Curves

So I signed up for Curves yesterday. I thought it would be great to add that to my exercise routine. I do have to say that I feel a little out of place. I am by far the youngest person I have seen in my two days there and my mother assures me that will be the case from here on out. The lady training me this morning was excited because I was young and picking up quickly. We will see how well this goes.

Bittersweet

This weigh in was bittersweet but mostly sweet. I lost 4.2 pounds. Yay for me. The reason why it was a little bitter is because I weighed myself on Friday and I was down about 5.5 pounds and was thinking I would be able to hit the 8 pound mark by this morning. Oh well. What can you do? The weekend was a little off but I stayed the corse regardless. All that matters is that I hit the 4 pound mark. My goal for awhile is 4 pounds a week. So I am patting myself on the back.

Last Week: 333
This Week: 327.8
Total Loss: -4.2

This weeks goal is to hit 320 pounds. That means I need to lose 7.8 pounds. I don't believe that is too far out of reason. Last week I only made it to the gym 4x and the workouts were very short. Here are the things that I am going to add this week to boost my weight loss efforts.

1. Make it to the gym everyday with regular length workouts.
2. Sign up for Curves and attend if I am signed up early enough in the week.
3. Continue to drink all of my water.
4. Continue keeping a detailed journal.

Can you hear that?

No. Ok. I guess its just me. I am at work right now and the Chex mix is calling my name. There is nothing I love more than snacking on Chex mix and sipping a cold Dr. Pepper in the afternoon. Mmmm. My best friend said I should threaten it with violence. Not a bad idea if the Chex mix belonged to me. Somehow the peanut butter bar and apple are not cutting it. Sigh....

I made it to the gym!!

Yay! It actually happened. I made it to the gym this morning. This was extremely hard for me. I haven't been myself lately and as much as my head is ready for it all of the my heart and body have had a hard time catching up. I figured if I didn't make it in today it probably wouldn't happen again until next week. My determination is starting to come back. I am definitely a work in progress right now but I am determined to beat my lack of determination and will power.

My dear friend, Sasha

There is no weigh in this week. Yesterday, instead of weighing in I had to go say my final goodbyes to a friend I grew up with. She passed away one week ago, today. It was sudden and unexpected. Sasha was very well loved and will be missed.

As for the diet, last week was just rough. Emotionally and just lack of time. It was unexpectedly crazy busy. Oh well. I did watch what I ate but I didn't count calories or journal. I was even snacking on carrots, cucumbers, avocados and tomatoes instead of other crap in the midst of all the sadness.

So you might be thinking, what will Shannon be doing to snap out of the funk. I have two motivations. Yesterday, I found out what dress and color I will be wearing in a wedding in July. The dress is beautiful, the color is burnt orange. There are 3 colors and this was the color I did NOT want. I wanted the wine colored dress. Oh well. It's not as bad as I imagined but I am going to have to change the color of my hair a bit so that my hair doesn't look orange and lose a lot of weight so I don't look as much like a round pumpkin. I am hoping for 80 pounds. I have a little more than 5 months to kick ass in the losing weight department. That is about 16 pounds a month. My dream is to lose about half that within the next 6-8 weeks. My dress needs to be ordered by then and the less they will have to alter, the better. I am a big girl so the 80 pounds is a lot to lose but not a complete stretch either. That would also put me at 250 pounds. Still not light but compared to what I look like now, I will be smokin' hot. Or as the blog says, I'll be...

Bringing Sexy Back

The second motivator is the $1000 weight loss competition that I have organized. That's right, you read that correctly. The family has started another weight loss competition that will extend through May 7. Check out the competition blog thebiggestfamilyloser.blogspot.com. This time around we addded friends to the competition.

I am currently, as we speak, in the process of posting pictures of the burnt orange dress all over everywhere. So far the refrigerator at work has 6 dresses taped to the inside and outside of the refrigerator. I have one on my monitor and soon there will be one over my phone. I am going to go searching for pictures of a $1000 bill to add to the collection. I think I will post a picture of the dress on this blog. It will be everywhere I am at all times.

See you next week with my new weigh in results.

A little bout with depression

So this week is not the outstanding first week that I wanted. It's been a difficult week to start. I've had unusal circumstances almost everyday this week beginning with Monday and a late work night. Tuesday was my Dr's appointment followed by an all day celebration of my best friends Vanessa's birthday. Wednesday was rough. A friend of mine that I grew up with passed away along with Vanessa's grandmother. Her grandmother raised her and was the only family she has left. Thursday was just filled with sadness and Friday through Monday will be filled with working and seeing lots of old friends and remembering Sasha. I'm a little down and allowing myself to be that way. I am giving myself through Monday night and then first thing Tuesday morning it will be back to the daily grind and routine.

Please keep Sasha's family in your prayers. She was an only child an really close to her family. Also keep her friends in your prayers too. She was too young to dye and there are a lot of people having a hard time with her death. Also keep Vanessa in your prayers too. She is having a really hard time as well. It's been really hard on her too.

I'll see you either late Mondy or sometime on Tuesday with week one results.

The Joys of Starting Up Again!!

I'm back. Sorry for the lack of communication over the past several months. I've been here, there and everywhere. Literally. So I am back in the swing of it all and already have a story for you. It only happened a couple of hours into my first day back into dieting. But first before I go into that let me tell you what kind of things I've discovered about myself and dieting over the past few months.

I LOVE Jillian Michaels and her approach to fitness. Jillian was one of the trainers from the Biggest Loser. I watched the show for the first time from start to finish. I've watched it before but usually just an episode or two per season. This year was different because my sister was college friends with one of the contestants on the black team. Anyway, I purchased Jillian's book Winning by Losing which is absolutely amazing and would recommend it to anyone of any fitness level. I now have a lot of direction for what I need to do for myself.

To make a long story short, I think my problems with losing the weight earlier in the year came from all the things that were going on and the stress I was putting myself under. I had a Dr.'s appointment today and she seemed to agree that that was more than likely the cause. I am really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and discovering a smaller me!!

Not much is changing with what I'm doing. I was able to find out how my body metabolizes food and the formula for figuring out what my calorie intake should be. So now I know what foods to eat and what percentages of fat, proteins and carbs to consume per meal. I think that is the short of it all. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

Ok. So back to the funny story. Well, I thought it was funny. I'm not sure you will think so. Jillian has this water she recommends drinking for 7 days to help rid your body of 5-7 pounds of excess water weight. It consists of distilled water, sugar free cranberry juice, lemon juice and dandelion root tea. All of which I am not a huge fan of. So I made the drink Sunday for Monday. I knew it was going to be terrible so I automatically plugged my nose and decided to just do it. That's what I did but at what I thought was more than half way through the glass, I need to stop for air. Well, I was barely a fourth of the way through it and I started feeling a small gag reflex coming on. I decided to start drinking it again and stop thinking about it so much. So within the first gulp I puked the water up all over the kitchen. So much for that. At lunch I decided to try again. This time I decided not let the tea sit so long in the water. I am now ready to try again except this time I decide not to unplug my nose if I needed to come up for air. I got that second glass all the way down. Yay for me!!!! So I attempted a third. I pushed my luck on that one. I barely made it through a fourth of the cup before it all came back up agian. I am waving the white flag! I tried and won't try that again for a very long time. LOL.

Thanks for sticking this out with me and supporting me through all of this!!

Happy New Year!!

I know its been awhile. I've been working a whole lot lately and haven't had time to do much of anything with my site, diet and healthy living. It has been crazy to say the least. I can't say that I haven't been completely lackadaisical on the issue. I've been doing a lot of research, reading and planning. I just haven't had the time to execute the plan but that all changes on Monday. I will probably have a large post sometime this weekend or first thing Monday morning. Those are the plans anyway :O) See you soon.