Final Tally: Not Bad. Not Good Enough, But Not Bad!

Two months ago when we started this journey I said my goal was to drop 15 pounds.

This afternoon when I finished working out and hopped on the scale, three great numbers popped up.

182.

Since I started at 197, that means I actually pulled it off. 15 pounds lost in two months. Overall, I’m pretty happy. Especially considering I spent 10 days of the contest on vacation in Europe, 5 days in NYC for SES and a full two weeks sick enough I couldn’t work out.

Granted, it wasn’t anywhere close to enough to keep up with Scottie. This is why the phrase “Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line” keeps getting replayed as “Never go in against Atkins when rapid weight loss is on the line.”

Really though, I’m thrilled for Scottie! She’s done amazing, as has most everyone in the contest. Collectively, we lost 101 pounds. That’s not bad. Not bad at all!

I know the contest has been life changing for me. I’d been looking for that kick in the butt to get me started for about a year and this was what it took. After four years spent pregnant or nursing, I know I’m done with the baby thing. That means it’s time to get myself in shape so I can spend time really enjoying my kids. At 197, I just didn’t have the energy to do as much with them as I would have liked. The two months of this contest have resulted in a complete reeducation for me about food and have locked in my love of exercise.

My goal is to drop another 15 pounds by SES San Jose in August. That’s 4 months to get myself down to 167. That would put me thinner than I’ve been since I was a junior in high school. It would also pretty much put me at my goal weight.

With that in mind, I’ll be keeping my blog going here. I won’t be posting daily meal tallies or photos anymore, but I will be making weekly posts with progress, exercise updates and the like. If you’d like to stick around, that’d be cool. Always good to have company.

Personal thanks also go out to all the sponsors who came on board. Google was kind enough to join us as a site wide sponsor, which rocked. I’d like to say a big “you rock” thanks to Search Engine Strategies, Freshbooks, Search Engine Guide, and Planet Chiropractic for coming on as site sponsors for my area of the blog.

Finally, special thanks to Michael, Karen and Judy. I know you all read this blog on a regular basis. Thanks for sticking by me, thanks for your encouragement. You guys rock.

Where Have I Been?

Well, I vanished two weeks ago to head to SES NY, knowing I wouldn’t be able to post much while I was there.

Unfortunately, I got sick while there and came home with a case of Bronchitis so bad I’m STILL down sick a full week later. That means I haven’t been able to make it to the gym for two full weeks. It also means that while I’m tracking my food and taking pictures, I haven’t had time to post them here.

I stayed pretty darn on track in NY. As with the Italy trip, I mostly ate what I wanted, when I wanted it…but it’s interesting to see how my “wants” have changed. Overall, I want healthy food. I’ve gotten used to it. Empty calorie “crap” just doesn’t sound good anymore. I’ve also seen a great drop in the quantity of food I want to eat and in my ability to say “ok, I’m done.”

I can’t remember the last time I ate until I felt full. Instead, there seems to be this little internal alarm that says “ok, that’s enough.”

In fact, the last three days I’ve ended up tackling some chocolate or even fresh based chocolate chip cookies. Two months ago, I would have avoided them like the plague, because I wouldn’t have trusted myself to stop.

On Tuesday, Rachel and I made a half batch of chocolate chip cookies and settled in with some Buffy. It had been a rough day. (Twitter followers know I was eyeing a one pound bunny…)  I’d seen the tallies and knew Scottie was now far enough in front of me that I couldn’t catch up. I wasn’t giving up on weight loss, but I did figure I’d have my first “splurge” of the contest.

I ended up eating just six cookies. (and these are the mini variety that are about the size of a half dollar.)

I think I’m cured.

With all that said, I’ll be uploading my pics to YouTube, but I won’t be going back and posting them here. With our conference coming up, I just don’t have time.

I’m down another pound though. Sitting at 183 right now. That’s 14 pounds down. We’ve got three days to go and I plan on working out over the weekend. I’m really hoping to hit my 15 pound goal by Monday. If I do, I’ll be the thinnest I’ve ever been since I’ve known my husband.

I may not have one the contest, but that’s still a pretty good accomplishment.

I’ve dropped a full jean size and am only a couple pounds away from dropping another one. In fact, I had to have my mom take all my jeans in about two inches before I headed to SES NY. (And thank you to all of you who made me feel so awesome while there, your kind words were appreciated.)

I’ll be back over the weekend with some final thoughts. Here’s hoping for just one more pound by Monday.

Weigh in - A Day Late and a Pound Short…

Well drat. I was sick all week, so didn’t get to work out as much as I would have liked. That left me down only half a pound…not enough to see a move on the front page listings.

Here’s hoping SES NY includes enough walking and skipped meals to let me throw up a big number next week.

Well this is new…

So I’ve been doing some reading and thinking and talking to folks who know a little something about nutrition.

It appears I need to actively work on INCREASING my calorie intake.

I’ve noticed in the last week I’ve been REALLY tired. I mean like REALLY tired. I got to thinking and started wondering if I was actually ending up too low on the calorie count each day. In other words, I wasn’t giving my body enough energy to get the job done.

Then I thought about what I ate in Italy. I’d estimate I averaged 2400-2600 calories a day on that trip. Granted, I was walking 10 miles a day, so I was really active, but I lost three pounds that week and I felt fantastic.

I also noticed it’s taking less and less food for me to not be hungry. As I write this, I’ve eaten 1121 calories today and burned off 430. That puts me at less than 700 calories for the day. There is simply no way my body can run off of that. Mathamatically is should mean weight loss, but health wise, I just don’t think it’s going to cut it.

So I’m getting a little worried I might be pushing my body into starvation mode. That would explain the slowing of weight loss, the lack of energy and the lack of appetite.

I’ve used quite a few calorie calculators to get an idea of what I should be eating if I want to lose weight. None of them come in lower than 1600 or 1800 calories. That seems so high to me, but I also know now I was probably eating 3000-3500 calories a day before I started tracking things.

So, as much as it makes me paranoid that Scottie will rocket past me this week, I’m going to aim to increase my calorie intake.

I’d been aiming for around 1000 net calories a day. My new goal is 1200-1400 net calories a day. That means 1200-1400 calories on the days I don’t work out and 1600-1800 calories on the days I do work out.

We’ll see what happen.

Weekly Weigh-in

I gotta tell you, I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope this week. After losing 3 pounds on the trip, I seemed to level out for a few days. I’d been watching food pretty closely though (mmm, lots of veggies) and working out regularly though in the hope my body would start cooperating.

And it did!

185.2 pounds this morning, which now puts me at 12 pounds total loss. Woo hoo!

We still have a little more than 3 weeks to go, so I’m hoping I can hit my original goal of 16 pounds. (20 would be nice…) Clothes are certainly starting to fit more loosely. In fact, I can no longer wear my favorite jeans without a belt. Guess this gives me a good excuse to go shopping before SES NY, right?

All That Vacation Food…

Oh yes…the vacation food. No way I can get it all posted here and I haven’t had time to hunt info on making a collage…so I’m just going to link you to it.

Here ya go: all my vacation food, including the meal with a face.

Home from Vacation Weigh-In

So the official weigh-in after 10 days in London and Italy?

187.

Oh yeah baby…I lost 3 pounds while on vacation in the land of pasta! Let’s hear it for hiking and walking.

That’s 10 pounds total, though Scottie is still ahead of me. Time to get back into calorie counting mode.

I’m Baaaaaaaaaaack…..

I know, I know…you’ve all spent the last eleven days sitting around your monitors trying to stifle sobs of anguish over the lack of photographs of my meals in your RSS feeds. You wondered what you’d do with yourself…how you’d go on.

Ok, ok, so actually, you REALLY wondered if I could stay on the Fat Fighting wagon while in London and Italy.

Now there’s no possible way I could take the time to post day by day breakdowns of everything I ate. (Though I’ll post a collage and link you to everything over at Flickr if you are curious.) There was also no way for me to know what the calorie counts of most things were. That meant I had to use common sense to try and make good food choices. I figure the first two weeks of this contest were good prep time for that.

So how did I do? Well, no official weigh-in until tomorrow morning, so I can’t tell you yet. I didn’t want to look back on my vacation and feel like I’d cheated myself out of enjoying good food, so I went into things with this plan…

1.) Wear my pedometer every day. 10,000 steps = roughly 400 calories burned. (At a normal walking pace for me.) I succeeded on this front. We only had two days that didn’t crack the 15K mark. Most days we cracked 20K and one day we hit 33K.  (That’s about 17 miles if you’re curious.) When all was said and done, we walked somewhere between 100 and 115 miles during our 10 days of vacation. Roughly 30 miles of that was up and down VERY strenuous hills as we trekked through Tuscany and the Cinque Terre.

2.) Only eat until I wasn’t hungry any more. This was a big one for me. I LOVE food. I’m not overweight because I have emotional issues that drive me to eat when I’m sad/happy/mad, I’m overweight because I think food rocks and I want to eat it. :)  Thus, if there’s something super yummy on my plate, I tend to finish it, even if I’m full. That didn’t happen this go round. I’d say I “finished” less than 20% of my meals. I ate less than half of 50% of my meals. The other 30% saw me leaving a decent amount of food on the plate. I ate what sounded good, but I ate much smaller quantities of it than I used to.

Now, I don’t know if I lost weight, but I know I’ve continued to build muscle and lose inches. My calf muscles are like rock now. I’ve already realized it’s time to introduce my favorite jeans (my Calvin Kleins) to Ms. Belt. Why? Because they’re falling down. (I discovered this yesterday while running through Heathrow airport as fast as i could with a backpack on…If you think that might cause a stir, imagine the stir if I hadn’t caught my pants before they actually fell off! And this from jeans that fit just a bit loose when we left for the trip.)

So, while I have a feeling I’m still going to be behind on the weight loss (I’m guessing I lost another pound, maybe a pound and a half and will come in around 188 or 189) I’m losing inches rapidly and may be able to go shopping for a size 14 jeans before SES NY.

Pictures and even some video to come…

Off to London to Tempt Scottie and Simon

Well, those of you who aren’t fans of my “food feed” (ha! get it?) will be getting a nearly two week reprieve.

Greg and I are hopping a flight to London today where I’ll be doing a half day “Blogging for Business” training session on the tail end of SES London. On Saturday, we’ll catch another flight to Rome, where we’ll spend a week working our way up through Tuscany and the Cinque Terre before we fly out of Milan and back to London for another night.

Simon and Scottie are already over there and I hear word that food has been flowing. In fact, Simon told me they had 15 plates of food for  4 people.

I was tempted to take Scottie a big dose of my homemade peanut butter fudge, since I know she loves it, but lucky for her we’re packing light and my bag is already at the 13 pound limit.

Ironically, I was watching last night’s episode of “The Biggest Loser” and it was the week where everyone goes home to visit their families. Some fell off the wagon, some stayed true to their long-term goals and ended up losing more weight than ever. While I wouldn’t wish a few pounds on any of the contestants (ok, maybe a little), I have decided I can enjoy London and Italy just fine without eating things that are bad for me.

I’ve packed my pedometer (10,000 steps = 400 calories burned) and will use the last two weeks of meticulous calorie, fat, carb, fiber and protein counting to make good food choices. No daily posts, but I will still take a picture of everything I eat. When I get back, I’ll have Flickr spit out a collage of all the food and will wrap it up in one posting.

The good news is, I’m down a pound so far this week, which brings my total to 7 pounds for the contest. Here’s hoping I can walk off another pound or two despite being in Italy surrounded by fresh mozzerella, olive oil and pasta.

Meals for the day - 02/16/08

02/16/08 - Breakfast

I’m out of Kashi and haven’t been to the store, so it’s Zone bars for breakfast for awhile.

Breakfast: 210 calories, 7 grams fat, 25 grams carbs, 3 grams fiber, 14 grams protein

02/16/08 - Lunch

It was a drive-thru day as I was out running errands. Usually I’d snag a grilled chicken, but Elnora desperately wanted a “cheeseburger, no meatball.” In other words, she wanted a bun with ketchup on it. I hate throwing away food, so I did the math and was surprised to find it wouldn’t “cost” me much more to just get a Jr. Cheeseburger and put her patty on my sandwich.

Mmmm…hamburger!

Lunch: 390 calories, 20 grams fat, 28 grams carbs, 2 grams fiber, 24 grams protein

02/16/08 - Snack

Needed some protein and something sweet, so more fresh pineapple and fat free cottage cheese.

Snack: 154 calories, 0 grams fat, 25 grams carbs, 2 grams fiber, 14 grams protein

02/16/08 - Dinner

Another mish mash. PB&J tortilla, green beans, fresh pineapple and cottage cheese.

Dinner: 404 calories, 20 grams fat, 61 grams carbs, 8 grams fiber, 24.5 grams protein

No exercise today. Too busy working on PowerPoint slides for SES.

Daily Total: 1158 calories, 37.5 grams fat, 141.5 grams carbs, 25 grams fiber, 56.5 grams protein