Back to work! House still upside down :/

Our renovations are still in the works, drywall is going up and I finally have a ceiling! (We haven't had one in the family room since wiring issues almost 3 YEARS AGO!) My husband says I'll be waiting 3 years for walls!  I told him to keep working!  I cant wait until it's all done and we can relax!

Speaking of relaxing, I started back to work on Thursday after 16 months of being off!  It was busy, but I didn't have a toddler sitting on my foot while I ran around!  I miss my girls terribly, but I have a good job and I love being there.  Two of my co-workers have started Weight watchers as a result of me being successful!  Awesome!

My first day I had trouble getting all of my points in.  I didn't eat enough at breakfast, Missed my snack and ate only a salad with 3 oz of steak on top.  When I got home I still had more than half my points left over!  Yesterday was the opposite!  I ate too much breakfast and big snack then too much for lunch and ended up using 3 extra weekly points!  Crap!

I know I'll get it eventually, lol!  Thankfully the office only goes out to eat if there is a birthday to celebrate, so I don't need to be concerned with restaurant eating every week!

The next hurtle now is Tom going to school this coming week.  I'll be solely responsible to get the girls to daycare everyday and I know I'm not going to physically have enough time to do all of this on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I go to the gym before work.  This is going to totally suck!

Here's hoping it all goes smoothly!

Well it's been a fun ride... 28 weeks down!

After being a stay at home Mom for the past 16 months I'm back to work tomorrow.  It's going to be a huge adjustment for all of us, my husband is also starting school, on Monday!  So the girls will be in daycare full time, cold turkey.  Granted they are going to our best friends, who have a son in between the girls ages whom they both love to play with, but it's still way outside of routine!  I'm worried about the baby and her naps, she's not great at napping anywhere beside her crib.  I know she'll adjust, but it's going to be a rough few days for all involved.

I'm also worried about starting work from a diet standpoint.  I won't be able to eat when I'm used to, there will be a lot of temptations, food everywhere in the office, and our office is inside the grocery store!!!!  The last time I did weight watchers, I started working in this office and it was a downward spiral off the wagon and I quit weight watchers and gained even more weight than I had lost!

I'll be taking leftovers even though Thursdays are our typical lunch out at some local restaurant, I just want to be prepared for either scenario.  Lots of snacks, a smoothie, my water bottle.

I'm so stressed about this.  I know I'll be fine, the girls will be fine, everyone will adjust and I need to stop thinking about it all!  I'm 5.4 pounds away from losing 50 lbs and so close to Onederland!  I don't want to F#@k it up now!

Yesterday I went to an earlier Weight Watchers meeting as my husband had school orientation for us to go to in the evening.  Obviously I couldn't go to my regular 6 O'clock meeting.  I brought my 3 year old daughter Lara with me.  I was down 1.4 pounds!  for a total loss of 44.4 pounds.  What a huge number eh?  I'm so proud of that :D.  Lara was an angel as usual and had everyone gushing about how cute she is, as usual.  She's so teeny but so smart!  It was adorable!  At one point she got off of her chair and said "Mama, may I go look at the whole world?"  Referring to the wall of windows and great view from our meeting room :)  Man she had all of those ladies swooning!

Well I'm going to go have lunch, fold more laundry, walk up to walmart and clean the kitchen :)

Ta ta!

Unplanned lilies.

Our back yard is a MESS.  It seriously is.  With me being out of commission the past 4 summers either pregnant (2 of the summers) or recovering from falling down the stairs and pregnancy, not to mention it had been neglected for years before that, my mom living alone in the house and not able to do it all herself, it's turned into a nice big overgrown field of beautiful dandelions and scotch thistles!

So with the nice weather we've been having, and the wish for a nice yard for the girls to play in, we got to work.  Last year we covered over an open space with new sod and laid a patio.  Yesterday we cleaned up garbage that's accumulated, raked up all of the brush that falls out of the trees over the winter and cleaned up some of the bushes.

Today we levelled a section, laid patio stones with foam tiles over top so the kids have a nice safe area to play in.  I also dug a trench a foot wide and 75 feet long along the fence, tossed the weeds out, replaced them with fresh triple mix and mulch.  Then instead of sprinkling the packets of morning glory seeds like I was intending, I decided to dig up a large area of lilies out back and replant them in the new garden!

I'm still going to sprinkle the morning glories, they will look nice climbing up the fence, blocking off the view of the dog run!  They'll grow quickly too giving the lilies time to thicken.  I still have quite a bit to do, but I got sent inside as my ankle was killing me and Tom knew I was done by the look on my face when I was kicking the spade into the ground apparently!

I was outside working for 6 hours straight.  Last year I never could have done that!  Now I'm thinking on what's left to do and what project out there comes after that!

Kill two birds with one stone right?  The yard gets done and I get exercise!

6 months down!

Well 6 months from starting Weight Watchers meetings.  6 months and a week in total :)

Last night I lost 1.2 lbs for a total of 43 pounds lost.  About 1.6 lbs a week.  Not too shabby!

So in 6 months,

-I have all "new" clothes in my drawers
-I have gotten rid of 6 garbage bags of FAT clothes
-I have gone from a size 20-22 to a 16, 2x-3x to an XL
-Gone from from a 44F to a 40DDD (granted I was breastfeeding,  I was a 40DD before this baby so my boobs haven't really shrunk at all!)
-All of my underwear are too big
-I have gone down a half a shoe size
-I have lost at least 3 belt holes (the belt didn't fit for a couple of months)
-I can walk for hours
-I can tread water for 45 mins :)
-I can run up and down 20 flights of stairs (my butt hurts from yesterdays workout)
-I can fold my hands in my lap
-I can touch the ground from standing
-I can tie my shoes and breath at the same time!
-I can get in and out of the bath tub effortlessly
-I can play with my kids
-I now think about food all the time
-I panic when there is no produce in the house
-I get up at 5:30am to go to the gym
-I see a nice day and the first thing I think of is going for a walk
-I keep up with the housework better
-I sleep better
-many more I'm sure!

Here's some pics of my journey!

July 2011 to April 2012

43 lbs down in the green, 35 lbs down in the white from March 1st 2012

Swimming NSV!

Last night was my sister and I's first swimming lesson.  We both know how to swim, but I'd like to add swimming to my exercise repertoire, and I know I'm not a strong swimmer.  So adult lessons were the logical thing to do!  We get there and they split us into 3 groups, make sure we know how to float and a group of 6 of us headed to the deep end to tread water.  For the whole class!  I held onto the edge of the pool a couple of times for 30 seconds or so but I figured I might as well keep it up and get the exercise since I'm not totally dying yet!  I was able to tread water for all of it.  I kept u with a woman who is training for a triathlon!  Everying kept saying "I can't believe you're still going!"  Yay me!  Now I'm off to the gym for 6:30 am!

I'll tell you about weigh in later.  I know I'll be down, but with a huge loss last week I'm not expecting much.

205.8

That's what the home scale reads this morning!  After an almost 2 month plateau, the weight is finally falling off again!  All I had to do was UP my intake!  Apparently I wasn't taking in enough calories :)  So there you go!  You need to eat to lose weight!  Who knew!

Being 6 pounds away from Onederland had bolstered me to work harder.  That's a huge goal I've had for a long while!  The last time I was under 200 was in 2007 when I was working in Emerg.  I was 190 something then lost 10 lbs when my body adjusted to the physically demanding job, then it readjusted and I gained 20! right before Tom and I started dating.  I was 210 shortly after, over 200 for the first time.  Then 2 pregnancies in 2 years and 40 more packed on!  So reaching 200 is momentous because it means I have reversed the downward spiral that has been the past 4 years!

I'm almost there!

Busy busy busy

With me going back to work and Tom starting college 2 days later, I'm trying to organize our life and home to make the transition easier.  I have a list of a thousand things to do in the next 2 weeks!  I don't know HOW I'm going to get through it all!

I'm cleaning and organizing the girls bedrooms, emptying out the cradle so we can give it back to my brother and bring Tom's dresser out of the closet so we can make room for work clothes, uniforms and such (we've been sharing a dresser since Zaryah was born and it doesn't accomodate us very well!).  We don't have a ceiling in our family room right now, so that needs to be totally cleaned out so my nephews can finish in there, the furnace room is half organized but we need more room to sort garbage from garage sale stuff and still store other stuff! The list goes on and on...

I'd like to get the majority done so we don't have to spend our precious weekend time on it when the kids are in daycare full time during the week.  I'll let you know how much of it actually gets done!

Annie made goal!

It was weigh-in day today and both my sister and I had a great loss!

This week she lost 1.4 lbs and made goal!  She's lost 26 lbs since starting Weight Watchers one day shy of 6 months ago, October 11th 2011!  What an amazing difference!  Annie I'm so proud of you!!!  Now her struggle will be to stay within 2 lbs for the next 6 weeks and then be on maintenance.  Oftentimes people keep losing after reaching goal and find it hard to reach a balance where the weight will stabilize.  So good luck Annie!  I'll be there to help!

August 2011 vs April 2012

As you know, I've been trying to stay on plan.  Renewing my commitment to Weight Watchers and sticking to the guidelines laid out.  I've been getting a lot of exercise lately and ate back all of my activity points/calories burned.  Previous to this I wasn't really tracking and probably not getting enough to keep losing at a healthy rate.  So, with all the effort, even over Easter, I'm down 3.2 lbs!  For a total of 41.8 lbs lost since October 11th 2011!   

Go us!

Surviving Easter.

As I wrote about yesterday, I was going to my husband's family dinner.  I did well I have to say!  I portioned out everything, had some of that awesome veggie dip my mom makes, but I stopped before I gorged myself. :)  I brought along a salad to get more veggies in too.  I did have a small piece of apple pie, a little smidgen of vanilla ice cream and a bite of chocolate.  


When we go home, kidlets went to bed and my sister and I went for an almost 6 km walk!  I was cold when I got home, but it felt good!


On another note...  Life is going to get really busy for the next year and a half...  My husband was accepted into the Paramedics program at Trillium College!  He starts the week after I go back to work :/  He's on top of the world right now!  He's been a stay at home Dad for the past 3 years, but has felt that he wasn't contributing and we have had some financial struggles.  He's excited to be a man and provide for his family, lol!  


I'm so proud of him!  


So the next 2.5 weeks are going to be super busy with purging crap from the furnace room and separating it into sellable crap and crap crap, re-drywalling the family room, organizing a meal plan, making freezer meals etc...  


If anyone has any great ideas for healthy freezer/crockpot meals I'll gladly take them!

Happy Easter!

This morning has been fun!  The girls found all of the toys and candy the easter bunny hid for them in the living room!  Interestingly enough, neither girl is eating candy or chocolate right now.  Zaryah shared Daddo's banana and Lara is asking for eggs and toast, lol!  I'd like to think my influence is rubbing off, but I'm sure they both will be covered in chocolate at some point today :)

So far I'm doing pretty well staying on plan.  I've tracked absolutely everything since Tuesday.  Yay me!  Even through a dinner party on friday!  (I ate a small burger with no bun and only a little BBQ sauce and brought 3 different kinds of salads).  I've gotten lots of exercise, walking everyday, doing my thing at the gym and even cleaned out the furnace room!  It no longer looks like I belong on that show hoarders, lol!

Easter dinner with Tom's family is this afternoon and I'm armed with veggies and sparkling water.  Mum's dinners are notoriously high calorie.  I just have to try and avoid her yummy (and full fat) veggie dip!  We'll see how that goes!

Ok.  1 year old is trying to thwart my attempt to blog with a strategic heel to the escape button!  Gotta run!

Zaryah is one!

So I promised to blog more often to keep myself on track.  So what better thing to blog about than my baby girl's birthday!!!

Our baby girl Zaryah Phoenix turned one yesterday!  We had a great day!  The kiddies slept in until almost 9, woke up happy!  We gave Zaryah her birthday presents, she was so excited!  Her and big sister Lara played with the new musical table!

We then went to the Disney store and they made a big deal about Lara's "unbirthday", she was feeling a little left out!  Lara pee'd on the potty TWICE in the mall (first and second time ever!).  We had bourbon st grill with lots of veggies for lunch.  Zaryah was a tired girl on the way home :)

After a short nap in the car Zaryah loved watching Lara summersault in the livingr oom and tried to copy :)  Cute little bum!

Happy birthday girl!

We had the traditional "first birthday dinner" of spaghetti and chocolate cake and Zaryah got covered!

I made the spaghetti sauce from scratch, that way I know what's in it.  Cake too.  I had a small piece and only a few licks from the bowl!  I used an extra 10 weekly points.  not too bad!

I'm down on the scale today too!

MOTIVATED AND ON PLAN!  To the gym for another beating then some easter shopping after that!  Ta taa!!!

25 weeks down! On top of it!

As you can see I've not kept up with my monthly stats and progress pic.  My work hasn't shown much on the scale or in measurements.  So I've decided to measure and take pics every 10 lbs lost.  I'm 1.2 lbs off from 40 lbs lost officially with weight watchers so hopefully that'll come soon!

This week at weigh-in I was pleasantly surprised I was down 0.2 lbs!  My resetting myself last week didn't work :(  I had a wedding to go to and I made the wedding cake.  I didn't eat a lot of cake (I know you were thinking that :P), I was so busy making it I didn't have time to eat most days!  And when I did eat, it wasn't well.  Yesterday was hubby's birthday as well and we went out for ribs.  I ate half a dessert too.  Didn't track.

I was definitely struggling with tracking again too.  Today I've tracked.  My goal is to track tomorrow.  I am going with it one day at a time right now and hopefully I'll make it a habit again.  I feel in control today but I think I need to take more steps to kick things up a notch.

I started this blog almost 6 months ago to hopefully keep me accountable.  If people are reading it, I need to write something for them to read and since this is a weight loss blog, I should be writing something weight loss related.  Right?  So I'm going to try writing more often.  Maybe that'll help me :)

Words of encouragement greatly appreciated!