Posts Tagged ‘mentioning my family’

Weight-loss stuff

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I’m going to write about exercise and weight loss and all of that in this post, which is something I try not to write about much because (1) I’m not very good at it and (2) I think it’s kind of boring.  But I want to let you all know what’s happening with this.  I’ll try not to write about it too much in the coming months.

So, in my last post, I mentioned my doctor appointment and that I’ve got a follow-up in six months to check on my weight-loss progress.  I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about how I’m going to approach this problem.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.  I have an account at MyFoodDiary.com and I know that if I actually go on there and track what I’m doing, I will lose weight.  I lost weight this way before—exercising and tracking my calories through this program.  So I’m doing that again.  Now, it only works if I actually go on there and enter in what I’m doing and I really don’t like doing that.  It’s a pain in the butt.  So my incentive to do this is that if I can log my food for 30 days in a row, I’m going to get a massage.  I love massages, but it’s been over a year since I last got one.  So!  Goal = 30 days straight of logging my food = Reward = MASSAGE.

I have a set of cards on the wall of my desk at work under my clock that count up to 30 (0-3 on one set and 0-9 on the other) and I have a tick mark on my mirror at home and I’m going to keep track.  I’ll also keep track through MFD, but I’m learning about visual management at work and the affectivity of it.

On my mirror, I’ve also written “Log your food!  Be nice to Justin – you asked for his help.”  Because he’s wonderful and gives me gentle prodding about logging and exercising and what I should and shouldn’t eat, and I get cranky at him.  So I’m going to try very hard to not do that anymore.  I appreciate his help. And I did ask him to help me.  So it’s not at all fair for me to get grumpy at him.

And that goes for the rest of you, too.  If you want to prod me about how things are going, I’m going to try very hard not to get grumpy about it.  So, please!  Go ahead and prod.  Send me emails and call and ask how I’m doing and if I’ve logged my food and if I’ve exercised today and if I’ve had enough water to drink and give me recommendations on different things I should try.  Because I have a wonderful bunch of family and friends and if I can’t accept help from all of you, then I’m in trouble.

I’m also putting in a request to get a nurse to help me.  My employer is starting up a program to help us improve our health and one of the issues that they’ll help with is being overweight.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that, exactly, but at this point, I’m willing to take any help I can get.

Okay, so that covers my calorie counting and accepting help from everybody possible.

Currently, this is my exercise program:  Monday and Wednesday night, I go to Zumba class.  Saturday morning, I go to yoga class.  That leaves Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday on my own.  What I’ve been trying to do is to practice Zumba or yoga on my own or do an exercise video.  Now that the weather is going to get nicer, I’ll be adding more outdoor activities.  Got to catch the weather between when it’s too chilly for rollerblading and too hot!  It’s not a long window.  In the summer months, I’ll get back into swimming again. 

What I’m missing is weight training.  I think it’s something I’ll want to be doing, I’m just not sure exactly when.  Yoga has a lot of muscle work in it that works with body weight, but I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be hitting the weights at the gym, too.  I’m still trying to figure that one out.

My overall goal is to lose 50 pounds in the next six months.  It’s a strong goal and I know that.  I’m going to have to work very hard to try to make that goal.  But I think that setting a goal that’s fairly difficult but not completely unattainable is a good idea.  That’s a loss of 2 pounds a week, which is healthy for my current weight and it’s going to be healthy for a long while.  Once I get past this first 50, it’s going to slow down, but for this first half, it’s attainable.

I need to lose nearly 100 pounds.  I’m sitting at 232 pounds right now.  I want to get down to 140-ish.  By my doctor appointment in six months, I want to be at 180.

And that’s that!  More information than you probably wanted to hear about my weight-loss situation.  :)

I’m on day 2 of logging my food.  Only 28 more to go before I earn my massage!

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Highlights of my weekend:

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

I didn’t go to work on Friday.  Instead, I luxuriated in bed for hours.

Someone finally came and towed away Justin’s old Infiniti, giving us $150 for it.  It would have been nice to get more money for it, but just having that parking space back is enough.

Beautifully sunny 50-something degree weather all weekend long with the windows open and fresh air blowing through the house.

Yoga class on Saturday morning.

Mail with boxes and cards and presents from my mom and brother.

Ordering my present and a few other fun things online and the excitement of anticipating all those wonderful boxes in the mail.

Going out to dinner for my birthday, even if it wasn’t exactly what Justin had planned, at a restaurant that I’ve wanted to explore for a long time, where we’re definitely going visit again.

Having such a great time singing at church that I almost sang my voice out and had to go home and sleep for an hour and a half to recover.

Watching a clever little squirrel perch on the top of the shepherd’s crook holding the bird feeder, climb halfway down, stretch across the space, push the top off the feeder, stick his whole upper body into the thing, and then go back up to the top to munch on what he had grabbed.

Watching that squirrel almost fall off his perch when a large bird shadow blocked out the sun, followed by a flailing leap into a nearby tree.

Justin fixing the laundry room light so we actually have full light in there for the first time in a year instead of this terrible flickering nonsense.

Watching a friend stand on the top of a ladder holding a broom with a dustpan duct-taped to the end trying to scrape sticky Halloween eyeball toys off their living room cathedral ceiling.

Chatting and laughing with my sister on the phone while her daughter hummed.

Curling up in bed and laughing with Justin until it hurt about funny things we saw on the internet.

And several other things, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

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Photos on a gloomy day

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

It’s a dark, windy, gloomy day outside – the perfect sort of day to sleep in, watch a movie, and do laundry.  And, hey!  Would ya look at that!  It’s exactly what I’m doing today.  (Yeah, sort of accidentally slept through church . . . .)

While I’m waiting for the next load to get out of the dryer, I thought I’d share a few photos with you.  The light is terrible today and both of the batteries for my camera appear to be nearly out of juice – so much so that they can’t power up the flash.  So they’re not the greatest quality of photographs, but I’m having fun.  And on a dark, windy, gloomy day, that’s the sort of thing I work toward.

Anyway!  We went to Savannah Mall yesterday because we refuse to find another hair dresser.  So instead of finding one closer to home, we travel the hour or so every few months to go to the lady we love, get gyros for dinner, poke around the mall a little bit, and then head home.  We picked up Justin’s sister, Jessi, and her roommate on our way past their dorm so they could hit the mall, too.  We got haircuts, picked up a few things in Target, got gyros and ice cream, and on our way out, I stopped into a cute little shop and picked up two short sticks of bamboo.

Bamboo

Bamboo

I have wanted something green and alive on my desk at work for a while.  I work in a sterile-looking building with no windows and it smells of chemicals and it’s just really a cold place to be sometimes.  I got a bag of shells to put into the vase to help stabilize them, but the vase was one I had at home in a cupboard holding a funky-looking champagne cork.

Shells keeping them in place

Shells keeping them in place

I am so excited to take this into the office with me tomorrow.  It’s going to make my cubical a much more welcoming place, I think.

It’s sort of the same way that this board makes my home office a wonderful place.

Family and friends board

Family and friends board

Working clockwise, we’ve got an invitation to my niece’s first birthday party, a birth announcement for my friend’s baby above a pictures of my brother’s children, a picture of my youngest nephew, flowers from my wedding bouquet, a picture of my brother’s family, a picture of my sister’s family, my parent’s wedding photo, and a photo collage on the back of a letter from a friend.

I love this board.

And, one last photo that I took while playing around taking pictures of the bamboo:

Books on my file cabinet

Books on my file cabinet

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Christmas trip (final post)

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

I had a really wonderful time seeing everybody while we were up north.  It wasn’t all just about the kids.  It had been a long time since I’d seen everybody and I really enjoyed getting to spend time with everybody.

We very much appreciated Tim coming to the airport to collect us.  And lending us a truck with 4-wheel drive so we could get around independently and not worry about getting stuck in the snow.  And Erica and Tim for letting us stay on the floor of their house so many nights.

I finally got to see the properties my parents are working on in Wisconsin.  I’d seen one of them, but not since they’d taken down walls and put up new walls and redone the kitchen and so many other things.  It’s looking great!  I’d never seen the house they have out in the next town over, and that one is super cute.  There’s still a lot to be done there, but it’s come a long way since the pictures I saw of it, and it’s going to be amazing once they finish it.

Justin and I also went out and looked at the property where they’re hoping to build eventually.  Dad took us out there in the dark and drove us around, and then we came back the next morning to see it in the daylight.  It’s got some amazing views!  When you’re coming from the low country, where everything is flat, standing on the top of a hill and looking out across other hills and pastures and fields to the Blue Hills is really a beautiful sight.  It’s a great piece of property.

Of course, the snow kept us from staying in Wisconsin as long as I was hoping to stay.  We went back to Minnesota with Mom and Dad to avoid getting snowed in so far from everybody else.  It was a little strange how we ended up working the holiday around the snow – I’m not used to opening everything on Christmas Eve.  But it was so much fun sitting around and watching the kids open presents, and then opening presents for all the adults with the kids helping.  I’m so glad that Luke and Krista were able to make it, with all their airport troubles.  It wouldn’t have been at all the same without them there.

I wish we could have spent more time together as a whole family, but there just wasn’t space enough for that.  So Justin and I spent time with Nathan and Amy and their kids while Mom, Dad, Luke, and Krista spent time with Erica, Tim, and their daughter.  We all had a fun time at our respective homes, sitting out the storm and playing in the snow.  And we had a good time when we all got together on Saturday for the Christmas dinner we didn’t have on Christmas.

Again, we left earlier than originally anticipated.  Justin’s allergies were getting really worked up for some reason, traveling and staying in so many different places and the cold and who really knows why.  We checked into a hotel for the night to let his sinuses clear up a little bit.  It was a nice hotel; our room was so cute!  There was only one bed, and after so much traveling with groups of people, I’m still not used to the idea that a room could have only one bed instead of two.  I think this was the second room that I’ve ever stayed in that had only one bed.  And the water pressure in the shower was so strong!  And we both enjoyed taking long showers without worrying about using up all the hot water before everybody else got a shower.

The next day, we took Tim, Erica, their munchkin, Luke, and Krista to lunch at Five Guys.  We’re enamored with this restaurant right now.  Best.  Burgers.  Ever.  So yummy.  After lunch, we had to say good bye to Luke and Krista as they went back to the airport, and Justin, Erica, and I wandered around the Container Store for a while before she went home to put the munchkin to bed and Justin and I went to the Mall of America to meet up with my friend Sara.

That was so much fun!  We wandered around the whole mall.  Justin figured it took us an average of an hour per floor for the 3 lower floors.  There really isn’t anything much on the fourth floor unless you’re going to the theatre, restaurants, or exhibits.  And since the exhibit was closed by the time we got there, we left.  But we wandered for hours along the other three floors, picking up a few things here and there (Order of the Stick board game for him, stuffed cow for me).  We went through the mirror maze and I would have gotten completely lost and panicked if they’d left me behind.  We drooled over a Bose home theatre system.  We were in that mall for a long time.

And then we went to her house, which I’d never seen, and it’s so cute!  She and her dad have done some work on it tearing up the carpet and restoring the hardwood floors.  Its’ a delightful home and it reflects her perfectly.

And then we went out for Indian food and it was delicious!

I’ve fallen into the chronological thing that I was trying to avoid by writing about the trip in separate posts.  It just gets so long when I write this way!

So that was Sunday, we left early Wednesday morning.  In between Sunday and Wednesday, we spent time at Erica’s house, went back to the Container Store so I could wander for a long time, went to see Avatar at the IMAX, went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch, and spent time with Erica, Tim, and their daughter.  Tim took us to the airport crazy early in the morning and we flew home without any problems at all, back to the warmer, more humid weather of South Carolina.

It was a great trip and I’m so glad that we were able to make it.  I’m already starting to think about how we can do it even better the next time we all get together.  Other than at Luke and Krista’s wedding, I mean.  That’s their party!  But next Thanksgiving or Christmas or whenever we’re together, how we can do this with less stress for people and better communication about plans and all those things.  We’re a family of planners!  This is what we do.  :)

I’ve hit the end of the second page on this document, so I’ve really got to stop.  And I think this will probably be the end of the posts about Christmas.  I’ve written a lot and it’s about as much as my attention span can handle.  I want to write about other things!  But I had such a wonderful time and it was so good to see all of you and I can’t wait until the wedding so I can see all of you again!

Love to you all!

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First day back at work

Monday, January 4th, 2010

We now take a moment away from writing about the Christmas trip to write about today.

Today is awful.  Today is the first day back at work and if there was anywhere I wanted to be today, work isn’t that place.  It’s never a good sign when I’m tempted to resort to violence toward my coworkers.

I should get a plant.  Plants are calming, right?

Plus, I bet they’re great and heavy for throwing.

Today I didn’t get up to go to the gym because I didn’t fall asleep until after 12:30 this morning.  4:45 is too early to get out of bed on a Monday on the first day back after vacation after only four hours of sleep.  No way was I getting out of bed.

Tonight I will go to Zumba and remember why I wasn’t supposed to have all that sugar when I was on vacation and why I was supposed to exercise every single day and I will sincerely regret the choices that I made.

Tonight I will sit and try to find pictures to put at my desk at work and try not to cry over how much I miss my family and how fat I look in pictures.

Today I will go to a meeting and try not to get too frustrated at the lack of progress that we’ve made over the last several meetings.  And I’ll brainstorm ideas how I plan to do it differently once I pry my way into control of that committee.

Today I will submit work that I’m not comfortable submitting just so management can maintain their precious schedule.

This afternoon I will sit and listen to music while trying to remind myself the importance of the work that I do and why I find it enjoyable on days that are not the first day back from a wonderful vacation.

Tonight I will go to sleep praying that tomorrow will be a much better day than today.

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