01/26/14 - baseline weight taken
02/03/14 - <1.3 lbs>
02/10/14 - <3.6 lbs>
Okay, so I didn't post last week, even though I had lots to say, but it turned into one of those weeks where it started out okay, but then turned into lots of hard things. The benefit is that instead of making a triple layer chocolate cake (which I really wanted to - with peanut butter frosting) I found myself at the gym, running until my hair was sweaty and curly and my muscles ached. Which probably contributed to my 3 lb loss this week, instead of the 3 lb gain I would have had with the chocolate cake method of dealing with my anxiety.
So...lets back-track to what I wanted to post about last week but lost time and energy for. On Superbowl Sunday, Uriah, Abby & I had what we refer to in this house as a Come to Jesus talk. Basically we lay everything out and we don't sugar-coat anything. The initial conversation revolved mostly around around Abby and her eating habits and lack of movement and how that can contribute to a multitude of ailments, not the least of which includes diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure/cholesterol - which can lead to heart attacks and strokes, shorted life expectancy. You know...the ugly stuff of being over-weight that I think even I need to remind myself of sometimes when going to the gym is a daunting task.
I think that I have been more worried about Abby lately than Uriah has, although that is not to say he hasn't been worried about her, too. When you're talking health and weight and good food/exercise choices to a 14 year old girl, the words need to be chosen with care and the steps need to be tread lightly because we don't want her to swing into the extreme (anorexia, bulemia) but we do want her to know that the choices that she's making are not healthy choices. We need to arm her with the tools to be able to make those healthy choices.
Now, that being said, she's 14 and she has an excuse for everything: why she can't work out, why she eats the things she does, why she doesn't eat that bad (implying that it's bad, just not as bad as it could be). So we really are stuck in a place where all we can do is give suggestions, make as many positive options available as possible, portion control to the best of our ability, and honestly, the rest really is going to be up to her to make changes that she wants to see in her own life. I will be so, so sad if she ends up with diabetes, or consumed with a life-time of yo-yo dieting or living with an inactive, unhealthy body. But, I can only work within the confines of what I have available to me and I hope that the healthy example that Uriah and I are attempting to set are going to be enough.
Week 4 changes included getting Uriah to start taking a men's health multi-vitamin - hooray! This was a hard sell for some reason, but he finally relented after our health discussion with Abby. Finn, Abby, and I continue to take ours daily and I think it's contributing to the lack of illness this winter. I'm also knocking hard on wood right now because we have been so healthy and I don't want to jinx us! I also continued to menu-plan and I challenged myself to get to the gym 3 times last week, which I accomplished only because I scheduled it in. I worked around Uriah's work schedule and it wasn't a consistent time, a couple of afternoons and an evening, but I got there. Uriah and Abby have started tracking their food using a small notebook and I continue to track using My Fitness Pal on my phone. I pre-track as much as possible.
The biggest step I took last week was to have Uriah take my measurements - we did chest, waist, hips, bicep and thigh measurements. I know that the scale is only a small measure of health and I also know that muscle takes up less space than fat, so I wanted to have another health measurable. I probably won't track measurements as often as the scale (weekly on the scale, monthly-ish for measurements) but I think it will help over-all.
This week, Week 5, I don't have too much planned - again a goal of 3 times at the gym (maybe even 4 since we are probably going out for a romantic Valentine's dinner on Sunday night - the curse of having a chef for a husband on any holiday is that we celebrate after the big day, which I guess is okay. Restaurants will probably be pretty quiet on Sunday night...). I am also going to try to stick only with eating the allotted calories and not dip into the calories burned category (which can be difficult, because I do seem to be pretty hungry on gym days), do some menu-planning for the next couple of weeks using some new recipes and start researching a program for the computer that will allow me to put in my own recipes and get nutrition facts. I have a feeling that will require budgeting for a new computer, though, as ours is a dinosaur.
Week 4 changes included getting Uriah to start taking a men's health multi-vitamin - hooray! This was a hard sell for some reason, but he finally relented after our health discussion with Abby. Finn, Abby, and I continue to take ours daily and I think it's contributing to the lack of illness this winter. I'm also knocking hard on wood right now because we have been so healthy and I don't want to jinx us! I also continued to menu-plan and I challenged myself to get to the gym 3 times last week, which I accomplished only because I scheduled it in. I worked around Uriah's work schedule and it wasn't a consistent time, a couple of afternoons and an evening, but I got there. Uriah and Abby have started tracking their food using a small notebook and I continue to track using My Fitness Pal on my phone. I pre-track as much as possible.
The biggest step I took last week was to have Uriah take my measurements - we did chest, waist, hips, bicep and thigh measurements. I know that the scale is only a small measure of health and I also know that muscle takes up less space than fat, so I wanted to have another health measurable. I probably won't track measurements as often as the scale (weekly on the scale, monthly-ish for measurements) but I think it will help over-all.
This week, Week 5, I don't have too much planned - again a goal of 3 times at the gym (maybe even 4 since we are probably going out for a romantic Valentine's dinner on Sunday night - the curse of having a chef for a husband on any holiday is that we celebrate after the big day, which I guess is okay. Restaurants will probably be pretty quiet on Sunday night...). I am also going to try to stick only with eating the allotted calories and not dip into the calories burned category (which can be difficult, because I do seem to be pretty hungry on gym days), do some menu-planning for the next couple of weeks using some new recipes and start researching a program for the computer that will allow me to put in my own recipes and get nutrition facts. I have a feeling that will require budgeting for a new computer, though, as ours is a dinosaur.
