Freshman Fifteen

Sorry for lack of updates

2009-09-11T02:33:14Z

Apologies for lack of updates recently. Been really busy with work, school, and recently a cold. :( :(

I promise I'll get back to updating this in a week or so.

Ran 5k!

2009-08-12T00:02:45Z

Today I ran 5k! I'm amazed honestly because Sunday when I ran I did 2 miles which was monumental for me and today I ran and was able to complete 3 miles without difficulty. I'm shocked because it doesn't make much sense, but whatever. I'm happy.

Couch to 5k goooooo. And I did it faster than the 10 weeks they suggest. Hopefully next time I run later this week I'll have similar results! :) :) :)

Week 4: Weigh-In

2009-08-09T02:16:53Z

Weight: 140.2lbs
Change Since Last Post: N/A
Weight Till Goal: 20.2 lbs
Total Loss: 2.8 lbs

So this post is kind of A) late and B) a lie. I actually don't have access to a scale at the moment since I'm out of town so I'm not updating my weight really.

I just wanted to let everyone know I can now officially run 2 miles without stopping. It's hard and I don't feel awesome at the end and I'm out of breath, but I can do it. :) Getting ever closer to 5k!

Short update. Busy this weekend, but making sure I take the time to run and eat healthy.

Week 3: Weigh in

2009-07-28T19:52:29Z

Weight: 140.2lbs
Change Since Last Post: +1.0 lbs
Weight Till Goal: 20.2 lbs
Total Loss: 2.8 lbs

So I was right about the whole lack of weight loss this week. I gained back a pound. I'm a bit disappointed in myself, but by no means discouraged. This was a weird week full of not so great eating habits, so I'm not horrified or anything. You win some and lose some, apparently!

I'm not sure this weight is entirely weight gain either. The days I weigh myself I might just be slightly fatter because I ate more pound wise the night before, so I probably gained something closer to 0.5lbs since I know I didn't go insane with calorie intake or anything.

Oh well, I'll just have to work super hard this week, though we'll see how that goes. I'm going on a trip this week and I won't be back till Sunday so my diet will be slightly different as I can't cook for myself while I'm gone. HOPEFULLY I'll still kick butt and pull through with some weight loss for next week.

Also, still happy about my jogging. :3 So I'm still in a good mood.

Running update

2009-07-26T01:24:24Z

I can already tell this week I'm not going to lose any weight! My friend that I haven't seen in four years came into town and she took us out drinking/late night dinner on Wednesday. We ended up pretty much drunk and eating awful food all night. I've been watching my weight and it went up instead of down this whole week. >_< I weigh in on Monday and I'm not expecting miracles.

Running wise I'm pretty happy with myself! Yesterday I jogged 1.5 miles without stopping! For me this is a milestone because before I couldn't even jog this distance without walking for part of it. :) I'm jogging incredibly slow, but the fact that I can DO IT makes me so motivated! I came back from my run and just wanted to run more. :) I try to do a distance of 3 miles each day regardless if I'm running it or jogging or walking.

So, even if I don't lose weight this week at least I'm jogging like a champ lately.

Week 2: Weigh-in

2009-07-20T13:43:29Z

Weight: 139.2lbs
Change Since Last Post: -1.0 lbs
Weight Till Goal: 19.2 lbs
Total Loss: 3.8 lbs

So I gained a little back over the weekend, which doesn't surprise me. I went out a lot during the weekend with friends and it involved alcohol and dinners out, so I'm 100% not surprised I gained a little back. Oh well! I'm still happy. This week was yet another week of a 1.0 lb weight loss. I'm 0.2 over my goal for this week (139lbs flat), but hey, it's coming off, so I can't complain.

I only ran twice last week as a result of me wanting to do an every other day kind of thing. Friday I ended up not running since it was ridiculously hot outside. I can't even describe the heat. No matter what I did all day I was sweating and miserable. Saturday I went out with friends all night and Sunday was much the same with the insane heat. I decided running in such weather would be absolute suicide.

I'm going to run an extra day this week to make up for last week. I'm still working on the couch to 5k program so I want to stay consistent in my exercise on that front.

Today's scorching hot

2009-07-18T19:24:59Z

I just thought I'd drop in to stay that it's disgustingly hot. The place I'm staying at this summer is a 100+ year old house and thus has no air conditioning. I'm dying. It's 87F in my ROOM at the moment. Ohhh, the misery.

Remember my last post about me stating that my weight had been static at 140.2 lbs for 5 days in a row? Well, I got angry after the 5th day (well, more just irritated) and decided to cut back my calories by 200 that day. The next morning the scale read 139.6lbs. I was pretty happy with that (that was Friday morning) and I kept my calories down by 200 Friday as well. Saturday morning, which is today, I hopped on the scale as soon as I got up and the scale read 138.6 lbs.

I don't understand that at all! I don't think I physically lost nearly 2lbs in 3 days, but I figure something about the change in calorie balance pushed my body to kick whatever weight I was holding. And no, I didn't take a phenominal dump or anything. This might sound odd, but if I go to sleep feeling a little hungry (not starving, but hungry to the point where I'd probably want a snack) I lose weight in the morning. I think my metabolism realizes I'm hungry but not getting fed at night so it burns fat instead.

Since starting weight loss (at my max I was 143lbs) I've lost 0.5 inches off my waist. The rest of the stats have stayed most the same, but I didn't expect anything drastic with only 5 lbs. We'll see how it goes on Monday when I do a weekly weigh in. :)

Happy weekend.

Stump in progress

2009-07-15T14:03:51Z

Hm, so for the past 5 days I've solidly been 140.2 lbs every single morning. Last week almost every day was meriting some sort of weight loss but this week not so much. I'm starting to wonder if I was losing water weight or something last week and I've finally leveled off? My calorie intake hasn't been much different from last week. *wonders* I'm going to exercise extra long/hard this week to see if that makes any difference. I'd hate to think my first week was water loss, but my better judgment tells me it was just that. Poodickers.

Oh well, going to continue my jogging routine tonight. I found a great guide online called couch to 5k in 10 weeks. Even when I was 120lbs I wasn't the greatest runner and I could never run long stretches as a time. I'm pretty adamant about getting myself up to running 3 miles consistently for health reasons as well as weight loss, so I've started it on week 2 since week 1 was too easy for me. So right now I do running a minimum of 3 times a week for 20 minutes. I run 1.5 minutes and then walk 2 minutes and alternate this process throughout 20 minutes. It's rather easy so far, but in subsequent weeks the routines get more difficult, so I think I should enjoy the easy jogs while I can!

Week 1: End weigh in

2009-07-13T17:48:35Z

Weight: 140.2lbs
Change Since Last Post: -1.0 lbs
Weight Till Goal: 20.2 lbs

So this week has been going well. I lost weight every single day except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday since my diet is more lax on those days. On those three, I maintained at 140.2lbs. I lost 0.2 lbs almost every single day this week.

So far, so good. :) Glad to see the numbers start to drop. My goal this week will be to hit 139 lbs by next Monday which will be the first time I've been in the 130s category for many months. After that, I'll know my progress is amounting to something!

Diet wise I've been sticking pretty well to my 1500 calories a day during the week. During weekends I don't keep as close a track and I'm probably eating 2000 or so hence my lack of weight loss. I eat pretty much whatever I please, but I keep the portions down and make sure I'm not going over my goal for that day. I've found I haven't been feeling as hungry lately, which is awesome.

Exercise has been rather lacking this week. Inclement weather has prevented me from running on most days except yesterday when I basically half-assed a jog for an hour. By that I mean I spent most of it speed walking and enjoying the scenery. My other goal this summer is to be able to run 3 miles non-stop over the next month and a half. I'm sure I can do that. I'm starting easy with a run 3 minutes, walk 1 routine until I can manage longer distances. Hopefully this will help me keep in shape. I'm going to go for 3x a week, or more, if weather permits. :) I'll keep you updated on this as well in subsequent updates.

Week 0: Starting off again

2009-07-09T23:48:49Z

Weight: 141.2lbs
Change Since Last Post: N/A

Let me start this off by saying I honestly don't care who reads this. I'm not really doing this to gain publicity or have tons of followers on my friend feed, but more or less as an online journal where I can come once a week and track my progress toward being in shape. :) The only kind of obligation I'm really going to feel toward this journal is myself and my irritation that this is the 3rd time I've restarted this thing. Since it is the third time I've restarted that should give you some indication as to how my weight loss has gone. Let's just say it really hasn't gone anywhere since my last entries, but at the very least it hasn't gone up! As Borat would say, "Great success!"

So, a little about myself.

Before college, I was a moderately active individual of average height (5'4") and average weight. I think I graduated high school around 125lbs, plus or minus 2-3 lbs. I didn't keep a real close track on my weight. All I know is that I was skinnier. I wouldn't necessarily say more in shape than I am now since I hit the gym 4-5x a week, but I stayed thin by really not eating too much. I rarely had breakfast as I would rather sleep 10 extra minutes than make myself some food before class and I ate relatively healthy for lunch. I think more days than not were spent at Subway eating their 6 inch subs. I also didn't eat too much at dinner since I was an avid online gamer and I would much rather scurry upstairs to play some videogames rather than stuff my face (helped a bit that my family is full of horrible cooks, so dinner was never the greatest). Doing a rough calculation, I was probably eating somewhere in the ballpark of 1500-1700 calories a day back then.

And then came college! Ohhh boy. A world of tasty food awaited me. I ate a lot my freshman year and honestly gained the greatest amount my first semester. The food was surprisingly good at my college's all you can eat cafeteria, so by the end of winter I was 135lbs. I found this out the hard way when I was donating plasma and they took my weight. I could've died! Either way, I continued to go through college with no real exercise routine. I had never really gone to the gym and got most of my exercise walking. I walked a lot. I tried going to the gym a few times my sophomore year of college, but I just couldn't get motivated enough to go and I think that's honestly a huge problem for most people. The gym really isn't that fun. Like work, I suppose. You go for a few weeks, but then straggle off and end up not returning for months. I had that problem for the longest time. I also didn't know what the hell I was doing in the gym, how hard to work, and was too embarassed to really ask for any kind of help. That sort of changed when I became a junior and I stepped up the exercise. I was doing an internship for 6 months and I'd hit the gym everyday after work for 4-5 months and pound out 45 mins on the elliptical. I ended up losing weight without changing my eating habits at all, but nothing significant. At this point, I didn't mind the gym. I still don't. I'll go 4-5x a week no problem now. I don't heart it to death, but I don't hate it.

Despite the gym, I was still heavy. I weighed, at my heaviest, 143lbs. It doesn't put me in the overweight category, but I'm pretty close and I can tell I've gained weight. Gym apparently isn't enough for my fatty body, so I decided in April of 2009 (my senior year of college) to diet and exercise. Ooh, what a concept! I cut my calories to 1600 a day and exercised 3-4x a week for 45 minutes of cardio (meaning heart rate of about 170bpm, so rather difficult). I was losing weight every single day. I'd step on my scale (which is accurate to 0.1 lbs) and every single day that number would creep down by 0.1-0.2. Success! I had figured out how to constently lose weight. I went from 143lbs to 139 in a few weks.

Then came distractions. I'm awful about this kind of thing. Classes ended and I went home to visit family. Which meant no exercising and more food. I also moved to another city for another internship during the summer. That meant many days of eating out, Chinese takeout, and a lack of exercise. I went back up to 143 lbs. Not good, obviously, but now I know what to do to lose weight and I know I can do it. Starting this week, I really got back on the horse with my focus on a healthy diet and exercise.

I am going to lose the weight totally this time. I'm just cheating myself by doing things half-ass as I have the past few months, so here we go. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out since I've never actually lost this much weight before. :)

What I'm doing:

I've cut out sodas. I still drink diet sodas, though I loathe what aspartame does to our bodies. I try to limit this.
I don't really drink juice. I feel like drinking calories makes me psychologically feel like I'm eating less and I feel hungry faster. I'd rather eat an apple than drink juice... if you get what I mean.
I don't cut out snacks or sweets. I still let myself have them, I just account for the calories.
I'm aiming for between 1500-1600 calories a day. Prior to my diet, I was eating 2100-2200 a day which is fine for maintaining my weight, but not good for losing!
I don't eat fast food. I haven't pretty much the entirity of my college life. I don't eat Burger King or McDonalds. I occassionally order Chinese takeout, but it's very seldomly. I also don't eat fried foods, ice cream, or cookies often.
I try to exercise when I can. The weather here where I'm interning isn't the best and it rains a lot. I also don't have gym access so I have to run outside. I'm aiming for 3 days a week of jogging/speed walking outside around a park.
I don't really drink. I might go out on Friday nights with friends and have a couple drinks, but that's my only real cheat day.
I want all my weight GONE by December 2009. That means I want to be 120 lbs by Christmas. It's a reasonable goal of 1lb a week for 20 weeks.

Ugh, I'm so horrible at this! An introduction :)

2009-07-09T23:29:57Z

I am so horrible at keeping this journals updated. I'm going to do my best to make sure I actually keep this little stinker updated! It'll serve as good motivation and a good backlog of all the progress I'm making. So, starting over for the third time because, as it has been said many-a-time before, third time's the charm!

Figures As Of Today July 9, 2009:

Age: 22
Goal Weight: 120 lbs
Pre-College Weight: 120 pounds
Journal Start Weight: 143 lbs
Highest Weight Ever: 145 lbs
Height: 5'4"
Body Build: Normal (I have short legs and bigger thighs)
Pants Size: 6
Shirt Size: Medium

Fun Measurements:
Waist: 29"
Hips: 38"
Bust: 37"
Chest: 32"
Thigh: 22" (junction of leg to crotch)