Fifteen Weeks Down

Yesterday was weigh-in day!  I stepped on the scale, and felt really great because I lost 2 pounds!  I weighed 138.4 this past week.  I can't really pinpoint what I did differently (if anything!), other than I tried hard not to binge on M&Ms.  I still ate them, but I tried to keep it in moderation!  We ate our typical dinners last week--leftover Cheesecake Factory on Monday night, Subway on Tuesday night (it was a crazy day), BLTs on Wednesday night, pancakes on Thursday night, and a Contessa Orange Chicken frozen bag meal on Friday night.  I stuck to my normal lunch (my chicken salad with grapes, almonds, cranberries) on most days, although I had half of my Subway sandwich on Wednesday for lunch.  Nothing crazy or out of the ordinary...or even overly healthy!  I had my regular exercise classes this past week as well--I added another riser to my step in step class two or three classes ago, and that first night with 2 risers felt like the very first step class back in January all over again...I was winded, breathing hard, and my face was bright red.  What a difference one little riser makes!  So hopefully I've been burning more calories in step class the last few weeks.  Wednesday's Zumba class had a substitute instructor, and I was very nervous after previous sub experiences--thankfully, she was an instructor we've never had before, not the terrible sub!  She started off the class with a lot of hooting and hollering, and I couldn't figure out if she was making those sounds to indicate a change in moves, or if she was just excited...  Turns out, she was just excited--that girl had tons of energy!  She also used super upbeat music, and a lot of songs we'd never done before with our regular instructors, so it was a lot of fun, and great to change it up a bit.  I really liked her routine to Jai Ho! from Slumdog Millionaire--I don't know how you can not smile when you hear that song!  It was a really good class--I love my regular instructors, but I wouldn't mind having that sub again sometime.  For those of you unfamiliar with Zumba or who want to see choreography almost exactly like I did in class on Wednesday, here's a good video:

Saturday probably burned all my calories for the whole week--it was a busy day!  I woke up and got to the commissary early for my weekly shopping trip, because we were out of fruit for lunch.  I got home in time to unload and get lunch fixed for the kiddos, and then after they were down for naps/quiet time, I changed into my swimsuit and headed over to the indoor pool for more lap swimming.  After my first swim last week, I'd been devising ways to get back to the pool all week--I even asked Dan if I could go when he got home from work one evening last week, but he wasn't keen on that idea.  I just loved it last weekend, so I wanted to work it in this weekend if I could.  I had about an hour, and I decided I would try to get to a mile in laps...but I didn't decide that until I was already in the pool swimming, so I hadn't checked the handy chart inside the locker room letting me know how many laps I needed for a mile.  I spent most of the swim trying to keep lap count while also doing math in my head--not exactly my strongest suit.  I used to run track in high school, so I knew the measurements of a track, and I knew the pool wasn't a 50m pool, so I figured it was a 25m--I was extrapolating from that to come up with how many laps I needed to swim.  It took me a really long time to figure out that I needed to swim 64 laps to get to 1600 meters, or 1 mile.  I kept getting confused trying to multiply and divide AND keep count of what lap I was on--that is hard!  I was swimming mostly breaststroke with a few freestyle laps mixed in, and I was keeping a pretty steady pace--it felt good, but I was also really concentrating on the numbers to make sure I got to that mile, so it wasn't as relaxing as my previous swim.  After a little less than an hour, I got to my 64th lap, and I felt pretty triumphant!  I wasn't horribly tired, and I was proud that I went for it and got it done...until I walked into the locker room and saw this chart:

what was I missing??

I am not a dumb girl, and I spent a lot of time and energy figuring out how many laps I needed--I could not for the life of me figure out how I got it wrong and was short of a mile by 8 laps!  It wasn't until I got home that Dan studied the chart with me and helpfully pointed out that the pool is not a 25m pool...but a 25 YARD pool.  Duh.  I even blogged about it last week and wrote that it was a 25-yard pool, but for some reason, I was convinced this week that it was meters--because that's what makes sense in my head for measuring stuff like this (probably back to my track days), but it's not.  It's yards.  8 laps short!  Oh well--I was proud of myself for trying, and I still almost swam a mile!  That's pretty impressive, right?  And I burned a lot of calories for my effort--my arms felt like noodles afterward.

I came home, took a shower, and then all five of us headed out shopping--this is something that very rarely ever happens, so I was nervous about how it was going to go down.  We were setting up Abby's new bed on Sunday with help from Dan's parents, and we needed some things crucial to the project--like a mattress and sheets to fit the new bed!  We spent 2 hours wandering around IKEA, searching for needles in a very Swedish haystack--the boys were not happy hanging out in a cart that whole time, Abby was in heaven since we were picking out stuff for her room, Dan was super grumpy, and I was focused and on a mission.  We treated ourselves to Red Robin for dinner after the painful shopping experience--it was deserved!  I even had time to make a really quick trip to Bed Bath and Beyond while we waited for a table at the restaurant, so I hoped I had everything I needed to make Abby's room perfect.  I was exhausted Saturday night--I burned a ton of calories with my entire day's activities!  Yesterday was totally nuts working like crazy in Abby's room--I'm going to devote a whole blog entry to her room transformation later this week.  Fifteen weeks and 24.6 pounds down on Challenge #2!