Before Pic

****Shudder***

Well thats me up there in the black sweater, in all my lumpy bumpy glory! And my mom is the one in the sweet navy track suit.

We have not been on track the last couple of weeks so although these pictures were just taken on Hallloween and Thanksgiving respectively, I think they safely qualify as "before's". Anywhoo, I've gotten a couple workouts in and the weather is shaping up for some nice walks this week so hopefully the next updated picture will be minus a lump. And a chin. And some jiggle.

Not such a good thing...

OK if you make egg muffins, do NOT freeze them! They are very crumbly and rubbery after being reheated in the microwave. Gross!! Time will tell if its OK to refrigerate them and reheat the next day but I highly DO NOT recommend freezing.

We are halfway through the second week of phase 1 and the light is on at the end of the tunnel! This upcoming weekend will be a challenge as I will be in Portland visiting my Russian in-laws who are always serving potato dishes and lots of baked goods, so I might need to stay on Phase 1 for the next week to undo whatever damage all that does.

In non-diet related news, Little Peanut has gone pee pee on the potty 4 times today!!! This is really going to open up a whole new world for us, yay!

Oh, weekend!

Well this weekend was a hodgepodge of stuff. As always, very busy and it disappears before you know it!

I think we both were doing pretty great with staying on plan, however on Saturday we had a birthday party to attend where we had spaghetti for dinner and pie for dessert. Overall, I didn't feel like that was too horrible of a setback for us and of course it would have just been really rude of us to say we aren't eating the dinner that hosts are serving so what can you do. Oh well. It was a nice party and we didn't go too crazy with the meals so I'm actually chalking it up to a success :)

I weighed myself today just out of curiousity (I really want to just do it once a week) and am down 3 lbs since Thursday so I'm pretty happy with things. There is more rain predicted for tomorrow but after that we should be able to get some good walks in at the lake this week so hooray!

I made some egg muffins over the weekend that were a total hit with our husbands and have some in the freezer for breakfasts this upcoming week. I'm going to try to plan things out as much as possible for the week ahead because it turns out that I hate making complicated dinners every night, who would have guessed? The slow cooker is my friend!

Ouch!

Well yesterday I fell of the wagon, HARD, and landed face first in my daughter's Halloween candy. Oh dear. I was able to pick myself up and get back on plan, however, and today has been a great day.

Little Peanut and I started our day at Green Lake (the lake in the picture on my header) and later while she napped I tried the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Boot Camp workout (it is free on-demand right now). The workout was not what I was expecting, the moves can be intense but there is a 20 second break after each exercise circuit is completed. For me, I felt a little bit like I was wasting my time. I really prefer to just power through if I'm already working out. Long pauses give me too much time to think about stopping, lol! Overall I think its a nice workout for beginners or on days when you just feel like a slower paced workout.

In other news, I weighed myself for the first time in months today. My goodness. It was a number I've seen a couple times before, and both of those times were horrible. I'm hopeful that number will disappear in the next couple of days and I am committed to never allowing that number to show up on my scale again. Lots of water for me today!!

So That....

I don't remember where I heard this from (if it was you, please let me know so that I can give you credit!) but someone had some great advice on spelling out our goals.

The idea is to state your goal and then continue to put "so that..." at the end and to continue to do that until you get down to the real nitty gritty.

Here is my example:

I want to be a fit size 8 by my 30th birthday (so that...)

I will feel great about myself (so that...)

I will have the confidence to go out and do more things (so that...)

my daughter can have a better role model (so that...)

my daughter will have a more positive childhood with lots of adventures and grow up to be a confident adult.

Ta da! And I really believe that the more we spell out our goals, the more likely we are to force ourselves to achieve them.

In other news, I receive a LOT of inspiration from the contestants on Biggest Loser (not all of them of course, we all know Tracey is completely nuts!!) and have been inspired by Abby (the poor woman who lost her entire family to a car accident). Something that she said really clicked for me, and that was that her extra weight was keeping her from being a participant in life and losing the weight has helped her to live in the moment and participate in life again. I feel like if someone has gone through what Abby has, and is now able to participate in life again, that just gives so much hope to all of us! I don't have terrible tragedies in my life (thank goodness) but really feel like my self-image and weight is keeping me from participating in life and living in the moment and my goal is to overcome that.

What a Weekend!

Daylight savings and Halloween all in one weekend?! I'm happy to say that I only moderately indulged in sweets last night (at least it was moderate compared to last year's Halloween indulgences)! And now thanks to Daylight Savings I find myslef up and ready to go at 7:30AM, works for me!

Today is the official start day for Mama Spanx and I to take on phase 1 of the South Beach Diet. We are excited and at least somewhat prepared after a lengthy grocery trip yesterday. We will be starting our day with a SBD approved breakfast and then a 3 mile walk around Greenlake (a popular lake here in north Seattle).

Thanks to the help of this awesome blog and in particular this post we have some great snacks planned and are excited to be kicking things off today. We had great progress with this plan the last time we were on it, but we were combining SBD with The Naturopathic Diet and really confusing ourselves. We could hear the wagon wheels whooshing past us as we fell of it last Easter, never to hitch a ride again. Until today. Wish us luck!

p.s. with this being the first day of the plan I feel like this would be the appropriate day to start posting pictures. Maybe I should have done this on Halloween? They will be frightening!