Appreciation

I love to feel appreciated.

Today, we got our yearly raises. I always assumed that they were "cost of living" increases, but all these years, I have been wrong. They are called "merit" raises, based on your performance, and your yearly evaluations.

This year, I get 5%. Doesn't seem like a lot, but when teachers are going on strike because the government won't give them 3%, it's pretty big.

Funny part is: the rest of the branch is only getting 3%. I get extra because I go "above and beyond" what is expected.

Frick yeah!

Feeling pretty awesome right now!

 

 

Wednesday AM Quickie

Just a quick post.

This morning I weighed in at 198.5 pounds. On Friday of last week I was 196.5 pounds, but after Easter weekend...well, you know how that went for most of us. I'm glad to have only gained 2!

I checked on my goal. I have this weigh-in on Sunday, and 8 more, and 16 pounds to go to make my goal. Thankfully, I kicked butt on one week and lost 4.5 pounds, meaning that I only have to lose about 1.5 pound per week until June 3. Now, to get my butt in gear and actually start losing!

I was planning on walking to work since I am way behind on my 100km in April challenge, but I woke up late. I actually only had about 4 minutes to write this post. I haven't done any workouts yet, but I have been so busy trying to get my house in order. It's so annoying living with boxes everywhere!

Oh, and I think I forgot to share the best news. We accepted an offer on our place in FSJ on March 31. I was always sure it would sell in March, I just wish we didn't have to wait until the last day! The guy has until April 18 or 19 to meet all of the conditions, and then it will be out of our hair, and we will have some money to fix up this place how we want it! Yay!

Anyways, I think I'm at my 4 minute limit. Can't be late for work today - the big boss is coming (my boss's boss). Whoopie [insert sarcasm font here].

Post-Easter Breakdown

No, not that kind of breakdown. I actually had a pretty good Easter!

 

But I can just imagine how my weight loss has gone. I was 196.5 pounds on Friday morning. Now, not so sure.

 

I'm skipping weigh-in this week, and going for next Sunday. We'll see how I am on the 15th.

 

Hope you all had a hoppy Easter!

Official Weigh-In #13 {a few days late}

Finally! A better mood! I actually kicked the bad mood yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to blog. I fell asleep on the couch at like 8:30 last night! I guess the hockey game just wasn't interesting enough to keep me awake!

So, who wants to hear about my awesome week 13 weigh-in?!

Sunday, March 25 - 202.5 pounds
Sunday, April 1 - 198 pounds
Yep, that's a loss of 4.5 pounds!

Pretty freaking awesome, right?? Yep, it is. I'm so excited to say that I am out of the 200s! It does suck that it is right before Easter - my favourite holiday! Oh well. No chocolate for me this year! Unless it's small quantities of the dark stuff!

I also told you that I was going to make a couple of April goals. Here they are:

• Continue with vegetarian Wednesdays
• To do 16 dvd workouts - 4 per week - which I am already behind in!
• To walk 100km - approx 3km per day - I'm also behind in this, but I will be walking to work soon, and that's 2km each way. 

A few simple goals. Of course, my goal of 2 pounds per week is still happening. This week so far, not so much, but with 4.5 last week, I'm already ahead! Just have to stay there.

This weekend is going to be tough. We are heading to FSJ for 3 days. That means 3 days of eating out for most meals. I am going to try my hardest to be diligent with it, and not eat the most fattening thing on the menu, but I will be honest. I am going to Wendy's and I am going to eat whatever I want. One meal, whatever I want. But also, we are bringing Molly, so she will still need to go for walks, so I'll be able to get in some good exercise because it's much nicer in FSJ than here! (We're expecting snow today - there's actually a snow warning - when is it going to end?!?)

Anyways, off to work! Yesterday was better, let's just hope today was better than yesterday!

Am I?

It's been brought to my attention that I might be too hard on myself. Could it be true? I don't know!

I had a screw up at work, and I don't want to get into too much detail because I'll just get frustrated and insolent again, but it may cost us quite a bit of money. And all I can feel is stupid. I made a stupid mistake, and now I feel like an idiot. My boss wasn't mad at all, just said "shit happens" and moved on. Me, I'm freaking out.

I have been programmed by my former AGI boss to expect perfection, and I won't take anything less. In FSJ, when you screwed up, even the tiniest bit, you were reprimanded, usually with him having a freak fit at you. So, I've come to expect nothing less. I chide my co-worker because he screws up all the time, and it's never anything nearly as large as what I did.

He's the one who told me I'm being too hard on myself.

So, I started thinking. Maybe, yes, I am too hard on myself. But how do you stop that? I'm sure that's part of why I overeat and eat things I know are bad for me. It's got to be. But how do you stop the cycle?

This thing at work happened yesterday, and might take a couple of weeks to resolve. If I'm feeling like this for the next few weeks I'm going to go right insane!

But the worst of it is that I can't even tell my husband. I feel too ashamed to admit that I'm not perfect. I know that I'm not, in life in general, but at work, I'm usually aces. Like, I may mess up, but it's small things. This is a big thing. Nothing to mess my job up about, but I can't get it out of my head.

It sucks. I slept very poorly last night because of it. Kept having weird dreams. Good news is that I didn't overeat too badly last night, and I managed to walk quite a bit with Molly. Down another little bit, so that's a helper. At least my personal life isn't suffering so far.

I will get to my weigh in from Sunday. It was such a good one, but I want to be in a good mood when I write the post. Maybe later today I'll feel better. I want to write the post because I feel so good about it, but I don't want my negativity to be in the forefront of the post.

Ok, off to work. Yay (enter sarcasm).

Happy Future

Something must be going on - two posts on the same day - again!

I'm just having a really good day. Vitamin D must be doing it's job! I'm just in a very positive mindset today and I'm loving it!

I've been thinking about my goals, and I think that I may have over thought it a bit. I thought I could do more than I can. Not saying that I couldn't achieve all of those goals, but I know that I need some lenience. I can't just go full out for 6 months - I'll need a break, for sure, and that was evident with my last goal. I only lost 1 pound instead of 10.

So, I figured out some ideas, and I don't think I'm going to reach my goal weight this year (at this point, with where I am, that's my thought) but I'm ok with that. If I go according to plan (which pretty much never happens) I'll be at it sometime in February next year. That's pretty much a year to get from 200 to 150. 50 pounds in one year is ok, right? I still want to enjoy life, which is why I've kind of made the plan up that way.

But, like I said a few posts ago, things do change! I could change my mind tomorrow, or next week, or with my next goal. I just don't want to miss out on life because I am losing weight. So, once I get into the 180s, I'm going to tone it down a bit. I'd like to be able to go out for a beer or two with friends, and not worry about how I'm going to work them off. But, you know what? I'm happy about it. I don't mind a long journey, as long as I'm not setting myself up to fail. I think I've done that too much in the past, and then I get discouraged. Well, the next 10 weeks are going to be tough, but after that, not so tough!

Anyways, back to work, once again.

 

Vegetarian Wednesday

What a success! I am so excited! Yesterday was my first "vegetarian Wednesday" and it was great! Quite a challenge, because after so many years of eating a lot of meat, even one day seems like a lifetime! I was craving meat so bad by the evening - doesn't help that I had leftover shepherd's pie in the fridge! - but I worked through it and it's all good!

Yesterday morning I weighed, just to see what would happen with cutting out meat. I was 202.5 pounds. This morning, I woke up excited to see how I did. Down to 200 pounds! I can hardly believe that with just one day of cutting out meat, I was able to lose 2.5 pounds! So great! It does all have to do with food! And working out and walking, of course!

I told you that I would let you in on what I ate, so here we go:

·         OrganoGold Latte - 90 calories

·         Crunchy Peanut Butter Cliff bar - 250 calories

·         Fruit salad (ambrosia apple, red naval orange & banana) - 285 calories

·         WF Hummus & carrots - 100 calories

·         Strawberry Nutrigrain bar - 130 calories

·         Kashi Toasted Asiago snack crackers & laughing cow cheese - 135 calories

·         2 eggs - 140 calories

·         Total of 1130 calories

Not too bad, right? I know that there is a lack of vegetables there, but I just wasn't feeling it. I planned on making a nice salad with spinach, peppers and my eggs, but after I worked out, I didn't feel like moving and the eggs were enough.

I'm just so excited that it was such a success. I also found that if I tracked my food in the morning, and planned out what I was going to be eating, that helped a lot. I'm going to do that again today, and hopefully it works out the same way! If I stay on track today, I'll have almost 500 calories left for dinner. Pretty good, right?

I definitely need to keep this positive momentum going. I'm feeling so much better already. And I'm even feeling ok after my second workout. I can't believe how hard JM's 30 Day Shred hit me, but it sure did. I was planning on just doing it 3 times a week, but I'll maybe do it tonight too, why not? I switched down to 5 pound weights for most of it instead of the 8 pounders. I found that with my 8 pounders I was quitting before I should, but with the 5 pounders I do ok. I can sure feel it in my arms though!

I am so enjoying the mornings alone at work. Today is the last day though! The boss won a trip to Rome, Italia, through our company, so he's been gone since last Wednesday, and it's usually just me and him from 7-8, which means that it's just me. We've been so slow lately, that the first hour of the day has pretty much just been me. It's nice to be able to get caught up on things and just chill out. Not that my job is very stressful lately with the slowness, but it's nice to not have anyone around, just me, and the sounds of the radio and the fans. I will definitely be sad in a way when the boss is back. This has been really nice!

I hope you all have a good STRONG day! I'm going to try my best to have one too!