Weekly Spark

This week all I lost was the pound I gained last week, making my grand total 12.8 pounds and my total for the month of March .8 pounds.  I don't know what's going on, because I did lots of exercise this week and stayed under my calorie limit every day except Saturday.  We spent Saturday cleaning the garage and Walker ran for fast food when we took a break.  I thought I was pretty safe with a breakfast burrito of scrambled eggs, cheese, and salsa on a tortilla (from which I pulled off all the bits that overlapped, so I would guess I ate maybe 2/3 of the tortilla part).  When I entered it into SparkPeople, it came up at 480 calories.  Really?  I would have guessed it around 300.  There looks to be maybe 2 eggs, a sprinkle of cheddar cheese, and a plop of salsa on the tortilla.  I didn't think the calories would be so high.  Of course, that wasn't what put me over.  The Thin Mints I found in the pantry are what put me over.  Even so, my calories for the day equaled what I should have burned for the day, so I should have broken even on Saturday.  The rest of the week should have been more of a loss, if you just look at the math.

When I logged my exercise on Saturday, a warning popped up on my screen in red lettering:  *The number of calories you should eat to manage your weight depends on many factors, including how many calories you burn through exercise. It may seem counterintuitive, but eating too little while burning too much can actually hurt your weight-management goals and the outcome of your fitness program. If you are consistently burning more calories than recommended here, please update your fitness settings as soon as possible. This may adjust your calorie ranges (if necessary) so you can reach your goals in a timely and healthy manner.

Okay, so apparently SparkPeople is telling me that I did too much exercise for what I ate last week. My weekly goal is to burn 550 calories through exercise, and instead I burned 1,914. Love that bike trail.  But still, not much progress at the scale.  

Walker's theory is that I'm toning and building muscle.  He says that I look thinner, regardless of what the scale says.  I did have to pull a couple clothing pieces from the closet.  One of my tops is so gappy in the neckline that I run the risk of flashing my girls every time I reach for something.  And the Capris I've been wearing around the house are too loose.  The other night I put my keys in my pocket so I could take my walk and the pants fell down.  My key ring isn't all that heavy, maybe four keys and the fob for my car.  So the pants went into the rummage sale box. 


My goal for this week is pretty much the same as last week:  keep up the exercise, no matter what.  I'm going to tell Walker no more fast food, too.  There's just no telling how that stuff is prepared.  I can do my own cooking, and I think I'll be better for it. 

Weekly Spark

My official Sunday weigh in didn't happen, because I forgot about it and drank a large glass of water when I took my morning meds followed by a Coke Zero half an hour later.  Coke Zero is my morning coffee.   But I'm a bad dieter who weighs nearly every day, so I'm just going to use Saturday's number, which means my unofficial loss this week is 1.8 pounds.  Wahoo!  I believe my total is now 12.8 pounds. 

I'm having a hard time keeping up with Spark People.  I don't have a smart phone or any of those nifty tablets that would allow me to record my meals in real time.  So I carry around a little notepad and write all my foods down, intending to input the info when I get home.  Which works if I don't forget my notepad at the office.  Sigh.  It's not so bad on normal weeks but last week was especially busy.  I think I got everything entered in, eventually.  Entering everything at the end of the day has one big drawback:  it's very easy to go over the calorie limit when you aren't monitoring it through the day.  To get around that I pretty much eat the same couple of things every day.  So far, that's working, but I'm going to have to come up with more options at some point.

Weekly Spark

I'm choosing to be a glass-half-full kind of person today.  With that in mind - Wahoo! - I didn't gain any weight this week.  The scale read exactly the same as last week.  I was a little disappointed, because I did pretty well with the calorie tracking, but I know weight loss isn't necessarily an exact science.  Yesterday, we stopped at Subway for dinner, and while I had a turkey sandwich with no cheese and lots of veggies, I know that deli meat has lots of sodium.  Sometimes that's enough to cause a little water retention.  Or, you know, my metabolism may just be on strike.  Regardless, I'm slogging on.  If things don't pick up this week I'll think about making some changes.

We had a pretty good weekend.  We went to a birthday party for our neighbor and friend, the lovely Miss Lucille, who is eighty-five years young this week.  To pacify the blister on the bottom of my foot I wore extra thick socks and my new Hello Kitty Vans.  Okay, the Vans didn't help my blister but hey, they looked cute:

My mom has caught a bad cold, so Diva and I brought her some Campbell's Double Noodle along with the cutest brownies ever:

She promptly ate the ears off, which brought back memories of pretty much every chocolate Easter bunny I received as a child.  To this day my mom can't resist a chocolate ear.

My Diva got herself into some hot water a while back.  What she did was pretty typical ten-year-old behavior, but when her Gramma called her on the carpet, she lied.  Then I asked her about it, and she lied to me, too. Well, that's not going to fly.  It didn't take me too long to get her to confess, but I couldn't let the lying go so she was punished with ten chores: five for lying to me, and five for lying to Gramma.  Sunday morning I handed her my weekly cleaning list and retired to the sofa.  Walker changed the sheets and did the dishes, while Diva vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned both bathrooms.  She also folded three baskets of laundry.  All I had left to do was to mop the kitchen floor and water my plants.  Wahoo!  It's almost like being on vacation.  Diva does very good work for a ten-year-old.  I'd like to hire her.  It was fabulous having two extra hours to myself.

Weekly Spark

The bottom line this week is the loss of one full pound.  I'm good with that.  I did toy with the idea of stepping up the exercise and trying to cut the calories a little more, but decided to just keep doing what I'm doing.  The weight loss is slow, but it's steady, and right now the routines are manageable.  I lost a pound, even though Walker requested lasagna for Valentines Day and we ate it for leftovers twice more last week.  And he gave me chocolate.  And I did not make time to do my Zumba at all.  I did get some walking in, four out of five nights during my dinner break at work.  I kept my calories within the recommended range at Spark People.  I drank water.  When I went to work without remembering to pack a lunch, I dug into the stash of oatmeal and Medifast bars I keep in my desk instead of running to one of the half dozen fast food places in a three block radius of my office.  I did okay this week, and I'm not going to mess with success.

On Saturday I went down into the laundry room, where every pair of Capri pants in my possession was hanging on a clothing rack in order of size.  Real size, determined by a tape measure, regardless of what the tags said.  I tried them on, starting with the biggest.  The first two pair are definitely too big.  The third pair fit, a little loose.  The next three pair are a perfect fit.  The next three went on but were tight, and the last two?  Well, I won't be wearing them any time soon.  Even so, I should be able to cobble together a vacation wardrobe with what I already own, whether I stay the same size or keep shrinking.  I'm looking forward to getting to the small end of the rack, to getting rid of the too-big clothes, and to finally having some spare closet space.  Good goals, all.

This week my focus is on making sure the exercise gets done.  I enjoy it, it helps me, and honestly?  Even when we're crazy busy I'm sure there are thirty minutes a day I can spare, somewhere.  My job is to find that time and utilize it.  Spark People recommends exercising four days a week.  I'm going to do five this week, just to prove I can.