set backs

this week has been just one set back after another. It started Thursday. I was doing a bit of exercise... AKA demolition on a old house we have in our back yard that we are planning on turning into a guest house/workshop. Stupid me stepped on a nail and having only my son with me at the time, it ended up being quite the ordeal. That stopped all work for that evening and Friday morning i had to go in and get a tetnus shot... NOT FUN!. Friday my foot was sore enough that i couldn't walk on it much. Saturday it was feeling MUCH MUCH MUCH better so we took the family and headed to a national park (did you know that father's day weekend was free enterence into all national parks? cool huh!) and did a nice hike with the family. Nothing too strenious since we had the 3 year old in tow. On our way home i started feeling the effects of the tetnus shot and since then, i've been under the weather with flu like symptoms from the shot and a raging sinus headaches. Today, i'm starting to feel like i may be coming out of the flu like symptoms. My arm still hurts like crazy but its slowly getting better and i can almost raise it over my head again. I still have the raging sinus headache though.

Sadly to say, i gained 1.8lbs sometime between wednesday and thursday (Team Yellow weigh in and my Weight Watchers weigh in)... i've steadly gained weight since then (nearly 5lbs)but am back down to my thursday weight. This is my first time ever gaining weight since being on WW, almost 6 months ago.

I'm really trying to mind my P's & Q's today and not show a gain from last week to this week tomarrow. I'm feeling like i've let you girls down, which i know isn't necessarly the case, but it's been a rough week.

I hope you have all had a good week under your belt.

weigh in day ladies!

today is week one weigh-in! How'd we do?

i am down 1.2 lbs. I'm surprised i lost... it's been one of those food weeks. So... how'd you do? I'm excited to hear!

struggling today...

It is only 9:30am and i'm already craving chinese. Yesterday wasn't the best eating day either. For breakfast i had a apple. Then we headed to town and we decided we had to try the new italian chicken sandwich from Subway. A foot long on wheat (light mayo, provolone cheese and lots of veggies, but also had their olive oil vinigrette) lasted me for lunch and dinner. But i also had a peice of my daughters subway pizza and a treat (3 points). I need to find out calories/fat/fiber so i can be accountable on WW for it. I'm scared to find out.

Today for breakfast i had a apple and am working on a 16oz cherry limeaide crystal light. I woke up super starving and i'm still hungry. The fact that i didn't sleep much last night due to my daughter having a fever that wouldn't break has started the day out on a terrible note. It's going to be a struggle to make it through the day focused. Not to mention the big family get-together tonight.

I'm going to try to plant more in my garden today and get those flowers we bought a few days ago into the ground. Hopefully spending a bit more time outside will do me some good.

I need some FOCUS mojo. 3 more days till my hubby and oldest son gets home. Life is bound to get more "daily" then.

finding the strengh...

...as i was walking through Wal-Mart today, i literally bumped into a stand of Alli. Which, in a way, was a bit funny because I've been wanting to speed up this weight loss thing a lot lately. Somehow I resisted throwing that box into my cart and running to the nearest checkout (part of it may have been the absolute fear of anal leakage EAK!). Instead, I proceeded to pick up the packages that fell, put them back up on the display and promptly turned and walked the opposite direction as fast as i could only to find myself walking through the diet supplements isle. It's tempting... oh so tempting. A part of me almost convinced myself that it was destiny. I have been proud of myself so far for being able to walk away from all these fancy shmancy pills and drinks and whatevers. I'm not sure i could ever feel proud saying the words out loud that i lost all my weight "by myself" with no supplement help at all. Which, by the way, I am determined to be able to say by the time this year is over with. It almost kinda feels like I'm cheating if i dare even thing of taking something for a boost.

Don't get me wrong, i have no problem with anyone who does. Sometimes i think that maybe all i need is that little extra boost to set me straight... but frankly, i think I'm just chicken LOL and truthfully, that may be all thats stopping me right now. I have a very close friend who is VERY obese (i believe he told me his starting weight was 460 lbs) who is taking daily HCG shots and a VERY restricted calorie diet (500 calories... can you believe it? i think I'd die the first day). He has been on this diet for a week today and has lost 16 pounds. I don't believe that it's the healthiest way of going about losing weight but i can't help feel a tiny bit (or a HUGE bit) of a twinge of jealousy thinking that in the last week, he's lost the same amount of weight i want to lose that will probably take me another 4-6 months or more to lose. And, i can't help feeling so incredibly happy for him and a huge part of me wants to go swipe some of that stuff for myself.

I suppose there is no meaning to this post other than, I'm frustrated. I know for me to be successful, i need to take my time and work at it right. But i also think, it's so not fair to have those silly displays in the middle of store isles... just so not fair ;-)

My "official" weigh in

Today is my "official" day for weight in's. I joined Weight Watchers Online in March (i think) to help boost my weight loss, because apparently i wasn't doing something right and wasn't loosing any weight on my own.

I weighed in this morning about 30 minutes to a hour after i woke up... and i weighed in stark naked. Officially, i am now 148.4 pounds (and down to 20 points a day). I'm pumped! 13 more pounds to go till I'll be at my happy weight! (Although, I remember when i got pregnant with my second child... i had hit the 150 mark and was actually excited to be pregnant because that meant that i would be skinny again soon. Sadly, pregnancy is my best diet although I don't advise loosing weight like that.)

After getting some getting some surprise news this morning, i feel even more empowered to get these last pounds off (lets just say i want to look my best next month... lots going on and i want to look good again, if for nothing else other than to say "I'm hot" and know that i am).

So in a frenzy to know something that i don't already know about weight loss, i googled the web on how to lose weight quickly. You know what i came up with? Exactly the same stuff WW stands behind:

*drink lots of water
*eat regularly
*eat lots of fiber
*consume more good fats
*get plenty of quality protein
*carbs can help you lose weight
*DON'T skip breakfast
*move more

I'm starting to learn the ropes of this weight loss thing and knowing what works for me and what doesn't. I need to eat breakfast, even if it's just a little something. If i don't, then i feel off the rest of the day. I try to put off lunch as late as possible without it going too far into the day, in hopes of curbing the late afternoon munchies, which is my biggest problem time of the day. Dinner isn't a big deal for me. By the time dinner roles around, I'd rather not eat. My biggest problem is that i LOVE dinner. It tends to contain the foods i love the most (and i absolutely love the chicken trick... i do that a lot to and the kids and hubby love it that way the best too) and the highest calorie/fat meal of my day. Not a good combo so late at night. It's hard trying to keep my way of life going the way i need it to and have a family who "needs" all the extra calories they can get.

Things i really need to do:
*drink much more water. I used to be pretty good at this... now not so much
*exercise more. Use the elliptical. Walk more. Just get out and play with my kids instead of watching them from a chair while reading.

Jolynn - a little background

WOW! now that is a hard post to follow!

Hi. I'm Jolynn
I am 34 years old
My starting weight: 169 (January 1st 2009)
My goal weight: 130
My weight right now: 148.6

A little background on me:

I've never had problems with weight growing up. If anything i was too underweight. I was the "tiny" girl growing up. I got married at the end of 1994 weight in at 117. Nine months after being married i found out i was pregnant but was told that i had an ectopic pregnancy and went thorough surgery to fix it and ended up with major complications. From there on out, it seemed like it was the turning point for me. I was either having another surgery or pregnant every three years. After 3 surgeries (that have left me with a zipper belly = no bikinis EVER for me) and three children my body has been through the wringer. However, it wasn't until my last child that things really started to bug me about my weight. I've slowly gone up from 117 pounds (even during my pregnancy days - lets just say pregnancy wasn't good to me at all) to 169 pounds. I know that may not seem too heavy for a lot of people but for me, it's been devastating.

I have two major turning point for me. 1st was the fact that i was no longer fitting into my biggest pair of jeans. I was devastated and hated the fact that i was that large. 2nd, I look at my mom, and although i love her dearly, i just didn't want to end up looking like her and sadly, I'm very much well on my way.

Now I'm on my journey to get back to myself. I don't want people looking at me and saying... "well, she looks just like her mom" or "you are just so cute the way you are". I know i have much more to offer than excuses.

So, now I've been working at this for 5 months and have been loosing, on a average, 4 pounds a month. I weighed in this morning at 148.6 pounds. My goal weight is 130. Still a far cry from the 117 pounds that i used to be. But I'm OK with that. In the last 14 years I've decided that i know the range where i feel best.

The best part about losing 20 pounds right now is the size 12 (stretchy) pants i can fit into now that i saved when i got pregnant with my 2nd child. That is especially a great feeling knowing that when i started out in January, i was in my big size 18 pants. Yesterday, i tossed out those pants. I will never go back.