I'm down - yippee :-)

I weighed myself on Monday morning and the scale said that I have lost two pounds - that's exciting! :-) It appears that exercise is the key. :-) Mike and I found we were on a plateau and the only thing missing was the exercise - I guess there is only so much weight you can lose by healthy eating. We now have been doing some kind of exercise every day, but Sunday. We are walking 3km in 30 minutes - quite fast and we work up quite a sweat. We are aiming to walk 3.5km in 30 minutes. We also sometimes bike ride - 6km in 35 minutes - we are aiming for 6km in 30 minutes. It's exciting to see the numbers going down on the scales - it really motivates me and spurs me on. We have also been tweaking our eating plan using sparkpeople.com and that is helping a lot - it seems that for the past few days, we can stay within our calorie range and also have a little treat at the end of the day (low cal pudding) which we enjoy.

October 24, 2010

Whoops, I have missed a few days, but it's been going pretty well, so I won't worry about fixing things up. I got on the scales today and it said that I lost a pound and a half. I am cautiously optimistic - I will weigh myself tomorrow and if it's the same, I will be thrilled. When I saw the amount, I smiled from ear to ear and I felt very motivated since I haven't seen that kind of progress for ages. So, we shall see what happens tomorrow.

Breakfast
3/4c Just Right Cereal
1/2c milk
70g yogurt
1/2c orange juice

Lunch
250g pea and ham soup
85g chicken bites
1/8c baked beans

Supper
Asian Grilled Chicken
1/2c basmati rice
1/2c carrots
1/2c corn
1 1/2c milk

Snacks
Chocolate pudding

A pretty good day today

So, we ate well and stayed under the amounts allowed. We also went for a walk which is great - it looked cloudy outside, but usually that doesn't mean rain (or much of it) unless they are quite grey and these ones were light grey. So, we decided to take a chance and go for it. We walked hard because we only had 20 minutes, but it was better than nothing in our minds.

Breakfast
2 pancakes
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup yogurt

Lunch
chicken and tomato sandwich

Supper
2 egg omelette
salad with croutons
1,000 island dressing
1/2c milk

Snacks
165g apricots
granny smith apple
fruit and oat granola bar

oops

Well, I thought today was a good day, but when I input what I ate, it turned out that I had very little left for dinner. Luckily for me, I am not counting tonight's dinner (chicken pesto pasta) or dessert (pavlova) as it was our anniversary dinner - so there was zero calories. :-)

I am really going to have to start inputting my information ahead of time so that I can tweak things. I think part of the problem might be that I am having three snacks on top of my three meals - I will have to take some time tomorrow to check this out.

For today, I ate..........

Breakfast
Smoothie
OJ
Applesauce oatmeal muffin

Lunch
Chicken Noodle Soup

Snacks
fruit and oat granola bar
apricots
banana

Oops - a little off :-)

So, today I thought I was doing well - I had put all my food into the Sparks People program and realized that I had some space to finish up my fruit for today (apricots). Then, I read my list of taco ingredients out to Mike, he reminded me that I had not added the hamburger in - eek! So, after putting that in, I found out that I had gone over by 242 calories, although everything else is within the ranges, so that's a good thing.

Breakfast
2 pancakes
1/2c frozen fruit
1tbsp maple syrup

Lunch
tuna sandwich

Supper
2 tacos

Snack
1/2c orange
165g canned apricots
1/4c yogurt
1 granola bar

We also did a 45 minute bike ride - 6km - which felt good - hard work - but, really nice to be doing it with Mike - having a chance to talk while we biked.

Hopefully, I can find a way to keep within my ranges better as we go along in this 'becoming healthy' journey.

October 18, 2010

So, today I did fairly well although I went over on carbs. This is what I ate today.....

Breakfast:
3/4c Just Right cereal
1/2c milk
1/4c apricot/mango yogurt
1/2c OJ

Lunch
85g penne
1/2 c spaghetti sauce

Supper
2 mini meatloaves
1c mashed potatoes
1/2c peas
1/2c corn

Snacks
8 crackers
1 laughing cow
165g apricots

We did a 40 minute walk today. We were supposed to do our strength exercises, but they didn't get done. That will happen on Wednesday.

Starting again ................

It's been ages since I last wrote in this blog and everything I am reading about today speaks of the importance of writing everything down that I eat and the exercise which I do. I will start all that tomorrow. For this blog, I want to talk about how I am going to keep better track of what I am eating. I also want to have to write down what I do for exercise because that part of my healthy plan has been very lacking lately. Between feeling tired and feeling stressed (from teaching full-time again - if only for five weeks), I find myself slacking off the exercising and Mike is okay with not going as well so he doesn't encourage me to get out and get moving. I know that it will make me feel better and so I want to make a pact with myself (and I will talk it over with Mike) to make sure that I do some kind of exercising every day (but Sunday, my lovely day of rest :-) Having to keep track of my eating and my exercising again will be really helpful, especially since we are going back to Canada in a month. I would really like to be down at least three pounds by then (to 185lbs). It's hard to believe that a few years ago, I was down at 152lbs. and I felt and looked great. I know I can do it - I just need to make that commitment again. I find it easier to lose weight when I have a goal like 'I want to look good for this or that' and right now, there isn't anything like that to spur me on. So, I am just going to make a commitment to eat healthy, exercise, and keep track of both.