Obesity Epidemic

Sitting here eating lunch of chicken soup and pudding, I stumbled across an interesting article about obesity on the Washington Post.

According to the article, one's chances of obesity increases when someone in their social network becomes obese. Wow, crazy... I hope I haven't had a negative impact on my friends over the last few months.

Luckily, I know from person experience that the opposite is true. Among obese friends and family members, drastic weight loss also seems to be epidemic. About a year and a half ago, my mother lost a bunch of weight. Her weight loss has since influences several of my aunts and uncles, as well as me. So I guess mom deserves a big thanks!

And while I'm here, I figure I'll share my accomplishments to date: I have lost 40 lbs in the past 8 weeks (an average of 5lbs a week), and I'm really hoping to keep that rate up.

I'm still struggling a little with exercise, though I've been traveling a lot lately, which tends to get in my way. Every week I manage to meet the 2000 calorie goal suggested by the program, but I'd really like to be hitting 3000 (since research suggests that that is what people who successfully keep weight off do). So to help me achieve that, I've decided that I need to try really hard to do about 500 cals of exercise a day (which would work out to 3500 a week).
I think i need to set a "start date" for going back to the gym... I have a friend that has said she'd be my gym buddy 2 days a week, so perhaps we will start going soon.

Well, I need to get my traineo page up to date!

Pictures!

I finally got NN to take a picture of me the other day for the blog. Things are going well. So far I've lost just shy of 36 lbs (my traineo is confused because i don't use the decimal places ;-) ). Most of the pants I wore don't fit any more and I had to ask dad to punch new holes in my belt. (I bought a belt when I started and I could just get it to the 1st hole, now I need to use the 5th hole!)

It's been an exciting journey and hopefully you can really see a difference in the picture
Anyway! have a lovely day! I'm off to make a coffee and chocolate shake

Trips, Treats and lack of motivation

For fear that my friends may beat me up, I decided to update this blog.

So far things on the diet are going very well. After lamenting my boredom to my educator A, I started having 1 HMR entree a night. Its pretty nice to actually get to eat something once a day and then entrees are pretty tasty. I don't do much with them, except spice the hell out of them.

A also sent me a bunch of recipes to try. I intended on trying to make some (like brownies!) before I drove home to visit the 'rents because solid food is much better then liquid when driving. Anyway, for a variety of reason, it didn't happen, but now I have all the ingredients for a bunch of tasty things. And speaking of tasty things, I bought some of the little crystal light things to add to bottled water to try mixing in shakes, and they are great! Finally I've found an acceptable way to make fruity shakes! YAY! I've also taken a liking to the puddings.

Anyway, as I really get into my groove with my diet, I'm finding that I'm getting a little bored of my exercise program. I like DDR a lot, but playing it every day is getting a bit old. I'm thinking about buying myself a PCGamerBike. They seem pretty cool, and they mean that World of Warcraft could be my work out. Anyway, I'm going to deliberate over them for a day or too.

Speaking of new toys. I'm also really considering getting a Smart Phone (specifically, this one: Verizon XV6700). One of the biggest reason is to help me get better about keeping a food diary. I almost always forget my little ledger and I've already lost one since I started the diet. I figure I hardly ever leave my phone at home, so I slick smart phone might really help me improve in this area. I tortured myself over the past week researching the features and applications that can run on the phone, but I'll probably wait a little while on that purchase, but maybe not ;-)

Oh yes, and to save the best for last. I've finally broken the 30lbs mark! I still really need to get some pictures... Maybe tomorrow...