Warning: My blog seems to be experiencing some type of funky formatting where all of my apostrophes and quotation marks are replaced with letters. Sorry for the confusion and if anyone knows how to fix this I’d appreciate it as it’s very frustrating!

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since my last post – so let me get my updates out of the way first:

Yesterday, I weighed in at 230.8, which is a 2.1 pound loss for the week. This brings my total weight loss since 9/28 to 25.2 pounds. Yep, I’ve hit my first “milestone” of 25 pounds lost and have updated my sidebar accordingly!

You can see the rest of my progress here

Now for the Hot 100 Update:

As I previously mentioned, I’m not officially part of this challenge, because I got in too late, so this is just for fun.

My goals for last week were:

• No carbonated beverages. period. Sucess!
• Complete Week 1 Days 1-3 of C25K training. Not completely
• Bring my lunch everyday to work. Forgot 1 day.
• Cook dinner at least once this week. Failed.
• Don’t buy any holiday decorationsSucess!
• Don’t binge on holiday food.Sorta successful, had a little too much peanut brittle…eek!
• Go to the gym at least 3 days this week.Didn’t go any.
• Keep working at C25K Day 1.Success…did it twice this week.
• Eat at least 1 apple each day.We ran out of apples, but I did have at least one fruit each day (grapes, strawberries, orange)
• Walk/jog 7 miles.Epic Fail

The Hot 100 Challenge is hosted by Steve and you can read more about it here.

And a photo update:

Me on Day 1:

Me ysterday which was Day 77:

Whew. What a week. Just hectic ya know? Sorry I went MIA and hopefully it won’t happen again. I miss you people!!!

There’s so much to say, (about hitting a milestone, doing c25k, the heartwalk, arm update, etc, etc.) but I’m really tired and I don’t want this post to be any longer than it already is. I did, however, want to mention this awesome email I got from my sister in law. It completely made my day when I read it and brought a little tear to my eye.

I’m sooo impressed with the weight loss and the exercising thing!!! Maybe you’ll be my motivation to get my stuff back on track for the new year. I had thought I would quit smoking by or at 50 and get into a better exercise routine…and I’m behind on my routine exams. I think O’ll keep telling myself, “if a young mother of two working full time can make the effort and succeed at this, surely I can at least get started!” I’m proud of you.

Awesome, huh?

Well, I miss reading all of your blogs and look forward to doing some catching up tomorrow. Till then, G’night everyone!

Another week and another loss. I weighed in at 232.9, which is a .7 pound loss for the week. This brings my total weight loss since 9/28 to 23.1 pounds. See the rest of my progress by clicking here. I will update my progress pictures tonight.

So, I’m thinking a few things at the close of this week. For starters, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I was kinda bummed to see only a .7 loss. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with the loss and I’ll definitely take it – I just think I could be losing more if I just stepped up my game a bit. I don’t want to lose at Biggest Loser rates, ‘a slow loss is a healthy loss’ and all that, but I think increasing my intensity a little is what I need right now. I guess I don’t want to hit a plateau and I feel that will happen unless I make some changes to my routine. Now.

Now for my Hot 100 Update:

As I previously mentioned, I’m not officially part of this challenge, because I got in too late, so this is just for fun.

My goals for last week were:

• No carbonated beverages. period. Sucess!
• Complete Week 1 Days 1-3 of C25K training. Success!
• Walk at least 5 miles for the week. Failed. Walked 3.5.
• Bring my lunch everyday to work. Failed. Forgot 2 days.
• Cook dinner at least once this week. Failed.
• Don’t buy any holiday decorationsSucess!

I guess the big news this week is that I finally started the C25K program. I still haven’t “conquered” day 1 yet – I’m finding the jogging part to be really difficult. I get out of breathe really quick and wind up walking the rest of the way. I like a challenge though so I’m determined to see it through. It reminds me of when I first started on the elliptical and could barely last a minute. I still have a hate/love relationship with that thing. I hate that it’s so brutal, but I love that it’s a really good workout…well, that and it takes me a third of the time to burn more calories than on the treadmill!

So in the spirit of me “stepping up my intensity” here are a few new goals I am adding for next week:

• Don’t binge on holiday food.
• Go to the gym at least 3 days this week.
• Keep working at C25K Day 1.
• Eat at least 1 apple each day.
• Walk/jog 7 miles.

The Hot 100 Challenge is hosted by Steve and you can read more about it here.

Last week, I really enjoyed listing the songs in my playlist and reading yours, so I wanted to doo it again this week. Here are the first 10 songs on my playlist this morning:

1. Stay Away by Nirvana
2. O Holy Night by Josh Groban
3. Elevation by U2
4. 83 by John Mayer
5. Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan
6. Baton Rouge by Garth Brooks
7. Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson
8. Roll On by Kid Rock
9. Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac
10. When the Children Cry by White Lion

That will be my last list for a while Have a great Monday everyone!

Steve, over at Log My Loss, set a goal to walk 750 miles this year and he is right on track to achieving that goal. (!!!) Well, I’ve been so inspired by this that I’ve decided to follow his lead and set a similar goal for myself. I wanted it to be S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) so here’s what I came up with:

Yep, I am hereby setting a goal to walk 500 miles between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. That’s right around 10 miles a week. Hopefully having this goal will help keep me focused, especially as I start training to run a 5k.

Speaking of 5k’s, I wanted to give a little update on the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot I walked. I found the website last night that gave the official D-chip finish times. If you click on that website, be sure to change the event at the top to 5k “walk” instead of “run”…I was bib# 1566. Anyway, I had originally posted that I finished in 56:57 because that was the time as I crossed the finish line. For official times, however, they measure from the time your foot crosses the start line to the time you finish so I actually finished in 56:55…so I was 2 seconds off in my initial blog. My official pace was 18:21. I also learned that I came in 219th place out of 282 participants.

Hope you’re all having a great weekend so far. I’ve been channeling my inner geek as I work on a certain Christmas present…it’s been challenging, but hopefully seeing the person’s reaction will make it all worth it.

My daughter has another performance tonight at 6:30 so it’s not worth it for me to go home beforehand…that means I’ll have an hour or so to spare that I could get a workout in except I’m wearing sandals again today. Maybe I’ll spend the time tonight doing some stretching or ab exercises where it won’t matter what shoes I’m wearing. I’m realizing that I should start bringing my sneakers with me everyday *just in case*.

I’m happy to announce that I am participating in another 5k walk! The Heart Walk will take place on Dec. 12 (next Saturday) and will benefit the American Heart Association. I’ll be walking with my sister again. The walk itself is exciting because it will take us across the Edison Bridge which has a lot of historical importance here in the Ft. Myers area and a spectacular view:

On the eating (and mental) front, I wanted to share how I handled a certain situation last night. I had to get my tire fixed immediately after work yesterday because I had somewhere to go, so I went straight to the auto shop from work. After I left there I knew I needed to grab a bite to eat because I wasn’t going to be home till probably 10 PM. I saw a Burger King and had all sorts of flashbacks run through my head. I used to eat Burger King almost everyday for lunch before I started this. And I’m not exaggerating, I literally ate it almost everyday for lunch. So there I was last night on day 65 of my journey, contemplating whether I should eat BK or not. Such dangerous territory for me my friends! I could smell the fries…and the burgers…and then the thoughts of no one would ever know started creeping in… I wanted so badly to order my ‘old usual’ which was a king sized combo with an extra burger. I honestly felt like I had miniature devil and angel characters whispering back and forth in my ears. After struggling and debating for a few minutes I finally sided with the angel and decided that I would order a grilled chicken sandwich (no mayo)…and that was it…no fries or burgers or soda. I purposefully went through the drive through because I thought “as long as I don’t SEE the fries, I’ll be ok”…As luck would have it, I paid for the sandwich and started to drive off when I opened it and realized they had put mayo on it. I hate mayo, so eating it was not an option for me…so I had to go inside afterall to have them correct my sandwich.

…And they were busy so it took forever.

…And the fries smelled so good.

…And it was at this point that I was regretting going there at all and began thinking I should have just fasted for the evening.

In case you’re wondering, I didn’t order fries or soda or burgers. I left fry-less with just my mayo-free chicken sandwich that I only ate half of…so, all’s well that ends well? I guess I learned a few things about myself last night. Mostly I’m proud that I didn’t give in to the thought of “no one will ever know”…

I would know.

And looking back now I am so happy that I can still report that I’m on my 66th day of NO soda.

After that mental episode I went for walk (about 2 miles)…it was a nice walk, but I could have done without the mental agony I put myself through earlier.

As you probably already know, I’ve been ‘thinking about’ and ‘planning’ to start the C25K program for a while now…heck, it’s been one of my Hot 100 goals for like 3 weeks now…but my fear (and if I’m being honest, laziness) got the best of me so I never did.

Until yesterday, that is.

Two of my new friends, Erin and Craig had invited me to join their C25K challenge set to begin yesterday, December 1st and I thought this would be just the kick in the pants I needed to just DO it instead of talking about doing it. So yesterday came and I was all gung ho and stuff.

Till I got to work yesterday…looked down…and realized, oh no, I have flip flops on! (BTW, gotta love Florida weather in December!) Yep, scatterbrained me left my sneakers at home…how in the world am I gonna start C25K in flip-flops?! I don’t know, but that’s exactly what I did.

I had to go to a performance last night (daughter’s clogging), so I had about a half hour to spare after work before heading to the show to do the workout. Week 1 Day 1 of the C25K program is 60 seconds jogging alternated with 90 seconds walking for 20 minutes total. I was nervous as all get out to do the jogging part, especially in flip-flops and without a sports bra, but somehow knowing that Erin and Craig were hopefully out there trying “with me” gave the reassurance I needed to just try. That first 60 seconds of jogging about killed me (got waaay out of breathe waaay too quick) so I ended up walking for the rest of the 19 minutes. Can you say epic FAIL? Well, I don’t consider it a failure because at least I tried, which is something I had been wanting to do and putting off for over a month now. I’m determined though to keep trying…I have vowed to repeat W1D1 daily until I can do it properly, jogging the correct amount of time instead of walking.

Now onto the “other stuff”…

This might sound like an odd question, but it’s one of those things I wonder about and figured one of you might can help – When you cook something in oil, how can you figure out how many calories, fat, etc is added to your dish by preparing it that way? Say you have 4 servings of pork cooked in a 1/4 cup of olive oil and there are 450 calories in 1/4 cup of the oil. Do you add all 450 calories into your intake for the meal even though you won’t actually be eating the whole 1/4 cup? Most of the oil is left in the pan after you’re done, but I know that it absorbs in the meat too, so how do you know how much oil you’re actually eating? Is there a formula? Told ya it was an odd question! I know the simple answer would be to just not eat anything fried -which I’ve been doing very well at avoiding- but I’d like to know what I’m consuming when fried is the only available option for me.

Last but not least, lookie what I noticed yesterday:

Just the thing you want to have when you’re broke and it’s 3 weeks before Christmas, eh? It’s all good though – I’m thankful I even have a car to get a flat tire! Not to mention, when you’re talking automotive stuff, a new tire is on the cheap end of the spectrum as far as repairs go. So I’m not letting a silly tire get me down or stressed. Not worth the negative energy, ya know?

Our Nation joins the world in celebrating the extraordinary advancements we have made in the battle against HIV and AIDS, and remembering those we have lost. Over the past three decades, brave men and women have fought devastating discrimination, stigma, doubt, and violence as they stood in the face of this deadly disease. Many of them would not be here today, but for the dedication of other persons living with HIV, their loved ones and families, community advocates, and members of the medical profession. On World AIDS Day, we rededicate ourselves to developing a national AIDS strategy that will establish the priorities necessary to combat this devastating epidemic at home, and to renewing our leadership role and commitments abroad.

That was a portion of the Presidential Proclamation declaring Dec. 1 -today- as World Aids Day. There are a lot of ways you can help, even if to just show support to eradicate this deadly disease:

Help turn Twitter (Red)
Help turn facebook (Red)
Buy Nike Laces (100% of the profits are contributed to the Global fund and to programs to help fight AIDS)

Click here to see other ways you can help.

I also wanted to mention this great giveaway that Jody has on her blog! You can win this awesome madBaggage tote just by leaving her a comment. So if you’re looking for some inspiration today, stop on over at her site (which is incredibly inspiring!) and who knows, you just might win a new bag along the way!