Over 40 - Christmas Challenge (Closed)

Hey everyone! We are back from our trip to the US (Boston) - a day late and probably a lot more than a dollar short. I hate to even think about the credit card bill. LOL! We did some shopping, eating, sightseeing, went to a couple of ball games...

I ate horribly. Logged everything, but went over my calories every day. Did lots of walking, stairs up and down to the trains, etc. but no "real" exercising. Nothing fast, sustained. Nothing that could be considered "official" exercise. Didn't get my water in most of those days, either. But I'm not going to worry about that now. Because we were on vacation. And I will start fresh tomorrow. I know that I can get back on track because I so badly want it. Eating all that junk doesn't even appeal to me at all anymore, but it's fast, it's convenient, and it's there. It's also cheap. If I had endless supplies of money, I may have made better choices, but at twice the cost of the burger and fries... I don't really want to be paying for this vacation for the next year. LOL! So, it's over and I'm back to it tomorrow.

Oh, yeah. We were supposed to come back yesterday, Labour Day. Then my husband heard the Stanley Cup was going to be in Boston yesterday. Since we were already there, how could we NOT go see it (his reasoning.) Normally, we would leave around 8ish in the morning and it's a full day of travel (with stops for meals, gas, breaks, etc.) so we'd get home around 11 at night. Yesterday, we didn't leave Boston till 3:30 in the afternoon. There was no way we were going to make it home yesterday - I didn't feel like travelling till the middle of the night. So we decided to go about halfway, stay in a hotel overnight and finish the journey today. We left by 9 and still only got home between 3 and 4 (but we had to set our watches ahead by an hour at the border.) Long story short - I'm back and ready to get right back into it.

I did weigh in on Thursday before we left and was down 1.3. Since I usually weigh Saturday, it's only two days early for my weekly weigh in (even though it's four days earlier than the Monday for our group), so I will use that for Sept. 5 and I will weigh again on the 10th and report that for my Week 4 weight (if no one has any objections.) I'm sure it will go up next week as I have to pay for my indulgences, but I will expect a loss for Week 5. So I still think I can make my goal.

Again, I want to thank everyone for their continued support and apologize for my absence during vacation. But I'm back and I'm here for everyone if anyone wants to chat or add me, feel free. It looks like I missed a lot of posts while I was away, so I could not read them all, but it looks like everyone's still doing a great job. Congratulations to all - keep up the great work! Together we can do this!

My goals for this week are to get back on track:
1) 10-12 cups of water a day (since I became a "heavy drinker" I don't feel 8 is enough, I find I feel dehydrated still until I get up to the 10 or 12 mark.)
2) walking at least 3km every day
3) staying under my calorie goal all seven days
4) eating a lot less sodium
5) eating lots of fruits and veggies


SW - 287
GW - 265 (Dec 25)

Week 1 - 282 (Aug 22)
Week 2 - 282 (Aug 29)
Week 3 - 281 (Sep 5)
Week 4 - xxx (Sep 12)
Week 5 - xxx (Sep 19)
Week 6 - xxx (Sep 26)
Week 7 - xxx (Oct 3)
Week 9 - xxx (Oct 10)
Week 10 - xxx (Oct 17)
Week 11 - xxx (Oct 24)
Week 12 - xxx (Oct 31)
Week 13 - xxx (Nov 7)
Week 14 - xxx (Nov 14)
Week 15 - xxx (Nov 21)
Week 16 - xxx (Nov 28)
Week 17 - xxx (Dec 5)
Week 18 - xxx (Dec 12)
Week 19 - xxx (Dec 19)
Final - xxx (Dec 25)

I totally forgot to weigh in, I will do so in the morning....Keep up the hard work everyone!!

This weeks goal is to try some new type of exercise. I want to either start c2k5 or hit the Latin Heat class on Friday. ( I'm not a great dancer, but they look like they had such a good time when they come out of the class ) I think it's my gyms version of zumba. Oh yea...and to lose some weight ....move scale move....

Sounds like LAFitness to me. I go to "latin heat" on Fridays and wish I had another free day to add more that is because I am doing C25K for now. As a ex non-runner I highly recommend it. Anyway enjoy!

Aloha All,

I joined this challenge because one of my MFP friends encouraged me to do this. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the 50 peeps participating in this wonderful challenge!

Today was a tough day because I was with clients from 10AM to 2:30PM and ended up being extremely hungry and dehydrated. I had them follow me in the car to a second appointment and thankfully, I had water and a granola bar in the car. I was loosing it until I consumed these items! Big "Ahaha" moment... always have something in your car, purse or back-pack for these moments.... Aloha for now, Maui Sue

Oh my heck! I am getting so frustrated!! I ended up weighing this morning because I "felt" like I had lost! OH NO! I gained the 3 pds back that I have lost!!! :mad:

Not only that what decides to visit me this morning! TOM!! Ugh! I have been so good and working out, even when I don't want to and I have to make myself! I have been great on my eating etc.

Sorry to be such a downer the last few days! I refuse to give up but dang this is frustrating!!

Congrats to all those who are doing great!! :drinker:

Pressing forward.....

Jenn

I have completely lost control over every aspect of my life and at this point, I'd like to just crawl into bed (it's 11:00 a.m. and I'm at work) and cry until I fall asleep.

How can I get it back? I'm overwhelmed! When I left home this morning (after over-sleeping by 1-1/2 hours) I promised myself that I would FINALLY take a walk around the block (1.2 miles). I was feeling like my back might actually be able to handle it. But right now, I just don't care. Too many things that are out of my control are affecting my day & my mood & my motivation.

What can I do?

I have completely lost control over every aspect of my life and at this point, I'd like to just crawl into bed (it's 11:00 a.m. and I'm at work) and cry until I fall asleep.

How can I get it back? I'm overwhelmed! When I left home this morning (after over-sleeping by 1-1/2 hours) I promised myself that I would FINALLY take a walk around the block (1.2 miles). I was feeling like my back might actually be able to handle it. But right now, I just don't care. Too many things that are out of my control are affecting my day & my mood & my motivation.

What can I do?

YOU CAN DO THIS!! I totally have been feeling like you lately and I literally have to make myself workout and just keep telling myself to be patient and to track my food etc. I even gained the 3 pds I lost today and just wanted to TOTALLY give up but I get on the boards and the groups I am in and see the inspiration there and that helps keep me going. Go for your walk, I promise you will feel better about it, just keep pushing thorough the desire to quit and move forward! WE can do this! My life is really stressful and seems out of control too, we just relocated from Utah to Illinois and it has been a harder adjustment than I thought it would be. I have no friends here, and friends seem had to make...so it's been quite lonely. Among other stresses as well but if you just take baby steps and make one goal for yourself everyday and do that, you will be great!!! When you feel you can do more than do that!

Hang in there ok!!!! :flowerforyou:

If you don't mind, I am going to skip my entry for this week. I was on vacation in Portland OR and wasn't near a scale Monday. Today the number is a little scary, but I think that will settle back down to normal in a day or two. I plan to jump back on the scale next Monday.

I hope you are all having great successes!

I think this is a stressful time of year for so many. I too feel like my schedule is slightly out of my control. My daughter, my mother, jobsearch activities. I just want my healthy exercise and making healthy food schedule back. Sometimes we have to be patient and let life happen and like others have said find a way to do somthing healthy. I did ok with Labor day weekend but yesterday there was leftovers, a long meeting, and my daughter going back to school. I had to put off my plan to complete C25K :grumble: . I have been working on this program all summer and I can't even get any time to complete it. I just had to say do it when you can. Wait till later in the week to get back to things you want to do. I didn't have any exercise, I was behind on my water and I was going over with calories since I had just lowered my goal. I can relate to you CISalmon. I just had to let it go and I decided to do what I could with the water. My husband wanted a walk but I didn't want to overdo it and ruin my run/walk chance today so we settled on a small walk that wouldn't be enough to address the calorie problem but at least would minimize it. Somethings I couldn't control and others I blew off and just a few I did what I could about.

So this morning I checked my e-mail to make sure that I didn't have any phone interview etc. and went running early. I knew my son had interviews and needed to get up mid-morning and I had said I would meet my mom for lunch and a meeting with a retirement community rep. I just did it. I completed the C25K program! Usually I run on Tuesday Thursdays and this week I ran on Wednesday. I hope to do better with food today and I actually did better than usual yesterday with water. And really when I thought about it I may have gone over by more calories than I usually do :ohwell: the few times I go over a bit but I still didn't go over my deficit amount. That means I was still under maintenance calories for the day. So I wasn't going backwards the way I felt I was I just wasn't being able to work as hard as I wanted to towards my health goals.

So sometimes we need to be flexible and find a different way around things and try to see things from a different perspective. Sometimes we need to pat ourselves on what we do accomplish even if it is as little as brushing our teeth. I think we discount so much of the routine stuff we do do for ourselves and other people. Tanny's walking on vacation may not have been postable but I bet it went along way to keeping her healthy.

... I have lost 51 lbs so far and only one person besides my husband has commented... oh well!

Have you purchased new clothes for your current size? I found that when I ditched some of my now baggy clothes, people started to notice. I don't want to go overboard buying clothes (at least until I get to my target size), but one or two things might be reasonable.

Huge victory today for me! Having a horrible week, as some of you know I have a close friend in a bad marriage situation that came and stayed with me over the weekend, however I managed not to gain any weight.... well now I just found out my father in law is going to have open heart surgery in a couple of weeks which is hard enough but we had our family vacation planned that week. So I had to cancel the condo at the beach for the week...work is rough today and I was headed out to eat something terrible for lunch.....until I was intercepted by my work buddies, who kindly swept me off to Subway instead of greasy fast food! So I got to go out and vent without giving into emotional eating... sometimes it is just babysteps!
Hope everyone is having a great week! xo