Feeling back to normal (-ish)!

So after spending Tuesday through Thursday feeling dead to the world, I'm finally back to my normal self and actually feeling pretty good! The hubs and I had purchased advance tickets to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter 6 on Tuesday night, so I ended up taking Wednesday off of work....and thank goodness for that too!! When I got home from work on Tuesday evening, I attempted to take a nap for a couple of hours to prep for being up WAAAAAY past my bedtime, but due to some severe pain in my upper back, was completely unable to fall asleep, so instead I just laid in pain on the floor of my living room...lovely. But we did make it to the theater, albeit both of us with migraines, so you can imagine how we both did in a movie theater full of teenagers :o) Though if one good thing did come out of my horrible headache, it did completely oblierate any desire I had for movie theater food. So what is normally the best movie theater popcorn ever (we go to the Cherry Hill Lowes theater), actually made me want to puke, lol....hey, I'll take self-control in whatever form I can get it! hahahaha

Wednesday turned out to be a rather productive day despite how badly I felt. I managed to drag myself to Target to pick up some stuff for the cats and also got some organizational stuff. That organizational stuff led me to finally organize our walk-in closet in our bedroom. We can finally see the floor!! And all the lifting and moving sure did give me a workout...not exactly a cardio intensive workout, but hey, consider how awful I was feeling, it was certainly better than nothing!!! But I did discover the new Lean Cuisine Sweet Asian Potstickers meal, which is VERY tasty and low in calories! woot!!! And did I mention that tortilla chips and organic salsa are my new best low-cal, fat free friends?!?!

Wednesday night I started a new medication, which apparantly I need to be takin earlier in the evening because it took every ounce of my being to get myself out of bed on Thursday! Every second of the first half of Thursday, I just wanted to crawl under my desk at work and fall back asleep. It was quite awful. Fortunately after about 5 tall glasses of ice water, I was feeling much perkier by the time 5 o'clock rolled around, lol. The hubby and I went over to my father's house for a visit after work that night. Since I haven't been grocery shopping in waaaay too long, we stopped at the local WaWa to pick up dinner. Much to my very pleasant surprise, their sandwhich counter makes fresh salads!!! For 5 bucks I got a rather large salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, dried cranberries, bell peppers, sunflower seeds and a small scoop of chicken salad!! With no salad dressing (which is my new preffered way to eat salads), it came in at under 500 calories!! I like it so much that I'm probably going to get another for lunch today!!! AND they have the best apple slices with caramel dip all in one container for 200 calories....it's the perfect mid-morning snack!!

Tonight I've got a family birthday party, so wish me luck that I don't cave into the chocolate cake!!! Well, maybe just a tiny forkful of my hubby's :o) This weekend I will be catching up on the exercise I missed out on this week and will be having my first official "weigh in" on Saturday...eek!! Fingers crossed the scale goes in the right direction!! xoxox

A bit of a bumpy weekend...

If it's any indication as to how my quest for 145 went this weekend, let's just say I had the Travis Tritt song "I Had the Best of Intentions" looping through my head all weekend...*SIGH*...though I have to admit, my diet fared pretty well until Sunday night, it was the physical activity that I basically slacked on for the majority of the weekend. I know, I know..."tisk, tisk, tisk Jennifer!" I hang my head in disappointment. But, I'll let you decide for yourself how much I should be wagging the finger of disappointment at myself:

Saturday was a lazy/productive/fun day overall. I woke up around 8am-ish and poked around the house for a bit. When the hubs got home at 8:45 I made us both egg sandwhiches, of which I only ate around half of mine (and gave the rest to him of course!). After he went to bed around 9:30, I was strangely possessed by the urge to start working on the tile backsplash in my kitchen. Now, keep in mind, I am not a handy woman by any stretch of the imagination. But I did manage to put up 3 1/2 sq ft of the stuff all on my own! Try not to get too overly excited at my progress of it, but I need to wait for my brother to come over and help move my stove and show me how to use a tile cutter.

My afternoon consisted of a lovely visit to my parents house, followed by an dinner with two of my best friends at an awesome Italian place in Bordentown, NJ. Now, I can already hear you saying, "Jennifer, what on earth could you have possibly eaten there that wasn't laden with melted cheese and thrown over a bed of pasta?!" But I will have you know I had a salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, topped with their house balsamic vinagerette. It was DELISH!! AND, I'll have you know that I only had 1 tiny piece of bread, so Yay (!) for me :o) 4 hours of food and laughter with two of my best girls definitely equaled an unbelieveably awesome night!

Sunday....oh, Sunday.....I had every intention of physically going to church on Sunday morning, but staying out so late and being kept awake by one of the loudest, most severe thunder and rainstorms in my recent memory, made for a Jennifer who was not easily coherced out of bed in time to make 8:30am service. Boooo on me. BUT I did log on to Liquid Church's website and watched a sermon from April on God's desire for us to live worry-free and stress-free lives. It was a powerful message that definitely put me in a relaxation state of mind for the remainder of the day. I headed back over to my mom and dad's house so that I could take full advantage of being my mom's guinea pig for the things she's learning in massage therapy school. It was a heavenly addition to my morning church lesson and I left their house much calmer, and definitely ready to take a nap.

Leaving there I headed over to my father's house for a visit. He and my step-mother just bought a house in South Carolina with the intention of retiring there soon (big time boooooooo). My step-mother has recently retired so she lives down there 80% of the time right now and they're working on selling their house up here so that my father can retire early and move down there as well. Anyway, my father had been down in SC for about 10 days and just got back yesterday so I was itching for a visit. I was also fortunate enough that my brother came over for a visit with my father, so the three of us got to hang out and celebrate my brother's 30th birthday hanging out together. I decided to take the reigns on making my brother whatever he wanted for his birthday dinner, which turned into hamburger AND hotdogs (for 3 people mind you), Velveeta mac and cheese, homemade coleslaw and grilled zucchini (my addition to the menu for an ounce of relative health in the meal). I've had pretty good self-control lately, but man-oh-man did I totally cave last night! A cheeseburger AND hotdog, mac and cheese AND coleslaw later, I was in a self-induced food coma and ready for bed. Can you believe I didn't even eat any of the zucchini I made either?!?! When I got home, it was time to watch True Blood on HBO. I had every intention of doing some sort of yoga/pilates during the show, but of course the hubs wanted to cuddle some before he left for work (how on earth could I say no to that!!) so by the time the show was over, he was leaving for work and I was going to bed.

So my weekend of housework, laundry, salads and exercise didn't exactly come into fruition but...I had the best of intentions.

The First Official Day!!

So it's my first full official day into my Quest for 145 and I have to say that I haven't been this excited about something in a while! Last night I got an extra boost of motivation when a very dear friend of mine (who shall simply be referred to as "The Friend" due to their request for anonymity) said that they wanted in on the bandwagon too. We talked a bit this morning and now have a plan set into place on how to acheive and motivate! No excuses this time!!

My "official" weight loss goal date has been set for April 30, 2010 (my 28th birthday). I'm hoping to reach it before then, but I didn't want to put too much pressure on myself and be miserable the entire time. According to my weight loss profile on SparkPeople.com (which is quite possibly one of the BEST weight loss community websites!), I should be aiming for 1400-1500 calories per day and I need to be burning 660 calories minimum each week. Most of the workouts I do burn around 200-250, so that should be a piece of cake! wait, make that a slice of watermelon :o)

For breakfast this morning, I indulged myself with one of my favorite healthy food discoveries, Fage 2% greek-style plain yogurt, topped with a spoonful of organic strawberry preserves. At 130 calories for the yogurt and 60 for the preserves, it was a great start to my morning. For those of you that don't know anything about greek-style yogurt, you'll want to read this. Greek yogurt not only has a much thicker consistency than regular yogurt, and a whopping 20g (!!!!) of protein in each serving! And for those of you who don't know, protein helps to keep your tummy satisfied longer, which means less hunger pangs mid-morning! If you go to the Fage website you can find a laundry list of awesome recipes and all sorts of other goodies.

My mid-morning chocolate fix came in the form of an single-serving bottle of Silk Chocolate Soy Milk. This is, unfortunately, the only form of soymilk that I can stand the taste of, but with 7g of protein and tons of vitamins and minerals, it'll do this body some good :o)

Lunch consisted of an Italian salad from Whole Foods. Not my favorite salad of theirs, but with Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, onions and a very tasty dressing, it's not too shabby.

I managed to stick with just a half of a LUNA bar for an afternoon snack......I'd never had their peanut something or other crunch bar before, so I figured it was worth a try....let me just say YUM-O!!! And the half bar was juuuuuuuust enough to take the edge off my mid-afternoon hunger :o)

I started prepping to make cheeseburgers at home for dinner on top of the stove and realized I'd run out of mayo to put on the buns, so I ended up making my own! I got this awesome recipe from a cookbook we got at our wedding shower and it was really good! Though unfortunately, because we ate dinner so late, cheeseburgers were it, nothing else......so I'm starting to feel a little rumbly in the tumbly, but I'm just gonna call it a night and hit the sheets! Until tomorrow...

In Health...

Jenn xoxoxox

This is the beginning of the rest of my healthy life :o)

145, 9, 40, 185. When I was a senior in high school, I weighed 145 pounds. That was 9 years ago. Since then, I've packed on 40 pounds, putting me at a hefty 185 pounds. Back in 2000, at 5 ft 8 in, with a large skeletal frame, I was of average weight. I was a cheerleader with a teenagers' horrible eating habits. Fast forward a few years and I was at the University of Tennessee trekking across a huge campus all day, everyday just to get to my classes. I was a busy student, again with horrible eating habits. December 2005 brought me to my graduation and entrance into the working world. It also brought me to a desk job where I sat for 8+ hours a day and was too "tired" to exercise when I got home. Did my eating habits change? Of course not! Throw in a healthy, loving relationship with the man of my dreams and 40 pounds found their way onto my frame VERY easily.

For the longest time, I was in denial about it, but then I really started to feel the burden that the extra weight was putting on me...not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. I've dieted and changed a lot of my eating habits, but I'm still an Italian girl who has a love of chocolate, cheese and bread (eek! I think 2 pounds just landed on my butt just thinking about it!!) and who also has a problem with emotional eating.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I had an epiphany today and I decided to really do something about it. My real problem with all of my past attempts at weight loss was that I tried to go it alone. I've come to realize that I can't do this alone. I need support. I need encouragement. But more than anything, I need people to help keep me accountable. So with this blog, I will be keeping you up to date on my progress of getting to my goal weight of 145 by weighing myself every Saturday, logging all of the exercise I get, keeping a food diary, and even occasionally posting a fun photo or two :o) Your job is this...enjoy this blog (as if you wouldn't!) and comment as you wish (yell at me if I should be doing something that I'm not, but of course encouragement is always highly preferred!)

I'm really looking forward to this next phase in my life and I'm really excited about being able to share it with all of you!! Thank you in advance for your support and encouragement and I'll see you at 145! xoxox