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...

Accomplish and Proud

Its been a rough week, but right now I have a distinct feeling of accomplishments. Just 3 weeks into the diet and I have already lost 20 lbs. I lost nearly 5 lbs this week! And I only managed to exercise 1 day all week. I'm really looking forward to another successful week.

I did, however, make the mistake of starting my exercise at midnight... which means I'm not remotely tired even though its bedtime...

In other news, my TSH levels came back high again, which is a strong indication that I have Hypothyroidism. I'm not terrible surprised because there is family history, nor am I terribly upset about. I've suspected for sometime that I have some thyroid problems, though, I can be a bit of a hypochondriac. Anyway, I'm seeing a doctor about it all early next week, to we'll see what happens. I wonder if the reason it never showed up before was because I've always been sort of sedentary and my thyroid was functioning well enough for my sedentary life style, but as I kick it into gear its having a hard time keeping up.

Oh... and I just noticed... all of labels were either neutral, or negative... That was silly of me... so I added a positive one!

:-) Next week, I'll post my Italian Pancakes recipe! Go me!

Behind for the week...

For the first time since I started my diet, I'm behind... I haven't done any intentional exercise in the last 4 days... I was away at annual conference for three of those days, and did a lot of walking, but I don't count that a PA because the walking wasn't with the goal of exercising. As a result, I'm not going going to make 2000 for the week... unless I do something crazy, which is unlikely...

It is especially unlikely because upon return from annual conference, I got very sick... I had a hard time eating sunday and saturday and only had 4 shakes both days... which is below my minimum prescription. I'm gonna get in trouble for it though. The most difficult part was the shear amount of dairy that I'm required to eat and it really didn't sit well when I was feeling sick especially since I had a virus attacking my digestive tract...

Anyway... hopefully today will go better.

Weekly number and update

I'm at annual conference right now (its the legislative meeting for my district of the United Methodist Church) which I really think is my first real test on this diet. I think that I have managed to plan ahead well enough to make sure that I'll be ok during the weekend. I decided to make tons of chicken soup crackers, which seem to be a good way to make sure that I have something I can eat if I get hungry. I was really glad to get the recipe for them when I meet with A, my health educator in the program. All I needed to do was to just follow the recipe and it worked really well! And they are actually tasty and CRUNCHY! So nice to eat something that crunches!

Anyway, what you all really want to know is what my number for the week. This week (Thursday - Wed. Morning) I lost 6 lbs!! That means I've lost a total of 15lbs in 2 weeks! So cool and encouraging. Anyway, I'm sure that I'll lose less next week, especially because getting my PA in for this week will be tough.

Oh, and I hope to post a pancake recipe soon. I'm still getting it perfected.

This post is brought to you by the number 9!

If you happened to look at my traineo page you my have noticed that I lost 9 pounds in my first week of the HMR program. I'm really excited about it and I really wish I could expect that every week... but alas, that isn't the case. Anyway, its really encouraging, so I thought I would share the positive result with internet land ;-)