Good Monday Morning!
I hope everyone had a great week and was platinum star all the way!

Beeps- You do such a great job articulating your goals and identifying what changes you want to make!

CutMD- I am new to this group and have just been really benefiting from the little extra challenge to stay within cal goals. Sounds like you have had a rough road, girl, my heart goes out to you!!

I did stay within my cal goals this week, Platinum Style according to Amy! However, my workouts have been a F-. Short runs here and there, etc. Nothing great. My goal this week is to get it DONE. We have had the inlaws here as well as health stuff complicating the picture. The way I feel in my skin is both cal related and workout related!! I admit though, I am struggling to grasp where I need to be calorie wise. My TDEE gives me something like 2000 cals a day. I just cant see that making sense when so many of my MFP friends are working out HARD and STRONG and eating at lot less. But I tank regularly, no fuel for workouts etc. Cant seem to find the sweet spot, so working on that.

Happy Monday ladies!

Hey shander. Good to hear from you. I agree logging helps keep me on track better than most things. And don't compare yourself too much to your friend. We are all different and are quick to notice flaws in ourselves, but notice good traits in others (and fail to see them in ourselves).

Steph, I hear you on the lacking workouts. I have had a lot going on too and I have been doing my best to get my workouts in, but last week I only got in three official workouts. I was active all weekend: prepped and paninted the exterior of my house for a couple hours, walked a bit, etc. but did not get 5 workouts. Eating was ok. Nice job on your platinum!

Amy, hope you balanced your weekend out.

Beeps, sounds like you have a good plan as always. I think weekly weighing is ideal; more than that and you'll drive yourself crazy! I too am shooting for lots of water. I just don't feel right without it.

That's all I can see.

So, last week was okay. I'm putting forth the effort, so there's that. Still just have so much going on. Vacation is next week and I am very glad. Work has also slowed down, so this week should be nice and relaxing. And my boss is gone. He's a great boss and doesn't get all up in my business or anything, but him not being here allows me to have an even more flexible schedule. Maybe some early days in my future?

My plan for the week:
1. Workouts: Monday - lunch run (bag is packed; I couldn't get up this a.m.); Tuesday - lift during lunch; Wednesday - run to the park and walk home, paint during nap time; Thursday - circuits class; Friday - may take a walk after work, but may not. We leave early Saturday morning so I'll likely ba packing, doing laundry, etc.

2. Food: Stick with my meal plan. I did some prep work yesterday. On the menu this week for dinner: red chile beef lettuce wraps, tofu sweet potato curry, turkey meatloaf, and of course sweet potatoes with ground turkey, salsa, sour cream, and cheese for lunch.

3. Get to bed by 10-10:30. I was beat last week. I went to bed at 9:30 on Friday night and slept 10 hours. It was great.

4. 15 glasses of water daily.

I also hope to get some activity in during vacation. I'll probably take my jogging stroller. May try to do some HIIT or circuits in the a.m. too with my sis while we're there. Totally doable.

I hope this week flies by! Have a great week all.

And don't forget to report in for the final week of the star challenge. I quit logging for a bit, so I got no star again.....

Silver star for me again....just barely I was 950 over last week. But, I got in all my workouts so I am proud of that. The past 2 weeks I have been averaging about 1700-1750 cals a day. I want to be more around 1500 cals a day. An easy fix for this would be to give up wine....but I know that is probably not going to happen.

Today I did Chalean, tomorrow I will run and Wednesday and Thursday will be Chalean and then Friday morning we leave early for vacation. We are going with another couple and their 2 year old. I will try to get in runs when possible, but its a road trip with many stops, so I will do what I can.

I get a Gold star this time - was hoping for Platinum but with my daughter home it just didn't happen... I want to get in a run before it gets too warm so I will respond to everyone and get my goals up this afternoon!

Yes, congrats to all the star-challengers!

I had a verrrry good weekend. 3 deficit-calorie-days in a row! So, that has convinced me to drop my calories EVEN lower and I am back to 9,800 per week. Hopefully I can just remain consistent and let the chips fall where they may!

I ended up with a bunch of extra unplanned cardio this weekend....which makes me HANGRY....so, had to REALLY watch that. I hit the weights, today, to make up for all that boooooooooooooooo cardio, lol!

I have decided to really work on "building strength", which I haven't worked on for awhile (was kind of going through the motions in my workouts). So, have dropped the reps back to 8-, and will try and go up in weights once per week....which might mean sometimes my reps will be in the 5- or 6- range.

I'd like to beef up my deadlifts and my weighted hip thrusts....if I could be doing 140-150 lb deadlifts by end of summer and maybe 225 lb hip thrusts, I'd be pretty thrilled with myself!

Thanks for checking in all. I'm just waiting for Kelly and then will post the star challenge.

Hi Everyone!
I finally have a moment to update my goals and respond! I had a wonderful weekend with my daughter! It was so great to get to see her and spend some time with her. I didn't run or workout over the weekend but I did a longish run on Friday. We did spend the entire afternoon Saturday at the outlet mall walking and talking and walking some more - it is a huge mall with 3 separate sections of stores and we pretty much walked all of it. On Sunday we went to the dog beach and ran around with my crazy dog so we got some activity in just not a workout.

My goals for this week and for June in general:
10,500 calories per week - get to Platinum!!
Hit my macros or at least be close
Run 5-6 days per week and get up early to go (this is a must do)
Weights 3x per week
ABS and Core - daily
Be consistent!!

CutMD - Welcome (back) - like Steph I am pretty new and found the group to be awesome for support and camaraderie! Hope you can get your Ex out of the picture soon but you need to lose the weight/get strong for you and for how great it makes you feel.

Beeps - hang in there, go lift and they will be gone before you know it!

Congratulations Steph, Ramalem, and Ris for your platinum - hoping to be there to this week!
Ramalem - if you feel the need to paint more you can come visit me :laugh:

Abigail - your hike over the weekend sounds wonderful and I have the same fear of trail running. I like it when I get to do it because it really can get you away from everything.

Can I just say I don't know how so many of you can drink so much water (14-15+ glasses)! I try to get in 8-10 glasses maybe 11 if I am really pushing it but I feel like I am going to drown and... I have to pee all the time!

Have a great week!!

Amy- I did not expect cash for my wedding at all, but still actually received quite a bit at the wedding. (We also did a dollar dance that I DID NOT WANT TO DO, but my husbands aunts insisted). I mean the point of registries is for a wedding gift right? I don't even know what happened to our cash to be perfectly honest, it did just get absorbed into the bank account, in fact we probably used it to pay off some of our wedding! :laugh: The cash we did receive was anywhere from $50/pp to $500 I think? Any amount is appropriate and I think if they want cash, giving what you were planning on spending for a gift is totally acceptable.

Amy - My sister just got married in February and I've been to a couple other weddings over the past few years. Over here in RI it seems like you get a gift for the shower and give $$ for the wedding. My sister was grateful for anything of course! It's honestly up to the gift giver! I think if you decide to give cash, just give the amount you would spend on a gift. A gift card is always great too, the bride and groom may want to make a larger purchase and feel bad about putting expensive things on the registry!

Please let me know if you have an opinion, or if you had a different experience. I always thought a gift was better because the cash just gets absorbed into the joint finances and you want something they can remember-oh remember how we got this towel from so-and-so...:flowerforyou:

I am in Canada....I totally only give cash - to everyone for every occasion. Maybe it is because I am lazy (yay! no gift shopping!) or maybe it is because I don't give a *kitten* about a "thank you" card....I just figure that whomever gets cash can certainly use it for somethin'.

That is MY opinion only....likely shared by zero. I am never popular with my opinions, lol!