The World According to Jennyfur

My weight has been fluctuating around this week in similar patterns to my moodiness. I’ve either gained a pound or lost two. I’ll keep an eye on it over the weekend to see where I level out. I haven’t been as focused on the weight loss aspect so some of the fluctuation is probably coming from losing body mass and toning muscles.

In other news, I have been getting better with the yoga workouts and am able to do some poses more smoothly. The warrior and triangle poses don’t leave me teetering on falling over as badly as they once did. I can even improvise variations of the sun salutations without using a dvd. I can *almost* attempt a chaturanga without bellyflopping on the floor. I still have problems with one of the poses on the Jennifer Kries DVD, she calls it the boat pose, but its not what the boat pose looks like in pilates, it looks like a combination of locust and bow to be honest.

I seem to have settled into losing a pound a week, which I am okay with as long as I am still losing weight, though I would prefer to lose 2 pounds per week. I think the slowing of the weight loss has more to do with muscle building and toning which I have been working on a lot in the past few weeks and actually have started seeing some decent results. I’m probably losing 2 pounds of fat, but offsetting it with a pound of muscle. I dunno. I’d rather the conversion than just flat out hitting a weight loss plateau. In any case, next week I should hit the 25 pound mark for weight lost since January.

I’ve splurged a couple times this week, once over the weekend. I seriously wanted to punch Chili’s in the face when I perused their “healthy alternatives section” All items are 750 calories and 25 grams of fat. Apparently, they use some definition of healthy that I am not previously aware of. I don’t equate 25 grams of fat with being healthy. In the end, I didn’t do as bad as I thought that I would there. I have to guess the point values by ingredients and average them out. Tuesday, I was in pure culinary heaven, darren and his mom made us this amazing stuffed squid. It was amazing. I love meditterean dishes. I’ve seriously been thinking about the awesomeness of the squid all week. It was that good. Last night, tim and I went to Panera since we had a house showing. There stuff isn’t too bad diet wise. I love their Asian Sesame Salad minus the cilantro. I really wanted one of their chocolate pastries.

I find I have gotten better at not giving in to temptation when the whim strikes. I really sit down and think about how much I really want something and then decide whether its worth the extra points and splurging. Occasionally, I throw caution to the wind and eat what I want. I find sometimes doing weird shit like having one single potato chip on a daily basis satiates the craving and prevents me from scarfing down an entire bag.

I have to say I am so in love with the 100 Calorie Snack Packs. I really love the candy bar varieties, especially the Snickers and Twix. They are about 2 points each, whereas a normal candy bar would be about 7 points if memory serves me right.W

I am kicking ass working out though I didn’t get to workout Tuesday mostly because I had done a lot of walking around at Longwood Gardens and I was stuffed to the gills with stuffed squid goodness. I tried the pilates work out again last night, I did better at it than the first time. There are a few segments I completely fail at epically. I’ve upped my weekly activity levels (Weight Watchers) a lot I was hovering around 30 for awhile and now for the past few weeks have broken the 50 per week mark. I don’t feel like I’ve lost any weight this week, but we’ll see, weigh in day is tomorrow.

Since I’ve been losing weight, I’ve been developing stretch marks mostly on my midsection and thighs. I hate them. Anyone have any suggestions for them. I’m currently using some cocoa butter oil stuff. Its not really doing anything. Someone suggested Vitamin E Oil and I’ve always head aloe is good for stretch marks.

Lost another pound this week bringing the weight loss total to 23 pounds. I’m glad I have been posting back up logs here, because I tried to re-enter my previous weights into the WW site after setting a new goal and failed epically, I had to resort to the dates and weights in my LJ. My weight loss has slowed down a bit to one pound per week, which is still fine. I’ve been focusing more on toning and building muscles and strength lately, so I am probably not losing as much since i am building up muscle mass versus fat. I am excited to be closing in on being within a healthy weight range for my height and having the corresponding BMI as well.

I’ve been doing much better at preparing dinner when I get home, even if they are quick and simple dishes, its better than popping a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Last night I made cheese tortellini, with pasta sauce, ground sausage and a touch of parmesan. I find doing a little pre-planning before I get home does the trick. I assess what I am in the mood for, what I have at home and anything that I would need to pick up en route. I find it hard to pre-plan too far in advance since I am a mood eater. I can’t just eat steak and green beans because today is Friday and it was pre-ordained to be steak and green beans day.

I received a new fitness DVD from Jennifer Kries Hot Body Cool Mind series from Netflix. I really like the pace of the workout as it is broken up into several segments including, Qigong, which I am interested to learn more about, Pilates, Yoga and Dance. Pilates are hell. Makes my yoga fails pale in comparison. How can one fail at sitting up from a supine position is beyond me, but I could only get so far without pushing up with my hands. Her Waking Energy DVD should arrive today from Netflix as well. Looking at the difficulty in the first level of this series, I am nowhere near ready for level 2 or 3 yet.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a weird, but welcome fashion related problem…. I end up switching out various components of outfits because they make me look fat, not because of my weight, but because the clothing is now too big for me and just hangs oddly off my body. I’m edging near pre-2004 weight so older stuff fits awesome and newer stuff depending on the cut fits looser.

I’m probably about 5 pounds away from being to fling my wedding ring off without effort. Its pretty loose thusfar. Tim said he would buy me a new one if I wanted. I have no attachment to my wedding ring. Its just a visual signifier more than anything else.

I think I want to pick out 5 target outfits I want to fit into from various points in my life, the end being this absolutely gorgeous sheer black dress I have been hanging onto since highschool. The fabric isn’t stretchy, but its fairly loose, it just doesn’t fit over my chest and shoulders.

I think my sinus infection is *finally* disepating, which is a good thing seeing as I just finished up the antibiotics for it. I really need to practice the various methods of deep breathing associated with yoga. Its hard to do when you can’t breathe through your nose.

I’m kicking ass at sticking to a daily exercise regiment of varying formats. I’ve been going strong on doing yoga daily. Sometimes I do an entire workout, other times I practice poses and transitions and test out new things. I’m more flexible than I think I am, but my balance is complete shit, but only for standing poses, surprisingly backbends and inversions are fine. I almost fell into the eliptical machine during a standing variation of sun salutation b switching between warrior poses and triangle side bend things. I’ve also been sticking to weight training more so than the elliptical machine, though I still use it from time to time. I am really trying to build my upper body and upper arm strength, since that is the other area I am lacking beyond balance. At least my transition to and from plank to downward facing dog are getting better, however my transition from plank to chaturanga to upward facing dog is still awful. I never was able to do push ups, gravity (read: boobs) and poor upper body and arm strength always worked against me. I get to a certain point and then belly flop on the floor and trip over my own feet in the process. I’m sure the cats find it endlessly amusing.

I’ve been incredibly snacky for the past two days for no apparent reason. I’m still doing fine on the diet. I just am curious as to why one day I am fine and the next day I want to eat constantly.

I lost another pound this week taking me down to 178 and bringing the running weight loss total up to 22lbs thusfar. I’ve adjusted to the point drop to 23 from 24. I’ve gone over a couple times, but that happens. I did a little lighter work out last night. I did about 40-50 minutes of yoga. I skipped doing the dvd workout, and did some practice poses and transitions from memory and also from a book I picked up earlier in the week called Yoga for Women or something like that. Its been a helpful guide that fills in some of the gaps on what I have done from the dvds and whatnot. I also threw in 10 minutes on the elliptical and 10 minutes of weighted exercise.

On another note, I’ve inspired one more person to join weight watchers this week, so yay for that. I needed to restore and rebalance my karma after some of the less than pleasant stuff that happened during February.

I got another yoga dvd from netflix yesterday. Apparently, there is some use of beginners that I am previously unaware of lol. I think it was from Yoga Journal’s dvd series. It wasn’t bad, it was just a lot faster and a lot more up and down than I was prepared for. I got the hang of most of it though my transitions were sloppy because I couldn’t keep up with the pace. It was a good workout though. I really need to work on stregthening my arms. Almost broke a sweat. My energy was a lot different afterwards. I noticed a difference between the calming/harmonious chilled out energy having done the Yin Yoga series from Jennifer Kries a few times (I ordered the DVD, so I can keep doing it, its gonna take awhile for me to remember all the poses and stuff). Its not than the energy was bad from this work out, it was invigorating, but not in a wow I’m in a peaceful ready for bed state, it was more like holy shit I wanna do stuff and get shit done kind of energy. Though I suspect my energy flow is a little off since it is that time o’ the month. I tend to go through energy bursts and lulls.

I’ve been enjoying working in a daily fitness routine into my evenings. It keeps me from slothing about online and watching television whilst mindlessly snacking all night. This week I’ve tried to do about an 50-70 minutes of yoga and some weighted exercises for my arms and upper body. Once I get a good routine down, I’ll through a 10-20 min jaunt on the eliptical back into the mix. I am simply amazed by the fact that I am actually exercising, wanting to exercise and actually doing it on a semi-regular basis. I tend to like these sorts of things to do in my own time at home whereas going to the gym or an aerobic class just never appealed much to me. Though I think if those types of things were done with a group of friends it would be fun.