Fitness Friday: Not So Good

I almost didn’t even write today’s post. I really don’t want to. In the last four weeks, I’ve gained .4 pounds. No, it’s not a lot. But, I’m so not happy with it.

And I can really only blame myself. I haven’t gotten out for my walks/runs much in the last two weeks. Before that I was doing pretty good. But, there’ve been a lot of rainy days. And I’d been falling behind on my to-do lists, so I put off working out in favor of getting other things done. And just generally lacked the motivation to do it. Again, totally all on me.

I have been drinking water, but certainly not as much as I should be. I just have a hard time to remember to drink it, even if I keep a bottle filled.

My snacking is still so-so. I don’t snack constantly, so that’s something. I still need to come up with some healthier alternatives. And I have a sweet tooth, so there’s that.

Kids’ last day of school is next Wednesday, so I’m going to have to find an alternate workout as well. I’d thought I’d let them ride their bikes down to the beach(at the lake where we live. maybe about a mile from our house…possibly less) and I’d walk with them. But, they aren’t so good at staying on one side of a path/road. So, I’m not so sure about that. Then, there’s the hill they’d have to ride back up to get back to the house. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Fitness Friday: Back to It

Yes, I’ve been gone for a while. Well, not really gone, but while I was doing the A-Z challenge, I didn’t worry about any of my other Friday posts. And, unfortunately, this seems to correlate to me not watching my eating or exercising as well. Weighed myself for the first time in over a month yesterday: up 5 pounds since the middle of March. Definitely not the way I wanted to go.

For the last couple of weeks, since the weather has turned nicer, I’ve been getting out for walks when it hasn’t been raining. And over the last week, I’ve been getting back to the couch to 5k program. I used to love to run when I was in high school. The problem is that my knees and hips did not appreciate it. I’m only 30, but sometimes I feel like my knees are twice as old. But, I still enjoy the feeling of running. Every other time I’ve attempted this program, I haven’t gotten past week 2. Going to try my hardest to finish it this time. And I have about 4.5 weeks until the kids get out of school for the summer. Once that happens I don’t know what I’ll do for workouts.

I’ve also tried to get back into tracking my meals. Not always easy when I make things from scratch. Or for me to remember to do it at all. But, I’m working on it.I do not want the weight to keep creeping up. So, I really need to get serious about it.

Last weigh-in: 172.8

Today’s weigh-in: 177.2

Total loss/gain: +4.4 pounds(boo!)

I still probably won’t be checking in weekly, but I need to hold myself to at least monthly.

 

Fitness Friday: Wrong Way

I was going to post an update last week, and I…didn’t. That’s it. No excuses really. I just didn’t do it. So, I’m here to do that this week.

What I’ve been doing:

Exercise:

I’ve been shoveling snow pretty much every day this week for at least an hour. Tuesday I didn’t because it was raining out. The snow is slowly melting, but so much of it has been pushed aside and piled up on the sides of our sidewalk and porch, so I’ve been trying to move it and widen the walkway to our front door. Also, I downloaded the Move app. I have it set to alert me every 30 minutes between 9 a.m.-3 p.m. with a random exercise. I can usually burn at least 100 calories if I do at least most of these.

Water:

I’ve been doing pretty good with this. Usually finish off 1.5-2 bottles a day. Instead of wasting a lot of bottles of water, I keep refilling the same one. If I don’t have the bottle right with me, I don’t drink very much though. So, I need to get better at making sure I have it there.

Food:

This is what I need to get better with. I haven’t been snacking too much, although more than I should when I’m editing. I really need to go and get something healthy to crunch on for those times. And not a bowl of sugary cereal. I also really need to get back into tracking what I’m eating. I used to do this and then I stopped.

Beginning weight: 174

Last check-in weight: 171.8

Today’s weight: 172.8

Weekly loss/gain: +1(for 3 weeks)

Total loss/gain -1.2

Not the way I want it to go, but hopefully I can start heading in the right direction again.

Fitness Friday: Two in a Row

I actually posted for Fitness Friday two weeks in a row. First time for that. Not a whole lot to report. Last weekend there was a good bit of eating out. I worked at one of the gates for a local track on Saturday ripping tickets. Since I had to be there early afternoon, we stopped and got lunch from Burger King on the way up. I grabbed a hot dog and drink from the concession stand after my shift, although I didn’t eat all of the bun because the bottom half was moldy. May just skip that the next time I work there. Then, we stopped at McDonald’s on the way home(at like midnight). I don’t remember what we did for lunch Sunday, but we went and got ice cream for dinner. Not exactly healthy meals. I’ve been sticking with mostly sandwiches for lunch(would do salads if we weren’t out of lettuce) and something small for dinner. And I’ve done something exercise-wise each day(except for today). Tomorrow we have a family reunion to go to. It’s at a private campground and there’s a little water park there too. I’m going to try to control how much I eat, but my will power tends to be weak when all that food is sitting out there. And there will be a lot of running around after the kids. And we have another family reunion to go to on Sunday.

Stats:

Starting weight: 165.2

Last week’s weight: 166.8

Today’s weight: 166.4

Weekly Loss: .4 lbs

Total Loss: still up just over 1 pound. But, it’s coming down at least.

Writing Wednesday: Winding Down the Round

Seems like the round should be ending this week, but I guess with the late start in January and the short month of February, it’s not until next week. That’s okay though, because it gives me another week than I thought to wrap up some of my goals. Not sure what all I’ll get accomplished today. Slept in since my phone that I use as an alarm clock didn’t get plugged in last night because I didn’t think the battery was even close to dead. Guess I learned my lesson on that one. And my son has a follow-up appointment this afternoon to check his throat/tonsils again after being on antibiotics for strep. That throws my routine off, but I should be able to make up for it.

• Send Slow Revenge to Beta Readers – sent out another call on Twitter and Facebook for readers. So, we’ll see if I find anyone who will be interested. I’d like writers as well as readers who don’t write since they can give me different perspectives on it.
• Finish outlining Stained Snow – finished the blueprint and novel notebook last week.  I started working on scene cards this week and have the first of them up on my corkboard at my desk.
  

  1st part of novella planned out and on board.

• Finish 1st draft of Flames of Redemption – DONE! Finished this Monday morning. So excited to have it done. It came in at a little over 55000 words. So, that’s a little short for a novel, but too long to really be a novella. So, I need to decide what I want to do with it. But, I’m going to let it sit for a while first. When I read over it again, maybe I can figure out which direction I want to take it in. But, i’m glad to be “finished” with it. I started writing it last September, so about 6 months to write it even though I actually only wrote about 66 of those days. This one gave me a lot of trouble.
• Edit Healing the Heart – I finished marking up the paper copy on Saturday. I usually don’t write or edit on weekends, but I wanted to get this done.
• Work all edits on Healing the Heart into computer copy – And started making those changes to the computer file this week. Through the first 6 chapters, which were all pretty short. Want to get the next 3 finished today, but I don’t know if that will happen or not. They’re longer ones, and I won’t be here for my normal work time. So, we’ll see what gets done. Hoping to at least have it done by the end of the month.

• Read 20 books – I’ve already surpassed this goal. Over the last week, I’ve read 3 books. The last one, The Darkening by Myndi Shafer was excellent. It had me feeling everything and I loved the roller coaster it had me on. I’ve read 30 books so far this year. According to Goodreads, I’m 10books ahead of schedule to read 100 books this year.
• Workout 5 days a week – We ended going shopping Thursday morning while our daughter was in school, so didn’t get my workout done then. Friday I walked on the treadmill for over 30 minutes, Saturday we went to a roller skating birthday party, and that was definitely a workout(but I didn’t fall even once! and that’s saying something). Over the weekend, I got two workout DVD’s. One is Gold’s Gym Sculpt & Burn, which has 12 5 minutes workouts so you can customize it for what you want to do/how much time you have. The other was Yoga for Weight Loss. Did the Sculpt & Burn onefor 30 minutes on Monday and I’m still sore from it. Did yoga yesterday for about 45 minutes. And today I shoveled snow(seriously, isn’t it supposed to be Spring? Oh yeah, not around here) and walked on the treadmill for about 25 minutes. I think I’m going to alternate between the three of these. Instead of doing the same thing every day
  

  This was a year ago today. Where is this weather?

   

Writing Wednesday: Final Check-In

Hard to believe it is all ready the final check-in for this round.

This week started out really well. Was actually awake before my alarm even went off on Monday, so I got started a little early. Usually when I get off to a good start, the rest of the day/week goes well. Unless something throws a wrench into it, which can happen quite often sometimes.

Have at least 21950 of WiP: I wrote 1183 words Monday morning which put me up to 21206. Tuesday morning I did not write as many words but I did still get 860. That put me up to 22066 which means I met this goal a whole day early. That does not happen too often for me. This morning, I struggled a bit more with the words but still got 550. Since I was all ready ahead of my target, this put me just about 200 words behind tomorrow’s goal. So, I’m still rolling right along here.

Write on 750words.com every day: Still going strong on this one. I’m currently on a 45 day streak. On day 6 of my no distractions streak. So just another four days before I can get that badge. Hopefully I will actually make it this time. I’m only about 18,000 away from the 50,000 word goal. Not sure that I’ll make it this month, but I’m still going to try. And I’m less than 20,000 away from getting the flock badge(for writing a lifetime total of 100,000 words). None of those will be achieved during this round, of course. But, hoping to have them by the time the next round starts.

Have Knitting Monday and Short Tuesday up on time: Done and done. I posted about my second month stats for my business on Monday and on Tuesday posted a portion of the prologue from my finished first draft. I’ve been trying to have posts written and scheduled ahead of time this week and have been doing okay with that. Tuesday’s post was actually done on Monday, and I’ve been working on this one throughout the week, updating it as I go.

Finish Living Half Free: I finished reading this on Monday. I felt like the ending lacked something. Not sure what just felt kind of disappointed by it. But, overall I really liked the story. I started reading another one last night, but not too sure about it yet. It’s written in fist person which always feels weird to me. Going to give it a little bit before I put it down though.

Read Chapter 8 of Plot & Structure and do exercises: Haven’t gotten to this yet(as of Tuesday morning).

Workout Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday: I had wanted to start doing the Couch 2 5K program on Monday. I even downloaded the app for it onto my Iphone(which isn’t really a phone anymore as we switched services, but anyway). But, when I woke up Monday morning it was raining. So, instead I did a cardio workout on the My Fitness Coach program for the Wii. Tuesday morning I did a fifteen minute upper body workout on it, but I think carrying my son down to wait for his sister’s bus to get here and take her to school should count as an upper body workout too. 😉 After I got my daughter on the bus this morning, I dug out the jogging stroller and made sure there was at least some air in the tires. And the boy and I struck out on the road for a walk/run. And I even had a couple people say they want to do the couch to 5k thing too, so hopefully if we all get together(virtually, since we all live in different states), that will help keep me accountable with it.

I will have my final wrap up of my goals tomorrow for the official end of the round.