Challenge Report: Week 1

First of all, I lost 5 lbs last week! WOohoo!

Also, it should be noted that I stuck to my meal plan. I sat down and made a plan on Monday (it takes a while) then I went to the store and made sure I had everything I needed (more expensive than I wanted) and I stuck to it. It's easier to stick to something when I put all that time and effort into it. Plus, I have always hated the "what's for dinner" hour that precedes something like "I don't know. Pancakes are easy." 

Usually when I have been on the Curves meal plan, I just keep my book handy and make a decision in the moment for every meal and snack. This was so much better. Planning ahead seriously reduces stress, and also keeps me in a good mood because I'm not trying to decide what to eat when I'm already ridiculously hungry. I think that's my husbands least favorite mood of mine - too hungry to decide what to eat.

I had my first official weigh in at Curves on Friday, which showed that I had lost 7 lbs last month. 7 is ok. I wish it had been 10. Maybe this month it will be. Last month I spent 2 weeks on phase 3, which is the "maintenance" phase, so really 7 lbs is pretty good. But as far as the challenge goes, I'm happy to say that every day I stepped on the scale before working out, and every day I had lost weight. Just a little, but it adds up. I'm doing this right, and sometimes that means the progress looks a little slow. 

Pineapple Chicken Skewers

I would grill every single day during the summer... if I had a grill. And mostly I mean I would make my husband do it since I don't do fire. Ever. Unfortunately I am not likely to have a grill any time soon, so I have to make do with the broil setting on my oven. I thought this turned out pretty well!

For a single serving of Pineapple Chicken Skewers:

4 oz chicken cut into chunks

3/4 c canned pineapple chunks

onion chunks

green and red bell pepper chunks

Assemble skewers any way you like. Spray a large cookie sheet with cooking spray. You could brush the skewers with olive oil, but I just sprayed them with more cooking spray. Next time I will also season the chicken. My husband just dipped them in bbq sauce, which kind of defeats the purpose of a HEALTHY dinner. Anyway, next you pop the cookie sheet in the oven set to broil. Cook for 5 minutes, then turn them over and cook another 5 minutes. It might take a little longer depending on how you cut your chicken. I served these with steamed zucchini since my neighbor has been giving them to me from her garden. I loved this healthy meal because it not only tasted great, it was so fun to put together!

*Note: This recipe, along with most of the recipes I am using this month are from my Curves book. As much as I would love to claim a recipe some day, these are not mine. 

Support

One thing I know for sure is that losing weight and staying healthy for good is not something I can do alone. I might have all the self-motivation in the world, but it still wouldn't work. Eventually I would feel like it just wasn't worth it. I know because I have been there before.

Luckily, the more I think about it the more I see that there are people supporting me at every turn. First, of course there is my husband. I often wish that his support were more active than verbal, because I want him to feel the benefits of healthy living too. But he is a great emotional support. He tells me every day how beautiful I am, and I believe him. Also, he gives me the time I need every morning to work out and take a shower so that I can feel like a normal person before I spend all day with my girls. It's early time, because he has to leave by 8:30 every morning, but it means the world to me. If I didn't know my girls were taken care of while I was gone, I would never leave.

Another source of obvious support is from the coaches at Curves, and the other ladies who work out there. Most of the ladies I see every single morning are somewhere between my mother's age and my grandmother's age. I am so inspired by their consistency. 7 o'clock every single day I see the same group. They know my name and they are happy to see me there. They would notice if I missed a day, which is great motivation to not ever miss a day. We cheer each other on, and I really need that. It's important to my progress that someone is noticing a difference.

I feel support from my friends on Facebook when I post a status about my health journey, and they cheer me on. It's kind of scary for me to put myself out there like that for all to see that I know I need to lose weight. It's kind of embarrassing, and it's sometimes hard to convince myself that it's ok this personal thing is going to show up in 400-500 people's newsfeeds. But I feel so much better when I know I'm accountable to my friends. I don't have very many random "friends" on facebook. It's mostly my family and other people I have really cared about over the years. It seems silly to say that I feel supported when people like my status, but I do.

I am supported by friends at church, many of whom are moms themselves and have been through so much more than I have at this point. They don't look down on me because I haven't had as much life experience as they have. They inspire me and they let me know when I've inspired them too.

Now as I start this 8 week challenge, I already feel more support. I feel support from my health coach, who is someone I knew from a travel study program I did 8 years ago. I feel support from the ladies in team "Mission Slim-possible" even though I've never met them. I was content to do my best alone in this challenge, but being on a team makes it so much better. That extra support is going to push me to do so much better.

All this support makes me wonder who would count me as part of their support. I hope there are many who would. I hope that I lift the people around me. When I think about it, so much of the reason I want to be stronger is so that others can lean on me as I have needed to lean on them.

$1000 Health Challenge

Today I started an 8 week health challenge where the person who loses the most body fat percentage wins $1000! I have never ever done anything like this, but I am totally stoked. I'm competing individually, and also in a team with two other ladies who my health coach knows. I'm glad that I'm in a team because it will help keep me motivated and accountable.

So my official starting weigh in is 218... which is kind of a bummer since the scale read 214 on Thursday. Weekends are killer. But not anymore. I'm working on my meal plan for the entire week. I might even post it when I'm done. Today I started phase 1 of the Curves meal plan - that's the 1200 calorie phase that lasts for a week. Curves smart told me this morning that my workout burned 1047 calories, which really sounds like a lot. So I'm off to a good start. For the next 8 weeks I'm not going to do any fall baking, which might just about kill me, but it will be worth it when the challenge ends 3 days before my birthday :) I'm shooting to lose 20 lbs in 8 weeks. It's going to be tough, but its good for me to challenge myself with my goals.

Wish me luck!

"Before"

So here is my official "before" picture, from this morning before my workout. I know it's taken me weeks to finally get one. I will try to do better.

The angle looks funny and I can't understand why since my husband was just a few feet away with his iphone like he is every time he takes a picture of me. Oh well. 

Curves SMART

Last week I started doing my Curves workout with the Curves Smart tag. Here's the explanation of how it works from dietsinreview.com.

"Curves Smart tracks how well you’re working out, which muscles you’re using, how many calories you’re burning and whether or not you’re working as hard as you need to be, all with a swipe of a mini key card. After completing  a personal profile with a trained Curves staff member, your personal info gets loaded onto this small tag. You then take this key tag and swipe it before you hop onto any Curves equipment. It then recognizes your own data and fitness goals so that you can see just how well you’re working out. At the end of your workout, you receive a complete analysis of the muscle groups you worked and the calories you burned."

This is great for me because I always think I'm working out as hard as I should be, but it's easy to get in the zone and forget to push myself. Curves Smart reminds me constantly to step it up. Except when it's reminding me to to start easy or cool down at the end. My favorite part is finding out how many calories I burned during my workout each day. Since the computer knows who I am, how much I weigh, how tall I am, and how hard I worked on every single machine I can actually trust that number. I can't trust the calories burned number on a recumbent bike or on the Wii Fit. 

My first official weigh in at Curves is next week. I'm kind of excited to see what kind of progress I've made. I still don't have batteries for my scale at home. I forget about them every time I go to the store. It's probably because I'm afraid having easy access to a scale will make me more obsessive than I need to be. 

Confession

Tuesday was my husband's 30th birthday. I thought about inviting a bunch of people over so that I wouldn't end up with a weeks supply of birthday cake, but the more I thought about it I realized all the people I was thinking of inviting were more my friends than his, and that seemed silly. I should have done it anyway. I did invite the couple that lives on the other side of our duplex, but that still left the weeks supply of birthday cake that I was trying to avoid. I don't have a problem with eating a piece of birthday cake on a special occasion even when I'm supposed to be cutting calories. My confession is that I have had a piece of birthday cake every day since Tuesday, because it's there, and I don't want to waste it, and I don't want my husband to eat it all because that wouldn't be good for him.

Baked goods are my weakness. I don't really go crazy for cake, but cookies, muffins, brownies - those I can't resist. Especially when gifted by neighbors. Today my friend brought us some chocolate zucchini bread. That can't be too bad right? Because it's still zucchini bread? It has to be at least as good as these Chocolate chocolate chip banana muffins that I made yesterday because I had bananas that needed to be baked. For my sake, it might be easiest to quit baked goods all together until I reach my goal weight, but I think if I did that I would never be able to eat them again, and that would just be sad.

Just Do It

The only way for me to wake up early and go work out is to just do it. No snooze button ever. No excuses. It's hard. It's been almost 4 weeks now that I've been getting up, and it hasn't gotten easier.

This morning I could have had a real excuse. I went to bed last night with a migraine and a sore throat. The headache stayed while I slept, even after I had taken medicine. My alarm went off and it would have been so easy to stay in bed. My baby slept all night and was still asleep. My husband always takes the side of staying in bed. But I knew this was an important test for me. So I got up. I got dressed. I took some heavy duty migraine medicine and I drove to Curves. And I started working out. It took 3/4 of my workout, but finally the medicine made it through my system and the headache went away. I felt so much better by the time I left.

I wondered if the headache would come back after the medicine wore off, but it didn't. I thought last night that I must be getting a sinus infection. But I haven't gotten any worse. My throat still feels a bit strange like it could turn on me at any moment, but I don't think it will. I won't assume that working out is always the best thing I can do to ward off illness, but today it was the best thing to do. And now I have a little more motivation to get up tomorrow.