We're engaged :)

Yes I dirty deleted my last post, and no I don't really care! The love of my life asked me to be his wife this Christmas Eve, and of course I said yes!

We always to to the falls in town on Christmas Eve before heading home for the evening to exchange our gifts. The city COVERS the surrounding park in lights, and is one of the things I look forward to most each year.

We pulled to the point where we normally get out to stand on the overlook above the falls, but since our little guy was fast asleep in the backseat we decided to stay in the truck this year. Then, he turns suddenly into a bank of parking spots, gets out, and goes to the rear tire on his side. Then he comes around to my side and asks me to get his tire pressure gauge from the center console. As I'm digging around in there, I feel something cold and smooth as he says to me, "find something in there?" Puzzled I pulled out a bottle of my favorite wine with a bow around the neck. I turned to him and he was down on one knee! It was the single most romantic moment of my life and I bawled like a baby. I love my ring, but mostly I'm beyond excited to marry my future husband. We will elope this spring. :)

I have a problem with abandoning my blog...

So I haven't updated in AWHILE! As per usual, I am beyond busy with motherhood, work, and life in general. One thing I did NOT abandon though was my fitness plan. I am right on track with my goals--as of today I have lost 32.5 lbs, have worked my way down to a size 14 from 18, and my bra size has decreased from 36J (yikes), to 34H (still yikes!). All in all, I look much better, and am still hoping to meet my goals by May 2013.

I did, however, end up abandoning my reward sheet since it was extremely costly and I'm meeting goals nearly every two weeks. Fitting into smaller clothes so far has been reward enough!

In other news, my little guy turned one in September, and is now an adorable little toddler. He is walking, says a few words, and knows a few baby signs as well!

Unfortunately, right now, he's fighting nap time, so I will probably have to abandon this post, too. Motherhood can be really aggravating at times.

Until then--

Days 12-22 + Goal Sheet + BEE PORN?? WTF?

Sooooo, I haven't been blogging.  BUT, I have been dieting!  But... I haven't been hardcore exercising.  I know, bad!  I HAVE, however, been pretty active--going swimming, taking Tristan on walks, going to the zoo--all of which have clearly been working, because when I weighed in this morning I came in at 201.2!  POW!  I am almost to my very first goal reward!

Speaking of my goal reward sheet, this is what I have set up for myself.  As I blogged about before, I started this journey a few weeks ago at 210 lbs, and to help myself along during my GOALDATEGOALWEIGHT challenge, I created mini weight milestones that allow me to reward my progress in small increments--5 lbs each to be exact, giving myself something to work toward in each couple weeks of training.  My biggest underlying goal with this was not to reward myself with food.  After all, that would be extremely counterproductive!  Each of the goal contain things I want or enjoy doing.  I also tried to give the last few goals some real punch, since I know from experience its hard to not just say, "this weight is just as good" when you are only 15 lbs away.  My first goal is 200 lbs, and it ticks down to my goal weight from there.  Here is the goal sheet I created for myself:

200 lbs: New workout clothes
195 lbs: Painting for vanity wall (I recently set up a vanity area which could use some wall hangings)
190 lbs: Pedicure
185 lbs: Facial
180 lbs: New workout clothes
175 lbs: Massage
170 lbs: Pedicure
165 lbs: New vanity chair (because I'm currently using an old office chair)
160 lbs: New workout clothes
155 lbs: Fresh flowers
150 lbs: New family photo
145 lbs: New shoes
140 lbs: New workout clothes
135 lbs: True Religion Jeans
130 lbs: New, spendy bikini
125 lbs: VEGAS!

Only one pound away from scratching off the first round of new workout clothes!  SO excited.

Lastly, before I sign out on this ridiculously small update: I looked through my blog stats because I noticed a few more hits (thanks, random few people who came here).  But I really have to address one of the Google searches that led to me, because lets face it, its fucking weird.  "Bee porn".  WTF???  What the hell is BEE PORN???  How does that even work?  Or is there something someone really likes about having bees around when engaging in, ahem, extracurricular activities?  So I googled it, because WTF, someone googled bee porn and got me, so I'm wondering how in the world does one find ME?  Apparently there is a porn site with that very domain name (not linking to you guys, sorry!), videos of bee's doing it with one another (ok, I guess?), and a random tumblr and flickr page, but guess who isn't on the front page at all?  ME. I'm not even in the first five pages! (Which is, incidentally, the only amount of time I would spend searching for my blog under "bee porn").  Nothing under images brings up any image I've ever posted here, so I'm at a loss as to how its linking here.

So, now that I've given whomever is searching for "bee porn" a few more reasons to end up here because of it (because find one page that's said "bee porn" this many times in one posting, right?), hi, I'm BzB, and here's a word of advice: quit looking for bee porn.  I mean really, that's just plain weird.  Stop it.  Oh, and thanks for the page view!

Until then--

Update: after further investigation, it has everything to do with this post I made over a year ago.  LOL.  Expect a deja vu post sometime over a year from now where I do it all over again!

8, 9, 10, 11

As of day 8, my promise ring from tony FITS!!!! I haven't been able to wear my ring for over a year, and it was killing me because of how much the ring really meant to me. I solely thank my diet change that eliminated a lot of unhealthy stuff and let me flush out some water. Otherwise, these days have been rather uneventful, apart from the fact that my weight hasn't budged, and my appetite is practically nonexistent. I did go over a bit yesterday after having a very meaty steak kabob and no exercise to speak of, but I'm still under budget for the week. I also ended up accidentally missing a running session, I was really avoiding the thick and humid 100+ degree weather. I just have to remember, NO EXCUSES! I'm not going to stop until I find the me that's buried under this fat. Ready for some yoga tomorrow!

I am losing some serious water weight...

I now weigh 205. Seriously. 205.0 even. Holy wow! I might make it to goal one faster than I thought! Who knew such small changes would start to work so quickly!

Edit to add details about days 5,6, and 7:

Day 5 I did another round of run/walk intervals, but I cheated a little and had mayo with the grilled chicken sandwich I had for lunch. Oops. For dinner though I had baked tilapia with roasted zucchini and rice, so I ended the day well under budget for calories.

Day 6 was a rough day food wise. First of all, it was lasagna day at work. Since I'm transitioning, I wanted to have one last time enjoying the catered in lasagna dinner at work. It came with garlic bread, and chopped fruit. Yeah, that came to about 750 calories. Then when I got home tony was not in the mood to make the stir fry I had on the dinner schedule, so we ended up getting (gasp!!!) Burger King. But I was a good girl and had their amazing chicken apple cranberry salad (grilled of course) with apple vinaigrette dressing and a smoothie. The calorie count was still close to 750 for not a lot of food. Then, I attempted the tae bo workout again: 10 minutes was all I was able to get through before needing to stop. Yikes. Not the best day, but a bad workout is better than none, and I still came in under calorie budget!

Day 7 we ended up going to a watermark with Tony's family. It was Tristan's first time in a pool! Somehow u managed to not eat acting before going, so once we got to the barbecue at uncles house after I went a little crazy. Had Cheetos, pulled pork sandwiches, watermelon, pinwheels, strawberry shortcake, and a Mike's hard lemonade. With no exercise other than pool wading and walking around the waterpark, I ended up 329 over budget, which still left me well under budget for the week. All in all I'm proud of my progress thus far, and ended the week weighing 204.6. I lost a total of 5.4 lbs in one week! Of course much of this is water weight being flushed out, but regardless, it's nice to see the scale creep down.

Days 3 & 4 - still going strong, and I dared to weigh myself for the first time since January.

I am on day 4 of my transitional week into a clean eating schedule and regular exercise routine, although I have already technically started the exercise routine.

For me, the problem was that I have trouble controlling my diet, so although exercise came very, very easy to me, I couldn't seem to resist many foods simply for how good it tasted.  But over the last few days I've really been thinking about why that is--why I couldn't seem to pull myself away.  I never thought of myself as an emotional eater, because when I get upset, I lose my appetite and just cannot bring myself to eat; my stomach feels like it's the size of a marble when this happens.  I realize now though, that I wasn't eating simply because I liked the taste of food, I love the feeling inside me when it tastes good.  In short, I've realized I am in fact, an emotional eater, I just happen to eat when I'm happy.

Realizing this helped me understand that I need absolutely control everything that enters my body, that I'm the one that makes this call, and that's that.

So, as of now I have done a great job of doing this.  I'm using an app I found called Lose It!, which I'm pretty sure is also a website.  With this free app, I can input my height, weight, age, and goal weight and how quickly I want to get there.  Based on this, the program sets a net calorie limit, which carries a weekly budget.

I chose a goal weight of 125, and since I want to achieve that goal by May, I chose the option for 2 lbs a week, the maximum.  This gives me a net allowance of 1,428--not much to work with, but the app definitely helps.  Since its my transition week, I was planning on seeing what the slight cutback would help with, still allowing myself little morsels of enjoyment until next week, when the clean eating plan begins.  Turns out though that those little changes put me right there, problem being that the things I'm choosing to eat really aren't especially healthy, so I can't have a lot of it.  By switching to this clean eating program, I'm hoping it helps me just stay more balanced and develop a taste for more natural, healthy foods.

So, my weight in.  I decided yesterday to get a starting number and see where I was really at.

That number, is 210.  Two hundred ten.  I can't believe I actually weigh over 200 lbs.

But when I weighed myself this morning, I was surprised to see I was now clocking in at 207.  Talk about water retention!  Either way, I have technically achieved my two lb goal for the week, but I'm still busting my ass to keep up for the weeks to follow.  Right now, weight loss is going to be rapid, since I'm eating enough to maintain a smaller frame only and exercising regularly.  But once I make smaller sizes, its going to slow down and plateau at times, so I need to establish habits of pushing through those times now in order to make my goal weight in the time frame I've set for myself.

To help, I've written out a reward list.  Every five pounds I lose (starting at 200 lbs), I reward myself for my achievement.  At 200 lbs and every 20 lbs or so, I reward myself with new fitness clothes--its important to feel like you look good to keep that motivation going!  Other rewards are going for pedicures, massages, facials, getting myself fresh flowers, basically things that AREN'T food.  My reward for reaching 130 lbs is to spring for a spendy hair session, whatever I want, which will probably be extensions.  The final reward for reaching 125?  VEGAS!!!!

So yesterday, we ended up having Taco Johns for dinner.  Naughty, I know--but I had two softshell tacos which are suprisingly rather low in calories, and only half of a small potato olay's Tony and I shared.  Today, we grilled up chicken wings on the barbeque and flavored it with buffalo sauce (zero calories!).  Had five wings total since each wing itself nets about 100 calories a pop, a cup of rice, and a ridiculous amount of asparagus.  Mmmmm, asparagus.

I was supposed to do yoga yesterday and rest today, but since Tony ended up working a 15 hour day and didn't come home until late, I didn't have the time between taking care of the house and little Tristan on my own.  So, I did some yoga today which felt great, but I'm wanting to go back to the plan I was using while training for the half marathon I ran the year before I had Tristan.  It was more challenging and focused on building strength as much as it focused on breathing and relaxation.

Tomorrow, I go for an interval walk/run--60 seconds on, 90 seconds off eight times.  The last run went well, so I'm hoping to move a little faster and cover a little more ground tomorrow.  Only one more set like this and I'll bump up to level 2, but let's discuss that when I get there, shall we?

Long post, without any pictures, but I have so much to say about all this and am hoping to keep myself honest and open by just blogging about my weight loss experience.  Things I have on the roster to discuss: shopping lists for meal plans (rough drafts!?!  Yeah, I went there), fad diets, diet pills/supplements, "clean" eating, and of course, the condition that affects my weight most of all (other than my own willpower), my hypothyroidism.  I'll close with the decision I made this morning to weigh in every. single. morning.  When I lost a lot of weight last time around, I was weighing myself daily to monitor changes.  I want to recreate that experience as much as possible so I can achieve those results.

I'M GETTING MY BODY BACK!  NO IFS, AND, BUTS, MAYBE'S, WISHING, HOPING, PRAYING, DREAMING, EXCUSES OR CRYING.  In the words of Yoda, "Do, or do not. There is no try."  I'm not going to try, I'm just going to do, because I have to.

I'll check in again soon.  Until then--

Days 1 and 2 of the path to fitness!

Since I graduated this weekend, I now have free time to throw myself into fitness and getting healthy again.

Almost two years ago, I worked my ass off (literally) to lose weight and get in shape. By the time I started this blog, I was as small as I had been since I was a freshman in high school, and feeling great. Then, I got pregnant.

Don't get me wrong--Tristan is THE greatest thing to ever happen to me, but I'd be lying if I didn't say he came at about the worst possible time in my weight loss program. I was so close to finding a maintenance program to use, and then I got the shock of a lifetime.

My weight gain during pregnancy was in large part my own bad habits (giving in to many, many cravings), hardly ever exercising, Thyroid balance issues and just bad genetics.

So when I ballooned up during the last two months of my pregnancy, I was less than pleased but figured once I had the baby I would quit retaining water, my body would quit stockpiling fat like the world might end soon, and the weight would "fall off" like it had for other mommy friends of mine, especially since I planned on exclusively breast feeding for six months. If you haven't heard the hype around breast feeding and weight loss you probably haven't been pregnant before. People LOVE to say, "oh with all my kids I put on 70 lbs and I lost it all in two months by breast feeding alone, and eating all the cake and French fries I wanted!"

I want to slap these women. Out of jealousy, of course. I'm not saying their lying, because I know for a fact many women are able to do this, but I am saying that these women are pretty damaging to the egos of those of us whose bodies go into survival mode while nursing.

I posted months ago about how defeated I felt over my weight. I wish I could say my journey started them, but instead, nothing. I started exercise programs, then got too busy to keep up with them. Between 65 hour work weeks, and a 16 credit course load during my senior year of college, and an infant son, I had two dinner choices: cook and get only 3 hours sleep, or pick up dinner and get 5.

But these are all excuses, reasons why I didn't do what I simply just need to do. I'm ready for a new life, or maybe just a small piece of my old one. I want to wear a bathing suit again. Hell, a bikini even. I want to be able to shop anywhere, and look good in almost everything I try on. When I'm out running, I want to be the girls I see now when I'm out--the ones that make me say, "I wanna be THERE". I want to spend my weekends biking, hiking, playing volleyball, I want to go kayaking, rock climbing--even if it's just a rock climbing wall. I don't want to have to find the right way to stand and the right angle in pictures, I want to look fantastic from all angles. I want to get rid of my muffin top, gain a space between my thighs, and have toned arms for the first time in my life. I want men to say "damn" when I walk by.

It all starts here.

I want to blog my progress in order to stay on track with my goals. For the first 4 months I'm doing the following for exercise:

Day 1: Cardio
Day 2: Tae Bo
Day 3: Yoga
Day 4: Rest

And repeat through the end of September. The cardio program is a half hour run that at week one has me running one minute walking 90 seconds, and by week 8 just straight running the whole half hour. Since I've added so much Tae Bo and yoga to the routine, that the 8 week running program will end up taking me 10.

Diet wise, I am quitting a lot things like fast food, fried food, processed food, and super fatty food. This week is our transition week, where I have started eliminating some things (mayo, baked goods and sweets), but I know for the next couple months in order to retrain myself I need to be extremely vigilant about food. Still in search of a good clean eating plan, but I should have one soon.

So, Day 1:
Cardio intervals. Had a GREAT run, my previous flirtatious with this program have definitely helped. Didn't track meals til day 2.

Day 2:

Diet: meatloaf for lunch with dinner roll and baby red potato. Used sour cream and butter. Coffee for breakfast (no time to eat, but yes I know I need to start!), and a turkey sub from jimmy johns without mayo but adding oil vinegar and avocado. Salt and vinegar chips and unsweetened iced tea with it.

Did tutorial for tae bo as a refresher on form, then the warmup of the actual workout. Took about 20 minutes but still made me sweat. This video is definitely going to kick my ass.

On to day 3!