70 Days

I will graduate in 70 days. That is 10 weeks folks. I would like to be around 180 by this day 10 weeks from now. Can it happen? Yes! Will it happen? I sure hope so!

So also besides graduating, I will be in a wedding this August. So that means a bridesmaid dress. I am not thrilled about the color or style, but they are graciously paying for it, so I can't really complain. I just need to get my butt to a bridal store here in TN so they know what size to order.


The Wine Tasting
I went, I drank, I conquered. And by conquer, I did not make a fool out of myself. So the thing lasted from 5-8 and I met my friend there at 6. The place was packed and they were not generous with their pours, thus it made it somewhat difficult to "taste" the ones I really liked. The food was somewhat disappointing and thus I ate nothing. It was a mixed crowd of Nashville wine "experts", lost frat boys, youngins like myself, and whatever other type of people you could imagine.

Was it fun? Yes

Was it worth it? Maybe. I tasted some decent wine and the money raised did go to "cancer", they never really specified what type...

Would I do it again? You betcha, as long as the kept the price under $50 and they don't start doing this type of tasting too often. (They have some really frou frou events that are pretty expensive and I don't even think I own the proper clothing to attend.)

After the wine tasting I went to a songwriters thing at a crappy hotel. The "lounge" was being remodeled. So the new lounge was a banquet room with really bad lighting. Food was limited to BBQ catered from across the street. I was starving so I had a pulled BBQ chicken sandwich and chips. Eh, it was nothing to write home about, it was actually pretty crappy now that I think about it.

So, yesterday I had cookies (I am really trying to be better folks), wine, and some bad BBQ that all really do no fit into my meal plan. Oh and the lunch I had yesterday was a box lunch so it was a sandwich, chips, and a cookie. I rarely eat sandwiches and I had two in one day. I didn't make it to the gym either....

Today I am going to the gym during lunch.
Today I am eating what I brought for lunch.

So my weekend is shaping up to be quite busy. Tonight my friends and I are going to dinner. I should be able to find something relatively points friendly on the menu. I will be having a few drinks and hopefully dancing some of it off. Tomorrow morning I will be going to the gym followed by kickball practice. Then I am going back to my bar for a dance party with the friends I hung out with last night. I am thinking 4 nights in a row at my bar is a little excessive, even for me, but hey I am trying to be social here. Sunday I am going to the gym in the morning and hanging out with my little in the afternoon. At some point during the weekend I need to clean my room and get some homework done. Next week is grad school "spring break" so I won't have classes, but I will still have to work so it really isn't a spring break.

In case you were wondering, I am fully aware of my large use of quotation marks in this post :)

Schedules...

I love sticking to schedules and this includes eating on a schedule. However I realize it's not always possible to eat whenever only *I* want to. Yes, there are things I can do to make this easier, but I want to have some sort of social life...

So yesterday after the gym I went home and showered. I then met up some friends for dinner in the Village. I got my favorite salad with these spicy buffalo feathers on it. I really wanted some French Onion soup, but I also realized I didn't NEED it. Then one of my friends and I ended up going and getting a drink so we could catch up on girly stuff that we could not talk about with our guy friends present. Of course the manager and the bartender I know stopped by our table to say hi and even my friend joked about the place being like Cheers.

Today I have been focusing on good eating. I had oatmeal for breakfast, a mid morning snack, and I am getting ready to go to my lunch. I just hope they have vegetables. It would be fantastic if desserts that do not look appealing at all. Then tonight I have the wine tasting. No time to squeeze in a trip to the gym though :(

...

I am trying to find some bright spots in the day...

The Good:

-There was no traffic this morning because of snow flurries (But who am I kidding? I have a 5 minute commute, traffic is rare on a normal day)
-I ate a healthy breakfast
-I only ate half of my leftovers from early this week for lunch instead of the whole thing like I briefly day dreamed about.
-I took a 20 minute nap during my lunch break. Yep, we have a couch in our "media room"
-I went to the gym
-I made dinner reservations for Friday night!
-I got to watch Oprah at the gym.
-There was snow, snow in Nashville!

The Bad and the Ugly:
-I ate cookies, lots and lots of lemon chalet creams and only a few somoas this afternoon.
-I only went to the gym for a little over an hour.
-My invisalign retainer is annoying me. It is starting to get gross (I clean it too) and I can't wait until Monday when I get a new one.
-I need to schedule an appointment to get my final HPV shot and shell out $100+ for it.

Now that I list it all, it wasn't that bad of a day except for the whole cookie incident. Tomorrow is another day...

Such A Con

Sometimes I feel like such a con. I posted I was going to have a good eating day and did I? Nope. It was horrible. A lemon poppyseed muffin, chocolate, which wich for lunch, and cookies for dinner. oh and no gym! Gah! I am going to try this again tomorrow.

On a brighter note, I rocked my presentation tonight. I now have 3 total class session left! Oh yeah!

Portion Control

This is something I am seriously working on. However, at certain times (stress, pms, etc.) it is like I lose all control. For the most part I am ok with having what some consider threatening or danger foods around. But last night and this morning I lost ALL control to some chocolate. The rest of the day will be a good one though.

Yesterday, during the day was pretty good. I went out to lunch at one of my FAVORITE places in town and I didn't overeat. I ordered my favorite pasta dish and only ate about 1/3 of it. So I plenty of leftovers for the rest of the week. I don't go to this place often because one meal is easily about $25. In class I was just ravenous and that continued when I got home.

I have 4 total classes left. I am so freaking excited. But when I finish the classes I also need to focus on my case study. (Just realized I still haven't ordered graduation announcements and I just did it. I am not $61 poorer.) I have a presentation tonight and then I will have 3 classes left. Oh yeah. I am going straight to bed when I get home tonight.

Here's to good eating today.

Weekly Weigh In

I am down 1 lb and I will take it! I am still not officially in the 180's, but I am oh so close I can almost taste it, well maybe see it or feel it :)

This week I am going to focus on portion sizes and staying in control of the food I put in my body no matter what situation arises. There are 3 potential land mines in my path this week. A lunch on Thursday which I have no control of the menu. It is a meeting and thus usually a buffet luncheon. Usually the salad is drowning in dressing, hopefully there will be some sort of veggie option and NO seconds! Thursday evening I am going to a wine tasting from 5-8. I paid $40 for this and it's a good cause (cancer), but I would like to try a few (or 5) tasty wines. I am sure there will be snacks there as well. Oh and I invited some friend to come after it is over, because well it is at my favorite bar. Friday is the Leap Year Day Party at the bar. So, the plan is to grab dinner at the bar and stay for the party. At least I am aware of potential problems and I can attempt to plan, because I LOVE to plan.

Happy Monday!

Back Yo Sh*t up!

So let me be a lesson to you all. I lost all of my pictures this week and the mac "genius" couldn't get them back. I also lost my iTunes, but I could care less about that, because I had a lot of it backed up and I can buy what I purchased. I actually didn't lose all of my pictures (thank god for flickr), but I lost 6 days of South Africa. I guess I am sort of numb to it. I mean I do have some pictures and I can get some pictures from friends, but still they are gone.

I also cried today. It has been MONTHS since I have cried. I think it finally all just got to me. The stress of the past week. School. My computer. Work. Job hunting. Moving. Not moving. Money. And I think you get the picture.

I ended up going to the gym for about 1.5 hours. I walked on the treadmill for about 30 minutes while waiting for a treadclimber to open up. I met a nice girl at the gym. I usually don't talk to people while I am there, but it was nice to talk to someone. She was also doing WW and had lost about 20 pounds since December.

I was in group meetings from 2-6:30 and I am so ready for school to be over with.

As far as eating goes today, I ate some fries with a wrap at dinner. I had oatmeal for breakfast and a salad for lunch. If the scale shows I maintained when I weigh tomorrow I will be pretty happy. It has been a long week. The first part of the week was great. The last part of the week has not been so great.

Sally asked me this week what my final goal weight was. For me, there is no easy answer to this question. There are generally two types of people trying to lose weight: those who have gained a bunch a weight and are trying to get to a previous weight and those who have always been overweight. I fall into the later category. I have never been a normal weight, well not that I can really remember. Looking at old pictures of myself there is a clear weight gain from first to second grade and I never looked back. I continued to gain weight. It wasn't until I was 21 that I finally decided to make a concentrated effort to actually lose weight. I read recently that you should aim for the weight you were when you were 18. Um that would be about 275 for me. No thanks. So as you can see I don't really have anything to go by. I do however have pictures of my gorgeous mother when she was my age from her wedding and when I was a toddler. She seriously looks like Princess Diana. She weighed in her 170's when she married my dad and that has always been a goal of mine. A way I measure this is to see if her wedding band fits. It has fit tightly the last few times I have tried it on, but I want it to slide on without any problems. So as of right now my goal is 175. I will see how my body looks and the amount of food, exercise needed to maintain that weight. My body could very well decide I am not meant to be in the 170's too.

Another factor I am dealing with is lose skin (and the idea that it might be contributing to a few of the extra pounds). My mom didn't have lose skin to deal with when she was in the 170's. I have a bit on my stomach which is really only noticeable when I bend over completely naked (nice graphic, I know). I also have some flags on my lower arms. I have quite a bit of muscle in my arm, but muscle doesn't hide loose skin. I personally think my legs are pretty unattractive even though they are pretty muscular, but I am working on it. I know my body is never going to be perfect and I am still adjusting to that idea. It's pretty hard to swallow especially considering how much work I have done. So with all that said, I am still really not sure what my end weight will be.

A day off from the Gym

I tried to give myself a load of excuses for not going to the gym this morning:
1) I woke up late
2) I just need to focus on my food today
3) I will clean up my room instead
4) I have 2 groups meetings starting at 2 and I need to prepare-Ha! I highly doubt this will happen
5) I am feeling sorry for myself (which should be motivation to go, no?)
6) I just don't want to

But guess what? I am going, even if all I do is an hour of cardio!