Happy Holidays!

Today is Christmas Eve and since my family is possibly celebrating Christmas this year, my dad is characteristically at Walmart right now.

I set a goal to get down to 155 lbs by Christmas day. I know I won't get down to exactly that tomorrow morning but what I do know is that I'm going to be within 5 lbs of that! Most likely less than 3 lbs of my goal, actually! I know that the goal is what I set it at, however if I can get close to that then it's good enough for me! I've accomplished so much that being this close is good enough for me!

I'll update more after Christmas to be sure as to how close I got to my goal, as well as to reflect on this past year. It's going to be a long post, so keep a look out! :)

When decorating the tree I found one of the jems that I created in elementary school. Go ahead, bask in that beautiful Santa that 8 year old me created!

The Slow and Steady Turtle Wins the Race... Right?

I'm still alive! I promise I'm still alive!

I've been gone for a while because I neglected to write anything on here during the fall semester. I'm really going to try to regularly post though, hopefully keeping myself more accountable.

I'm sad to report that although I blissfully wrote about how excited I was that I entered the 160's in August, I'm still there.

However! I'm ordering my HRM soon and I'm going to start Insanity after the New Year when I get back to my apartment and get back into the swing of things and back into my regular schedule. I'm going to move past the 160._ that I've been looking at for the past few weeks.

I AM GOING TO GET INTO THE 150s, BEFORE THE END OF 2012!

I AM GOING TO WEAR A BIKINI THIS SUMMER.

I AM GOING TO LOOK HOT DURING SPRING BREAK.

I AM GOING TO MEET MY GOALS.

To help motivate me, I compared May to December pictures. 32lbs lost. Even though I'm not a super fan of how I look in the second picture, since my tummy area looks a little weird, but I look fantastic in it compared to May's picture. Check it out! 

I will stay more active on here, even though I'm pretty sure no one reads this. lol! I'm doing this for myself, not for other people. However, if I could help someone else out by doing this, all the better! :)

Say WHAT?

Every time I go over my daily goal, literally every single time I weigh myself the next day to see the "damage" done, and I always lose weight! I ate a whole bunch yesterday and terrible food at that, but I weighed myself and I was down over a whole pound from before I left!

I don't want to increase my daily goal just because of that, but it is sort of nice to know that's apparently how my body reacts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Side note: At this point, I can't help but think that losing weight is easy. I don't think I've even gone to the gym in over a month and I'm still steadily losing weight and I'm pretty sure I'm not losing muscle mass because I wasn't very muscular before and I'm really just continuing the same sort of lifestyle I was before I decided to live healthier, just eating better.

I am only 7.4 lbs away from my halfway goal!

I am 3.4 lbs away from the goal I set for when I move back to Gainesville in a week. Now, I know that it's completely unreasonable to think that I'm going to lose that much before I go back, but I set my goals so that if I can get within 5 lbs of it, I'm satisfied because I know I'm still making progress, and right now I am even closer than 5 lbs within my goal!


Life is going splendidly! I'm going to a Jason Mraz/ Christina Perri concert in 3 days; I move back to Gainesville in 8 days; M and I's one year anniversary is in 10 days; Gator football starts in 21 days. :D

AHHHH!!

Okay, so this isn't a HUGE deal, but I am SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
Today when I woke up, I weighed myself and I saw 169.8 looking back at me. Granted, it's only .2lbs less than the last time I weighed myself, but this is the first time I've seen a number in the 160's since I was 16 or 17 years old?
FINALLY!

EAT!!

Let me just start this off by saying that I am NOT an expert on anything I'm about to discuss, but I do know from personal experience that it works. Hopefully no one takes offense to this.

When first signing up for MFP, it asks you how many pounds you want to lose per week, what your goal is, what you daily goals should be, ect. I know for me, originally, based on MFP's estimates, it was recommended that I consume and net 1200 calories for the fastest weight loss possible. The very next day I began very strictly watching what I was eating and keeping my net around 1200 calories or less depending on my exercise. However, I soon realized that I was kind of cranky and a bit hungry throughout the day, but I figured it just meant that my body was adjusting to the amount of food that I was eating, after all, I didn't get to my highest weight ever by eating proper portion sizes!

Lo and behold, I come across a whole bunch of people saying that I  should be looking up my BMR and eating around there. Since I always need to know about anything, I Googled it, of course. I ended up coming across this website and my calculated BMR is around 1700 calories per day. Now, I'm no expert, but I believe that means that as long as my activity level stays the same, that is roughly how many calories my body uses up, per day, purely by existing. 

Now that just so happens to conflict with the number previously suggested to me by MFP, so I asked around to my friends on MFP and I couldn't find a single one that had tried it and had negative effects as a result, so I figured why not. I set my calorie goal to be around 1550, because apparently it's okay to eat a few hundred (200-300) calories below whatever your BMR is to speed up weight loss. Since then, I've pretty much continuously lost weight, regardless of going to the gym or not. (Going to the gym just helps, and I can eat a little more on days that I do go.)

I guess the concept behind it is that although 1200 calories is what your body needs to stay out of "starvation mode," at that mark, it's kind of difficult to eat exactly 1200 calories per day, and there's still a huge debate as to whether people should eat back exercise calories or not (whatever, another day for my opinion, I suppose). SO BASICALLY, it's a pain in the butt to eat that little each day. If you click "complete entry" with 1199 calories in your diary for the day, MFP will alert you that you are eating too little and that it would be best for you to eat more, so I think it's fair to say that maintaining ONE more calorie per day is NOT the magic number. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know, I know, this was a bit of a rant, but I've recently told people in my real life about what I've been working towards (now that it's becoming more obvious) and I've ended up finding out that a few people I know in real life have MFP accounts and they are eating at/usually BELOW 1200 calories per day! Yeah, they've lost 5-10lbs maybe, but I can't seem to explain to them that it's not good to be doing that. I know I'm no expert, but I really want to help. I think I do happen to at least know something if I can manage to lose 22 lbs to date in 3 months, and pretty much keep it off (if I didn't want to lose plenty more still, that is).

Sometimes, I wish people would just listen to advice, but I know that sometimes it's best to let them learn on their own. It's just really difficult to do when you know it's going to hurt them in the long run. :/

I'm back!

My internet connection was cut off for somewhere between 3-4 weeks, so about a week after I started the Back 2 Basics challenge, I was procrastinating updating my progress on here, and right when I was about to do it, my internet got shut off!!
SO ANYWAY. Here's an update on what's been happening:
I started a new job and basically, the job and the operation hours of the Y are the opposite so I kind of stopped going (with the exception of Saturdays that I'm off work and the Y is open when I'm awake. lol) It kind of sucks because I actually enjoy going to the Y and working out, but I work from 4:30pm-12:45am and I can't be making myself wake up early to work out and then risk falling asleep on my 30min drive home in the middle of the night.
Even though I've hardly gone to the gym in the last few weeks, I've still been steadily losing weight regardless! I'm sure if I were able to keep going to the gym, I'd lose a bit faster, but I'm quite happy with the results that I've been seeing. :)

There's probably other things that I've left out, but it's difficult to update the last month of my life. haha

Oh and my pants still fit the same, but my tops finally look much better on me!

B2B Challenge: DAY ONE

Okay, so today is Day One of the Back 2 Basics Challenge and I'm excited to get back to the gym :) There's  not too much more to say about that right now, but I do have something to note for anyone who actually keeps up with reading my blog:

Today I finally started acknowledging the decimal part of my scale when I weigh in. It will help me be more accountable, as well as keep better track of my loss. So, today it doesn't look like I lost much weight, but hopefully it'll melt off throughout this competition.

But anyway! The disclaimer I wanted to mention was that on my "Stats & Weigh ins" section, as of today there will be decimals included in my weight. I'll be weighing in every Monday for the next 6 weeks (until the end of July), and I can't wait to see how much I lose! I also might take another set of pictures to compare if I get up to 20 lbs lost. :)

OH! And I'm super excited to share that I only have to lose 5.5 lbs to finally be out of the "Obese" category for my height! I know that BMI isn't everything, but for me right now, it is very important.

Back 2 Basics Challenge

I feel so lazy sitting on my butt all day and not doing anything. 
Screw this knee problem.
I'm over it.
Another one of my reasons for not pushing myself to get back to the gym is that I'm saving money by not paying for another month at the gym. BUT! I know that once I pay for that month, I'm going to get the most for my money. 


A friend of mine on MFP posted about a Back 2 Basics Challenge that she's doing and as the description says, it's a "a swift kick to get back on track" which, in my opinion, is what I need, as well as some nice strong pain meds for my knee (LOL!). It starts on Monday and runs until the end of July. Not only will it motivate me to keep working, but I am the type of person to work really hard to complete a goal/challenge, which is what this is!


There are four challenges:

• Weight loss: 5% of body weight 
• Miles: 90 (walk, run, jog, etc) 
• Calories burned: 18,000 
• Minutes exercised: 900 

I'm going to try to complete all four of them! 

SALAD!

I'll go ahead and say it right now. I do not like salads, at all. I prefer warm food over cold, I suppose, so the whole cold pieces of lettuce and various other things is just.. not appealing, at all! Yes, I know that vegetables are good for us and all of their nutritional benefits, and I LOVE veggies, but salads are a big NO for me.

I'm writing this to say that I've not eaten a single salad yet into this weight loss journey of mine and I've lost 14 lbs already. There's no need to necessarily eat more salads, it's to eat less junk. Salads can be healthy, with little dressing, but too much dressing and BAM it's right back to being an unhealthy meal.

The key to weight loss is LIFESTYLE CHANGE. I'm not going to eat salads to lose weight, because if I had to eat a salad everyday of the rest of my life, kill me now. I eat my veggies happily, but not in a salad. However, tonight's dinner was veggie cakes and oh my goodness they were sooo yummy and sooo healthy!! One day I'll post the recipe to them on here, but for now you can just wonder what they're like. ;)

Diet really DOES matter!

Who would've thunk it? haha.
Since I've had those troubles with my knee, I really haven't gone to the gym at all. At all, at all. I pretty much end up doing nothing but sitting around all day because my knee hurts so much, but I kept eating what I'm supposed to and stayed under my calorie intake (a bit harder for some of the other things I monitor on MFP, but that's another story) and tried to rest my knee as much as possible.
I weighed myself almost two weeks ago, and it was before Memorial Day and before my knee started to give me hell, and then both of those things happened and I was afraid to weigh myself for fear of what it might say. I put it off until this morning, but I figured that it's been a while and I guess curiosity got the best of me and thankfully it did because I finally saw a number in the 170's!! It's been probably over a year since I saw a number like that and I'm so excited about it! I'm going out of town this weekend (well, early weekend haha) I'd like to be able to maintain what I've got going for the 2 days I'll be out, and I probably will considering how psyched I am about this!!

Just let this be yet another reminder as to how important what you eat is to weight-loss. Yes, exercise is important to tone your body and make it look even better, but it definitely goes hand-in-hand with what you eat. So don't let not being able to go to the gym put you down! Keep up the great work and you will reap the benefits!!

:D

Here's to catching up!

SO.
I've been totally MIA on here for quite a while it feels and I'm still not totally sure as to why. However, quite a few things have happened to me in the time that I've been away.

I snuck in a weigh in last Saturday morning (the day after I weighed in and saw no change on the scale) and I saw that I had, in fact, lost one more pound, putting me at an official 10 lbs lost. :)

I experienced my first NSV (Non Scale Victory) Saturday night when I was out with friends and one of them asked me if I had lost any weight. It was a great feeling to say "YES, YES I HAVE AND THANK YOU FOR NOTICING!!" Needless to say, I was excited.

Then, this past week, I wanted to really work my butt off at the gym and keep up the progress I was making, and do some damage control for the prior weekend, since I ended up guessing on a lot of my food and wasn't really able to exercise at all. HOWEVER, the knee issue that I've had for the past 2 years crept back up on me and I was struck with an almost unimaginable amount of pain my right knee. So I've been barely going to the gym this week since my knee has been killing me, but I've at least been trying to eat properly so that I don't go over my calories since I'm not really able to do anything.

Tomorrow I'm making an effort to make an appointment with a doctor because I can almost not drive or walk because it hurts so bad at some points. It's worse now than it ever has been and the knee brace that used to help and offer some pain relief does next to nothing now.
It's time to see a doctor, even though I'm afraid of what will come from it.
______________________________

Also, I haven't weighed myself since that last sneaky weigh-in. I'm going to wait until next Friday; I'm trying to be healthier and if the scale reflects that awesome, but I want to be able to look in the mirror and see a difference and not let the scale consume how I feel about myself. I'm hoping that by distancing myself from the scale, I'll have a bit better of a relationship with it.
Hopefully that makes sense. haha

Weigh in

So, today, like every Friday, I had my weigh-in. Unfortunately, I didn't lose any weight. I guess the upside is that I didn't gain any either though? haha. Either way, it wasn't what I was looking for. I guess that's the price I pay for upping my calories from 1250 to 1550 to more coordinate with my BMR and TDEE (a little lower than what it actually is, but apparently it's okay to eat 200-300 below for a little while). I feel better and according to MFP I'm still on track to lose weight accordingly, but I do expect to be at bit of a standstill until my metabolism resets itself. I just wish it didn't have to happen. haha!

Anyway, I figure it's no good to sit and worry about something that I can't really change immediately, so today I continued to log my calories and exercise (I burned an impressive 620 calories at the Y today!) and made an attempt to pamper myself. I've already done my toes and I'm going to work on my fingernails next, oh and even fixing my seemingly unruly eyebrows. (Sorry to any guys reading this, it's probably kind of boring for you.)
It's not much, but it's something and it's making myself feel better. Oh, and I totally love Country music (don't hate!) so I've been listening to my Country Love Songs station on Pandora while doing all of this tonight, even right now! It's definitely a good way to occupy my time while my boyfriend Matt is out with friends tonight.

Oh and another mini-accomplishment: I registered for the Color Me Rad 5K tonight! I'm going to do it with some great people I've met on MFP in Jacksonville and that makes me even more pumped! Not to mention, it is my first 5K, ever. I'm so excited to have the experience under my (hopefully looser) belt, as well as make some great memories with some great people and get a really cool looking shirt out of it!

I can't help but be worried..

I've been "this big girl" ever since I can remember really. Not THAT big, I've pretty much always been probably 60 pounds over weight my whole life (Imagine being the 5th grader forced to shop in the adult sizes because that's what fits and seeing a teacher wearing the same thing. :/ ) but I can't help but be worried that after I lose the weight I want to that my skin won't "bounce back" from the excess weight it's been holding in for all these years.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be psyched to lose the weight regardless, but I want to feel SEXY in a bikini, not just as self-conscious for a different reason.
I wish someone had the answers I'm looking for, but everyone's different and I'll have to find out from experience and actually doing it. My hope is that because I'm still young, my skin is resilient enough to adjust to my new weight, as well as the fact that I'm doing it within reason (time-wise).

Goals

I figure I should lay out what I actually want to get out of this journey so here's my goals, and the rewards for meeting them.
(If anyone has any suggestions for personal rewards, let me know in a comment!)

SW: 192 lbs

Goal weight for the end of May: 177 lbs
Reward: Getting my free panties from VS! <3

Goal weight for the end of summer (mid-August): 160 lbs
Reward for reaching goal weight: I will get the second hole done in my ears.

Goal weight by Christmas: 145 lbs
Reward for reaching goal weight: I will get my tragus pierced.

Ultimate goal weight (by my birthday in April): 130 lbs
Reward for reaching goal weight: First ever mani-pedi combo

A lull in motivation?

I was totally stoked when I first started to do this and today I, to put it plainly, wasn't stoked. I don't know what it is or why, but all I wanted to do was sit around, watch TV and snack on all the junk food my family comes home with.
I didn't want to wake up earlier than necessary.
I didn't want to put gym clothes on.
I didn't want to log my food.
Today was a total "blah" day if I've ever had one.

I guess I'm in a rut because I'm not SEEING any real difference as to what I'm doing. Yeah, when I weigh in, I see a slightly lower number on the scale, but I want at least ONE NSV (Non Scale Victory). I know that's a bit antsy of myself, considering I've only been working on this for a little over two weeks, but I can't help it! Another reason might be that I've been eating sort of the same foods for the past 2 weeks and that gets to be a bit monotonous if I do say so myself. However, I don't have much of a budget to buy anything outside of what my family wants to eat and my rather large family, although desiring to lose weight, refuses to stop eating anything and everything that is bad to eat (ice cream sandwiches, pizza, pop tarts, gummies, ect.) I'm at least keeping the willpower to not eat their food though, right? Now, if only there were a way to log exercise as "Keeping willpower to not snack on delicious looking/bad for my health foods"...

I'm hanging out with friends that I haven't really seen since I started working out and eating better this coming weekend and I'd loveee for someone to ask if I've lost any weight. I know it probably won't happen, but still. A girl can hope, right? Wearing the same clothes probably doesn't help my case with whether people notice my weightloss or not, but if they still fit-ish, then I'm going to keep wearing them since I'm A) too broke/cheap to buy new clothes all the time and B) I've got lots more weight to lose so might as well "go big or go home" when it comes to my new clothes purchases.

I guess that's it with today's troubles. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Oh hey

So.
Here's what's up.

My name's Zoe and I've recently decided that enough's enough. "Recently" being exactly 2 weeks ago (May 6th, 2012), and "enough" being my weight.
Throughout the past I've always said that I wouldn't let myself go over 180lbs. Then I entered my first year at the University of Florida and, of course, gained the "Freshman 15" although most of that happened during finals week right before I went home.
I weighed myself and saw 192 staring back at me and right then I knew this had to end. It was a Sunday night, so the next morning I joined MyFitnessPal and even downloaded the MFP app for my phone and joined my local YMCA. (Everything about MFP is free, but the gym membership is $24/month and if I'm paying for something, I'm getting my money's worth!)

Here goes!