Vacation is over and race report: Race for Grace 5K

While I was on vacation I got the chance to do a 5K outside of my home state for the first time, doing the Race for Grace 5K in Logansport, Indiana. I like the picture above because it actually shows me RUNNING with relatively fit people at the finish line, lol. I'm on the far right in the teal "Fight Like a Girl" shirt. The race was to raise funds for a 72 hour prayer and discipleship event that the church where the 5K was held does every year. This was also the first time I've done a 5K with a family member other than my husband. This time, my nephew (who is on the cross country team at his school and finished 6 minutes ahead of me), my sister in law and her father all did the 5K. Before it started, we were warned about "Holy Hill", a very steep hill with several churches on it that starts and ends the race. However, we were reminded that one the way back, once you get over Holy Hill, "the promised land" (the finish line) is just feet away. The coolest part of this 5K was the view from the top of that hill on the way out- from there, I could look down and see the hundreds of people ahead of me in the valley created by the hill, it was really a pretty sight. The two hills really did about do me in, with all of my races being in flat Florida I'm not used to those! I ended up coming in 147th place (almost exactly in the middle of the pack) with a time of 35:48 according to my chip. I somehow paused my Nike+GPS at around 2 1/2 miles, so the time on that was way off. The very best part of the race was the AWESOME post race snacks- grapes, apples, oranges and hundreds of amazing homemade cookies. I tracked every bit of it on WW, but I surely did enjoy using up 1/4 of my points for the day on those wonderful peanut butter/chocolate/oatmeal cookies. Way to go, church ladies! I was very careful on my eating while on vacation (I actually lost 2 pounds over the 3 weeks), but since I hadn't weighed in at WW since the beginning of June I showed a gain of 6 pounds and had a lapse in my lifetime member status. I had to pay for a week of WW and I'll continue to have to pay until I lose another 4 pounds to get to the high end of my goal range. Hopefully that will only take a few weeks, it's very disheartening to have to pay after striving for so many weeks to earn that "free" status. :)

Lifetime member at last!

Tonight was my 6th week of WW maintenance after reaching my goal weight, and since I stayed within 2 pounds (up or down) of my goal weight at today's weigh in I became a lifetime member! (Best part of being a lifetime member= no more paying for Weight Watchers!) My final weight after maintenance was just 4/10th of a pound above my goal weight, to be a lifetimer I have to keep it within 2 pounds with a weigh in once a month. My total weight loss was 101 pounds and 7 pants sizes in 2 1/2 years. (From a size 22/24 to a 6/8...not sure how that is counted but I think it's 7 sizes.) When I weighed myself this morning I was still 2/3 of a pound too high to make lifetime so I got in a 4 mile run before the meeting and that did the trick. :) This picture is me with my Weight Watchers leader and the receptionist who has been so encouraging to me for the last year and a half or so. I plan on still attending a WW meeting every week, though I'll only weigh in once a month. :) I also had a dexascan (bone density test) today, I'll be interested to see if the weight loss, strength training and cardio I've been doing will show as improved bone density. I was told that I had osteopenia in my late 30s due to a tumor on my parathyroid that was somehow pulling the calcium out of my bones. My endocrinologist said that I had the bones of a woman in her late 50s- not a good thing to hear in your 30s. I had the parathyroid tumor removed, which improved my calcium and Vitamin D levels. This was the first dexascan after that, so I'll definitely be looking forward to the results of the dexascan in two weeks. It was funny, the lady doing the dexascan had my records from 3 years ago and she was concerned that she had the wrong file due to the big difference in the weights listed- over 100 pounds. Once I explained that it really was my file, she never quit asking me questions the whole time she was doing the dexascan, lol. I joined a local running club yesterday, mainly to get a discount on their series of beach 5K races this summer. They also offer Tuesday morning workouts (at 4:50 AM!) at the track at my old high school, so I may give that a try once I'm out of school for the summer in two weeks. Thanks for the support as I've stumbled through this maintenance phase of Weight Watchers, I hope that I'll continue to have it as I work on the "lifetime" WW part!

Restaurant review: Applebee's new Weight Watchers menu items & maintenance week 2 weight in

Last week, I was thrilled to find out that I had won an Applebee's $25 gift card on a giveaway on the blog Weight Watchers Wannabe. The point of the giveaway was to introduce Applebee's 3 new Weight Watchers Points Plus entree choices. So, when my son volunteered to run the lights, sound and video for his school prom tonight it seemed like a perfect time to make use of that gift card and enjoy a date night with my husband while our child was occupied for the evening. I chose the Grilled Jalapeno-Lime Shrimp (Weight Watchers PointsPlus value: 8). The Applebee's website describes it as: "a hearty portion of grilled chipotle lime shrimp and black bean corn salsa tossed with lime juice and chopped cilantro, served on a mix of grilled zucchini, marinated tomatoes, onions & red peppers with steamed white rice."

The shrimp was very good, especially the veggies, beans and corn salsa which was very flavorful. My only disagreement with the description is the phrase "a hearty portion"- I understand that portion control is a vital part of Weight Watchers, but there really wasn't a whole lot of food in this meal. I enjoyed the meal very much, but the fact is that I could have easily eaten two servings before I felt like I'd had a full meal. However, for 8 points it's a good deal in both price and points cost. My husband got the Cabernet Mushroom Sirloin (Weight Watchers PointsPlus value: 12). This is a Applebee’s 7 oz. grilled House Sirloin with sautéed Portobello mushrooms & onions in a Napa Valley Cabernet sauce with steamed herbed potatoes and garlic broccoli.

Same story here- the food itself was excellent, but my husband was still hungry once he'd eaten everything on his plate. As he said, that portion size was not intended for a full grown man such as himself. We ate at a little after 5 and by 6:30 we were both ready to eat again. In summary, the new Applebee's menu choices are very good, but be aware that they are not the most filling meals. I came home and enjoyed a yogurt/banana smoothie and some fresh fruit afterwards and I'm good. (My husband is planning a full additional meal, however- he's still quite hungry! Then again, he's also 6 foot 1 and 280 lbs so he can really consume some food!) :) The update on week 2 of maintenance at WW is that I'm up 1.2 pounds, for a total gain of 2.6 pounds since I started maintenance. However, this particular gain was earned- there were dietary transgressions this past week. Gloriously chocolaty transgressions at that, so I'm ok with the gain. For the week coming up I've lowered my daily points allowance back to my pre-goal range of 26 until I can get back to my goal weight. Then, I'll bump it back up 2 or 3 points to make a more focussed attempt at maintenance. :)

Weight Watchers maintenance: Crazy Train Edition

This was my first week of maintenance on Weight Watchers after reaching my goal weight last week. WW suggests that you raise your points allowance on maintenance by up to 6 daily points and decrease that as needed until you are maintaining- that is, neither gaining or losing. I increased mine by what I thought was a conservative 3 points per day and when I weighed in I had gained 1.4 pounds. Grrrr. The awesome receptionist reminded me that maintenance is a "balancing act" and advised me to drop down to 2 points added to my previous pre-goal points allowance and see what happens this coming week. I say this "balancing act" is more like a wacky see saw with a roulette wheel and the conductor of the crazy train on the other end. While it probably won't help that I've already used 28 of my weekly points, we'll see where this crazy train ends up on next Thursday. I'm WAY tempted to go right the heck back to my pre-goal points allowance and just stay there. I'm stressing a little over maintenance so I'll feel better once I hit lifetime and only have to weigh in once a month. The blurry picture here (thanks, iPhone camera!) is my "inspiration board" featuring things that help keep me on track on WW. The "certificate of accomplishment" is my 100 pounds lost award from WW, thrilled to finally have that! I also have postcards from my WW leader, quotes, Twitter messages, and a nice message that my husband printed out and put on there while I was gone one day, "I'm proud of you!". :) Below the inspiration board is a holder for my race numbers, with my personal best race bib on top. We have a busy weekend planned, this morning I went to the gym and did the BodyVive and BodyAttack classes. This evening we are going to see Rick Springfield (my inner 13 year old girl always squeals a little when I say his name) at an outdoor concert in Clearwater. This is probably the 7th or 8th time I've seen him in concert, he puts on a great show. He often comes into the audience for several songs, and as a result I can say that I have touched Rick Springfield several times as he's roared by. (I think you have to be a woman of a certain age, raised in the 80s, to appreciate the blessing of touching a sweaty Rick Springfield) :) I'm going with Dianne; one of my great friends since high school, and my husband John is going as our personal security. I think he secretly enjoys Ricks music a little too, but he always claims to be going to protect us from the overzealous Rick fans. One concern is that the show is outside and tonight we are expected to have 2-3 inches of rain, hail, thunderstorms and flooding. For Rick, we will risk it! Hopefully the rain will clear up by Sunday AM because I have the Iron Girl 5K run at 7:30 AM. We will run from Coachman Park in Clearwater (the same place where we are seeing the concert tonight) to the pier at Clearwater Beach. I did a practice run over the big scary bridge over to Clearwater Beach with one of my pals from the gym on Tuesday night and it was no problem- I can say to that bridge "you don't scare me bridge!". Now if the thunderstorms and hail will just stay away! I'll be back on Sunday with a race recap, John is coming along and will take pics IF the weather isn't too bad- don't want to lose a camera in the downpour!

GGGOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL! (Read in the booming voice of a Mexican Univision TV soccer announcer, duh!)

As you might gather from the ridiculously overwrought ALL CAPS title of this blog entry, I *finally* reached my goal weight at Weight Watchers last night. I needed to lose 6/10ths of a pound to reach goal, but when I stepped on that scale I had actually lost 1.6 pounds so I was a full pound UNDER my goal weight, with a total loss of 101 pounds! My group of friends who've attended WW with me for most of the 2 1/2 years ( the "No Pudge Posse", made up of myself, my BFF of 35+ years Lisa, our other friend Lisa and my husband John) it took to get there came with me to the scale to celebrate. My original goal weight was 143, but since I weighed in at 142 I set that as my official goal weight to start my 6 weeks of maintenance. I'm still freaking out that 142 is too high, but since I've worn size 8 pants to work every day this week and I can *just* get into size 6 capris, I think that I'm still seeing the "old" me that weighed 101 pounds more when I think about my weight, I might actually BE at a healthy weight. My best friend Lisa took the picture that is on this post, neither my husband or I were organized enough to *bring a camera* so Lisa did the honors with her cell phone camera. I got my 100 pounds lost charm, my goal weight charm and my maintenance book and instructions at the meeting, then the leader called me to the front of the room. I told how much I'd lost, then the leader
sat down and told me to talk. I said "I thought that's what I just did!"...I'm SO not comfortable talking in front of people. So, I talked about my 9 5K runs, how long it took to lose the weight, etc. Then she asked if anyone had questions for me as I frantically tried to retreat back to my seat, lol. A man asked "so what are you going to eat now that you've reached goal?", I answered that on WW I can eat whatever I want as long as I plan for it- I really think he thought I was going to freak out and eat gallons of ice cream now that I'd hit goal, I'm hoping that's not his plan once he gets there! :) Then a woman said "with an over 100 pound loss there has to be some issue with...loose skin, right?" I fear that I overshared, because I vaguely recall telling the 30+ people at WW that my stomach was "not pretty, and just plain gross". Ug. Thank goodness they didn't ask me anything more embarrassing than that, because I was sort of in a haze of anxiety from being in front of all of those folks, who KNOWS what I might have said! :) I have 6 weeks of maintenance, I increased my WW points range by 3 points and I'll weigh in next week and see how that works. If I maintain, I'll stay in that range- if I lose, then the points are increased again, if I gain then the points are reduced. It's all a balancing act to keep the weight stable now. After 6 weeks, if I'm still within 2 pounds up or down from my goal weight of 142 (so, between 140 and 144 pounds)then I will become a free lifetime member two days after my 43rd birthday. That is especially sweet since I remember how upset I was to realize that on my 30th birthday I weighed over 200 pounds and by my 40th birthday I was over 240- I love (hopefully) making WW lifetime member so close to my birthday for that reason!
Tomorrow is my big day at the gym, I usually take 2 or 3 classes in the morning. The great instructor for my favorite class, Body Attack, says that they will be celebrating my weight loss goal at the class with some workouts of his choosing...I'll apologize in advance to the others in the class as I fear he will be inflicting some pain on us, lol. Then a week from this Sunday is the IronGirl 5K, I am very excited about enjoying that event with so many other women- and the awesome race bling at the end isn't bad either! Now that I've rambled on, I'm off to go catch up on everybody's blogs. I love reading your comments here, if you've suffered this long through the blog please drop me a comment. :)

Thursday weigh in...same story, copy and paste :)

Today was my yet another weigh in at Weight Watchers where my goal weight was tantalyizingly close but still not achieved. I needed to lose 8/10ths of a pound to reach my goal weight and a 100 pound loss. My actual loss for this week: 2/10ths of a pound. So- the goal remains 6/10ths of a pound away. I'm okay with that, any forward (or is it backward, in weight loss terms?) motion is good progress. Even at tenths of a pound a week, eventually I'll get there. It was especially ok not to make it this week because neither my regular leader or my very favorite receptionist were there, and it would have been anticlimactic to finally reach that goal without any of those familiar faces there. It appears to me that I did everything right last week- I stayed well within my points, only using 18 of my weekly points and earning an a personal high of 71 activity points from last Thursday to yesterday. I don't think I'll reach that much in activity points this week, since last week was spring break I had two days at the gym that I would normally be at work. This week my goal is to stay within my points, track 100%, use less than 25 of my weekly points and to earn at least 35 activity points. No worries, I've *got* this. :)
I'm trying to branch out in my activity, so I signed up for a race that sort of (ok, not sort of, but REALLY) scares the mess out of me. I've signed up for the Iron Girl 5K in Clearwater on April 22nd. It will feature thousands of runners, but the scary part is that it goes over the Clearwater Pass bridge- a very steep, long, high bridge that I've never had the guts to drive a car over, let alone run over. In fact, on the rare occasion that I'm a passenger in a car going over that bridge (usually, I'll convince my husband to take an alternate route to the beach to avoid it) I clamp my eyes shut and keep asking "are we over the bridge yet?" the whole time. But, now I will be running over that bridge.
As my BFF Lisa says, "personal growth is a good thing". I'm going with that, my fervent hope is that I'm surrounded by so many people that I won't freak out about the wicked long scary bridge I'm struggling to haul myself over. Maybe I'll just chant "personal growth! personal growth!" the whole way...that'll surely clear some space around me as runners avoid the crazy person. :)

Race Recap: St. Cecelia School Crusader Gallop 5K

Today was my 8th 5K race, the St. Cecelia School Crusader Gallop 5K. I wasn't able to make any improvement on my regular 5K time, finishing in 36:33. I usually try to run faster at the beginning to "make up" time for the end when I'm more worn out, but today I tried to keep a steady pace throughout to avoid having a vastly slower last third of the race, but it didn't seem to make much difference. This was an afternoon race that I did after having done two hours of very challenging classes at the gym this morning (BodyVive and BodyAttack), I'm not sure if that had some effect on my time. I have another race next Saturday morning, I'll be doing that one in place of my regular gym classes so perhaps my legs will be fresher. Today's race was in support of a local Catholic school, so there were lots of children and families running. The course was well marked and following the event there was a big picnic with wonderful food- Greek salad, baklava, boneless wings, buffalo wings, chips, cookies, sodas, etc. Everyone was very mellow about the food and actually let my "support team" (my husband and son) join in on the great meal even though they weren't registered runners. They gave out dog tags with the race name on it as finisher's medals, my first real "race swag". I'm not sure where I came in regarding my age bracket, but I think that it was fairly good. I'm in the 40-44 bracket, and the woman that I finished a few seconds ahead of came in 3rd in the very next bracket, 45-49...so to my faulty logic that means that I was close to the top 3 in my bracket too. :) I added one song to my playlist for this race,"Shackled and Drawn" by Bruce Springsteen and it was really motivating. It has a couple lines in it that are perfect for runners: "I always love the feel of sweat on my shirt/stand back son, and let a man work/let a man work, is that so wrong?" (OK, the opening line "another day older and closer to the grave" isn't exactly fitness-affirming, but I even found that one quite motivating today.) Here is a live video from two weeks ago that I found of the song, it's awesome. Shackled and Drawn Staying on WW plan has been going just fine this week so far, I have 40 activity points as of today and I've only used 3 of my weekly points. I have a real challenge tomorrow though- lunch at a Chinese restaurant. :/ We are celebrating my neice earning her GED last week, def worth figuring out HOW to eat Chinese on plan!

Thursday weigh in...less than a pound to goal!

Today was my regular weigh in, I lost 1 pound for a total loss of 99.2 pounds. I am .8 (8/10ths!) of a pound from my Weight Watchers goal weight! This week went pretty well, WW plan-wise. I had one evening of insane stress eating, but it all got written down and accounted for so I say it's all good since I stayed within my points by the end of the week. I'm calling it the Frankenberry incident, but let's just say that my husband had to work Friday night and I was home alone pondering my son being thousands of miles away on his mission trip. Somehow, I ate a good portion of a box of seriously stale novelty marshmallow-rific retro sugary cereal left over from Halloween. Yeah, I was elbow deep in stale Frankenberry cereal. Oy. I also earned 57 WW activity points this week, so things seem to have balanced well.
After a fair amount of drama (high fevers, missed airplanes, extreme turbulance, sleeping overnight in airports, damaged planes...)my son arrived home safely from his mission trip, nearly 24 hours later than scheduled. We spent quite a bit of time tonight looking at some of the nearly 3,000 photos he took, I'll post one or two here once he pulls them off of his digital camera. There is one of him mushing a dog sled team that (to me) was worth every bit of stress that the mission trip generated- he looks happy and triumphant (and cold!) I think this week will go better on WW since I won't have that worry about him in the back of my mind all the time- I worry about him much less when he's HOME! I have another 5K this Saturday, this one is to raise money for a local Catholic school. I'll be back on Saturday or Sunday to report on that race, and on how the first half of the WW week ("The Epic Quest for the FINAL 8/10ths of a Pound") goes. I'm looking forward to catching up on everyone's blogs, reading them has really helped me to stay on track (most of the time!) :)

Today was my weigh in, with 1 pound to go to reach my goal weight, I...gained 8/10ths of a pound. While it was disappointing, my daily weigh ins at home over the last few days had clued me in that the scale stopped moving in the right direction early in the week so I was fairly mellow with it. I kept the words of two weight loss bloggers/Tweeters that I follow in mind. When Krystle, who blogs at Skinny Jeans Dreams faced nearly the same situation a few weeks ago, she said "I am already THERE....the rest is just numbers." Very inspirational, and very applicable to my situation. Two weeks ago, when I was 1.2 away from my goal and gained a pound, Whitney, who is very active on Twitter as Whit Gets Fit reminded me that "you are already there. Don't let the number get you down!" Thanks to both of these ladies for their direct and indirect support, keeping their words in mind helped prevent me from freaking out and falling hip deep into a pile of Reeses Cups and raw cookie dough, my drugs of choice. :) I can't explain this gain, I tracked everything I ate this week, stayed well within my weekly points AND earned *55* activity points this week. 55 AP's represents HOURS in the gym, several group fitness classes and miles and miles on the treadmill. I don't get it, but I'm just going to keep on and look for a better result next week. I am going to try to mix up my food a little bit this week, as I tend to eat the same foods over and over, especially for breakfast and lunch. We'll see, it's gonna happen...soon I hope! :)
I signed up for another 5K today, so I have them scheduled for Saturday March 31st and Saturday April 7th. Tomorrow (after payday, natch) I'm going to register for the Iron Girl 5K in late April. It looks awesome- thousands of runners, custom finisher medals, the vanity appeal of the "Iron Girl" name and a beautiful race over the bridge out to Clearwater Beach and right up to the beach.
My son is doing very well on his mission trip, tomorrow he leaves Billings and heads to Big Sky, a Montana ski resort. He's going to dogsled there, he's very excited about that. He's taken (literally) thousands of pictures and lots of video, I can't wait to see some of it. He'll be home very late on Monday, I'm glad he's having a good time but I'm quite anxious to have him home. (And just in time for spring break for himself and me.) :)

One pound to go!

Source: mmorris.webs.com via Sherrie on Pinterest

At my weigh in last Thursday I was down 1.2 pounds, so that puts me at 99 pounds lost and just one pound to go to reach my Weight Watchers goal. So far this week it's been well in sight, with today's AM consult with the scale showing me down 2/3rds of a pound and yesterday's at under my goal weight by a half pound. I know that the AM weigh in isn't exactly what will show when I weigh in Thursday night after working all day, but it's always been a good indicator of the direction that I'm going. This week (and part of next week) are going to be fertile ground for huge stress eating for me, but so far I've been able to keep on track. My 15 year old son left yesterday morning for a 9 day mission trip with his school to Billings, Montana and I'm more than a little stressed out. It's his first time on an airplane, his first time to see snow, and his first time out of state without me. Plus, while he is the very definition of a "strapping young man" at over 6 feet tall and healthy as a horse the last few years, I still see him as the little boy who we handed over to doctors for open heart surgery twice in his first 8 years so I put a massive amount of energy into worry at a time like this. (He has so much stainless steel wire in his sternum from his two surgeries that he has to carry an operative report with him to explain why he sets off every metal detector...he thinks that's really cool.) :) Anyway, he arrived in Billings just fine and so far things seem to be going well. He'll be doing some "Habitat for Humanity" work with the Sioux indians around Billings as well as some service projects for the host church there. Next weekend will be their "fun" time, with time at a ski resort and some dog sledding. He's the photographer and videographer for his team, so he will be doing some cool stuff to document their week. He's also one of the cooks for the team, but he's a lot more excited about the video and photos! He can call us each day around midnight (our time), so we are just waiting anxiously for a call or text and my husband is trying to plan activities for us so that I don't just sit and eat, which is really helpful. I'm getting in a lot of activity, and focussing in on WW power foods to make sure I don't go over on my points. On to Thursday, I keep reminding myself that "I've got this!", even if my goal weight doesn't happen this week it WILL happen soon!

Thursday weigh in update

Tonight was my Weight Watchers meeting, I needed to lose 1.2 pounds to reach a total loss of 100 pounds AND my goal weight. I've been showing a gain all week (I weight myself, at minimum, three times a day- insane, I know) so I wasn't surprised to see the official scale say that I had a 1 pound gain. So, that puts me at a total loss of 97.8 with 2.2 pounds now to go to get to that elusive goal. I got my activity in, and only went through half of my weeklys so things aren't too out of whack. I suspect that the problem may be that I was a bit too "free" with the zero point fruit- I had a serious amount of fruit each day. An average day this week featured 3-4 bananas, 3 Clementines, a cup of grapes and a cup of strawberries- even though there are no WW points to be counted for that fruit, that's still a good amount of calories and natural sugars. I'll tone down the fruit this week & see if that changes things up on the scale. I have my 7th 5K race on Sunday AM, I'll post then with a race update.

Closing in on goal!

Wow...I just typed a whole blog entry here, and made the mistake of clicking on one of the pictures to try to realign the text and the whole thing WENT AWAY. Stinkin' computer! Oh well, here's another try.
My Weight Watchers weigh in went well, I was down 1.4 pounds for a total loss of 98.8 pounds. My ultimate goal weight is just 1.2 pounds away. It's possible that I *might* make goal next week, but I'll just chip away at it this week and (if a kickstart is needed) I have a 5K race a week from this Sunday so maybe that will be the final kick that I need to reach my goal weight.
This week I've discovered two new Weight Watcher friendly foods, thanks to other weight loss bloggers. First is the peanut butter-y fruit dip of my dreams, thanks to Spunky Suzi. To make the fruit dip, mix 2 tbsp of PB2 with 1/4 cup of nonfat French Vanilla Greek yogurt. This picture shows a half cup, but I found that the best ratio for maximum peanut butter goodness is 2 tbsp PB2 to 1/4 c yogurt, so a half cup serving is best with 4 tbsp so as not to diminish the peanut butter goodness. Strawberries are ok with the dip, but bananas are *awesome*. I may have even forgone the fruit entirely and simply eaten a half cup of this stuff, it's just that good. I'm going to try a quarter cup of it on top of a warmed chocolate Vitamuffin, I'd bet it's an amazing 5 point snack. The other things that I discovered this week was thanks to Jennifer at
Living A Changed Life. She posted a picture of the Archer Farms Indulgent Granola Bites, a wee tiny 2 point snack that really packs a chocolate punch. I stormed through Target with that photo on my phone, a shining beacon of snacking goodness. There are 4 different flavors, but my favorite by far is the one shown here (sorry for the sideways pic, after losing my first attempt at typing this I'm not going to try to rotate the pic), the Sea Salt Caramel & Almond. There are 15 wee snacks in each box, for under $3- they are very similar to the Weight Watchers 2 point bars for half the cost. I left a half dozen in my desk drawer at work for snacking emergencies and brought the rest home. Yum, I love having them around, they are practically like eating a little chocolate bar but without the guilt. Thanks to all the bloggers who post these food finds, having options like these make it easier to reach my goal when cravings strike.
Tomorrow I may snap a pic of the flourescent green Skinny Green Monster smoothie that I'll make as my reward (and breakfast) after doing two classes at the gym, see you all then.

Steady progress, no matter how small, is closer to goal!

Source: healthyisalwaysbetter.tumblr.com via Sherrie on Pinterest

My weigh in at Weight Watchers on Thursday night showed a 1 pound loss, for a total loss of 97.4 pounds. I'm now 2.6 pounds away from my official WW goal weight of 143. I'm really going back and forth in my mind, trying to decide if I want to keep that as my goal weight or go a little lower. When I first started WW 2 1/2 years ago, I *never* imagined that I'd get to that weight, I really just wanted to get under 200 pounds. Now that I'm so close to my goal, it almost seems like 143 isn't a low enough weight...that alternates between sounding crazy to me and sounding perfectly reasonable. I guess I'll see how long it takes to get that last 2.6 off and see how I feel about my goal weight.
Had a huge non-scale victory yesterday- we went shopping for clothes for my son's mission trip that he's taking in 3 weeks, and while he was trying things on I browsed the clearance racks. I found three pairs of pants for work that I really liked for only $9 each- the problem was that they are all size 8. I took them into the fitting room with no expectation that I would even be able to put them on at all and all three pairs fit beautifully! I guess that I still see that size 22/24 body that I had before WW, which makes it kind of hard to shop for clothes! :) So, I bought all three pairs of pants and I'll be wearing one of them to work on Monday!
Reading a lot of weight loss blogs has been really helpful in my recent WW efforts, I am really enjoying keeping up with many other weight loss bloggers- keep up the good fight, we'll all get there eventually!

Trust the process, but reserve the right to grumble about it :)

Thursday PM weigh in report: I was UP 2/10th of a pound at my WW weigh in last night. While I was hoping to make some progress on erasing that 5.8 pounds I need to lose to reach my ultimate WW goal, instead now I am sitting at 6 pounds to goal. I did everything as I should, I suspect it's just a reflection of my reduced gym time last week (which will be corrected this week). I usually get 45 to 50 or more WW activity points per week, this past week we were out of town all weekend and John had family visiting on Wednesday so I missed 4 of my regular gym classes and only got 30 APs. I'm gonna call it a "blip" in the progress, one of those weeks where the line does a little dance step instead of it's steady downward flow. So, I remind myself of the this Bob Harper quote and begin a new week. I'm really enjoying checking out everyone's blogs, especially the ones with pictures of the WW friendly meals- going to have to try out some new foods this week!