New personal best

Just finished exercising this morning...for 100 minutes! My new personal best for time spent exercising. 80 minutes treadmill, 20 minutes doing the 30 day Shred. Yay for burning more calories!

Proof in the pictures!

I decided that I wanted to compare pictures of myself, to really SEE if I've lost weight. And I definitely like what I'm seeing! The first picture is on May 6, just over 2 months ago at my sister Maggie's bridal shower. The second picture (same outfit for comparison) is tonight, July 16. Yay!

Shape Up Challenge!

Twelve weeks ago at work I started a "shape up" challenge my company was having. They monitored exercise minutes, pedometer steps and weight loss. I didn't count my exercise minutes, because on the days I work I don't exercise. But I did monitor my weight and count my pedometer steps.

The challenge ended July 3. And as of this morning, I have lost 22 pounds and walked over 1.1 million steps. I'm pretty impressed with myself. But more importantly, I'm SO glad this happened when it did. I was just about ready to get back on track with healthy eating and exercising and this has helped so much. And I've gotten so used to wearing a pedometer that it doesn't feel right if I don't have it in my pocket! My company is going to keep the website up through the end of the year and I plan to keep counting my steps every day. My goal is to have at least 15,000 steps a day!

Oh! The best part? As of this morning, my overall weight loss since I started this last year is 41 pounds. Yay! About 1/3 of the way to my goal. :)

One year weigh in

One year ago, I started this. And I've lost 37.2 pounds. Not too shabby. Now to make the next 37 come off faster than a year!

One year ago

One year ago tomorrow I weighed the heaviest I ever have. June 21, 2010, was when I started recording my weight and making a major attempt to lose weight and get healthier. I did well until October, then I got majorly derailed until about April. But I'm back.

I'm excited to weigh myself in the morning to see what the scale says, so I can say, "I lost x number of pounds in the last year." I still have a LONG way to go. But I'm well on my way. Tomorrow morning we'll see just how far.

Accountability

So I started counting calories today. I've never done it consistently, but I've decided I really need to do it in order to make sure I'm on track. And so far it's been very eye opening. Plus, I really have to think about what I'm putting in my mouth. If I don't want to add those calories to my daily amount then I can't eat it.

I guess I realized that with my weight, I've not wanted to be accountable. I think that's why I've never done any plans where you have to go to meetings, like WW. I've always wanted to do it on my own, without help. But obviously that hasn't worked. So now I'm accountable. No big weight loss plan, but I started seeing a counselor yesterday. (That's a whole different story!) But we talked a lot about my weight and the two things she asked me were to stick to 1800 calories (or less) daily and no fast food (my big downfall). I don't see her again for 2 weeks but I'm determined to go back with a "good" report about how I've done.

Geocaching

I went geocaching today. What is geocaching? It's a high tech game that uses GPS coordinates to find hidden items, all over the world. It's become quite popular and a lot of people have actually heard about it by now.

Why is this important? I used to LOVE to geocache. Before I had Jenna, I would go all the time. I started in late 2004. Currently, I've found just over 2000 caches. When I first started, I would go almost every day that I had off. I loved it. I loved finding hidden things in plain sight, or finding caches that were associated with history, or finding caches that would just show me something or someplace really interesting that I would have otherwise never have found.

So why is it so significant that I went today? I've gone a few times here and there in the past few years. But today, today was MY day. I have a meeting at work tonight, so I dropped Jenna at day care this morning, and I decided that I was going to do what I wanted. No cleaning, no laundry, no bills, nothing like that today. I was going to get back to what "I" loved to do. It was about me. No one else. And I think that's key....I need to work on myself, bettering myself. But in doing so, I have to find me again. I'm not just Jason's wife. I'm not just Jenna's mom. I'm not just a nurse. I'm Kate, and I love geocaching. So dammit, I'm going to do it every now and again. Just me, myself and I. Because it reminds me of ME.