ZOMG CAKE!

Ugh... yeah birthday party today. i had way too much cake. i havent had anyt cake in forever and yeah totally ate too much of it today. also had a horrible eating habits day yesterday that i don't even care to talk about. There are 2 birthday parties next saturday and then jett's birthday is the next weekend and then the weekend after that is another birthday party we have to attend. so yeah... no more cake for me this month. lol. just a tiny bite at jett's party and i know i can do that.


i had a crazy crazy weekend this past weekend and im glad its finally over. time to start fresh tomorrow! :)

fatsecret.com

So yeah I've been slacking on my fatsecret page but I've decided I want to start using it again. I've gotten to where i mostly know what calorie amounts are in which things now and so I was just jotting down numbers on a scratch pad i have in the kitchen. I think it will be nice to keep the food log online though and see what food choices I've made overall for each day and keep myself more accountable for them all.

Anyone who wants to friend me on there or send a message or whatever, my username is jen112685

:)

Changing on the inside

I woke up from a bad dream this morning and felt my heart racing and immediately thought - omg how awesome! I'm getting cardio in my sleep! bwahahaha, I guess that's how you know when you're too in to working out. lmao. Also, like a couple months back, I was driving the car down the road and as I saw a speed limit sign posted, in my head i spoke what i was seeing to myself and said 'oh its only 30 calories per hour through here'. :)


Lol... it's just odd to me to notice these sorts of things because it's easy to notice my physical changes. My mental ones are the ones that I'm constantly being surprised by. Last week or the week before I kept having these 'bad' dreams about sitting somewhere eating on one cupcake just licking the icing off the top with my finger. The icing was never ending and each time i picked a piece of it off, there was always tons more left. I woke up in a cold sweat as if I had just had the most horrible nightmare and I felt sooo guilty! This time last year that would have been a really good dream, followed by no guilt! lol.

12 lbs/month

So my new goal right now is to lose 12 lbs per month or more. I was reading Sarah's blog (http://fatsosarah.blogspot.com/) and it dawned on me that my birthday is 4 months and like 2 days from now and I've been wanting to be at 150 lbs by my birthday.

I think if I'm lucky and try really hard without too many hiccups along the way then I should be able to do just that! I know it will be challenge to me though because its always harder to get the last few lbs off and as the months get colder there are more and more birthday parties and special holiday events and all sorts of lame excuses I could use to revert back to my old ways. I'm hoping that my new found strength can help keep my willpower in check and continually lead me to success.

So far I'm a little over 6 months in and am down 75 lbs. That makes an average loss of 12.5 lbs per month. So this is doable... now I just gotta do it!

ahah!

I found an old picture of me wearing that swimsuit I bought at the end of 2006. This picture was from summer of 2007 at six flags. lol, I cropped out sylvester and wile e. coyote.



and this is the picture i took last week. I told you i look better in it now than i did when i bought it! lol.



I know my arms are bigger because i've got lots of loose skin there now but my tummy is much flatter than it was then! and my face is thinner too!

Welcome to 'One'derland!

That's right.... I made it!!!!




I busted my ass off yesterday because I was tired of being stuck at 203 for the last 3 days in a row now. I woke up early and did a dance workout video that i had never tired before for about 50 minutes then later in the day I went on a 4.5 mile stroll with Jett for 2 hours in the hottest part of the day. After dinner I got around to my Last Chance Workout dvd and got about 45 minutes of high intensity interval training out of that. Then later on in the evening, Jett asked for some popcorn and I couldn't resist wanting some too so I had some and then did another workout dvd. This time it was a 30 minute ab attack one. I was also planning to vaccuum the living room yesterday after cleaning it all up but never got around to it. But yeah anyways... Worked out way more than usual and saw 199 on the scale this morning. 4 lbs in a day! WHOA! I was definitely shocked and had to step on and off the scale several times!

This was me around my heaviest:







This is me now:

Let me challenge you...

So while sitting around on facebook this morning with a whole slew of random thoughts going through my head about how I should be outside strolling around with Jett getting so exercise a marvelous idea popped in to my head!

I decided it would be really fun to start something new around here where Jett and I, and several of the other mom's with kids in strollers all got together and went for a walk once a week! Then I decided even better yet that anyone was invited. They could invite their friends or spouses, etc. Even if you didn't have kids you could just come to walk your dog or hang out with us all and get in some exercise. So I created an event and explained what I was wanting to do and invited as many of my friends who I knew lived in the area as possible and instructed them to invite anyone they wanted to. So far I have 6 people confirmed to go walking with us next week at one of the trails around a local park here. We havent set an exact day or time yet and are still trying to figure out when is best for the most people. But I am so excited its only been posted for a few hours and I already have some people who said they thought it was a good idea and want to come. There are even some people who I don't know, so they must be friends of someone else that I do know that got invited. Yay!

So my challenge to all you guys out there in blogger land is to do something similar! Use your blog or your facebook or your phone, just whatever, and get to inviting people in your community to go out for a simple walk. You know it will be nice to get out of the house and meet some new people and it will count towards exercise. I am really looking forward to being able to socialize with someone other than Jett. lol. And I know he will be excited to see the other kids. It doesn't have to be weekly. It could be bi-weekly or monthly. But just give it a try! :)

Good luck everyone!

Fixing up my blog...

So I'm changing some things up and adding new widgets. Now you can easily see what my twitter updates are right there on my sidebar and even see some pictures from our walk today. I also added a youtube widget so my weightloss vlogs are right there up top and easy to find and view. :)

I am actually a rather good(if I do say so myself :P) graphic designer and have been meaning to give myself a lot nicer look here, but 6 months later and I still haven't done it. haha. Well I'm going to make time to do a few things at some point this week. For those of you curious - this is my facebook fanpage for some of my design work. http://www.facebook.com/182Designs



Anyways... our walk was awesome. The weather was sooo lovely. It was hot as hell but the wind kept picking up and there was a nice breeze coming off the lake at us. Also the sun kept peeking in and out between clouds the whole time so I'd get a nice sweat worked up and then have some shade to cool off in a bit. It was very pleasant. :D

Gonna get off here and find something to snack on and then get started on another workout...

Progress...

So today is yet another Weigh-in Wednesday for my facebook chat group and I am at 203 lbs. Although I am up 1 lb from last weeks weigh-in. I am down 3 lbs from the damage I did this past weekend with poor eating habits and staying up all night drinking. lol. In any case, I am very pleased to have lost 3 lbs in the last 2 days. woot. Its a new week now, time to kick some ass so by next week's weigh in I can be celebrating 'One'derland!!!

Hope you all are having as good a day as I am today! :)

Oh and I recently decided to start using my twitter account again. I've decided that I'll probably post mostly things about what I'm doing for my weightloss journey or whatever. But of course there will just be random Jen tidbits from time to time as well. lol.

@poisonedpenguin

I am no different than you.

As strange as it feels to be typing that right now... its true. I am just another person. Not anyone of any particular importance, yet at the same time of utmost importance because I am me and that makes me awesome. lol. But the very same can be said for you. :)

I just feel I need to say that because the more and more weight I am dropping as the months go on, it seems that slowly but surely there are more and more people thanking me for being their inspiration or their motivation or what have you. Which don't get me wrong, I am so EXTREMELY flattered. While I know that what I have accomplished is nothing short of fantastic and the me from a year ago is jumping up and down screaming HALLELUJAH WOMAN! lol, the me from right now is thinking well I'm just me and so its really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that there are actually a few random people out there who look up to me now and ask me for advice and tips. I do my best to oblige of course and I love helping anyone I can, but I almost feel unqualified. Like... I don't know how to explain it. Not that I'm not good enough, but... yeah something kind of like that.

It's obvious to me that my physical changes are far greater than my mental changes. I still often see myself as much bigger than I actually am right now. Although that does leave me pleasantly surprised from time to time when something happens that snaps me back in to the reality that I am smaller than I have been in about 10 years now. :)

Anyways... all that leads me to talk about my weekend. As I've said many times before, this blog is not only for me to share my successes, but my struggles and weaknesses, too.

Friday started out alright and I was happy to finally have reached the 6 month point. Later that afternoon my whole family left the house to go check out the new Sea Life aquarium at Grape Vine Mills mall which is a couple hours from here. This changed up my regular dinner time schedule greatly. I have been eating dinners at 5pm and trying to make sure at the latest I don't put any food in to my mouth past 7pm. Well, we left the house at 3:30 to get there by 5 and then didn't get out of there to eat somewhere until about 8:00pm. Of course, my family decides Golden Corral is the ideal choice because its a buffet and its right there next to the mall. I knew I should have stuck to the salad bar first and filled up on veggies before trying anything else but I let my eyes get the best of me yet again and got all sorts of things I knew better than to be eating. I did eventually eat a salad as well, but at that point I shouldn't have even bothered because I was consuming way too much food. I also had some of their rolls and some rice and potatoes. All foods I haven't eaten in a very long time and so my stomach just wasn't used to them anymore. By the time we left I was hurting pretty bad and felt so sick the rest of the night. Why?! Why did I let myself do that? I came up with all sorts of reasons made up at the last minute of why it would be okay. Well you know you're going to have a bad day Saturday anyways. Well you know you don't have these foods all the time so just this once will be okay. Well you know you can just have a tiny little bit of every thing that you want and it won't be so bad. Just one dumb thing after the next until my mind caved to my body's want. In reality though, these were not reasons and they were simply excuses. The only day that should matter is today. You can't worry about how bad or good you have done the day before or are going to do the next day. You can only try your best every single day at a time. Just because you don't have something all the time doesn't mean its okay to have it every time you go out either. Special occasions/events are not an excuse to eat poorly. Your body needs to stay healthy no matter what's going on otherwise. Having a tiny bit of everything still adds up to a whole lot of calories and carbs and sodium and all sorts of things when you put it all together. One plate of food should be more than enough at one meal. It eventually will be 'so bad' if you keep allowing yourself these little slips. Eating out has been challenging for me and that's why I try to avoid it as much as possible. However, eating at buffets has been the one type of place that I cannot seem to conquer, yet. Well I am on a mission to change that. I will someday be able to come right a very proud and accomplished post all about how I resisted temptation and didn't reward myself with food, but a much healthier alternative.

As for Saturday... well I had a super busy day planned and knew my food choices would be limited to whoever I was spending time with at the moment. That morning we left the house shortly after waking up and my mom stopped at Sonic for our Breakfast/Lunch. I ended up ordering a grilled chicken sandwich and had some then but saved the rest for later. We spent most of the day at Hurricane Harbor soaking up the sun and enjoying what we could of the water park. The place was packed and so the water was a tad warmer than normal, but all in all still a great time. We had a snowcone while there and some popcorn. After leaving there we headed over to Six Flags Over Texas and I grabbed a granola bar I found I had left in Jett's stroller a few days before. We ended up getting a refill on our popcorn while there and so I had a little more of that. Once we were done riding things there we headed over to my brother's apartment in North Dallas. He was having a huge party that night and I had been looking forward to it for months, literally. lol. As a single mom, I don't really spend a whole lot of time out being social these days so it was nice to have some time away from my son and seeing old friends and meeting new ones. My mom dropped me off and took an already passed out Jett home for the night. He didn't nap at all that day so I assume he slept most of the night. She had to stay awake anyways though so she could sleep all day the next day and be ready for work Sunday night. Anyways, I didn't arrive to David's place until about 9-10pm I guess and then immediately began to drink. I know I stayed up until about 5am and drank all night long and someone had some beef jerky so I had some of that. They did order a pizza from Domino's but I didn't have any of that. It smelled pretty good though. lol. Needless to say... Saturday was a horrible calorie consuming day for me and I knew it would be.

I wish I had drank more water that night though because on Sunday I had the first hangover I've had in years. I laid on the couch all day while Jett watched cartoons next to me and played inside with his trains or whatever else was nearby. I felt so dizzy and didn't want to do a damn thing. I knew I really really needed to after the previous two days though. So around 7pm I finally got my head in enough of a right place to get up and do something with myself. I felt so disgusted for laying around like a sloth all day, but decided it was time to change that. I turned on one of my old workout dvd's and got right in to it. It happened to be the Kickboxing Boot camp by 10 minute solutions. I can't recall the last time I did this workout but its been a month or two at the very least. I was a little shocked but at the same time, not at all shocked to notice that I was instantly in a better mood and feeling much better than I was from laying around all day moping about having a hangover and being dizzy. lol. The getting up and moving around got me to feeling much greater and I was happy that I didn't waste another day. What was even more pleasing though was the very large difference I noticed in my endurance and abilities during the workout. There were several moves that I didn't fully complete before or that I couldn't do for as long but was breezing through them and finishing out every last exercise. I did the entire 50 minutes and felt great afterwards. :)

Yesterday, I decided it was time to pick up the pace because I had gone up 4 lbs over the weekend and was sitting at 206. I had worked too hard to just give that all up so I knew I needed to step up my game and bust my ass all day. I did the kickboxing dvd again and sweated like crazy during it. Then me and Jett went for a nice long bike ride and then after dinner I started on week 5 of the Biggest Loser's Last Chance Workout dvd. I had great results this morning when I weighed in and saw the scale was back down to 204 lbs. :)

Today I did some shopping and actually felt pretty proud of the choices I was making overall and so I decided to take a picture.

One good thing that came out of Friday night was that I tried a brussel sprout for the first time while I was at Golden Corral and actually thought it wasn't that bad. So I bought some today. :) Got lots of other random veggies and fruits and then a couple things for Jett and my mom. The only other 'new' thing I'm trying right now is these Special K crackers/chips. James from Extreme Makeover: Weightloss Edition on ABC posted a picture of some the other day on his facebook and was talking about how good they were. They looked tasty and so I decided to give them a try. Had some earlier tonight and he was right. The sour cream and onion ones were pretty good. I got some sea salt ones I'll have to try next.

6 months

So I finally hit 6 months. Halfway through a year and over halfway to my biggest goal. WOOHOO!!!! Sounds good to me. I thought at first I'd be happy with just losing 100 lbs in a year's time, but the closer I get to that, the more it seems so realistic that I could be down all 123!

Anyways. here are my pictures!

From 273 to 202 lbs

and this picture just because i can fit into my old swimsuit i bought in 2006 way better than i even fit it back then. so yay! haha. im totally wearing it to hurricane harbor on saturday.

and now for measurements:

Starting measurement > Newest one > Amount lost

Bust - 51 in > 42.5 in > 8.5 in
Waist - 53 in > 42 in > 11 in
Hips - 58 in > 47.5 in > 10.5 in
Arms - 17 in > 14.5 in > 2.5 in
Thighs - 31 in > 26 in > 5 in
Calves - 19.5 in > 17.5 in > 2 in
Neck - 16.5 > 14 > 2.5 in

70 pounds!

Yeah so I meant to update last night but got carried away. Yesterday for weigh-in Wednesday I hopped on the scale hoping that it would finally be the day I saw 203 and could finally post a new update on facebook about my weightloss. I've been posting every 10 lbs down so yeah. lol. Well to my surprise I went from 204 on Tuesday to 202 yesterday! So woot!!! I'm, actually 71 lbs down now.



In 3 more pounds I will finally be to that oh so coveted blissful place of 'One'derland!

I was kinda hoping I could reach 199 by my 6 month date, but that's tomorrow. Is it possible? Yes! Will I make it?... hah.. not so sure, but I'll do my best. In any case I'm very happy with how far I've come! :)

I got a new water bottle today!

Those are just a few pictures I found online of what mine looks like. I was reading an article recently about how it being better to drink out of a metal water bottle instead of getting plastic bottles all the time and making more waste ya know. I mean, I already knew these things... but i was just reading lots of info and came across that, too. Also there is no BPA in the metal bottles and they stay colder longer. Well I reused my plastic bottles all the time anyways so they weren't really going to waste but I saw the exact bottle the person was talking about and decided I had to have it.. Its a breast cancer awareness bottle with a cool straw on the top and its stainless steel so yay. Like 10% of my 5 bucks is going to the breast cancer people so sweet deal. The real seller for me though was the straw. I didn't want a bottle I would have to constantly take the lid on and off to drink. That's what I loved about the plastic water bottles I used to buy is that they had a cool top with a flip open lid I could flick on and of with ease to drink and then cover back up to keep dust out, etc..

Believe in yourself, even if no one else does.

I think one of the most important lessons I have learned in life was that you can only really and truly rely on yourself. If you try to rely on others, whether its in a journey to a healthier lifestyle, or in a relationship, or in your family, or even your friends... sooner or later you are gonna hit a bump where whoever it is you were counting on either wont be there or can't be there for you and then where will you be? I used to feel so lost until I finally realized that If I need only me I can be stronger for myself and continue to conquer any obstacles I face. This is not to say you shouldnt include others in your life to help cheer you on and support you in the things you do, just that you need to make yourself a priority and learn that you are worth doing so.

Got all dressed up and went out tonight...

And actually felt good about it. woot. I took a couple pictures and then I remembered the old ones I took back in April and went to see if the difference was noticeable at all and was surprised to see that it was!







Yay!

and these is just because.

I figured out why I'm fat!

The shampoo I use in the shower that runs down my body says "For extra volume and body". I'm going to start using "Dawn" dish soap. It says " Dissolves fat that is otherwise difficult to remove". Repost if you have the same issue.

Just something I saw on facebook today and thought we could all use a good chuckle. :)


I seem to be doing well these past few days. AF is almost ready to pack up her bags and leave! Still steadily losing weight even though I havent had as much time to workout. I have been out of the house out running around doing all sorts of things so at least I'm not sitting on my butt all day using that excuse. lol. I have maintained my good eating habits even though I havent been home. I've either brought food with me or ate well outside the house so yay. Today the scale said 204.8 but i stepped back on coz I was in shock and it said 205. haha. Then everytime after that it was still 205 so I guess that's where I'm at. Not too shabby! I can't believe I only have 5 lbs left to go. Well 6 I guess to be 199! Woot!!! If I work really hard then maybe I can reach that by the 15th for my 6 month weigh in and stats. That would be absolutely fabulous!

Got my re-ordered workout dvd in from netflix today so yay! Jett or someone scratched up the last one really bad somehow and it stopped working. :( Gonna bust my ass tonight after dinner though. So far today I've gotten in some bike riding. Its really hot out though! I was sweating pretty bad after only like 20 minutes out there. Anyways... hope everyone's got a wonderful weekend ahead of them! :)

By the way, I'm still interested in any new food ideas... please share one of your favorite things to eat!

Happy Independence day!

I know I'm a day late... lol. but better late than never, right? Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and was able to steer clear of too many disastrous food options. Even if you didn't succeed at that, though its a new day and time to start fresh.

Lucky me I had my monthly visitor show up yesterday and its been a weekend full of temptations! There was cake and mcdonalds and mexican resturaunts... quite a bumpy road that I wasn't sure I'd be able to conquer. I did indulge more than I would have liked to, however I am proud of the little accomplishments like only eating maybe 1/4th the serving i would have in the past of such things as chips and salsa or super salty french fries. I really wish I could have resisted them completely but I knew Aunt flo was due to arrive any day and my eyes just took over! Excuses, I know... but hopefully admitting my hurdles here will remind me to do better next time and try harder so I won't feel so guilty. All in all I am still 208 so thank goodness for not gaining.

About to start making a shopping list for some groceries I know I need to pick up at some point tomorrow afternoon. So far I just have the usual things we use that we're out of and need more of right now but I really want to pick up some new things I either havent tried before or haven't tried in a long time. Who has any great ideas for healthy food choices I should add to my list? I'm in the mood to try out some new recipes... getting tired of eating the same old things...




oh and look what i got in the mail today... my first bondiband!!! woot!

3rd video post!

Finally got around to making a 3rd video... well for the 2nd time now... the first one was too long to upload so I had to redo it.