Bye Bye Scale

Well, not forever. Just for the week. I decided that I wanted to see how I did without constantly weighing myself at home on my digital scale. I am kind of obsessive with it. I think I weighed in twice everyday during this past week. So…. last night I put it in the cabinet and hopefully I won’t bring it out until after next week. If I lose at least 5 pounds this week I’m sure I will be fine without the scale but if I don’t I think I might feel like not weighing had something to do with it. I know – its crazy and purely psychological. The first step is admitting that you have a problem right? Good luck to me! :-)

 

Day 7 – Goal!!!!

Today is the end of week 1! I made it! I had my first official weigh-in since I started on product last week and I am down…..10.2 pounds!!!!! I’m so excited. So motivated. So happy. Only 79.8 to go lol!!!! Anyway, I’m excited. If you noticed I added a page for my results and another one for milestones and stuff. I have updated the results page so all my stats will be there. On the Milestones and Rewards page I have outlined each goal that I have and a reward that I have committed to give myself. I have reached my first goal of 10 pounds so sometime between now and Saturday I will be rewarding myself with an eyebrow wax. I’m excited! It’s been a long day so I’m off to bed. Nite! :-)

Day 6

Hello Day 6! :) Yesterday wound down well. I had my shakes as planned and, more importantly I worked out as planned. I took a Hip-hop dance class at the racquet club. The class was not intense but it was good. It was actually funny as well because the instructor was very dramatic – but in a fun way. He would show us choreography for about 3 minutes then make us put it all together and do it over and over and over. We almost finished a whole routine yesterday lol. But it was good. I meant to wear my Polar heart rate monitor but I forgot. I will try to remember to do that next time. I’d be interested to see how many calories I burned in that class. If I had to guess, I’d say about 320. The workout was decent and probably the best thing I could’ve done to introduce physical activity to this adventure.

Today has been just the same as most – uneventful. I had Earl Grey tea which I didn’t realize was so caffeinated. I was hyper and hot for a good hour. No mas para mi! I’m sticking to water. And maybe Crystal Light sometimes.

I’m glad I’m able to stick with this so far. I’m excited! I’ve been trying to come up with some rewards for myself for sticking to it. I might create a new tab for goals, rewards, milestones….all that stuff.

I hope everyone else out there is doing good especially my other Optifast peeps! :-)

Day 5

Today is Day 5. Everything has been going well. I am going to actually make a very big attempt to work out this evening. I have been sticking to having a shake at 6:30am and every 3 hours after that like clockwork but today I am going to switch it up a bit because if I work out, I don’t want to be lightheaded or anything. So I have already had my 6:30am, 9:30am and 12:30pm shakes; and I will take the 3:30 at 3:30 but I am thinking of moving my 6:30pm to 5:30pm, going to the gym at 6:30pm for an hour and then taking the last one at 8pm when I get home. I have a Vanilla Powder mix and a shaker cup in my workout bag already just in case I ever need to eat in a hurry at the gym. I’d rather be safe than sorry and not have to worry about being unprepared in a hunger emergency.

Anyway, I will update tonight or post tomorrow about whether or not I actually make it to the gym lol! I think I will but you know how it is….AND its still only week 1.

Days 1 – 4

Today I have been on product for 3 days and I am two products into Day 4. I have decided to try to blog everyday in the beginning just to track things and to keep me motivated. So I will go back and give a recap of each day so far:

 

Day 1

Day 1 actually started out well which you would’ve read if you read the last post before this BUT I think I spoke to soon. My dad always said “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched” and I guess I kinda did. I had been feeling so good all day. I had my meals in 3 hour intervals until the 4th meal. I was in a meeting and planned on leaving the meeting at 3:30 to grab a shake but when 3:30 came 2 other people had already left early and I didn’t want to seem rude so I stayed. I don’t know why i cared at all lol but I stayed. By 3:40 I was feeling lightheaded and by 4:00 I had a full-blown migraine. I left as soon as I could and drank a shake. I left work still feeling woozy so instead of dropping by the racquet club to start a new membership I drove home. I laid down for 2 minutes and then I had to race to the bathroom where I puked violently. Three long hard rounds later I was wiped out. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my whole stomach was empty. I had to call my program director at Kaiser who advised me to try some bread and broth. I decided only to have the broth. I felt better as soon as I was through drinking it. She also wanted me to wait to start again because she thought it was the stomachs flu. I thought it was the product or the shock that my body went into from not having the product on time or the shock of eating only product after the crazy eating spree I had been on since Valentine’s Day. Either way I wasn’t waiting because I felt much better. I went to bed at 10pm a little disappointed for having to break the fast but also determined to be ok the next morning.

 

Day 2

I woke up at 6:15 feeling perfect so I went back on product. All meals were on time. No headaches or anything. I actually felt quite great and was able to sign up at the Racquet Club after work. I’m excited about that. 

 

Day 3

Saturday was pretty good. All product on schedule. A little tempted when my husband brought home McDonalds for dinner but I didn’t have a single bite. I did however write “McDonalds fries” on the list of things I want when I can control myself and eat again. I think I would go insane without this list. It almost reminds me that the food will still be there when I’m done. I have made lists like this in the past but never actually eat all the things on the list. It’s more of a psychological thing.

 

Anyway, it was a good day. I had a small headache before bed so I took some of my migraine medicine and went to sleep. I think that headache was because I stayed up till like 11:45 which is way past my new 9:30 bedtime.

 

Day 4

Here we are at day 4. It’s not even 11am yet but I’m doing ok so far. I hope to have an uneventful day diet-wise. 

 

Hope everyone else on Opti is having a successful day and weekend. 

New habits already!!!!

So today I started my shakes. I had one at 6:30am and the other at 9:30am. I wasn’t even hungry when I took the second one but I know that I have to drink them all so I drank it. The first one was a Strawberry Ready to Drink (RTD) and the second was a Vanilla RTD. I had already planned what I would be consuming (can’t say eating haha) last night so I had placed 4 RTD shakes in the refrigerator and 2 powder shakes in my LOVE PINK bag that I take to work with me sometimes. I had an ice pack from when I had something delivered to me from Shari’s Berries so I just put the RTD one’s for work in a small insulated lunch bag that I have and put the ice pack on top of them. It worked well and the Vanilla shake I had at 9:30 was well chilled. They have a medicien-y after taste but it is very mild and goes away after a while.

Since I have to consume 6 products a day in 3 hour increments I have decided on a schedule of having them at 6:30am, 9:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6:30pm and 9:30pm. I have alarms set on my phone to go off 5 minutes befrore each meal time so that I have time to get the shakes ready or get to wherever they are or whatever the situation might be. This means that I will be starting off with immediate changes to my behavior. In the past I would eat breakfast at maybe 8:45 at work, lunch at 12pm, if I ate lunch at all, and then a huge dinner at some point between 6 and 9pm. I also would stay up until midnight and sometimes after, and get up at 7am. With this schedule for mealtimes I have to go to bed between 9:30pm and 10pm so that I can feel rested when my alarm goes off at 6:15am. Last night I went to bed at 10pm but woke up at 5:50am by myself. I read my bible, something I haven’t done in the mornings in a LONG time, and then I had my first shake. It felt good to do that and I hope these changes stick throughout the whole program and even beyond!

Here’s to new healthy habits!

My alarms for my 6 meals…

Week 2 – Start Product Tomorrow!!!!

We start the Optifast800 products tomorrow. For me – that will be only shakes for the week. 6 of them. I went to my meeting tonight and I picked up my food. It was SOOOOOO heavy! I am super excited and can’t wait to start.

Optifast 21313

Its here – 21313. It came quite quickly actually; in spite of my impatience.

I had my first meeting this evening. I met the rest of my group and we got acquainted. I built easy rapport with the two people sitting beside me which was great. I think this will be a great group. There were obviously different personalities in the group but I think it will all balance out.

We ordered our product for next week. When the facilitator came by to collect my order form she looked at the form then back at me with a questioning look. I think it was because of my order. Everyone around me had mixed it up quite a but my order was for 15 ready to drink vanilla, 15 ready to drink strawberry and 12 powder vanilla shakes. No bars. No soups. Just shakes. I need it to feel like a liquid diet up front. Once I get used to it and/or tired of it (haha) I will switch it up. Right now I am trying to make it easy on myself.

We got homework too. Write down what you eat all week. Gulp. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Can I just write “Valentine’s Day Sweets” as one item? I know it’s not gonna be pretty otherwise lol. Have a Happy V-Day! :-)

Me and Physical Activity

I have fortunately been an avid gym-goer for the past 2 years. I lost 34.8 pounds between June and October of 2011 and kept most of it off by simply eating healthier and working out more UNTIL I dislocated my knee on March 16th last year. Now, I have gained some of it back but have been stalling at the most abnormal (for me) times. Optifast was a choice that I made because I want to start over from scratch. I want to get a large amount of weight off while incorporating physical activity into the mix gradually. Its like hitting the reset button. I don’t want to do Atkins, I don’t want to count points on Weight Watchers…I just want to start over with a fixed menu for a fixed amount of time. I am really good when it comes to being disciplined. I can stick to anything as long as I put my mind to it. Knowing that at the end of it all there will be a lot of rewards (slimmer, healthier, less weight on my knee, new relationship with food) is motivation, so hopefully I will do well on Optifast.

Currently, my main work out is just Cardio Dance at my gym. Cardio Dance is really just Zumba but with a few extras added (jumping jacks, squats, etc.). I only take one instructor’s classes and that usually ends up being 1 class on Mondays, 2 classes on Wednesdays, 2 classes on Thursdays and 3 classes on Saturday. The classes usually have a 5 to 55 minute gap in between them depending on what day. Lately though, I have been only going to 2 classes on Thursdays and 1 on Saturdays. This will all be coming to an end though because my instructor is leaving my gym permanently to pursue her own independent dance classes and I won’t know what her class schedule will be like until she comes back from vacation in March. This is kind of a good thing because I get to start the program without the crazy workouts that I’m used to. At the same time it sucks because (1) I will miss the camaraderie of the classes (2) I don’t have my “go to” exercises, and (3) I will have to figure out some new physical activity.

I’ve been trying to decide on what to do and so far I have come up with two things for sure: First, I will take up tennis. The racquet club that I’m a member of has a tennis class beginning March 4th. It will meet 3 times a week for 3 weeks, so that’s definitely going to be on the agenda for me and I am looking forward to starting. The second thing is following this schedule of ab workouts that I found on Ripped Goddess’ Facebook page. If you click the calendar it should open up larger in a separate window. I will start these tonight. She posts one every month and I just so happened to see the one from january last Friday which made me look out for February’s. Now I don’t want to get SUPER duper ripped – I just want to get SUPER duper toned. :-)

Courtesy of “Ripped Goddess” via Facebook.

I know I will have to come up with more but I like being able to start from scratch.

This is going to be an amazing journey and I am super excited.

Health Assessment

So I had my health assessment done on Thursday. I have positive and negative comments about this. I’ll do negative first. The Nurse Practitioner was new. She said she hadn’t been doing “this” that long. I was fine with that but then she didn’t get my body fat percentage nor did she calculate my metabolic so that we could compare it to my ending body fat and metabolic rate. When I asked her about this she said they were “optional” and when I asked about how to get these “options” she said she was new and not sure. I will call the program coordinator and find out more because for as much as I’m paying, this needs to be done right. I hate to be so anal about these things because it might rub some people the wrong way but this is my health and my weight and my life.

Now, on to the positives. Everything looks great! Well except my weight, lol! Obviously! I weighed in at 247.4 with shoes on too. Just about where I expected to be. My total cholesterol was 183 which was great and blood pressure was 116/63. Everything else was also normal and I’m really happy about that. 

I have to admit, I am SUPER excited to start! Can you tell? I have been putting together a plan for how I want to start my physical activity on the program. I don’t think I can jump in with the Zumba and Cardio Dance classes right off the bat. I will get some exercise in though. I do have a plan! :-) I am looking forward to so many things! I can’t wait to get rid of my clothes that are too big, I can’t wait to reward myself with a new wardrobe at my goal weight, I can’t wait to run my 5k this June, I can’t wait to start of the next year of my life at the lowest weight in a long, long, line of birthdays. I just can’t wait to feel amazing again. I feel great right now but I want AMAZING, and I will get it too!

I hope that somehow I am encouraging someone else to regain control of their weight. And if not, then I hope my blog is at least entertaining. :)

have a great evening!

Mimi