Where did I put that wagon again?

So I'm falling off the wagon - sort of. After getting engaged I decided it was a good idea to call it a quits with my WW membership ($40/month) and my gym membership ($80/month). To be honest I was kind of getting sick of going to WW meetings and my gym doesn't have any classes so the expenses were a little too high to keep up considering we have to buy dinner for like 230 people in 11 months! Not that I'm complaining!

To be honest AGAIN I'm kinda sick of writing about this stuff soley on my blog because when I'm not always perfect it's not exactly fun to confess to my 3 readers haha. Anyways, this will morph into a mashup of wedding planning/working out! If you can't tell, I haven't really found my blog voice yet.

Anyways, so many people are asking about our plans and I am excited to announce that we picked a date, location, DJ and now we're in the works with picking our photographer!

So far we've been bleeding money with these deposits and what not, I must say, I'm very VERY fortunate to be marrying someone with the good sense of not spending every nickel like I do. I currently am paying what I can on my student loans and paying credit cards every month (by the way I'm 100% credit card debt free, I just pay off what I use that month! HUGE ACHIEVEMENT!).

I'm really excited for my wedding, last night though I had a dream-mare (that's my word for a dream that goes bad but doesn't really fall into the nightmare category) that my whole wedding just came and went but I didn't get to hear any toasts! So I decided that I need to make a list of things that I definitely need to happen at my wedding:

-Hear toasts from Maid of Honor, Best Man and SIBLINGS (this means you R) if they want to give one
-Dance to Cotton Eyed Joe
-Dance with my mommy! (tear if I don't!)
-Make by brother pay up to the $5 bet we made when I was in 8th grade about whether or not I'd play "My Heart Will Go On" at my wedding (shhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I don't think he reads this, it's gonna be a surprise!)

So yeah, that's about all that's going on right now... oh and I guess we kind of picked our colors, purple and silver! If you don't like it, well who cares!

Tonight I'm going to try to go for a run, last time I ran for approx. 1.8 miles according to my app runstar (it's on the droid, but you might get it on iPhone too). It's a free application that tracks where you're running with GPS and plays music with a "power up" song in case you need a little boost! It's really pretty sweet. I've set my goals to run 12.4 miles this month - that is totally achievable! And I'm gonna do it all outside! For resistance training I'm getting back into Pilates after years of not doing them. I can't wait til I can do the teaser without looking like a total goon!

Update!

Great day!! I went to WI today and now I'm officially down 15 pounds!!!

I'm really excited to reach this milestone, and I've been shouting "FIFTEEN!" over and over again as it's such a big number and hard to get a grasp on the actual amount.

Anyways, I'm short of time and also tired after donating blood today, I just wanted to keep holding myself accountable for this! I hope everyone is doing well!!!

Another good day!

Happy Saturday everyone!! I'm sure that you've had just as hard of a week as I have, but I'm sitting here watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and thinking about all good stuff for myself I've done this week.

On Sunday (Valentines Day) I moved from Chicago to Palatine! It was a big move for me, obviously as I've lived in Chicago for 2.5 years and being a suburbanite wasn't too appealing for me, but I have to say after one week living here it's SO AWESOME! First of all I have a lot more space, and this is in a one bedroom, one bathroom with my boyfriend! I did love my old place though and I'll miss my old roommie!

Another thing is the convenience of having close access to a car most of the time. I haven't purchased a car for myself... yet. I'm trying to put off as long as possible because as we all know, car payments suck! Right now, being a one car household is working well for me. I just went grocery shopping and took my time there looking at the labels of the food I was picking out.

I guess I'm just trying to write some garbage before I tell you that I LOST 2.4 pounds this week, and I have officially lost 12.4 pounds total!!! I went to a different weight watcher meeting today in Buffalo Grove, it was a nice facility and there were a LOT of people there. I've gotta say, it's interesting for someone to try and change their lifestyle and become healthier when they reek of smoke, but I digress. I also switched meeting days from Thursday to Saturdays so you'll probably see some better blog posts than I've been posting recently.

Challenges from this week:
Moving and organizing my crap - I prioritized getting settled in to my new apartment which was a hard task. Although the place is kind of a mess right now, it's that "I'm so comfortable in my new surroundings that it doesn't matter that I haven't tidied up today" mess.

Burger King - Umm did you know that their tendercrisp chicken sandwich is 20 POINTS! I ordered one on valentines day with mi novio when we went on a very special valentines date ;) It was my idea, I was starving and wanted something fast, we were going to go to Portillo's and get hot dogs but on the way there the thought crept into my mind of what exactly hot dogs are made of. So I made a quick decision on getting this 800 calorie sandwich with over 40 grams of fat... In the future, if you want to save yourself 310 calories, get the tendergrill chicken sandwich. Such an easy fix, and honestly the crispiness of the chicken doesn't really make that big of a difference!

Flat Top Grill - I have to say this wasn't so much a challenge as it was a fun outing. Yesterday I went ICE SKATING for the first time with Jen and Brian. Afterwords we were planning on getting some Chicago deep dish pizza from Exchequer but ended up walking past a flat top grill, which is kind of like a HuHot. You select your mixings for a customized stir fry. I selected a bunch of veggies and noodles with chicken and black bean garlic sauce. Of course I didn't have my handy dandy measuring cups so I have no idea how many points this whole thing was but I budgeted for it throughout the day and had 15 points left over for dinner so I figured I was ok.

Anyways, I'm totally excited about my loss this week, I'm feeling awesome!!! I hope you're having a great weekend!

I hate to start calling this easy but...

I couldn't believe it. You could have knocked me over with a feather. But after a long weekend with the boyfriend's family, going to cheesecake factory and a 3 year old's birthday party with cake and ice cream... I was actually quite literally at a loss [for words] as I am down 2.4 pounds for a total of 9.4 pounds in the last 3 weeks.

I plugged this info into the WW website and they pulled up a warning for me... Basically it said I was losing weight too fast. The recommended weight loss is 1-2 pounds/week and my current average is around 3.1/week. There are some serious side effects of too quick of weight loss. So let me tell you what I'm going to do differently:

I'm going to eat ALL of my points - if you're not familiar with the program there is a daily target that you're supposed to hit. Points are calculated based on the calories, fat grams and fiber grams. The formula is supposidly top secret but you can look it up if you google it. I get 23 points/day plus 35 points allowance for the week to "spend" as I wish. Since I started I've been reluctant to eat those extra points because I had this goal in mind and to me eating more doesn't seem to make that goal come any closer. You can also earn activity points which are calculated based on the intensity of the workout (which is pretty subjective if you ask me) and your weight. I definitely didn't eat my activity points... So there you have it, this is a major tweek .

I'm really excited about my progress so far!!! Thanks for reading and for your support (Rachael).

Don't have much time for this one...

Sorry I have been super busy this week!!! I meant to update on Thursday or by the weekend at least to give you my weigh in update. Don't worry, the delay doesn't mean it was bad news! I was down 1.8 pounds this week for a total of 7 pounds!!!! Wow, I'm very impressed with the program and definitely sticking to it.

My mantra is something to the tune of "every day you start over". I say this because we all have the tendency to just say **** it and just go crazy with the snacking. Since you already feel like you blew it, why not just eat more? Yikes, that's something that can't happen anymore!!!

Anyways, the reason I didn't get a chance to update was because I went to Omaha Friday morning and returned LATE Monday night. I went to visit the boyfriend's family for their "Christmas". As with any family occasion, the food was a'plenty. Luckily I had some healthier options like Chicken Tortilla soup (without the tortilla/rice that sometimes comes in that soup). I didn't really count points this weekend since I lost some of the control of making the food myself. BAD ELIZABETH. But I just weighed myself and I think I can say at least I didn't gain anything in the last week. Maintaining is just as important in this "game" as losing is. There will be those weeks that just don't go well, and there will also be incredible weeks that just seem to blow my mind (read my first blog about this).

So thanks for sticking with me! I have another weigh in tomorrow, I'm sort of nervous!!! I still have today to make a difference though, right?

Whattup!

Ok, quick blerb here - I weighed in my first official weigh in since I started back on weight watchers.

DOWN 5.2 POUNDS, yeah that's right, in ONE WEEK!

I know that it's not healthy to maintain losses like that, I'm really shooting for 1-2 each week. I guess this is really working for me so far though.

Challenges this week - The weekend...
I have plans to get either dinner or drinks or both with an old co-worker tomorrow night, this usually means 7 beers.
I have plans on Saturday to drink with some friends too at my place...
Well, here's the game plan - as hard as this is going to be, I'm going to shoot for no more than 4 beers each night. This will help me 2 ways - first, no empty calories from beer, second, fewer "bad decisions" (ie eating 4 slices of pizza).

So yeah, week 1 - a HUGE success!

Holding Myself Accountable

Ok- here's a public confession... I'm starting weight watchers... I know as I'm typing this that this admission is going to make it hard to hit that "publish post" button taunting me. I know it's going to be hard to admit publicly because there are many people I'm close to that I haven't told personally.

My goal in writing this blog today is to come forth and admit what is often times an inner struggle, by turning this into common knowledge it will result in my being held accountable on a regular basis. If you know anything about weight watchers, you have two options but each involve a weekly weigh in: The first choice and most commonly known is the meeting, you weigh in and some stranger records your weight and it goes into their computer, they give you a sticker with your weight on it and it says how you're doing overall and how you've changed since last weigh in. The second choice is using their online etools and weighing yourself at home. I have chosen to attend the weekly meetings and I hereby decree that my blog will be updated weekly.

So there you have it, family and friends who read this blog! You're now in the know.

I've decided that in this "journey" I will NOT admit my actual weight, so if that's what's kept you reading then I'm sorry. What I do plan on blogging about on a weekly basis is my ups and downs (hopefully downs) and write about what I plan to do the next week, especially considering those personal challenges (ie birthdays, pizza parties at work, family visiting and taking me to Giordanos).

Week 1 - So far so good, I weighed in on Friday morning and with nothing to compare it to, I guess I'm at 0 right now. I've been good so far, counting and tracking my points. I even went out with my boyfriend to a bar crawl and was able have a few beers! Halla! (Ummm cuz I'm not going to stop drinking, eating ice cream or doritos - If I do I may just go crazy!)

Oh, I forgot to mention - this time around I actually told my boyfriend I'm doing this! What he doesn't know is that I've actually been on weight watchers before and did really well, (testing, testing... does my boyfriend read my blog? If you're "salty", bring this up next time I see you) it was my super senior year of college and I really enjoyed it. Part of why I think it worked for me was because my roommate, Erick, was aware that I was going to weight watchers and really looking forward to the results. I shared with him when I gained/lost pretty regularly - being held accountable by him was partly why I think I did so well before. Why I stopped, well that's another story.

So that's about it for week one so far. I suppose it's a little early in the game but I'm looking forward to next weeks weigh in to tell you how I did! Hopefully good news... yikes - the pressure is on! Till next time...