I have been doing core for a full week now. I don't know exactly what made me decide to try Core, other than it seems to work for a lot of people.

After my first week, I know I will at least give it one more week. I was surprised at how easy it was. I was able to use my activity points and weekly flex points to have some whole wheat bread here and there, fat free cheese turned out not to be as bad as I had always imagined, and I really feel like it is a way of eating I would be able to maintain. I guess the proof will be in the pudding (fat free, sugar free of course!) and I'll find out tommorrow at Weight In.

I think from now on I am going to just update on my other blog, The Work of Her Hands. I am not doing so well at keeping up two blogs. It'll be easier on me that way. Hope you find your way over there.

I had my first gain at WW this week. +.6 lbs, not much, but a gain, and definitely not what I was expecting, since I had been really working out trying to meet my goal of 230 or less by Valentines day. I haven't figured out what I did wrong yet, but I'm going to stay on program, keep working out, and hope everything works itself out. More later,

I had a much better weigh in tonight, I had lost 5 lbs from last week! That means to date, I have lost 37.8 lbs. I didn't work out as hard this week as I did last week, but I still racked up 17 activity points. If I want to get to 230 by the 14th, though, I'll have to crank it up a notch this coming week. I still have to lose 1.8 lbs to reach that goal. If not, I'll know I got pretty close, anyway.

This weekend I packed up all the clothes in my closet that are now too large. A whole trashbag full of stuff. I realized this week that although in my head I was saying, well, I wear a 22, I am actually wearing 20's, and in some cases, 18's. I guess I need to start wrapping my head around that fact that I am getting smaller, even though I don't feel a lot different.

I had to move my fiber arts blog. It now resides at http://theworkofherhands.wordpress.com I hope you'll pop on over and see what is going on in my life besides dieting or "lifestyle change" as it should be called.

See you next week!

Another dissapointing weigh in at Weight Watchers tonight. I either lost .2 or .8 lbs. I can't tell, because the lady who filled in the back messed something up and I will have to get it straightened out next week.

Either way, I'm dissapointed. I really worked hard this week, and earned 30 activity points. I'm sore, on top of being sick. I am worried that I am going to have to lose the rest of this weight in tenths of a pound, which would take forever. I don't want to lost 5 or 10 lbs a week, the 1 or 2 lb. safe range of weight loss would suit me fine. .2 lbs, though. Sheesh.

Anyway, I am resolved to work even harder on making good nutritional choices. After I had in my healthy 8, I was allowing myself to have a 100 calorie pack of cookies or chips if I still had points left. I think I am going to cut those out completely (they aren't that good anyway) and use those points on fruit or vegetables instead. I feel better, not guilty, after eating those anyway.

There is one thing keeping me optimistic. I had decided last week to take my measurements, so I could start keeping track of how many inches I had lost. SO today after getting more and more depressed by the fact that my home scale had me weighing 4 lbs more than last week, I broke out the tape measure again. While my chest and bust measurements stayed the same, I was down 1.5 inches at the waist and 1 inch around my butt. So I did get smaller, even if it wasn't measurable at the scale.

So, the total weight loss so far is either 33 lbs or 33.6 lbs. I'll know for sure next week. I hope I have a better report when I check in next.

Well, I went to weight in in Muskogee last night, we have a birthday dinner for my MIL tonight at this great seafood place called Catfish Cove. (unfortunately, a buffet. Buffets are so hard! FIL will lose money paying for me tonight). I had lost .6 lbs, but I had had three really good weeks in a row, so I am not surprised, or dissapointed.

Maybe not seeing a change in the scale didn't surprise me because I have seen a change in my clothes. When I went to visit Jody before Christmas, she gave me a bunch of clothes that were 18's and 20's. I kind of laughed, because really, I have been wearing much bigger clothes for a long time, and it just didn't seem possible that I would ever wear that size. Then Sean gave me a pair of size 20 jeans for Christmas. Again, I looked at these relatively tiny pants and kind of laughed at him. I mean, no way am I ever going to fit into those pants. I could squeeze into them, but I knew I looked ridiculous.

Well, tonight I am wearing them to dinner. And while I'll be wearing them for quite a while, and I am sure they will look better on my later, they don't look too bad now. I am thrilled.

Last night at weigh in was my 16th week on program. So much has changed for me since I started weight watchers. I am more confident, happier, stronger, and I am sure healthier. My tastes have changed too, and I hope that makes dinner tonight easier. The change in my weight is just the outward manifestation of the bigger changes I know I am making on the inside. God has really been with me, and every Tuesday as I drive home from the meeting, I just have to praise His name and thank Him for being with me through this and giving me the strength to change. I just know it wouldn't be possible without Him.

I am facing a few areas that are particularly challenging in this weight loss journey. The area that is most confusing to me is this whole excercising thing. I have been a bookworm most of my life, and it's surprising to find that I actually like the way I feel after doing a workout video. There are so many differing opinions on how to excercise and what excercise is best for you out there though, that it can be a little confusing.

When I first started excercising, my main motivation was just to get moving. I knew I had to, so I started off doing the easiest excercise program that I got on FIT TV. Now that I have started to lose weight, and I am getting fitter, I find I can do more. No one was more surprised than me the day I decided to do a kick boxing video and actually made it through the whole thing (although I am sure I didn't kick as high as the instructor did, at least I tried) I bought a set of dumb bells, a stability ball and excercise bands. I probably look ridiculous trying all these things, but I am in the privacy of my own room, and no one sees me (God probably gets a little tickled, I bet) and I feel better, so I keep doing it.

Here are some sites I have found that have good information on excercise:
Sparkpeople, and Realage.com (These are the people that wrote the book You On A Diet. It's a good book, and there are good recipes here, although a little high on points if you are doing Weight Watchers.) Body For Life is another that has good excercise plans.

That being said, I have joined a 100 Days of Excercise Challange. It is just to challenge yourself, not really a program or anything. Progress will show up in the little ticker I set up in the side bar.

Well, after weighing in last week, I am down a total of 29 lbs. I got my 10% keychain last week, and was really hoping to hit a total of 30 lbs gone this week, but I missed it by .4 lbs. It was a little dissapointing to have not made it this week, but I'll get there during this week coming up, right? We had so many great losses at this last meeting, it was just great to cheer for everybody else. One lady had lost 11 lbs in her first week, and another had lost 7. It was really great!

Well, until next time....

Well, I haven't posted in a while, although I haven't fallen off the WW wagon. I went on a trip to my sisters house, and had the adventure of doing WW while traveling for 22 hours in a van.

My best suggestion for eating healthy while traveling is this...take a cooler. The day before we left, I grilled up a huge batch of skinless boneless chicken breast in three flavors. Italian, buffalo wings and fajita. I packaged it, in ziplock bags, in 2 ounce packages. We took a bottle of light done right ranch and a bottle of blue cheese for Sean, and I pre packaged salad in reusable containers. That worked great for meals, and then for snacks we had a lot of 100 calorie snack packs, ziplock bags with a cup of grapes each, and baby carrots. (Keebler has come out with 100 calorie packs of tiny shortbread cookies with fudge on the back. They are wonderful) All of the 100 calorie packs that I have tried come out to 2 pts a piece, so while they are okay as snacks they are not as point friendly as fruits and vegetables.

Since we drove straight through, I probably used food as a way to stay awake more than I should have. And then there were temptations at Jodis house that I don't have here, and I did have a cookie and a baklava or two. The worse veer off the path though came on the way home, when we stopped at Shoneys to eat because we could not find an Applebees anywhere. (Next time, I will look up locations before we leave the house, so we will know where to stop) Anyway, Shoney's was having a seafood buffet. If I had stuck with the baked fish and shrimp and crablegs, I would have been fine, but I tried a bite of this deep fried white fish. One thing you learn in weight watchers is that is okay to try a bite of something. The operative word being, BITE. One bite led to three peices. I just did not do well at all. Next time, if faced with that situation, I will not have any of that at all.

The good thing is, though, that we went to the Smithsonian, and then walked to the Washington Monument down to the front of the White House, and then to a distant metro stop. I probably walked 4 miles that day. And when I weighed in that Tuesday after we got home, I had lost 4 lbs!

So I have lost 25 lbs! I only lost .4 lbs this last week, because of Christmas. At least this Christmas, I did not give myself the ok to eat everything I saw. I did eat cookies and candy (Mom always sends homemade candy for Christmas, and I didn't have the heart to tell her not to send it. Next year, though,(if she sends candy again) we may keep the candy somewhere else besides in the house.) As people have pointed out, I did indeed lose weight at Christmas, even if it was just .4 lbs.

So I have about 1.5 lbs to lose to get to my 10% goal. To have lost 10% of my original body weight really is exciting. I hope I reach the goal this coming Tuesday!