Gaima Yoga

I've been dying to get yoga into my life. I love stretching! I always have. I guess the love of it comes from religiously stretching as a dancer, gymnast, and cheerleader for so many years. The best I had been able to muster were some poses here and there that I knew by heart. So, I figured I'd start out easy with a Yoga DVD and take it from there.
I picked up a Gaima Yoga DVD with 5 different 20 minute routines. I chose this DVD because I know I have seen this yoga dude (Rodney Yee) that was on the cover before; he looks so legit.


I did it last night before bed and it felt great. Now, I realize it says A.M yoga, but I'm a bit of a rebel. It relaxed me and stretched my tight legs. I am really paying for the increased running this week, but I'll just combat the tendon tightness with yoga. In fact, I think I'll go do some right now ;-)

Creepers

I don't know about other weight loss bloggers, but I use this blog as outlet, away from people who know, where I can be brutally honest. If I wanted family and friends to know such things about myself, I would tell them (or I would tell them that I have a blog).

What is your take on your blog? Have family or friends inadvertently found your blog? If so, how did it make you feel?

It's Clicking

Slowly but surely everything I know about weight loss and that my faithful commenters keep reminding me of is "clicking". I tracked everything I ate yesterday instead of adding up the points in my head from my best guesses. After lunch, I evaluated how many points I had left for dinner, and then I cooked a dinner based on the available points.

I rinsed and repeated today, but I went a step further and instead of eating a high point breakfast like I have been for the past 2 weeks, I ate a small 3pt breakfast and a 2pt snack 2.5 hours later. I ate a bigger lunch at 9pts and have a 1pt apple lined up for my afternoon snack. Low and behold, I am feeling more full and satisfied with my food.

It's amazing how we know these things- eat more filling foods, eat more often and in smaller quantities, track your points- but we sometimes choose to forget them or think we know them so well that we need not be mindful of them or even track them. I am not special nor am such a pro at weightloss that I am above tracking my points. Last time I had become too lax, it took me 7 months to realized that I couldn't just pay for the Weight Watchers eTools and lose weight. Hmmm, go figure! I hope I am able to continue to put these into practice so I can say this time it took me only a few weeks to realize the error of my ways.

Gaining some weight and some perspective

I gained over the past two weeks: 3.6lbs.

I understand physically why the gain happened: excess calories and not enough exercise, but I really need to evaluate why mentally/emotionally. I realized two things: 1) I still have an emotional eating problem. It got me to be 227lbs. I have not cured myself of this by losing weight. 2) I have become lax in my weight loss efforts because I am kinda happy with the way I look right now. I know that's typically a good thing, but I think I have used hate of my body as motivation to lose. I also convinced myself that the 180's are where my body is happiest, i.e. it maintains at this weight very easily.

Bullshit! I call bullshit on myself. I could have deemed any weight decade to be my comfy zone, the weight range at which my body is happy. My body is not happy there- it knows it can do better. It remembers being 160lbs and it liked it. My mind is happy there- convinced it couldn't possibly fit in another workout or plan ahead more with meals.

I know I can do better and I must.

A little bit of honesty

I over-ate all weekend. I knew I was doing it, but I did it anyway. I am feeling badly about my weightloss efforts and my family right now. This destructive behavior is a direct form of self-punishment.

Friday, I ran 2.5 miles, so I was glad that I am getting back into my running, but I still wasn't proud of myself because it was only 2.5 miles. My eating was fair- cereal, rice cake with peanut butter, chips and queso dip, grilled chicken, zucchini and garlic linguine, and I finished the day off with a hot fudge sundae.

Saturday, I started my day off with 2 donuts and coffee. Lunch was some chicken and eggplant parmesan. Then, I snuck in another donut as a snack. For dinner I made fried zucchini as an appetizer and had london broil, grilled shrimp and a some fettuccine alfredo, and for dessert I had an apple cobbler flurry (apple cobbler ingredients mixed with soft vanilla ice cream).

Sunday was not nearly as destructive as Saturday but fair nonetheless- bagel with cream cheese and half an english muffin for breakfast, a few chips, a piece of a roast beef and cheese wrap, salad, cocktail shrimp, and cake at a bridal shower, then dinner was ziti and 1 meatball, dessert was some peanut butter munch candy from my Poconos trip as I tried to finish the last of my thank-you's for my engagement party.

I have no idea how many points or calories are in the food I ate, because frankly I am not tracking them right now. I have been only tracking Monday- Thursday for the past few weeks. Sometimes, I'll go back and try to track in vain what I ate over the weekend, but we all know I'm not fooling anyone. I'm not getting results because I'm not trying. It's pretty plain and simple.

Maybe writing all this will help me realize the mistakes I am making, or maybe when I weigh myself later today and see the horrific gain, I'll get a slap in the face that I very much need.

Fitness has not been my focus

Starting a new project for work is always a difficult time for me and my fitness is never the focus- where in the country will my next project be? What will I be doing? What will my day be like? Will I like the people I work with?
And then there are the health and fitness related concerns- Will there be a fridge for my snacks/lunch? Will there be healthy options available to buy in case I can't bring lunch? Will I be able to maintain my current workout routine? Will I have a few minutes during the day to track my food and check out my favorite weightloss bloggers?

The last two weeks of my life have been consumed with these thoughts as I settled into a new project. So, what's the verdict? The commute is different as it is the first time I am taking public instead of driving and it can be very interesting- there are some real characters that commute into NYC: Every morning there are the usual "Blackberry Prayers" where everyone bows their heads over their blackberries as they pound the tiny keys feverishly. Some of the people I work with are awesome and some of them I'd like to beat with a blunt object. My days are long right now: over an hour to get into the city, 10 hours at work, and 1 hour home. The food options are optimal for watching what I eat but there are also a lot of delicious temptations around. But again, fitness hasn't been my focus.

I am trying to remedy these feelings by getting myself excited again to exercise, but so far I have only been semi-successful. I thought maybe another race would get me excited again about running but I can't find any 5K's or 8K's that are coming up anytime soon so that idea is out the window. So far this week I ran on Saturday and Monday, and I hope to motivate myself to run again tonight.

My Engagement Party

After getting engaged in December, we finally had our engagement party on July 11th.

The evening was amazing but it went too fast! I feel like I don't remember much of anything, but I know I felt happy. It was surreal to have all the people in your life in one room. Joe and I looked rather "Connecticut" as my friend put it. I love the look- I really wanted to look classic, like it could have my grandparent's engagement party in the 1940's.

Me and my Joe

Sadly, I do look at some of the pictures from the event and judge my appearance. I wish my arms looked more toned and that I was about 20lbs thinner. More so though, I wish I didn't have these thoughts at all. I want to love my body more than I do already.

Me and the lovely bridesmaids: (from left) Colleen, Olivia, Me, Kristyn, Sammy, Courtney and Brittany

The handsome groomsmen: (from left) Kevin, Bryan, Joe, Austin and Justin

I don't want to look at any of my wedding pictures and judge my body the way I am right now. Admittedly, I am getting a little fed up with my lax attitude toward weightloss. I deserve better. I deserve the best. I feel content and happy in other aspects of my life and I want to feel the same way about my fitness.

Bermuda 2009 and My 24th Birthday

My fiance and I had a great time in Bermuda. It was my first big-girl vacation, as it was the first trip I had taken since graduating from college last year.

Me in St. George, Bermuda

I also celebrated my 24th birthday while we were away. My goodness, where does the time go?! Even though time is fleeting, I felt great on my birthday. I reflected on where I am now in my life in terms of weight loss and where I want to be. I realized that unless I am willing to make more concessions on my food choices, that I am destined to stay this weight because my body is comfortable here. Well, my body may be comfortable, but I am not comfortable here.

My fiance surprised me by having our cruise cabin decorated

Then he surprised me with a special blue box :-)

Happy Birthday to me: dinner at a Mediterranean place in Bermuda

More celebrating was had when I returned from Bermuda. My family had a bbq, bought me an ice cream cake, and made me play drinking games all night. Well, maybe they didn't make me ;-)

Reeses ice cream cake...drool

Losing the drinking game, pouting about it, and being punished by sitting under the table

I feel lucky and blessed to have a wonderful fiance, family, and my health. I would not be the person I am without their love and support. Their faith in me has given me the strength I needed to lose weight and become a happier person in the process.

How I Saved the Barnegat Bay with an 8K!

The Barnegat Bay from Lavalette, NJ

I saved the Barnegat Bay by running an 8K! How did this "save" the bay? I have no f*cking clue.

I woke up nice and early, dressed, ate some peanut butter on a slice of bread and drank some water. My fiance came along to take pictures and share in the moment with me. We drove over to the bay (a few minutes from my childhood home), registered, got our goodies, and hooked up a little race tracker to our shoe for time keeping.

Hooking up my race tracker

We stretched a little, but mostly hung out and soaked up the sun. There were a few real characters there though. Ya know, the ones that take themselves way too seriously even though it is apparent that they are not hardcore runners. They were doing some stretches that I have never seen before, and trust me, I have seen a lot of weird stretches before- I was a competitive cheerleader for 9 years.

Can you guess which set of legs works 10 hours a day inside and which two sets of legs belong to lifeguards?

Back to how we were "saving the bay". I really don't get it. Especially when there is a water station every mile where you grab a cup, drink/splash/pour it, and then throw it on the ground so that the garbage may blow into the bay before someone has had the chance to clean it up. This seemed illogical to me, but my cousins thought that it would be an opportune time to come up with a song to amuse themselves as I left on my headphones, running and panting, and trying to keep up with the tempo. Their little verse went like this....

Just take one cup at a time
there's no need to waste.
It's like Saving the Bay,
the month after May

It's going to happen when it's
supposed to happen.
When you find the reasons why,
one cup at a time.

Mile 2: Me, my cousin Brittany, my cousin Courtney

In all seriousness, the race was really really hard for me. The race started at 8:30am and it was so hot and sunny. I usually run after work and on shaded roads so I found the sun added a big challenge to the run. I also felt a bit faint at times during the race. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to finish, but I kept it together.

Part of the course snaked through a neighborhood filled with locals who live there year-round and who (like me) have a certain pride in being from the area. There were so many people outside their homes cheering for us. There were a few awesome houses that even put out their own water stands and sprayed hoses into the air to cool off the runners- now that is gratitude!

I had wanted to run the 8K in 50 minutes because I new I could do it (10min/mile). My pace ended up being more like 11.5min/mile or 57 minutes. I'm not going to lie, I am disappointed in that time, but I know that's not what it's about. Would I do it again? Heck yeah! I can't wait! Me and my cousins have already planned to do it again next year but with more style- I'm going to design some cute tanks for us and get them screen-printed.

The finish line

Professional photos:

Start:

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=JMcCoy1454&gallery_id=1625284&tcount=149&scount=88&sku=1

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=JMcCoy1454&gallery_id=1625284&tcount=149&scount=89&sku=1

Finish:

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=JMcCoy1454&gallery_id=1625285&image_id=464&pos=465

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=JMcCoy1454&gallery_id=1625285&tcount=521&scount=466&sku=1

//www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=JMcCoy1454&gallery_id=1625285&tcount=521&scount=467&sku=1

Blogging Back Up

My goodness, so much is going on in my life that I have found myself in a blogging back up! I have so many posts to share with everyone, but I find myself swamped with a new project which means lots of changes to my schedule and commute.

I did post a nice loss this week after my feeding frenzy on vacation (-3.0lbs). Yay me ;-)

Look for some fun upcoming posts on:
My first 8K
My 24th birthday
My Engagement Party
Reworking my exercise routine to fit my new schedule

Lots of love to everyone!

Vacation Detox

Bermuda Vacation 2009

I'm back from my week long cruise to Bermuda. It was great- there was sleep, sun, booze, snorkeling, beach and lots of food AND it was my birthday. I definitely over-indulged, but I wouldn't change a thing.

The weigh in yesterday has me at 187 or +4.6lbs. This gain can be attributed to all of the following: crossiants with butter, desserts everday at lunch and dinner, lots of alcohol, and no official exercise.

So, I am officially on diet detox- no alcohol all week, lots of water, light eating. Yesterday I had egg whites, turkey sausage and a light bagel for breakfast, a salad with balsamic vinegar and oatmeal for lunch, tilapia, couscous, and spinach for dinner and cereal as a snack. I have to make sure I look like a knock-out in my engagement party dress this Saturday!

I'm happy to be home and to get back to my routine and my exercise. I'm excited to catch up on everyone else's lives and weight loss progress. I have lots more to post so stay tuned as I catch everyone up.