A good deal!

Hello from Bah Habah or Bar Harbor as everyone else would call it. I wanted to fill everyone in on a deal. I received in my inbox from Amazon.com that today's "deal of the day" is the Gruve that I've been raving about. It's 50% off! That's a huge discount. However it's only good for today, and while supplies last, so you had better act fast if you want to try it out.

I know I haven't done a formal review post here about my experiences with my Gruve, but I do like it a lot. Very simple to understand and easy to work with.

I know I haven't blogged much this week while on vacation, but I promise I have lots to tell you when I get back home.

A quick weight update, I went to go to weigh in, and I was up about 2 pounds, well I am on vacation, so it can happen, but I believe the true judge will be on Tuesday when I can weigh in back at home. For now, I am just happy I went to weight watchers while on vacation. That shows some commitment!

Weight Loss Tool Box

I've been thinking about all the tools I've been collecting and using through my weight loss journey. It's important to not only educate yourself about weight loss and the proper way to do it, but also necessary to incorporate tools to help you achieve your goals.

In my tool box:

• Weight Watchers - I love the structure of the meetings, the public-ness of the weigh in's (even though they say they aren't; you are weighing in in front of other people). I feel its a great tool to start with; they promote a healthy weight loss and teach you proper nutrition. It's not for everyone, for some it's not forever, for now, it's working for me.
• Water Bottles - This promotes my water intake. I am in the midst of my soda free summer challenge issued by Healthy Boston. To be honest, I am not really craving soda anymore, even when I go out to eat. I'm kind of cool with this. The water bottles help me have a constant reminder of what I am trying to accomplish. While I am at work, they encourage me to move around so I can fill my water bottles up. I also save money on not buying bottled water!
• My One Bite; One Decision bracelet from A Prior Fat Girl, whenever I feel a binge eating session come on, I just look down at my wrist and remind myself of the journey I am on.
• Gruve Activity Monitor - This has been something that I've only just begun to learn about. In fact I haven't even done a blog review post on it yet! (slacker I know!) However, I am liking this newest tool in my toolbox. Basically you wear it on your belt or waistband of your pants and it tracks the number of calories you burn. There are different colors to indicate how you are doing throughout the day, obviously, you want to go for green.
• iPhone - I love my iPhone, one of my mini goal rewards. But it serves a purpose in my weight loss journey as well, it serves as my iPod which I need to have music to work out to. It also has a bunch of cool apps to help. Mainly my Couch to 5K training app. But not going to lie, I do like my I Am T-Pain app, I mean you never know when you'll have to autotune something, right?
• Mini goals. You need something to shoot for. Some that is obtainable. If you look at the big picture, you are bound to get discouraged when you aren't seeing results as quickly as you'd like. I should know, over the past few months I've been slacking big time.
• Challenges - everyone needs a good challenge. Competition helps drive us to be better, it's the human in us, to always be better than someone else. So friendly challenges are great and can be helpful. I've enjoyed the #AwesomeByAugust challenge and also the little ones between DBF and myself. It can be the thing you may need to shake things up. Even though I may not win the challenges, it does help re-energize my body and gets me in a great frame of mind.

You need variety in your routine so that it doesn't get boring and you loose interest. It's also helpful to shake things up so that your body doesn't get used to doing just one thing or just one way. Working different muscle groups can help tone your body.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu. Or in my case, a journey of a healthy lifestyle begins with a single calorie.

I am always on the lookout for different tools, I'd love to hear what ones you use.

What tools do you have in your tool box?

Weigh In 7/27/10

Last Week's Weight: 292.8
This Week's Weight: 294.8
Gain: 2

Total Loss: -19
 
Ugh! This is pre-iPhone territory! We are talking like mid-February weight. NOT happy about this. I didn't work out like I wanted to, I am not tracking like I should. I am in a slump.
 
According to my Gruve there was only one day last week were I didn't achieve my green goal. Of course it was Monday, the day before my weigh in.
 
So what did I do about it? Well I went grocery shopping after the weight watchers meeting, since I was up at the scale I didn't purchase anything that would tempt me or derail my efforts. Not that I normally do, but I was more strict this time. I had plans to go to the gym, but I forgot my headphones for my iPod, I'm just the kind of gal who needs music to workout. It helps to keep my energy up.
 
So this afternoon, I decided it was way too nice outside not to go and get a walk in, once I got moving, I wanted to try a Couch to 5K training session from my iPhone. I restarted the program, but instead of going back to week 1 day 1, I jumped in where I left off, week 3 day 2! I was able to complete the session. I was so proud of myself, I haven't trained or really ran since my first 5k way back in early June, so this felt amazing to do.
 
I tracked my food today in my Weight Watchers app for the iPhone, I have the tools, I just need to use it! And hold myself accountable for the decisions I make.
 
The topic of today's Weight Watcher's meeting was Smart Snacking, we discussed:

• Planning snacks at hungry times
• Choosing filling foods
• Counting and tracking snacks
• Preparing snacks ahead of time
• Packing snacks to go

Challenge issued this week was to try and get the 5 servings of fruit and veggies every day and plan for snacks, create a list of easy packable snacks.

Next week's topic: Getting off the merry-go-round

I've never really tracked my hunger, I've just always ate when I felt like I was supposed to, standard meals, but I can see how snacking would help in maintaining levels within your own body to keep you feeling satisfied longer. I typically eat every 3-4 hours, but that's just me, I've never really tracked it. I am going to try to track my hunger and see if eating every 3-4 hours is helping or hurting my efforts.

One thing I love about my Weight Watcher's leader is every month she gives us a calender with a daily tidbit on it. I read it every day, it's part of my ritual. One thing that jumped out at me for next month is Monday August 2: "Where do you want to be on Labor Day? You have 5 weeks to get there." I want to be at my 10% by Labor Day, but that is nearly 12 pounds to loose in 5 weeks, roughly 2.4 pounds a week, it may not be in me, but I am certainly going to give it a go!

In other news, I don't know if Amber was serious, but last night she tweeted about needing a gym buddy (even if virtual) and I could always use a kick in the behind and someone else to help me along. So I offered my services. Since she's on the west coast and I live on the east coast, I highly doubt that we will ever be gym buddies in real life, but hey, blogging is sometimes real life too!

Have a great week everyone! I look forward to blogging about my August goals and recapping my July Goals and my quarterly 101 things in a 1001 days update!

Early Morning Randomness & New Tools!

I am up early today! Well in all fairness, I'm at work. So I am catching up on some blogs and I had some random thoughts that I thought I would write down.

I'll be posting later on today my weigh in results, even after gaining last week, I was up even more with my submission into the Awesome By August challenge. You can see my official weigh in for the challenge here. Since that picture, I am down, but I believe that I am still up from last week's official Weight Watchers weigh in.

(I love this picture, I don't know why, but it makes me laugh every time I see it!)

I am trying not to be discouraged, I've just got to take it one day at a time and wrap my head around it. This journey isn't easy, it would be easy just to give up. But I am determined not to give up. It's just going to take me longer to reach my goals. That will make the end result all the more worth it! I will have invested all of myself in time and energy, I want that end result.

I've already failed one of my July goals. I didn't work out 4 times last week. I made it to 3. Is that terrible, no. I still managed to workout 3 times that week. But did I miss my goal, yes. In my opinion that is the point to goals, that you have something you need to work on. Goal-setting will help you see progress, maybe a past goal for me would have been working out 3 times. I am going to continue to challenge myself with goal setting.

Even though I've failed one of my goals, I am not throwing away the rest of the month, I am making an action plan to succeed in my goals for the rest of the month. I took the time to print off a separate calender for the month of July so that I can keep track of my goals separately (my real life calender is a mess, chock full of everything) my goals would be lost in my regular calender. I also feel that my goals are important enough to me that they deserve their own separate calender. I am hoping that this will help me achieve my July goals. I've printed off this calender and plan on keeping it with me so I can have a reminder to be conscious of my efforts.

In other news, Jen from A Prior Fat Girl is selling bracelets that I hope will help me be more conscious about my eating. One bite, One decision. I am hoping that it keeps me focused on one bite at a time. I was so happy when I read that she was offering these for sale. What a great method to keep your focus, part of the proceeds will also go to YMCA Activate America program, which help support people trying to lead healthy lifestyles. I can't wait to get mine. I've already been in the mindset about thinking about how each bite of food affects me. I think the bracelet would be a great visual reminder.

I also received my Gruve in the mail the other day. I am currently on my assessment week where it monitors my activity. Next week will begin the buzzing, I am sure! I am excited about this device making me more aware of when I need to move more! And I'll be going for green! Now where have I heard that before.....

So that's about it for now, but I am excited about the steps I am taking to ensure that I am successful in my goals and my journey. Just more tools in my weight loss tool box.

What tools in your tool box do you go to for your weight loss success? What have you tried in the past that didn't work?