Time Will Pass

I am sure that you are not new to the quote, "Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take to get there, the time will pass anyway". I have always loved this quote, but it has been at the forefront of my mind a lot this week. I would like to start off by saying that I am extremely proud of myself and how far I have come, but sometimes it is easy to get discouraged when I think about how far I have left to go. I have been trying to force myself to think about the last year, and how quickly it has gone. If I had stuck with the weight loss journey that I started last January I would already be at my goal. 2012 went by so fast, and I know that 2013 will do the same. Christmas is going to come wether I lose weight or not. The only difference is, If I stick with what I am doing, I will be at my goal weight by that time. Christmas seems like a lifetime from now, but at the same time it feels like it was just Christmas last week. I know that I will be at my goal weight before I know it, but my journey will not stop there. My decision to lose weight has to be a lifetime change. Of course I will be able to add more calories when I get there, but I am still going to have to eat well and exercise regularly in order to maintain my weight.

With that being said, tonight was not a good night in regards to my workout. I know that is bound to happen every once and a while, but I really struggled through tonight. For some reason after about only 15 minutes on the elliptical my legs felt like I have been climbing stairs for an hour. My legs got so worn out very quickly. I ended up having to take my resistance down to 5 and I was only able to reach 4.8 miles in the hour. I am not sure what I have done to make my legs so sore, but I am sure that I will be back to my normal 5+ miles by Saturday. I think the key is to not focus on the workout that I had tonight, and just move on to the next one. So that is what I intend to do. Don't dwell in the past, because you might miss something great in your future!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Crazy Weekend

Ever have one of those weekends, when you think you might actually prefer to be at work? Well, that was my memorial day weekend. As I have mentioned in what feels like my last 500 posts, we are painting the house. We had a huge fiasco with the second can of paint not matching the first can of paint that we bought. Lowes gave us a free 5 gallon bucket of paint to make up for the mistake, the only problem was that the 5 gallon bucket that they gave us did not match either of the colors from the first two cans. So we ended up having to start from scratch and re-do EVERYTHING that we had already done. I had 2 days to re-do what had already taken me a week, because we had painters coming to do our stairwell on Monday. After 8+ hours of painting on Saturday, and another 8+ hours of painting on Sunday, I finished everything that needed to be done prior to the painters coming. Only one tiny little problem, the painters did not show up on Monday!! Frustrating to say the least. This weekend was one of those times that missing my gym workout was completely unavoidable. However, my body is assuring me that well over 16 hours of painting was plenty of workout. There is a light at the end of the tunnel though, the painter called me today and evidently there was a mix up with the schedule. They came and did a beautiful job on the stairwell, and charged us less than we were expecting ( I am assuming because of the mix up.) I just recently watched the movie Silver Linings Playbook, so I like the think that the silver lining in all of this is that we love the incorrect color of the 5 gallon bucket much more than the color that we originally picked. Always look for something positive! My goal for today was to put everything having to do with the house in the back of my mind, and just focus back on my workout schedule. Missing 3 days in the gym was starting to make me antsy. I have never enjoyed an hour on the elliptical so much in my life, as I did today. It was so good to be focusing on myself again. I cannot explain how good I feel after a nice long workout. It is so much better than any feeling that I ever got from food. I cannot wait to start my day in the pool tomorrow, and start chasing that feeling again. I guess I have officially become a workout junkie, who would have ever thought? Not me!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

History Will Not Repeat Itself

I am not sure if I have mentioned this before but starting in January of last year I set out on yet another weight loss journey. My starting weight was 220 lbs, and I was doing really really well. I had gotten my weight down to 202 by March 9th, at which time we had to travel to Chattanooga for a friend's wedding. We were staying in the same hotel with several friends, and we ate out the whole trip. I decided that I was going to enjoy myself and have a cheat weekend. I was just going to enjoy the trip without having to think about calories. Well, I ate whatever I wanted and I enjoyed it a lot. When we got home I just never could get back into the weight loss groove. Fast forward to March 22 of this year when I started this weight loss journey and I had gained back all but 1 of those pounds. I am a little farther in my journey this time around, but I am still so scared that the moment that I go completely off track is coming. Why do I feel that way? Because it is what I have always done. This is the reason that I have given myself ZERO cheat days this time around. Cheat days do not work for me, because I cheat and then I just never go back. One positive thing that has come from failing at weight loss so many times in the past, is that I learned something that didn't work each time. Now that I know all of these things that don't work, I have been able to put together a plan that is working. I just have to have the willpower and the dedication to stick to it. I can't let the fear of failing get in the way and cause me to trip up.  I missed my morning workout on Wednesday, because I was sore from painting and I was going on about 4 hours of sleep. The truth is though, those are just excuses and I have beat myself up about missing that workout ever since. I know that there are going to be times that missing a workout will be unavoidable, but I missed this one purely because I couldn't force myself to go. I am glad that I have been upset with myself, because tomorrow when my alarm goes off and my shoulder is aching from painting and I am yawning from staying up late writing my blog, I am going to force myself to go anyway. I know now that I will feel so much better if I go, not just physically but mentally as well. I will be proud of myself instead of fighting an inner battle. I am continuing to learn from my mistakes every day. I am so thankful for the lessons that I have learned along the way, and I can't wait to learn more. Just hopefully not from mistakes this time!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Busy.

I think I mentioned in my last post, that we are painting our whole house. As you can imagine this is quite a task, especially with each room requiring two coats. Did I also mention that we are painting all of the trim as well? Well, we are. As I also mentioned in past posts, I am very particular about how our home is kept. So, having all of the furniture from the living room in the center of the room and in the kitchen is driving me insane. Because of this I am working as hard as I possibly can to get this painting done, while still doing a great job of course! So here is a little snapshot of what my day looked like. I got to work at 8:30, worked until 5:00, went to the gym, ran for an hour on the elliptical, came home, and painted until 8:45. Needless to say, I am worn out, but we are that much closer to having the house back in order. I decided that even though I had so much to do, I was going to be running for an hour regardless so I might as well give it my all. I put my incline and resistance both at 10, and I was able to run 5.45 miles in that time. Meaning that I beat my distance by just under a quarter of a mile! In other news I got asked by two customers today how much weight I have lost, which means that my body has changed enough that people who don't see me on a daily basis are noticing. This is a new exciting step in my weight loss, and I am looking forward to more of it!

I found out today when I was doing my hour on the elliptical that the machines at my gym have a resistance and incline that goes higher than 10. I always assumed that 10 was the highest that they went, but I noticed that the girl next to me today had her incline at 15 and her resistance at 13. Now this is a really bad habit of mine. Because I am so competitive I constantly find myself glancing over to the machine next to me to see if my incline and resistance are higher than theirs. I have been trying really hard not to do this, but for once I am glad that I did. I was starting to feel like my workout was going to stop challenging me since I had reached the peak of the machine. Turns out, I still have enough room to move up to keep myself challenged for several weeks! I have definitely learned through many failed weight loss journeys that keeping your body challenged is a key to continued success. Let's keep the ball rolling!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

2nd Official Weigh In

Alright so it is that time again! It is time for my second official weigh in. The last time I weighed on April 20th I weighed in at 209.6. I am happy to say that today I weighed in at 198.4. That is right ladies and gentlemen, I am under 200 pounds! This is a huge, huge deal for me. I have not been under 200 lbs in 2 and a half years, so I am not going to lie I got a little emotional when I saw that number. Knowing that I will never weigh 200 lbs again is the most amazing feeling. Now time for my measurements. I did not lose as many inches this time, but that is ok because the weight is still coming off.

                                      Starting                    Last Weigh In                     Current

Thighs:                             28                                    26.5                                25                                


Arms:                              14.5                                   14                                  14


Neck:                               13.5                                   13                                  13


Belly:                                40                                    39.5                                39


Waist:                             35.5                                   32.5                               32


Chest:                             43                                      41.5                               41


Hips:                               44                                      43.5                             42.5                


Butt:                               47                                      45.5                               45


                               Inches This Week:  6                        Inches Overall:  17:5                         

Seventeen and a half inches overall is not too shabby! I have updated the current picture on the front page of my blog, so that you can see the difference in my body thus far. Sorry for the no make-up, we have been painting the house all day. I will be weighing again on June 8, and my goal is to be at 190 by that time. I seem to have been losing right about 10 lbs per month so I think that is an obtainable goal. I am really proud of my progress this far, and I look forward to what is to come!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Figuring it Out

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how I was feeling like there just were not enough hours in the day. After almost two months of this, I think I am figuring it out. I was always feeling overwhelmed because I felt like keeping my house in order was falling to the wayside because of my workouts. I am very particular about how our home looks, so this was definitely an issue for me. I was working out every day after work, and still having to cook, shower, and pick up the house. If I had any errand to run at all my whole night was thrown off. For the past two weeks I have moved my swimming workouts (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to in the mornings before work. I am not a morning person by any means, but to do this I only have to wake up one hour earlier than normal. I am able to complete my workout, come home, shower and still make it to work on time. This has helped me tremendously, because now I have three nights a week to get things done. If something comes up after work, I don't have to skip a workout to take care of it. My house is looking much better these days. Now if I could only completely catch up on our laundry we would be in business! I know morning workouts are not for everyone, but there is something so satisfying about getting your workout out of the way. There are most certainly days that I have to psych myself up to get out of bed and go, but I always feel so much more alert and energized afterwards. On Wednesday this week, my alarm went off at 6:00 letting me know it was time for my workout. I was not having it, so without even thinking I grabbed my phone and reset my alarm for 7:00. I laid there for about 10 seconds and realized that I was not going to sleep for the next hour, if I had stayed in bed I would have laid there for an hour and fought with myself about not going. I decided that I would rather workout for 45 minutes than to lay in turmoil for an hour. I think I made a good call.

Today's workout went really well. I kept my resistance at 8 once again and I was actually able to reach 5.12 miles in my hour. I plan on raising my resistance to 9 on Saturday, so let's see if I can raise my distance as well. Saturday will also be my official weigh in and measurements. I am so excited to get on the scale and see where I am at. No matter what the scale says, I feel great! I hope that you will come back and check on my progress!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

5 is a magical number!

You may have noticed in my last couple of posts that I have been getting really close to reaching 5 miles during my hour on the elliptical. I am here to tell you that I have succeeded!!! I raised my resistance up to 8 today, and I started out going as fast as I could. I noticed that I was at a pace of about a 12:00 mile. I decided to push through as hard as I could and maintain that pace for the whole hour, so that I could reach 5 miles. And as you can see from the picture posted below, I actually reached 5.06 miles in one hour. I was so proud of myself, that I almost teared up. 5 miles has just always seemed like such an unobtainable number, but not anymore. I did a post a couple of weeks back about allowing yourself to be proud of your accomplishments, and I am definitely proud of this one. A 12:00 minute mile might seem so easy for some people, but keeping my pace at a 12:00 mile has been really hard for me. I am excited to see how much farther I will be able to go in the future.

 I plan to start adding some light strength training this week by adding some push ups and low weight dumbbells to my workouts. I want to start toning as I am losing weight, so that as I get smaller I will also start to see some definition in my arms and legs. I also attempted a very small amount of running on Sunday, to see how my knees would do. Brandon and I were walking in the park, and I ran up ahead a couple of times to test my knees out. I did not have any problems that day or yesterday. Today I felt a little twinge of pain when I was squatting down to get something, but it was very minor. Since I don't have a scheduled workout on Sundays I am going to start using that day for running. The doctor told me to try one day a week at first, so I am going to try this for a few weeks and see how my knees hold up. I think that as I get stronger and lose more weight that I will be able to run more and more. Here's hoping!

Thans for reading,
Sarah

Its the most wonderful time of the month...

Today's post is going to be a short one. I was getting really excited about my weigh in today until yesterday afternoon when mother nature decided to pay a visit. I have decided to postpone my weigh in until next Saturday because of this. I am assuming that most of my readers are women and therefore need no explanation as to why I made this decision, but just to cover all bases here is why. Most women feel bloated and crampy during their cycle, and I have that going on and then some. Last year through a series of tests with my lady doctor, I found out that I do not ovulate properly. I ovulate very sporadically and sometimes not at all. This causes me to go longer between cycles. I have not had a cycle in over two months, and because of that when I do have one it is really bad. So needless to say, the last thing I want to do when I feel hugely bloated is to weigh and take measurements. You should know that this did not keep me from going to the gym though. I went to the gym and did my full hour on the elliptical. I had my resistance at 7 again, and my distance was 4.85 miles so I beat my best distance by a tenth of a mile. I am scaring that 5 miles to death and I love it! I hope that you will bear with this hiccup in schedule, but I am hoping that most of you understand. Screw mother nature! With that, I am off to cuddle with my kitties and watch Harry Potter!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Special Day

As you can tell by the title of today's post, today is a very special day. I have been married to my wonderful husband for 4 amazing years today. I haven't given a whole lot of detail about my private life, so I will tell you just a little bit about us. Brandon and I have been together since we were 16 years old, so we have been together just under 9 1/2 years. He started going to the church that I had attended since I was born when we were about 13. We absolutely HATED each other. We fought all the time, in fact we fought so much that our youth pastor pulled us aside right before we left for a weekend trip to tell us that he didn't want any arguing from us at all and he made us hug and make up. Its a good thing he did because we actually started to become friends on that trip. He asked me out 3 months later, and we haven't looked back since. Brandon and I have grown up together, we have also gained weight together. He is one of my main motivations for losing weight. I want to be around to enjoy my time with him and vice versa. I want to be able to run around with our children, when we have them. He loves me no matter what, but I am sure that he will enjoy having a thinner wife, whether he admits it or not. Although today is our anniversary, we decided to celebrate tomorrow night. He has to work tonight, and tonight was an elliptical night for me so I don't get home until 7:00. You didn't think I would skip my run because of my anniversary did you? I'll be honest, I had decided to only run 30 minutes tonight so that I could get home a little earlier and spend some time with him before he clocked in. As it turns out though, he was at a golf tournament that went over schedule, so I got to do my whole hour. I am so glad that I did too because I got my fastest time since doing an hour long work out. Not only did I get my fastest time, I raised my resistance from 5 to 7 so I am very happy about that. I know it might be confusing when I say that I hit my fastest time because an hour is always an hour. What I mean is, usually I am able to run 4.5 miles in an hour. Today I ran 4.75 miles in an hour, which means I beat my last time by a little over 3 minutes. I hope that makes sense. I am really happy with my workouts this week, and I am excited to weigh on Saturday. I hope that you will come back and check out the weigh in. In the mean time enjoy some pictures in honor of our anniversary. The first is when we first  started dating (age 16) and the second is from our wedding.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Your Hair Looks Nice

I am at a stage in my weight loss that is inevitable. That would be the stage when people realize that something looks different about you but they can't quite figure it out. My weight loss is evident enough that people realize that something has changed but not evident enough for them to guess the real reason. So this week I have been getting lots of different compliments from people who just can't quite hit the nail on the head. I have gotten, "That outfit looks good on you", "Your makeup looks good today", and the one that I have gotten the most "Your hair looks nice." I am normally very awkward when I receive compliments, especially about how I look. I have been over weight for a couple of years, so I am not used to receiving them. I normally get red in the face and just brush off the compliment. This week however, when someone has given me a compliment I have just smiled and said thank you. Part of me just wants to yell, "I've lost weight, thats what's different!", but I know that is not necessary. If I give myself another month or so, people will be able to tell exactly what is different about me.

I have tried something new on the days that I run on the elliptical, and I think it has been beneficial. I have started catching up on my shows on Netflix while I run. I love to listen to music to get me going for a workout as much as the next person, but I find myself constantly looking at the time I have left to go. When I am watching a show when I run, I get engrossed in the show, and I just kind of forget about the time. I do find myself going just a little bit slower, because the music really helps my pace. So this week I am going to work on speeding up my pace, but I think that I am going to stick with the Netflix approach. I always want to find new ways to make my workouts enjoyable, and this definitely seems to be working.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Did you ever think you would hear me say that?

If I am being completely honest with you I should tell you that one of the main reasons that I started this blog was accountability. There were other reasons as well such as documenting the process, and having somewhere to spill out what is on my mind during the process. Accountability was definitely at the top of the list though. I knew that if I had even just a couple of people reading my blog, that I would feel an obligation to workout so that I could post three times a week. It has worked too, I have not missed a single workout on a blog day. I have had to move 2 Saturday posts to Sunday because of busy days, but I have not missed one. I am going to be real and admit that there have been a couple of days that if I didn't have to get a post up, I wouldn't have gone. I don't want to let anyone down, and that keeps me going. I was going to have to postpone my workout today until tomorrow because we had a ton of errands to run. We had run all of our errands and also enjoyed a delicious lunch at Cheddar's. We had originally planned on going to see Iron Man 3 with some friends, and we decided to go anyway even though they backed out. We got to the theater and saw how packed it was. Brandon asked me if the show was sold out if I wanted to wait around town for the next showing or just go home. I answered without a second thought, "I want to go home because I really want to get a work out in." Brandon smiled at me and I said "Did you ever think you would hear me say that?" He said no and laughed it off, but it really got me to thinking. I had absolutely no obligation to my blog to go to the gym today. I had already planned to postpone my post until tomorrow, and no one would have thought any differently since I have done that a couple of times. I genuinely just really wanted to get a workout in. Well, it turns out that there were no tickets left so we went home. I got my workout clothes on and went and did my hour on the elliptical. I usually take Sundays as my rest day, but I am planning on making a trip to the gym tomorrow as well. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

Thanks for reading,
Sarah

Even a little improvement is progress

Today was my second attempt at running for an hour on the elliptical. As I tend to do, I had worked it up in my head that I was going to demolish my time from Tuesday. Well, as you can probably guess from the title of today's post, it didn't quite turn out like that. On Tuesday I was keeping my mile between 13:30 and 14:00. Today my mile was consistently at 13:30, not quite a demolishment but still improvement. My first reaction was disappointment, but I quickly decided to let that go. This is only my second time attempting this, so I should be happy with any improvement at all. I have decided that the next thing that I am going to tackle mentally in this journey is setting my expectations too high. When you set unrealistic expectations, you are only setting yourself up for failure. I don't know about you, but especially when it comes to weight loss, if I feel like I am failing I tend to give up. I lost 10 lbs in my first month, and it would be amazing if I lost another 10 lbs in the second month. However, if I don't have the same results or better every single month, it doesn't mean that I failed. It might just mean that I need to change up my workouts. You have to choose a goal that is a happy medium between challenging yourself and something that is unobtainable. After all, life is all about happy mediums, right?

 I have included a picture of the elliptical screen just before I finished. It is a little fuzzy because I was still running. It shows my time at 59:54, distance at 4.51 miles, incline at 10, resistance at 5, and calories burned at 652. It still amazes me that my body is capable of this. See what your body can do too!

Thanks for reading,
Sarah