Weigh in: 12-12-15

Well guys I do apologize that I have been a little behind on the weight loss updates.  We have been extremely busy with the kids and the last minute Christmas shopping that needs to be done.  We went today to get the last present for our son.  We also found a store in the next town over that sells gaming consoles that will take games that are for Sega Genesis, Nintendo and Super Nintendo.  Let's just say that I was like a little kid on Christmas morning or in a candy store.  I was in awe of all the games.  I was definitely taking a trip down memory lane.  I can't wait for Christmas because I will be getting one of those gaming consoles and a Tetris game!!!

Let's get back on track.  I was just so excited about my Christmas present that I had to share it with y'all. The past few weeks Brad hasn't lost any weight but he hasn't gained any either.  He has been breaking even.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, this time of year is always so hard for him.  Work provides different meals for the entire plant and his supervisor provides meals as well.  He has had to turn down food that he normally wouldn't have.  It is so hard to say no when you still can remember the way that it tasted. He is just wanting to get through the holidays without gaining any weight or as little as possible if he is going to gain.

I have done pretty good this week.  I have lost 1.8 pounds since last week.  I have 9 pounds before I reach my goal weight.  I have also had several NSV which are non-scale victories.  I have never been able to run in shorts.  My inner thighs would always rub together and I would end up chafing really bad.  The first half marathon that I ran I wore shorts.  I remember around mile 3 that I forgot to put anti-chafing cream on and I still had 10 miles to go.  I was constantly pulling my shorts down and by the time I crossed the finish line, I was in pain.  Not only from running 13.1 miles but because I had rubbed my inner thighs raw.  I cried when I took a shower and I had to tape gauze around the raw areas just to put on pants.

I am telling you all this because this morning I was able to run 3 miles in shorts!!  I have never been able to do that and I didn't have any issues with my legs rubbing together.  Score!! My second NSV is that I can wear a pair of pants that I haven't worn since high school.  They are a 7 in juniors!!  I am beyond excited.  I have worked hard to get where I am at and I am finally liking the person that is looking back at me in the mirror.

In the picture above, Brad is looking awesome!!  I couldn't be more proud of the way that he is sticking to this.  Even though he hasn't lost any weight in the last few weeks, he isn't giving up.  The pants that I am wearing in the picture are my size 7.  I am beginning to really see a difference.  Next time I blog, I will be posting a side by side picture of when I actually started working out. Until next time.

Weigh in 11/28/15

First, I would like to apologize for the delay in writing a post for our weigh in. I didn't write for two reasons. One we were so busy on the 28th that I just didn't have time and two that is when Thanksgiving for my in laws was going to be. I wanted to spend time with family and I didn't want to be rude with other family members there. I have made such a cautious effort to not let my kids on any electronic devices during family get togethers because before you know it the people that you love will be gone. What will you have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. No memories. So that is why I am behind on my weigh in blogs.

I just recently wrote a post for my race that I did on the 28th called the Running of the Turkeys. I did the 10k and most of the time after a run I will do Zumba but I didn't this time because there were no classes being offered due to the holiday weekend. 

It was a little rough for Brad because he had his work Thanksgiving meal on what was suppose to be a low carb day. He did good and didn't eat many carbs. He lost .4 pounds and I am very proud of him. It wasn't a big loss but a loss is a loss. Below is a pic of him. 

He is beginning to notice changes himself and I can definitely tell a difference.

I lost .4 pounds this week as well. Which isn't bad at all. To be honest, I have been snacking on some of the kids Halloween candy more than I should so losing some was definitely a plus. Below is my weekly picture.

I don't have much more to lose before I will be at my goal weight. Something I wasn't sure that I would ever see but will definitely be welcoming. 

Thanks for following our journey. I will be updating you on our progress for this past week soon.

What is your goal?

Around this time of year, it is always hard to lose weight.  In fact, most people probably gain a little bit of weight during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  Especially since any given person usually goes somewhere for the holidays at least twice for the same holiday. When my side of the family did Thanksgiving, tradition was that it would be on Thanksgiving day and around lunch time.  Which was normally 2 in the afternoon.  Late lunch huh?  Then about 3 or 4 hours later, we are headed to Brad's parents for their Thanksgiving.  By the end of the day, I was so tired and full that I believed that I could go a couple of days without eating and be completely ok with it.

This is where meeting your goal can be hard.  You want to eat what everyone else is eating.  You want the same size pie, same amount of gravy and mashed potatoes or another roll or two. I am so close to my goal weight right now that honestly I am worried about the holidays.  I know that I will more than likely go a little overboard with my food choices. I am going to try my best but not everywhere that we go will have healthy options.  It is going to be hard to stay on track.  Since we are going to do something small at our house on Thanksgiving day with a little more healthier options, we are going to adjust our eating plan.

Instead of having our free day on Sunday this next week, we are going to move it to Saturday.  This is when our Thanksgiving is going to take place.  We will still have to watch what we eat but it won't be as bad.  We are hoping that the holiday season won't cause us to gain any weight.  We will just have to wait and see. 

Now on to this last week.  We have had a little bit of a slow week.  Mainly for Brad.  I believe that he would have lost more weight than what he did if he didn't have his meal at work.  We have both have learned that since we have changed the way that we have been eating that it doesn't take long for us to be full.  Isn't that crazy? 

Above is a picture of Brad.  To date, he has lost almost 25 pounds!!  I am so incredibly proud of this man.  He has been such an amazing husband in the years that we have married and especially in the last couple of years.  I am amazed at this man everyday and couldn't ask for anyone better.

Above is a picture of me.  To date, I have lost almost 14 pounds.  I have a little over 11 pounds before I hit my goal and I honestly never thought that I would see this day come.  I got up to highest weight of 194 in January 2011 and have been working out for almost 5 years.  There's been times that I have put on more weight and then had to lose it again.  That time was so aggravating but now I am on the right track and can't wait to be able to share with you the day that I am FINALLY able to share with y'all that I have hit my goal weight.

Thank y'all for staying tuned and supporting us in our weight loss journey.  Until the next time.

You lose to gain

What would you lose to gain?  This question has hit me lately.  During this journey that Brad and I have taken together, we have chosen to give up a lot of things that we were eating before.  One of my biggest things has been Mexican food.  I loved going out to eat Mexican to the point that when I was at my heaviest that they knew what our order was and already had it written down.  They just verified that we still waited the same thing.  This type of eating caused me to get to my heaviest weight of 194 when I wasn't pregnant that is.  If you count when I was pregnant, I got up to 208.

We have also learned that in order for us to gain a better life, we have to lose some to gain.  Not necessarily pounds or inches but other things as well.  I have had to let go of people that have been a bad influence on me or have been involved in things that I didn't need to be around.  People that constantly want to live in the past and be negative all the time. People that I had a hard time letting go but knew that I needed to do it.  Mainly for my sanity and my happiness.  Stress causes me to gain weight. For the last year and a half, I just kept going up and down.

I stayed stressed because of things that were said to me and I am thankful that I have been able to let go of that.  I still have my good days and my bad days.  This journey has been so much more than losing weight that I put on.  It has been more about gaining my life back.  The way that my life use to be before the decisions that I made that ultimately caused a downward spiral on my life.  I have gotten my life under control now and wouldn't be where I am at without God and my wonderful husband.

Now that I got off track just a little bit, we will get to our weekly weigh in.  This week I don't have a separate pic of Brad and I.  Instead, I have pic of us together with my daughter Peyton.  I have lost a pound this week and Brad has lost a pound and half.  Total for us since starting on September 21 has been 12 1/2 pounds for me and 24 pounds for Brad.  This week we were thrown off a bit because the kids had their Thanksgiving lunch at school.  It is hard for us because we have two and their lunches are always so close together.  Since we had carbs on a low carb day it probably affected our weigh in a little bit but we both lost.  We can't complain at all though.

We are starting to notice changes in ourselves.  For instance, Brad is having to add another hole to his belt and his pants are starting to fit looser.  Soon he will be buying a size down and that is awesome!!!  I know he is excited. He has stuck with it for almost 2 months and he is seeing changes.  When you have worked and worked without seeing in changes, it can be discouraging.  This time is different and I am so glad that we found something that worked for both of us.

I have gotten in a size 9 in pants that are juniors and they are fitting extremely loose.  I won't be able to wear them soon and I just got to where I could wear them.  I also can wear a 7 in juniors.  I don't like how they push up on my sides a little but soon I will be able to wear those without a problem as well.  I haven't been this small in my adult life and I am beyond thrilled.  I am looking forward to summer because I have worked hard.

We both are looking forward to summer and going to the beach.  This is the first time that I have been excited to buy a bikini.  I am hoping that buy summer time that I will be have abs showing.  You have to have goals right?

Below is our weekly picture.  Look at my sweet baby girl.  She was so excited about taking a pic with us and Bradley did so well taking the pic for us.  It is hard to get a pic of all of us together.

I am extremely grateful for being able to go on this journey with my husband.  We have been through a lot and for us to come out on top is amazing.  Thanksgiving is going to be a little hard but we are determined to come out ahead. We have talked about changing our free day from Sunday to Saturday when we do our Thanksgiving with Brad's side of the family.  We are preparing ahead of time so that we can still be successful.  What is everyone else doing to stay on track close to the holidays?

Another week down

Well another week has come to a close and we had our weekly weigh in.  It has been somewhat of a stressful week for Brad so therefore, he didn't lose any weight.  Instead he put on a pound and a half.  He has been sick so he hasn't been able to exercise as hard as he has been doing because he didn't feel good.  Like I told him today, he has still lost almost 19 pounds and he could be that much more heavier.  He would have rather lost this week but he is also very thankful that he didn't put on any more than what he did. I am still very proud of him and this week is a new week.  To begin fresh.  Make a new commitment to the journey. 

This time of year is always so hard anway.  You have Halloween at the end of October, Thanksgiving in November and Christmas in December.  All three involve food and lots of it.  Halloween is more candy than the other two holidays but Thanksgiving and Christmas you have all the good food that only seem to be there around this time of year.  The turkey and/or ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and so much more. Then there is the desserts.  Oh my goodness.  My weakness is the cheesecake and I love peanut butter fudge. 

Which brings me to the picture below.  I have learned in the last month that you can work out all you want but you have to control what goes in your mouth the rest of the time.  If you don't, it is a never ending cycle and you won't see much of a change. In fact, you may never see any change at all. 

To me this is the real strength.





Below is a picture of Brad.  We both are still learning and are committed to continue this journey.  He is hoping for a better week so that he is able to share with y'all how much weight he has lost.

Regardless of what the loss or gain is for this week, I am still incredibly proud of him.  He has found something that works for him and he is sticking with it.  He is taking the good weeks along with the bad.  Not every journey that you embark on, weight loss or otherwise, is going to be 100% perfect all the time.  You have to take the cards that you are dealt because you can't change them.  Why worry then?

Although Brad didn't have a good week, I did pretty good myself.  I was able to lose 1.6 pounds which put me under what the highest weight would be for me to still be considered healthy. I have never been so excited. I have been working extremely hard for almost 5 years to get down to what is considered a healthy weight and I can't believe that I am finally there.  I am hoping to lose about 10 more pounds or so then just work on maintaining from there. 

Below is a pic that I took today when I got to my mother in law's. I love how I am able to wear jeans that I never was able to wear before because although they fit, they were still small.  I had love handles hanging out and they were probably too tight to be wearing in the first.  Which is why I hardly ever wore them.  Now they fit perfectly.  I am sure that eventually if I lose more that I won't be able to wear them and will have to go shopping.  I would rather go shopping for workout clothes than regular clothes.

I still have a few areas that I need to work on but honestly from where I started, I have come a long way.  I have lost almost 50 pounds in almost 5 years and in the last year alone I have put on weight and lost it multiple times.  At one point this year I was 175 pounds!!!  That was only 19 pounds away from my starting weight when I first started working out.  So glad that I have eliminated stress and found something that works for me.

My advice this week is if you are looking for something to help you lose weight, find what works for you.  Running and Zumba works for me but may not work for you.  Find your happy place with your workout routine and go for it.  You should also have a good support system.  If you don't have one, I will be happy to be there for you.  Remember that your food intake is important and no matter how hard you workout, you can't outwork a bad diet.  Until next week friends.  :)

Live and Learn

If you have been keeping up with mine and my husband's weight loss journey, you know that we have a free day on Sundays.  We are only suppose to eat 1,000 more calories than we normally do and watch our sodium intake.  Well come Monday morning when we weighed ourselves, we realized that the choices that we made for Sunday were poor choices.  We retained water weight for several days and for those several days, we became frustrated.  Even though we were the ones that made the decisions to eat what we ate.  No one else but us. 

The scale usually moves some on our low carb days and it wasn't moving at all.  Personally I was upset because I was so close to being under what is considered overweight on the high side for my age and height. We learned that we can't eat a meal that contains a lot of sodium with every meal that we have on our free day because we will be paying for it later.  We each carried about 3-4 pounds of water weight for 3-4 days.  Very frustrating but we made the decision to eat it so we have to live the
consequences.

Unfortunately for Brad, he had a weight loss but not as much as he would have if he had made better choices for Sunday.  I am still very proud of him.  He lost 20.6 pounds in 5 weeks which is amazing.  Every person is different with their weight loss journey so I know that there are some people that would love to lose the amount of weight and in the time that he has.  Below is an updated picture of him.

My weight loss for this week brought my total to 9.8 pounds. I know that is still awesome and I am very proud of the weight that has been coming off.  I guess in a way I was slightly disappointed. I am about 1/2 pound away from being below a number that I briefly stayed at while training for my first half marathon back in 2012!!  I am excited because I have noticed that I no longer have any love handles and my clothes are fitting looser.  I am determined to make better food choices for my free day tomorrow and maybe by the next blog post that I write I will be able to tell you that I met my first goal.  Below is an updated picture of me.

So the big lesson that we learned this week is while it is still ok to have a free day, we need to be more mindful of what we have because no one likes to keep loosing the same weight over and over again. If you are thinking about doing this, please keep that in mind.  We make mistakes and we have to learn from those mistakes. 

It will be worth it!!

I am sitting here extremely proud of my husband. All his life he has struggled with his weight. We both started working out together in February 2011.  I started Zumba and he would do the elliptical.  I lost about 30-35 pounds in 6 months.  Brad might have lost 5 pounds so he would get discourage and later just do enough.  This streak continued until now. For about 3 years we have been watching the show Extreme Weight Loss with Chris Powell and his wife Heidi.  They take on clients that are extremely obese and help them lose 40-50% of the original body weight.  We kept talking and saying that we need to try what he is doing with his clients.

We gave every excuse in the book.  The most famous one out there is I will start Monday.  Well Monday rolls around and then it is next Monday.  We didn't want to give up things that in all honesty we shouldn't have been eating. So luck would have it we came across his book one day when we went to Books A Million after taking the kids to Sky High to play.

We started his program the week of the fair and he has stayed consistent with it. Consistency is the key to have a successful weight loss. So we read his book and the first couple of days we were extremely tired and trying to get use to everything.  The cravings that were coming on and all that.  It was hard at first but we chose to stick with it.  There are 4 different cycles that you can do.  We have chosen to do Turbo.  This is where you do two low carb days followed by a high carb day followed by another two days of low carb and another day of high carb. You will finally come to Sunday which will be a free day.  Let me break it down a little bit more for everyone that has been asking.

On any of the carb cycles that you choose to do, you will be eating 5 times a day and every 3 hours.  You are to eat 30 minutes after getting up and then every 3 hours after that. Your breakfast no matter if it is a high or low carb day will always consist of a carb.  Whether it is a piece of whole wheat toast or a banana.  There are definitely more options than just those two but those are just an example.  We normally eat egg whites versus the whole egg and I will have mine on a whole wheat tortilla with some hot sauce. 

For my morning snack, I will usually have some chicken with a little bit of ketchup and a handful of pecans.  For lunch, most days I have a chicken fajita salad.  Then for snack I will have some more chicken and sometimes will have some more pecans or a banana. For supper is usually some more chicken with some sort of vegetable. 

The serving size is different for men and women.  The serving size for your protein is usually the size of your palm.  I don't have the book with me right now to tell you the serving size for the carbs, vegetables and fats.  I highly recommend that you buy his book.  It will be most beneifical to you if you are wanting to lose some extra weight. 

Above is a picture of Brad.  To date he has lost 19.2 pounds. This past week he has learned what foods causes him to retain water because of the sodium.  He has done extremely well overall.  He is doing amazing and I couldn't be more proud of him.

Above is a picture of me. To date I have lost 7.8 pounds.  My biggest problem is I obsess with the number on the scale.  Even though I see in the mirror the changes and I have been complimented on how much I have slimmed down.  I am still working on not obsessing over what the scale says.  It is definitely a work in progress.

We also try to work out 5 days a week along with this lifestyle change. I am starting to incorporate weights and on Saturdays right now is the day that I workout the hardest.  I will do a long run followed by Zumba. Brad will do the elliptical machine and also weight training.  This can be done without exercising but I would strongly recommend that you do. The benefits are so worth it.  You feel so much better after a good workout.  Even if you have a bad workout it is still better than no workout at all. 

My husband and I chose to do this journey together so that we can keep each other accountable.  We also want to set a good example for our children.  What are you willing to do for your weight loss journey?  Remember it may be hard now but it will be worth it in the end. 

The pounds are just melting away

If you read my last blog post, you will remember me talking about starting a new weight loss journey with my husband. It is by the host of the host of the show Extreme Weight Loss.  We have been doing this for 3 weeks and I am here to give you an update on how that is going.

I am going to be honest.  I really didn't think that this was going to work.  I wasn't losing anything. On our free day or high carb day, I would put on a couple pounds or just a pound.  It was very discouraging to me because I have struggled to lose the last 10-20 pounds that I would like to lose.  I am happy to tell you that I was wrong.  I have had success with this lifestyle change but Brad has had the most success.  He has lost 16 1/2 pounds since this morning.

The above picture is my husband.  As you can tell, he is thrilled that he has lost the weight and is looking forward to having more success stories to tell you.  He is beginning to notice changes with his clothes.  Which they say is the biggest way to judge how your body is changing. I can't begin to convey in words how excited I am for him.  

The above picture is a comparison from the time that I started exercising.  The left picture is in January 2011 and the right picture is October 2015.  There is a forty pound difference between these two pictures.  I am looking forward to seeing how much my body changes while on changing our eating habits to better ourselves.

I will continue to keep you updated on how things are going with our journey.  If you have any questions about this, please feel free to send me a message on my Facebook page Focus on Your Own Race.  Look forward to updating you!  Until next time.

Impatience

I'm going to be honest. I'm the worst when it comes to being impatient. I'm currently wanting to lose an additional 20-30 pounds but I want to see the results right now. Back in January of 2011, I weighed 194 pounds. I lost about 30 pounds in what seemed like instantly by doing only Zumba. I was beyond thrilled. Now that I want to lose more, I can't seem to.

I'm trying a new lifestyle change called carb cycling by Chris Powell. He's the host of the show Extreme Weight Loss. Chris will take on clients that are obese with the help of his wife Heidi. He will help them  transform their life in a year. I've seen one guy this year lose all his weight in only three months. He had so much lean body mass that he killed it in the last first 90 days.

I have been doing his carb cycling program and I've seen it work. Yet I find myself becoming impatient. Jealous even. Jealous of those that have already lost the weight that they wanted and I haven't yet. Normal human reaction.

I want to know the feeling of succeeding again. I feel that I failed and during my failures I have gained weight. I have that weight and then some to lose. In other words instead of being impatient with myself, I would rather be proud of myself. For something after all the bad choices that I made. I hope that by the end of the year I can write another blog of my success. Will you help keep me accountable?