101 things to accomplish in 1001 days

I came across the Day Zero Project on a few different weight-loss blogs a while ago (I'm sorry, I don't remember whose!  If you have a list, let me know and I'll like to it and we call help each other reach out goals!) and remember thinking, what a fabulous idea.

I believe it is now it is my turn to make one  Considering I work best when I have something concrete I'm going after, I am hoping this will give me focus.

I'm making a 101 things to do in 1001 days.

The weight loss ones are a given, but this list should give me an opportunity to really focus on non-weight number related goals I want to work towards.

So far I have:

1. Weigh below 240 lbs
2. Weigh below 230 lbs
3. Weigh below 220 lbs
4. Weigh below 210 lbs
5. Weigh below 200 lbs
6. Weigh below 190 lbs
7. Weigh below 180 lbs
8. Weigh below 170 lbs
9. Weigh below 160 lbs 
1. each of the weight goals other will be considered complete if I weight below the amount for 10 or more days, and will be considered incomplete if I go back up past that number.
10. Reduce my body fat % to below 25%
11. Hold a perfect plank for 60 seconds
12. Buy a size 12 dress
13. Buy pants in a normal size clothing store (i.e. not Penningtons, Addition Elle, Lane Bryant or the Plus size department in ANY store)
14. Run a mile without stopping
15. Complete the Couch to 5k running program (0/27 sessions)
16. Run the 10K Vancouver Sun Run in under 90 minutes
17. Lose my double chin
18. Buy skinny jeans
19. Do a proper boy push-up
20. Do a pull-up
21. Go snowboarding and actually be able to stand up on the board unassisted
22. Wear a bikini
23. Feel pretty inside my own skin
24. Buy a house with my husband
25. Sell my condo
26. Travel to Europe
27. Pay off my credit card debt
28. Take a spin class (Completed, April 10, 2011)
29. Take a step class
30. Teach myself how to use wordpress to move this blog to my own domain
31. Blog at least 3x a week for the next 1001 days
32. Organize my music - 15 Gigs worth
33. Organize my photos - thousands and thousands
34. Take an Adobe Photoshop course
35. Finish my scrapbooks:
1. wedding day
2. university
3. bahamas trip
4. wedding cruise
5. Other trips
36. Knit an afghan
37. Visit my friends in the Bahamas
38. Get a promotion to Senior Developer at work
39. Sell all my left-over wedding stuff
40. Find a way to organize and stay on top of the paper that accumulates every where
41. Go skydiving
42. Find 100 things I like about myself
43. Find the perfect little black dress
44. Make a decent recipe binder and organize recipes
45. Make whole grain bread from scratch
46. Purchase a bicycle (and use it)
47. Make pasta and/or spaetzle from scratch
48. Attend a knitting meet-up
49. Knit a pair of socks
50. Floss every day 
51. Make a recipe from at least every cookbook I own
52. Do something physical every day
53. Change my last name to my husbands
54. Get a Nexus card
55. Keep my car clean for a month
56. Walk the dog 3x a week for a month
57. Brush the dogs teeth 2x a week
58. Make a new friend (or 2)
59. Wake up before 8 am every day for 2 weeks
60. Host 10 game board nights
61. Create a LinkedIn account
62. Order new eyeglasses
63. Not hit the snooze button for a week
64. Clear out the clutter from the house
65. Host another mystery dinner party
66. Chest press 50lbs
67. Decorate / Make a cake out of each of my decorating books.
68. Knit a sweater that looks good
69. *private ;)*
70. Work with my dog so he is less fearful and more friendly with kids and strangers
71. Find a family doctor
72. Learn to play Mahjong
73. Comment on 30 blogs
74. Gain 30 followers on my blogs
75. Find the perfect icing recipe
76. See 10 classic movies I’ve never seen
77. Learn and be comfortable with Javascript and Ext4 (crucial to move forward at work)
78. Never wake up past 10am for 3 months
79. Sell 500$ worth of stuff I no longer need
80. Purge my closet every 3 months 
81. Go on 5 roadtrips
82. Look into electrolysis
83. Paint my nails once a week
84. Fold laundry within 24 hours of it being dry
85. Take boudoir pictures (post weight loss)
86. Make a will
87. Bake a pie
88. Begin to learn Cantonese
89. Use my elliptical at home at least once a week
90. Create an esty shop
91. Sell something through the esty shop
92. Knit / Sew cushion covers
93. Create a life/goal board
94. 
    

101. on day 1001 start a new list with anything I haven't completed and some new goals
...

Anyone have any great suggestions to fill out the last 6?  I'll eventually move this to its own page, categorize them, and keep it updated.  I commit to seriously trying to accomplish every goal on this list.  

Pilates or Die!

Once again I didn't get my ass out of bed for my hour of self-directed cardio this morning.  Epic Fail.  My trainer is going to own my ass tomorrow.

However, I did do something active.  I tried a new Pilates DVD I ordered on Amazon a couple of weeks ago:

I cleared the area in front of the TV (man do I have to vacuum!) and sat down to do 3 of the 5 10 minute solutions.

I like the DVD because I can choose as many of the 10 minute workouts to flow one into the other.  Since my body is still sore from everything else I wanted something that wouldn't focus on my legs.  So I chose to do the Upper Body Basics, Total Body Combo, and the Long & Limber Stretch.  I found they went by quickly and that I actually quite liked the instructor on it.  I'll definitely be repeating them all at least once a week to help work on my strength, form, and to help stretch out my back.  However, now that I'm done I have a serious headache.  All you Pilates fans, is this normal?


Wohoo!  I did a new exercise and liked it!  Score one for the fat girl.


My food today was good.  I'm in love with the McCains Ultra Thin Crust pizzas ~ I don't often eat them as I try to stay away from most processed food, but today was a long day at work, crappy weather and I felt so tired, a combination which usually would lead me to fast food, chocolate, or ice cream and sometimes all 3. Instead I grabbed the new pollo pizza and ate half for dinner (only 300 calories!) and man was it tasty!  

I'm super impressed with myself. I tried 2 new things today, enjoyed them both and now have time to take a nice long hot bath before heading to bed.




I still haven't come up with a suitable revenge for Mike for the mini eggs.  Food for thought in the bath!

All hail the mini egg

Since I was on the topic of trainers, I figured I'd quickly share this tidbit.

A close friend of mine is also heavier like me and working towards her goals with the boot-camps and personal training sessions as well.  Her chubby buddy's is my chubby buddy`s friend.  We've been doing this together for just over a year and have got a good vibe going on.

So, yesterday, she had her personal training session with the trainer I generally work with (who is also the nutritionist and not the one who complimented me this morning.)  Jesh, I should really give him a name.  Lets call him Mike and the one I don`t see eye to eye with Sam.

Mike had my friend on the stepper killing her cardio when he pulls out mini eggs.  Yes, this nutritionist / trainer ate mini eggs in front of my friend while training her.  Mike can get away with a lot, we've become friends with him and have partied with him but, I'm sure you'd all agree with me that eating chocolate in front of a fat girl trying to resist said chocolate for week is just evil! Especially when said friend had been craving them for 2 weeks.

My friend shared this information with me in the evening and I was superiorly annoyed with him... like really dude?  you think you're helping?  She yelled at him during the workout and made him put them away and still yelled at him for having mini-egg breath.  But I decided he needed to be yelled at more. lol.  Now, it isn't really yelling, but a more friendly telling off over text messages.  He laughed at me and told me he`d bring the crème eggs to my workout with him on Friday.  Now that works for me, since I don`t like the crème eggs at all.  Mini eggs I could just hover up.  We bantered back and forth for a bit and I was still prepared to kick his ass if he brought out chocolate in front of me on Friday.

Well, trainers talk and at 4:30 today as I was at work I got a text from Mike saying good job on the workout this morning and that he was eating mini eggs again at the gym.  He was just about to start the afternoon boot-camp at my company and I threatened to come over and steal the eggs from him; that he shouldn't come between a fat girl and his chocolate.  However, I wasn't about to put my hand down his pocket and there was no way in hell I`d ever be able to catch the quick fuck, so with an hour left to work, all I could think about were mini eggs.

MINI EGGS oh how I love you.

Damn Mike.

So I was horrible, undid all my hard work today and made myself chocolate chip cookie dough for dinner.  I didn't eat any of the healthy chicken or vegetables all prepared in my fridge like a good girl would have.  No, since I refused to spend money on mini eggs (I'm cheap cheap cheap), I did myself even worse and ate cookie dough.  *sigh*  I don`t know if this friendship with the nutritionist is going to work.  I'm sitting here feeling ill over the dough and cursing myself for not being stronger.

OK wow, I wasn't planning on writing about that in this blog entry, but as I was explaining the evil nutritionist, I realized why I made that cookie dough. Admitting that food slip was really hard ~ putting it out there for the world to judge, for anyone who reads this to judge was so much harder than posting the pictures.  It was admitting to a total fat girl cliché.  But I needed to put it in there since I figured it out.

I made and ate the cookie dough without even thinking.  Mindless, stupid, and wow.  Hopefully, now that I know my trigger, I can prevent this in the future.  On my drive home, all I could think about was how much I wanted bad food and how much I didn't care how it would hurt my weight loss.  I think, possibly, I got into the mindset of I'm fat, I always will be fat, and if I want the darn cookie dough / mini eggs, then why the hell not!  Or else I just really wanted something bad and since I couldn't have mini eggs, I substituted something I could make quickly at home.   Mindless eating.  I really need to get a handle on that.

Since I've finished punishing myself, I need help with coming up with a payback for Mike that doesn't involve harming myself and eating bad food.  Don't worry, I've got that covered all on my own!

Any ideas?

Compliments and Trainers

Today I dragged my lazy ass to the gym for the 7 am bootcamp class.  I don't know why, but the last 3 weeks my body has had a really hard time recovering from the workouts.  I don't feel like I'm pushing myself harder or that the workouts themselves are particularly harder, but I'm finding my recovery time is much, much longer.  My legs are still sore from my workouts last week!  I must remember to ask my trainer about it during my 1 on 1 session Friday.

Anyways, I felt that I really struggled for the first two thirds of the workout.  I've been having problems with my shins and calves and any lateral movement aggravates them and prolonged (like 5 min +) of running and such bother them as well.  I barely made it through the warm-up (running laps, lunges, side shuffles) when we lined up on the white line and proceeded to do 3-2-1 line exercises.

                   A quick explanation - in our company gym, we have a half-court gymnasium.  It has all the lines for a half-court basketball court, badminton, and volleyball.  Often the trainers will have us line-up so we are facing the long horizontal of the gym and do an exercise to the furthest white line (3), jog back, do the exercise again to the middle white line (2), jog back, and then once more to the closest white line (1), jog back and repeat again from 3.  Hence the 3-2-1.  Exercises can be anything from running, jogging, lunges, squats, squat jumps, can-cans, etc.  You go at your own pace and switch to the next exercise demonstrated when you've reached the front of the gym.  It is great since it works for all fitness levels and I don't feel like the fattest, slowest on there. 

My shins and knees were screaming at me for just moving by now and it was only 10 minutes in.  I did my own modifications on the jumping line exercises and went at my own pace, a much slower pace than normal I felt.  Today there just wasn't any energy in the tank.  I was in a good mood, talked and joked around, but felt like I was dragging my ass.  But I dragged my ass the whole way and didn't quite or stop during any of the exercises (unlike some who prefer to watch others than actually move).  

We did a few cardio sprints on the machines and other floor work with free weights.  Then we finished with an ab workout on the mats.  One of those exercises were side crunches while holding a weight up in air with one arm (I chose a 10lb weight.)  Apparently I was rocking these because I got a very rare, highly valuable compliment when the trainer called out that I was rocking them, getting good air and that my obliques were getting really strong.  Then as I was stretching out my calves on the wall at the end of the workout, the trainer came up to me again, complimenting me on how hard I worked during the class and how it was one of the best group workouts he had seen from me in a long time.   

Huh.  What?  WTF?  Really?

I thought I was dragging my ass.  I thought I could push myself harder.  I thought it was one of my worse workouts in the last month or so.  Apparently my trainer thought otherwise.  I was talking to my co-worker and fellow bootcamp inmate and she also said that while I may not have been pushing as hard as I could, I never stopped, that I kept going slowly and steady through the whole workout.    

Now, I've been working with this particular trainer for over 3 years.  We've been through a lot together.  I don't want to make him sound like an ogre, but he doesn't give compliments easy, most of the time with him you never quite know where you are standing. It is a blue moon when he actually comes up to you and praises you.  I've never really figured out what he wanted from me.  Honestly, we don't get along.  We had a big blowout last year (I'll share the story eventually) and his favourite thought is that I love to hate him.  It isn't that I hate him, I definitely don't love to hate him, but I just don't see eye to eye with him.  

But I think today, I may have gotten a bigger insight into what makes him tick.

Not giving up.

Working through discomfort.

Keeping a positive attitude. * 2

Pushing yourself harder even when you want to quit.

It was a good workout, a 500 calorie burn according to my heart rate monitor, but I still wasn't feeling it.  But I think I have to sit back and really think about my attitude in these bootcamps.  I've been doing them almost regularly for 3 years and I will admit I don't always give it my all.  I give up to easy; I scoff at exercises I don't think I can do; I sometimes use my injuries and soreness to hold back; and I do go in with a sullen attitude, more often than not lately.

Maybe on Friday during the circuit class, even though it is with a different trainer, I need to work on keeping those above 4 points on track.  Maybe that is what I need to get results and stay consistent.  Just maybe the trainer is right for once.....

Not that I'd ever tell him that!

Pictures of Fat

I finally found that stupid connector cord.  

And was able to see full body picture of myself.  I chose simple, body skimming black workout pants and a blue tank top.  No bra so we can see what it looks like without the help of Victoria's Secret.

Wow.  Nothing like putting it out there in its full glory.

Now lets pick it apart like all females do!

I actually don't mind my butt.  It could be worse, but it is much better than I thought. 

My boobs, ugh... I so want new ones!  I would love for my boobs to actually stick out further than my stomach one day!  

I don't mind my waist, I actually have some curves.  And in dark clothes, I don't look too bad from the front.  The sides though!  Mamma-Mia.  Thank gawd for Spanx!

Oh those arms... ick ick ick ick.  I have this feeling that I'll have to suffer through excess skin removal surgery there when I'm done.  

What else?  My calves aren't too bad, but to ever get to that elusive weight and body where my thighs no longer rub together... I don't know if that is possible!

I don't quite have a chin as a slope...  I don't really have a neck.  I eventually want to see a defined chin.. and a neck.. not triangle is trying to imitate one.

Hmm...  maybe in different lighting I'd look worse from the front, there doesn't seem to be any definition there, just a blob.

Yeah.. that is what I am.  Just one big blob of fat trying to write a blog.

The Blob Blog!  lol.

Okay... I've driven myself into delirium looking at how ugly I am.

I've got 80lbs of fat to remove from that body... wish me luck!  

Come on Pictures!!

Clipart from Clipartheaven.com

I know no weight loss blog is complete without before and after pictures.

I'm still looking for a picture of me which shows the weight at 260 lbs, but I took a couple of current ones of me at 241 this evening.  Now I'm just trying to get them off the camera!

First, I couldn't use my DSLR because I live alone and couldn't get my remote trigger to work; I hope it is just the battery that is dead.  Since I couldn't get my iPhone to balance properly I ended up using my point and shoot Panasonic Lumix.  While it takes good photos, getting said photos off the card is turning into a hassle!  I can't find that one stupid cord to connect to the camera with (out of the 7 different cords we use to connect various devices to the computer) and my USB card reader is being stubborn and won't connect to Windows 7.  I don't know who to blame that on!

But trying to find the photos made me realize that I've always stayed behind the camera since it was safer than standing in front of it in all my fatty glory.  I cringe when I look at myself in photos.  I don't know many obese females that don't.  The worst was when I took a photography course with 3 friends, 2 being gorgeous, tiny, females, the other a fairly attractive male, and we had to model for each other.  It made me so self-concious to see the full body "beauty shots" up on a huge projection screen showing off my ugly disgusting body right after my svelte classmates.  I despise being in front of the camera and sadly realized that I'm not that good behind it either.

How many of us keep those "ugly" photos for motivation?  

How many of us crash diet so we'd look better in photos at important events?  We don't necessarily care if we look thin on the day of, but we so want those photos, those everlasting memories, to show us at our thinnest. 

How many of us have googled "How to look thinner in photos"?

How many of us have deleted photos where we look larger than we imagine ourselves in our head?

I answer a resounding yes to all of the questions above.  I'm constantly amazed by how ugly and large I look in photos.  Yet, once again, they may motivate me to lose weight temporarily, but nothing lasting.

What is that thing that can motivate us to lose 100 pounds?  Where does that motivation come from?  Is it one life event?  A series of events? One photo?

What has motivated you to take the step and permanently, consistently work toward achieving a healthy you?

I refuse to wake up early.

So as part of the way to trick my metabolism into working, my trainer wants me to do all my workouts first thing in the morning.  He hopes that maybe that it will get my metabolism kick-fired and I can break through the plateaus that plaque me after every five pounds I lose.  Ha. I live to sleep and would be rather passed out like my dog than getting up for the anything, let alone the evil elliptical.  So yet again, I didn't drag myself out of bed this morning for a self-directed morning cardio session.  I instead hit snooze for 2 hours and dragged my lazy ass out of bed so I would make it to work just in time.

The 7 am Monday, Wednesday, Friday workouts are easier because they are classes held by the trainers; if I am not there, the other participants will track me down and harass me and I would be guaranteed to get my ass kicked at the next session by the trainers.  However, motivating myself to get up when I don't have anyone holding me accountable is something that has always held me back.  My husband hates it when I press snooze, but since he is away for school, I can indulge in that glorious snooze until the dog gets impatient and forces me awake by threatening to pee on the bed.  That, and the risk of being later than usual in the morning, is the only thing that gets me moving in the morning these days.

Sometimes I wonder if by not waking up on time, I'm sabotaging myself.  That not waking up when the alarm goes off (giving time for at least 2 snoozes) I am admitting defeat and indulging in the lazy beast the possesses me.   I always make excuses for myself to hit that button again ~ I will work out after work, I need the day off, I'll eat better today.  But do we actually do what we promise ourself when the snooze siren calls?

Well, for once this morning, even though I let myself down by not working out in the morning, I did do what I promised myself.  I set up the Wii Fit for the first time in 1500 days and did a cardio and yoga workout.  It turns out, I am 6 lbs lighter than I was 4 years ago.  Go figure.  Maybe 140 - 145 is my body's default set point.

I did 40 minutes of step cardio, "running" and all the unlocked yoga poses.  While I did get a glow of sweat it was no where near the sweat pools that I generate when I do a full workout.

I think I'll have to keep the Wii workouts for recovery days.  Alas, I really need to get my ass to the gym in the mornings to get the calorie burn I need to bust the plateaus.

*Sigh*
Did I mention how much I'm not a morning person?  Let that lazy beast roar!

As luck will have it...

I'm lucky, I won't deny it, with the support and resources I have available to make my lifestyle change.

I work for an amazing company where there is a free gym in our building.  Not only can we access the gym daily from 6 am to 10 pm, the company also pays for personal trainers to come in and host bootcamp and circuit training classes FREE for the employees.  Yes, free!!

And yet, I'm still fat.  The company gym has been open for 3 1/2 years and I'm the same weight I was when the gym first opened.  However, I don't look a gift horse in the mouth, (what the heck does that even mean?) and my fitness and health are 100 times better.  I can run laps around the gym without stopping to walk, the elliptical no longer makes me want to cry.  I still hate running the stairs, but I can do it.  I have become very intimate with every piece of equipment in that gym and it has been graced with my sweat.  I have taken almost every class available to me and become friends with the trainers.  I look forward to going to the gym on a regular basis.  I laugh more inside that stupid room than I do at my desk!

Yet, I'm still fat.

That is not my company's fault, for they have given me every opportunity to lose weight (wait (haha) until I tell you about the Biggest Loser style competitions!) My weight is my fault.  My food has been hit and miss ~ I've yo-yo dieted so much that I have next to no metabolism.  For me to loose a pound, I have to work twice as hard and eat half as much as my healthier co-workers.

But I'm not giving up.

I've become quiet close with one of the trainers who is also a nutritionist.  Combining the free bootcamps, with personal training sessions (paid by me) every other week with the trainer, I'm getting a handle on what food combinations work for me.   In the middle of January I went on a restricted diet that limited my calorie intake to 1000 - 1200 calories a day after we tried many combinations over the previous year.  My food was boring.  BORING!

Here was my daily menu:

Breakfast 
1/4 cup steel-cut oatmeal
3-4 egg whites
1 serving fruit (generally 2 kiwis or 1 cup berries)


Snack
1 cup grapes


Lunch
2 cups spinach
150 grams chicken breast (baked, stir fried with herbs and seasoning)
1 cup berries (generally the frozen berry mix from Costco so the juices make a dressing)


Snack
1 cup sugar snap peas
1 fibre one brownie


Dinner
1 red pepper - raw, cut in slices
150 grams chicken
1 cup spinach
Small carb serving (generally I used 1 90 calorie 5 g fibre pita bun, or a 100 calorie high fibre wrap)


Evening Snack
*80 calories dark chocolate

* the nutritionist didn't recommend this!
I LOVE chocolate, 50 lbs of my fat is from chocolate alone.  There is no way I could live with the diet for so long if I couldn't have chocolate.

So technically I wasn't supposed to have it, but I did anyway. I figured it was worth it to keep my sanity.  I found these amazing Lindt chocolate balls where I can have 3 of them for only 80 calories.  Since I snacked in the evening like most people, I would play a game with myself so I wouldn't snack.  I would dole out those chocolate eggs at a rate of one per hour.  I got one at 8 pm, 9 pm, and 10pm as a reward for not snacking and for keeping with the diet.

And even with a few bumps here and there, I'm keeping with that restricted food plan.  I'm now allowed 1600 calories a day and generally stay at 1400 unless I go a little nuts with the chocolate.  I'm down almost 20 lbs from where I started 12 weeks ago.  I think if I keep this up, if I eat like this 80% of the time and keep the pizza and cookie dough to 20% of the time, one year from now, all the free stuff I'm lucky enough to have at work, will have paid off and I will be in one-derland!

* As a footnote, please remember I'm not recommending anyone go on this diet, I'm not a doctor and this is my and my nutritionist's diet plan tailored specifically for me.  So please...don't do anything this drastic unless you've talked to a trained professional!  Please!

+0.4lbs....I'll take it.

Today was weigh-in day and I gained just under half a pound.  If I would have gained half a pound this time last year, I would have had a breakdown, beat myself up for being so ugly and fat and then spent the day moping about how much of a failure I was.

I let half a pound do that to me and I doubt that I'm the only one.

But this year, this time around, I refuse to let plateaus, small gains, or small setbacks get me down.  I am trying to look back at the past week critically and figure out where I went wrong and stop lying to myself about how I was "perfect" on my food and exercise and how I deserve to lose weight.

Because I wasn't perfect and I didn't deserve to lose weight.

Since my last weigh in I deserved to gain half a pound based on my food alone.  I had pizza, ooey gooey pizza.  I had a full sugar Coke.  I had cookie dough, ice cream and cookie dough ice cream.  I didn't eat enough vegetables, I ate too many carbs;  I deserved that half a pound and am a much saner and healthier person for realizing that.

So this week, I'm starting over.

This week, I'm aiming to eat good 80% of the time and only letting myself splurge slightly for the other 20% of the time.

This week, I'm going to hit my calorie burn goals when I work out.  I will not give up early, I will not make excuses over how my knees hurt.

This week, my goal is to loose 2 lbs.

This week, I will make my goal.

The beginning of the end?

Welcome to 100lbs of Fat to Lose!

On January 1, 2012, I recommitted to losing the 100 extra pounds of body fat I have hanging off my body.   I am now 12 weeks into this journey and has it ever been interesting.

A bit about me first:

I'm 31.  In the last 13 years have gained and lost the same 40lbs about 6 times.  During those cycles, I graduated university, found a full time job, bought a condo, moved, got married, and ended back at the same weight I was when I started university.  I refuse to continue cycling!

I have so far survived 12 weeks of changing my life.  It has been 12 long weeks with more downs that ups.  But what I realized that reading inspiring stories, from all of the archives at www.PastaQueen.com to the wonderful ladies at www.priorfatgirl.com kept me going.  When I saw that other people have started where I am and succeed made me want to do lose this weight.  It made me realize, that despite cycling over and over, that I can do this.  I will do this.

So I've started the blog at the 12 week mark to keep me accountable as the downs start to quickly overtake the ups.  By publically posting my weight, my journey and my life, perhaps I'll find the right balance to make this the very last cycle from 260 lbs.

Welcome!  I hope we can motivate each other to laugh, move, eat healthy, and lose weight. I think we all know this isn't going to be easy, but hopefully it can be fun.