Discouraging

Well.. Happy South Beach Diet Week 2.. I weighed myself this morning and i lost 2 lbs. This isn't normal. After one week i've normally lost at least 5 or 6.. so i'm a tad discouraged. I don't really know what the problem is but I have a hypothesis.. I haven't been loving the eggs for breakfast thing which i was consistent with the other times I did this. But I haven't been skipping breakfast.. I try to have other things instead, mostly cheese. But my guess is that the egg has so much protein that starts the diet process right in the morning and i've somehow been missing out on that process because i haven't been eating eggs.

Well, what a crock! It makes me mad and of course discouraged. But for some reason it doesn't make me want to quit. I actually want to see what happens when I start having an egg for breakfast every morning to see if that was in fact the cause of this non-weight loss. And maybe if i'm lucky it'll mean that it's going to just speed up and i'll drop 10 lbs in one day ;) just kidding that would be pretty unhealthy. But I do kinda feel like i'm starting all over and that really isn't fun.

It's not going to ruin my day but it is kind of annoying.

South Beach Progress

So I was a very good girl this weekend, other than taking a few sips of wine that I was peer pressured into. And Alex isn't holding it against me for the Hoss's deal, thank goodness. Just wanted to chart my progress so far and outline the future goals.

Basically, it's been going really well.. but I must be moving slowly this time around because the weight seems to be coming off a lot slower. I'm not really sure why that is? But hopefully as I keep going it'll keep going and i'll get lighter and lighter. Due to the slow factor, i'm extending it until November 7th. That's 3 1/2 weeks with no carbs. Will be tricky but worth it, hopefully.

Again, I need to exercise more. Mondays I play volleyball but that's about the extent of my exercising. I found my exercise mat though so I'm hoping to do 2 work outs a week. This weekend coming up is going to be busy and it's going to be hard to stick to it but i think i can manage. I've made it one week with no problem. That commercial for the new Wendy's burger though is killing me :)

Breakfast is still the hardest meal but i'm trying harder with that. I can hopefully drop a total of 15 lbs.. that's my goal. Especially before christmas and new clothes shopping.. I don't want to get any gifts that will end up not fitting.

Good Girls Get Hoss's

So Alex and I started the South Beach yesterday. I think I said I was going to in a previous blog a while back but it didn't end up happening. However, I normally go to sleep thinking, I should eat better, I should exercise more.. and then I wake up the next morning and think, nahh.. no need, i'm good the way I am.

Then one morning I woke up and thought, Today is the Day i start my detox. That's basically what the South Beach is.. a detox. First you lose water weight and then you move to actual weight.. and the 2 week phase is a bit of a motivator since you're losing about 2 lbs a day. Though sometimes I only lost one lb a day but still.. that's a whole lb. I did this diet 10 days before my wedding and felt awesome. Then of course we went on our honeymoon... oops!

The point of my title is, Alex told me that if I stay on the diet for a full week without messing up, we can go to Hoss's. I love Hoss's with a passion and even with all the other great food choices in Lancaster, we go there probably once a month. The salad bar is just phenom and I can't find another one like it. Plus, where else do you go and only eat salad for your meal? No where!

So everytime I think about the foods i'm not currently allowed to have, I remind myself that good girls get hoss's. And i'm not sure what the reward for going 2 full weeks will be but i definitely need something to work towards, other then a weight loss goal.

All I Want..

.. is a slice of pizza
.. is one peanut butter cup (who am i kidding that would turn into at least 5 more)
..is to make a fulfilling lunch (lunch is so hard for me, i would eat a sandwich everyday if it was considered healthy.. in weight loss cases anyway)
..is a job that i enjoy and look forward to
..is the world to be a little less judgmental
..is to eat and not worry about it
..is to look hot in hawaii

Being on a diet isn't easy. I'm aware that it's not supposed to be easy, and that the results drive you forward.. which, they are. 8 lbs! But when you don't see physical results.. it's a little disheartening. I've noticed that my legs have gotten a bit smaller, my arms, a tad smaller, and my face.. a teeny bit smaller. I guess maybe if i exercised more, it would accelerate things, however.. i don't currently have time to do that. This week is busy with the wedding on Saturday.

Tuesday: Dinner at my parents and to work on the programs/place cards.
Wednesday: Shopping for our Trip
Thursday: Tuxes, Champagne for the Limo, Hoss's!, Alex's Basketball Game
Friday: Nails, Lunch, going to the Base to drop off the goods, Rehearsal Dinner
Saturday: Get Married!

I can't say it's really stressful, it just keeps me really busy! And tired because I'm not fueling my body with as much food as normal. I'm still around 800 calories a day though which is good. At least I get to have a piece of cake at the wedding!

Seven Pounds

No, not the movie.. it's the weight i lost since last monday on the South Beach Diet. The weekend wasn't easy. My cousin Ashley had a graduation party with tons of goodies I could've eaten. However I stuck with meatballs and bbq pulled pork. No veggies.. but then for dinner i had a salad and some spicy chili at Conestoga. Then yesterday at Charmayne & Omer's they had strawberry shortcake. Darn diet! But it's working so i'm not complaining.

Weekend recap:
Friday: Worked a half day (love half days) then had to be home because our desk was arriving. After that had a carpet quote and headed to my parents house. In the evening I attended Ashley's Cumberland Valley graduation at the Giant Center. From 7:45 to 10:30.. crazy! Plus traffic! It was a nice graduation though. Makes me feel old.

Saturday: Ashley's graduation party. Alex was in Atlantic City for his bachelor party friday night so he did not attend the party with me on Saturday.. instead he took a 4 hour nap! He needed it though.. Atlantic City can be rough! But he had a great time, so i'm happy for that! After Ashley's party.. filled with Volleyball, Lifesize Jenga and Ladder ball, I headed back to my house in Lancaster. Alex and I eventually went out to dinner, Conestoga and then watched Saving Silvermen and went to sleep.

Sunday: I was late meeting Jen for breakfast (with Erik & Alex of course) and I felt terrible! But breakfast was good and it was nice getting to know Erik a little (soberly) before the wedding saturday. We then went to the Farm to help Alex's parents with the camera we gave them since we got a new one. Well, the camera isn't working.. what a great gift! I didn't expect to spend the whole day there, but we did. We went to the outlets to exchange Alex's swim trunks at Nike and then went over to Bass because they always have good sales and Omer needed some tan pants for the rehearsal dinner. Then we had hot dogs for dinner. I'm assuming their carb free?
All day I spent searching for kittens or waiting for kittens to come out of hiding. We got some good looks at them, they're super cute. There are 4, 2 orange ones, a cream one and a black and white one. Two are still up in the loft and two are in the lower part of the barn. Butterscotch (their mom) can't seem to get the two to come down from the loft. They sure know how to hide though. I have a picture of the two in the loft that i'll put on here then. I don't have a card reader here.

Overall it was a good weekend. I finished thank you notes last night so they'll go out today. Next weekend is of course, the wedding. It's going to be crazy! I have a pretty strict timeline to follow but once we get to the reception, everything should be fine. I get my programs and place cards today, so I'll be working on that tonight.

I'm so excited to be getting married in 5 days! I love Alex so much and can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him! :)

You are what you eat..

For some reason I really enjoy reading health blogs. It's fun to see how people go from overweight to healthy weight. Tipping the scale is very beneficial for your life.

Over a year ago.. I think it was February 2008. Alex started the South Beach Diet because his mom had recently tried it as she is pre-diabetic. Alex started at about 265. We don't know the exact weight, but we're guessing it's around there. His current weight is about 203. That's about 60 lbs.. it's crazy! Crazy good of course, but nuts to know that he dropped 60 lbs.. and about 20 of it was in the first month! I now call him my skinny minnie because i've never seen him this small since i've been dating him (2 years and 9 months). This is apparently where he was at weight wise in high school. I'm pretty proud of him.. plus not that he wasn't hot before.. but this makes him even hotter!

Moving on.. i'm currently on the SB to shape up a bit before the wedding/honeymoon. I started on Monday. I've been doing really well. One thing i'd like to mention though is scales are finicky.. it says i lost 4 lbs in 3 days. I'm not sure if this is accurate or not. I was thinking that my first weigh in was inaccurate, but hey, maybe it wasn't? 4 lbs in 3 days just seems crazy. I've been tracking my food intake.. calories, carbs and sugars and then how many calories I think i'm burning.. which really, might balance out because I'm eating an average of 750 calories a day. That doesn't seem like much compared to the 'recommended' amount that the gov't says you need, however i eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack (sometimes), dinner. It's the south beach.. actually you're supposed to snack more on the south beach! I'm thinking that 4 lbs was water weight, and I know there's more water weight to come off (since i've done this a few times). Easter really threw me off last time with it's peanut butter cups! I just need to keep being strict with it. It's going to be hard to do that this weekend at my cousin's graduation party, but i'll do my best!!

Here's a fun website, 100+ Nutrition Facts about Well-Known Foods. It's very interesting. Count how many of those foods you eat on a regular basis. I'm 11 out of 25. I think that's pretty good?? it's only 44% but still!

I know it's hard not to eat processed foods, but you really are what you eat. If you eat a lot of junk, you're body will fill up with junk (fat) and if you eat foods that your body actually uses, then you're on the right track! So many of the foods on that list are anti-carcinogenic and can help cancer patients greatly by removing toxins from their body that they get during radiation and chemo.

Alex has a dream (yes another one) to one day be self sufficient on the farm and not need to go to the grocery store for anything (of course, somethings.. like toilet paper will need to be purchased) but you have a large garden in the summer where you grow all the veggies you'll need for a year. Obviously you'll have to freeze some or can some to make it the whole year but there are a lot of seasonal veggies. And he wants to have a couple chickens for egg production, a steer or two for beef production, sheep for lamb production, and of course a large garden. I agree with this dream, and though it will be a lot of work, we may live 10+ years longer because of it.

Sometimes I wish I lived in simpler times, like little house on the prairie. They didn't worry about much. Sure, Nelly was a biotch but other then her and her mother, everyone was super nice (from what I can remember). It just seemed like such a carefree life.. little to no bills to pay, no tv (which i couldn't live without but hey this is hypothetical).. no drugs (in your face, of course there were drugs).. no rehab though. It will never go back to that unless the earth becomes extinct and we start all over.. that's another topic tho!

Happy Thursday, Tomorrow is Friday!

She's a Maniac

As you can see by the lack of posting. I've been busy. And sick actually. Tuesday, after feeling great all Memorial Day weekend, I woke up with a Severe sore throat, but went to work and left at lunch time to spend the rest of the day miserable on the couch watching Tori & Dean re-runs (which i love). Yesterday I felt better, but today my throat hurts again on the right side, no swollen lymph node, but pain. I'm pretty sure I have strep throat! My boss had it for 2 weeks (untreated) and i'm pretty sure it's spread to me. Of course, i'm getting married in 16 days and can't afford to be sick, so i'm going to call the doctor at lunchtime and hope he believes my strep and sends the local pharmacy a prescription. I need to get a new doctor, since this one is still in Harrisburg and I've been living in Lancaster County for years now. It's hard though! Plus, I like him, he's been my doctor forever. Anyway, I'm headed up there this evening for a highlight touch up, so if worse comes to worse I can leave work early and stop into his office.
On a lighter/brighter note: My weekend was awesome! We found the kittens at Alex's parent's farm that we've been wondering about, by found I mean we saw them from a distance and when we went to search for them, we had no luck, they're good little hiders, well trained I guess. I'll find them next time i'm out there. I'm thinking of getting two of them and Laurel wants the other two, so that'd be perfect! Alex doesn't want a cat but they're so cute! Also, i've officially started my 18 day diet/exercise plan.. the South Beach has begun and this is the first time i'm actually exercising with it, so i'm hoping to get good results. Usually I lose about 8-10 lbs in 14 days, so maybe working out will speed this up. Plus, I need to be bikini fit for Hawaii. Super excited!

This weekend is packed full of fun as well.. Friday night i'm hanging out with the Brewing Wives Club, going to eat some yummy Thai food at Sukothai and then back to my house to play some Apples to Apples. Saturday is my Bridal Shower, yay!! And it's at Hoss's which i loooove. I'm always begging Alex to take me to Hoss's. The salad bar is out of this world, i think i wrote that in a previous post?? haha. Anyway, after that is my Bachelorette party with my bridesmaids and a couple close friends. We're going to dinner downtown in Harrisburg at Cafe Fresco and then we're going to go out for a little while.. play it by ear and maybe head back to Jess's.. I'm kinda boring so I kinda wanna keep it low key. Should be fun though! Then Sunday, Alex and I are having a date day, we're going to write Thank you notes and maybe hit the movies, probably some dinner, relaxing stuff.

Today's only Thursday, but it feels like Friday and should fly by pretty quickly. Next friday we get our new desk that my grama got us for our Wedding Gift. It's awesome! And now I don't have to hear Alex complain anymore about papers being all over the kitchen bc we don't have a decent desk to store them innn!! :)

Happy Thursday!

The first of many..

I'm not sure where I want to begin my blogging journey but I might as well introduce myself.

I'm 24 years old and I work as a Marketing Assistant (but I call myself a Marketing Specialist) for a manufacturing company. My job is pretty easy, I have to say. It's everything I learned about in my Marketing classes in college, so that's good I guess. I'm looking for something more though, this definitely isn't a job I plan on staying in for years (I've already been here a year and a half). I'm looking into getting an Interior Design certificate from a local college because I've always loved interior design. I even started a degree in it when I first went away to college, but that school wasn't working out so I had to find a new major as well.

I'm engaged and will be marrying my fiance in June, so that's coming up pretty quickly. Things are busy now and will only be getting busier by the time the 13th rolls around. It's exciting though, and we're going to Hawaii for our honeymoon so we're super excited about that! So many people are engaged right now, it's crazy! But I guess i've been out of college for 2 years, so that's normal. Pretty soon everyone will start popping out babies too! Not me though, I plan on waiting at least 4 years.

I have a serious dream about building a home and Alex's parent's farm provides the land, now we just need to save the money to buy some of the land and build the home! It's a pretty daunting task but really that just means I need a higher paying job so that I can save the money, the job i'm in currently is under paying me which.. I know the economy is in a recession and all but I haven't gotten a raise since i've been here, oh other then the .25 they gave for cost of living or something.. what's a quarter going to do for me? After taxes it's about 18 cents an hour!

I'm also determined to drop 10 pounds by my wedding day (shouldn't be hard) through utilizing the South Beach Diet. I lost 10 before Easter which I gained about 3 back because of the chocolate.. i really can't resist mini peanut butter cups. But I really need to buckle down since the wedding is about 6 weeks away. I need to look good for Hawaii! The South Beach Diet works though, so i'll outline all the stuff i'm doing to drop the weight, including Pilates which i'm adding into my diet/exercise regimen. Last time I took off the 10 lbs I did it without exercise, so pilates should help expedite the droppage!

Well that's a bit of a preview of my life.. elaborations to follow!