My upward spiral

Since the beginning of May, I'm ashamed to say, I've gained weight. Maybe you noticed I haven't been updating the weekly Weigh Day information ... it's because I was on an upward shame spiral. Last week was the worst. I hit 152 when I stepped on the scale Wednesday. For my height, that's seven pounds overweight.

It's no secret that I've been stuck in a slump. All you have to do is look at the titles of my posts over the past few months to see how much I've struggled.


I shouldn't have let myself create this big finish line for a goal that wasn't my ultimate goal. Once I hit that goal weight, I let down my guard and it triggered a retreat of sorts. One that I really regret right now!

I'm angry because I worked so hard to lose that weight and gaining it back is NOT acceptable.  Plus, seven pounds up means seven more pounds to lose to reach my ultimate goal weight - and that's about 7 extra weeks! But I have to admit it's my own fault. All I've done lately is talk about my plans to lose more weight, but I've acted on very few of these plans.

As it happens, a friend came to me last week because she wanted help losing weight. She doesn't know about my recent struggles and it was nice to be with someone who sees me as a success story. It's the old adage - I'm my worst critic and I've been bringing myself down. I've been my own road block.

Sitting down with her, creating a plan for calories and meals and giving her my tips and tricks really reminded me of the basics that I followed not-too-long-ago.

I set out to help her, but I think I helped me in the process. I'm back to counting my calories and tracking how much water I drink. I'm monitoring my fiber intake (I noticed my system wasn't as regular as it used to be). I even went on a 3-mile walk last night with Kevin and Sadie last night. This morning, I stepped on the scale for Weigh Day and it came up at 148! I'm not even letting myself freak out because it means I've lost 4 pounds this week - I'm pretty sure it was water and waste thanks to getting my system back on track.

I'm not calling declaring myself cured - far from that. But this is a step in the right direction. Finally.

Summertime

... and the living's sneezy. Grass is growin' and the pollen is high.

I am super-stoked that summer is here, but sad because I'm sick. Not sure if it's allergies (I don't usually have summer allergies, but anything is possible), I just know I've felt icky the past few days and had to call in sick to work today.

So, here I am blogging - finally. It's been awhile, so let me catch you up.

As school ended, my summer life started taking shape and I couldn't be more excited for the next 2.5 months! I'm not taking any normal classes, but am working as a research assistant and creating an independent research project for credit later in the summer. I'm still working my part-time job, but just one day a week and I'm interning with a local public defender's office full time. I guess listed out like this it looks like a lot, but it certainly doesn't feel like it!

I come home every day at 5:30 and get to enjoy my evenings without the guilt that hangs over me during the normal semester. Not having to read 150 pages a day from a law book is totally and completely a vacation for me!

So far, I've settled into an easy routine. I get up, make coffee and eat breakfast. Then, I walk half a mile to the nearest bus stop and bus the 25 minutes to work, walk another half mile to my office and then spend the day hoofing it around downtown as only interns do. At 4:30, I walk the half mile back to my bus stop and ride home. All in all, though I keep forgetting to wear my pedometer, I'm walking between 2-3 miles a day.  I wear flip flops when walking to or from the bus (unless I'm wearing pants). But as much as I walk around downtown in heels, I'm hoping for some killer calves by August!

I've been working on the front porch a lot lately - pretty much creating an outdoor dining room and kitchen. At least three nights a week we can be found sitting on the porch grilling our dinner. I love that my house is so shady and cool despite the 90-degree temps we've had this past week.  Yay, trees!

Thanks to some hard work, my jungle of a lawn is finally under control and ready for it's weekly cuts. I have a big yard, so I take two days to mow it. The front yard gets cut on Mondays and the back yard on Wednesdays. Usually it takes about 30 mins to mow each side, but thanks to the crazy rain we've had lately, I spent almost two hours on my backyard this week. My Sparkpeople.com app says I burned 500 calories!

That's the thing I love about mowing - it burns a lot more calories than I ever realized. And y'all know me - I love multi-tasking. Burning so many calories while also taking care of a chore is awesome to me.

For the Memorial Day holiday, we bought a badminton set. Sure, most people think badminton is boring and slow, but the way we play (poorly!), it's fun and involves a lot of running after birdies. I'm thinking we can upgrade to a full size volleyball net later in the summer. My neighbors are totally down for some couple against couple action!

And there you have it - be on the lookout for a few blogs in the next few days. I've got a lot of time to make up for and I'm sorry about that.