A job interview!

So during my community service this past Thursday I happened to get a phone call back from something I half-heartedly applied for about a week or so prior. I got an email from careerbuilder.com while I was on my phone one day and simply submitted a mobile resume which only really consisted of me giving them my name, email, address, and phone number. I then received an email back saying I would need to go online and do something else to complete the application but I was busy at the time so I didn't bother finishing up and thought oh well. I was really surprised they called because of how little effort on my part there was for it, but happy nonetheless. It went straight to voice-mail since I was busy working off my speeding tickets for the city but I planned to call them back on my lunch break. They ran out of things for me to clean a whole hour before lunch and she went ahead and said I could go home and she would give me credit for working the whole day even though she didn't need me to return after lunch. Yay! I hopped on my bicycle since I decided to ride in again that day and I rode it back to the house in such a great mood.

After I got home I called the number back immediately to find out all the details. The position is with Our365 which is a photography company that specializes in taking newborn pictures of babies at hospitals shortly after they're born. Doesn't that sound like fun?! lol. It does to me anyways. I had seen many positions for this company before over the last several years but this was the first time one had opened up near me. It is actually at the very same hospital I gave birth to my two children at. She asked me a few questions like if I had any photography experience or sales experience. I do not have any professional photography experience but it is a hobby I've had for a long time and something I used to think I wanted to do for a living. I took some random classes through Girl Scouts at a local college several years back but that's about as far as I had taken it. I was trying to apply at the Art Institute in Dallas a couple years ago but my school loans from when I attended SFASU held me back from even getting to apply there. No photography experience was needed for this job though, they were more interested if I had done any selling before. My last job was service writing for a tire and lube place so I had to sell oil changes, tires, and then try to talk them in to anything extra you might need for your car while you're there anyways. Before that I had worked as a concessionist at a movie theater where we were required to 'upsell' always asking them if they wanted to try a larger size drink or popcorn for only a quarter more or if they wanted candy or something to go with their order, etc. I also worked at the trading post at boy scout camp for several years selling souvenirs and refreshments and such. She seemed satisfied enough with those things and asked me to come in to the hospital on Tuesday at 11:30am for an interview.

I am so excited. She said that if I did get the position that I would be working Tuesdays through Saturdays starting at 9am and ending whenever I was finished taking pictures of all the new babies that had been born for that day. She said it usually takes about an hour for each baby and there were usually about 2-3 babies each day so I would be getting maybe 25-30 hours per week. The hospital is not too far away from where I have to drop off my son at school during the weekdays just before 8am. My friend Ashley lives not far from his school, so I could just kill time with her in the mornings before I had to go in for work. With it being a part time job, I am fairly sure I could be finished before I had to pick him up at school at 2:30pm. Right now my fiance isn't working but that could change at any moment. He's headed to a job fair this afternoon to see about another warehouse position. So if he gets a job soon and can't watch our daughter, then this is what I'm thinking. Tuesdays and Wednesdays my mom would still have to be sleeping so she could work those nights, but my dad might be able to help watch Bethany those days since he works from home. If not, I'm sure my friend Ashley would watch Bethany for relatively cheap for me. The rest of the week my mom would be available to help watch her. Here's hoping for good news tomorrow morning! Wish me luck. :)

As far as exercising and eating right are going, things are mostly on track still. I've been having foot issues and having to take things easier but I'm still getting in as much as I can. I got in the first of my netflix exercise dvds this weekend and am now able to do those. Did it for the first time last night and absolutely loved it. My son decided he wanted to do the whole thing with me. He wasn't very good at it, lol, but it was great seeing him try and have fun with it. My daughter was laying in the floor next to us watching him intently the whole time. Any time she spit out her paci and started to fuss about it though he was very helpful and put it back in for her so I could keep doing my workout uninterrupted. He's such a helpful big brother.

Mrs. Dash

I love Mrs. Dash. For those of you who don't know she's simply delicious. lol. It's a seasoning brand that you can use for cooking prety much anything. Burgers, Steaks, Chicken, Pork, and even vegetables! I love using the original blend on my green beans. The Garlic and Herb is great too and I usually add it when making chili or to meat when I'm adding meat to my spaghetti sauce. Anyways... They are giving away free samples of it on their facebook page and you can check that out here. I just wanted to share it here with you guys since it's not only great tasting but they are all also salt free!

On another note, someone mentioned they wanted to see some more pictures of Bethany so here's a few more professional pictures I had a friend take of her when she was 3 weeks old.

Here is a picture taken of her last week in a cute homemade onesie another friend made for us.

Now she is just over 7 weeks old and this is her right at this moment. She's sleeping in her carseat still because we just got home from taking Jett to school this morning. :)

30DS, Day three

So it's day 3 of doing the 30 day shred again and I'm really feeling the burn! On day 1 I forgot to follow up with a protein shake and I was super sore the next morning. Last night and tonight though I made sure I had my shake. Still feeling a bit sore but not near as much as after that first time back at it. lol. Things are going well and I can feel myself breathing a little easier through some of the workouts already.

As far as my calorie counting has gone I have managed to keep an average of about 1400/day without restricting myself too badly. I did catch myself this morning about to buy a donut though. lol. I was doing some grocery shopping and just happened to walk by the donuts while looking for something else and thought oooh I was craving a chocolate donut a couple months back (while I was still pregnant, mind you) and thought it kind of sounded good at the moment. After searching for a plain chocolate donut I only saw cream filled ones, which I really don't care much for anyways and considered for another moment that maybe I should get something else covered in chocolate. Then it dawned on me all of a sudden what I was doing. I took the time to stop and think about it and realized, hey wait a minute - you don't even need a chocolate donut in the first place because you already picked up one of those apple, grape, and cheese packs to snack on and just think of the added calories! Secondly, why would you try and substitute it with something way below your expectations and still ridiculously high in calories? After that it was easy to just push my buggy right past them all and head straight to the checkout lane. Hooray for small victories.

I did also manage to get in another 15 minute walk/jog on the treadmill today. Speaking of jogging though, I happened to run across a new blog tonight.  I found Running on Candy through a mutual blogger and found this post of hers that mentioned something I found really intriguing. I had been considering recently whether or not I wanted to try doing the couch to 5k program again to get back in the swing of things with my running but now I think I may do this instead. Apparently there is some sort of zombie app out there that you can use to keep you motivated to run. It will somehow have a zombie chase you and your gps will let you know if you ran fast enough to outrun the zombies or not. How cool is that? And now they seem to have some sort of zombie 5k training program, too. I can't wait to try this new app out! Woohoo!

In other good news, I stepped on the scale this morning and saw that in the last 2 days I've already dropped 4 lbs. Sweet deal!

A bad weekend

Well in terms of eating healthy and exercising I most definitely had a bad weekend. I went through some pretty stressful personal things mostly due to me being extra hormonal on my first postpartum period. Those are the worst. Not that you wanted to know, but I was going through super tampons every hour or two. The bathroom constantly looked like a murder scene. It was not fun. I was being pretty shitty to those around me which dug up some issues that needed to be dealt with, so I guess that's not all bad. Things got handled and I feel better about them now, however I spent my weekend lounging about and eating every thing in sight. The period cravings always get worse at night it seems and I just didn't even care to fight them the last couple days. I decided last night though that I would finish getting that out of my system and wake up a better me.

Today I ate a decent breakfast and then got on my phone to start uploading some apps to help keep me on track. I didn't care much for that Nexercise app since it didn't tell me anything about calories and the rewards it gave were not of much interest to me. I put Cardio Trainer back on my phone to keep up with my walking and jogging and I also put My Fitness Pal on there so I can log my food and count calories easier. 

This morning, when I stepped back on the scale to see the damage I had done and face the cold hard facts, an ugly 244.2 lbs was staring back at me. I spent 15 minutes on the treadmill and while I mostly walked, I did manage to get a little bit of jogging in, too. I wanted to start off slow and ease back in to my workout videos by doing some of the ones I had saved on my Netflix instant queue, however, when I attempted to bring them up I realized they were gone and apparently not even available instantly anymore. I went ahead and added them to my list to get mailed to me but in the mean time I still wanted to get some sort of dvd workout in. I really didn't want to start off with Jillian Michael's 30 day shred so soon but it was one of the easier things I had laying around so that's what I put in and did today. Sweated my ass off and it felt great but man I am definitely out of shape from where I used to be with it. lol. 

Anyways... Time for some new measurements and pictures. Got to put it out there so I can keep myself accountable. I'll be sharing the measurements I had from the very beginning of my journey and from the last time I recorded them, which was on November 15th of 2011 at 10 months in to my journey. 

Starting measurement > Last one > Current one > Difference from last
Bust - 51 in > 39 in > 46 in > +7
Waist - 53 in > 39 in > 48.5 in > +9.5
Hips - 58 in > 44 in > 54.5 in > +10.5
Arms - 17 in > 13 in > 16 in > +3
Thighs - 31 in > 24 in > 30 in > +6
Calves - 19.5 in > 16.5 in > 18.5 in > +2
Neck - 16.5 > 13 > 14 in > +1

Wow, first time I've seen all those numbers together. That's definitely an eye opener. Okay time for pictures.

Click here to see the last progress pictures I posted back in November of 2011.

Community Service

So I apparently had some unpaid traffic tickets from over a year or so ago and the police showed up at my door and arrested me at 8 months pregnant. Needless to say... not a good day for me. It was pretty awful and I'm pretty broke. We had to set up a payment plan but since I'm not working I'm relying on family to help me out. The judge said that after I had my baby and the doctor wrote me a note saying I was clear to work that she would let me work some of my fine off with community service. Well, I got my note on Tuesday, talked to the judge yesterday and set up my hours to work. I get to go in every Thursday (except Thanksgiving) until December 6th.

City hall is between a mile to 2 miles from my house so I decided to ride my bike there this morning and rode my bike back home at lunch. That totaled about 30 minutes of bike riding for today and I am most definitely feeling it, especially after being on my feet all day working for the city. After lunch, I had my mom drop me off since it sprinkled on me on the way home and I didn't wanna be caught in the rain later. They ran out of things for me to clean though at 2:35 so I ended up being released 2 hours early today. Sweet deal. lol. I decided to go ahead and just walk home since the sky had cleared up and it was bright and sunshiney outside. I got half way there and my dad started driving past me just after he finished picking Jett up at school so I hopped in with them and rode the rest of the way home. lol. I walked about 20 minutes though so that coupled with my bicycling was definitely a workout today, not to mention all the cleaning I had to do. I dusted, swept, mopped, vacuumed  and wiped down pretty much everything in the building at City hall and the civic center next door to it, too. My arms and legs are both a little noodle-y feeling now.

Having to work today has been really good for my calorie counting though, lol. I have been too busy to stop and think about eating anything extra that I don't really need. Yesterday, I made the mistake of  not looking up the calorie count on a drink first thing in the morning. After dropping Jett off at school with my mom she offered to buy me a drink at McDonald's or Sonic. I wanted to see if I could win anything else on the Monopoly game from McDonald's so we went there and to get a game piece I ordered a large caramel frappe`. It was delicious but holy hell was I upset when I realized the damage I had done. Well over 600 calories for that one drink. I managed to do right at 2,000 calories by the end of the day. I'm not gonna be too hard on myself for that number, but I won't be drinking that many calories again any time soon! I'd much rather eat the majority of my calories for each day, if not all of them. To make matters worse, I just got 2 board game pieces, no instant wins!  lol. Totally not worth it. Oh well, lesson learned.

Feeling the burn

Day 2 back in the habit and I'm already feeling the burn. lol. It feels absolutely great. I love the high you get from working out. When you are really sweating and body parts are tingling you just know that you are improving your muscle strength one step at a time.

The week that I gave birth to Bethany my neighbor ended up giving away a treadmill or selling it super cheap, I'm not sure which, but my mom ended up taking it. So today I hopped on the treadmill and did some intervals of walking and jogging. When I stepped it up a notch and first started jogging I instantly felt that familiar pang of "omg your whole body is jiggling!" lol. I could definitely feel the difference from the last time I jogged when I didnt have near as much extra baggage around my waist and hips and well everywhere. I'm okay with it though. That just makes me that much more determined to keep at it until I'm back down to where I was before and then keep on pressing past it. I really missed running and I'm so glad I get the chance to fall in love with it all over again. ♥

A New Poison, Take 2!

Today is the day I get to start all over. Scary, exciting, and anticipated for soo very long now. Here it is finally come. So... guess who showed up today to congratulate me on making it to 6 weeks post-partum so now I am free to start actively trying to lose weight and working out again? Aunt Flo... that bitch.

Minus that little setback, all is going well. I'm taking it easy on myself and slowly getting back in to the swing of things. The internet was down here most of the day today so I didnt get to do the netflix instant play workout I intended on doing. Instead I turned on my Wii Fit Plus and hopped back on the Wii board. I knew it had been a long time since I played it but wow, well over a year apparently. Here is what I seen today...

I've gone up almost 50 lbs since the last time I used the Wii. Damn... but oh well. I needed to see where I was so I know how far I have to go. So I'm currently sitting at 241 lbs. In 2011, I managed to lose an average of 12 lbs per month all year long, although the first month was considerably the most. I still have a goal weight of 150 lbs eventually but right now I'm going to focus on aiming to lose 30 lbs before 2013 arrives. I really think if I try and do a little more each day than the one before that I will get there as surely as I did before.

I started counting calories again today. I decided that to begin with I wasn't going to set myself an exact limit. Last time I was trying to stay at  roughly 1200 calories per day but so far I am just counting how many I consume today and making note of it. I know that being conscious of how many there are is a big part of mentally preparing myself for what I'm actually doing to my body. I have no doubts I was consuming closer to 2,000-2,500 cals/day recently, but that is hopefully all out of my system now.  I just finished dinner about an hour ago and am sitting at 1395. I may or may not have a small snack some time before bed. I was hoping to stay under 1800 calories at the most so I have already done better than I gave myself credit for in the first place. :)

Gearing up for my comeback...

In anticipation of Tuesday I have been trying to get all my bad eating desires out of the way this past week and refreshing my memory on how to eat less and move more. Received an email from sparkpeople with a very helpful article that serves as a reminder to me on what all I need to do to keep my portions in control so I thought I would share it here with you guys.

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/slideshow.asp?show=40

I have used every single one of these tips in the past and they work so well! Time for me to start focusing on them again and making sure my eating is under control or else the working out will be kind of useless... for weight-loss purposes anyways.

My fiance started a new job this past week so he has been gone a lot and I am on my own with the baby and with Jett after school for a few hours. This has left me with little time to do as much walking as I had hoped for but none the less I did manage to get some in. Today I even broke out my bicycle, aired up the tires, and took it around the block. I enjoyed getting back on it even though it's been probably over a year since I last rode. That saying about riding a bike is true though, once you learn how then you never forget. :) My chains are definitely gonna need some WD-40 though because I was awful squeaky headed down the street. lol.

October... the best month EVER... seriously :D

Hah, so I'm a bit of an October freak I guess. I am so super pumped it's finally here! This has got to be the absolute best time of year. I know I've said that like a billion times, but man.. I am just so excited! haha.

Not too much has changed around here just yet. I still have one more week from tomorrow until my final post partum checkup. October 9th is the big day though and by then my doctor should clear me to finally start working out again. I am very excited for the go ahead but I am also a little bit scared or nervous maybe. I'm not exactly sure why. I just don't want to over exert myself from the get go and at the same time I don't wanna do too little and disappoint myself. Its been sooo long since I've really tried doing anything and so I'm not sure where I stand really. Only way to find out is to do it though. :)

Congratulations are in order for fellow blogger Mary over at A Small Loss! I'll let you read her post to find out why. ;) If you're not already a follower of hers you should definitely add her to your list because she's full of wonderful advice and tips on living a healthier lifestyle and is so well written. I always enjoy anything she has to say, even the things that aren't really about weightloss. :D