Weigh-In #43: Awesomeness

First thing's first: 226!!!  A new low!!!!  WHOOOOPEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
Item #2: I cut off all of my hair, took a picture, and am changing my main side-bar pic from:

OMH I look like my mother!!!

And now, for the main theme of today's post ... KAYAKING!!!  Snackers and I have been wanting to go for years and even considered buying our own kayaks but because neither of us had ever been kayaking before we always hesitated to buy them because ... well what if we didn't like it right?  So we got this coupon, a full freakin' day on the river for $30!!!  BOOYAH!

The rental was so out of the way, which totally explains the massive discount.  It was this little mining town about 45 minutes from Henderson and about 7 miles from the Colorado River.  Stepping out of the car felt like stepping back in time and we couldn't stop just staring in all directions.  It's teeny tiny but so amazing!

That is the mine entrance up on the hill

We headed over to the little store, signed the paperwork, paid our measly little fee and loaded up our kayaks!

Me and Snackers in front of the store: We both look so much smaller than we did the last time we took a photo standing together!!!!

Me, my car, and our kayaks!  Ready to go!!!

 First we paddled straight across the Colorado river to explore a cave that the rental place told us about.  We got about 20 feet into it, saw our first snake, and high-tailed it right back out again.  That's ok, we didn't need to see it that bad! lol.  After that we paddled to a cliff where people were cliff jumping.  I've been before, not a fan of heights, but this was Snackers' first time.  He's totally hooked!!!

I'm rocking a spare tire in a wet shirt here but oh well, I look awesome compared to 10 months ago!!!

Snackers gets truly air-born for the first time in his life and LOVES IT!

After that we paddled back to the car, had a granola bar and some water, then headed back out again.  We cruised up and down the river, found a quiet little cove where we had some sandwiches, did some more cliff jumping, did some swimming ... and maybe some discreet kissing :) and then, alas, our time was up so we loaded up the kayaks and headed back to drop them off.

Me on the left, Snackers on the right.

And then we had to high-five, paddle style, for one more pic before packing up!

This was absolutely the most fun thing I've done since my family had our own horses and I used to just let my horse open up and run until she felt like stopping.  We're hooked ... guess we'll have to budget some kayaks into our savings plan - hopefully before the season ends because we both wanna go again!  I had a few more calories today than my 800-ish average but I also burned a lot more calories.  We hit the water around 8:30 - 9:00 and by 11 I felt like I was going to pass out so I ate the granola bar and drank the tea/ginger ale.  By noon I felt like I was hungry again and we had the sandwiches we packed and some water.  By the time we got home I was feeling hungry again but I showered and got cleaned up before supper.





Food:
120 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 Fiber One bar
1 homemade sandwich
>>sourdough, genoa, muenster, and EVOO mayo
2 mini-fish taco's
12 oz green tea and ginger ale
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Daily Caloric Intake: 1,002




Activity:
Packing up the car for kayaking
Loading the kayaks - yep, I totally helped load them at the rental place and at the river when we were done
Unloading the kayaks - I unloaded them with Snackers at the river but I was inside doing paperwork when they unloaded them at the rental place.
Swimming / Kayaking / Hiking (we got out of the water and hiked around in several places in addition to the snake-cave)
Shopping: After supper Snackers and I couldn't resist, we hit two sports stores to "window shop" / "price" kayaks of our own to find how much they would set us back.

A New Do

So I got a wild hair yesterday when Snackers and I went for haircuts (another discount coupon, I'm loving those things!) and I cut all my hair off.  Yep, shoulder length, shaggy, with bangs.  Still trying out different styles but loving it so far.  I'll try to remember to take a good pic when I find a style I'm happy with.




Food:
154 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 egg white omlette
>>w/ spinach, mushroom & tomato
2 slices what toast, no butter
>>w/ pico de gallo
2 servings baby carrots
1/4 cup hummus
12 oz green tea and ginger ale
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Daily Caloric Intake: 769




Activity:
Shopping: 1 hour (3 stores)
Packing/Prepping: Got an AWESOME coupon, full day rental of a two person kayak for only $30!!!!  So we're going first thing in the morning and we got our coolers, food, drinks, life vests etc. out of boxes in the garage so we'd be ready to go.
Cleaning: Bathroom and kitchen

An Unexpected Side Effect

It was recently stated that it doesn't seem like there are many veggies in my diet.   ALL Healthy Choice steamers include veggies, I had salad yesterday (lettuce, tomato, onion, olives), I had greek salad for the last three or four days in a row.  That's cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, garbanzo beans, and asparagus with chicken and vinegar.  On my chicken sub I had tomato, onion, cucumber, and olives.  When we had chinese food I ordered beef with broccoli.  And that's just in the last five posts (and yes I know tomatoes are a fruit because of their seeds but that is a technical distinction, nothing more).  For breakfast this morning I had a veggie and egg white omlette - mushrooms, onions, olives, tomatoes.

I have stuck with this blog, and will continue to do so, because it keeps me accountable on my food choices.  I've mentioned this before but when I feel the urge to eat something that I know I shouldn't I think 'I can't post this on my blog' and more often than not I don't eat it.  Sometimes I give in and when I do I post it and the feeling of having to do so helps me resist the next dozen or so urges to eat something bad again.

But blogging has had an unexpected side effect.  It seems many people in the world have an opinion and they like to share it, which is fine.  But all too often when I choose not to take someone's advice, or when someone offers advice based on incomplete information and I attempt to 'fill in the blanks' I tend to offend them.  Suffice it to say, in the end, I am going to ultimately make the decisions that I think are best - or that are available options for my personal situation.  It doesn't mean I'm not reading everyone's comments but I can't take everyone's advice because several of you are offering precisely opposite suggestions - I can't eat more and less at the same time so someone's advice must go unheeded.  Please try not to take it personally.

To recap: I am not starving myself.  I eat on a schedule on most days, I don't wait until I'm hungry, I don't allow myself to feel like I'm "starving".  If I do feel hungry outside of my schedule I compensate with a reasonable snack like peanut butter or sunflower seeds and I am open to suggestions if they are for things that are readily available and affordable and practical.  I don't mean to offend but sometimes I do get frustrated with having to repeat myself for new readers and sometimes that frustration comes out in a non-diplomatic way.  I would also like to invite all new readers to please take a moment to review the articles of faith post, permanently located in the upper left margin of this blog.  Some things have changed as I've progressed but the basic principles of my mission have remained the same.





Food:
102 oz of water
1 veggie and egg white omlette
2 slices wheat toast with pico (great jam substitute)
1 skinny cow ice cream
4 tbsps hummus
>>w/8 baby carrots
1 serving green tea and ginger ale
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Daily Caloric Intake: 862




Activity:
Grocery Shopping: 1 hour
Walking: (Distance unknown but about 30 - 45 minutes)

Coming Back Down

Weighed this morning, 227.5 - I'm coming back down again but the question is, with so little physical activity this week, how low will I go?  My lowest weight ever thus far was exactly where I am at now and I have three days before the official weigh-in so the question is this ... will I continue to drop and reach a new low (which would be totally odd and hard to understand), will I gain right back up over the weekend like I seem to do every damned week, or will I stall out?  I guess that depends on what I do this weekend but I'm pretty confused - I didn't do anything of merit this week so I can't imagine that I would lose any fat by Monday, water sure.  So if I spend the next three days doing nothing, logic dictates that I will probably stall out right?

But if I spend the next three days exercising, my own personal history has shown that I will probably retain copious amounts of water and have yet another shitty weigh-in come Monday.  I wish I could hook my body up to a machine that would help me to understand it better.

One thing that I do know is that I've been on prenatal vitamins for a month now and I love them!  My hair and nails feel stronger than ever, I'm not shedding hair nearly as badly as I used to, I haven't had any of the problems that everyone claimed I would have from prenatals (constipation, etc), and they don't seem to drop my blood sugar levels or make me sick to my stomach like every other vitamin I've tried so far.  YAY!

They also seem to be improving my mood, along with the low-levels of estrogen the OBGYN has me taking, because I've been a lot less bitchy lately which means, overall Snackers and I are getting along a lot better.  I remind myself of my dad in that regard too - he's diabetic so he'll just fly off the handle over the dumbest things when his blood sugars are out of whack and I've kind of been like that at home.  (Though I'm not taking all of the blame, we've both been stressed throughout this whole house buying process and we're finally both starting to relax a little).

We still have some unpacking to do around the house, stupid little things that we've put off because we didn't really know where we wanted to put them or because we just didn't need them right away.  I'd like to rearrange the living room again (still trying to get it just right), and clean out the guest room (full of furniture we've decided to just sell on craigs list).  I don't know if it'll happen though, Snackers has another football function on Saturday and we want to go hiking on Sunday ... but I'm an 'a place for everything, and everything in it's place' kind of person so this being half-unpacked thing is starting to make me twitch. lol




Food:
130 oz of water
1 Healthy Choice lunch
1 small salad
1 serving whole wheat pasta
>>w/chicken and tomato basil sauce
1/2 cup green tea and ginger ail
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Daily Caloric Intake: 820




Activity:
Rearranged the living room: Moving furniture, cleaning, unpacked two more boxes and put stuff away.
Walking: 1/4 mile
Sprinting: 4 long sprints, about twice as long as usual.  On grass, felt great!!!

Dying Foot

Oops.  Ok so last weekend Snackers and I went looking for two things that I needed to make walking/exercise easier.  The first item was a pair of compression pants which we found at Target for super cheap and I love, love, love them.  The second item was a daytime brace for my PF which we found at Walgreens.  The instant I put the little stocking like wrap on I felt relief ... it was like a whole new foot!  I wore it all the rest of Sunday evening, took it off before bed, and put it back on first thing Monday morning.

Wore it all day Monday, took it off before bed, and put it back on first thing Tuesday morning.  When I woke up yesterday morning I went to scratch my leg at the top of the brace and it felt bruised but the relief that the little sock brought to my heel was too wonderful so I simply folded the top down a smidge and went on with my day.

Last night at football practice my whole foot started to hurt so I took the brace off and my foot and leg were purple everywhere that the sock had been.  Two of my friends insisted that I needed to spend some time without the sock because that was bad and I knew that they were right but no sock meant no walking and once I took it off my foot started to hurt even worse, all over ... you know, like when you sleep on your arm and it falls asleep and then starts to ache everywhere due to loss of blood flow.

My foot remained purple throughout practice, though it did start to improve.  When we got home and I told Snackers he looked at it and said he could still see a color difference even though it had been almost three hours since I'd first taken the sock off.  So I guess I'm going to go without it today, which means no walking today ... but on the up-side I weighed this morning and am back down to 228.0.

Ok, so it's definitely still not fat loss, but at least I can take comfort in knowing it wasn't fat gain either.  My diet yesterday felt so much more normal to me!  I had one little hand-roll for supper on the way to practice and thought I would be starving when I got home but I wasn't.  I had a bite of hummus on a spoon because I wanted to take my vitamin and I didn't want it to upset my empty tummy but it felt a lot better to be back to eating less and not feeling like I HAD to eat a certain number of calories.  Cass was right, my food choices lately have sucked.  When I'm choosing healthy food options and just eating until I'm satisfied an 800 calorie average just happens.  When I was actually trying to eat 12,000 + I felt like I was having to either eat twice as much healthy food as I wanted to or eat bad food in order to increase my count.  Maybe that's just the way I am ... different people have different metabolisms after all.  I knew a gal in college (Ki knew her too) that could put down a full rack of ribs with sides at Chili's and finish whatever anyone else at the table didn't want and she only weighed 96 lbs.  Maybe caloric recommendations aren't 'one-size fits all'.  Clearly she needed more calories in her diet on average and maybe I'm just someone who needs less than average in mine.




Food:
140 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 serving peanut butter
1/2 serving greek salad
1 serving sunflower seeds
3/4 chicken quesadilla
5 cherries
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Daily Caloric Intake: 859




Activity:
Walking: 0.75 mile
Rough housing w/Vladdy