Kari’s Blog

Hello my buddies…just wanted to let you know that I’ll be off the computer for a couple of days.  My dear aunt went into the hospital earlier today with kidney failure and what may be a serious stroke, and things aren’t looking very good.  I spent some time with her tonight and am taking the day of of work tomorrow to be by her side.  It’s hard because she’s not always lucid and sometimes doesn’t recognize some of the family, to the point of getting scared when we’re around.  Then other times she does know us and seems comforted that we’re there.  She’s been in poor health for some time but this is a major downturn.  Please keep my family in your thoughts / prayers / whatever good get-well vibes you have, and I’ll post an update when we know a little more.

Thanks for being here.  It helps a little bit to even write it out and know that a few people out there will be thinking of her.

Wow….Friday & Saturday I spent all day cleaning, shopping, and preparing for the party we hosted Saturday evening.  The party was a success, I think everyone had a great time and it all went off very smoothly.

Unfortunately we had tons of food left over!! I always seem to overestimate how much we’ll need.  Some of it is fresh veggies (yay!!) but there are also tubs of fat-filled dips & cheeses in my refrigerator now.  I don’t want to waste them but I don’t want to WAIST them either, if you know what I mean!!  I’ll have to find creative ways to get rid of them without fattening myself up!

Sunday we cleaned up from the party and just spent the afternoon relaxing….we were exhausted from all the stress of party-prep, etc.  Watched a couple of movies, and worked on a cross-stitch project, which I hope to have finished for Christmas.

Today the scale hadn’t moved at all…which doesn’t surprise me, actually.  I was really good during the week, but I had several treats Friday & Saturday, and I only exercised twice.  At least I didn’t gain!  This week there are no excuses.  I’m so relieved to finally have that party behind me, I can focus in on my exercise again!!

This week all I can think about is getting ready for a cocktail party/baby shower that I’m giving on Saturday night.  I’ve been planning it for a couple of months and now all the last minute things are falling into place, but there still seems to be so much to do - not the smallest task of which includes cleaning my entire house!!!  It’s not horribly dirty, but I like to have it SUPER-shiny-clean when I have company over for a big party like that.  So that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow…that should count as exercise, right, since I don’t do it every day?  Totally counts.

Let’s see….Tuesday was bowling night, and I did well.  I ate a tuna sandwich before we left so that I wasn’t tempted by the food there.  I brought my own bottle of water so that I wouldn’t drink soda.  And I even managed to turn down free pepperoni pizza when the team next to us had leftovers they were trying to get rid of!  I knew that I was full from my sandwich, plus it was after 7pm and my rule is no eating after 7:00!! 

Bowling kept us out late though, so I didn’t get up to do my Fit to Strip DVD before work….I brought my workout clothes and went for a 4 mile run at lunch, though, so I still got some exercise in, though it was cardio instead of toning.

Speaking of toning - after taking a few months off this summer, I’m going to start seeing my personal trainer again.  A friend and I go together and he gives us a 2-for-1 discount basically - she gets to attend my sessions and I attend hers, so we split the cost, and it’s fun to do together.  We took the summer off because she owns a business where they arrange international student exchanges, and summer is their busy busy time so she was working practically 24/7 and couldn’t make it to the gym.  But starting Oct 2, we’re back into it two nights a week and my goal is to get my upper body toned & ready for that strapless wedding gown!!

Yesterday I entered all my food into Sparkpeople at the beginning of the day and stuck to it, so I ended right in my target range.  Even got in all my calcium & iron, which is where I usually miss!  I’ve entered my food for today and am right on track….here’s to another day in my range!

I just spent 15 minutes writing an entry only to have it not appear when I hit ’submit’!  D’oh!!  So here’s the condensed version.

- I had a great weekend at the coast.

- I shopped for & bought a TON of clothes (including six pairs of new shoes) - all incredible deals.

- DF & I cooked a beautiful dinner on my bday.

That’s the main points of the birthday stuff. :)  I also lost 2 lbs since last week, but looked back at my weight graph and see that I’ve been gaining & losing those same 2lbs for the past 6 weeks or so.  I’m falling in to maintenance mode when what I really need is to be focused on losing the last 10 lbs so I can feel great about ordering my wedding dress in the right size come November!!!  Help, I’m in need of motivation!!

I also (FINALLY) received my new exercise DVDs in the mail.  I rode the exercise bike for an hour this morning, so I’m going to do the stretching one tonight and the toning one tomorrow morning - I’ll let you know how it goes!

Remember when yesterday I said that “I WILL run this evening”, so that I could come blog to you about it??  Well…..DF had different plans. :)  When I got home he told me we had made reservations at one of our favorite steakhouses, to celebrate our 3-year anniversary of when we met.  The anniversary is actually tomorrow, but he knew that we’d be heading to the beach, etc, and it’s our tradition to go to this particular restaurant for anniversary, so he was sneaky & made reservations without telling me!  I was verrrry excited!!

So much for the calories though….I had a green salad with roquefort cheese dressing, an 8oz filet mignon, garlic mashed potatoes, a lovely glass of pinot noir, and an ice cream sundae for dessert.  It was awesome! :-)  Actually when I added it in to Sparkpeople it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared!

The moral of the story, though, is that I broke my promise to run last night! LOL   But I did go at lunch today and do 6 miles.  My pedometer thing is broken so I don’t know what my pace was, but I’ve done this loop several times and know it’s almost exactly 6.0 miles, so I’m sure about that part.

Today has been a good one, stayed on track with eating, etc.  Tonight our bowling league starts back up so I have to face my nemesis:  The Evil Tater Tots!  Luckily I have superhero strength of willpower and will avoid them like the evildoers that they are! 

Well, after all my hard work & exercise in the past week to get rid of those pounds I gained back over Labor Day, I weighed in this morning and saw no change from last week’s number.  I’m 100% sure this is due to Mr. Tom’s arrival, so I know that I’ll see that number fall at next week’s weigh-in, but it’s frustrtating nonetheless!

Today I’ve been doing well, I’m sucking down water like it’s going out of style in order to try to control the water retention issue this week, and I’m eating the healthy foods I brought to work with me.  I didn’t get to run this morning but I’ll probably go this evening after work.  No…I WILL go this evening after work!  I’ll commit to that right now so I know I have to blog about it tomorrow and I won’t want to have to admit a failure to you guys!

I leave Wednesday evening to go to the beach for a long weekend, won’t be back until Tuesday the 19th.  The beach house we’re staying at doesn’t have a scale so that will be a nice break for me from the constant obsessive weighing.  Unfortunately the house also lacks internet access, so I won’t be blogging for those days and won’t have Sparkpeople to help me track my calories.  I’ve decided that I’ll log my food manually and enter it in when I get back - it’ll be a fun challenge to see whether I can actually apply what I’ve learned over the past few months and eat well without the daily logging of exact calories.  The only exception to this will be Saturday, when DF is cooking me a delicious dinner for my birthday. :)  That evening I’ll eat what I want!

The other good part about going to the beach is that there are lots of great places to run, so I’ll definitely be able to keep up my exercise and enjoy the beautiful scenery while I’m at it!

Whoa….yesterday I decided that I had taken too many days off from my exercise routine and that I needed to get back into it!  But I guess when I do something, I do it all the way!! Here’s all the exercise I did yesterday:

- Biked to the train station for work (3.5mi)

- Ran 5.0 miles at lunch

- Biked from work to volleyball game (2.0mi)

- Played 60 minutes of volleyball

- Biked from volleyball courts to train station (2.0mi)

- Biked from train station home (3.5mi)

Holy moly!  I went a little crazy, methinks.  I also managed to stay within my reasonable calorie range and drink all my water! 

It was a good day! I’m taking all the positive exercise energy from yesterday and trying to roll it into today so that it carries through to another awesome day. 

All my buddies have posted some great updated pics of themselves lately…..I wanted to put up a new one of myself, but I can’t find any recent ones!  I’ll work on that this weekend…or maybe next week at the beach, although the thought of me in a swimsuit is still a bit scary!!

I am just absolutely amazed at the difference in my attitude, my feeling of general well-being, my motivation, etc when I’m eating well & exercising vs. when I’m not.  Even though I only took four days off from exercise (ran on Saturday, then didn’t run again until today), I felt sluggish, slow, and, well, FAT!  I’m glad I was able to get out for a run at lunch today, even though it was warmer than I expected it to be!

After completely disregarding Sparkpeople and my food log over the holiday weekend, I got back into it yesterday and logged everything in.  I ate over my range by about 100 calories, but that’s definitely closer than I got all weekend so at least I’m headed in the right direction!!  Today I’m on track to be well within my range so I guess I was just easing back in.

I’m STILL waiting to receive my “Fit to Strip” and “Stretching for Beginners” DVDs from Amazon.com.  They say they’re supposed to ship between Sep 1 & Sep 18….so it may be a few more weeks before I receive them.  Bummer.

Next week I’m going to the beach for a long weekend - Thursday through Monday.  I can’t WAIT….I wish it was TOMORROW morning that I was leaving for the beach instead of next Thursday!

I don’t even know who was inhabiting my body this weekend.  I honestly gave no thought to what went into my body.  I ate so much bad stuff, didn’t drink my water, only went for one run on the 3 day weekend, etc.  The whole time I was blissfully unaware of what I was doing…..it was strange.

I’m not going to list all my individual food sins from the holiday weekend, but suffice it to say that I did not live up to my own expectations.  And in return I got a 3 lb GAIN at the scale from what it said last week.  At least some of that is probably water weight from not drinking enough and eating lots of salty foods. 

I fell off the wagon in the major way.  But I’m back on track today and I will definitely say good-bye to those 3 nasty pounds before my next weigh in.

I’ll blog more tomorrow because this blog is about my failure on the weekend and I don’t want to dwell on it!!

I am really looking forward to this long holiday weekend!!  We have lots of fun things planned with friends and family.  We’re staying in town but we’re going to some BBQs, a soccer game, and maybe the state fair if we find time!  The “Caution!” warning in my blog title is a reminder to myself that with all the socializing and being out & about I need to pay careful attention to my food - pick the healthiest options and watch those portions, Self! 

The one “pass” I’m giving myself is at the state fair.  I’m not going to eat anything & everything I want to, but I am planning in advance to allow myself 1) a huge mound of shaved ice…..yummmmmm  and 2) a greasy, buttery, doughy, cinnamon-sugary elephant ear.  I swear to you, buddies, there are times I would give an ARM for one of these delicacies.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  The fair only comes once a year, and this will be my indulgence.

However, I do need to be careful with those two “treats” on Sunday to balance it out with some extra exercise, because weigh-in is Monday and I want to see a loss!  So I’ll try to go for a good long run on both Saturday and Sunday to get those cardio minutes in.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!