A new plan is in the works! and Christmas chat

So yet again I'll have a new trainer beginning Jan 1st 2014. I can't keep a trainer. They all move away. I think it's part if living in a town with a university. They graduate get a job in their college town as a stepping stone to the job or town where they aim to be. I'm always happy for them but sad to make a change again. 

My new trainer will be awesome. I think I'm going to have the consistency I had back two years ago with my trainer Chad. He trained me for about a year. My new trainer has already started planning my Jan., what I'll change in my eating, what I'll do each day and what I'll do in my workouts. The best part about my new trainer is that they don't cost a thing and I'm able to meet with them any time I need/want to. My new trainer for 2014 is me, Bethney. 

Sounds silly huh? Not really. I've worked with 5 trainers in the past few years. I've learned so much in that time through workouts with them and other research I've done. I realize that it's time to use my own knowledge and resources to just do it myself. Do I know everything I need to know?... No way! But I know more than I probably give myself credit for and I have resources to learn more. 

I think this may be the key and may be my best year yet. I'm back to calorie counting so I'll be using myfitnesspal again using username findtheskinny and as we all know it's about calories in/ calories out so I'll be utilizing my Polar heart monitor as much as I can to track my calorie burn. My biggest key will be tracking and blogging. Blogging to keep myself accountable. Tracking to find trends and areas to improve on. 

I told my husband this a few days ago and he was thrilled. Zero cost! Haha! He is getting ready to return to the gym and go with me. I'm excited about that. Yay!!! 

I'm working on Jan right now. I'm looking at the month as a whole, each week, and each day. If anyone has any advice or tips for creating my own plans please share. 

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm three meals in and a few to go. We are just now traveling to see my family.  I did great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day though . Little spoons of several things. No big servings. Lots of open space on my plate!  I totally enjoy it because I don't usually do things like mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole (and never together). 

Christmas Eve at my husbands aunts house I came in over 500 calories but just imagine if I filled my plate how much worse it would have been. 

Christmas Morning breakfast at our house with my parents. 

Christmas Supper last night at our house with my parents and Brandon's parents. We definitely cooked deer on Christmas. Watch out Rudolph! We cooked pork too with a fabulous cranberry sauce. 

I'm very proud to have stayed within reasonable calorie counts on these two big food days. Even including the two desserts I had yesterday. All gluten free too!

Oh and I took a Christmas run too! Which helped yesterday on multiple levels. Got me out of the house, helped with calories, made me feel accomplished, etc. 

Merry Christmas! 

Decision

I made a decision to stop tracking my good using weight watchers points and go back to calorie tracking. Back in May when I began eating gluten free I had not had much luck with weight loss. Taking the gluten out was a lot to focus on for a while as I learned the dos and don'ts of gluten. During that time I stopped tracking my points and found a great increase in my weight loss success. I continued my weight watcher recipes and Wednesday weigh ins and one day I realize I was paying my monthly few for the graph/chart that I could screen shot with my progress each week. That's an expensive chart. Funniest part is that I called my good friend who had been accountability partners with me and she pretty much told me the same story. 

I truly believe that removing gluten was one of my puzzle pieces and that calorie counting will be plenty alongside my exercise to help me continue being successful. I'm still following all of my weight watcher friends on blogs, twitter, and Instagram. I think it's fantastic but I couldn't justify continuing. Now I'm on a mission to find a fun and good chart/graph system to track my weigh-ins. 

Speaking of exercise. I haven't done much of that lately. On Halloween I was recovering from leg day with my new trainer who I felt would be good and I got sick. Long story short I have been through an upper respiratory infection, an infection that immitates the flu basically, and have a cough that my doctor estimates will linger for 6-8 more weeks. I have been released to exercise and believe that I may go for an easy run tomorrow on Thanksgiving to see how I feel. Mornings are tough right now. It takes me a few hours to get to feeling ok each morning. I can say that with a virus my doctor suggested good hydration, balanced nutrition and rest. I've been following those directions and it is amazing how much they help. Especially the rest. I've rested more than I think I ever have before the last few weeks. I've now been sick for four weeks. I'm way over it and can't wait to get back in my healthy routine. 

I'll post about Thanksgiving in the morning!

Bloggin' and meeting a reader

I have finally set my blogging reminders on my phone. At the least I'll be blogging on Sundays and Wednesdays if not in between as well. So if you're a regular reader check in on those days. 

I have been sick since Halloween. No exaggeration. That day at school I ran a fever but had too much going on to slow down. I developed a nasty sinus flare up over that weekend that led to a cough. I was so sad because since I removed Gluten I hadn't had any sinus trouble. Whe I finally went to the dr. He assured me it wasn't allergies so the allergy relief from being gluten free was still going. Long story short after antibiotics and a good amount of Mucinex I thought I was better then all of a sudden it hit me like the flu. Fever, aches, sinuses, nausea, ear aches, sore throat, cough again. So I went back to the dr. He thought it wa the flu or mono but both test negative. So his orders after blood work and lots of examination were to rest, take Tylenol, aleve, and tough it out. So tomorrow it's back to work for a two day work week. I've been resting a lot. The best I can. I'm not really one to do nothing. So in the midst of resting I've cleaned my entire house and reorganized/ cleaned out my home office. 

In the midst of these 3+ weeks I've not worked out with my new trainer Greg. I liked working out with him my first two weeks. He really pushed me to my potential. I called to schedule for after thanksgiving and he told me he was moving so I have to get a new trainer. Again. I think I know who I'll end up with. More on that to come. 

So last weekend I was at an event with my husband at his school and a fellow blogger who's fiancé is in our line of work was there with her fiancé. She blogs about her weightloss journey as well.  She is found at talesfromteamawesome.com 

A few years ago at our state conference a few people I knew mentioned my blog and 13.1 training to me when we saw each other throughout my first day there. I met back up with my husband I said I'm surprised how many people have mentioned my blog to me. He said "you have NO idea... A guy I know from home saw me and said 'my girlfriend reads your wife's blog' it was crazy". At that point I found out who she was and started following her in return. She and I didn't know each other or even of each other. She found my blog when a Biggest Loser contestant retweeted my blog. (My favorite part of the story I think) The next year at the conference I got to meet her boyfriend. Now two years later I finally got to meet her. We had the best time catching up with each other and getting to know each other in person. I'm so thankful for that time we spent chatting about runs and tris and biking and eating and doctors opinions etc. It was truly inspirational. 

I am at my lowest weight for the year at 189. I am going to try to at minimum maintain through thanksgiving. 

My next step is to determine what event I'm training for next. When Jessica and I talked we chatted about how having something on our schedule helps us greatly. So I need to schedule something. If I know it helps me I have to do it. 

Sweet snacks 101

So my hubby enjoys something sweet after a meal. Very typical. I can go either way but when he asks "do we have anything sweet" then I want it too. I have a tendency to not have sweets in the house because I have little ability to say no to sugar. I'm an out of sight out of mind type person on this. Last night there were no sweets so tonight I decided to plan ahead. I grabbed a container of cool whip in my way home to make a key lime pie but was planning to leave the crust off and place them in cupcake papers to freeze. 

Got home....

Not enough Nellie & Joes Key Lime juice (find it at your local grocery, it's fabulous... It's from key west. My Mimai family introduce it to us. The mango key lime is awesome too)

To make the recipe. Bummer...

Hmmm. So I decided to make it with te juice I had and then thought it would be way too sweet. So I then decided to cut down the sweetened condensed milk amount. Then thought about the cream cheese left in the fridge and wah-la. A new recipe was born... Key lime cheesecake cups:

(The pan is clean. It's stained by some chocolate batter)

 The measurements are below and they are nuts because it was how much was left of a few of them. 

1/8 cup Nellie's Key Lime Juice

6 Tbsp low fat sweetened condensed milk

8oz container of cool whip

4 Tbsp of cream cheese. 

Mix all ingredients with a handheld mixture. Use a small ice cream scoop to place in papers. 

Freeze.

I unfortunately did not have access to low fat or fat free cool whip this time so the calories will only reduce once I make that change. 

Here are the facts when divided into 10 cupcake papers:

Each 

101 calories

12 carbs

5.2 fat

1.7 protein

3 weightwatchers points

My blogging thoughts from the big cheese wagon

I haven't been blogging as much lately and I believe it's due to the quick posting ability of Instagram. This past week though I was reminded of how beneficial my blog is to me and how others enjoy reading it and how it may help someone else. A friend of my brothers (who is a friend to me as well) has been following my journey via my blog and Facebook since I trained for my half marathon. He  is on a journey to better health as well. He told me when he met me in person a while back how inspiring my blog and my journey are to him. I was reminded of that by him last weekend when I went for a visit. I talked with him about how there is much more I could be sharing and how sharing and knowing I have readers inspires me to keep going. One specific thing we discussed is how I have kept going through  many disappointments in my journey. Many of those disappointments stemming from medical troubles or mysteries keeping me from losing as I wanted to. 

So. I'd like to try to blog regularly. I typically just blog when something strikes me to write but as I said, I think I'm satisfying those strikes with Instagram (follow me there @findtheskinny). So in addition to strikes I'm going to settle on some regular times and set reminders in my phone to stop what I'm doing and blog. I think it will be good for me on many levels. One of which will be just slowing me down sometimes. 

I went back to my doctor on Wednesday. He is very pleased with my weight loss since April. A little more than 10 lbs. May seem slow but my goodness it's success compared to the 3-4 lbs I'd lost and gained a million times the last three years. Though my blood work was great in April he gave me an option to do it again to check on improvements from being gluten free and having lost 10+ lbs. so of course I said let's do it. Who cares about the needle! So I'm waiting on those results...

I'm traveling this weekend with the marching band. Our favorite trip. I had to pack tons of my own food though. I'll post more about that later. 

I dressed in my run gear because were headed to my alma mater and I wanted to reunite with the famous 2 mile loop on campus. Not sure I'll get to though. I don't want to go alone and so far I haven't found anyone who can go along. Still looking.... Oh and we left 2.5 hours late so the 3 hours of downtime is cut way short. 

For now I'm going to get back to "relaxing" on the big cheese wagon!

Stay tuned!

I am totally seeing dots from taking a selfie with a flash on the bus. *see my findtheskinny cooler?*

I won ! Me - 1 , Sweets - ZERO

So I headed to Zumba after school. I had a huge traffic snafu when I tried an alternate way around a long long line of cars at a left turn lane and ended up having to go back across the entire intersection again.... Hard to explain if you aren't local so anyhow. I was a few min late into Zumba class. 

I was so excited for class tonight as my goal was to increase my heart rate and calorie burn from last time. Very soon into class I did something funny up on my toes or jumping I pulled a calf muscle. I tried for a few minutes to go on but it was getting worse. I had to leave. At that time (within about 15 min) I had burned 125 calories so things were headed in a great direction. My average heart rate was up and so was my max from last time. I was bummed. I headed home to ice it.  

So on the way home I was upset and quite frankly wanted something sweet. Really bad! I'm such an emotional eater. That's when the addiction to sweets gets tough. 

So I had a few thoughts. A single scoop of vanilla ice cream from chic fil a. No... Not a good choice. A vanilla come from sonic. No... Not a good choice. I needed to stop in Kroger maybe a Hershey bar from line... NO NO NO!!! Not a good choice. I made myself resist and made it home. It was a true battle with myself. While at Kroger I purchased some vanilla almond milk to make some fake ice cream. I used my sport bottle blender. I mixed 12 oz almond milk, 6-8 ice cubes, 2 TBSP of PB2 (powdered peanut butter w cocoa) and 2 tsp of butterscotch sugar free pudding mix. It tastes like a butterfinger bar when you mix these things in a protein shake but I added the ice and put it off into the freezer to make fake ice cream. (No protein powder of any type)

It is super good! (Maybe less ice next time)

I divided all I made into four servings approx 1/2 cup each. 

Weight Watchers it is 1 point for a serving

Calorie counters. Each serving is 41 calories. (Only 1.5 g fat)

For me this was a huge success! I beat the craving to eat sweets because I was frustrated/ upset. I've iced my calf and its pretty sore. I will see what tomorrow brings. 

I helped get a running group together at work and tomorrow is a running day I sure hope I'm able to run tomorrow! 

Woohoo!

So I had a great weigh in on Wednesday losing 2 lbs landing me at 191.8. This morning I hopped on the scales for a midweek weigh in. 189.8!!!! That's right! Two more lbs and I broke the 190s. Goodbye 190s!

My exercise schedule for the week didn't work out as well as I wanted because of adjusting to new routines and things popping up. Hoping this week will be better for that. I'm just so stinkin excited for 189.8!!! Wanted to share really quickly! 

Back to Routine equals New Goals

This week school starts and routine returns. I've already picked up a new habit suggested by my cardiologist. That habit is eating not a quick breakfast in the car but setting down for breakfast at home with lean protein each day before work. I began that habit during marching band camp. I pre cooked gluten free biscuits and pancakes to last a few weeks. I also pre cooked chicken/pork sausage links. So each morning it took 1 min to warm EITHER one biscuit OR two pancakes in the microwave with a sausage link and cook one egg at the same time in the skillet. Super easy. Some mornings I ate it on the back porch while the dogs ran. (Multitasking!)

Next goal : get my exercise routine in check! My fantastic dr gave me a target heart rate zone to try for three months in addition to removing gluten. Well I do better with one big goal at a time. So now that I'm successfully eating gluten free I'm ready to hit the exercise hard. I'm going to purchase my polar heart monitor soon. Sunday night I sat down and planned out an exercise schedule for the week. It is as follows: 

Wednesday - Zumba

Thursday - Spin Class (fairly new to me)

Friday - Zumba

I decided that each week I'll set my schedule on Sunday when I plan the rest of my tasks out for the week. My "big rocks" for any 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fans out there!

I'm starting with classes. While I'm working on those I'm going to check back into some of my old routines I did with trainers as well as try to find a trainer again to use up the rest of my trainer sessions and see if its something I want to do again. 

I know I said I'm best at one big goal at a time but I think this one goes hand in hand with my exercise routine. It's to clean up my eating. 

Tonight I was watching Extreme Weightloss with Chris Powell. He ate for a day as his client used to eat and he was completely ill from eating restaurant food. Now I am super careful about restaurant food with my gluten free diet these days. (But that doesn't make gluten free restaurant food ok!) However, his experiment really struck me.  He said he has a treat once a week and its usually tortilla chips or frozen yogurt. Seriously! Seriously! How many of us consider those treats and not just foods that aren't "too many points" or they fit into our calories etc. 

My treats usually consist of Hersey's chocolate or ice cream and truthfully happen 2-3 times a week. Not ok. 

I know some about clean eating but over the next few months I will be figuring it out even more. I've been gluten free for 3 months and I've lost about 10 lbs which my cardiologist was super excited about. Next I'm going to settle back into my exercise routine and clean up my diet and then in 3 more months make that appointment with my doctor to see how it's gone with both a gluten free AND clean diet as well as steady exercise. 

I need encouragement though. I'm going to be posting more often on here as we'll as my Instagram/twitter accts. mostly food / exercise pics there. If you don't follow me there... both places you can find me @findtheskinny go follow me! My blog readers and Instagram/twitter followers truly keep me accountable and motivated. Thank you!

Tomorrow is weigh in day. I think I will also attempt to take measurements in the morning if I can find my measure tape without making myself run late. 

So here's to new goals an being back in a routine!

More water in Florida in more ways than one!

So when you head to Florida for vacation and you're like my husband and I you figure out how to spend as much time as possible at the beach. We successfully spent 6 days out of our 7 at the beach. The water, sand, sun, dolphins, boogie boards, ocean side dining, tunes at our beach chairs, seaweed in our hair, etc all made it just what we wanted it to be. Relaxing and rejuvenating. We also happen to get nice tans and our hair turned a lighter shade of blonde from our normal. We had all the ocean water and experience we could need or want. 

Something else came with it as well. Plenty of water consumption. Every day we filled 4 Nalgene bottles (2 for each of us = 64oz of water each) That means outside of my beach water I needed 16 more ounces to meet my 80 oz a day. No problem a cup with my thyroid med in the am and a cup with my heart med at bedtime. Easy peasy!

Well it turns out that I still did t quite make 80oz a day but came much closer than I have the last few weeks at home. My husband feels that it is due to sweating more on the beach. I agree but I also think it just goes with the overall refreshing effect the beach has. So in general going to the beach help increase my water intake closer to my daily goals. 

My current water goal is 80oz a day. I use the plantnanny app (thanks to LindseyLosingIt from Instagram sharing her experience with it) to track my water consumption. It's like a modern day Tomagochi (remember those? I may have spelled it incorrectly). I plant a plant and I have to water it to make it grow. In my last few months I've grown plants and planted them in my garden and ice also killed plants. But anyhow. I'm now growing a Cactus that I named Spike. It all seems silly but it actually helps. 

When I tell plant nanny that Im active and 193 lbs it requires 134 ounces of water a day. I just don't feel that is necessary for me. So I manipulated the numbers down to 100oz because I recently read about dividing your weight in half and drinking that many ounces. That was when I was still 199ish. I found with 100 oz that I spent an excessive amount if time in the bathroom. So I dropped down to 80oz and it seems to work well for me. I plan to ask my doctor at my July appt what he suggests in this area. But for now I've lied to Plant nanny and told it I weigh 155lbs and Im sedentary to get it to require 80oz of water. 

So I've attached a few graphs along the way to show how inconsistent I have been at home and how much more successful I was at the beach. This week is the top graph. (The last Saturday is today and is only halfway complete as I have half a day left) Now my goal is to continue the good habits I formed this week once I return home. I'm wondering how these good habits along with lots of fresh local foods this week will affect my weigh in in the morning. I'm anxious about that. 

Downward trend... Who knew?

So I weigh in weekly as most people (especially us weightwatchers) do. Each week I have three outcome options: loss, gain, or stay the same. Each week I hope for a loss and settle for staying the same but despise gains. Normal right?

I often feel agitated by the ups and downs. Why can't it all be downs?. I told my husband the other day that if I had never gained back any pounds I've lost in my lifetime that I would have lost more weight than I actually weigh! I'm sure most people fit that description. 

So I recently noticed a trend and its easy to spot in my weight tracker graph. It's two low "peaks" where I had significant losses with a significant gain in the middle. Now this is pretty personal and I don't mind that just a warning. 

With PCOS and endometriosis both I must be on a hormonal birth control. No option. Well I went off the prescription for a week while I was on another medication that really didn't mix well with it. Well that week I lost 5-6 lbs. wow! So when I started back I maintained for one week and then gained 5 lbs. I was not happy. I felt that the prescription was maybe holding back my weightloss progress which I needed in order to control the PCOS. 

So I called and made an appointment with my doctor (OBGYN) and over the next week took a risk and stayed off the medication to see what happened. I lost 3.4 lbs. of course I did!

I went to the appointment yesterday and as always my dr was amazing and talked and listened and he said that the weight loss was likely water that the hormones make your body hold onto and the loss would likely stop/ level off if I stayed off the medicine. I cannot stay off the medicine for medical purposes so we had to chose something else. So we chose to change the type of medicine that Im on. I'm pleased with our decision and he said that a change could be beneficial. 

So next ...

He said. I do want you to notice something. He had written my weights down from the last four appointments including yesterday. They we're :

203 (Dec ish)

200 (Jan ish)

198 (March ish)

193 (June 21)

So he said you've actually lost 10 lbs (5% of my weight) since we first determined you have PCOS and began discussing your weightloss. I hadn't really noticed that downward trend. So I said look at my weight watchers graph with me. I did the landscape view where it goes back 24 weeks and ,by George, there was the downward trend. Now it did look like a mountain range but overall it's going down. I was excited. 

I guess I get so caught up in the weekly that I lose sight of where I'm going. He told me to keep it up and it would get easier as I lose to lose more (hormonal lay due to PCOS)

I felt encouraged when I walked away yesterday. 

I write this post or a few reasons:

1. To encourage others to advocate for themselves and talk openly with their doctors about how their medications affect them. 

2. To remind others, as my doctor reminded me, to look at the overall not just the right now. It's about losing in a healthy way. Not losing fast. In the long run losing slow will be more permanent. 

I know this post was personal and I hope you don't mind. I need some feedback though. As you may notice my weight watchers app lists 200 as my starting weight because it's what I weighed the day I started but from the time my doctor and I talked and I headed in the glutenfree/weightwatchers direction I was 203. So I'm thinking if changing my ww starting weight to match. I have 203 as my start weight on myfitnesspal and would kinda like to see it all match. Opinions?

A bit of success

When I first began with gluten free I had just weighed in on April 10th at 200.4 lbs. blah!

I was nervous to begin but that is just what I did on April 13th. I went cold turkey because with gluten that's just what you do. My mantra for the time.... "Ill feel better than that food tastes"

I slowly thought of all the foods Ill never eat again (Krispy Kreme, and a few other I can't remember now thank goodness)

I never really crave anything. I almost immediately notice positive differences:
I slept better
Woke up better
Had level energy through the day
Ached less (from fibromyalgia)
I also lost around 4-5 lbs pretty fast. In about 2 weeks. Considering my 3-5 lb loss over the last two years I was pretty excited.

I leveled off for a bit though I kept going. No matter what zero gluten. No cheating at all.

I had a bad week a week ago when I couldn't get enough chocolate and ice cream. I was getting a DQ blizzard or Hershey bar like every day. All
Gluten free but not healthy. I believe it was due to stress at the end of the school year and maybe some girly reasons too. Even during that week I lost .4

This week I have fixed the chocolate issue. I have weighed in today at 192.8. So I've lost right at 8 lbs in about 6 weeks. I'm super excited. I feel as though the gluten is finally out if my system and I'm on a role.

I go back to the dr in about 6 more weeks. I would love to be at 179 when I go back

This week I have a goal to get back to my weight watchers point tracking. It's been hard for me to keep that up while learning to eat gluten free.

Next week when my girly reasons have gone away I will be settling in more on a summer workout routine.

I am not only still here but I have some success to share.

I haven't posted much this spring. I have yet to find a good balance in the spring as I prepare my choirs for state assessment. That balance is something that I plan to work on each year until I find it.

Anyhow. I've still been here, tweeting, instagraming, and working to findtheskinny. I just haven't been blogging.

I have had some success with the gluten free eating and I can't wait to share.

Tomorrow is my first day of summer break and I can't wait to find my summer workout routine and get to blogging.

Details on my recent weight loss tomorrow!

So I am a healthy "obese" person.

Yep. That's right. Interesting huh?

So here's how it all came to be....
I had a bloodwork panel along with glucose/insulin test a week ago for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) Initially the dr who ordered it called with the results that were in.
*a few hormones were low (to be expected)
*glucose was elevated on last hour
*everything else was normal
*waiting on one more hormone and insulin but nurse warned me that insulin may show resistance since glucose was elevated on last test.
*referred me to regular physician to go further into the glucose/insulin etc
*pcos was officially diagnosed but we are already doing all we can for treatment.

The nurse suggested that my regular doctor might send me to a nutritionist to learn how to eat healthy. I could have gone through the phone. Bless her heart she had no idea that I've been trying to adjust my nutrition for years to lose weight.

So I made the appointment and saw my regular doctor on Thursday. I was excited for the appointment but nervous too. I trust my doctor a lot and know that he won't do anything crazy and he is super thorough.

We started by reviewing the panels. Remainder of hormones came back normal and insulin was normal. That was a surprise.
Me to Dr: I had mixed emotions about the insulin because had I been resistant it would have given him something to fix that would help me.
Dr to me: Fix is a strong word and he wouldn't use it in that case because the resistance would always be there. So he said I should be very happy that I'm not insulin resistant.

So happy I am!

So then he told me something that still makes me smile. My cholesterol panel couldn't be more perfect than it is. It's never been "bad" but it has been middle to bad end of average. Now all numbers are on the fantastic end of average. His point: I may not be seeing the results I'm looking for with my healthy lifestyle but I am most definitely benefiting from the healthy choices.
(It's better than my brother's who is way more "in shape" weight wise than I am. He's running his second marathon of the month in a few weeks. Nothing against him. I wish his cholesterol to be awesome too. Just an example)

My next question: so what about that one elevated glucose level?

Dr: sometimes with PCOS you can not be insulin resistant but your body doesn't exactly process sugars as efficiently as we would like.

We discussed how a person with a great BMI can be very unhealthy and a person with a BMI over 30 can be extremely healthy. My BMI is currently 35. So....

Me: So you would consider me healthy except my weight

Dr: I would consider you very healthy no expect.

So he made my day. My doctor who is awesome and isn't only a general physician but also has a sports medicine office told me I was very healthy. That is encouraging. What I do has results!

All of this hasn't been for nothing. Basically at this point losing weight is still a great idea but it is not a health necessity. It can possibly reduce symptoms of the PCOS but that is the extent of it. (Of course weight loss would make me happy).

I told my doctor that when I go to yoga I always get mad because I'm more flexible than my fat allows me to be. Lol.

One thing we discussed is how my husband and I, like most people, have a set of puzzle pieces to fall in place before children. One of my pieces is to be at a healthy weight for a pregnancy.

dr: it's not a matter of getting to "healthy" weight. He says my weight is not in the way of a great pregnancy. He says that my healthy life style has me at a perfectly healthy place for children. That losing weight before hand would only improve how I feel in reference to how I look.

I still want to lose before kids but its nice to know that we're not actually held back by my health. That I'm actually in a good place. There are still other pieces out of place so those of you who know me don't get too excited here.

So next ... Me: so what now? How can I lose weight better?

We discussed my current nutrition and weight watchers. He likes weightwatchers. We discussed my current exercise habits. He likes what I'm doing but wants to make sure that Im really focusing on my heart rate in cardio workouts. I told him that I would love to run a 13.1 again but have decided to wait until I weigh less for the sake of my knees. So I'm sticking to 5Ks and training for the sprint triathlon in town in August. He was super excited for me to do the Tri. He thinks the swimming is awesome and biking can be as long as I adjust my bike correctly to avoid back strain.

He's been to see the Tri in town before and I asked if there are big people who do it too. He assured me that people of all shapes and sizes participate and I can totally do it. He thinks ill be fine to use my mountain bike for this distance. So that's good.

Me: Do you think I can be at my healthy weight in a year?

Dr. : yes

So the plan:

Cardio 240 min a week properly monitoring my target heart rate.

Any resistance or weights are on top of this. (I told him I do NOT want to become jiggly. Lol)

Stick to weight watchers

Go gluten free (this is something that my cardiologist had mentioned and I had read up on)

See him in 3 months to see how I'm doing. At that time if I have been dedicated to the above and still don't lose he will try me on metformin. He wants a medication to be last option. He said that even though I'm not insulin resistance the medication would help my body be more efficient in processing sugar but he thinks I'm going to succeed without it.

He then sent me to try out a new anti gravity treadmill in his building the next day just for fun in reference to me holding back on long distance running to save my joints. (Separate post coming)

So all in all I felt so good and encourage when I left his office.

I do want to clarify some things.

I'm NOT and he is NOT saying weight doesn't matter or being at a BMI of 35 is always ok. Every person is individual. In my case I'm very healthy at BMI 35 and 200 lbs but also have a healthy desire to lose weight to be even better and my doctor supports that.

I'm not talking about just kind of trying for two and a half years and just deciding I'm ok this way. I'm talking about being a 200 lb person who leads a healthy life on a regular basis. Who does the work to meet my goals (13.1, 5Ks, sticking to nutrition plans, regular exercise)

I'm also not claiming to be perfect. I have unhealthy snacks or meals sometimes. But I avoid unhealthy days.

I've always said that I'm glad my body tells me how I treat it. I would much rather be a healthy "obese" person than to be someone who has an awesome BMI and can fit in any clothes they want but also eats what they want and they are very unhealthy on the inside. The two (inside and outside) don't always match but it does go both ways.


So today is gluten free day number 1! Ill have lots to say about this soon.

So I'm excited to just keep on keepin on!

Its been a while

It's been awhile since I blogged. Been super busy at work polishing the choirs for state assessment. I've been on Instagram and twitter just haven't blogged. I hate when I get behind blogging.

So here's what's been happening.

I got to try trader joes. Love it.

I'm still doing weight watchers online. It's going well. I'm not one of those people that drops multiple pounds a week but I am losing. Sometimes I gain but soon after I have a better loss. Overall since Jan 2 I've lost 3.4 lbs. some wouldn't be happy but I am. Considering that I've lost more in three months than I did the last two years. Pretty great.

My obgyn is working with my regular doctor and my cardiologist on what may be the final puzzle piece into why I can't seem to lose. Remember the endocrinologist that told me I was genetically predisposed to being overweight and gave me a weightloss pill? Yeah I took it for a few weeks and all my other doctors vetoed that idea. He seemed to miss a panel that my obgyn would have expected him to have done. The pcos panel for polycystic ovarian syndrome. My obgyn discussed this with me and I blogged previously but he waited until some symptoms calmed down to talk further. In the mean time my general physician brought it up and my cardiologist loved the idea. My obgyn and I chatted about a week ago.

So here I sit today doing a 2 hr glucose test to check for insulin resistance and the pcos panel to seal the deal.

I have mixed emotions here. I don't want to be insulin resistant but if I am they can treat it and it should help me lose weight much easier then in turn reversing the resistance and controlling the pcos. So there are pros and cons you see.

In the mean time. All three drs love weight watchers and my OBGYN described this to me: "your body doesn't want to change so its fighting against you. Keep fighting hard and eventually your body will give in and you'll lose better. " (all this in reference to pcos and weightwatchers) also the more I lose the more things balance out in my system and the easier losing becomes.

I just can't wait to be successful. !!!

I have attached pictures of data for these three months. Notice I have been below 200 for 6 weeks now! I'll try to blog consistently. I'll update about this insulin stuff.

Where does it come from?!

So when I weighed in Wednesday I was feeling pretty good but still cautious as I had felt good about weigh ins in previous weeks too. I actually lost 2.6 pounds. I was so excited. I went from the highest weight (2/13 weigh in 201.2) since starting WW the first week of Jan to the lowest weight (2/20 weigh in 198.6) all in one week. Woah! I was so excited. I lost!!! And it was more than tenths of a pound!
I was happy and moved on not really thinking of what I had done to do better other than knowing I was being more strict on my points tracking.

So this morning I decided to hop on the scale again. Im pretty well addicted to weighing but have been doing good only weighing once a week but today I wanted to weigh. I took my glasses off as always because they might weigh a few ounces. So I heard the scale beep and I squinted to see the screen. OMG! I grabbed my glasses and looked again. I saw it right 196.8. Down another 1.8 since Wednesday?! You have to be kidding. What's happening to make it work?

I began to go through what I've done different.
-aiming for 100 oz of water a day instead of 64.
-eating more fresh fruit
-leaving Cheerios off my breakfast menu

Would any of these things make such a difference alone or is it the three together?

My exercise has lessened since I have been having lung issues with this virus in my chest that I wish would go away. I've been mainly just making sure I get in 10,000 steps most days.

So what is it?! I know ill keep up the water and fruit ect. The Cheerios part got me to thinking. I've been thinking about an researching a gluten free diet. Have I reduced my gluten unintentionally? I'm truly not even sure about that.

So I'm not sure what has changed but I know ill keep going. Can't wait for Wednesdays weigh in!

So the where did it come from part...

When you lose weight do you ever thing about where the pounds came from? Belly? Arms? Hips? Legs? Face?

I always picture the model of 5 lbs of fat and in this case over the last ten days I've lost 4.4 lbs. almost that full 5 lbs. so that amount of fat is gone from my body. But from where. In that thinking I can't help but be excited to hit 5 and 10 lbs because at 10 lbs ill surely notice a difference. Yay!

So last week before my successful weigh in I laid in bed one night calculating where I would be weight wise on certain important dates (ex: spring break, last day of school, color run day, ect) if I lost at an average rate of 1.5 lbs per week. I have it all listed out each week in my notes in my phone. This allows me to set short term goals. For example. At that rate I should be down to 192 by spring break. 186 on the day of the Nashville half and 180 by the time School lets out 175.5 on our fourth anniversary. This gives me a vision for where I'm headed and short term goals. It gives me hope that it can be real. I have a space next to each week to place my actual weight to see when I'm ahead like now and when I'm on track or falling behind. I know I will see all three of those as it is calculated on a 1.5 lb average loss per week. Some weeks will be not as good where some will be awesome.

I can't wait to see how this goes. I pray that I will continue losing. It's like something has lined up. Still haven't figured it out but in thankful. It's been years since I've had a loss this good. Seriously.

So yay! I hope everyone's weekend is great! How do you set goals? Do they help you?

Saturday morning thoughts

So I'm sick on this Sat morning. I got sick last week but it was the type of sick where you feel good by 9:00am. But them Thursday I woke up with no voice and chest congestion. I've had a fever around 102. Lots of fun. So I'm totally hanging out doing nothing at home today. My hubby went to the farm so I have somewhat of a desire to clean while Im here alone. We'll see.

Here are some topics I mentioned that I was going to talk about.

Gluten:
So I've thought a few times about the benefits of going Gluten free. It's always caught my attention because it is suppose to be good for skin and for reducing belly fat (I need some serious reduction in that area). From everything I've seen the way you know if you are sensitive to gluten is simply by trial. Seeing if symptoms improve with the elimination of Gluten from your diet. I guess if you eliminate it and nothing changes your not sensitive. Then at my last cardiologist visit the Nurse Practitioner that always starts my appointments suggested that I read Wheat Belly and that trying a gluten free diet might prove to be helpful for me. She is awesome and takes great interest in nutrition. I love chatting with her.

So I went to KMEA (my music educator state conference) and when I returned home and the last day I was there my skin was all broken out yay for adult acne! That is about the time I was researching Gluten free diets and what contains gluten I had always been afraid it was basically no carb which I am not interested in. I not only learned that there are carbs that are gluten free but that malt vinegar is high in Gluten due to the Barley. Who knew? Really?

Well guess what I ate THREE times in Louisville? Fish and Chips and of course malt vinegar. Not sure why but Louisville has awesome pub restaurants. So it hit me. I had maybe an unusual amount of gluten and an acne breakout. So I think I definitely need to try going Gluten free. I can combined that with weight watchers very easily. I haven't started though because I'm trying to research and know the dos and don'ts before I start so I can do it correctly. If anyone who reads my blog has info or advice on this topic please share. I'd like to go Gluten free by March if not sooner. I figure Ill try it for one solid month and see if there are any changes unless my research indicates a different time frame.

Kettle Bells: when Chad was my trainer I used to do a lot of kettle bell work. So my sweet hubby bought me the new Jillian Michaels kettle bell set. I used it early this week and loved it. It comes with an instructional DVD from Jillian but it has a lot of downtime. It's not really a workout video. I need suggestions for good kettle bell videos. Doesn't Bob Harper have one?

Races:

So I have yet to decide if I'm going to run in or be a spectator at the Country Music Half in April. (My brother and sis in law are running) There are a lot of factors in my decision:
Am I ready?
Do I have time to get ready?
The day before I have some work things that I missed last year in order to register on time. Do I want to miss it again?
Etc. ill decide soon. In my brothers words "you better get to deciding"

I did a 5K in Dec and I feel that Im at a point where I can just up and do 5Ks on a whim. I'm still not fast so I might want to decide to work on my 5K time. However I was so encouraged by a WKU long distance track team member that I met at a jewelry show I did yesterday. We all got to talking about running and I asked her what her 5K time is. It's like 17 mins and some seconds. Nuts! I shared my time of 40+ minutes. She said "hey it's just great that you do it. No matter what your time is". That made me happy. She probably didn't know what her statement meant but for someone so good to encourage someone like me meant something.

So upcoming 5Ks I am doing.
March 23rd: 5K that my gym puts on to raise money for Courageous kids. Running that with my cousin I think.
June 8th : Color Run with co workers.
July : I'd like to run the Trooper Sunset again. It was my first ever and it's a fun night time run.

So I have plans. Now to keep them and run to be prepared.

Weight Watchers:

It's going fine. WW is working super well for my cousin Tracy! She's lost a lot of weight since Jan 1. Go Tracy. She's being a huge motivator for me.

My friend Nola is also doing good. She had a great week this week. She and I are accountability friends for WW. We text when it's hard or when we weigh.

Nola got more strict on herself this week and had a great week. Tracy and I were talking about how up and down I am. She said "I've been really strict".

Common idea. Strict. I'm not strict like I should be. It's not hard to be strict on WW it just takes determination and dedication. So I'm utilizing my sickly three day weekend to make a better plan for myself to be more "strict" and disciplined. I truly believe that if I get to losing that it will keep coming off.

So here's to better planning.

A shout out to Karie and Kim for helping me with WW with ideas and such too.
I promise all 4 of you ladies that Im going to get better at it!

Now back to my hot bath and lazy sick Saturday!

Here are some pictures of my weigh ins so far with WW. I need to see some more negatives and less plus signs.

So much to say...

I haven't blogged in a bit. I keep thinking about things I want to blog about and then I don't set aside the time to blog. Work has been very busy recently. I need to blog for me though. It keeps me going.

So here are a few topics I need to catch up on:

Traveling:

I went to my brothers house for my nephew's second birthday. We had a blast and I have to say his house may be one of my favorite travel spots because it is such a healthy trip every time. Sometimes we run races, my sis in law always cooks good veggies and healthy lean meats, and there are always health conversations. This time they introduced me to Jillian michaels 30 day shred workout. OMG. Tough! I burned 160 calories in 20 min! I also got to log a lot more flights of stairs on my fitbit because they have stairs in their house. I played grocery store with my nephew and helped him with his new piano attachment for his iPad we got him. I drove home with a single cake ball in a container for my hubby and never touched it. Yay.

Then I had a work trip to Louisville. Every single meal was eaten out including the turkey dog I bought from a street vendor. Felt like that was a good choice over a hot dog or beat. Still haven't had that weigh in yet (tomorrow morning)

Fitbit:
It's going well. Most days I walk 6000 steps just in my teaching day. Crazy! I struggle to get in stairs because my life is very flat. Seriously! My biggest day was 18,866 one day on my work trip I KMEA in Louisville.

Now Im about to fall asleep and sleep is important. So I will finish these thoughs with these topics:

Gluten
Races
Kettle bells

Yoga!!!

So I pulled out my old Biggest Loser Bob's Weight Loss Yoga DVD last night. I wanted to do something to jumpstart my attempt of pre planned daily exercise. I've been struggling this week with not getting home from work in time to get to the classes I penciled in for the week. So last night at 9:30 it was yoga time. Bobs weight loss yoga is not your typical yoga. It burns and hurts and makes you sore.
Yoga at the gym usually pushes you but not in the make you sweat kind of way.
I've always wanted to try hot yoga for that reason. To sweat. But I'm also afraid of hot yoga. Wonder how my body would react to it.

Anyhow. So of course 5 min in my husband got home and thankfully he was awesome and got the dogs calmed down and stayed out of the room until I was done. It was tougher than it was last time I did it because its been a while. But I was able to do it all and it felt good.

Gracie I think wanted to do yoga too. She laid down on the end of my mat. She popped her head up when I took her picture so it's not as good as if she had stayed laying.

Speaking of my mat.... It's Vera Bradley, its cute, I love it and I've used it for almost three years now. I think it sometimes helps motivate me for yoga. Who doesn't want to carry the cute Vera carry bag and get out the cute Vera may?!

So Bobs yoga DVD is progressive. You build your workout on the DVD using warm up, cool down, and three levels of yoga routines in the middle. My plan is to make it through all three levels as try suggest. I've never gone past level two. You have to stay at each level dr a few weeks. So yay yoga!!!

Cardiologist today! Great news!

So my ejection factor increased to put me
Not only in the normal range but well into the normal range. The cardiologist said that with heart abnormalities they are used to seeing small improvements and small to large problems or changes for the worst. He said I had a large improvement and its nice to see because they don't see that very often. Now that's encouraging.

My pulse was around 65 today. Amazing for me!

The weird thing is that my palpitations have increased in frequency. He discovered that during my stomach viruses in Dec/Jan I depleted my potassium and just haven't gotten it back yet which is increasing my palps. So I will take a supplement for a few weeks and recheck. Stupid stomach virus even messed with my heart.

Interesting fact. My Cortisol checked out normal. That's the stress hormone. Cool I figured as most Americans it would be off. Good to know.

Dr and his PA both love that Im on weight watchers. PA suggested I read up on gluten. Ill be researching that. Reading suggestions welcome. She told me about Wheat Belly.

I think I've decide to run the Nashville half again. My next cardiologist appt is the week of the race. I wonder what I can accomplish before then!

I had a jewelry party tonight. I was so proud that I made all my snacks weight watchers snacks! Woohoo for feeling good about snacking with the girls.

Lots of random thoughts here but I had a very encouraging day and I'm ready to take tomorrow and do something great!


I took a random picture of a heart model while I was bored at the appointment today. Lol

Sooo...

Lol. I didn't have a good title. Just sitting here thinking and decided to blog.
Weight watchers is going ok for me. Just working on my discipline. It's not quite where it needs to be yet. I lost one pound last week and I was so excited. Funny to be excited over one pound. But I thought. Only 64 more times of repeating this week and I'm there. This honestly was encouraging to me. For real.

I'm nervous about this week.

I'm still not exercising as I should. My schedule has been super busy and its only going to get worse. I know one of the best things for a busy schedule is a regular exercise routine. I've got to do this. I got a got bit a week or two ago and I've been wearing it daily my steps at work range from 6,000-8,000 each day. I am a walking kind of teacher no walk around my room non stop. So I'm thinking a 10,000 step goal isn't enough. In thinking 12,000 steps a day is going to be my steps goal.

It tracks my floors of stairs climbed. Guess what? I never climb stairs! Lol. My home and my school are one story. What to do here?

It tracks my sleep quality as well. This I believe is an important thing I can improve. I've only been getting 5-6 hours of sleep each night. Not enough an waking up 5-18 times per night. No fun! I do not have sleep apnea but because of my Fibro I don't always go into a deep sleep. I used to take sleep medication because my doctor said I needed the deep sleep for Fibro management. I'm wondering if this is why I feel tired a lot. Wonder if I should use the sleep medication again for a little while to try to retrain my body to sleep better. Hmm?
What I CAN fix without meds is my hours in bed. I must get to bed earlier! Ill work on that this week.

My fitbit has a flower that grows with activity level through the day. I want that flower to max out. I gotta see how much it takes to make this happen.

So I have tomorrow off work. I thought it might be a good day to hit the gym to get it in my system. I really think one day back will get it back in my system.

I also have a cardiologist appointment tomorrow. I'm supposed to receive good news about my ejection factor! So yay. I gotta ask them about my palpitations though. They are recently more frequent. Who knows...

Here's to a new week with a day off work to help start fresh!

Happy beginning of the week everyone!6

Great Recipe and other thoughts....

Weight Watchers is going well.  I continue to here from friends that weight watchers is what worked for them.  I'm getting so much support right now and I truly appreciate it.  It is something to get used to though and any help from my readers is welcomed.  I'm so used to counting calories that this is so different.  It's so easy I almost feel out of control. Haha.  Today I felt like I had done bad, but I actually had 3 points remaining. 

For those that don't know how it works you have a set amount of points to use each day.  You are supposed to not go above but not really below either.  You also have weekly points that you can use but you don't have to use.  I've heard from many that they have lost best when not utilizing the weekly points.  The weekly points are intended to be used for a "cheat meal" or a special dessert, or a meal beyond your control etc.  The point of them is to use them and then continue as normal following your daily points.  If you go over on your points one day they come out of your weekly points. 

Yesterday at work I had Thursday's dinner left overs for lunch and grabbed a sprite from the soda machine.  MISTAKE.  Who knew a can of sprite was 4 points!!!! I do now!!! That is why I think weight watchers will work for me.  It keeps me accountable to those little things that I used to do and I guess knew mattered but pretended that they didn't.

So remember mine and Brandon's challenge to not eat out for Jan.?  Well, we had a "beyond our control" situation arise and we ate out.  Every year during all district band weekend we take Brandon's students to dinner at Shogun.  Of course I could have eaten at home quickly and sat and not eaten at Shogun, but this goal is not about being miserable.  So, I decided to just enjoy it.  I did manange to resist soda at Shogun by using Lemonade flavored Mio in my water.  Hibachi is one of those foods that I need a flavored beverage with.  Can't explain it.  Its just how I am.  Can't do pizza and water either.  After the sprite accident at lunch and my view of the chunk of butter fixing to hit the hibachi grill I figured I'd better make a good beverage choice. 

I get 31 points a day.  When all was said and done, the hibachi, the sprite... I went over my points by 6.  I used 37 points yesterday.  I get 49 weekly points.  So I used 6 weekly points.  So all and all.  Not that bad. 

Back to the no eating out challenge.... This one out of our control situation is isolated.  That is not stopping the challenge.  It resumed this morning and will continue. 

So back to todays points.  I had what I felt were too many sweets but still came in under point budget for today.  So that just tells me that what I can control is making sure that I eat plenty of lean meats, fruits, and veggies (basically eat enough) so there is no point room for sweets.  Another thing that keep my points down was sleeping in today.  I slept late enough that I had a brunch kinda of morning meal and then dinner.  I had a snack of a few pretzels in between.  But 2 meals obviously has less points than 3.  I'm a breakfast eater for sure so I normally don't miss meals.  Hoping that keeps my points up and away from sweets.

Ok, now to the best part of this post.....our dinner tonight.

Its Heidi Powell's Garlic Lime Chicken.  I like to call it Spicy Lime Chicken because the seasonings seemed more spicy than garlicy to me.  I give her all the credit.  It is amazing.  Me from the kitchen into the living room to Brandon as I cooked "I feel like I"m on food network".  I got to do some cool things.  Here is the link to her recipe:
Garlic Lime Chicken

The only thing I did different was instead of putting the seasonings into a baggy and shaking and baking.  I placed the chicken breast in the pan to cook, rubbed seasoning on top of all four pieces then immediately flipped over, rubbed the remaining seasonings on the opposite side.  To me this just ensured that I would have enough seasoning to spread across all pieces.

I also cut the two chicken breasts in half in order to have four 4 ounce servings.

The best part, creating the sauce at the end (the reason I used my stainless steel rather than non stick pan) You use the "stuck" seasoning in the sauce.  Super cool!  I used tongs to constantly move around my chicken as it cooked to keep it from actually sticking. 

I served with green peas and carrots.  Super good.  A four ounce serving of the chicken is 7 points.  One of my veggies was free, one was 1 point.  Can't remember which was which.

Juicing my limes... This awesome juicer that my husband wanted when we
did our wedding registry is awesome. 
I got 8 oz of lime juice from 3 limes.

Love measuring tools and pinch bowls... this isn't the half of it.

Cute huh?

This is when I got the beginning of the Food network feeling...
my stainless is just so shiney

seasoned and cooking

This is the cool part... Food Network feeling complete when I used
the wisk to pull the "stuck" seasoning up into the sauce when
I added the lime juice and broth... My sauce appears darker than Heidi's...
wondering if I cooked the chicken at too high of a heat....
the stuck seasoning was dark and the sauce reduced very quickly.
It tasted great though.... was not burnt at all.

complete dinner... this is a small plate by the way. makes the plate seem more full.
of course I used measure cups and measured my veggie portions exactly

2013 Good Year Ahead. I am telling ya

Well, its a new year.  I've been blogging now for 2 years.  Thank you to those of you who view my blog regularly and those who have stopped by a time or two.  You've kept me going.  I may have thought that by the end of two years I would be blogging about having found the skinny and maintaining the skinny, but that just isn't how it is.  God has had a different plan.  I've had lots of ups and downs along my journey so far.  I've fallen on ice (remember that?), I been awesome at cooking, counting calories, attempting to calculate ratios, and other exercises that my trainers have pushed me to do.  I've been dedicated 80% of the time.  The other 20% of the time I struggled.  That 20% came Sept-Dec. of 2012.  I'm coming off of that 20% right now. I've learned that about every single level in my body is just right and not causing me problems.  I've been told that I'm genetically pre disposed to being over weight.  I've most recently been told by two of my doctors they believe that I have PCOS.  My biggest accomplishments in the last two years were running my first 5K in 2011 and my first 13.1 (half marathon) in 2012.  So through the struggles I've never stopped blogging or accomplishing.  I'm proud of that.  I've had 4 trainers..... I ate peaches for the first time.... I can do burpees (and use my knowledge of those to keep my football player students behaving in class.... they don't like when I mention "burpees" and "tell your coach" in the same sentence).  I have been in the newspaper, I've set an example for my students.  I've run in the rain, the sun, the snow, and ice.  I found a new favorite class, R.I.P.P.E.D. I have found a physical strength that I didn't know I had.  I have also found a mental strength that I'm still learning to control.

So what does 2013 have to offer?

Well it began with a mean stomach virus.  I've been down for 6 days.  I had this same virus back in Dec. along with a sinus infection.  My goodness.  I hadn't been sick in forever then all of it hit at once.  I'm finally feeling better and headed back to work tomorrow.  You know what I determined about me being sick.  I think its my fault.  I think that for the last few months my activity and exercise levels have been much lower than normal in my opinion making my immune system less capable of fighting off the germs.  Just my opinion. 

So now that that is over I can get on to my goals that I have set for 2013.

My husband and I spent our drive home from my parents house setting 2013 goals.  Not resolutions really... not things that you have to do every day or you fail at because who can really be perfect every day.  Our goals were things we wanted to accomplish in 2013.  So Christmas 2013 we want to look at that goal list and mark them off.  Examples:  Paint specific rooms in our house, pay off debt (we are Dave Ramsey fans and have finally decided to get gazelle intense), get more rest, eat breakfast at home not in our cars, follow a more organized schedule for cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, etc.

So I have kinda been struggling with how to set my personal health goals.  I saw a friend add of his miles run over 2012.  He aimed for a 5K everyday of 2012 and just came sooo close.  I think he missed few enough days you could count them on your right hand.  he ran like 1100+ miles and lost 40 lbs.  Super Super cool.  He goes to church with my parents.  We enjoyed several running updates from each other through the year.  I definitely want to keep running so I thought about a total mile goal for 2013.  My brother is going for 1000.  I just think 1000 might be too much for me for now.  I truly dont' have a desire to run a 5K everyday or anything like that and I think its for fear of exhausting myself which I have to be careful of with fibro.  So I added up my miles from last year and it was like 100+ for Jan-April when I suddenly stopped running because I ran my half (face palm).  So I think I'm just going to look at it this way.  52 weeks.  6 miles a week would be 300+ miles in the year.  So thats pretty close to 365. So I'm aiming for 365 miles run in 2013.  An average of 1 mile a day.  If I go beyond I go beyond and yay, if not I still have an attainable goal.  Right now due to mega stomach virus I'm at zero.  I'll get right on that! Hopefully tomorrow I will feel up to it.

Moving on..... losing pounds..... I know I was encouraged by my OBGYN to just keep on keeping on and get back into any habits I had slacked on and be patient that even if the pounds didn't drop I would be healthier.... Also encouraged by the Physicians Asst. at my MDs office to back away from the scales and focus on how my clothes fit and to see my OBGYN for further info on the PCOS.  At one time the thought crossed my mind to just own it and make a size 14/16 look cute, but I hate feeling like I'm in a fat suit.  So I'm focusing on one thing the OBGYN said.... "if you keep going, the weight will eventually start to come off and when it does you will get momentum and have more success"  The more I read the more I realize this is a PCOS thing.  PCOS is all hormonal and affects weight and is affected BY weight.  So when you manage to lose a few pounds the hormones shift closer to normal and then you can lose a few more and they shift more etc.  I've heard one opinion (not my doctors, but someone else's doctor's) that with PCOS every 5% of your weight that you lose is easier than the previous 5%.  Now that sounds like a deal....

So I needed a plan.... a plan that wouldn't allow me to lie to myself..... a plan that would be there on good days and bad days, in restaurants, at home, everywhere I go.  I needed someone else to think for me a little bit because I was tired of thinking.  There was one thing that I NEVER accomplished... a balanced ratio between carbs, fats, proteins.  I was given appropriate ratios by trainers and my doctor agreed with them, but that stupid pie chart on myfitnesspal never was right no matter how much I tried or planned ahead. 

My mom and a friend of hers were going to start South Beach diet in Jan together, so I started thinking about SB diet.  (I decided not to do it, so keep reading) That is the ONLY diet that has ever worked for me.  Summer of 2003 after high school graduation I lost the 25 lbs that I had gained that year.  I thought well low glycemic levels would be good for PCOS, but I kept thinking that it seemed like a lot of restrictions and I knew if my hubby was going to do something with me restrictions wouldn't be best.  I didn't want restrictions quite that much either.... then something happened...

I showed my hubby another success picture of a friend who had lost 60 lbs (I think.. if I remember the number right) this past year and has similar obstacles.  He said " How'd she do it?" I said "weight watcher" and moved right on down my facebook newsfeed.  I had NEVER wanted to do weight watchers.  Then my husband said something "Do you want to do weight watchers?  I'll do it with you?" I said "No, why do you think I want to do it?" He said, "Well, every single success story of a friend you show me you tell me they did weight watchers, so I thought that was your way of telling me you wanted to do it"  Bless his heart he was trying to figure me out and I wasn't even trying to subtly say anything this time.  I hadn't noticed the trend.... but it WAS there.  I got on facebook and messaged all my friends who had had success with weight watchers and they all had great things to say and were very supportive and highly suggested it.  I got online and read. Talked to my friend that I mentioned above.  I thought I wanted to do it.  Yesterday hanging out sick at home I texted one of my very best friends who I've always had great weight loss conversations with who also has similar obstacles.  I said out of nowhere to her "I'm thinking about doing weight watcher...."
her text back "No way!, I seriously just signed up for ww online like 2 min ago."
That was it.  It was my sign.  I truly believe God was saying through all of these friends but particularly her.  DO IT!

I went to the dr. yesterday and had to have blood panels done etc. for this silly virus.  So I asked the PA about it.  She thought it was a fantastic idea.  She said "out of all the diets out their WW is by far the best one".  So with her blessing, God's blessing, and lots of friends to encourage me I signed up last night.  I'm doing it online.  I'm pretty excited.  I have a friend with PCOS that has lost on weight watchers.  I have a friend that lost weight on ww to get to her goal before having a baby, then after the baby back to her goal minus another 5 lbs.   You know those ratios I was talking about?  Well, weight watchers does that for you.  I'm so excited to have a good ratio without having to bang my head against a wall (I never really did that, but wanted to).

I counted my points and was way under yesterday because I was trying food (beyond saltine crackers) for the first time.  So I expected to be under but wanted to practice tracking.  Today I was under by 3 points, still not eating quite like normal.  Hoping for a normal day tomorrow and exercise added back in.  So here's to a brand new, never tried it before, plan for 2013.  Bring it on!!!

I'm also so happy to have my hubby on weight watchers with me.  Watch out!

So my goals for 2013:

• get more sleep, lots of weight loss statistics there
• eat breakfast at home in the mornings
• do weight watchers
• run 365 miles this year
• schedule workouts ahead of time in order to accomplish more
• run a 10k
• run another 13.1 (lexington got cancelled, picking a new one)
• bike more (i have an awesome Trek, why is it collecting dust)
• cook more

Oh and a current goal for my husband and I that is helping us weight wise and wallet wise....

In Jan. we are striving to not eat out AT ALL.... notta, none, zero.  So far we've done it.  It's not been easy, especially being sick it would have been way easier to let Brandon pick up his own dinners, but I have cooked the last few days anyhow.  I think after the initial detox of restaurants and whatever on earth makes us so addicted to them we won't even want them any more.  Join us on that challenge.


*** Lose it before they do challenge.***
Anyone still in?  The before the new season part is over and I lost like 2 lbs.  Let me know if you are still in.  Now comes the second half.  Sunday is the premier! Yay! Gotta get my NBC channel fixed, stopped coming in for some reason today.  I was sad.  As a teacher I NEVER get to see the Today's show, so I was going to watch it while home sick.  Nope.. didn't get to.

So here's what I need from my readers.... keep reading, share my blog with others please, and comment to me.  Today for this blog please let me know if you are also not eating out, or doing Weight Watchers.  I love hearing from y'all.

Best Wishes and God's Blessings to you all!