The End of Vacation

First let me say: I’m sorry for not keeping up with my posts as well as I should have – but it was vacation, afterall! Also, no stats with this post.

Well, I stepped on the scale this morning and I gained 3lbs and about a ¼ inch on my gut while in Arkansas. I have to say this wasn’t anywhere close to what I had expected, so I’m pretty happy! However this definitely is telling of how quickly weight gain can sneak up on you.

I was still counting calories for most of my trip and then Weds night and the rest of the week/weekend I gave up. Mostly I was just busy. I’m pretty sure there were only one or two days that I broke the 2500 mark – with the amount of alcohol consumed I definitely breached the 1800 mark every day, but I’m okay with that.

I did at least walk every day while I was down there – Mon I took a quick 15 minute job, Tues. I jogged for 2.5 miles in about 40 minutes, Weds I took about an hour long walk with my cousin, Thurs I played football for about 30 minutes, Friday I walked for 40 minutes with my uncle Marvin and the dogs. This, I think, was the first week I actually got in 5 consecutive workouts/walks/runs! Too bad I was eating so much the whole week otherwise I might have actually lost something.. lol  “I’m soooo full” was the story of my life while I was there. I feel like all we did was EAT!

This week my focus is to take off those 3lbs I packed back on, to get some good hard exercise in, and hopefully finish this book I’m reading. I realized a few days ago, aside from Walking Dead, I haven’t read in probably 2 months. I really enjoy reading and I think it really helps keep my stress levels low, so I need to make finding a good book every couple weeks a priority.

I talked to Mike this afternoon about getting a gym membership – he says he needs to “think about it”. Hopefully he’s okay with us spending the extra $30/month, and hopefully he’ll be done thinking about it before Wednesday when the offer expires. :-p

Weight update

Well, I forgot to weigh myself this morning until AFTER I had already eaten breakfast and gotten dressed... so with those things considered, the outcome was pretty awesome... 200lbs! Still! lol This will have been almost a month of no weight change. My measurements are holding strong too. So not much change. Oh well. Better than having gained 5 pounds from all the restaurant food I've been eating!!

Stats for 11/23:

• total calories: 1770 - right at my limit.
• calories burned: 250 - went for a 20 min run
• I don't even know how many cigarettes... I've been terrible since I've been down here. 
• 12am bedtime
• I'm not counting spending this week since we're on vacation.

On vacation

Sorry I haven't posted since, what, thursday? I left for vacation Friday afternoon and then was busy driving for two days.. and yesterday I was exhausted from the two days of driving. But I'm all caught up on my calorie tracking now and I have internet access so here we go!

I'm just going to give you a quick overview of the last few days... just calories and what I consumed to get those calories:


Thursday, Nov. 18th:

• total calories: 1387 - but I skipped dinner this day. I got real stressed out in the afternoon and worked myself all up and ended up making myself nauseated and panicky for most of the afternoon/evening. Eating was the last thing on my mind. For breakfast I had some oatmeal, and then some almonds for a snack, but the bulk of my calories came from a BBQ stuffed potato at this local place called Dixie Bones. I estimated it was about 1'000 calories after adding in all the cheese, sour cream, bbq sauce.. and of course the pork. Keep in mind this was a 1 pound potato... !!!
• no workout mostly due to the crazy stress and having to get everything packed and ready to go for our vacation.

Friday, Nov. 19th:

• total calories: 1589 - I'm amazed I did this well considering we had CRACKER BARREL for dinner.. being on the road makes for really bad eating choices. For me, anyway. Although I did pack SUPER healthy snacks for the road - so kudos to myself on that. 
• no workout, just 10 hours of DRIVING.. ugggh. I seriously thought about taking advantage of the fitness room at our hotel the following morning when we first got in... but then I slept like crap and probably only had about 4 hours of hard sleep total so my motivation was zilch. Plus there was that whole.. another 6 hours of driving thing ahead of me. 

Saturday, Nov. 20th:

• total calories: 2123 (!!!!) - Yeah. That's almost 300 calories over my daily allowance. Here's where I screwed the pooch: We stopped at STEAK'N'SHAKE for lunch. That place is SOOOOO freakin' delicious... but when you consider that I had a burger with guacamole on it... well.. I should have known my calories would be blown out of the water. Even though the guac calories/fat were GOOD calories/fat.. I'm sure the rest of the burger and the fries were mostly certainly NOT. And then their computers went down and it took 30 mins to be able to pay our check, so we got free milkshakes... at about 400 calories a piece. I only drank half of mine. but still. My lunch alone was almost 1200 calories. Then my grandparents ordered pizza for dinner since the football game was on.. I was still pretty full from lunch so I only had 2 slices, but that still set me back 500 calories thanks to the pepperoni topping. Vacation calories don't count, right? lol
• no workout - again, lots of driving and exhaustion. 

Sunday, Nov. 21st:

• total calories: 1659 - this completely blew me out of the water. I thought for sure I was looking at a 3'000 calorie day, honestly. We had US Pizza for lunch - but I ordered the veggie pizza and the slices there are incredibly small so even thought I had like 5, I'm thinking it was the equivalent to about 3 slices of pizza hut thin crust pizza. Oddly enough what gave me the most calories was the salad supreme... their house dressing is just simply decadent. I tried to only used about 2 tbsps of it, but I'm sure that alone was probably 200 calories and 20g of fat! Then we had japanese steakhouse food for dinner.. looking up the hibachi stuff online I was pretty surprised at how "healthy" it is. And I didn't eat really any of my fried rice so that saved me a lot too. 
• again, no workout. 

So my goal for today is to get some exercise in - this is vacation so I'm not going to stress of my eating too much, but just focus on making good choices when I have the opportunity and focus on getting some good exercise EVERY DAY. I don't really have much else going on in the morning/mid-afternoons, there's no reason I can't squeeze at LEAST 4 workouts in this week.

Tonight we're supposed to be going out for Mexican with my uncles, and I'm thinking I'm probably going to get either carne asada or steak fajitas - but just eat the steak and veggies and leave the tortillas alone. That should keep dinner to under 500 calories. No idea what the plan for lunch is yet - but I'm thinking if we hit a restaurant I'm probably going to opt for a salad...assuming the salads don't seem like that be worse for me than a regular old sandwich or something. lol

So, again, I'm sorry for neglecting the blog but as you read I've been pretty caught up with life! Now that we're here and settled I should be able to update on a daily basis with no problem. I just have to make the time. :)

ps - I will post weight and measurements later. I'm going to measure at my Granny's house later today since I know she has a tape measure, and once my Uncle Mark wakes up I'll go borrow his scale.. here's to hoping I have gained 5 pounds in just the last 3 days!!!

*sounds of a cheering crowd*

So, even though I didn’t make my walk yesterday since a) my mom wasn’t feeling well, b) the wind was blowing about a million miles an hour down from Canada making it REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE OUTSIDE (screw Canada and the cold wind they send this way), and c) had to finish laundry/cleaning/shopping/start packing for our trip (tomorrow!!!!)… I did an amazing job on my eating. An AMAZING job.

I read this article yesterday at Huffington Post about how drastic changes in your diet can actually reverse heart disease. The type of eating that this doctor was encouraging was, basically, clean eating – what he called “nutritarian” eating – where 90% of your calories come from nutrient rich plant-foods: vegetables, beans, fruits, nuts and seeds. He actually makes HUGE points of getting out of the “low-fat” frame of mind and focusing on “good fats” - things like nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oils, etc., and for your main starchy carbohydrate to be beans.  It was really interesting. If you want to take a look, you can read it here.

Yesterday I ate oatmeal, almonds, salads (for lunch and dinner), triscuits with low-fat cheese, grapefruit, apple, shrimp sautéed in olive oil spread and minced garlic with some low-fat fettucini alfredo (some of that dry mix you can buy and then heat with water and milk).. the alfredo was probably the worst thing I ate the whole day and it was only about 300 calories for the serving.

Stats for 11/17:

• total calories: 1500
• no workout - although I probably got some exercise running up and down the stairs all night doing laundry and speed walking around Target to get the last of the things for our trip. 
• no cigarettes
• 11:30pm bedtime
• $0 spent

here comes my 19th nervous breakdown...

I must must MUST get better about updating my blog on a DAILY basis instead of this every other day routine I seem to be falling into.

So I bumped my caloric intake down for this week. I use MyPlate to track my calories and they have a little calculator that tells you how many calories you should eat to lose or gain however many pounds per week. So I would, ideally, like to be losing about 1.5 pounds a week – so this little calculator dealie told me I should be consuming 1877 calories/day or less. Okay, fair. I can totally do that.

Then… I go out for beers last night and blow my calorie count by 48 calories. 48 maybe not SEEM like a lot… but you consider that I consumed 550 calories worth of BEER last night… that makes it seem pretty awful. I even told myself I was just going to have 2 glasses of white wine (about 200 calories, give or take) and then drink water… but I just didn’t want to pay the $6 a glass or whatever it was… yeah, so I spent $20 on beers instead.. plus tip.. because I drank FIVE of them. FML. Seriously.

Other things to derail my healthy eating this week… had to take the kiddo to the doctor yesterday morning – find out he has a sinus infection, which sucks pretty hard for the little dude – but the appointment was at 11:30am.. which means he missed lunched at daycare.. so what do we have for lunch? Ah, yes, the World-Wide Little Kid Favorite Food: MCDONALDS! Now, I got myself a kid’s meal with a tea instead of soda so I kept it under 550 calories there. But it’s still fucking McDonald’s. And it pretty much killed my sodium intake for the day. I did have some baked salmon and wild rice for dinner though… so I feel like I made it up to myself a little bit there. Although I cooked at my mom’s and she didn’t have any vegetables for some reason, so I didn’t even come close to my “strive for 5” yesterday. I’m so envious of Emily and her brilliant job at clean eating!

Part of me kind of feels like, “Oh, stop beating yourself up because you’re about to leave for vacation and you’re pretty much going to give in to all your vices and eat like shit while you’re there. May as well just start over when you get home.” But I don’t really WANT to eat like shit and I certainly don’t want to feel like I have to “start over” on anything. I want to just move FORWARD. Consistently. I’m sure I will probably bust my calories several times – I mean, let’s be real. It’s THANKSGIVING. But I generally want to try to make good choices.. even if I’m just eating massive quantities of those good choices.  Plus another part of me feels like it won’t be so bad because I will actually have the time and opportunity to exercise EVERY DAY. And that will be so brilliant!

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. …now watch me lose like 10 pounds while I’m there. Hahaha!

Okay so stats for the last couple days…

11/15:

• total calories: 1798 - I was starving almost ALL DAY on Monday. I don't know what the deal was. So I ate a lot more than I usually do, although I tried to make sure I was stuffing myself with healthy choices like apples, wheat thins, pistachios, etc.
• calories burned: 500 - so I actually clocked the walk/runs my mom and I have been doing.. and turns out it's more like 2.5 miles than 3, so I've probably been a little off on the amount of calories I've been burning. Today we jogged almost the whole thing. It felt amazing! 
• no cigarettes - day 2
• 10:30pm bedtime - WOO! GO ME!
• $4 on lunch ($36 left for the week)

11/16:

• total calories: 1925 - we discussed this above. Beer is evil. The End.
• no workout - it rained like a mofo yesterday.. I planned to do a workout dvd at home, but then hung at my mom's til like 7pm or so and had to meet up with folks at 8pm, so I didn't really have the time. Poop.
• ...3 cigarettes. Begin again. *facepalm*
• 1am bedtime - I actually got home around 11:30pm, but I stayed up late reading. AND NOW I HAVE NO MORE WALKING DEAD COMICS!! NOOOOOOOOooooooooo!
• $23.. on beer... -.- ($13 left for the week. EFF!!!)

Oh, also.. I forgot to mention this last week - but I bought some new jeans and a bunch of long-sleeve T's and sweaters because I realized I have, like, NO WINTER CLOTHES. Word? So get this.. I got a HELLUVA deal because a friend sent me an invite to the Gap Give+Get sale, and I had a TON of cashback from Discover.. so I was able to trade in $80 of my Discover Cashback for a $100 Gap gift card (!!!) so I got almost $300 worth of Gap clothing for... wait for it... $98!!! Brilliant, eh? Plus free shipping. Damn straight. I'm so amazing. Heh. 

Anyways, so that leaves me with only $2 left in my monthly fund, but I'm pretty sure I'll do just fine with that. 

I'm getting so excited for my trip to NLR!! Only two days!!! Or "two sleeps" as I tell James. :)

Plateau

Body stats beginning of Week 6:

·         200lbs. – again no loss. But now that I’m back into an exercise routine maybe we’ll see the change.

·         Waist: 34inches - that's another half inch!!

It seems I’ve hit a bit of a plateau on my weight-loss and it sure seems awfully early in the process for that to be happening… but I’m pretty sure it’s more my laziness than it is an actual plateau. I’ve just got to keep up the regular exercise and really start pushing myself a little more. I’m sure it would also help a ton to start lifting weights again since I’ve completely pooped out on that for almost 3 weeks now.

Stats for Sat/Sun:

11/13:

·         Total calories: 1880 – probably my highest calorie count in a while. It was the wine. In large quantities.

·         Calories burned: 550 – I did my 3 miles today even without my mom and I even jogged about half of it! I’m really proud of myself. I felt amazing afterward!

·         I made it 4 days without smoking and then broke down and had a couple Saturday night at a friend’s party. Restart.

·         2:30am bedtime. EESH.

·         $0 spent

11/14:

·         Total calories: 1679

·         No workout – I’m a little disappointed in myself here because my mom totally called to ask if I wanted to walk in the afternoon and I opted out because I was EXHAUSTED from staying up too late the night before. Then Mike and I were gonna go before James got home from his dad’s but we opted to clean out the car for our upcoming trip instead and by then it was dark and James was gonna be home any minute. I’m sure cleaning out the car burned SOME calories, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Lol

·         Didn’t smoke – day 1

·         12am bedtime – then proceeded to have zombie nightmares all night. Damn Walking Dead…

·         $5 spent on starbucks

So I’m excited to do my walk this afternoon – I even packed a bag of workout stuff this morning and brought it to work so I don’t have to waste any time! I’m going to try to jog some of it again today too. I have to be careful about jogging though because I get shin-splints really easily and they’re incredibly painful. If I get them that will set me back a LOT I know, so I really have to watch it.

The hubby came home from his “guys night” with fever last night. He’s definitely caught whatever virus James brought home from school last week. I’ll be pumping myself full of water and vitamin C this week (and exercise!!) in an effort to avoid contracting the virus just in time for us to leave for our trip. This, unfortunately, also ruins our plans of taking a half-day of work Friday to get on the road at a decent time. *sigh* Yay for driving until 2am!! 

Getting it together

Stats first..

11/11:

• total calories: 1909 - that's probably the most I've eaten in a couple weeks at least. I was SO HUNGRY all day. It was bizarre. Might have had something to do with the fact that I actually exercised for the first time in a while.
• calories burned: 500 - 3 mile walk with mom which basically should have been a run we were going so fast! 3 miles in 30 mins is pretty hardcore.. for me anyway.
• 0 cigarettes - day 2!
• 11pm bedtime
• no money spent

11/12:

• total calories: 1666 - that's including lunch at Wendys (jr hamburger with a side salad) AND going out for pizza.. but I got veggie-covered pizza, no meats and it was SO DELICIOUS.
• calories burned: 500 - another 3 mile power walk with mom. Hoping to go today too!
• 0 cigarettes - day 3!!!
• not sure what my bedtime was.. I passed out on the couch while watching Dracula and then Mike woke me up when he went to bed at 2:30am.. but I'd been asleep WELL before that.
• $15 spent to go out for dinner ($7 left)

I've really enjoyed these walks the last couple days - I'm just a little sad and disappointed that it's going to be too frigid to keep it up soon. Probably by the time we get back from Little Rock the temps will be low enough that walking in the evenings will just be too uncomfortable. :(

I'm planning ahead to my trip - I'm definitely bringing "workout" clothes so I can either join my Uncle Marvin at his gym or at least get a walk/run in just around their neighborhood or the lake. I'm definitely excited to have access to so many walking/running paths and neighborhood streets that don't have regular traffic coming through. It'll definitely help for my motivation. Plus I have a tendency to actually get to bed at a decent time when I'm down there (with maybe the exception of actual Thanksgiving evening).

I'm really proud of the food choices I've made this week. Even at Wendy's where there was a huge temptation to just get the fries to go with my burger - or even worse, break down and go the crispy chicken sandwich mayo and all! - I got the salad, only used about 1/4 of the dressing and didn't even open the croutons. I've also gotten back to eating my giant salads at home during the week and making my fruit smoothies so I'm getting a good amount of fiber. Plus I've gotten so much better at planning for dinners - making sure I get chicken/beef/fish thawed in time to be able to cook a healthy meal, keeping my fridge stocked with veggies to steam and making sure I have brown rice in the pantry to make little rice bowls if need be. I've also started buying sweet potatoes which are not only super good for you, but also super delicious and really filling. Some nights I just have that for dinner with maybe a small salad and it's really satisfying.

I know there's going to be a lot of eating out going in Little Rock, which is a big reason why I'm trying to keep myself in line with exercise while I'm down there. If I can make sure I'm burning calories everyday then I shouldn't have to be too cautious about what I'm eating for dinner every night. The killer for me will be alcohol consumption while I'm down there - but I'm going to try to stick to wine since that won't bust me as bad caloric-wise.

One other thing I'm really proud of: I'm finally able to comfortable wear some of my size 16's now. Hopefully by the beginning of December they'll start actually feeling "roomy". I would love to be back down to a 14 by my birthday in April. I feel like that's an incredibly realistic goal. April being 5 months away and all. I've lost about 10 pounds since the beginning of September. So, about 6 weeks. It may even be more than that since I think maybe I was probably lying to myself quite a bit about my "start weight" back in end of August/beginning of September. From what I can find on my other regular blog I was saying I was 207lbs.. I'm pretty sure I was probably closer to 210 or 212.. also I think my scale was probably totally off and now I have a scale that actually WORKS so maybe it's been more like a 12 pound weight loss. Honestly, if I can just get UNDER 200lbs I will be ECSTATIC.

...how sad it that? lol

So my truthiest truthiness on my weight - I seriously for real am right at 200lbs right now. Now I can finally gauge accurately my progress over the next couple months. Back to the size-14-by-April thing... if I can lose 15 more pounds in the next 5 months (which is less than a pound a week) then I figure I'll be able to fit my 14's again. That's a truly exciting prospect. But for now I'm just gonna be ridiculously happy about fitting into my 16's again. :)

Inspiration

It definitely helps to motivate to workout when your mom calls and asks you to walk with her after work. Woo! Although I'm really wishing I had taken my "floating holiday" today for Veteran's Day and then could've walked while the sun is still up... live and learn.

Stats for 11/10:

• total calories: 1270 - yup you read that right. That's even WITH eating lunch out and eating every couple hours. I'm finally figuring out this whole low-calorie snacking thing.. ie: fruit and/or popcorn. Normally I would be concerned that this calories intake was too low, but considering I haven't exercised all week it's probably a good thing.
• no workout
• no cigarettes... what? I only just realized that as I typed. GO ME!
• 11:30pm bedtime
• $3 spent ($22 left)

I found out basically NOTHING in making gym phone calls.. everywhere wants you to "drop by". It's like, NO! JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH MONEY YOU WANT TO STEAL FROM ME, DAMNIT! 

It just really can't be that hard.

Now I'm feeling like maybe I should just hold off on doing all that right now anyway since we leave for Arkansas in a week and will be gone 10 days. Is that bargaining? Although I AM going to see if my Uncle Marvin can hook me up with a guest pass for his gym while we're down there... since I really won't be doing a whole lot during the day while we're there and there's no reason I can't get my butt moving for an hour or less during that time. Or at least maybe Maury and I can walk-it-up once she gets down there. 

Oh, man.. I am SO EXCITING to get down there and see everybody!!!

just a bunch of frick-a-frack..

two days worth of stats... of course... because I've become the ultimate slacker. :-\

11/8:

• total calories: 1664
• no workout - because I'm a lazy fuck
• probably about 6 cigarettes having coffee with my girl Karen that I hadn't seen in MONTHS. Yep, so much for quitting smoking this week. :-\
• 12:30am bedtime - Walking Dead comics are KILLING MY BEDTIME SCHEDULE
• $5 on lunch AND starbucks ($35 for the week)

11/9:

• total calories: 1420 - this is including having 3 beers last night. I pretty much lived off of salad yesterday. 
• no workout - AGAIN. UGH.
• again, cigarettes. Not even sure how many 6 or 7? I'm such a brilliant quitter.
• 1am bedtime.. bar+walking dead comics = NO SLEEP
• $10 on beers ($25 for the week)

I'm not doing so great this week. Over the last 3 weeks I've slowly been declining on my motivation. Don't really know what the deal is. However, I DID actually make phone calls to a couple gyms.. so that's something. And I've done an excellent job keeping my calories in check... unfortunately I'm 99% sure I'm one of those people that just can't lose weight on calorie cutting alone. 

Right quick!

Body stats beginning of Week 5:
Weight: 200lbs - no change since last week
Waist measurement: 34.5 inches - half inch loss!

I feel like I haven't accomplished "enough" for entering my 5th week of this. Granted, I've been slacking these last couple weeks. And I feel like a broken record at this point.. but gym. I need to GYM!!! I swear, I swear, I will call some places this week. And tomorrow night my plan is to go by the rec center where my buddy works and can hopefully getting me in for cheap to do my workout there for the night. *crosses fingers*

Stats for 11/7:

• total calories: 1588 - not too bad.
• no workout
• 3 cigarettes - theoretically my last cigarettes
• 12:30am bedtime - The Walking Dead comics are SO ADDICTING!!!!
• $6 spent on Starbucks for breakfast (and I wonder why I didn't lose any weight this week. -.-)

So I pretty much only spent about $25 this week. Go me! And spent none of my month fund so I'm pretty sure I've got all $100 of that intact... if I'm remembering correctly.

Overview for week 5:
- 2000 calories or less a day
- gym-it-up/walk/workout dvd 5 days a week
- avoid smoking
- avoid beer
- get to bed by or before 11:30pm on weeknights
- focus on clean eating
- restart sugar detox

On giving myself the weekend...

Friday and Saturday's stats...

11/5:

• total calories: 2041 - definitely took it over my limit by drinking beers Friday night. BUT the following stat kind of cancels that out...
• calories burned: 550 - yay for super long quick-paced walks!
• 10 cigarettes
• 2am bedtime - thanks, not to being out drinking oddly enough, but to The Walking Dead comics!!
• $10 spent on beers

11/6:

• total calories: 1675 - including the wine I drank. Wine is DEFINITELY a better option as far as caloric intake... and drunkeness factor as well lol. Definitely cutting back on the beer for the next few weeks.
• no workout
• 8 cigarettes
• 2am bedtime - but not really because Daylight Savings ended, so really it was only 1am.. heh. 
• $0 spent

So I gave myself the weekend to smoke as much as I wanted and I did pretty well... except when I was drinking. And it's not even one or two drinks... it's when I reach that "tipsy" point. That's the kicker. So I'm realizing I gotta cut back on the alcohol in order to cut out the smoking. I'm okay with this. Because waking up NOT hungover on Saturday mornings it pretty bad-ass. Not gonna lie.

I should have taken some time to go check out gyms this weekend, but I napped a lot instead. The winter coming in is KILLING me and now with DST ended, and it's getting dark at 4:30 or 5, it's going to be harder and harder to motivate. I know myself. I know this to be true. I think I had a little bit of that "Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder".. yes, that's right, I'm SAD. heh. Also, my husband is telling me he doesn't think we can afford a gym membership for me... but I may just get one anyway since I think I can cut back on other things (y'know, like SMOKING) to come up with the $30 or $40 a month.

For this week I'd like to try to keep up with my walks as much as possible before the frigid temperatures set in, and also throw in some power yoga a few times a week which will hopefully help with the S.A.D. and also the smoking/drinking.

Weight/waist measurements tomorrow! 

Slowly getting back on track..

Here's the skinny (body stats) for Week 4:

• 200lbs
• 35inches at natural waist (the whole "measure at the belly button thing didn't seem to work for me - like I couldn't figure out how to measure EXACTLY the same spot each week)

Stats for 11/3:

• total calories: 1328 - just a quick interjection to say that I've done REALLY well on my calories lately. I rarely cross the 1800 barrier anymore and have just naturally become more conscious of what I can and can't afford to put in my mouth. I did great avoiding processed sugars until Halloween weekend - but I'm not going to beat myself up over that. It's all about moving forward and getting back on track.
• calories burned: 370 - walked last night, which is actually the first time I've exercised since LAST Wednesday... my mantra this week has been "Keep your calories in check" -- as long as I'm not binging missing a couple days of exercise is okay, and my conscience needs to lay off the guilt-trips. 
• *cringes* 6 cigarettes. Yes. Yes, I know. I wrote a BIG HUGE LONG blog post yesterday about quitting the smoking... but if you'll also remember, I was quite honest in that I was FREAKING out about it. Well, here's the thing: I realized perhaps trying to add another goal to my routine in the middle of the week wasn't the most brilliant idea I've ever had. So next week, starting Monday, I add the "Avoid Smoking" goal for myself. Perhaps the "Avoid Alcohol" will need to be added as well.
• 12am bedtime - I seriously want to work on this bedtime thing. 6-7 hours a night just isn't cutting it for me. I need that full 8 hours and I feel SO MUCH better and am more likely to get my workouts in when I feel well-rested. 
• $8 spent so far for the week ($32 left/$100 for the month of November)

I've really, really, been thinking about this gym thing the last week or so -- I keep saying I'm going to go check out some places and get a membership but I just haven't had the chance yet. It's incredibly frustrating. Today, here in Virginia, it is supa cold and raining and dark and just all around disgusting.. today would be the perfect day to grab my iPod and hit the gym for some elliptical trainer action and perhaps even some weights. But, alas, I have no membership. Maybe today is the day I go to check out some gyms and get it done. My ideal goal is to replace the smoking with the exercise - because honestly the more I exercise the less I WANT to smoke. It all sounds good to me!

No Smoking - Day 1

I know I've been terrible about posting the last 5 days or so and I know you're owed stat updates and all that diet/exercise stuff... but I just got sat down at work with my MIL (who I happen to also work for) and with tears in her eyes told me how disappointed she was that I'm a smoker... Mike got the talk too.. but it really hurt my feelings. And I pulled that whole smoker thing of making excuses.. and honestly I really am just a social smoker. It's not even something I think about on a normal day. But it doesn't matter because I quit for almost 3 month back in February... and then I started back with smoking like maybe 3 or 4 cigarettes a week... and then a pack a week... and I've noticed lately instead of going my normal Mon. - Thurs. without a single cigarettes, I've been buying packs every 3 days or so and smoking at home, not just at the bars, and not just with an alcoholic beverage in hand.

I've been bargaining with myself.

Now, I've talked plenty about bargaining with myself over food and exercise, but I'm realizing quitting smoking is probably the most important thing I can do for myself. It's funny how I can vote on Maury's poll with my vote being "not smoking" as the most important thing for her... and yet I didn't realize until just now that it's incredibly important for me too. And I'm doing a great disservice to myself to say, "It's okay to go through a whole pack Friday/Saturday nights and the occasional Wednesday or Thursday night since I don't smoke at all or hardly at all the rest of the week."

It's not okay.

If I'm gonna do this I need to just DO IT and quit making excuses and quit cutting deals with myself. I also know it's time because as I write this I'm TOTALLY FREAKING OUT about not being able to go out tonight or tomorrow, or even just chill at home tonight, without smoking if I feel like it. That definitely is not a "social smoker" mentality, that a smoker-smoker mentality lol.

I know I'm going to have breaking points. I know there are going to be days where I'm gonna break down and smoke. And I know that I need to take all that in stride and just start over the next day... but I also know that I can't be "restarting" every two days. Or three days. Or week. I've gotta commit. I've done it before and there's no reason I can't do it again.

On another quick note:
My brand new scale that told me I was at 206lbs last week informed me yesterday morning (even WITH JEANS ON) that I am now *drum roll please* 200lbs. EXACTLY!!! I'm very excited. I even was able to wear one of my old belts this morning... woo!!