In that test phase, I knew I would not lose the few pounds that had crept back on, but I was fine with maintaining them for the time being.  While increasing the number of calories, I was also supposed to increase my levels of exercise to speed up my metabolism — hopefully with the end result also being warmer body temperatures.

Well, I got accustomed to eating more but not to the exercising more part.  I’ve proven, AGAIN, that I suck at exercise and if I had to rely on it to lose weight that I just would not have been able to do it.  Thank goodness for will power (on most days) when it comes to portion sizes.

Anyway, the purpose for my post tonight is to become accountable AGAIN for the poor eating choices I’ve made the last few days.  The last four days have all had caloric intake of over 2000 calories, with today and yesterday both being around 2800.  (Speaking of warmth — you would not believe how warm I am today!)  Tomorrow I get to start depriving myself again, and also pull out the wool socks.  Ha!

I will try hard to put some encouragement on here once in a while — some self-praise or positive thoughts or a healthy recipe — something other than using my blog for confessing my eating indiscretions or seeking accountability.  It’s not fair to you to hear all the bad and ugly and none of the good.  There’s plenty good, more good than bad actually.

Stick with me!

The odd thing?  All day each of the last few days I have eaten very well — carefully recorded every morsel I ate, chose my meals and snacks wisely, stayed within the calorie range I wanted — but when the day was done and I should have been in bed I was instead up eating like a crazed lunatic!

My sleep has been terrible.  My stress has been very high.  (An uncle passed away today and I had to deal with a medical emergency of someone else VERY close to me that I will not reveal to protect the privacy of that individual.)  Added to that is the fact that my youngest transitioned to preschool last week and my older two start back tomorrow.

I’ve got reasons, but I need to be stronger than this.  I don’t want to throw away progress.

It has been four weeks since my last blog post and perhaps part of the reason I am failing at this is that I haven’t had any accountability.  It’s worth a try.  I don’t mind that everyone else sees my failures.  I’m human, and I can admit that I have successes too!  I’m not totally depressed, just in a funk right now with everything I am trying to juggle.  I think I am using food as an outlet for my stress, but right now I am so junked up on sugar that I think I just might vomit.  My stomach hurts so much.

Some positives from the last four weeks:

1. I recovered from my last binge four weeks ago and went from 161 pounds back down to 151.
2. I went on a mini vacation to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and engaged in lots of outdoors-y activities including hiking, rock climbing, and swimming — all without feelings of being overly fatigued.
3. I wore a new swimsuit and for the first time in ages looked at a photo of me in a swimsuit without disgust.
4. I was away from my routine for four days on vacation and had to rely on food prepared by others yet did not gain any weight on vacation.

The negatives:

1. Night-time snacking that has plummeted into uncontrollable binge fests — wanting to eat secretly and alone rather than for nourishment and energy with those that I love.
2. Went from 151 pounds back up to 160 in just four days.
3. Not getting good quality sleep.
4. Have back aches every day and therefore not much desire for exercise.
5. Unknown duration of stressful situation and to top it off, a funeral to attend this weekend.

I am going to share a few photos to highlight the positive and to encourage me to seek out healthy ways of dealing with stress or whatever else has caused me to binge at night.  I don’t want to do it anymore.  I’m stronger than this, dammit!

I thought that I would make a natural progression of the 30-minutes-straight goal to include a 30 minute 5K goal.  It seemed like the type of goal that most 5K runners aim for, at least based on what I’ve read on other blogs, so I thought it would suit me too.  I do agree that once you start running for x-number minutes (15 or 20 maybe?) that you feel like you can keep going forever.  But, I don’t know if it is my lack of coordination, improper form, or treadmill-based-lack-of-scenery boredom, but I’m just not excited about the prospect of continuing to run the 30 minute intervals with the goal of getting faster at doing so.

I tried.  I increased the speed from the time where goal was met (3.5 mph — which is a slow run I know but with my short stride and clumsy approach to it was actually a smooth pace for me) to 4.0 yesterday on the treadmill.  I only ran for about 30 seconds before I began to dwell on the fact that a lower back pain was nagging me.  It seemed like each step seemed to jar my bones and apply pressure to an area that was already sore.  I didn’t feel that I wanted to continue putting my body in pain just to get past a certain time limit and I know I didn’t want to feel that pain for another 29 and a half minutes!  I think my body was trying to tell me something.

Anyway, instead, I put the speed back down to 3.2, I increased the incline all the way to 15% and then walked the rest of the half hour.  The amazing thing was, my heart rate got much higher, I burned many more calories and I had no pain.  If I’m going to get better workouts by walking, I think I should go that route!  It’s all about health anyway.  I wish I enjoyed exercise more, but I just don’t.

• My alarm didn’t go off and I didn’t get up when I wanted to.  As a result, I didn’t have first pick of the machines available.  Fortunately, I’m not too choosy and as long as something is available, I will feel content.  I think I had my alarm tuned to a station that doesn’t broadcast 24 hours a day because when I checked it afterwards, it wasn’t coming on at all.  I assumed that I had chosen “pm” instead of “am” when setting the alarm (I have done that before) but this time that wasn’t the case.
• After a five minute warm-up, I could only last two minutes running before I had to resume walking.  I hate to sound like a big complainer, but my foot started cramping up!  I thought it was better not to “push it” just for the sake of saying I had worked through the pain.  I think it’s better to pay attention to the cues our bodies give us and just concentrate on doing better next time.  No need to risk injury!
• I actually have more weight to lose than I thought.  Instead of the 12 pounds I mentioned yesterday, I woke up to 161 on the scale so I actually have 13 to lose instead of twelve.  Sounds unlucky, but since I’m not superstitious, I’ll just treat it as the number it is.
• I’m weaker than I thought.  After 30 minutes on the treadmill (to make up for the fact that I wasn’t running more than two of the 30 minutes, I put the incline all the way up to 15%) I decided to lift some weights.  I did the bilateral shoulder press (hopefully this helps with upper body strength and gets me able to do at least one push-up) the abductors and the lower back machine.  I remember doing all of these machines in the past and being able to set the pin of the weight stack on a lower position (more weight).

So now for some positives!

• I went!  Despite having gone to bed later than I wanted to last night and not waking up when I wanted, I didn’t change my mind about going to the YMCA.  Getting there is half the battle.  It was even raining outside this morning, which is always a mood dampener for me, but I was strong in my resolve.
• The rain was cleansing.  Although I just listed it as a “downer” the rainy weather sometimes can have a different association — that of washing away sins and transgressions.  I felt that by raining down on me, God was telling me that all of my recent bad eating habits were being forgiven and that I had an opportunity to do better going forward.
• I’m symbolically letting go of bad foods.  In a lot of ways, I am a bargain shopper.  So, when I saw milk chocolate bunnies on clearance at Aldi I stocked up.  Their chocolate, Choceur brand, isn’t too bad.  It’s not as good as Hershey in my opinion, but it’s better than some — Palmer as an example!  Anyway, buying chocolate in bulk just because it is a great bargain is a terrible idea.  Thanks to the suggestion from my mom, I am donating all of it to the local food pantry.  I’m going there today.

I also exercised again today — not much — but enough to say I did it.  I did Just Dance 2 for the Wii for about 40 minutes, trying to break the records my daughter took back from me.  I did have the record in all songs except for Tik Tok.  Now she has them for five songs total.  (She’s 12 and has quite a competitive side like me!)

We were indoors all day again today because of the bad weather.  It’s been very cold and dreary.  The weathermen actually predicted snow today, but I don’t think it ever got cold enough.  At the highest, it was 39, but the low must have been higher than 32.

The best accomplishment for me today was the breakdown of foods by percentage.  I only had 45% carbs, and it’s usually 55% on a good day and more regularly about 60-65%.  (I love carbs, unfortunately, and stock up so high on vegetables because of their low calorie nature.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to get enough protein and fats in my diet.)  I also consumed 60g of proteins today, which is good.

I did eat two pieces of chocolate, but again stopped there.  In case you didn’t see the comment on my post from a couple days ago, Mike Navin suggested brushing my teeth after eating my bite of chocolate so I wouldn’t want to eat more after that.  I haven’t actually had to employ that the last three days, but I have used that trick before and it works!

Caloric intake:  1484
Exercise calories burned:  226 (Wii Just Dance 2 and 30 minutes of stepping routine)
Net calories:  1258

I’m hoping that when I step on the scale tomorrow morning I will start to see some of the binge pounds gone.  I think I have about two weeks worth of dedicated eating to get back to where I was.

I had three pieces of chocolate today.  That is more than the one piece I was going to be “playing with” but much less than the entire package I ate a few days ago.  I think it’s too early to tell whether my chocolate test is successful.  I guess I get to continue testing tomorrow. 

1. It was a little hard, but not bad!  My lower weight has made any efforts to exercise much easier.
2. The last time I edited my profile and used EA Active, I weighed 194 pounds!  That seems like such a long time ago, but based on my weight log, it was roughly 8.5 months ago, not that far in the past at all.  It felt good updating my avatar to give her a slimmer look!
3. EA Active gives a better workout than the Wii Fit, in most cases.  (I still think Wii Fit is more fun, but we’re in it to lose weight, right?)

Anyway, I undertook this activity in some precious moments of free time, while my preschooler was taking a rare afternoon nap.  I could have been doing any number of things, but I chose to exercise.  I’m proud of myself.

I hope all of you did something today to make you proud of yourself too!

Well, I can blame my current problem on a little Valentines Day chocolate or Superbowl parties or any number of things (there was another family birthday party this weekend where I decided to consume 2000 calories more than I should have) including “time of the month” but I’m not going to dwell on that.  I have been reminded over and over that my lifestyle change has been a good solid one and that when I falter it is just temporary.  Unfortunately, string a few temporary events in a line and it appears habit-forming!

Don’t worry.  It is not.  It just feels that way, given the scale at weigh-in this morning said 159 pounds!  Yikes!  That is seven pounds more than it reported last Monday.  The few big fluctuations in a row (last few weeks were up and down like crazy) really play games with your mind.

A few good things to remember and keep in mind: 

• I did formal exercise yesterday for the first time in several weeks and although it was just using Wii Fit, that balance board was able to remind me that I was still “down” from the last time I weighed in using it.  That shows progress overall, even if the number on the scale tries to contradict me.  What’s more, my little Mii character did report that I am still “Normal” — as I am no longer registering as “overweight” I don’t have to feel so guilty about a few measly pounds on the scale.
• I set a new record for the number of hula hoop rotations in a ten minute time period. 
• There are four more weeks until the next family birthday party, so there shouldn’t be any additional derailments in the short term.
• Even though it doesn’t feel like it now and the extended forecast also does not show any warmer weather, I did have one day last week in the mid-40’s and several above freezing, which leads me to believe that I can indeed “make it” through my first Wisconsin winter as a normal-size person and that, God-willing, my body will begin to acclimate to this treachery so that I will not be as miserable next year.  Yes, I am looking forward to Spring, this year more than any year I ever have in the past!

I am commiserating with fellow blog buddies right now though.  I wonder if I will ever be happy with my body.  I don’t think so.  I am happy with my increased cardiovascular health though, and I can say that with extremely pride and sense of accomplishment!  I have been practicing vertical jumping to try and warm up when all else fails.  There are only so many extended stays in front of the fireplace and blankets that can be comfortably worn around me and layers of socks before my shoes or boots don’t fit.  But, jumping up and down in place is both exercise and warmth-generating.  I can only assume that jumping up and down two or three times would have made me winded in the past.  Now, I have to do it for well over a minute or two before it even phases me.  That’s a nice feeling.  I feel good about knowing that once it finally warms up outside, I can play in the yard with the kids, chase them around, play ball with them (or whatever) and not prefer to make an excuse why I should sit out or let them play alone.  I want to be more active.  I want to play.  I’m a big kid now!  (I’ve seen too many potty-training commercials lately and paid attention to them in celebration of my toddler’s recent potty training achievements!)

One thing I did new this time to pace myself and ensure I wouldn’t give up each stint of running before I had “done the time” was to actually not concentrate so much on the time portion of the display. Instead, I counted my paces like you would to a 4/4 musical time signature. (So, for those of you that are musically inclined or at least can read music, think one-ee-and-ah, two-ee-and-ah, three-ee-and-ah.) Or in other words, I counted one for every four steps I took and did not stop running until I got to 100 (100 pounds, 100 counts — I like the symbolism) which is 400 steps and then tried to make the walking breaks in between no more than a count of 50, with 25 to 30 being ideal. It would mean that I was running between 50 and 75% of the time.

I don’t know if all these numbers are confusing, but it made sense to me. And, the number on the distance readout at the end of the 30 minutes made me feel happy, 1.766 which means that I made it an entire tenth of a mile more than I did on Monday in the same time frame.

Baby steps!

And, there is another benefit to this little goal I’ve set up for myself… as if it were magic, each of the last three days has resulted in another pound off the scale during my morning visit to the scale. I think the addition of the more strenuous cardio exercise (with a toddler I’m always getting some sort of exercise during the day, ha ha) has jolted my body into weight loss mode, because according to the scale this morning, I weighed 173, which is 95 down and five to go out of the original 100. I hope I am not jinxing myself by posting this success early!