Beginning the Christmas holidays with a bang!

Update: 12/9/08 8:10pm

Don't have much time these days; work is EXTRA, EXTRA busy. That 2 week vacation is going to be more special and necessary than EVER!

Just a posting tonight to note that I made it through the official week 1 of health and fitness swimmingly!! I only cheated 1 day which was Thursday right before my son's Christmas play. I didn't even get home from work until after 6pm and had to have him at his school by 6:45pm. He left 6 ketchup-drenched fries on his plate from dinner so I ate them. But the rest of the week went WONDERFULLY! Chris and I are competing in a fitness competition middle of next year so we're on a pretty structured plan for our health and fitness. We give ourselves 1 cheat meal per week. Not cheat-day like most people, but cheat meal only. I know better; people with my personality can't be given so much as an inch. :-)

Progress Report: Back on November 14 I weighed myself on one of those scales in the convenience store restrooms where you put in a quarter and it tells you your weight. I weighed myself again today and I was 10 lbs less!! It's been almost a month so that's good progress! Or maybe that scale was busted; I don't trust electronic scales so much. Either way, I'm fitting back into my jeans again. About 3 weeks ago I couldn't fit into ANY of my winter pants from last year, so that's a relief. By New Year's Eve, I'll be back into my skinny jeans which is a RELIEF.

Also, I normally can't exercise with my iPod. I accidentally left it at home today and I STILL exercised...did sprints, even!! That's how I roll now. :-) Good Night!

Smooth sailing for Week 2.

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Notable items since Thanksgiving:

My friend Kelly started a new Facebook group called "Facebook's Biggest Loser". It's SO helpful because it keeps us all accountable to one another. Not to mention the fact that I'm ultra-competitive about stuff like this. We all have our gifts or specialties, and one of mine is the fact that I'm so used to being the among the "fit ones" in my social circles. It's something I had grown to take pride in until, like most other women I know, the babies arrived! LOL They have been MORE than worth it, and now it's time to get this body back into shape for good. Let's do it sisters!! :-)

Speaking of Thanksgiving, it was WONDERFUL! We visited with my mom and dad, and my sister and her family came as well. It's ALWAYS a blast when the 10 of us get together. Not to mention that my potato salad was the BIG HIT this year. This makes the 3rd year in a row that one of my dishes was the star of the show. My macaroni and cheese was just a tad too seasoned. I need to use less salt in the water in which I boil the noodles next time. But it was still a cheesy delight! The following we prepared the remaining dishes (potato souffle, dressing, turkey smoked greens and honey fried chicken) and let me just say that we spent Fri, Sat and Sun eating, eating, eating!! The food was DIVINE!!!!

I did get to do some things on my vacation list, and a few others went neglected. But I'm glad that I made an effort to "plan" some vacationy things to do. It kept me from focusing on un-important things that could be left to the regular routine work days (of which there are less than 3 weeks before my 2-WEEK Christmas vacation starts - HALLELUJAH!!)

LOL moment of the day (and possibly week) - My Gmail Chat status says "I'm around...so leave me a message". My friend Neal sent me this in Gmail chat while I was away from my browser earlier today: "i must point out that your status is truncated on my chat window...so all i see is 'im around..so leave' and somehow i can see you saying that in certain situations". He was logged off by the time I saw that, and that made me LOL, literally. :-)

And finally, the best news to report. For the first time in over a year, I have been able to stick to a healthy fitness/meal plan for more than 24 hours!! The best thing about this is that I haven't even had any cravings! That may not mean a lot to most of you, but those of you that know me VERY well know that I am borderline OBSESSED with food. Consuming yummy delights determines my mood in most cases. But this past Monday and Tuesday I only consumed the healthiest fat-free, low-carb, low-fat, protein packed meals. And I exercised both days; I'm SO proud of myself!! I'm on a roll!!

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 3

It's like, why am I even still posting these at this point? I've completely abandoned the whole healthy/fitness idea the past two days. But at some point I've got to get tired of coming here making excuses on why I didn't get to the gym. Now, I will say that today I actually did have a good excuse for not making the gym and abandoning my diet plan. If you don't mind TMI, go ahead and highlight the next three words. Womanly issues today. So here's how my day went:

8:45am - chicken burrito from Chick-Fil-A (not too bad of a start at all; I didn't eat the tortilla, just the inside of it)

9:15am - large cup of water

11:00am - Snickers bar (WTH??) I don't even know where this craving came from; oh wait, just I do...the TMI from earlier in the post. Never mind.

2:30pm - birthday cookie w/frosting

9:00pm - rotisserie chicken, salad with buttermilk ranch dressing, chips w/guacamole

9:30pm - kiwi flavored juice

And I'm in a bad mood tonight. No one has done anything to me; everyone has been wonderful. My hubby even went out and got me the yummy eats I was craving. I'm just tired and need a vacation, I think. Off to bed then.

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 2

When I'm bad, I'm REALLY bad! the day started off a little rough and went downhill from there:

I mentioned when I posted yesterday (Monday) evening that I was planning to go to bed early so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat anything bad for me. I've got some type of chronic sinus issue that has been keeping me from sleeping soundly for a very long time. Even though I drifted off to sleep at 11pm, I woke up at 2pm unable to breathe through my nose. I stayed up until 5am, and since "Dawson's Creek" comes on The N on Comcast at 5am, I was up until 6 am watching it. I drifted off to sleep around 6:15 and woke up at 6:45am. How brutal is that?

So I jumped up and got the kids ready, took them to school, and was back home by 8:20am. I worked online for a while to take care of some emergency issues. Bear in mind that I haven't eaten anything this entire time. So by the time I get into the office, I'm pretty hungry. I consider going to the gym, but there's too much work to be done and it needs to be done immediately. I "put off" the gym until later in the afternoon.

By the time later in the afternoon rolls around, a last minute group pow-wow meeting is called. By the time the meeting is over, I am FAMISHED.

3pm: Chick-Fil-A sandwich, fries, lemonade
3:30pm Snickers Bar
7pm: Grilled Chicken nachos from Pollo Loco
7:45pm - 2 chocolate cookies

I had a glass of Kiwi flavored juice; no water today. It is 8pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. I have to leave in 15 minutes to drive me and the kids all the way to GA State to pick up my husband from class. We won't be back home until around 9:30pm at which time I will probably crash and burn.

As long as I spend 5 out of 7 days not eating terrible and getting some form of exercise, I'm happy with that.

Road to Fitness and Good Nutrition: Day 1

Here's how my health and fitness went today:

9:30 - pack of sugar-free oatmeal w/ ice cold water

10:30am - ice cold water

11:15 - 12:15pm - up in the gym just workin' on my fitness...lots of room temp water

1:30pm - protein shake, chased by water

3:30pm - 1 tilapia filet and veggies w/ ice cold water

7pm - 1 tilapia filet and veggies

Making it by the skin of my teeth at this point. I'm going to bed at 8pm so that I'm not tempted to eat anything else. Tomorrow, I need to up the resistance training and add some more protein in the AM; hopefully I'll be up early enough to make some egg whites.