It has been a little over a week since I decided to try out SparkPeople. (Yes I know, I ditched that blog once a day thing pretty early. I just don't have the time.) I think I am getting it figured out, but there is still a lot to explore and more decisions to make. I am still working on eating better and getting enough water. (I just love going to the bathroom so often, so much fun.) I am doing well at sticking to the exercise plan, since it is pretty basin and doesn't take too much time.
Overall, I guess I am getting going. Not too bad, but maybe not that great either. Sometimes I eat a lot and then wince when I put it is the counter. I figure, I could fib about it, who would know...other than me. That is the sticking point. I feel guilty for cheating, eve though this plan isn't about cheating or rules, just about eating better and hopefully less of the things that keep me chubby.
I need to practice not feeling guilty. Is there an easy way to do that? Is there an easy way to say "It's ok to eat that much garlic bread, but don't do it too often"? I will work on it and let you know. :)
Other than that, I think I am going to be able to do this. The articles and posts and messages are very positive and that is a big boost. Here is to trying my best and success.
Showing posts with label dieting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dieting. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Spark People
I am now a Spark People...or is that Person? I don't know yet. :)
www.sparkpeople.com is a website that I heard of through my sister-in-law. She started it last summer, and really got going with it the first of this year. It is basically a healthy living site with diet plans and exercise plans and lots of groups for support. There are articles and a recipe database and chat groups on tons of subject.
I have not yet explored a tenth of the things available on the site, but I think that it has promise.
The site is really full of stuff, so navigating takes a bit of memorization, but the tabs and such are pretty self explanatory.
The plans encourage you to set goals and track them daily. Doing so earns you points, but I am not clear yet on what points get you, other than kudos from your friends. One of the goals I am working on for now is journaling every day, so most of the time I think that will take the form of blogging. I will try to keep them brief, since a daily ramble through my vocabulary would be boring for both of us. I will post recipes from the site and let you know how my goals are coming along.
The biggest reason I am doing this is to try to get active and lose weight. The site and I agree that I need to lose about 50 pounds and I am aiming to do that by my birthday in October. Wouldn't that be a nifty birthday present?
For now, I am off to get some work done. I will hopefully talk to you again tomorrow :)
www.sparkpeople.com is a website that I heard of through my sister-in-law. She started it last summer, and really got going with it the first of this year. It is basically a healthy living site with diet plans and exercise plans and lots of groups for support. There are articles and a recipe database and chat groups on tons of subject.
I have not yet explored a tenth of the things available on the site, but I think that it has promise.
The site is really full of stuff, so navigating takes a bit of memorization, but the tabs and such are pretty self explanatory.
The plans encourage you to set goals and track them daily. Doing so earns you points, but I am not clear yet on what points get you, other than kudos from your friends. One of the goals I am working on for now is journaling every day, so most of the time I think that will take the form of blogging. I will try to keep them brief, since a daily ramble through my vocabulary would be boring for both of us. I will post recipes from the site and let you know how my goals are coming along.
The biggest reason I am doing this is to try to get active and lose weight. The site and I agree that I need to lose about 50 pounds and I am aiming to do that by my birthday in October. Wouldn't that be a nifty birthday present?
For now, I am off to get some work done. I will hopefully talk to you again tomorrow :)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Game Night and Cruising
Game Night was great this weekend. We got eight people together and played a rousing game of Munchkin. Good times were had by all. Saturday I did a whole lot of not much at all, which was great. It is nice to actually be able to relax on the weekend. :)
Today I got my chores and errands done and Shane worked on the yard. When we finished with all that we drove over to the mall and went to the travel agents to get some information on a cruise.
We have been talking about going on a cruise this fall for our fifth wedding anniversary. I am very excited about it, but it is proving to be somewhat difficult to make some of the decision. We have about nine cruises to pick from that fit our time and price range that are going to Alaska. The good and the bad is that they all go to different places and none of them go to all the places we think would be neat to see. So, we have to decided which would be the best combination at the best price with the best excursions. So so so difficult. I tried to convince Shane that he should just pick one for us, but he is making me think about it too...meany. My life can be so difficult sometimes.
In other news, we got some art prints from the Rad-Con art show framed and picked them up yesterday. They look so great. We picked some really nice frames and they worked out really well. We even hung them up...yay us. :)
Also, I have decided that I need to get back onto my diet soon, at least within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I decided that after I went grocery shopping and got a bunch of things that are not South Beach Diet approved. So, it is going to have to wait a week or two until I clean out the fridge and cupboards. I refuse to throw away food. Some stuff can just be boxed up and put away until it is allowed again, but not everything. I really like South Beach since it works really well for me, but it is hard to give up the bread and pasta and sweet stuff. The first week is hell. Sigh. However, I remember how well I was doing last summer when I stuck to it for a couple months. I lost about 15 pounds and was really looking good. Unfortunately I got lazy and haven't been sticking to the rules so I have gained back about five. I was thinking it would be really great to lose about 30 pounds before this fall and the cruise. Shane promised me last year that if I stuck with the diet and lost all the weight I want to lose, he would buy me a bunch of new clothes. It would be super to have a new wardrobe to go cruising in.
I am going to go and look at brochures since I have lots of deciding to do about the cruise. I will keep you posted and hopefully make some decisions soon so we can get this all set and booked. Wish me luck.
Today I got my chores and errands done and Shane worked on the yard. When we finished with all that we drove over to the mall and went to the travel agents to get some information on a cruise.
We have been talking about going on a cruise this fall for our fifth wedding anniversary. I am very excited about it, but it is proving to be somewhat difficult to make some of the decision. We have about nine cruises to pick from that fit our time and price range that are going to Alaska. The good and the bad is that they all go to different places and none of them go to all the places we think would be neat to see. So, we have to decided which would be the best combination at the best price with the best excursions. So so so difficult. I tried to convince Shane that he should just pick one for us, but he is making me think about it too...meany. My life can be so difficult sometimes.
In other news, we got some art prints from the Rad-Con art show framed and picked them up yesterday. They look so great. We picked some really nice frames and they worked out really well. We even hung them up...yay us. :)
Also, I have decided that I need to get back onto my diet soon, at least within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I decided that after I went grocery shopping and got a bunch of things that are not South Beach Diet approved. So, it is going to have to wait a week or two until I clean out the fridge and cupboards. I refuse to throw away food. Some stuff can just be boxed up and put away until it is allowed again, but not everything. I really like South Beach since it works really well for me, but it is hard to give up the bread and pasta and sweet stuff. The first week is hell. Sigh. However, I remember how well I was doing last summer when I stuck to it for a couple months. I lost about 15 pounds and was really looking good. Unfortunately I got lazy and haven't been sticking to the rules so I have gained back about five. I was thinking it would be really great to lose about 30 pounds before this fall and the cruise. Shane promised me last year that if I stuck with the diet and lost all the weight I want to lose, he would buy me a bunch of new clothes. It would be super to have a new wardrobe to go cruising in.
I am going to go and look at brochures since I have lots of deciding to do about the cruise. I will keep you posted and hopefully make some decisions soon so we can get this all set and booked. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Work and Plans and Stuff
The plans I have made for the new year are going fairly well I think...at least some of them are.
I am doing a lot more reading now and some of the books are even educational. I will post a list later of what I am reading and what I think of it, but for now ... I want the big one! I checked out a book called 30,000 Years of Art. It is giant and pretty and I could seriously maim, if not kill, someone with it without trying too hard. I will weigh it one of these days and measure it and shock you.
Other than that, I have been riding my exercise bike and will be starting the South Beach Diet again this weekend. It will be hard to do the worst part without Shane around to be my enforcer, but at least he won't have to listen to me whine. For those of you who live in a cultural vacuum or just don't pay attention to this sort of thing, the South Beach Diet is, for the first two weeks, basically no-carb and no-fat. After that it is just low-carb and low-fat. This is very difficult for me, since those are my favorite types of food. So I suffer ... but I have not learned to suffer in silence. Poor Shane. But, as I said, he will be out of town for more job training and will only have to listen to me when he gets home. I think that I will only do Phase 1 for 1 week this time, since we are going to Idaho with my in-laws the following week and this is not the easiest diet to do when travelling. I will still try to stick to it as well as possible, and we will be doing lots of normal cooking since the condo has a full kitchen, but I don't think I can be 100% faithful to the rules. And in case you are curious, the reason I do this even though I hate it is that it is effective. Yes ... a diet can be effective. Although, I believe they prefer to view it as a lifestyle change ... but I just keep changing back after a few months. While I am following the rules, even if it is only mostly, I lose quite a decent amount of weight and can keep it off. Last summer I did it for about 2 months and lost 20 pounds. I only gained it back over the holidays while I was being a disgusting pig and living on candy and the cookies I baked. Naughty. But I want to get back on track now. I have gained back about ten pounds that I want to get rid of again, plus the 20 left that I did not finish last time. My goal weight is 150. I will keep you informed of my (hopeful) success.
While in Idaho I will be working on the embroidered quilt squares with my mother in law and, hopefully, some new knitting patterns. I may get a set of circular needles and learn to make hats and socks. That would be super fun. It may wait until we get home though. I also plan to take a cross-stitch kit that I have been working on forever. I pick it up and do a little and get side-tracked and put it away and repeat that once every few months. I am progressing very slowly, but it will be gorgeous when it is done.
Work is proceeding along as normal and we are all waiting to find out what the new owners of the business have planned. I work for a small lab and we were bought by a large company that employs 1,400 people and has labs all over the east coast and Midwest. This means there are lots of things they may do to improve our operations, but it also means that they will take their own sweet time doing anything. So many vice presidents-in-charge-of and so much paperwork and so many conference calls. Ugh ... I am glad I am not the manager. I am merely the lowly secretary in charge of faxing this to him and mailing these to them and keeping track of conference calls and appointments and so on and so forth. Busy times, but hopefully all the fuss and nonsense will pay off for the lab and our clients.
On an exciting note, in the next few weeks our garden will start sprouting. We spent several weeks in the late fall planting 2 large bulb beds. The bed by the house is all irises, which won't be up for months yet, but the bed by the road is full of all sorts of different bulbs. Some of them will be blooming next month, which means I am going to start watching for tiny green points to start poking up soon. I promise lots of pictures. This makes me want to read The Secret Garden again ... I think I will read it tomorrow. Yay!
I am doing a lot more reading now and some of the books are even educational. I will post a list later of what I am reading and what I think of it, but for now ... I want the big one! I checked out a book called 30,000 Years of Art. It is giant and pretty and I could seriously maim, if not kill, someone with it without trying too hard. I will weigh it one of these days and measure it and shock you.
Other than that, I have been riding my exercise bike and will be starting the South Beach Diet again this weekend. It will be hard to do the worst part without Shane around to be my enforcer, but at least he won't have to listen to me whine. For those of you who live in a cultural vacuum or just don't pay attention to this sort of thing, the South Beach Diet is, for the first two weeks, basically no-carb and no-fat. After that it is just low-carb and low-fat. This is very difficult for me, since those are my favorite types of food. So I suffer ... but I have not learned to suffer in silence. Poor Shane. But, as I said, he will be out of town for more job training and will only have to listen to me when he gets home. I think that I will only do Phase 1 for 1 week this time, since we are going to Idaho with my in-laws the following week and this is not the easiest diet to do when travelling. I will still try to stick to it as well as possible, and we will be doing lots of normal cooking since the condo has a full kitchen, but I don't think I can be 100% faithful to the rules. And in case you are curious, the reason I do this even though I hate it is that it is effective. Yes ... a diet can be effective. Although, I believe they prefer to view it as a lifestyle change ... but I just keep changing back after a few months. While I am following the rules, even if it is only mostly, I lose quite a decent amount of weight and can keep it off. Last summer I did it for about 2 months and lost 20 pounds. I only gained it back over the holidays while I was being a disgusting pig and living on candy and the cookies I baked. Naughty. But I want to get back on track now. I have gained back about ten pounds that I want to get rid of again, plus the 20 left that I did not finish last time. My goal weight is 150. I will keep you informed of my (hopeful) success.
While in Idaho I will be working on the embroidered quilt squares with my mother in law and, hopefully, some new knitting patterns. I may get a set of circular needles and learn to make hats and socks. That would be super fun. It may wait until we get home though. I also plan to take a cross-stitch kit that I have been working on forever. I pick it up and do a little and get side-tracked and put it away and repeat that once every few months. I am progressing very slowly, but it will be gorgeous when it is done.
Work is proceeding along as normal and we are all waiting to find out what the new owners of the business have planned. I work for a small lab and we were bought by a large company that employs 1,400 people and has labs all over the east coast and Midwest. This means there are lots of things they may do to improve our operations, but it also means that they will take their own sweet time doing anything. So many vice presidents-in-charge-of and so much paperwork and so many conference calls. Ugh ... I am glad I am not the manager. I am merely the lowly secretary in charge of faxing this to him and mailing these to them and keeping track of conference calls and appointments and so on and so forth. Busy times, but hopefully all the fuss and nonsense will pay off for the lab and our clients.
On an exciting note, in the next few weeks our garden will start sprouting. We spent several weeks in the late fall planting 2 large bulb beds. The bed by the house is all irises, which won't be up for months yet, but the bed by the road is full of all sorts of different bulbs. Some of them will be blooming next month, which means I am going to start watching for tiny green points to start poking up soon. I promise lots of pictures. This makes me want to read The Secret Garden again ... I think I will read it tomorrow. Yay!
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