Week 1.5 Results are in!! (And Memorial Day memories)

Good morning everyone!

I hope this note finds everyone doing well today as we all prep for a wonderful three day weekend! I wanted to give you a quick update on my WW progress before I get into a couple other things.

 

I went to my second weight loss weigh in last night instead of this Saturday morning because we are going to be heading out of town for the weekend as of tonight. After getting on the scale I found out I lost another 0.6 lbs in ½ week. I am completely fine with this number and pleased that it is still a step in the right direction. My WW leader said that this number has a couple of things behind it. 1 – I did not complete a full week since my last weigh in. 2 – I weighed in at 6:00 pm after work instead of 10:00 am on a Saturday after I just crawled out of bed. She said I probably lost about 3 pounds in reality being the body can fluctuate 3-5 lbs as the day goes on. 3 – I lost 7.8 pounds last week so she said it is normal to see a much smaller loss a week after such a great number. I will have to weigh in on Thursday again next week as we are heading out of town for M&K’s wedding in OH so I won’t be back to my Saturday schedule till the follow weekend. She said I should see that extra loss when I switch back to Saturday mornings. So, in 1 ½ weeks, I have lost a total of 8.4 pounds! I am super excited as that is a great weight loss for only 1 ½ weeks.

For the Memorial Day weekend we are going to be going boating/camping at Lake Kincaid in IL with our good friends Kim & Bret. They are expecting a baby in July so they wanted to get out to a lake one more time before the baby comes. I am really looking forward to the trip as it is predicted to be 87 and beautiful all weekend! I have never been tubing or water skiing so it should be a good time. With how clumsy I tend to be, I am a little scared of water skiing so I am hoping I don’t come home with a broke arm or leg :) We are bring Gypsy with and she is not a very big fan of water so we picked her up a life jacket last night in case she decides to get brave and try to take a swim. I will post pictures after we get back on Sunday.

 

I have a lot of wonderful people to remember this Memorial Day but particularly the three people that we lost this past year:

• My Grandma V passed away at the age of 91 in September 2009 after leading an extraordinary life. She was my favorite person on this earth and I pray that I can live to be an amazing person like her. She impacted many lives in her time here on earth and I am grateful for all of the times I was able to spend with her. I miss her dearly and look forward to seeing her again some day (hopefully when I am really old)
• The second loss in the past year came about a month ago. My 6th grade and High School band director passed away from cancer after battling it for about a year. He taught at SMCHS since before my Mom went to school there in the 70’s and in my biased opinion, created the best band program in the state of ND. I had the honor of being in the Junior/Senior band when I was a freshman and sophomore as well and learned a lot of life lessons from Mr Schmidt that has helped shape the person I am today. His motto was “Early is on time. On time is Late.” Because of him, I strive to always be early to everything I attend so that I do not make people wait on account of me.
• Lastly, my great aunt Toni (Grandma V’s sister) passed away from her battle with cancer on Wednesday night. Toni lived in the twin cities for many years and her and I became very close when I moved to Minneapolis after college graduation. I would go over to visit a couple of times a month and ended up finding out that McDonald’s was one of her favorite places to eat. We would go to the McDonald’s in uptown and have burgers and fries and catch up with one another. After she became sick she moved to Bismarck to live with my aunt and uncle. She lived three years longer than the doctor’s expected she would so I cherished all the times I would get back to visit her. Toni was known to be pretty stubborn at times which made me love her even more. When Grandma V passed she told me that she thought grandma was going to go straight to heaven but felt she herself would spend a long time in purgatory :) I told her that I disagreed with that statement and I truly believe she is sitting next to God in heaven watching over us all today.

In remembrance of all those we have lost this year and previous years, I hope this Memorial Day weekend is a blessed one for everyone. I am going to try my best to eat well this camping weekend so that I don’t wreck my diet progress and will post pictures of the trip when I get back. Thanks for all the support in my diet plan so far!

 

Happy Graduation weekend to Hannah and Hayley! I’m sure you will both look awesome walking in your caps and gowns on graduation day!  I am very proud of both of you!

 

That’s all for now!

Results of Week #1 are in!

Drum Roll Please.........

I lost 7.8 pounds for week one!!!  I am extremely happy that week one went well!  It really has been not bad at all this past week.  It is amazing how much food you can eat when you eat healthy instead of eat pizza and chocolate all the time! :)

I have learned that Subway is my best friend during this diet experience.  I can go to Subway and eat a 6 in turkey and ham on wheat with lettuce, pickles, cucumbers, lite mayo and a bay of baked lays with diet coke for 9 points.  Pretty good deal!

It is girls weekend for Gypsy and I.  Chris is on a fishing trip with his uncle and cousins so I am relaxing and getting caught up on things at home.  I had my WW meeting this morning and then went and got my eyes checked.  I am becoming more blind the older I get but at least I have been able to find some cute glasses to wear!  I decided to schedule an hour massage tonight to get some relaxing in so I am looking forward to being spoiled!  I feel I deserve it after such a successful first week.

Week 2 is where they introduce activity points into the program so that will be my test this week.  I think I am going to take a quick nap and then take Gypsy for a long walk this afternoon.  It will be good for both of us.

I hope you all have a great week!  If anything comes up during the week I will let you know, otherwise I will give you another update after my week 2 weigh in.  Thanks for all of the support this week!  I really appreciate it!

Will Power Test #1

Today my team at work had 1 new hire and four interns start for the summer, so they had a team lunch to welcome them that consisted of pizza, salad, and brownies.  As some of you know, pizza is my favorite food ever and it smelled delicious.

I am proud to say that I stuck to my will power and ate the lunch I packed (turkey sandwich, cucumbers, and jello) instead of giving in to the pizza and brownies!  I was so proud of myself considering chocolate is another one of my downfalls.  Hopefully I am able to continue to keep it up!

Have a good afternoon!

I am now a Weight Watchers member

Well, I am on day two of weight watchers and am surprised as to how much food I can eat. I went and signed up yesterday morning and attended my first meeting. I was a little heavier than I thought I was so I am setting my goal at 35-40 pounds total but my first goal is 5% of my total weight. They gave us a lot of tools (books) to use so so far the program seems pretty easy to follow. Once I start remembering how many “points” things are I think it will be even better. Then I won’t have to get out my book every time I want to eat to see what I can have.

It has been a pretty rainy weekend here. Not as much rain as was predicted but still enough to keep us inside for the most part. We have been pretty lazy today but did have my Dad and Lynda over for dinner last night to show them the apartment. It was good to catch up with them for a little while. The rain is supposedly going to clear up after tomorrow so we can get back outside a little more. Chris’ softball was rained out last week so he is hoping for some sun!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I hope my first week of WW goes great. I will let you know how I did after my weigh in next Saturday! Wish me luck!

Good evening all!

Gypsy!

Welcome to my new blog!

Hi Everyone!


Welcome to my new blog! I hope this posting finds you all happy and that the spring weather is cooperating for each of you. After being inspired by my brothers and their blog posts, I have decided to start one of my own. The main purpose of my blog is to document my efforts to lose weight in order to fit into the bridesmaid dress I am wearing for my friend Vicki’s wedding on July 3, 2010. In order to tell you my plan to get to that goal, I should probably first explain how I got into this situation in the first place.

My story began almost three years ago when I went on a work trip to Bangalore, India for two weeks in May. At the time I was working as an IT auditor for a large retail corporation and when volunteers were asked to go on this audit trip I jumped at the chance. The extent of my international travel prior to this trip was to Winnipeg Canada and the Bahamas and I figured I would probably not travel to India for a personal vacation so this was my opportunity to go! We met with a doctor before the trip and had to get four shots as well as take malaria medication while we were there to stay healthy. As an extra precaution, they gave each of us 10 days of antibiotics to take in case we got sick while we were there. This should have been a red flag for me but I was just so excited to go, I didn’t care. What was the worst that could happen? Maybe a little stomach flu? Wrong.

Fast forward to the weekend in-between my two work weeks over there and I was sick to my stomach. I started taking the Cipro so that I could make it through the next week and that really seemed to help. After I was back in the states and ran out of the Cipro however, I was back to being in the bathroom within ½ hr of eating no matter what it was.

I was a pretty healthy person prior to this so I hadn’t established a doctor in Minnesota yet. I thought it was logical to go to the doctor that gave us our shots prior to the trip as she specialized in international travelers. She did the whole run down of testing for things like parasites and the tests all came back negative. I ended up just getting frustrated and didn’t go back because she said she didn’t think there was anything else she could do for me (I blame the rest of my ongoing problems on her as she was a crappy doctor).

When I had finally had enough and felt like I was getting a sinus infection the following January I decided to go into the doctor and scheduled an appointment with a nurse practitioner because she was the first person I could get in to see. I began to tell her about my stomach issues and she asked if they had checked for H. Pylori. I told her I didn’t think they had so she ordered up a blood test. Sure enough, it came back positive and I was put on two medications for 2 weeks to get rid of it. I won’t go into gruesome detail of what this bacteria infection is, but if you are that curious, I would recommend googling it.

As a result of having H. Pylori for nine months, my immune system was shot. I ended up getting diagnosed with Epstein Barr Syndrome (Chronic Fatigue) and was always tired. The H. Pylori did a lot of long term damage to my stomach as well which left me lactose intolerant and forced a lot of other things out of my diet. Once I was able to cut a lot of those things out of my diet and get to a regular sleep schedule I was finally beginning to feel normal again. Every once in a while I would go through a couple weeks of feeling like I had mono but would recover pretty nicely.

Last August I began dating the man of my dreams. How we ended up together is a whole different story that can be saved for a different day, but Chris and I have been together now for almost nine months after being friends for three years. We always had a long distance friendship as I was in Minnesota and he lived just outside of St Louis on the Illinois side of the river. As our relationship progressed, we decided that the distance was getting harder and I was tired of the weather in MN so I found a job for a pet food company in St Louis and moved to Illinois in March. I am loving it here so far (Miss my ladies in MN though!)

After getting settled into my new home with Chris, the Epstein Barr came back in full force. It has been six weeks of feeling extreme fatigue to the point where I started to fall asleep at work. I went and saw the doctor this week and he took blood work to see if it may be due to hypothyroidism or maybe iron deficient anemia. I should find out next week if either of these things are present in my system.

I have never been a coffee drinker and after diet coke was cut from my diet two years ago caffeine isn’t much of an option to help me stay awake during the day. It doesn’t matter if I get 5 hrs or 12 hours of sleep a night, I feel the same lethargy every day. As a result, I began to eat a lot of sugar to keep myself awake every day. This is not a good idea when it comes to trying to maintain or lose weight. Needless to say, I have packed on a few pounds over the last three years, but most recently the last six weeks so the doctor recommended that I lose weight. So, I have decided that on Saturday morning I am joining Weight Watchers. We will see what their recommended goal for me is, but I would like to try for around 30 pounds.

Back to the green dress – I purchased a bridesmaid dress last fall from David’s Bridal for Vicki’s upcoming wedding. At the time I purchased it, it fit me perfectly to the point where no alterations were needed. I have since put on about 15 pounds of weight, mostly in my stomach area. I need to fit into this dress on July 3rd so I am using this as my inspiration to get fit.

Going forward I will post updates on my progress from now until Vicki’s wedding and beyond as somewhat of a motivator for myself to keep working at it. I do not have a lot of patience or will power so this will be a great test for me to see how well I can do. I don’t feel like a blimp but my body is not where I would like it to be so now is the time for me to do something about it.

Thank you for supporting me though this journey and if you see that I am starting to fall off the weight watchers wagon, please tell me to get my butt back up and going. I think the end result will be worth it; I just may need a little pushing once in a while to get me to that point. Thankfully Gypsy (my dog) is a good exercise partner and she and I were able to run ½ mile this morning without stopping.
That is all for now. I was feeling a little long winded for my first post. I promise no life long health history next time!

-Bethany

PS – Please don’t read this as a bashing of Bangalore. It was an amazing experience to be there and I met a lot of great people on my visit to India. If I had to do it all over again knowing I would get as sick as I did I would still go in a heartbeat. I would probably just have gone to get a second doctor’s opinion a lot sooner than six months after the first doctor was incompetent. If you ever have the opportunity to experience India in person, make sure you take advantage of that opportunity and go.