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.
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| 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...
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| 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!
