Monday, March 4, 2013

Sometimes Life Happens

I've been kind of dreading this post all week last week...the weigh-in post.  I was really hoping to get below 150 this week, and that wasn't an unreasonable goal, considering I've been losing an average of 1.6 pounds, and last week I weighed 151.4.  Well, this week, I weighed in at 150.4.  One more pound down, and I'm trying not to be disappointed.  I feel the need to dissect my week last week, to figure out where I got off my average--it's not excuses, it's just the reality of life, and my life was a little crazy last week!

I'm going to break it down into bullet points:

  • I didn't drink enough water last week.  Truthfully, I've been on the downhill slide when it comes to water intake the last few weeks, and last week was my worst effort.  Sometimes I just forget to drink any water before like 3pm, and by then, it's impossible to make up the deficit the rest of the day!  So I need to be better about drinking water first thing in the morning to get the day off on the right foot.

need to drink more!!
     
  • I didn't get enough sleep last week.  I was cramming to fit everything into my days because we had a lot going on last week, so I didn't get to bed by midnight--or even 1am--most nights.  Lack of sleep is really a weight-loss killer, and a motivation drainer!  I was so exhausted by the end of the week, and I felt terrible.  I need an alarm clock to go off at midnight or something that forces me into a bed--where's my fairy godmother to turn me into a sleeping pumpkin when I need her??
     
  • Stress.  Along with lack of sleep, I was a ball of stress last week.  I was stressed out over Dan's promotion ceremony stuff--all the logistics, how the cake was going to turn out, how Abby would behave, what was I going to wear???  I was also stressed because I couldn't get to my cleaning schedule three days last week due to other stuff going on--it seems silly, but it really threw me off because I don't want to get behind now that I have a good system going.  I was also stressed because I was going over my calories due to cake and cupcakes...which no one forced me to eat, but like I've said before, if it's in my house, I will eat it.  I managed to eat not very many, but still...too many for losing weight!

  • Not eating enough/eating too much.  I didn't do well with my calorie management last week--Monday and Tuesday were decent, but Wednesday, I ate too much icing and frosting while working on cake and cupcakes, and my dinner wasn't the healthiest.  Thursday, I didn't eat any lunch (no good!) because I was in a rush, and I ate way too much for dinner because I was so hungry.  Friday, I wasn't feeling well (due to being so overtired)--I forced myself to eat, but it wasn't enough and I just felt yucky.  Saturday, I tried to get back to my routine with an apple and peanut butter at lunch--only to discover that I might be allergic to apples?  I've been eating an apple a day almost every day since I started this Challenge in January, and I haven't had a problem until last week...when I noticed that my stomach hurt a lot after eating my apple.  I chalked it up to a weird stomach, and ate another one a few days later...followed by stomach upset.  Hmmm.  I ate one on Saturday, and my stomach hurt terribly--to the point of giving me chills!  I googled apples and stomach pain, and discovered there's such a thing as an apple allergy--I'm hopeful that I don't have it, but the symptoms were eerily familiar.  I'm going to try washing my apples even better, and possibly taking the peel off to see if that helps--apparently apple peels can have similar properties to birch pollen, and folks with seasonal allergies (like me!) can have issues with stomach pain due to the birch pollen-like effects.  So weird!  My stomach was kind of a mess a few days this week because of the apples...

maybe not an apple a day...

  • Not enough calories burned through exercise.  I started the week well with a walk on Sunday in addition to my grocery store run, and then step class Monday night.  Tuesday, I deep cleaned all the bathrooms in the house (a full-body workout!), so I was doing well.  Wednesday, my neighbor with whom I've been doing the exercises invited the boys and me out for a walk in the nice weather--we probably walked about 2 miles, and it felt good to be active outside...can't wait for consistently nice weather!!  Zumba on Wednesday night was awesome--the instructor had a lot of energy and really worked us hard.  Then the week went downhill fast--not much exercise to speak of on Thursday, and Friday's Zumba class was not the workout it usually is...we had a substitute instructor who, even though she is very cute and well-meaning, isn't a very good Zumba instructor.  Her workout is more like light dancing, and I barely broke a sweat--not the calorie burner that I needed, especially after cake and cupcakes earlier in the week!  Without sticking to my cleaning schedule the later days of the week, I lost some of my usual cleaning-related calorie burn as well.  Saturday, Dan and I caught up on our TV shows that we missed during the week, and I pretty much sat in one place for hours!  It wasn't a full-out exercise bust for the week, but it just wasn't as intense as it has been in previous weeks.

With all that said, maybe a one pound loss is just where my body is this week, and one pound was all I was going to lose no matter what I did or didn't do.  I'm just going to keep plugging along, and work on the things I know I can control in the coming weeks--sometimes life gets in the way, but hey, at least I managed not to gain 5 pounds with all that cake and icing in front of me!  That says a lot, right?  Here's to under 150 next week!

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