I only got about four days into the fitness challenge before I realized that it wasn't going to work. I'm not organized enough to keep up with everything that it wanted me to keep up with. So ... I dropped that. And then I gained like four pounds. I haven't weighed myself in a couple of weeks, because I was depressed about those four pounds! Haha!

I am LITERALLY dripping sweat right now, and in places I didn't even know it was possible to sweat from. Behind my ears, for one. Anyways - I was doing some online looking and found the formula for calculating your own Weight Watchers points. Apparently they redid the formula so you don't get extra points for working out... you get a set amount of points each day. If I count myself as sedentary (which I, sadly, mostly am, it seems), and at my current weight of 211 pounds, I get 28 points each day, with 35 points each week to use at my discretion.

So I'm going to do that. I'm on day four of doing it so far, and I like it. I started a food journal in MS Excel and have been holding myself accountable down to the last cracker, or sip of lemonade. This encourages me to eat even more fiber, since the higher the fiber content, the lower the points in the item. I think I'm going to stock up on fiber bars. I already only eat Fiber One cereal, but it never hurts to add in more. ;)

For the last three days, I've been working out VIGOROUSLY. I was inspired by watching The Biggest Loser, for the first time, a few weeks ago. The people on that show are bigger than me, less in shape than me, and yet they can manage to work out until their shirts are soaked in sweat. I may not have Bob or Jillian here, screaming in my ear to keep going, but damn it, I'm not going to be shown up by a 500 pound man.

The first day of working out, I just did normal elliptical, as hard as I could, holding it at about 45 RPM, which is pretty good for me. Yesterday, I bumped up the resistance to the first level and held it at 45 RPM again, which definitely prompted me to sweat like a pig. And then today... I did about fifteen minutes with the ramp on 1 AND the resistance up and I held it between 48 and 51 RPM. My legs were burning about two minutes in, and I was sweating by three. My husband popped in for a second to tell me he was leaving to get a haircut when I was about twenty minutes in, and he opted out of kissing me, because I was so sweaty. :)

I never knew that sweating and having your legs feel like noodles could feel so GOOD!

I'm going to start weighing myself again on Monday. I REALLY hope I'm back out of the 210-s.

Time to go wash the sweat away. :)

So I just realized that I haven't posted on here in two weeks or so (who would notice?) and thought I'd do a quick update.

About two weeks ago, I came across a "Thirty Day Fitness Challenge" on about.com. I read through it and was intrigued, so I signed up for the daily e-mail. And then I never started it. But its been arriving in my inbox daily, reminding me that it was an interesting thought. And this morning, I decided I'd give it a try.

The low-down of how it works:
A challenge arrives in your e-mail daily. The challenges include everything from eating something new (and healthy) to trying out yoga. Each day includes two or three challenges: a fitness challenge, a flexibility challenge and a food challenge, sometimes a mental challenge (like meditating). It asks that you put away the scale and stop worrying about how much you weigh, so I am going to do that. I will tell you that when I weighed myself yesterday (forgot to Monday and Tuesday...) I was at 207.8lbs. Who knows where I will be in thirty days? :)

It also asks that you keep a detailed food journal, because apparently these are good habits to have. So I'm going to try that, too, even though I've always failed at them in the past. Maybe this time will be different.

Anyways - I probably won't be posting on here for a while. Maybe once or twice in the next thirty days, unless I completely fall off the bandwagon, which I don't intend to do!!!

Monday morning weigh-in: 207.4lbs

That's down another pound from last week! Yay!

We finally bought another water filter (one of the pitcher kinds...) and I wasn't sure that it was going to help. But it actually turns our nasty, hard, metal-tasting water into something that I crave; cold, clear, crystal goodness. Its fantastic. So I've been drinking anywhere from 48 to 64 oz of water a day for the past four or five days. Its fantastic, and I think its helped. I pee a LOT, though!

My husband is ready to start trying to get pregnant again, so I'm easing myself into eating and just generally treating my body like I'm already pregnant. That is - no alcohol (I've had only the occasional beer since The Incident in January), plenty of water, daily half hour on the elliptical, at least eight hours of sleep every night.

I'm working on making better snack choices, too. No sugar added applesauce instead of a large bowl of ice cream... yogurt in stead of a candy bar, etc. My sweet tooth is pretty well satisfied by most of this, some of the time, but I still get that CRAVING for chocolate about once a day. *eye roll* I'm scared to go buy a bag of individually wrapped Hershey pieces or anything, because I know I have a hard time resisting it and I'd end up eating the whole bag. Its really better to force myself to go without.

I did some sit ups the other day... I'm either not doing them right, or I'm not doing enough of them... I only get a little bit sore the next day from it. I highly doubt there's a load of muscle hidden underneath my flabby gut. So today I'm going to increase the number of them I do and work harder on doing them correctly. I think I might be using my legs more than my stomach to pull myself up.

I also attempted to do some push ups... but my arms can barely hold me up. I can do a few of them on my knees... so I guess that's where I'll have to start with those.

And then there's the housework. I've done an INCREDIBLE amount of "spring cleaning" in the past two weeks. I've vacuumed, swept, mopped, hauled out like ten boxes full of stuff out to the shed, completely reorganized my son's bedroom, set up a fish tank ('cause I really needed another one... lol)... and in the course of the next week, I'm hoping to get some walls washed, and our spare bedroom cleared out. There's a ton of outside work that needs done, too... but its going to have to wait until its less windy out. Darn Wyoming weather.

Monday morning weigh-in: 208.4lbs

That's down a pound from last week, but I'm not sure if its true or not. I ate a LOT of fast food, drank hardly any water (I had a headache for two days from what I'm pretty sure was dehydration) and only worked out once.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why I haven't bulged back up to 215. I mean, I'm glad I haven't, but... really. Maybe the infrequent workouts are keeping me stable. Now if I can just kick them back up to like four or five times a week, we'll be good. I also really need to figure out a strength training plan...

Sometimes during the week, the scale goes as low as 207.4... but I just don't stay that low. I'm so ready to be under two hundred pounds again...

My husband is ready to start trying for a second baby. I'm about three pounds away from where I was when I found out I was pregnant the first time, so we're going to start trying. But, due to his obesity, I imagine its going to take a few months (took nine months the first time...), so I'm going to keep right on working on losing weight, but I've gotta be sure to be super healthy about it.

I've discovered recently that I stress out incredibly easily. I seriously stress out about EVERYTHING. And then I don't know how to handle it, so I start eating. Which is why I've had such a rough time getting anywhere with this losing weight thing; its stressing me out so I'm eating it up. I've been trying to not eat when I'm stressed, but that's proving to be difficult, so I'm also working on eating things that are better for me when I'm emotionally eating. I guess we'll see how that's working next week.

On a brighter note: I've gotten up before 8am three days this week. In fact, I've been getting up at more like 6:30am, which is nice. I get to work out and shower before my little man is even awake, so then I can clean house while he's napping, instead of trying to shower. I'm not even doing this for my physical health. I'm doing it because it stresses me out less. You should SEE how much of my house I've cleaned up in the past three days. When I walk out of my bedroom in the morning, I don't feel claustrophobic, which is nice. There's still a long way to go before the house is really 'clean', but I'm getting there. :) One nap at a time.

Monday morning weigh-in: 209.4lbs

I had a long weekend out of town with my ever-annoying mother in law. I ate... a LOT. Ugh. Time to work it off.

I have been doing pretty good with the working out thing, though, even if it isn't showing. I've been doing half hour a day at least four days a week. Now I just need to get back into drinking water (we got a new faucet, so we had to get rid of our water filter, so now our water is *disgusting*... I'm looking around for a better water filter that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.)... and maybe go pick up some free weights so I can start doing some strength training.

Monday morning weigh-in: 208.8lbs

That's up by .6lbs from last week, and now I'm officially irritated. When I got on the scale yesterday, I was at 207.2. Evidently... my body thinks its funny to weigh more on Mondays.

I'm SO TEMPTED to give up, but I know that giving up is definitely not going to help me get healthy, or lose weight, or even feel better about myself. So I'll keep plugging onward... and maybe I'll lose weight again soon. Ugh.

I've been trying to go to bed earlier so that I can get up earlier and work out before the baby wakes up. Well, I've been in bed between 9:30 and 10:00 almost every night for the past week... and the only time I've managed to get up before the baby was yesterday, and that was only because I was going out of town for the day and needed to shower before noon. So instead of going to bed earlier and waking up when I'm not tired... I'm going to bed earlier and still getting up at like 8, and therefore getting WAY too much sleep, which makes me groggy and tired the whole day. Its this awful cycle and I absolutely can't break it. I love sleeping too much.

And it seems like if I do manage to get up while my baby's still asleep... I make just enough noise and then he's awake and once he's awake he starts wailing. And lately he's hardly been taking long enough naps for me to do anything but shower.

My husband is doing nothing to help me out, and I'm frankly, fed up.

Not that anybody reads this or gives a shit. I should probably just stop the online journal thing. Its holding me too accountable and I feel like a failure all over again every single week when I don't lose any weight.

Monday morning weigh-in: 208.2lbs

That's only .2lbs down from last week.

I'm frustrated for a few reasons. I worked out almost every day this week, for twenty minutes or longer. I've been trying to drink enough water...and I've been trying not to overeat.

And a couple days ago, I stepped on the scale and it said 207.4. So I really figured that I'd be under 208 today. But I suppose down by .2 is better than up by .2... even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted to see. I was looking forward to weighing in all weekend, because I thought it would be good news.

I guess I'll just have to try harder this week. Exercise, drink enough water... and don't overeat.

Maybe I'll have better news next week.

Monday morning weight-in: 208.4lbs

That's down by 1.4lbs from last week! I guess the workouts helped out. ;)

I did four days on the elliptical this week: two days of twenty two minutes, one day of half hour, and one day of fifteen minutes (I was short on time, but figured fifteen was better than nothing). And then yesterday, I did between thirty minutes and forty five minutes worth of raking in the backyard.

I did pretty good with the no pop - though I did drink a little on Tuesday. It was root beer, and it is all I can do to say no to root beer. Its my very favorite. >_<

I have this one pair of jeans that I wear all the time, mostly because they're comfortable and fit pretty nicely. But in the last couple of weeks, they've been feeling WAY too big. Its kind of exciting, but also a little irritating because I love those jeans! LOL :) And also because all of my jeans that are a size smaller don't quite fit right just yet, so they aren't very comfortable ... at all. Maybe in a couple more weeks, that'll change.

Finding enough energy to face day after day after day of needy husband, demanding baby and messy house is a whole other story. There is absolutely no sleeping in past 8:30, and usually its not even that late. I try to be in bed by 10, but at night is the only time I really get to myself: baby's in bed, husband's in bed... I'm hoping that as I get into an exercise routine, that my energy levels will start to rise.

For the past two days, I've been on the elliptical for twenty two minutes per day. I stopped yesterday at twenty two minutes because I just got exhausted and thirsty, and its too hard for me to drink and keep moving at the same time. So I jumped off. Today... I was pushing along at a jogging pace, so I barely made it to twenty two minutes, but I refused to do less than yesterday. Eventually... I'll make it up to thirty... then forty five... Y'know how it goes.

Anyways. I just wanted to say - I've been less stressed today, and I think its because of the workouts yesterday and today. I put the baby down for a nap, I make sure I have workout clothes on, I turn on my iPod, and its all about me, the music, and the Tetris game. But its not like moving little shapes around really requires very much concentration, so I get the chance to think about things; things that I usually avoid thinking about because they either stress me out or make me sad. If I get stressed out while I'm jogging, I just jog harder. It doesn't translate into me sitting on my ass and crying... it turns useful. This could be the therapy that I need. And hopefully it'll eventually lead to a boosted self-image, too. Maybe next week, I'll have lost two pounds. :)