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I have been definitely avoiding writing in my blog. Life has been so completely weird being away from home, being at my family's-- where there are amazing special K bars and vodka cream penne. I have gained about a half-pound since I last wrote :( Which put me two pounds up from last week Monday.

I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I'm still down 10 pounds in general and I can definitely get back on track.

Life will go back to normal soon. After choir tour, a week of sandbagging and this week of being floating refugees I will be able to get into a ROUTINE again. Also, I have to remember that this is a long-term thing. Three weeks is not that long in the grand scheme of things. Right now three weeks sounds like a billion years, but life WILL BE back to normal soon.

I hope everyone is safe, dry and happy. I will be updating every day from now on to let you know how and what I'm doing. :)

Down one pound-- for the week.

Morning Weigh-in: 196.5

So, all in all, this crazy week, I have lost one pound :)

T and I are safe at my parents' house. It looks like we're not going back to school for awhile. They think the river has crested, but there's not anything to do in our city right now. No school, which means neither of us can work, and no more sandbagging is going on. So we're going to stay here for a few days and then go to some friends' house where we'll be able to help with some stuff.

I'm okay with gaining 3 pounds in two days. I'm pretty sure I lost most of that weight in water and stress. This is the healthy way for me to be doing this-- gradually. Of course, it is a little sad not to see those super-low numbers, but considering the times I'm just worried about staying healthy and safe.

Not really about weight loss

Good morning everyone!

It's 3AM and I was woken up by sirens thank goodness they weren't for us. The students at the local private college are being asked to evacuate. And a bunch of areas in Moorhead and Fargo have already been evacuated. We are, according to this fancy map, in amazing danger of having our home flooded. I have lost several pounds since Saturday, half from sandbagging and I would guess half from pure stress.

The National Weather Service upped our estimated crest from 41 to 43. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for my parents' house in more central Minnesota. Quite frankly I am very torn about it. I live here. I love it here. We have worked for hours trying to save our community and it feels wrong to abandon it now. Fargo and Moorhead now are in fact, separate places only connected by the 94 bridge-- one lane traffic each way.

It's so frustrating because people came to help in droves. Volunteers were being turned away in some places. We had built sandbag dikes and levees to protect homes and communities-- up to 42 feet. They've been trying to add two more feet to the dikes, but it's set to crest pretty soon here and the roads next to the river are all closed. They asked us not to come to the Fargodome unless we live close to it. I have a hard time dealing with the fact that after an entire week of work, some people putting in astounding eight and twelve hour shifts and with the help of the National Guard-- we still may be forced to leave and we don't know for how long.

So we're going before they make us. Tomorrow morning. Stay safe and dry, friends.

PS: A quick 3AM sociology lesson: The lack of normalness, or rather the presence of normlessness has a name in the Sociology field. It's called Anomie. Emile Durkheim, who is one of our founding fathers wrote about it extensively. Technically we are not to structural anomie yet. But every day hanging out anomie, oh yeah we're there.

Okay no plateau

Morning Weigh-in: 193.5
I'm really just breezing through the 190s. I guess a natural disaster will do that for you. Last night we went to help at the Fargodome which has turned into Sandbag Central II. Then we heard news that Nemzek hall, (which had previously just been a meeting point for volunteers) had become Sandbag Central III and also gone into 24-hour operations. So, T and his best friend went out there late last night-- I haven't talked to him yet because he got back at like 6 this morning.

I went to sleep because one of my choir friends needs help right away this morning.

The river is set to crest at 41 feet-- if it goes over 41.1 it'll be an all-time record flood for Fargo (apparently it hit 41.1 during a flood in the late 1800s.)

I am starting to feel a little weird about not having school, not having a schedule, not being able to use my water freely, having my boyfriend gone at weird hours of the night, worrying about evacuation... etc. It's just getting a little scary.

All we can do is pitch in and hope it doesn't get any warmer or any colder. Any warmer and the snow will melt and we'll have a serious problem. Any colder and our dikes and levees could get destroyed by ice. If our levees and dikes get destroyed, well, a lot of each city is going to be under water.

Pretty soon, Fargo and Moorhead will legitimately be separate places. :(

Me and T helping out!

Sandbag Central II

The sandbagging scene at the Fargodome.

Plateauing again?

Morning weigh-in: 194 again. I am so not complaining about this. I've lost a ton of weight the last few days. Life has been completely weird so who knows what's going on with my metabolism.

They're asking us not to run much water since our sewer systems are under so much stress-- not that we want to use the water since it tastes and smells bad since they switched to wells instead of purifying our river water like they usually do. They say it's okay for us to drink, but I've been having to choke it down. I only drink water! So I imagine some of the weight I've lost comes from that I usually drink LOTS of water in a day and now I'm only drinking what's absolutely required :P

Last night we had planned to help with the late-night sandbagging effort, so a bunch of us met at Perkins to get the required energy. Of course, once I'd eaten oatmeal and an omelet, we found out they weren't going to need us until like 5AM. By this time it's 2AM and we've had rough days already. Some of my friends did go at 5-- I slept through my alarm. :(

Only in Fargo-Moorhead does it snow, flood, blizzard and flood again. As of right now the flood is up to 34.7 feet. It's expected to crest at about 40 and the ground is covered in snow again, ready to melt off and fill up the river.

In other news, I went to the old wellness center yesterday to cardio-off some of my soreness and it worked really well. I'm mad that the new wellness center isn't opening until April now-- but there's nothing I can do about that. Except write angry letters, which I might.

Sometimes naming posts is hard

I'm leaving to check out the new wellness center. I'm feeling tense and sore from sandbagging so I bet some good old fashioned cardio will straighten me out a little bit. :)

Also no school again tomorrow so more sandbagging to be done!

PS: New wellness center-- not opening until March 30th. We've been paying for this thing for 4 years-- we'll get to use it for ONE month.

3 pounds in 3 days

Morning weigh-in: 194 flat

That means that I've lost a pound every single day this week. I guess sandbagging is awesome exercise, haha. Good thing I'm doing it again today and probably again tomorrow. I was amazed to see 196, astounded at 195, and now I just think my scale is broken, hahaha.

I can't believe that I'm getting close to losing 15 pounds. It's a struggle every day, but seeing this progress is totally worth it.

Now if only the town would stop flooding and the grad school would call me, the world would be pretty much perfect. :)

Going well

Morning weigh-in: 195!

I'm amazed I didn't gain yesterday since I had such a big loss the day before. It just tells me that my weight-loss is actually kicking into gear and hopefully I'll be able to continue losing weight!

I can see the 180s. I weighed somewhere in there when T and I met almost two years ago. If I go below 170, I'll be at an all-time adult low. I might have weighed less than 170 sometime in high school, but it would have been my freshman or sophomore years IF it ever happened.

Also, it was my goal to get down to 195 before April :)

Today I probably won't go to the wellness center either. T and his dad are going to work on the lake in our backyard and I'm going to go help sandbag a music professor's house. Then this afternoon we're both going to one of our other professor's house to do the same. And I need to get some homework done today. Seriously.

Flood

Today I did not go to the brand new wellness center. We spent two hours at what's being called "Sandbag Central" instead. In Fargo, sandbags are being filled around the clock to protect homes and buildings from the impending flood. It was a little scary at first. We went at night when they need more volunteers. It felt like everyone was moving very quickly. Disaster prevention is a serious business. The Army (and/or national guard?), the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and Nechama were all there providing food, volunteers and leadership.

It was very loud with several bulldozers of different sizes hauling around thousands of tons of sand. A lot of beeping and scraping and thumping made yelling necessary. The huge warehouse door was open so that the biggest bulldozers could come in and out of the pouring rain to dump sand. We quickly fell in line, taking turns shoveling and holding bags.

Eventually we 'adopted' a kid who tied off our bags for us and opened new ones. It was very functional. It just shows how helpful people can be no matter what their age or ability. There were quite a few kids there, and they all seemed just as busy as the adults, distributing bag-ties and bags, tying off, opening bags.

School is canceled tomorrow so that everyone can go out and help with sandbagging. Some of our friends and professors are in serious danger of having their houses flooded. T and I have a huge, ominous lake in our backyard that's about 7 feet away from filling our basement. Luckily, T's dad has a pump of some sort and I think they're going to work on that tomorrow before anything gets any worse.

At one point, a man came up to me while I was shovelling and asked if I wanted him to take over. Two months ago, I might have said "okay," but today I smiled at him and said "Nope. I'm good."

I got my exercise and helped the community. Woot.

Continuing

This morning I weighed in at 196! Which I was really amazed at. I didn't actually get any real cardio in yesterday but it just shows that keeping my calories at a reasonable level is really making a big difference.

Of course, it's not easy. Last night we went over to some friends' apartment. I can tell how much I've changed by the way I reacted to all of the potential food choices. Usually I would have had no problem indulging in a huge pineapple-based drink. I might have had two or more if T was driving. Yesterday I took one look at the nutrition facts on the back of the pineapple juice and knew I shouldn't have any of it. I tasted T's drink and called that good.

Then of course, there was frozen pizza. Which I would have consumed in fantastic amounts. T and I used to buy frozen pizzas and we'd each eat half and sometimes we'd also eat breadsticks. So of course, there I was, checking out the nutrition facts for the pizza (pizza companies do this tricky thing, where they make a "serving" one third of the pizza, when most people cut pizzas in 8 slices and generally consume half of a pizza. Sometimes figuring out calorie counts for frozen pizza isn't my favorite thing). I was feeling hungry, so first I ate an apple. Then I decided, yes, I was hungry, and had one slice of pizza from the first pizza and part of another slice. I didn't have to not eat pizza, I just had to make sure I didn't eat too much of it.

Today the wellness center opens (actually I think the brand-new wellness center is opening) and I will be happy to get back to a regular exercise routine! Today I'm going to exercise and watch my food-- still! :)

Jeans

I am wearing my old jeans. They were the top pair of jeans in a pile I had to set aside about two months ago because they didn't fit anymore.

Today, they're just a little bit snug, but I'm wearing them. Pretty soon I hope that they'll be too big for me as well and I can have an excuse to buy some new clothes :)

Today we did some extra walking-- so that felt good. I will also be going up and down the stairs several times to get all of the stuff out of our basement just in case the flooding comes as far as the house. There isn't anything too heavy down there, but it'd suck to have it all destroyed.

For instance, one thing in the basement is my prom dress. I haven't been able to wear it in years. It definitely didn't fit me when I was a sophomore in college and I'm sure it doesn't fit me now. Even so, it will be cool to be able to try it on again in a few pounds. Not that I'll ever have anywhere else to wear it, but it'll feel good.

Back to reality

Morning weigh-in: 197.5

Which means several things: I didn't gain weight on my trip, as difficult as it was to not do so, I have officially hit the 10lb mark, and I'm SO happy to be home :) The new wellness center opens tomorrow and I am totally ready to hit it hard and take off the rest of this weight. I have 47.5 pounds to go and I'm feeling good.

On the trip I bought a shirt that baaarely fit me... just a little tighter than most people should wear. I hope that by the end of this it won't fit me because it'll be too big :)

I have also done my measurements, since I was unable to do so last Sunday. All of my measurements are lower by at least half of an inch :) Thusfar I've lost 3.5" off my hips, 3" off my waist, a full inch off of my thighs and half an inch off of my arms. I'm feeling pretty good. Yay!

My immediate goal is to get out of the "obese" category of BMI, and it looks like I have several pounds to go. But until I get out of there I'm still putting myself at risk for diabetes and heart disease. Eeew.

It sounds like I'll get my exercise this weekend since we're going to have to sandbag the river. Apparently we're supposed to have a pretty serious flood. :(

Almost!

Here's the excitement from the last day of tour!

Tour has been awesome. I'm having a great time with everyone here and have seen some awesome things. But I will be incredibly happy to be home. Tomorrow I will have my weigh in to find out how I did on tour :/ I am very nervous. It's a long time to go without having an official gym and control over my food choices.

Saturday I will have to find something else to do as well since the wellness center doesn't open back up until Sunday. That means I didn't exercise yesterday, can't exercise today and probably won't be able to exercise tomorrow. Hopefully I can find something to do tomorrow to get back in the groove of things.

Tonight we have a concert in Alexandria and then we finally get to go home. I can't wait to be back in my own house and my own scale.

I did bring my measuring tape with on the trip, but I haven't really measured myself. I th ink I'm just going to wait until Sunday for my measure-in.

I'll be updating every day again starting tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

Fancy choir sign in Philadelphia

We got our own sign!

Too bad he's only cardboard.

Cutout of Barack Obama in Washington D.C.!

The trip continues!

Hello from Arlington, Virginia! :) We are almost halfway through our trip (it feels like a really long trip) and I am still working hard at balancing my calories with my exercise. It has been more difficult because I can't really control the food I eat-- even on days where we're completely free, often we have to grab some food between sightseeing or want to take advantage of ethnic restaurants that definitely don't exist in Fargo-- for instance, we ate at a Portuguese restaurant for lunch and an Indian restaurant for dinner today (we do have 2 Indian restaurants in FM, but they're really expensive).

Yesterday was hard with food as well since the church provided lunch (two equally sized tables: one covered in "salads" and sandwiches and the other covered in desserts) and dinner, which was pizza. I did quite a bit of exercising last night so hopefully it all balanced out. Today we did a lot of walking too, but I think I'm going to go do some actual exercising for a little while too. New food experiences are wonderful, but I can't help but worry about the amount of calories I've consumed. :/

Exercise is the only cure.

Tomorrow is a concert day, but I should be able to get up early enough to be able to exercise before the bus leaves. We're in host homes tomorrow night so I won't get another chance to get movement in. The next day is a wandering Philadelphia day so hopefully I'll get my exercise then. Thursday and Friday will be killer-- both days are concert days, with no time or opportunity for exercise on either and no control over food.

Again, :/

But the trip is going really well, I'm seeing some awesome things and I love the people in my choir. I miss home and was really happy to get a chance to talk to both T and my Dad today. I love them both a billion :)

Continental... hmm

Hello from Baltimore, Maryland! I am on the computer in the lobby of our hotel, watching over the continental breakfast. Not very uplifting to be completely honest. I was careful making my breakfast decisions: a piece of whole-wheat toast with peanut butter, an apple and black tea. I looked at the yogurt and decided just drinking some milk would be a better option for my calcium. WRONG! Two types of milk: Whole and 2%. SERIOUSLY? Why, if you're only going to have one kind of milk, would you not provide just a little bit more variety?

Whatever. Last night we did quite a bit of walking and I took advantage of the Hotel's exercise facility. I now feel bad for ever calling the wellness center ghetto, because this place only had a bike, a Stairmaster(TM) and a treadmill on which the incline did NOT work. I did 15 minutes on the stairmaster and half an hour on the non-inclined treadmill.

Also, on the treadmill, I got brave, and I ran for just a little while. It is a little easier on my ankle now that I weigh a little less. So, that's cool.

In other news, I'm really tired because I didn't get very good sleep last night. We didn't go to bed until after midnight and then I kept getting woken up by stray alarms from cell phones and our ridiculous in-house alarm clock. And then, also, one of my roommates snores... like an outboard motor. I am NOT used to that!

Today is exploring Washington D.C. so I'll be wearing my pedometer to judge whether or not I walk enough to constitute exercise for the day.

:)

Quick Update

Morning Weigh-In: 198 flat. That's a loss despite a cream puff, baby! I worked hard last night at the gym!

I'm leaving for Baltimore today, DC tomorrow and Philadelphia next week.

Hope to update again soon!

...I ate a cream-puff

Let me explain. I didn't want to, I really didn't.

So I went to this dessert social for the grad program I want to get into (my interview went really well, for those of you who have been following. I won't hear anything for about 3 weeks, so let's see if I can break 195 before they call. Haha). At this social there's a biiiig long table of desserts that the current students made for the prospective cohort. Very sweet of them! Literally.

So, I'm watching as all of these other women are just piling on the desserts. I have absolutely no interest in eating any of them. I'm at an all-time low today and I do NOT want that to turn around for my last weigh-in tomorrow morning. But, I'm not going to be that girl. So I take a mini cream-puff, a mini-cheesecake (about one square inch of cheesecake) and this homemade swiss-cake roll thing.

I ate the puff and the cheesecake and half of the roll.

I have to tell you that until this point in my life I would have easily taken a full plate of desserts and thought absolutely nothing of it. I might have had a full plate and had one MORE of the thing I liked best.

For the first time in my life, I felt disgusted by food without nutritional value. I had always been confused when I read nutritionists or athletes or in extreme situations bulimics or anorexics discussing their feelings about "bad" food and how "bad" food is gross.

I had absolutely no desire to eat more. This is a pretty huge step for me in my fight against over-eating. :)

Tomorrow morning will be my last post for awhile. I'll try to find computers on tour, but we don't come back into the area until March 20th :( So I won't get a valid weight until the 21st.

As always, thanks for reading, I appreciate the support, even if it's silent. <3

Unplateau'd (awesome new word)

So, I try not to get to excited on the scale these days, because I know I'm doing the right thing and the weight will come off one way or another. But, you know, it helps when the scale gives you numbers like 198.5 at that point I really feel like I'm out of the 200s and hopefully it can stay that way for a very very very long time.

Today is my interview for the graduate program I want to get into. It's kind of an extremely huge deal and I'm trying not to be too nervous. But having a loss this morning rather than a stasis or a gain has really set the tone for the day. If I can lose nine pounds since Feb. 16 I can do pretty much anything. :)

Also, 48.5lbs to go. I fully expect for it to take until the end of the year, but I also fully expect it to happen.

Here is an update of what my big chart looks like:

Down Again

Well it's very exciting to have another day under 200lbs. This morning I weighed in at 199.0 again! Yay me! Days where I'm under 200lbs are always good days. This is my third one thus far and I'm happy.

It's going to be a very busy day, with making up for all of the things that didn't happen yesterday like the school newspaper and getting another rehearsal in with the choir.

It's weird for it to still be dark outside right now-- hmm. Today will be another day of exercising and making sure I eat enough of the right foods. Thankfully the blizzard decided to fall on my day off of exercising so that worked out really well.

Also, we finally got our itinerary for choir tour, and all of the hotels we're staying in have fitness centers. On days when we're not in hotels, often we're sightseeing all day so I'm not concerned about getting my exercise those days. There was only one day in there (next Wednesday) where I felt like it might be a dangerous day. But I can exercise on Tuesday and take Wednesday off instead.

I am determined to come back from this tour NOT weighing any more than I do. Seriously. I've worked way too hard to have it messed up now.

Happy Blizzard Day!

I am very pleased that Fargo-Moorhead shut down completely on my off-day. Last night when I was at the wellness center, they put up signs saying they'd be closed today. Haha! On my break day! Luck was completely on my side.

The evil plateau continues: 200.5

But like I said, I'm happy to plateau just a little bit lower. Healthy weight-loss is a pound a week, and that's what I'm going for. (2lbs would be great, but I'm not going to be choosy). The unfortunate thing is that I'll have to leave a big gap in my data from choir tour :( I like my data to be all pretty and continuous.

Today, I will probably still get my exercise as I'm going to do laundry. The bedroom is on the second floor, the laundry is in the basement :) STAIRS!

The Evil Plateau Part 2

I said "I'll be okay if I plateau even a little lower." BUT, after gaining a half a pound every day this weekend, I'm getting a little annoyed. This is my same diatribe as it always is: WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?! Blah blah blah, I ate well, blah blah blah, an hour of cardio, blah blah blah.

200.5

T was telling me yesterday that it will probably start to get easier. I really hope so because right now every single day is an incredible struggle with food (I'm pretty good about exercising now).

In other news, choir tour begins this Friday, so I'll probably be updating my blog, but my scale is staying home. That's the other scary, frustrating thing happening. I'm not READY to go anywhere. One week could completely undo everything I've done so far. I'm incredibly excited to go-- I've never been to the East Coast before, but at the same time it's a lot scary for me to just go out there on my own, not knowing what the food will be (church food, much of the time :P) or whether or not I'll be able to walk enough to get my exercise, which I doubt on concert days.

It's just scary. I like to have my things, all set up and ready to go. Choir tour will be a lot of fun and I'm sure I'll have a great time. I just hope I don't come back needing to start all over again :/

200 flat

Well this morning I gained half a pound, but 200 flat isn't too depressing when I look at my overall chart.

It's a Sunday so that means weekly check-in day! I lost a pound and a half, an inch and a half off my hips and a half an inch off my waist. The rest of my measurements stayed the same. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when my arms FINALLY start getting smaller. It'll be my favorite day.

I will definitely miss getting to watch whatever I want in our garage when I return to the wellness center tonight (especially since it's a Sunday and they are by far the worst day).

My challenge today will be the family gathering. We will be celebrating my cousin's birthday with... KFC. Hmm. So I don't know exactly how I'm going to avoid that. I'm fairly sure KFC doesn't make anything on my diet. It's probably a great test for my portion-control skills haha.

If I can keep losing a pound and a half or two pounds each week, someday I'll weigh less. Hahaha.

STILL! :)

We're at my family's this weekend and so food is the biggest challenge. There's definitely a treadmill and I worked out hard last night. I'm happy to announce that yesterday was not a fluke-- this morning I weighed in at 199.5.

Today we're going to watch my little sister play in a volleyball tournament and then I'm making us some soup for dinner. Another hour on the treadmill tonight and I think I should be okay. Just another day of working hard and even maintaining wouldn't be bad. I want to say goodbye to 200 and keep working my way down.

Probably a fluke, BUT...

This morning, I weighed in at 199.0.

I'm guessing that tomorrow I will be back up to 200-something, but it didn't stop me from being very happy to at least SEE the number and know that it's possible. I MIGHT be out of the evil plateau. Woo!

Today we leave for BL to visit my wonderful family. Lucky they have a treadmill and the only person I'll have to fight for it is my dad :)

Part of my theory is that I haven't been eating enough. When I allow myself to eat a little more I tend to lose more weight. I have to remember that calories are actually energy.

I'm under 200 pounds, at least for the day-- man does that feel good!

Gymming it up

After my little debacle yesterday at the wellness center, I was loathe to go back today-- but I did.

I should explain that I'm probably one of the least rational people I've ever met. I have a ton of irrational fears-- most of them involving me flunking out of college or disappointing my loved ones, but a good portion of them center around people making fun of me being fat. One of my particular irrational fear scenarios was coming to the gym and being asked to leave by a scary buff guy-- this fear has kept me away from the Dragon Wellness Center-- pretty much forever. Even when I did exercise, I went to Curves.

Exactly that happened last night. Not in so many words, of course, but it did freak me out and send me right back to where I was at the beginning of this blog: feeling like only people who are there to train and maintain are allowed. No fat people. So coming back today was a bigger challenge than going in the first place.

But nothing changes if you don't make it change. I thought about my support group and how many people are cheering me on. I was inspired by Jimmy Eat World (as usual) "Don't write yourself off yet, it's only in your head you feel left out or looked down on." I reflected on weighing 200 pounds forever. I finally put on my exercise pants and went.

I was happy to be there. :)

The Evil Plateau

This morning I was at 201.5. I'm not too surprised since I didn't get to finish exercising last night. But do you know what's getting a little frustrating? Never getting below 201. That's frustrating. Feb 23 was the first time I saw 201.5, since then I've been up to 203.5 and down to 201. I'm just going to keep plugging away! It can't stay stuck on me forever, so I'm just going to keep exercising.

The other interesting thing was that I've been talking about how my right ankle has been sore for awhile now. It never actually occurred to me to LOOK at it, since I figured it was just a pulled muscle or remnants of when I hurt it in freshman year-- nothing to see, right? But yesterday I had T look at it, and it's easily twice the size of my other ankle and a weird color of purple. :/

T thinks I should to go to the doctor. I think I hate doctors, and that it's not broken, so I should go get some sort of brace or ace bandage and move on with my life. The last time I had a problem with my ankle, they took an x-ray, found out it wasn't broken, then the doctor came into the room, poked my ankle (literally, poked it once) and prescribed me pain medication. THANKS BUDDY! Pain meds are nice and all, but I'd rather you actually fixed my problem rather than cover it up with drugs that dull my system and make me nauseous.

So I don't know what to do. In reality, T is right, my ankle does look pretty messed up, but that probably also means giving up exercising which I really do NOT want to do.

Ummm

So. Exercising has been going really well. The wellness center is crowded, but it hasn't been bad. Until today, when someone thought it would be okay to color over my initials. I signed up for a normal workout-- half an hour on a bike and half an hour on a treadmill. When I finished my time on the bike, I got on the treadmill, only to be poked by some buff jock, asking me to get off the treadmill.

I apologized, thinking I had signed up for the wrong machine. When I went to check-- I WAS on the wrong machine-- someone had colored over MY initials.

We need that new place to open, seriously.

Why is it that people at the gym seem to think their marathon training is more important than me getting out of obesity? Of avoiding diabetes and heart disease? I don't think maintenance and attainment are any different, training is important, and so is my health.

I signed up, I should have my half an hour, that's it. SERIOUSLY.

The worst part is, by then all of the machines are taken, I have nothing to exercise with or on and I'm completely embarrassed by being asked to leave my machine. So I only get half an hour in today, and not even my good half an hour.

Neat

When I stepped on the scale this morning, it told me 200.0lbs. I was absolutely speechless and did not believe it. So I stepped on my other scale (I now have two, even though I think I'm returning my new one-- the display is all wonky), which told me 201.1lbs, and that felt a little more accurate-- I didn't exercise yesterday. So I'm sticking with 201.

I've decided not to get all excited about being near the under 200lb mark-- I don't want my blog to get boring! :) Also, I don't want to bring myself the disappointment of last week.

This is my "Biggest Loser" hypothesis:
During week one of exercising I lost a considerable amount of weight (3.5lbs) the second week of exercising, I haven't lost much weight at all, only about 1lb. However, this is exactly what happens on the biggest loser-- week two is always really bad for weight loss and they're doing like 6 hours a day of exercise. So, I have my hopes up that this next week is going to be a lot better.

.5? Seriously?

Isn't it amazing how quickly I can put on weight and how slowly it comes off!? This morning I weighed in at 202.5.

But, it's less than yesterday. It's progress, even though it's backtracking progress. J suggested to T yesterday that I see a nutritionist. This is would probably be a good plan if I didn't know that nutritionists charge up the wazoo and I definitely don't have the money for it right now (Thanks, Choir Tour!). I was writing my dad last night that the problem I'm having with eating healthy isn't the emotional overeating problem I started out with. I dropped that almost immediately.

Now my problem is that I'm terrified of food. I don't know what food to eat. All of the food seems to have too much of something, too much sodium, too much fat, too many carbs, too much sugar or scary ingredients that I KNOW my body won't process properly. So in the end, I eat whole wheat toast with organic peanut butter (ingredients: peanuts, salt), scrambled eggs, oatmeal, bananas, home-made soup when I have time to make it, brown rice and black beans when I have time for those and various fiber-one bars. It's kind of like I'm stuck in perpetual breakfast.

Like I told my dad, an hour or an hour and a half at the gym isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it's easy and I KNOW it's good for me.

My diet before consisted of a lot of pasta (and I mean A LOT), a lot of tortillas, chicken nuggets, a lot of various kinds of pizza and other things that I just don't think will help me in this process. I found out the other day that Applebees' boneless hot buffalo wings with bleu cheese weigh in at 1750-some calories. No wonder I gained so much weight! I used to eat a basket of those with fries AND beer. Add that to my already crappy eating habits and you have a recipe for disaster.

So, in short, I've established that what I was doing before was unhealthy. So I stopped doing it. Now I need to figure out how to eat healthy on my college-student time-crunch and college-student budget.

Okay

I realized my post this morning was ridiculously emo. It sucks but being whiny never helped anyone. Here are some changes I'm going to implement to make this easier on myself and my body:

• ~Real Breakfast. I have been drinking water and eating slimfast bars for breakfast but they're made out of mysterious disgustingness (WTF are fructooligosaccharides? That's seriously a listed ingredient and it just sounds like some sort of scary franken-sugar). With 6 grams of fat (3.5 grams of that being saturated fat), 33g of carbs, and almost as much sodium as a good pasta sauce, they have got to go. Breakfast from now on will consist of oatmeal or eggs with a small amount of milk and possibly a banana.
• ~Eliminating orange cheese. "Real" cheese secretly doesn't ever come in the color orange. It sounds weird, but apparently cheddar is the fattiest and most fake kind of cheese and I usually eat one or two servings of it a day.
  
• ~DDR + Cardio = Less of me. I've been neglecting my DDR game for awhile now because I've been stuck on this one level. An hour at the gym plus at least a half hour of extra movement in the living room might be a good addition without dying on a treadmill.
• ~Simple Carbohydrates. I've cut these significantly, but in the end they just have to go. The one white flour tortilla or the one piece of T's frozen pizza isn't killing me, but it isn't helping me either.

So, that's my plan of attack. I've eaten my last scary slim-fast bar.

Boo

Most mornings, I am a little apprehensive about stepping on the scale. Getting healthy is very important to me and I spend a LOT of time worrying about it. So, each morning at 8am, I am up for excitement or disappointment.

I don't even want to write what the scale told me this morning. It's just frustrating. I'm eating well and I'm doing an hour of cardio every single day and still, the scale told me 203 this morning. I haven't been at 203 since the 24th of February.

What's worse is I don't know whether I need to eat less or more! Am I eating too few calories and my body is freaking out? Am I STILL overeating?! I have no idea. Do I need to spend MORE time at the gym? Have I been pushing myself too hard? Am I doomed to be a 200 pound woman for the rest of my life?!

GAH it's just so frustrating. Like nothing I do actually counts or works. :( I thought I was getting close to the 200 mark on Saturday when I weighed in at 201, and I thought, 'If I can just go down from here, I'll be okay.'

Boo.

March Goals and Week Results

This week I lost 2lbs, lost an inch off of my waist and an inch and a half off of my hips :) All of my other measurements stayed the same, but it was amazing to see an inch come off of my waist and an inch and a half off of my hips!

Unfortunately, this morning I weighed half a pound more, so I'm at 201.5 today. BOO. More hard work, more exercising and more protein.

Happy March, also! In the month of February I lost 4 lbs! 6lbs, if you count when I was up to 207.5 in my first week, because I did conquer those extra two pounds as well. In March, I hope to definitely get under that 200 mark. If I can continue at 2lbs a week every week but choir tour week, I can knock down at least 6 pounds in the month of March leaving me at 195 for April.

So that's my goal :)