Here is my mess... I have everything 'tucked' under the porch for now. I am lucky to have a south facing door, lots of sunlight. My son, Nate, has a very odd glow about him. LOL! He is such an angel!

I signed up for a Groupon today... It is a 2 month pass for W3 - It seems like all classes (Zumba, Turbo Kick, Yoga), but it is close to work and will give me something to do when my son is down in southern IL for the summer being spoiled.

I have put my NROL4W mission on hold... I enjoyed the first guy I went & talked to at X-Sports, but the second guy could less about my goals. Plus this is one of those gyms where it seems like EVERY female is wearing Lululemon and EVERY guy looks lke cast member from Jersey Shore or is too busy looking at himself in the mirro.... I think I will go back to the tiny little YMCA free weight room, which has all kinds of people. Ugh!

**Hope I fixed the size issue on the picture... If not sorry!

My 1/2 pound blip worked itself off between Sunday am and this morning! :flowerforyou: :flowerforyou: :flowerforyou: (Talk about panic for nothing! :laugh: )

Thanks to my 10 sessions of 30 mins on the Step-Bench, I am 31% (849 flights of stairs) up the face of Mount Everest - at this rate, I should reach the summit before the month is out! :bigsmile:

My side challenge for Week 2 of the "Lose 5 pounds in May" Group is:

"Week 2 Side-challenge -

WE ARE FINISHERS!!

This week you are challenged to do something you have BEEN PUTTING OFF (PROCRASTINATING)!

SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH YOUR TEAM!!

An extra .1 lbs bonus will be given for every team member who completes this task. Please make sure that it is something you can finish this week. Have a great adventure!

(Some of you may argue that this is not a weight loss thing. However, as we look at changing our bodies, feeling better about things we have been putting off is going to help each of us feel better about challenges we will need to tackle in the future).

Brainstorm with your team for ideas of what you can do.... "

If this was you .... what would YOU get around to doing this week?

Wow, great work on the step bench! That is so awesome, I love that you "climbing" Mount Everest. It sounds like a good goal to have. Also good to see that the half pound blip worked out

I like that challenge a lot, I sort of wish it was ours XD If this procrastination thing could be anything I'd probably say finish this historical novel I've been trying to read for a bit. I started it two years ago, put it aside, restarted it a couple weeks ago but haven't touched it in a while.

It's keeping me from reading new books -_- I don't like to start a new book with others open. Bah. Maybe this week I'll finally finish it!

Here is my mess... I have everything 'tucked' under the porch for now. I am lucky to have a south facing door, lots of sunlight. My son, Nate, has a very odd glow about him. LOL! He is such an angel!

I signed up for a Groupon today... It is a 2 month pass for W3 - It seems like all classes (Zumba, Turbo Kick, Yoga), but it is close to work and will give me something to do when my son is down in southern IL for the summer being spoiled.

I have put my NROL4W mission on hold... I enjoyed the first guy I went & talked to at X-Sports, but the second guy could less about my goals. Plus this is one of those gyms where it seems like EVERY female is wearing Lululemon and EVERY guy looks lke cast member from Jersey Shore or is too busy looking at himself in the mirro.... I think I will go back to the tiny little YMCA free weight room, which has all kinds of people. Ugh!

**Hope I fixed the size issue on the picture... If not sorry!

Oh wow, that's fantastic! I love it and your son it's adorable!

Good to see everyone making progress!

Jenn- nice plants, and cute kid!

I spent the past few days out at the Tradewind's Resort on St. Pete Beach. (I live really close, so I let the rest of my family sleep there, and I stayed home at night with my baby.) We went paddle boating, and my mom and baby jumped ship on me half way, so I had to paddle the boat back all by myself going against the wind. It was rather hilarious to blow around at the mercy of the wind. LOL. and we went swimming for a while in every pool they have. lol. walked down to the beach and such. It was nice. And no sunburns!

I'm still not weighing myself. I don't need a number to tell me how I'm doing every week. Some weeks are bad, others are pretty good.

Have a good one everyone. Keep up your awesome work!

Well, yesterday I was fighting a bug, sore throat and headache all day so sadly No exercise yesterday either. Went to bed early, slept well. and today sore throat is gone. Yayyyy!!!! So will go for a run when I get home from work. Hopefully the week will end better than it started --exercise wise. Have a great day all!!

No reason why the challenge couldn't be some kind of "NEWT" in the future :laugh: I will pass on other ones as the weeks go by!

Personally, it is not uncommon for me to have multiple books going at the same time - one beside the bed, one for on the bus etc etc.

Week 1 was "Do something you have never done before that is good for you" (left wide open, so it could be either food or activity or self-estime related)

If you want to climb Everest (or some other mountain) yourself, google Stairway to Health and sign up, then every day enter the number of flights of stairs you went up. Because my Wii counts the number of steps I take when going "up up down down" on my 6" step-bench (average over 3000 per 30 min session) I divide the number in half (to count only "going up") then divide the result by 17 (the number of stairs between floors in my office building). I am usually at 88 or 89 flights per 30 minutes.

If you actually WALK UP flights of real stairs (at home, office, shopping mall, StairMaster at gym etc) count those and that is what you enter.

haha I approve of that idea! I always try to keep other goals in mind - from what I've seen of internet weight loss groups (say on tumblr) sometimes it just seems like there's focus too much on what the scale says and people forget to think about their mind. Got to keep a little sane and remember it's just as important to work on loving yourself/self esteem when losing weight.

I have a few going too. It bugs me and this one book is just on top of the pile XD

If I wasn't already doing the Body Revolution (Jillian Michael's 90 program thinger) I would totally sign up for that. I'll keep that in mind for afterwards though, I like a challenge and it sounds brilliant!

Day 45 in a row for me! And last night's 70 mins was entirely "mountain climbing" - 207 flights of stairs (most since I started recording, but not most I have ever done) I am 40% of the way "up Everest" now.

Good morning everyone, TGIF!!!!! It's been a long week. Left work last night with stuff undone because I wanted to go to Zumba. I missed Zumba monday because I got out of work late, and didn't want to miss another class. I had intentions of going back to the office after class to finish, but did not. Urgghhhh!!!! Wish I would hurry up and win the lotto!!!! 8 ) have a great day everyone

Happy Friday Huffles!!

Wow, what a week I have had. It's actually a bit of a blur looking back and it's almost 11pm here..I'm really not sure how I am still awake as I've survived on very little sleep over the past 4 nights. For some reason, I thought that I finished school on June 1st, but it turns out I finish on May 25th (the day after my birthday which makes a nice present!) so when I found this out on Tuesday, I really started to panic as I had a lot of work to get done for today. Last night I thought I'd written 9 essays this week, with a further two to produce today but as of this afternoon, I'd written 14 essays (most of them 2500+ words) in the 96 hours. Somehow, probably due to my lack of sleep/energy/will to live (!) I'd completely underestimated how much I'd done but it made sense since I was just completely exhausted and definitely relieved to get home at 5pm today. I have no school until Thursday now so I am beyond excited about getting to relax and catch up on sleep, though I have work tomorrow but I'm sure it'll fly by.

Unrelated to school, I suffer from recurring tonsillitis. I get it on average 7 times a year, plus a lot of viral infections (generally 'untreatable' through antibiotics) and I've become immune to some antibiotics for the illness. Over the past 5.5 years I've fought long and hard to get my tonsils removed but I've been unsuccessful this far. I'm going to study Nursing in September and I will come across children with no immune system and an infection such as tonsillitis could potentially kill them, so I made an appointment with my doctor who has finally referred me to an ear/nose/throat specialist to have surgery on my throat. The doctor I saw is new to the doctors I go to and hadn't met me before and was surprised that given the career I am going in to, plus the state of my throat (very enlarged tonsils, a lot of scarring from infections, general nastyness!), I hadn't been referred before had. He also noticed I have an extremely large cyst on my throat, it's nothing serious but I will need to have it looked at, so again building my case for surgery.

Enough about me -- but yes, what a week I have had!!

How are you all doing? Really well I hope. It's great to see everyone doing so good in the OWLs, NEWTs and H.P challenges. I haven't looked to see if this weeks results are up, though I don't think they are yet. When I submitted our stats, we had really strong figures so I think we may have made a great start on week 1. Well done everyone!! Just a reminder that you can weigh in anytime between today and Monday, and that all weight must be posted by Monday night (your time, whatever that is and wherever you are) in order for it to count and get submitted.

Enjoy the rest of your Friday everyone!

In support of using my EA Sports Active 2 more (once I get to the top of Everest) I bought a discounted "Supreme Strength Building Kit" (see Picture here : http://london.kijiji.ca/c-ViewAdLargeImage?AdId=378883796)

I did my 60 mins step (178 flights of stairs) plus Rhythm Boxing Advanced for my extra 10 mins and as additional aerobics that works the upper body more. That puts me at 46% of the way up the mountain.

Hi all, well tomorrow is weigh in day, I have not done as well this week as I did last, either with the diet or the exercise, but haven't totally fallen off the wagon either, so hopefully weigh in won't be too painful. Went for my first run in the rain of the season. In the summer months, I love running in the rain but in the spring the rain is usually too cold for it to be enjoyable, but today was nice. Next week, I am going to work on increasing my numbers of runs. Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there.

sounds good!

What I THOUGHtT was going to be a day with more walking turned out to be more like a road-rally orienteering event. But really enjoyed my day of touring artist studios and gardens in West Carleton. They were just more spread out than I realized.

So I didn't get all my exercising in, had a Pub Food supper out, and so my Sunday Weigh-In is artificially up a 1/2 pound (if I had weighed in on Sat morning, it would probably have been down!) Last week, I was up a 1/2 pound on the Sunday because of our wedding anniversary dinner on Saturday, but had "processed" the 1/2 pound by Tuesday.

And NEXT Saturday, I will be attending the first wedding in The Next Generation ... my oldest niece. So I better apply Lessons Learned and not wait til Sunday to weigh in! :laugh:

Happy Mothers Day to all moms! I hope everyone had a great day/weekend
Lost 0. 5 pounds this week. I'll take it. Had a great bike ride this weekend. I can not believe my race is in 1 week. It is not quite real yet. It it will be at race orientation next Saturday! I think most of you know my race of choice, but for those that don't, it is a sprint triathlon. This is a short one... 250 yard swim/9 mile bike/2 mile run. This is my first race "away from home" though it is only about 30 minutes from where I live.

Molly I am glad you are surviving the end of school! Have a great time biking! I didn't know Mother's day is in March in England. Learn something new every day! I hope you are able to get your surgery before you leave for school. I think that it will make a huge difference in the number of times you get sick.
Moe-Glad to hear you are going to give stretching a try. I love it now and actually look forward to it at the end of a workout. Plus it add extra HP
BeeJ sounds like a fun, relaxing weekend and another one coming up!
Suzie-great attitude I like to think of no weight loss or a weight gain as "practice for maintaining my goal weight"

urgh i just realized i haven't been putting my exercise minutes on the spreadsheet. i'm so over not using MFP at work I don't care anymore. I'm going to start logging again from work, it's messing me up big time and it's so much easier to log in food. ladies monday morning i'll be back in action and on the boards.

oh fyi all you teachers out there i need some advice, please. i'm looking at teacher prep problems to do a career change...yeah i know right in the middle of a bad economy but what can i say i'm a glutton for punishment.

i'm in california and apparently i have to take all these tests cbest cset and something else. it's kinda of a headache but i just wanted to know how you came out to be a teacher.

oh yeah and i got a bunch of workout dvds that i haven't had time to try but will be working on that this week.

I was a little confused, looking at the Week 3 & 4 Month Challenges - Are there NO NEWTS to earn in Wk 3, but healthy snacking NEWTS in Wk 4, or was that just a transcription error? :huh:

Thanks in advance for clearing that up! :flowerforyou: :flowerforyou:

Also wondering about this too! I was afraid of bringing it up though haha.

Bought a food scale today and I've just had my first meal with it - makes such a difference! I have been really overestimating how much chicken I've been eating, apparently. Yay for accuracy, I just want to have better ideas because it looks like my current ones are off a bit. Not going to get too crazy/obsessive haha