Tightening Up

Thanks to the awesomeness of nursing my son, I have lost all my prego weight plus five extra pounds.

(pauses to do happy dance)

However, during the course of the pregnancy, my wonderful husband also gained some pregnancy weight, as every good, supportive man should do.  We had a memorable night at the movies where we ate a full meal and shared a milk shake. A really big, chocolate one.  Ah, yes, we had fun with eating during those pregnancy months.

I have the luxury of nursing Toph while Matt does not, so my prego weight is gone and his is still there.  Also, while my baby weight is gone, my body is not exactly the same.  New and improved? Sure, I'm a mom now, my body has lived through and been part of the miracle of life, so yeah, it didn't come out on the other side of that to be exactly the same.  I wouldn't want it to be.  I have stretch marks.  My hips have widened.  My ribs are still displaced.  My upper abs are extremely flat (think no definition) and my lower abs pooch out in a way that says, "I carried life in there."  I have no waist to speak of and must camouflage with belts and fitted tops.

I'm not saying this to complain; quite the contrary.  My body did me proud; now I need to do it proud.  Thus, the tightening up.  Hubs wants to lose his prego weight (which in all honesty will be gone in two weeks when he puts his mind to it...boys have it so easy!) and I want to tone up a bit.

Soooo, we're starting P90X.

This is going to be a fly by night kind of thing; we'll move the ottoman and scoot the loveseat back every night and get busy in the living room after the baby goes to bed.  I honestly don't know if we'll do it every. single. night...but we'll give it the college try.

Wish us luck!


I must say thank you to the great Kris Brannan for generously burning lending us his copy of P90X...without him we would still be using that time to sit on the couch.

So, how is that diet going?

Well, husbandly and I have had some busy couple of weeks. What with his first year of teaching, my third year of teaching and a couple of weddings in between, our schedules have been turned on their ears. It's not that we haven't been making a concerted effort to get back into the swing of things, but you know, it's hard.

Cut to the diet: how is it going? Well, due to my busy-ness, it's kind of plateaued. The good news is I haven't gained any weight, but the bad news is that I haven't lost any weight. I haven't been running as much either, a fact that my husband reminds me of everyday.

"Did you run today?"

No, I got home late.

"Did you forget we're running a half marathon in a month?"

No, I didn't forget.

"I can't carry you those 13 miles you know, you're going to have to do it yourself."

Listen buddy, I can at least walk if I have to.

And this is what goes on nightly. I think that when I signed us up for the half marathon, I simply forgot that it would be in the middle of the second nine weeks, right before Thanksgiving Break, which is simply a back breaking time of year in a school. There's all sorts of things going on, all sorts of tests being taken and all sorts of little extras to be done. All the other races I've run have been A) In college, which I now know was the cushiest, easiest time of my life. What I wouldn't give to be able to spend my days waking up at 8:30, going to class at 9:15, learning about Spanish literature from the Golden age and US-Latin American relations all day, getting home at 2:30 to watch Roseanne reruns and strolling into work at 4:3o to work a four hour shift.
I digress. B) During summer. Relatively nothing going on. I had already finished finals and had the world at my finger tips.

So, this race that I'm about to run has taken a backseat to all my other priorities. And this one is 13 miles to boot. I know I've got to be serious about it, but I'm already so serious about so many other things: my husband, his job, my job, my diet, making sure my husband eats, making sure the cat is not completely ignored. I'm just busy.

But, I'll keep all posted on the diet thing. Hope that the plateau will indeed start on the downward slope again once I get serious about running 13 miles.

Counting Calories Just Got Easier

I have mentioned before that sometimes I have to guesstimate for different foods when I'm counting the calories in them. This is all well and good but it is what it is. It's not an exact science. Well, my lovely mother-in-law, Mama J, sent me an awesome scale. This scale rocks. All I have to do is turn it on, place whatever it is I'm about to eat on it, and enter in the code for it and it tells you the calories in it, according to weight. For example, a banana has 162 calories. Five strawberries? 45 calories. An apple? 92 calories. You can weigh more than fruit, but that's all I've done so far. We registered for it, much to my husband's dismay. I remember him saying in the middle of Target, "whose going to buy us this?" Well, my mother-in-law bought it for me. So, thanks Mama J. You rock!

The Chronicles of Professional Development in a Dieter's World

My first day back to work was last Thursday. I walk in and it's like a reunion. You'd think us teachers hadn't seen each other in years, the way we hugged. I hugged a first grade teacher that I'd barely talked to last year because it seemed like the right thing to do. Really, hugs make me feel pretty good, so that wasn't the bad part.

I came in, ready to learn something about our year and after I greeted everyone, I looked at the other end of the cafeteria. Donuts. Tacos. Orange juice. Pan dulce. Oh. No. Luckily, I had already eaten a pretty large breakfast, so I ignored all that stuff. Things were great until our first break, an hour and a half in. I had started to get a little stressed, the honeymoon period of seeing everyone having worn off. Oh, you mean in a week we ARE going to have kids in our rooms? Let's talk about this on our way to the donut table. Well, I did walk down there, thinking I would just scope out the scene. I got lucky in one area. I mentioned that bean and cheese tacos are my weakness. I didn't know how I was going to avoid those things. My principal and I must have ESP because she didn't even buy that kind, and I really don't like any other kind of breakfast taco. Unless it's made by me. I'm weird about eating eggs at restaurants and stuff. You know they don't pay attention to the expiration date.

Then I looked at the donuts. In all their deliciousness. Man, those things looked ooey gooey. But, I had to tell myself: those things are processed beyond belief. Once in your body, it will turn right into sugar which will get into your blood stream and spike your blood sugar, causing a rush and then a crash. Look at all the bread to it. That's not whole grain. Those are the bad carbs you've been reading about. Reason prevailed. I went back to my table, filled my water bottle and ate the whole grain granola bar I had in my purse.

Day one was a success...what about day two? Stay tuned.

Ben Folds is My New Running Buddy

I had kind of gloomy day today and I put off my run for a long time. Finally, I decided to put what was bothering me behind me and get on that treadmill. Of course, now I feel great as I knew I would. Isn't that weird that the buildup to a workout can seem so dreadful but afterwards you always feel great?

I love running, I really do. I don't consider myself a fantastic runner or a speed demon or anything like that. But my stamina is good and I can go for a long time once I get started at the right pace. As I'm training for a half marathon, I have to kind of switch up my running to make sure I'm ready for it. However, one of my most favorite places to run is right here in my own house.

Here's why: I have a treadmill. My awesome mother in law gave it to me (us) and I love having it here. It's a fold up kind so when I'm done it doesn't take up a whole lot of space. Since I have this treadmill, I can go running whenever I want and I don't have to worry about driving anywhere, getting hit by a car or sweating profusely in front of people I don't know.

Another reason I like running here at home is that I can listen to whatever music I want and I don't have to fool with an Ipod. It's true; at the gym I can put on my Ipod and listen to whatever music I want; but those ear buds are the bane of my existence! They don't stay in and when they get sweaty the music gets all weird and muffled. Today on my run, since I was feeling so awful, I knew I needed some bright music. I chose Ben Folds. It was definitely the right choice as I lost myself in the music and my run was over in the blink of an eye. I did not hear one bad song. All the songs were a joy to listen to and as I've been listening to Ben for a LONG time, each song generally drums up some memory associated with it.

I had a good run today. If you haven't ever listened to Ben Folds, I would recommend it. His voice is like a bell and his songs are lovely.

Week 1 Update

It's been a little more than a week and I promised myself that I would update everyone on my weight loss progress. I stepped on the scale this morning and...

I lost 5 pounds.

Crazy, I know. I didn't think I would lose any weight this week, as I've been acclimating to life as a newlywed. I've also been cooking again and I wasn't sure how my body was going to take home-cooked meals. I'm happy with that, but I fully understand that this will not be a weekly thing. I wouldn't want it to be a weekly thing because I really feel that five pounds a week is too fast. Five pounds a month is better. But I'll take it.

When I weigh myself, I use these rules. One, I only get on the scale once a week. I used to weigh in every day but for me that became really discouraging. Two, I always weigh myself in the morning, right after I wake up. Three, before I weigh myself, I always use the restroom. I don't drink any water which is what I'm inclined to do in the morning right after I wake up.

Pretty simple process. It is nice that I'm halfway to my September 27 checkpoint. I still have a long ways to go and my ultimate goal is to get there by March. Slow and steady wins the race.

Peace out.

A Sure-Fire Way to Squelch Cravings

Last night after I had eaten my perfectly nutritious meal of veggie lasagna (Deceptively Delicious), I had a hankering for a Sonic milkshake. Now, with gas prices the way they are I would not ever dream of leaving the house and wasting gas, money and calories for a silly shake. As luck would have it, my house is a block from Sonic. As I sat with my craving intensifying by the minute, I started justifying that I wouldn't actually be wasting gas if I just walked there, plus I would be burning calories in the process. It would practically be a health shake, right? I hemmed and hawed for awhile and had almost decided to go. My shoes weren't on yet, but I was thinking about which ones I was going to wear. At the last second I decided to look up the nutritionals for a Sonic shake, a coconut cream shake to be exact.

That's what did it. That's what killed my craving. What I found was so ridiculously high in calories, as well as fat and carbs (and not good carbs either), that it stopped me dead in my tracks. A regular size shake of the coconut cream nature had 680 calories. I did the math; that's roughly 45% of my daily caloric intake. And they're not even useful calories; they do nothing for your body except go directly into your bloodstream and spike your blood sugar, setting you up for a sugar crash and another craving. Oh no. Not good.

So, that killed my craving. I would like to find a less harmful sweet something for after dinner. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

That solves that!

When I was in college, I loved to run races. I never did it competitively, but I always enjoyed training and the races and the camaraderie that goes with training with a friend. I miss those races as they always gave me a reason to get up; I'd tell myself I have already paid for the race, and did I really want to get sick on the course because I was out of shape? So, SATX is having it's inaugural marathon and half marathon this November, right when the weather gets cool. MGK and I are going to run the half marathon! We'll start our training this weekend. I'm really excited because we've never run a race together before but he's a really good runner and I know he'll do great! I've always only run 10k's, which are approximately 6.1 miles, so a half marathon is over double that, but I know we can do it. I'm really excited to do this. I'll let you know how the training goes! Wish my husbandly and I luck.

Ready for the School Year!

I am so ready for school to start for many reasons. For one thing, third times's the charm and I've worked out all the kinks and I've solidified my teaching philosophy. So there's that.
Then, there's the routine. As I said before, I love a good routine. I love getting up at the same time, doing things in the same order everyday and going to bed at the same time. Now, the things I do within these days will be different, as no two school days look the same, but I love the consistency of my days.
That being said, while I love the summer because it's when I get married and restore my sanity, I get tired of it too. I get off my routine, I sleep too late and stay up too late. When that goes out the window, I'll admit; I have a hard time getting motivated. I've been staying on my diet and it's been going well, but where I start to slack is my exercise routine. Normally, I would exercise right after work but since my work's not in season right now, I have the whole day to exercise. I should just get it over with but I keep creating excuses not to. Yikes.
I love working, I love contributing to my household and making a difference in my students' lives. On a personal level, the routine suits me and for this, I'll be looking forward to the first day of school, the beginning of the 2008-09 school year.
Hmm, maybe I'll go get on the treadmill?

Really cool website...

Tonight I made Italian Meatloaf from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld. It was delicious but it got me tired of "guesstimating" how many calories were in it. I got to researching and found a really cool calorie calculator for recipes. You just enter in the exact recipe, including number of servings and measurements, and it shoots out a rough number of calories. Now, is it exact? No, probably not. But it gives me a ball park to work with, which is what I like.
Here it is:
http://www.calorie-count.com/calories/recipe_analysis.php?

Enjoy!

By the way, each serving had 229 calories. Not bad; that's a little less than half of my calorie allotment for dinner.

Routines

Being a teacher, I find comfort and solace in a set routine and schedule. If I know what's coming next and I have everything planned out, life is going to be much easier for me and my students.
I've applied this philosophy to my diet and so far, it's helped me be successful.
Just like I plan for my work week one week ahead of when it's supposed to happen, I plan my eating week. I've done this ever since I've started teaching, but only recently have I done my planning with nutrition and caloric intake in mind.
I sit down every Saturday or Sunday, depending on what the weekend looks like and I map out 7 breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Breakfast is the easiest thing, so I'll start with that first.
I am a big fan of breakfast and out of my daily caloric intake, breakfast probably has the biggest percentage of calories. I truly believe in a good breakfast, not only because it's what you hear everywhere you turn, but also because I've seen the person I am without a good breakfast and it's not pretty!
Usually a breakfast for me consists of five things and these things hardly ever change, as opposed to my lunches and dinners.
1. Slimfast Shake in Milk Chocolate (I like the Optimum that keeps hunger away for up to 4 hours)
2. Granola bar (9 grams of fiber, an ESSENTIAL part of breakfast and your diet)
3. Apple (Fuji's are the best, in my opinion)
4. Cup of soy milk (I drink this to help get my vitamins down.)
5. Cup of coffee with one TB of creamer
These things hardly ever change. I don't know why, but I like my breakfasts and rarely get tired of them.
Lunches are a different story; I mix it up more often. I almost always have a salad and fruit, but a few of the things that can accompany it are:
a. Slimfast shake
b. vegetable soup
c. chicken breast
d. assorted Lean Cuisines
Or anything else that catches my fancy and is good for me. I try to limit the carbs I take in, as well we the fat, but I try to "beef up" on the protein, as lunch during the school year is important for me. My students can always tell when I'm hungry.
Dinner is always different, as this is the meal I cook for MGK. I always plan healthy meals with veggies on the side (MGK's faves are broccoli). Some of his favorite meals are sloppy joes (from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook...sooo good), chicken pot pie (a family recipe from Aunt DER), and spaghetti (mom's recipe...yum). I love to cook for him...love love love it.
As a general rule for me though: I aim to eat dinner before 6pm every night. I don't know if there's any sort of rule about eating later, but this is how I go to bed comfortable. If I make pasta, I cut what looks like a normal portion in half and load up on a bunch of veggies. I also begin each dinner with a salad. Even when the meal is not pasta or breadlike, I watch my portions like a hawk.
Now, dinner is hard because it's hard to peg an actual caloric number on it and I'm no expert on figuring out calories in cooked meals. So, I guesstimate. I know that if I use heavy cream in something, that's going to be higher. That's why portion control is so important to me. But I would never sacrifice cooking for my husband (nutritional meals, but good ones) for pre-packaged, calorie counted meals. It means too much to me to do that. Plus, I love to cook.
What I'm doing is not hard, nor does it make me feel deprived. Just good and healthy, and I'll take that any day.

How I Picked the Magic Number

Like I said before, I won't be putting my weight down in numbers on this blog. I will only divulge the pounds I want to lose and the pounds I have lost. I am going to be posting monthly pictures of myself documenting this progress. The reason I'm doing it that way is because with my body build and muscle mass, I shouldn't try to get down to the ideal weight for my height. My height is 5'7, and I think the ideal weight for that is 130. I can tell you right now I have not weighed that since 7th grade. I'm not a waif; I have curves and muscles and a belly. Now, I do want all those things to be smaller, 27 pounds smaller in fact.
I chose my goal weight after doing a lot of research about what is healthy for a girl my age. That weight also happens to be what I weighed as a senior in high school. I'm not trying to recapture my glory days or anything like that. When I was 17 and a senior, I didn't have to try for anything to maintain my weight. I could eat what I wanted, then go to basketball practice and sprint for two hours and be fine. I'm no longer 17, I no longer have a basketball coach yelling at me to run and I no longer have the super-metabolism that I had back then. I certainly can't eat like I did back then, dang it.
But why this number? Why 27 pounds? Why keep up this diet after the wedding is over?
Well, I have done my research and have come to the consensus that this is the healthiest number to be at.
I decided to stay on the diet because I am married now. To me, what I'm doing seems backwards; I've got the ring, he's tied in, now's the time to let myself go! I can't do that though. I started thinking about what it means to be married, and the vows "as long as you both shall live." I want to live as long as possible. I have to treat my body like a temple and only put good, substantial things in it, not only for me, but for my husband. We have a lot of living to do and we have a lot of fun doing it.
I also realized that being married means having children. We don't know when that will be, but every time we see a parent with a child, we know our first pregnancy will come a little sooner than we originally planned. I fully understand that my body will go through unimaginable changes when I am pregnant, including the fact that I will gain weight. I want to give my body a fighting chance to lose that weight once I've had the baby. I think that if I kept the weight I'm at now, I might be at risk for complications during the pregnancy. My body needs to be super healthy when it starts baking that baby-bun. Also, if I kept the weight I'm at now and gained more weight on top of that during a pregnancy, not only would I not look healthy, I wouldn't feel healthy and would have that much more weight to lose. It wouldn't be good for the baby, my husband or me.
There you have it. I hope this will bring understanding to anyone who is reading. I know I'll have to revisit this post throughout the process of this lifestyle change, as it'll get hard and I'll need to be reminded of why I'm doing it. It's not just for me, it's for my family.

Why the blog?

Hi.
I don't know who I think I'm kidding, but I decided to start a blog. I love to write, and I have a lot to write about. Now, what you might think of what I write is a different story. Here's the deal. The title of this blog is "Confessions of a Chubby Newlywed." I created this blog to document my quest to return to the weight I was when I was a senior in high school eight years ago. That was 27 pounds ago. You will never find out what weight I am now, nor what weight I want to be, only that I have 27 pounds to go.
I started the actual diet the beginning of June, when I tried on my wedding dress. Wouldn't you know that thing wouldn't zip up?? It scared the fool out of me, so I went on a diet I titled "Operation Starvation." I put myself on 1200 calories a day and ran 30 minutes every day. I lost 12 pounds in six weeks and looked great in my wedding dress.
However; it was a struggle! Every calorie I took it, I analyzed. If I didn't think it had a good nutritional value in my body; I didn't eat it. My adding skills GREATLY improved; as I had to document EVERYTHING that went in my mouth, add it up, and then subtract that number from 1200. Honestly, in that 6 week period, my outlook on nutrition changed. I look at each calorie as a precious unit of energy that will sustain me. I had to let go of useless calories and embrace the ones that would be beneficial to my body.
Now, I understand that this was a very extreme diet. Many nutritionists think that this is borderline starvation, but I had to be drastic. I had a wedding coming up, which was perfect and beautiful and I'm married to my best friend. I believe in my heart of hearts that MGK would love me at any weight, but I owe it to our marriage to be the healthiest weight possible.
Now that the wedding and honeymoon are over, I will continue the diet. It won't quite be "Operation Starvation." I'm going to slow the loss down a little. I'll be moving myself up to 15oo calories a day, and will continue my 30 minutes of cardio. My goal is to incorporate more types of exercising in my routine; I just love running so much! But I'll do more weight lifting and vary my exercise.
As far as goals go, I expect this to be a long process. If I did it quickly, that would mean the weight would come back just as quickly. I'm doing this so that I can teach myself a new way of looking at food so as to KEEP the weight off. I have some checkpoints though; and here they are:
by Sept. 27th, I hope to have lost another ten pounds. Why this date? Well, that day is important to me for two reasons: it's my husband's birthday and it's my brother and sister in-law's wedding. I want to look my best for their wedding, and for MGK's big 29.
Another checkpoint: by Christmas, I hope to have lost another 7 pounds. The holidays will be super hard; as everyone I know including myself loves to cook all sorts of fattening deliciousness. I'll be researching ways to curb holiday eating, that's for sure!
Finally, the last checkpoint: by Spring Break in March 2009, I will have lost another 10 pounds. That will be the 27 pounds I want to say bye bye to. By the end of this journey, I will have lost a total of 39 pounds. Later I'll go into more detail as to why it's so important to me to get back to that weight, especially as it started out as a panicky scramble to fit into my dress.
So, this is the start of my journey. I don't expect it to be easy, but I am lucky enough to have an awesome support system; my beautiful husband; who loves me just the way I am. :)