Several weeks since my last posting, not much has changed, accordingly to the scale.  And, it really hasn’t.  Yes, I’ve done some awesome things, and yes, I’ve done some abhorrent things.  I guess I can admit that only because of the abhorrent things have I been diligent with exercise.  If I didn’t overeat, I wouldn’t feel as strong a need to punish myself with exercise.  (Isn’t that a terrible sentiment?)  I know exercise should be fun, but in most instances it is not, at least for me.  I do it only because I feel I have to.  My heart is in good shape, and I am not at risk for high blood pressure or diabetes as so many others in my extended family.  Ok, enough rambling.  I’ll move on by telling you about some ups and downs since the middle of March:

The Easter holiday, a spring break family vacation and my birthday all contributed to weight gain.  I love chocolate, I ate out at restaurants much more than usual, and I was treated to Olive Garden on my birthday.  I don’t think I need to say any more, but I will:  I had to haul out a box of clothes in a size 14 because my 10s and 12s no longer fit.  Darn it!

The upside?  I have already made good strides in getting the weight back off.  For my birthday I got three things that I wanted, and that will help me regain control of my situation.  I got “My Fitness Coach” for the Wii, a platform for the Wii Balance Board to make any step aerobics Wii activities much more of a challenge, and a new set of Wii Resistance bands to replace the ones that broke apart in the EA Active set I have.

I am nine workouts into My Fitness Coach.  There are some things I like about it very much.  First, there are not pauses in between exercises as there are in Wii Fit.  Your entire routine is pre-planned for you by the virtual trainer and you don’t have to interrupt your workout to select new games or exercises.  Second, you can choose whether the emphasis for a particular workout should be cardio, flexibility, upper body, lower body, core, etc.  Third, you are asked for feedback after a segment of the exercise and based on your response (i.e., it was too hard, I was keeping up, it was too easy) future workouts will be adjusted accordingly so that you are getting maximum benefit.  The one thing I’ve noticed so far that I really don’t think I like is that the feedback options are too sparse.  The game might get 20 minutes into the workout before I’m asked how I was keeping up.  If one of the exercises within that 20 minutes was too hard but the rest were just right or too easy, I’d like to be able to give feedback by exercise — not after each individual exercise but rather in a batch process at the end of the workout.

The resistance bands are nice.  I like the fact that they are so much more durable than what comes with the EA Active game.  (I have the original EA Active, so I can’t speak to the quality of the ones in Active 2 if they happened to change that.)  I also like that they provide so much more resistance and there is a set of three of them so that you can vary the amount of resistance.  Nice!

The balance board step platform is awesome too.  I can’t believe how much harder I work.  In “Free Step” mode of Wii Fit, I could, if I wanted to, set the counter for three hours and probably continue moving the entire time and barely break a sweat.  With the platform, which I have used four times now, I’ve done 15 minutes each time and have felt a lot of beads trickle down the back of my neck and across the brow of my forehead.  Yikes!  You should try it if you haven’t already.  Good investment!

Well, in the end, my weight is the same as the last time I posted.  I’m excited that there are only a few opportunities in the next couple of months to go too overboard in celebration.  There will be more opportunities to get outside and play.  And, I have some new fitness games to keep me interested.

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!

Looking back on this accomplishment, I am especially proud because exercise has always taken a back seat for me.  Of the 120 pounds I lost, I’d venture to guess that only about 20 of them were due to commitment to exercise.  Most of those nasty pounds disappeared because of my commitment to a reduced calorie diet — smaller portion sizes.

I wish, wish, WISH (with all my heart) that I would have enjoyed the exercise along the way.  The fact that I didn’t makes me skeptical about whether or not I’d be able to repeat the challenge.  I have lots of good feelings now in the achievement, but I saw the exercising as a chore.  I think the personal challenge kept me going.  I didn’t want to let myself down.  Perhaps that is why so many exercise-related activities are hard for me to maintain.  I never got a runner’s high or other sense of euphoria.  My body is clumsy and my movements often uncoordinated.  With a preschooler, my schedule is hard to coordinate.

So, what were my results, you might ask?  It has been almost a month with no weight updates.  You probably don’t miss them — or at least have been able to manage to go on living without them.  That’s good. 

Anyway, I weighed 177 as of my last posting.  Since then I had gotten as low as 168 and now I am at 174.  Damn yo-yo, I’m going to cut that string!  No more “walk the dog” for you!

I’m going to really try to continue finding ways to challenge myself physically and make exercise a more integral part of my day.  With the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, it is not hard to get outside and walk, if nothing else.  Now to just find the time.  Sarah would love to accompany me, but her 4 year old legs just don’t maintain a pace I’d prefer.  I know… any exercise is good exercise, so sometimes I have to compromise and realize that for some “workout sessions” I am not going to maintain a heart rate in the cardio or fat burning zones!  ha ha

But, at the same time, I can’t let my consistent exercise be a justification for eating “just a little bit more” as I did while I was doing the  30 Day Challenge.  If I burned 300 calories in a day and I logged that in my Livestrong app, I would be told on screen that my remaining calories for the day became 300 higher.  So, rather than just accept the deficit for that day, I tended to consume up to the max allowable knowing that my weight wouldn’t be affected.  But, it was, because whatever I treated myself with usually was something from the “occasional use” list and not something particularly healthy.  And, it is those occasional use items that spawn additional consumption of carb-addictive foods.  At the end of the day, I’d end up going over the calories allowed and the exercise didn’t have the intended results.

Those addictive foods create the need to burn more calories.  What an evil endless cycle…

I may have overdone it.  I only allowed myself to consume 902 calories today and I will be going to bed hungry.  In fact, dinner was about 550 calories, so before that I was pretty hungry indeed.  My stomach has quieted a bit, but now that dinner is four hours in the past, I’m starting to feel more hungry again.

I didn’t mean to neglect myself nearly that much.  I actually would like to aim at taking in about 1200 calories per day until the weight slowly comes off and then increase it a tad to 1400 or 1500 as a form of maintenance (that is, maintenance which allows for a treat every now and then).  But, I figure I had to drastically shock this system of mine which had been a glutton for lots of bad things lately.  Here, have a look yourself.  The red line represents a stated goal of 1200 calories per day.Â
You can see how much of a blur yesterday was — you’d think I didn’t do anything but eat! I guess in a way it does feel like that.  Well, no more — at least for quite a long while.  I’m back to wearing mostly “fat pants” because only a couple things with a zipper fit well enough to be somewhat comfortable.  I hate that feeling — the way it makes me feel, the way I’ve let myself down — how others must be looking at me and thinking I’ve failed.

I don’t want to feel that way, and I don’t want to give anyone else an upper hand to feel that way either.  While I really don’t theoretically care what others think, I am (wo)man enough to admit that I am only covering for what is truly in my heart — that it bothers ME.

Now, just to show you that I have not fallen off the deep end, I want to share the good news that, despite several days of taking in way too many calories, I have been fantasically consistent and committed to doing the Wii Active 30 day challenge on “hard” level and with each stint exceeded the projected calorie burn for that particular workout .  I recently completed the “EA Active More Workouts” six week challenge, but it took me nearly two months to do it.  That challenge was a little different from the very first one in that it was designed to take a tad longer.  In having to do 20 workouts in 30 days for the 30 day challenge, I am forced to do two workouts every three days, a pace that is sometimes hard to keep up with “life” getting in the way — let alone the chest cold my daughter lovingly shared with me.  BUT — I am on pace to complete it in the time frame suggested.  And, at the “hard” setting, I am getting in some pretty good workouts.  One interesting thing to note:  that game uses a resistance band for strength training and I have managed to break the band.  I had to cut it and loop the handle on the band higher up — which means there is even more resistance with a shorter band!  After the workouts that concentrate on upper body conditioning, I feel the burn!

This morning’s weigh-in was 173.  It is kind of heart-wrenching, I must admit.  I’m not going to beat myself up over it.  I just have to refocus — perhaps push myself a little harder on the exercise front this week, if I can, that is.

I’ve been experiencing weird pains in my abdomen this week.  One night I was actually doubled over in pain.  Thankfully it was 80% better the following morning and never returned to its miserable glory.  It’s rather dull now, but I’ll have to monitor it because it’s something I don’t want to have to deal with on a daily basis.  I thought at first I had pulled an abdominal muscle.  (Side note:  the last time I felt like I had pulled an abdominal muscle I found out I was 21 weeks pregnant.  I’m sure that’s not the case this time, ha ha!)

Anyway, these pains made it undesirable to exercise this week, and feeling sorry for myself, chose a bag of M&Ms to provide some comfort.  What a stupid mistake.  It makes me realize how easy it is for an old habit to rear its ugly head.

For those that look to this blog for inspiration:  do not let an ugly head stay ugly!  After a mistake, brush it off.  Learn from it.  Move on.  Don’t focus on your mistake and bring yourself down because of it.  You’re going to have to allow yourself these errors in judgment, just don’t multiply the effects by allowing a continuation.  The only snowball effects you want to have are the ones that are on the heels of something positive — like a good workout or a healthy meal that turns out tasty.

Shortly after getting the game, I began the 6 week challenge on Medium difficulty.  In a Six Week challenge, the participant is supposed to complete 24 workouts in six weeks.  It took me 59 days, but I got through it.  I guess I just wasn’t diligent enough to get two workouts done every three days.  Most of my workouts were on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Sarah was in school.  It was easy for me to fit it in then.  The rest of them really were slotted as time allowed, sometimes on the weekend and other times when Sarah could occupy herself with something else.

Ironically, I gained weight during the two months I spent using this product, but I don’t believe that was the fault of the game!  It actually has some pretty good exercises in it.  In the end, I do feel a little stronger.  I can do the crunches with less twisting and jerky movements — where the curl up motion is actually fluid now.  Had they been named for how I performed them at the beginning, they would have been called jerk ups rather than curl ups!

After doing modified push-ups throughout the six week challenge, I feel that I have a bit more upper body strength.  And, I really LOVE the step routines that the game includes.  You may recall that the step aerobics included with the Wii Fit were also among my favorites in that game, but this set is even more fun.  I just wish that the step exercises were more random and that you didn’t perform the same routine every time that segment came up in the rotation.  It’s nice not knowing what to expect — kind of keeps it fresh.  Well, despite the lack of “freshness”, it was still very enjoyable.

My birthday is coming up in a couple of months, and I’m still holding out hoping to get the step aerobics riser platform for the Wii balance board and any of the following games:

• Exerbeat (Wii)
• Walk it Out (Wii)
• Get Fit with Mel B (Wii)
• My Fitness Coach (Wii)

That first one listed, Exerbeat, is one I actually just stumbled upon this evening.  It looks pretty cool based on the reviews.  Anyone have it and care to provide testimony?

I finally lost another pound, and I’m down to 168.  Remember me saying that with a 15 pound goal it was my plan to break that down into losing three pounds five times?  Well, at a third of my second mini goal, I feel good about that achievement, but somehow breaking it down this small is kind of frustrating, especially since it took so long (two weeks seems like a long time when you’re diligent on a daily basis about recording every morsel you eat) for that one measly pound to come off.

I guess I just have to be thankful and hopeful that the remaining 66% of this set of three decides to dissipate at a rate faster than the first third.  I know I am the one controlling that, so to talk about it like “the set” has the power to affect change is silly.

It’s all in “us” folks.  WE can do it!

Stay tuned — later this week there will be a post on exercising with the Wii.

I plugged all the ingredients into a Livestrong “recipe” and, assuming that the 2 lbs of ground pork would make 8 links of a size equivalent to the ones I used in my pizza soup recipe (which contained two links in the crock pot that ultimately served four people) the sodium per link would go from over 1000 to about 380.  I think most of that is contained in the parmesan cheese that goes into the making of the italian sausage.  Now if I could only find a low sodium parmesan cheese!

In any case, it is much better!  It sounds yummy.

In the time since posting about that goal, I have fluctuated quite a bit, both in my eating habits and (of course) a weight that corresponds to eating behaviors.  I realized that much of the gain would be in water weight and would quickly come off.  I was right.  Within three days, five pounds was gone and I weighed 167.  But, five days after that I was all the way up to 174.  (Obviously some bad eating choices the night before that weigh-in!)  Slowly, the weight has been coming off again, as I’ve resettled back into some good routines.  I was at 166 on Sunday but by yesterday back up to 169.

I try not to let little fluctuations of 1-3 pounds bother me that much — as long as they are not consecutive.  In fact, the three pounds that reappeared this week were based on sodium, not calorie intake.  In fact, on Sunday I only consumed approximately 1224 calories.  However, sodium was just under 3000mg.  I tried a new crock pot recipe for pizza soup (which was fabulous, by the way) and I guess I didn’t realize how high on sodium it would be until I entered it (after consumption) into my Livestrong database ingredient by ingredient.  I guess to make it next time I’ll have to modify it slightly to make it lower in sodium.  Note to self:  italian sausage is high in sodium!  Duh.

When it comes to those fluctuations, however, it is important to look at them as trends.  If I say I won’t fret over a two pound gain, then I have to follow that up with “but I can’t be ok when there are five consecutive two-pound gains” without the corresponding entries in the CREDITS (losses) column.  I’m no accountant, but to have a good balance sheet, the debits and credits (or gains and losses) have to negate one another!

So, as a trend, I am doing well.  If I weighed 169 this morning, that means I’m down three pounds and my goal is 20% complete.  When I was losing all my weight, I kept reminding myself how important it was to think of it not as losing 100 pounds but losing 10 pounds ten times.  That was much more doable for me, and allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  So, if my math is correct, I just need to lose three pounds four more times.  No problem!

10 ounces of canned tuna packed in water

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup egg substitute (or two eggs)

Mix all ingredients and then form into patties.  Spray a medium heat griddle or frying pan with non-stick spray and then cook on both sides until lightly browned.

This makes about six patties, each with less than 100 calories.  They are roughly 9g carb, 11g protein and 1g fat.

I wanted a riser for the Wii balance board to use during step aerobics and step routines.  It makes the balance board be higher off the floor, providing for a better workout.  It can be adjusted from four inches to six inches in height for a varied workout.

Based on the reviews, it looks awesome.  One of my favorite activities in Wii Fit is the Advanced Step on the Aerobic menu.  And, on the EA Active More Workouts, there are a few different step routines that I really like.  I had a few other Wii fitness games on my list that I also did not receive, but I’m sure that with all the games out there, both already owned and those wanted, that I’d have plenty of opportunities to use this cool step platform.

Does anyone else have it, or one like it?  I see there are other varieties and name brands, but I kind of liked this one because it had the adjustable height.