Summer Lovin'

I didn't get around to posting yesterday. It was a busy day and I just wasn't in the writing mood. My weight stayed this same this week. I'm indifferent about it, but with August right around the corner, I feel like I really need to get my butt into gear. I'd love to be almost out of the 240's by September first. I'd rather be in the 230's, but I don't want to make an unrealistic goal either. I also have a my second 5k race on September 22nd at the Toronto Zoo. I've still been running, but I haven't been as strict with it, so I need to start making sure that I get my 3 runs per week every week. 

The weekend was pretty busy as usual, but it was a lot of fun. Friday after work I went berry picking with my sister. 

I forgot to take a picture before we picked all the berries lol

yumm

The wagon ride is the best part ;)

Saturday night we headed downtown Toronto for a bbq and Jazz street festival. I got to see a few friends from college who I haven't seen in a very long time, it was so good to see them! 

:)

Giant Slugs! YUCK

Sunday we woke up and headed to the amusement park to meet up with the same group of friends. There was about 8 of us, which was nice because we could split up a bit and do our own thing. I've been there 4 times already this season, so I was more interested in hitting up the water park :) After a few rides and some funnel cake, we made our way to the water park and stayed there for the better part of the day. 

The infamous Wonderland Funnel Cake 

We didn't get home until 7pm, we made some dinner, cleaned up a bit then hit the sheets! It was another fun, but busy weekend and I can't believe it's almost August! Time is just flying and summer is going to be gone before I know it. That being said, it's been one of the best summer's I've had in a while, so I can't really complain :)

How's everyone else's summer going? Hopefully it's been fantastic :)

Feel Good Friday!

I'm feeling really good today. Not really for any particular reason, it just feels like a good day :)

I work about 40 minutes from home, so every day but fridays I carpool with a few other ladies. I'm so glad that I have the option to carpool considering it saves me so much gas and milage! However, I  enjoy driving and I actually prefer to drive alone. I absolutely love when it's a sunny day, me, the open road and some good music! Most fridays I drive on my own, today included. So the day started off sunny, some good music and a nice drive up to work where I could freely belt out the lyrics without anyone judging me ;)  It's a great stress reliever (when the traffic is light). We have EXTREME "cottage country" traffic here during the summer on Fridays and Sundays, but luckily, I drive the opposite way of 90% of commuters, so I just get to point and laugh at all the people driving bumper to bumper.

I decided to trat myself this morning and buy my breakfast somewhere. Normally I would go to Tim Hortons, but my friend recently told me that McDonalds has sugar free options for their new coffee drinks, so I thought I would check it out. I ended up getting a medium, sugar free vanilla latter with skim milk and it was delicious! I also decided to try out their fruit and maple oatmeal and I was pleasantly surprised! Whenever I eat oatmeal, it's always plain oatmeal with my own toppings and a natural sweetner of some sort and I thought for sure that there's would taste like Quaker packets of oatmeal, but it was surprisingly fresh tasting. I would get it again. All in all, it was pretty good way to start the day and it came under 400 calories, not too bad!

On another good note, it rained poured yesterday!! This normally wouldn't be worth mentioning, but seriously, we desperately needed it! According to Environment Canada, up until yesterday, the rain fall in July was 3mm and normally it's closer to 100mm... Crazy! Grass everywhere was crunchy and hay-like and fires were popping up on a daily basis. It's sunny right now, but apparently there's some more in forecast for later. I just hope it doesn't stick around for too long ;)

As long as the rain holds out, I should be going blueberry picking after work! I love berry picking. Saturday I'm heading downtown Toronto to the "beaches" for a friends bbq and Jazz street festival and Sunday it looks like we're heading back to the amusement park. Should be a fun weekend!

Unfortunately, the scale hasn't budged all week. I'm hoping for a bit of a loss over the weekend, but we'll see!!

Ok, that's enough random babbling for today... I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Cheeeeeese!

Letter to Myself

As I've mentioned before, I'm participating in a Lose a Marathon Challenge. The goal is to lose 26.1lbs by September 17th. I'm not sure if I'm actually going to reach that goal, my progress has been pretty slow, but I'm still making progress and that's all that matters. 


Every week we are given mini challenges and it's up to us if we want to participate. Last weeks' challenge was to take photos of every meal and post them, preferably somewhere public. I didn't participate in this one. I love photography, but I just don't have the patience (or memory!) to photograph my meals every day. Not to mention the lighting in my apartment is horrible and my pictures always look like crap. 


This weeks challenge was intriguing though.
WEEK FIVE CHALLENGE: Love Thy Self. Write yourself a Love Letter.  This may sound corny, but please give it a try. Use this neat website here that lets you write your letter now and schedule delivery for a future date. This can help you focus right now, and again down the road. Here are some ideas on what to write...

• Tell yourself you awesome you are
• What are you fighting for? Why do you want to lose weight?
• What you've accomplished today, this week, the past month...
• Your strong habits, things you're good at
• What you love about yourself
• Words of encouragement to 'Lose the Marathon'
• How you are going to feel when you hit your goal? What are you capable?
• Be sure to thank your{future}self for taking the vow to change your life in healthy ways.
There is no need to share your letter with anyone else. This is a personal challenge that only you can benefit from. I hope you take five minutes out of your busy schedule to love yourself this week!

I'm not a writer. I struggle to come up with ideas, well-written sentences and meaningful posts. I'm actually surprised that I enjoy blogging. I also find it very hard to be honest with myself in weight loss and life in general. Which is why I want to take part in this weeks' challenge. 

I've mentioned before that I once got down to 214lbs and I have no recollection of ever being in the 100's ( I was very heavy as a child). Over the past few years I slowly put the weight back on, but my mind still believed that I had maintained some of my weight loss. I was in denial, I didn't want to believe that I gained most of the weight back and it wasn't until I weighed in at 279lbs and my old winter coat didn't fit that I started to be honest with myself. I remember when it hit me that yes, I have gained back 60lbs over that past few years.. it was hard to swallow. Even now, I have a hard time being honest with myself about my current weight loss. It's great that I've lost almost 30lbs, but I'm in denial that it has taken me since January to do so...It's not until I look at my Weigh In page that it really sinks in.

I've decided that I want to write an honest letter to myself, but I'm not going to make it public. Not yet anyways. I'm going to have it sent to me on April 22nd, 2013... the day before my one year blog anniversary. I will post it on the 23rd. I think it will be good timing. If I stay on track, I should be well into the 100's. If I have slipped and not in the 100's (and likely not being honest with myself), then hopefully it will be a good kick in the butt! 

Stay tuned on April 23rd, 2013 to see what I wrote ;) 

Monday Weigh In {Weekend Round up}

Good Monday morning everyone!! 


I'm in a surprisingly good mood this morning considering it's monday AND I slept in. I forgot to set my alarm last night and I woke up at 6:25.. and I normally leave the house at 6:40 to meet my coworkers at the car pool lot. I managed to leave the house at 6:43. It's amazing what you can do in such short time when you have no choice. 


This weekend ended up being a bit more eventful than originally planned and I managed to stay on track, for the most part... My goal for the weekend was to stay away from as many bad carbs as possible, which is always the toughest on the weekend.


I was off Friday and one of my best college friends finally moved back to the area, so I went and picked her and her 8 month old daughter up at 9:30. We headed to Ikea and decided that we'd try out their 1$ breakfast. Even if it was gross, it was only going to cost us a dollar ;) It turned out to be pretty darn good! For one dollar you get scrambled eggs, home friess and two sausage and for an extra dollar you can add french toast, toast, pancakes or bacon. I stuck with the original plate and only ate a few homefries. Breakfast = success. 


After we ate, we shopped around for a while and picked up a few odds and ends. We decided to head over to Addition-elle (my favourite plus size store) because they were having a clearance sale. My friend and I are both going to the same wedding at the end of september, so we tried on a few clearance dresses. I rarely shop with friends, so it was nice to try on pretty things and show each other. The dresses were super nice! However, I'm hoping that I'll be down more weight by September, so I don't want to drop cash on a new dress just yet. I ended up buying a cute tank-top (which makes me feel skinny!) and some jewellery. 


After shopping and lunch, we headed over to the amusement park and went to the water park for the rest of the day. My friend suggested that we go to a nearby pub for dinner. I wasn't too thrilled on this because I knew the food choices would be crap, but we went anyway. We ended up sharing an appetizer sampler. I ended up consuming 3 friend pickle wedges (YUM!), 3 wings, a piece of rib or 2, a few fries and an onion ring... not too bad. 


I spent the first half of Saturday getting some errands done and I also attempted a run. It was so friggen hot, I had to cut it short. That evening we headed to Ross's sisters' for dinner. Again, I didn't do too bad. I had corn on the cob, chicken, a tiny bit of potato salad, spinach salad and a small piece of cookie pizza. 


Sunday was a relatively lazy day, however, we did manage to get out and play a little bit of tennis. It was super hot out and our tennis balls sucked! We managed to borrow one from some guys that were waiting for the court and they were much better.. so I'll be going to pick up some new ones so we can start playing more often. I didn't realize how good of a workout tennis was!!


**


I was anxious about my weigh in all weekend because when I checked on friday, I saw a pretty good number!  I managed to stay on track pretty well this weekend so I was actually looking forward to weighing in. Even though I was tight for time this morning, I made sure to hop on the scale...


Previous weight: 256
Current weight: 251.5
- 4.5 lbs!! 


Woo hoo!! I finally saw a good loss! I passed the 25lb loss mark and I'm so close to the 30lb mark! I would LOVE to see the 240's next week.. fingers crossed! :D

Random Friday Thoughts

As I mentioned in Monday's post, I decided that I needed to stop eating so many bad carbs, so that's exactly what I've been doing this week. My scale body does not react well to bad carbs and I've been eating way too many of them which would explain my recent plateau. That being said, I've been doing pretty well with it this week and I was very excited to see the number on the scale this morning! My official weigh in isn't until Monday, so I must stay on track over the weekend :)


** 


This is the first weekend in forever that we don't have very many plans. It's kinda nice. 
I'm off today so I'm heading out shortly with a friend and her 8 month old little girl. We're going to check out Ikea and we're going to attempt their 1$ breakfast, should be interesting! lol
We might go see a movie this weekend and will likely just relax. Sometimes less busy weekends are harder to stay on track for me because I get bored and start to munch on food which usually leads to a binge. I'll have to make sure to keep busy outside. 


 It's still very hot here and we haven't had rain in far too long. One of the local campground declared it's first fire ban in 8 years this week!! The grass here looks like hay and the crops are suffering. There are a ton of farmers stands by our house and it's disappointing knowing that there's going to be less selection this year and likely a lot more pricey. 


**


I believe I mentioned before that my sister is expecting her first child. It's also the fist grand baby for my parents - very exciting! Yesterday they found out that it was a girl :) She's due december 1st. She had a few complications at the beginning and I'm a worrier by nature, so I hope everything will continue to be ok. I'm going to decorate their nursery for them as a baby shower gift, so I'm VERY excited that it's a girl. I've been pinning a lot of ideas on Pinterest lately and all but one were girl rooms haha. So now I get to start shopping, YAY!. 


*


The lovely Marcia at Minus One Hundred  nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award. So stay tuned for more on that later :)




Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

A new day... a new week!

So this morning I was up one pound from last week... 256lbs. 


I already expressed my frustrations on Friday and I already have a plan of attack for this week. I'm staying away from bad carbs (I will be eating fruit!) and after a week, I'll slowly add some whole grains back in to my breakfasts and some lunches. I'm not doing so well with the Lose a Marathon challenge and September is quickly approaching, so it's time to get my butt into gear! 


That all being said, if my weigh in days were still friday, I can guarantee that I would have been up at least 3 lbs after this camping weekend!! Actually, after all these busy weekends I've been having, I'm pretty sure I'd be well into the 260's again. So at least the challenge is helping :)


**


We had a great time camping and we lucked out and had great weather! The weather forecast kept changing it's mind, so we had no idea if we were going to get rain or not and we didn't! 

This campground ha an awsome pool, that's shaped like a lake and holds 1,000 people!

Self portrait! :)

I've said this many time, but I just love camping! I wish I could do it more often. My family and I used to go camping for the entire summer... those were the days. I'll always be a small-town girl at heart :)

**

On a completely other note, my eyes have been bothering me so much since mid last week. I decided to stop wearing my contacts for a few days to see if it will help. They've (specifically my right eye) been very sensitive to light, I had to wear my sunglasses when outside and I've had my visor down in my car because even the sky seems to bother them. My right eye feels almost like it's dry and when I wake up in the morning, it's super sensitive to the TV. It's odd. I've never really had allergies, so I'm not sure if that's what it is? I'm going to try some allergy meds later today and see if that helps and I'll also wear my glasses for a few days. If they aren't better by wednesday, then I'll make an appointment with an optometrist.  

**

We're in for another heat wave this week. It's funny reading comments from people that have never been to Canada and assume it's always cold there. Well pretty much since June, the temperature hasn't dropped past 80 degrees and this week it's supposed to be 98 degrees and over 110 with the humidity.. YUCK! 


Hope everyone has a great monday and Stay Cool! :)



P.S. I've been playing with the look of the blog (again!) and I think I like this version.. it can stay (for a while anyway). 

Non Scale Victories

The scale has been seriously frustrating me lately and the worst part is that I can't stop weighing in daily. 

That being said, I think I know why the scale isn't budging. Carbs. Too many carbs and white, processed carbs at that. Carbs are not my friend, but I definitely can't live without them (been there, done that, no thanks!). However, I've been lazy with my meal planning and my breakfasts have been including bagels and eggos far too often and my lunches have been sandwiches almost every day. I've been keeping within my calorie allotment, but I know what my body is like and it just doesn't react well to that much processed food. 


When I got down to my lowest weight in college (214lbs), my carb intake was pretty low. I didn't even realize that I was cutting out carbs (I was loosely following a rough meal plan provided by the gym I was attending). A typical day would include a fruit smoothie with soy milk and protein powder, Ryveta crackers with a topping such as tuna, cottage cheese, eggs, etc., turkey chili for dinner and snacks would be fruit and veggies. I certainly wasn't eliminating carbs completely, but I definitely wasn't eating bread, bagels, cereal etc., very often and I felt so good and the weight came off pretty easily. 


I need to get back to this. I don't want to eliminate carbs completely, I need them to feel satisfied, but I don't want carbs to be my main focus of my meals. I went to the grocery store last night and stocked up on meal ideas for next week. This weekend I'm going camping and I'm going to do my best and try not to give in to all the treats (s'mores, chips, etc). I picked up some "light" coolers at the liquor store last night and I'm going to limit drinking to one night. I'm determined to see a loss on Monday, even if it's a small one. 


**


Even though the scale has been frustrating, I've had a handful of NSV's (non scale victories) this week. 


Exercising: 

• Friday, Saturday and Sunday I did Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I went running. 
• While out running on Tuesday, I passed two ladies that were clearly walking for exercise. They both politely moved out of way for me and the one girl gave me a thumbs up and a "way to go!" ... made me feel good about running in this heat. 

Clothing:

• On Tuesday I was digging through my closet to find my go-to black dress pants and couldn't find them anywhere. So I pulled out an older pair that I haven't worn in almost 2 years and they went on with ease! I have no idea how tight they were at 279lbs, because I never even attempted to put them on, but it still made me feel good that they fit :)

Compliments:

•  On Wednesday, an older gentleman (think grandpa-old) that works in our office stopped me in the parking lot and told me that I always look so pretty. That was nice.
• Yesterday I wore a cute dress to work and got a bunch of compliments and another coworker asked me if I lost weight, yay!
•  On my lunch break yesterday I walked over to the grocery store. On my way back, a Cab pulled over to ask for directions. After I gave him directions he said "thank you, thank you, you look so pretty". It was random, but very sweet. 

So overall, it was a good week for my self-esteem lol. It's just another reminder that the scale isn't the only measure for our success. 




I'm off camping for the weekend and it's another scorcher!! Mind you, it hasn't actually cooled off at all and apparently we're on for another week of over 103 degree temperatures (that's 40 degrees in Canada ;) )!! We've had like one day of rain in the past month and there's fire bans everywhere, but luckily, the campground we're going to is still allowing fire.. thank god! Camping without a fire is just not cool!


Have a great weekend everyone!!