That weight loss thing

So I lost a good 12 lbs before the boat trip. Speaking of the boat trip, it totally rocked. Jack was having daily seizures when we went and the entire 4 days he didn't have a single one. NOT ONE. I think he's telling us that he wants to live on a boat. Which I'm all for, by the way.

We swam all day, had friends out, had great food, and Jack slept all night. I miss nights when he slept.

The only other thing that really sticks out in my head is that the last day Jack started to get sick. He was actually showing signs of acidosis, which is a VERY bad thing and gone untreated can lead to death. It can happen if his blood ketones (think ketogenic diet here) get too high. He was extremely lethargic, didn't want to eat, didn't want to drink, didn't want to move. Of course we didn't have any apple juice with us, which is what they treat it with, so we had to just get whatever carbs we could into him and get him back on land. He enjoyed his strawberries. We were headed back anyways and he perked up by the time we got home so we didn't have to take him in, but I was worried. But I had the dietitian on the phone in no time, I didn't have our blood ketone testing kit with us, and the nurse called later that day to make sure he was okay. But that is what I'm worried about with him being on the full diet while having surgery too because he likely won't want to eat much at the time.

Anyways, here are some pictures!





Since then both Jonathan and I have struggled with the weight loss. Lets face it, we are extremely stressed. We aren't sleeping much because Jack is on a diet that requires a lot of time and he is waking up at 5 every day, and the closer we get to surgery the more neurotic I get. 5 weeks from today.

We tried this crazy HCG diet that just ended up being a bad idea. We had awful headaches the whole 4 days that we did it, and I went from cooking every bite that one person eats to every bite that 3 people eat. The stress was enough to drive me over the edge and we were both on edge because we weren't eating much. We both lost 5 lbs in those 4 days but it just wasn't worth it.

Now, I am really just trying to keep from gaining weight in the next 5 weeks. If I can do that, I will deal with it after surgery. I would love to exercise, but when it's 100 degrees at 9:00 pm there ain't no getting outside. We quit the gym back in January because we weren't hardly using it and we just couldn't afford it anymore, so there goes our inside place. If I got more sleep, I would go at 5 am when we wake up but running on 5-6 hours of sleep just makes me really cranky.

I know that I need to stop making excuses, and after September is over I will, but until then we are all just trying to survive.

I'm the biggest loser!

I won the weight loss challenge at the gym... by 7 lbs! I lost 25 lbs total and I feel a lot better. I'm below my pre-pregnancy weight and I plan on loosing more too.

Here's what I won:
1. professional photo session
2. free 4 weeks of the next 12 week team class
3. one on one grocery store tour
4. one hour massage
5. free RMR test (resting metabolic rate - measures how many calories you burn per day)
6. free lunch for 2 at the cafe

Anyways, I'm excited. It was challenging. But I stuck with it and I will continue to do so. Next is Jonathan's turn to take a class. He'll be using some of my prizes (the RMR test and the free 4 weeks) but the rest are mine. :-)

I've celebrated, had margaritas, has a piece of pie, and now I feel crappy enough that I'm ready to eat healthy again.

Here's to another 25!

The race is on

The weight loss race that is. As of last Monday I was winning by 1.5 pounds. Here's the kicker, at the beginning they said that the first week didn't count since not everyone had signed up for the class yet, and I lost 4 lbs that first week.

Last week when they calculated everything they were including that 4 lbs (so I've lost 16.5 total) and I don't know how much the other person lost in that first week but I have a veg recollection of it not being much.

It looks like it's between me and this other person, Stacy. She's really great but has a lot more weight to loose than me so she could easily beat me. % wise there is no doubt that I've lost more, but it may all come down to if they count that first week or not.

This week I feel like I've been a little off. I went to the baby day movie at the Alamo Drafthouse and had mozzarella sticks (yummy, but not on the diet) and we went out and had a big dinner last night. Everything I ate last night was fine, but portions were way too big. Also I know that I haven't eaten enough vegetables this week. Hopefully I haven't doomed myself too bad.

2 more weeks to go!

A 4 Letter Word

(Originally posted July 13th, 2009)

I've been avoiding this post for a while, and no, not the vacation post. I'm still working on getting one of the video's to work right. This particular post I've been avoiding because I didn't want to really make public what I'm doing. I've spoken to a few people about it, but I haven't gone into detail here because I don't want to fail and have to admit it.

That 4 letter word is DIET. When I got pregnant I was already overweight. Then I gained even more and ended up heaver than I've ever been. Even now, I'm still heaver than I've ever been and I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that.

Anyways, I've lost weight before so I know I can do it again. 6 weeks ago I joined a weight loss/exercise class at the gym. It meets 3 days a week for an hour with a personal trainer and a nutritionist. The nutrition part I pretty much know, eat sensibly, control portion sizes, mostly animals, vegetables, and fruits. The great thing is that it holds me accountable. I have to write down everything I eat and I get "in trouble" if it isn't good.

I also really like the group that I'm in. It turned out to be all women, and all of us are mom's. There are 11 of us total and 3 of us have little bitty babies. It's an intense work-out but the girls make it entertaining.

Another factor I'm having to learn to balance is the elbow. For those of you who don't know, 3.5 years ago I shattered my left elbow and all hell broke loose. It was followed by 4 surgeries, over a month total in the hospital, WAY to many pain meds, and what started me on this road to being overweight. It's frustrating. Before the accident I was super fit, felt the best I'd felt in my whole life, and I could kick just about anyone's ass. Now... not so much. I'm learning that I can't compare myself now to how I was then and I can't compare how I could exercise then to how I can now. And I'm having to figure out how to do enough with my arm that it gets work but not so much to keep me up all night in pain. That's the tricky part. I've discovered that if I work out on my non-class days all I can do is walk and maybe a little core stuff. No upper body stuff at all. And for now, that's fine. A big part of all of this is getting by body used to moving again and getting my arm strong. Given that, I've taken on not complaining about going. I often times find myself having to bite my tongue and hopefully I'll still have one when this class is over with.

So far I've lost 11.5 pounds and dropped 5.3% body fat. Not too shabby! I'm eating about 1500 calories a day and working my butt off, literally. :-) I have shrunk out of some of my maternity clothes, thank God, and I'm going to have to take the sewing machine to some of my night time bras soon.

This is all a life style change. When you're pregnant it's very easy to eat however you want and as much as I'd like to continue that, I don't want those results.

There is a $750 prize package for the person in all of the weight loss classes who looses the most weight. I think there are about 40 of us total and from what I hear it's any ones at this point. So I'll keep ya'll updated... however it goes.