands. Ok so I'm plenty used to the part where if you're out of shape you get sore from working out for the first couple weeks, no big deal I can handle that. But I don't like being sore because I was sitting on something uncomfortable while working out, that doesn't seem productive. The jury is still out on if I'm going to keep doing spin or not. I hear that padded bike shorts help, but I'm not sure I want to spend the money.

Does anyone know how to make the seat more comfortable for spin class?

On another note I have been eating 2 servings of fruit/veggies per day. Still eating too much junk, but I'm working on it. I'm watching a ton of the olympics, sort of helping inspire me to get in shape.

Here's to hoping you all are less in pain than me!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Winter Blues

Ahh yes, I'm back again. I can't seem to get consistency in any part of my life so it's not just the blogging. This is about the time of year where the only way I think I'm going to get out of my "dark and twisty" mind set (see Grey's Anatomy for the quote season 3 mostly) is by leaving for a vacation somewhere sunny for about a week. Of course that's not a possibility due to grad school, money, and well life, but it sounds nice. Hence my winter blues... very little sun, lots of work, not time off. So I guess instead I'll just try again, like I've been trying to restart so many times it feels stupid to say again, but here goes.

So I think I would really just like to start exercising again. That will most likely lead to weight loss on its own as well, but I just feel better if I'm exercising. That might help give me the energy winter seems to have stolen. I also would just like to stop eating a crazy amount of well crap, it's not really even food to be honest, just junk. I think I will change those into goals for the rest of the week and see how that goes before I force myself into counting calories and certain amounts of exercise and stressing myself out about it.

Goals:

1) Blog, even just once more this week
2) Go to Spin with coworkers on Thursday and work out one other time
3) Eat more than 2 servings of fruits/vegetables every day
4) Think before putting candy/chips/non-food items into my mouth

Also, thanks for the support you guys. It helps to know that other people out there are struggling too!


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Time Management

I'm not sure what I want to write in this post. I just know that I have to write, so bear with me for a minute.

I failed miserably at all my goals from last week. I probably have gained some weight, but refused to weigh myself yesterday. I was stressed over a presentation last week and didn't make time to go to the grocery store so I ate out... all week. I made some good choices and some bad ones. I still haven't been to the grocery store. I went on two dates, something I haven't done in a while and my confidence is still on the low side since I haven't lost much weight. Plus it took up time.

Ah ha, I figured out what this post should be about. My awful lack of time management last week. Time management is incredibly key to weight loss. I've read about it in about a million different articles and they all say. Weight loss takes planning and it takes time. Mostly because you need to work out and buy and prepare food. I decided to let my stress and busy schedule take over last week which is why I had no success with my goals. So I need to start with at least a basic plan to help me manage what is looking like another hectic week.

Goals for this week:
1) Make a plan
2) Follow the plan (ok a little too general)
Things to incorporate into the plan:
1) Grocery run
2) At least one work out
3) Two more blogs this week
4) Calorie Counting

Let's see how it goes...

Monday, January 25, 2010

One of those Weeks

You know them well I'm sure... those weeks where nothing goes right and you just want to eat whatever to make it feel better. Well that was last week for me. I didn't blog, I didn't track calories, I didn't exercise, I barely did any work... Sometimes these things happen, so I'm not going to beat myself up, just get back on my wagon again.

I did make myself weigh-in this morning (164.2 back where I started 3 weeks ago). Back to trying hard again and making goals and following through.

Goals this week:
1) Track calories even if they aren't so good
2) Exercise twice (my knee is finally better!)
3) Go to the grocery store
4) Blog twice more to keep myself on track

Good luck with your weeks everyone!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Beautiful!

Well gee I'm so excited Meg who writes one of my favorite blogs to read passed on the the Beautiful Blogger Award to me! She's very inspirational and upbeat, and you should all check out her blog.
award
So the rules are as follows: list 7 random facts about yourself and tag 7 others that I feel deserve it.

Things about me:
1) I've wanted a dog since I was about 3, and I've never had one. I intend to fix that as soon as I move into a place that's big enough for one.

2) My favorite TV show of all time is the West Wing. Ask me anything, I can tell you the answer.

3) Percocet has no effect on me, except to make me slightly more awake. Great combination, no effect on pain and the inability to fall asleep.

4) I'm a complete Band Nerd (can you say marching band in high school)... that's right, my clarinet is currently under my desk. Although I have switched to playing in orchestra now.

5)I don't like the melted cheese on pizza. I take it off and then eat the bread with tomato sauce on it. Sometimes my friends eat the extra cheese for me.

6) I had to have oral surgery when I was 15 to cut open the roof of my mouth, attach a bracket and chain to my upper right canine and sew it back together, so my orthodontist could slowly pull the tooth down into position link by link of the chain.

7) I sing a lot, everywhere (thankfully I'm not bad). If you're in Chicago on a mostly empty street and you hear someone singing to themselves, it might be me.


Ok on to the pass on portion of the post. Although I'm not sure how many of these people look at mine, you should definitely check out their blogs!

7) Emm

Thanks again Meg!!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Food, food everywhere...

So here's a little story about my day today:

I made dinner last night and portioned out the extras into 3 days worth of lunches, hooray. Brought it in, put it in the communal fridge, awesome, go me. I go to heat it up in the communal kitchen today for lunch and I'm starving. I look up above the microwave and there are 3 bags of potato chips, and several chocolate chip cookies sitting in a bowl, for anyone.... I have no where to go, I have to wait for my food to heat up, and the chips are staring at me, saying eat me, eat me. I pick up a bag, look at the calories and it's 150 and I think but I'm going to want my nice glass of wine later. I put them back down, stare at the floor until my food is done and run away! Phew, crisis averted. But seriously is it necessary for there to be extraneous food everywhere for people to eat?! I vote this as a problem in our society.

*Spoiler Alert* Biggest Loser Episode 2-to remind you I just sort of say some things I'm thinking

So it's the learn how sick you are episode this week. And wow everyone is very sick. Bob is trying to stand with like 300 extra pounds and freaking out. Jillian is basically throwing up from trying to eat the food. I was surprised it got anywhere near her mouth to be honest. She's so insane about organic and healthy stuff and counting her calories, which is good, but yeah surprised. Oh my god, the white mom fell and like broke her nose or something. Crazyness. Red team gets immunity, yay!

Oh wow, i didn't realize she was terrified of water, good for her getting in there and facing it. Ok weigh-in... Hmm red team playing the game, well that's smart, but still don't you just want to keep losing weight, isn't that the point? Whatever. People are pulling pretty good numbers for week two, except poor purple team :( And the mommy sacrifices herself for the daughter, so sad. Also, she's looking pretty good, still losing weight, good for her.

All the sickness helped motivate me to do my crunches for today and my knee is starting to really feel better, not great but better, so good day!

Monday, January 11, 2010

on to Week 2

So I in fact accomplished my goals from last week! Go me :) As you can see I posted more than once, I also kept track of all my calories, and I wasn't allowed to work out, so I didn't do that. I also cooked for almost all my meals, so that's good. Hooray for accomplishing goals! I think as a reward I will find a workout video I want and buy it.

I did have a bit of a bad day on Saturday and ate about twice my allotment of calories, but I recorded them. I also discovered that Lose It switches to to the next day at midnight and you can't adjust the previous day after that, so that's a good tidbit, or at least I couldn't figure out how to.

I did weigh in this morning and was 163.0lbs, so that's down 1.2lbs, pretty good start :)

I guess on to goals for this week:
1) Track calories
2) Stay within 250 calories of the total week goal (1350 each day)
3) Cook for almost all meals this week (or make a sandwich whatever)
4) Do daily crunches
5) Post twice more this week

Since I'm still not sure how to work out with out killing my knee we'll start with crunches and I'll see what else I figure out how to do. Have a good week everyone!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Knee Issues

Well my knee still hurts (although a bit less) and I went to the doctor today. He said, it sound like you strained your medial collateral ligament.... I said Huh? Apparently the muscles connecting the tibia and fibia are called that. So basically there's nothign much wrong with me I just have somehow repetitively tweaked those and it hurts now. So I'm supposed to rest it, avoid stairs, and ice it at night until it goes away... really helpful. He gave me a couple knee exercises, so I guess I'll do those, but no exercising for me for a little bit, which kinda sucks.

Just wanted to update, I'm doing well with my cooking and calorie counting :)

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

New Building Woes

So we moved our lab.... and it was only a month and a half after our original move date. However it did manage to be right before Christmas and therefore caused some issues with my vacation plans (which were resolved by me pointing out to The Boss that I had actually informed him of my vacation plans well before the move date was set, to which he had no response, and let me keep my flight as planned). So we were the 3rd group to move in, which is all well and good, but let me tell you, working is difficult in this building for the following reasons:

1) The cold room doesn't work- so all our cold stuff is still one building over and 4 floors down (anyone seeing a problem here?)
2) DI water is still being cleaned-we work with really small concentrations of metals, so DeIONized water is kinda key
3) No natural gas hook ups-biology=sterile things, hard to do without bunsen burners

Those are the major problems, besides not knowing where we stored anything and general other issues. I would however like to give a shout-out to Midwest Movers, who totally rocked. Didn't break anything, including the boxes full of crappy glassware which we were hoping to break, and are sooooo crazy efficient it took them 1.5 days to move everything (we were afraid our 3 days wouldn't be enough). Also, Steve and the connection guys, who made everything work magically and are still hooking things up for us. You guys rock!

P.S. If you're reading this and choosing a grad school, don't pick one where they're going to make you move the lab to a new building. Just a hint....

Monday, January 4, 2010

New Year, New Start

Hi all, it's a new year!

So as many people have, I'm sure, I've recommitted to getting healthy. I got an iPod Touch for Christmas and have been using the Lose It app to keep track of my calories. So far I am a big fan. I started using it on Sunday just to test it, but have been following pretty closely since Monday. Aiming for 1350 calories a day, it says that's what I need to loose 1.5lbs per week, which seems reasonable. I started at 164.2lbs on Monday, so at that rate I would make it to 125 by mid July. Of course, I'm sure there will be many set backs, but at least I have a plan.

The other part of my plan was to start working out this week. However, I've had a bit of a set back there. My knee hurts like hell and as far as I can remember I didn't do anything to it. I thought it might just go away but it's been 3+ days now, so I have a doctor's appt tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that it's nothing too bad!
Oh I also decided to do the Pound for Pound Challenge, so you all should too, it doesn't cost anything and it helps feed people in need!

I also watched the premier of Biggest Loser last night! I'll start doing summaries again next week, but the people are really big this season. They inspire me to start before I let myself get to the point where I'm like that. Plus if they can do it, I can too!

So goals for the rest of the week:
1) Blog at least one more time
2) Keep track of alllll calories on my Lose It app
3) If the doctor gives the go ahead, exercise once
4) Continue to cook good food/bring lunch

Sounds like a good start, I also have been thinking about buying a couple workout videos for the weekend when I don't want to come all the way to the gym, so I'll look into that.

Happy New Year! and good luck with any resolutions you've made!