Well the cycle was broken, but only for a week.  I'm up a pound this week.  However, I'm happy to say it is only a pound.  This time of the month is hard for me to lose.  I'm feeling very bloated. But that is not the only issue I had this week.  Like most of us I'm an emotional eater.  I had a very emotional weekend.  It started last Thursday at work.  I had to tell someone that we couldn't help them anymore.  Without going into too much detail, because I can't (legally) this person is terminal.  Needless to say they were very upset.  On Friday morning, they called me back at work and during the course of our conversation they told me that they had contemplated suicide because we couldn't help them anymore.  When I got off the phone, I was very upset.  I realize (logically) if they had done it, it wouldn't have been my fault.  However, logic is not my strong suit.  But I did ok for a while, then my boss comes up to me and tells me my interior lights are on in my car.  I tried to get them to go off, but it didn't work.  For some reason, that was the straw that broke the camels back.  I just started crying and couldn't stop.  I knew I couldn't stay at work, so I went home.  Most of that weekend I spent in kind of a funk.  Every little thing would start me crying again. So I started mindlessly eating.  I know I didn't eat a lot, but it seemed like that was all I did.  By Monday I had gained about 5lbs.  So as I say I'm happy that it was only a 1 pound gain.  BTW, I am also happy to announce that this person is still alive and kicking.  We have been able to figure out a way to help them.

 

Laurie

 

I don't know if you guys remember about a month ago, I wrote about going to the rodeo which was held at the Expo Center here in Topeka and how miserable the experience was because of trying to squish my big ol' hind quarters into that chair and the the arms of it were digging into my hips the entire time?  Well, anyway, we went to the Expo center again this past weekend.  We took two of our nieces to teh circus.  I must say, I was a bit apprehensive.  I knew that we'd be there approximately 3 hours and I wasn't too excited about having a repeat of that rodeo night discomfort. 

 

WELL, I'm happy to report that all of this hard work has paid off.  I sat right down in my seat just like a normal sized person.  There was not one iota of discomfort.  I can't wait until I take my measurements again in a coupe of weeks to see just how many inches I have lost, especially in my hips. 

I just wanted everyone to know just how proud I am of Laurie as well.  She modestly fails to mention that prior to this challenge; she was already down nearly 30 lbs.  I'm just trying my best to follow her lead.  She is the one that has really given me the motivation and courage to know that I can do this too!  It has been such a pleasure to participate in thsi Million Pound Match-up with my sister (my best friend). 

 

 

Well, I have finally broken my up and down cycle.  I'm usually up one week and down the next.  But this time I have had two down weeks in a row.  I only lost .6lbs this week, but it is definitely better then going up 1.4lbs.  I'm hoping this is the start of a new trend.  I'm so proud of my sister.  She really keeps me motivated.  Our Mom has been doing this Y thing with us and she has lost around 5lbs so far.  I'm so proud of her as well.  She is a smaller person, meaning she really doesn't have too much to lose, but she is doing great.  She is just about at the right weight for her height.  I'm just going to keep trying and perservering and hopefully I can make them as proud of me as I am of them.

 

Laurie

I DID IT!!!!   I hit the 20 lb mark this week at the weigh-in.    Actually I passed 20 right up.  I lost 2.6 lbs this week for a grand total of 21.8 lbs.  YAY!  I've had my eye on that number since the beginning of this competition.  Now I know that I can reach my ultimate goal of losing 10% of my beginning weight before the end of this challenge.   I only have 3.2 more lbs to go and we still have nearly 3 weeks left.  I am just thrilled and so thankful for this Biggest Loser challenge.  It came at just the right time for me.  Like I mentioned in my personal story, I'm just a few weeks away from being done with my cancer treatments and am ready to be done with the "cancer chapter" of my life and move on to the next chapter which for me is winning the war against fat.  This challenge has certainly given me a great start! 

 

As for my America On the Move walking challenge this week, my steps walked last week are:

 

Today is another one of those "mixed bag of emotions" weigh-in days for me.  I lost 3.6 lbs this week for a total of 19.2, which is FABULOUS, BUT I sooooo wanted to hit that 20 lb marke this week.  Sigh....so close, but no cigar.  Bummer.  Oh well, I'll have it next week. 

 

This week at the Y they added a fun little feature.  They had printouts posted on the wall so that we could see where we fall out in the list of competitors in the Y's Get Fit Topeka Challenge.  As of last week, I was #23 out of nearly 400 participants.  Top 25 baby!!!  So even though I didn't hit my 20 lbs like I wanted, that really was exciting to see.  I'm really not all that far behind the people in the top 5, so seeing that in black and white is extremely motivating.   I'm really going to push myself for the last three weeks of that challenge.  Coincedentally, it ends just 3 days before the end of this Biggest Loser challenge.  That's perfect!  Being in the stretch on both of these challenges will inspire me to give it my all.

 

As I wrote last week, I started my America on the Move challenge at work.  My steps walked last week are:

2/8   - 7566

2/9   - 8054

2/10 - 1925  (pretty much a lazy Sunday that's for sure!)

2/11 - 8505

2/12 - 7604

2/13 - 8611

2/14 - 8020

 

Not bad averages, but I want to be doing much more than that.  I don't know about the rest of you guys out there, but it has just been miserably cold here in Kansas this winter.  I don't usually mind winter so much, but I have just had it with this winter.  I'm ready for it to turn nice so I can get outside to walk.  I don't really feel motivated to put in too many steps on a treadmill.   I like being able to see the distance pass by under my feet.  Not only do treadmills not movitate me to walk alot, when it's cold, all I want to do is curl up under my big fuzzy blanket and watch tv.  Hopefully our weather will break in the next week or so and it won't be so bitterly cold and I can get outside and rack up those steps.   

Yea!!!  I actually lost this week.  I'm down 4.2lbs from last week and 8lbs overall.  I just need to make sure I stay on this losing streak.  I really was hoping for more as I was down 6lbs according to my scale, but I weigh sans clothing at home and in jeans and a t-shirt at the Y.  My plans for this week are to actually work out and to monitor my diet better.  I'll talk to you all next Friday.

 

KUTGW

 

Laurie

All I can say is it's my own fault.  I was up 1.4 lbs this morning.  However, it could have been more.  I went out to eat with an old friend last Friday night.  My band performed Friday and Saturday (free beer) and Sunday was the Super Bowl, also, it was that time(if you know what I mean).  As you can see it could have been much worse.  My game plan for next week is to go to the gym at least 3 nights and eat several small meals a day to keep my metabolism up.  I had also been allowing myself one real pop a week.  I decided to give that up for Lent.  I'm hoping that going without it for 40 days will really help me not to want it anymore.  Pepsi is a real weakness of mine, so I really related when they did the soda temptation on Biggest Loser. 

 

Well anyway,  I hope that next week I will have better news on the weight loss to report.     

 

Laurie

I almost forgot...Today is Day 1 on the America on the Move challenge at my office.  I have my trusty pedometer on and will start logging my steps. 

 

As you all know by now, Friday's are weigh-in day at our local Y.  I was really freaked out about today's weigh-in because when I weighed myself on Monday, I had GAINED 4.6 lbs overnight.  We went over to our mom's for a Superbowl party, but trust me, I did not consume 16,100 calories.  (3500 cal = 1 lb).  While I did allow myself  a bit of leniency, I was very conscience of my portions, so I have no clue what happened.  I've been working really hard this week hoping that I would be able to at least get that gain back off.  So when I went to the Y this morning, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I "officially" lost 1.2 lbs since last Friday's weigh-in.  What that means is that "unofficially" i lost 5.8 lbs this week.  Man, I wish I could count that as progress.  Oh well, I EXTREMELy happy that I lost this week and now am at 15.6 lbs total lost since beginning this challenge! 

 

Laurie seems to have found herself in a little bit of a yo-yo situation, down one week, up the next.  We'll be putting our heads together to figure out a way to break that cycle for her.  Wish us luck!

Today is Weigh-in day at the Y.  I’m down another 4.4 lbs, for a total of 14.4!  I feel very good about the progress I’ve made over the past 4 weeks and I am sure my success so far will help to motivate me through the end of this challenge. 

I’ve been adding walking to my daily routine for the last 4 weeks.  I’ve started out slowly 10 minutes a day at first and now am up to 2-20 minute walks a day, most days of the week.   I’ve been reading recommendations that we should try to shoot for 10,000 steps per day.  For the first month of this Biggest Loser challenge, I didn’t want to keep track of steps.  I just wanted to work on incorporating walking in to my day.  My intentions were to begin Phase 2 of my Biggest Loser challenge at the halfway mark (this next week).  Phase 2 includes using a pedometer to track my steps each day. 

Talk about perfect timing.  At work last week, we got an email introducing a fitness challenge.  It is AOM, America on the Move.  It’s a walking challenge that my employer is challenging us to.  Our walking challenge at work runs from Feb 8 – March 21^st.   This challenge requires a pedometer to track steps.   AOM has a pretty cool website,  www.americaonthemove.org.   They offer you the option of 6 different trails to challenge yourself over the timeframe of your choosing.  The trails run the gamut of one that averages 4310 steps over the course of the 42 day challenge and one that averages 10095 over the course of the challenge.  I haven’t decided which of the six I’m going to pick yet.  Next week I’m supposed to track my steps for 3 days just to get a base count of how many steps I’m taking right now during the day.  After I do that, then I’ll know that I want to challenge myself to a route that will incorporate at least 2000 extra steps per day.   I’ll be posting my efforts so you all can watch my progress. 

Phase 2 also will introduce a new phase to my nutrition.  Like I said, this first month for me was just an easing in period.  I didn’t want to overwhelm myself by trying to be too rigid with my food or my exercise.  Now that I’m getting in the swing of things, I really need to start keeping track of my food intake in a journal.  I think that will be extremely helpful during this next phase as usually in the beginning, weight can fall off rather quickly.  I want to be able to keep losing steadily for the remainder of the challenge and beyond, and I believe that journaling will be the key to keeping a close eye on what I am doing to be successful or what I am doing that might impede my progress. 

Good morning!  The title of this blog is Frustration.  I'm feeling a little frustrated this morning, more with myself then anything else.  I have gotten so lazy and complacent about not exercising, that I can't make myself go even though I like doing it.  I keep finding little excuses not to go.  I'm planning on going tonight.  I'll let you know tomorrow if I actually went.

 

Laurie

Went to the Y this morning before work and lost another 3.6 lbs.   That’s a total of 10 lbs since we started 3 weeks ago.  While I am THRILLED at weighing 10 lbs less, I find myself feeling a bit discouraged thinking it should be more.  I’ve been a fan of the Biggest Loser since Day 1 and the participants in that show often lose 10 lbs or more in a week.  I do understand why they pull the numbers that they do.  When we went to the kickoff for the event at the Y; Marty and Amy were the guest speakers.  They told us that they would spend 4-6 hours a day exercising at a pretty intense level.  I’m still at probably a “less than moderate” level.  I asked the fitness expert in Wichita during the Biggest Loser tour last weekend about the reality of trying to exercise at such a level.  She strongly advised me against it.  She said for the normal person (one not in a television competition) we would be setting ourselves up for failure.  Especially if we are a not a regular participant in exercise yet, which I am not.  It would become too overwhelming and painful and we could get injured, or just decide to quit because it’s too hard.  If we start out slowly and work our way up, this is the best route to go to gain every advantage in order to stick to this new way of life.  So while I do understand all of this, I still struggle with wishing it were more weight gone.  But as the old story of the hare and the tortoise goes, we all know that slow and steady wins the race.  That’s what I need to do, be methodical, thoughtful, and purposeful; and that my friends is how I will ultimately be successful.

 Well I had a small set back.  I weighed in this morning and had gained 1.4lbs.  I can't say that I was perfect on my diet last week and I only worked out once.  Weekends really do me in and we had a 3 day weekend last week.  I know I will do much better in my next weigh-in.  I go to the gym tonight and I should have alot more exercising done this coming week.  I am also going to keep better track of the food I eat.  I was pretty bad about not writing down everything I put in my mouth.  I can't fix it if I don't know exactly what broke it.  Well that's all for now.

 

Laurie

I did my 2nd workout last night and it really wore me out.  I did what my trainer calls circuit training.  My routine consisted of 15 minutes of warming up on the treadmill. Then I did my weights on back, calves, chest, hamstrings, biceps, quads, triceps, shoulders and then abs.  On most of them I did 2 sets of 20, but on shoulders and hamstrings I could only do 2 sets of 15.  I'm hoping to build that up.  Once that was done I cooled down with 15 minutes of walking.  It felt good to be able to get through the routine, but I know tomorrow I'll be a little sore.  Kathy and I weigh in tomorrow, so I'm going to do some cardio at home tonight. 

 

Talk to you all tomorrow to let you know how it goes. 

 

Laurie

It was quite a weekend for me.  One great experience and one not so great experience to talk about.  I’ll begin with the latter.  Friday night, I went to the rodeo with my guy, his brother and our 11 year old nephew.  The rodeo was held at the Expo center, which is a local venue for these types of events.  I was really looking forward to the rodeo.  It’s been several years since I’ve been to one and they are most certainly exciting events to watch.  Anyway, we had general admissions seating, the seats in the auditorium are those kinds where the seat bottom flips back to the top and folds down when you sit in it.  And of course they have arms.  OH MY GOSH, I sat down in the chair and had to shove my big fat hind end down in that seat.  Then I spent the next three hours with the arms digging into my hips.  And if that weren’t bad enough, I sat in-between my brother-in-law and my nephew.  I found myself trying to make myself smaller by crossing my arms over the front of my body so as not to hang over in their space.  By the time rodeo was down, I was actually kind of sore; obviously from the chair arms digging into me, but also from tensing my body so that I wouldn’t take up extra space.  It was awful.  Luckily my nephew is a little guy, so I was able to lean towards him instead of my brother in law. 

The good experience for the weekend was that Laurie and I went to Wichita to check out the Biggest Loser tour.  A couple of weeks ago, when I first saw that they were going to be that close to us, I called Laurie and told her that if all possible we should plan to go.  Wichita is about a 4 hour round trip from where we live, but we decided that as long as we didn’t have crappy weather we would go for it. 

I really enjoyed the experience.  There was a couple of long lines that we waited in to get through all the activities, but we met so many interesting and inspiring people during our wait that the time passed by rather quickly.  Jim and Julie from this season's Biggest Loser were there to meet people , sign autographs and hand out Biggest Loser books and DVD’s.  We were also allowed to meet with fitness experts who answered questions that we had about diet and fitness.  They took our picture and I guess it’ll go up on msn’s website sometime this week.  People that wanted to create a website for the contest were also allowed to do that during this event.  They had 3 laptops set up for people who were interested. 

After we were done with this event, we decided to have lunch.  We were starving!  We picked a “fusion food” place and both got rice bowls.  I have to say, I don’t go out to eat all that often and was surprised that my lunch cost nearly $11.00.  I digress, anyway, we got these rice bowls and they were really pretty good.  We both got through about half of our food and realized that we were full.  My guess is that 2 weeks of eating portion controlled food helped in that.  Now in the past, I don’t care how full I was, I would have finished that food, ESPECIALLY after I’d spent $11.00 on it.  I guess we could have gotten doggy bags, but since we hadn’t planned to leave Wichita for a couple of hours and then it being another couple of hours to drive home, we just decided we didn’t want to carry it around with us.  Now if we were thinking, we should have just gotten one entrée and split it, but I don’t think either of us knew that we would get full.  The portions of food weren’t outlandishly big like you see in lots of restaurants.  So we didn’t think it would be a problem eating what we ordered.  I felt bad about wasting that food, but obviously stuff like that is what has gotten me in trouble in the first place.  So I have to  say, I felt more proud about being able to walk away than feeling bad about being wasteful.    Guess we’re making progress!!!

Well I did my 1st workout Friday evening.  I actually enjoyed it.  I like weight lifting (toning), it's usually the cardio that does me in.  I did one circuit on the weights and only 15 minutes on the recumbent bike.  The last 5 minutes, I alternated between going as fast as I could for a minute and then slow and steady for a minute.  However, I was unable to make it to the gym this weekend or Monday.  I'm not going to make excuses, I just didn't go.  I'm planning on going tonight after I get off work.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Kathy and I went to Wichita on Saturday for the Biggest Loser tour.  I found it very informative and I really enjoyed talking to the folks in line.  The different stories they told were helpful.  We met one lady who has gone from weighing 240 to 160, she looked great.  Very inspirational.  I hope that someday, I can be an inspiration to someone.

Just a quick note to let you know how I did with this week's weigh-in at the Y; I lost 5 lbs this week (WOO HOO!) for a total of 6.4 lbs so far.  As you can see, Laurie had an awesome week too!  I'm so glad we're doing this together. 

 

As I wrote in my 1/11 entry, my activity goal during week one was to simply walk 10 minutes per day.  This week my goal was to walk 15 minutes per day.  Not only did I meet that goal I exceeded it by doing my 15 minute walk twice a day; once before work and once during lunch.  This next  week, I'm going to try for 3-15 minute walks per day, adding a 15 minute walk after work.  

 

This week has been extremely busy at work.  I work at a college and we've been dealing with Spring enrollment all week.  Hopefully next week, I'll have more time to devote to writing in our blog, so that you can get to know me a little bit better! 

  Well I went and weighed in this morning.  I'm down to 236.8.  I started at 241.  However I gained at last week's weigh in.  I was at 242.4, so I lost 5.6 lbs this week and a total of 4.2 since we started.  I'm so excited.  It's nice to see the scale go in the down direction instead of the up.  On my scale at home, I weigh 227.  I like that one much better, but I'm going by the scale at the YWCA, to really chart my progress.  I go tonight to get my fitness routine so I can start really working out at the gym.  I'm looking forward to that. 

 

I'll probably check in on Monday!  See ya then!

 

Laurie

Well, I joined a gym last night.  Tomorrow, I get set up with a fitness plan.  I'm going to be doing weights and cardio at the gym and I have some exercise DVD's at home to work on.  I'm going to be a lean, mean fighting machine.  Woo! Hoo!    I started walking today at work, just during breaks.  Next week I'll do it during my lunch breaks, since I can eat my lunch.  One step at a time, one day at a time.

 

Until tomorrow,

 

Laurie