Merry Christmas and a Happy Weigh In!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! I hope you all are enjoying this weekend at home, rather than at work, like me! Oh well, I'm not too mad about it. I do have today off, but have to come back in tomorrow.

Tonight we are going to Charlie's aunt and uncles house. I'm sure there will be some really delicious, bad for me food there! I'm going to TRY to have small portions. I just have to keep telling myself "This isn't your last meal! You're not starving! There will be other yummy meals in the future!" lol but lately, I haven't been the best at self control.

The Holidays are difficult at work. Everyone loves to bring in good treats like cookies, cakes, candy, bread! All enemies! But they're so darn irresistible! Especially when I'm sitting in the lounge on break, and they're just staring at me saying "You know you want me!" Arghh!! So hard to resist!! Tonight I had 4 amazing cookies that a co-worker made! OMG they were awesome! And someone brought this really good Challah bread! So obviously I won't be doing so well on carbs today!:)

I'm really excited to be writing this blog becauseeeeeee... I weighed in! And it was good!!! Actually, it was great! Here's what I got...

Previous Weight - 155.2

Current Weight - 152.8

Weight Lost - 2.4 Pounds(!!!)

Total Weight Lost - 78.6 Pounds!!!!

*Jumps around for joy!*

Yes, I was soooo excited when I woke up and decided to get on the scale. Chief was next to me as I stepped on it. When I saw that number, I was in shock! I always double, sometimes even triple check it, and it was still the same! I yelled to Chief "Yay Chief!! Mom had a loss! Mom had a loss!!!" lol!! Yes, I am his Mom:-)

Now I'm just trying to figure out what it is that got me over my plateau! Since I started doing so many things different at once, I can't really pin point it. Or maybe it was the combination of all of it? I cut way back on my carbs, started taking my thyroid medication again, and started drinking LOTS of green tea!! So who knows!:) I just know that I am thrilled and now have more hope for reaching my goal of 150 by 1/9/12!

I visited my tattoo artist, Dee, yesterday before work and we looked at her schedule. She's booked for all of January!!! So that makes getting my goal reward tattoo out of the question. So I think to give myself more time to save up money, I will wait till March and make it a reward/birthday present:-) And hopefully a "congrats" present too, for HOPEFULLY getting the PGFD job! Of course I will definitely let you all know when that happens. I am patiently waiting to hear some good news!:-)

Well folks... I have 30 minutes to go at work! I cannot wait to get home! Charlie and I are going to open presents when I get home since he and I both work on Christmas! I'm excited:-) Then Sunday morning I'm going to my brother Rick's house to open presents with my family. This year we did Secret Santa for the first time! I'm really interested to see how that goes! lol:-)

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!!

Love,

Anna

Hurry Up 2012

Guys, I don't mean to be so grumpy, but I'm really ready for this year to be over! Not because it's been bad, but there's just so many things to look forward to in 2012!

That, and the fact that this month has just been really bad, food wise. I'm ready to start fresh and not have so many holidays to eat crappy for!

Although, I must say I've done pretty well with my eating lately! Yesterday I kept my carbs under 50 grams and my sugar under 30!:) Yes!! That is crazy good and I'm pretty proud of myself!:)

For those of you who have been following me for awhile now, you might remember a blog I wrote awhile back about my Amaryllis flower. I used it as a metaphor for how I had let myself go, but was slowly working on making myself beautiful again. I also mentioned wanting to get it as a tattoo for my 1 year anniversary/reaching my goal. That's still the plan! I really like this picture of it, so I think I'm going to show this to Dee and see what she can come up with:)

Speaking of the Amaryllis... once again I kind of abandoned it after it finished blooming this year. I left it in the guest room and sort of forgot about it. While I was rummaging through there the other day, I noticed it and picked it up. It was so dry! I felt super guilty and took it over to the sink and drenched it in water! I'm trying to rehabilitate it again, so we'll see! Luckily I haven't done that to myself yet! lol:)

I forgot to put this picture up from Rayna's birthday last week:) She made this GIANT, gluten free, chocolate, vanilla, coconut cake! It was really good! And gigantic! lol.

I can't believe she's 16 already!! It's funny how I can remember back to conversations Roch and I would have about her. Being like "Man, I wonder how it's going to be when Rayna is our age!" and now the time is here! Sure does make me feel old!!

Time is flying and it's really depressing. But I must say, I think I am making good use of the time I have. Rarely do I just sit around on the couch and "be lazy" anymore. I don't let myself get "bored" like I used to. Whenever I have free time, it's usually spent working out, and I love it!

Ever since losing weight, I've felt like I've been growing up in reverse. I feel like a whole new person who has to experience things all over again. Especially when it comes to social activities. The old me was way too shy and embarrassed to go out and drink. I never felt cute in anything I wore, and I just felt so uncomfortable in social situations. It sucked. I was like a freakin hermit!

Now? I feel reborn!! lol! Seriously... it's like I'm getting to experience things in life all over again, but as a different person. I'm having so much fun, enjoying life to the fullest! There's no limits to where I can shop, I don't feel embarrassed to dance, I actually get compliments! It's awesome and I couldn't be happier. I never want to go back to my old ways and I hope this blog will be a constant reminder of how happy I am at this point in my life! I can always look back on this and think "Wow, I was awesome!" lol:)

So since I've been doing the whole "low carb" thing lately, I've had to change up my fruits a little bit. When I researched low carb fruits, it said berries were the best. So I went out and got some blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. I'm now addicted! I've been eating them every day, sometimes multiple times a day! They're just so good! And I got these from Target! Definitely good quality:)

A lot of people ask me what I eat, as if I'm on some type of diet where I eat the same thing every day. Not the case! But, I do tend to eat a lot of the same things. And I'm not a huge cook, so most of my meals are small things that I just put together and call it a meal! But if you want to know some of my staples, here is a list!

Light tuna fish
Chobani Greek yogurt
Light string cheese
Baby carrots
Eggs
Spinach
Trader Joe's light champagne vinaigrette
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Canned chunk chicken
Tuna or Salmon fillets (comes in pouches like tuna fish!)
Chicken tenderloins
Berries of all kinds
Cottage cheese
Almonds
Milk
Green tea

Those are just some of the things I ALWAYS get when I go shopping. I can't decide if I'm going to cut out the Greek yogurt or not. It's so good for protein, but the carbs are a little high, so for right now I might cut back on it! Even though I really love it:(

So I'm off today (after I get off work in the AM) and I have so many things I want to do! I definitely am going to see my tattoo artist. Then I'm going to visit Phebe and hopefully Connor too! He's visiting for the Holidays, so definitely gotta hang out with him:) I'm not sure what I'm going to do exercise wise. I want to get a good burn in! We'll see how the weather is. If it's nice, I might do some outdoor running! *Crossing fingers* :)

As for a weigh in, I think I will weigh in Friday or Saturday morning. We'll see... Nowadays I'll sometimes just weigh myself randomly and just record it if I have a loss. Not so much pressure anymore:)

Alright peeps, thanks for reading about my life:) <3 you guys!!

Anna

Now & Then: Tattoo

Hey guys! I'm in a much better mood than the last time I blogged. Could be because I'm not at work, but there's also other reasons!:) First of all, aren't you proud of me for writing another blog in the same week?! That's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself:)

Today is my last day off, before going back to work tomorrow night. Boo! But it's been a really good 3 days off, and tonight should be fun! We're going over to my parents house to have dinner with them, my sisters, and her boyfriend. She's finally introducing him to my parents! So nerve wracking! I remember those days lol. I think she's more worried about how the house looks, than if they'll like him or not! He's a good guy though, and she really loves him, so I think they'll like him too:)

We're having an Italian dinner... !!! Yum, but definitely not going to go well with my "low carb" thing I've got going on. Oh well, it's one day! Besides, I did SO awesome yesterday! I only had 65 grams of carbs, and 24 grams of sugar!! That is amazing for me... not quite sure how I pulled that off:)

So I'm not quite sure what did it, but I had a loss! Could it be cutting back on the carbs? Or, because of my "good luck" dinner that seems to bring me a loss quite often? lol:-P Thursday was Rayna's birthday, and we went out to Sardi's. Normally I get the ceviche de pescado. But, I had ran 5 miles that day, in preparation for that night, so I had 1,700 calories to spare! I got 1/4 white meat chicken, fried yuca, and fried plantains. Mmm mmm mmm! Love it! It really wasn't the healthiest choice, but hey, I wanted to splurge a little! I also had cake and ice cream that night!! So I call that my "good luck" dinner because in the past, when I've had Sardi's, I always seem to have a good weigh in the next day! And no, it's not because it gives me mad diarrhea or anything like that! lol:-P

I'm not sure what prompted me, but I decided to just weigh myself and see how much I had probably gained from pigging out the night before. Here's what the scale said...

Previous Weight - 156.4

Current Weight - 155.2

Weight Lost - 1.2 Pounds

Total Weight Lost - 76.2 Pounds!!!

Wow, I was so happy! Finally, FINALLY... a loss!! Ahh, it felt so good!:)

Oh, another thing I kinda forgot to mention that COULD have been affecting my weight loss... my medication. As I've mentioned before, I take medicine for Hypothyroidism. Well, generally that helps with weight loss, but I can't say how much it really had to do with all of my weight loss. But, I had forgot to refill my prescription and I was slacking, then when I did refill it, I never went to pick it up and yeah... I'm just lazy when it comes to other things besides working out! lol. So needless to say, I wasn't taking my medication for about a month or so. (Don't hurt me Allison!) So I'm wondering if now that I have it back in my system again, if that'll help me out some? I guess we'll see:)

I am SO CLOSE to my goal, it's ridiculous!! This is going to be a real nail biter, seeing if I can lose the last 5.2 by January 9th!!! If I haven't lost it by January 6th, I'm just not going to eat for 3 days!!! ..... just kidding guys:) I wouldn't do that lol:) But I really, really, really hope I can do it!!!

You're probably wondering what the deal is with the title of this blog. Well I will explain that now:) I took a picture of my tattoo the other day and it made me realize that I've had my sugar skull/geisha chest piece for a year now! What?! I can't believe it's already been a year! But it made me think "Hmm, I wonder how I looked when I first got the tattoo?" So I got on facebook and looked back at my older pics, and found a picture I had taken right after it was finished. I got the outline on December 10th, then finished the color on December 21st:) Here is a side by side comparison.

Sorry, it's a little revealing;) I think the biggest difference is my face, obviously. But I can see it in my arm too. And now I actually have collar bones, yay!:) Speaking of tattoos, I need to go see my artist, Dee, and talk to her about what I want for my goal reward!:) Even if I don't reach 150 by January 9th, I'm still getting it! I think being this dedicated for a year is deserving of a tattoo:)

Well, time to stop putting it off and go work out!! Gotta get a good burn in for the pizza and spaghetti I'm going to have tonight... ahhh!! Hope you all have a fun & safe weekend:)

<3 Your Biggest Loser,

Anna

Feeling Stuck

As usual, I'm sorry it's been so long! I swear, every time I've been at work, I just feel too tired to write a blog! And when I'm at home, I don't even think about it!:( Besides, I have no losses to write about, unfortunately!:(

Here's my calendar for November. So I exercised 24/30 days. That's not too bad. I had a long streak going on, but had to break it when Charlie was in the hospital. I did a lot of running in November, it looks like. My first 10 mile run! I'm a little proud of that:) I did a 10k and a 5k race. I was supposed to do another 5k race on the 26th but as you can see, I was sick:(

So my last weigh in was on 11/20. I've weighed myself multiple times since then, and nothing. No loss, no gain. It's seriously frustrating! I'm trying not to let it get to me, but of course it's hard to not lose weight after all the hard work I do! Plus, it's coming up on a year soon that I've been doing this, and I really wanted to get to 150! I'm not so sure if that's gonna happen now:/

Baby spinach, grilled chicken, mozzarella, egg, vinaigrette:)

Since I haven't really changed anything since I started losing weight, I decided to take a different approach!
Low carb, high protein. At first I just upped my calorie intake from 1,200 to 1,490 to see if that would help. I also started eating most of my exercise calories back. That didn't seem to do much, but I do enjoy having the extra calories!

I'm going to keep that my limit, but I'm not going to purposely eat back my exercise calories. If it happens, it happens, but I won't force myself to eat if I'm not hungry.

So when I asked for advice on MyFitnessPal, a friend on there mentioned low carb. I've done a little research on it, and so far I like the idea. There's a thing called Ketosis. It's a state your body goes into when you restrict your carbs a lot. Basically it causes your body to start using energy from fat, rather than muscle or wherever else it takes it from. That might not make sense, but you can Google it... that will explain it better!

Regardless, it made sense when I read it. So I'm going to at least aim for low carbs. I've been watching how many carbs I eat the past few days and I've tried to limit them. It's definitely harder than I thought. Especially since a lot of the food I have right now is pretty high in carbs... Bagels, Greek yogurt, bread, fruits, cereal, etc. So my plan is, once I finish eating those foods, I will stock up on some low carb stuff and not get anything like that anymore. Although I love Greek yogurt:-(

Once I get rid of all those things, I'm going to make my daily goal to stay UNDER 100 grams of carbs a day, but preferably closer to 50 grams a day. I really hope it gives my body the kick start it needs to lose weight again!! I mean come on, I'm 156. I'm 5'5. 150 is NOT asking too much! I know people that are my same height and weigh less than me, so I know it's attainable. I don't even want to be THAT skinny. I just want to be healthy and in shape. And I wouldn't mind getting rid of that stupid little pooch, either!

The Hot Chocolate 15k. Yikes. What a mess! Don't get me wrong, I did have fun. But, it was a terribly organized race. There were 20,000 people running and the National Harbor definitely couldn't handle that many people. Luckily, we made it there on time. 6:45am like they had asked, for a race that started at 8:00am. Well, it didn't start at 8:00am... it started at 9:00am!! An hour delay, which according to the race officials was due to an accident. Speculation was that really there was just a TON of traffic from people trying to make it to the race, so they waited longer for runners to get there.

That's nice of them and all, but for those of us that had been waiting there for over 2 hours, it wasn't so fun! It was about 35 degrees out. FREE-ZING COLD! Our feet and hands were numb by the time we finally started running! The course was weird. The beginning was along Indian Head Highway and it was quite dangerous!

It was very crowded and people were almost getting hit by cars! Not only that, but there were lots of hills, sharp turns, and areas where only 2 people could fit side by side! It was really tough and I wanted to give up so many times, but I never quit! I finished in 1:30! Not too bad for how hard of a course it was! The delicious fondue and hot chocolate afterwards made up for it, a little bit! It was definitely yummy:)

So now we're getting close to Christmas... *sigh* I'm really not a huge fan! It's the same thing every year, and I think it gets worse the older I get! I just can't seem to get in the Christmas spirit as much as when I was a kid! We did put up our tree, and that helps a little bit. But I'm so unmotivated! I haven't bought any gifts yet... oops!

Rayna's 16th birthday is on Thursday. I'm going over there and then we're going out to Sardi's

I'm ready to get this year over with. I just want a fresh new start! 2012 is going to be a good year! I already have so many things planned... well, races mostly! lol. Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, Columbia Iron Girl Half Marathon, Warrior Dash, ??? I'm sure many more!!

Staying on a healthy diet during the holidays is just really tough, so I'm ready to NOT have so many things messing up my good eating!:)

Ok... that's about it for now. I can't think of much else to talk about. I'm really going to try and be strict about updating this thing at least weekly! I promise, I'll try! Even if it's just a quick little update:)

Keep your fingers crossed that I lose some weight SOON!! Thanks friends:)

Anna