My Future Marine

Today I was forced, against my will, to attend a work event.  I can’t stand social events for work.  Chit chat, mingling, networking…I hate all of that crap.  A meal was served during the program, and I didn’t know ahead of time what it was, so I knew it was going to be a high-risk situation.  If I pack my lunch, I have total control over what food is even available to me.  An event where food is served?  Not so much.

Luckily the meal itself wasn’t terribly tempting.  It looked and tasted like it had been sitting a while before it hit my table.  I picked at the chicken and ate a few pieces of grilled squash.  I didn’t like anything else.  Cooked carrots and most other vegetables are just oozy slime to me.

During the entire meal, though, a delectable, tantalizing slice of cheesecake posed seductively before me, topped with whipped cream, calling my name like a brazen temptress.  Have I mentioned that I absolutely adore cheesecake?  All I’ve wanted to do all week is eat, eat, eat, and now this!

Before I knew it, I picked up my spoon and grabbed a small bite.  I had hoped it would taste terrible, but no such luck.  It was amazing.  I have been resisting temptation all week.  Didn’t I deserve a little treat?

Maybe, but I still put the spoon down and firmly told myself “no more”.  I don’t need the Weight Watchers points or the calories (18 Weight Watchers points and 400 calories in one slice, in case you were wondering).  I was honest and logged my one bite, and I was relieved I didn’t have to log the entire slice!

You may have noticed that I re-launched the My Marine Boot Camp Challenge on the right side of my blog.  When I was struggling so much, a challenge was just another burden and stressor.  It wasn’t helping or motivating me at all.  Now that I feel like I’m ready to move forward, I decided it was time to get back to my challenge.

My stepson had an injury not long after arriving at boot camp, so he hasn’t been in a regular platoon until now.  So, if I am understanding correctly, his 12 weeks start now, not when he left last month.  We miss him a lot, but maybe focusing on this challenge and accomplishing some personal weight loss and fitness goals will make the time he’s gone go by a little faster.

So, starting now, consider me in boot camp too (albeit a much easier version that what he is enduring).   Here’s to me being a lot stronger, fitter, slimmer, and lighter before my future Marine sees me again.

 

Weight Watchers vs. MyFitnessPal

I have a few weeks of following Weight Watchers under my belt now, and I am over the initial shock of just how many points my favorite foods are worth.  The first week was a jolt, and I had to overhaul my eating habits fast.  Soda is worth way too many points and left nothing if I actually wanted to eat that day.  Candy, sweets, anything sugary and gooey and rotting my teeth (in other words, my favorite foods) had to go. 

Most fruits and vegetables are “free”, meaning they have no points.  I can eat them and not lose any points for the day.  So I started packing things like bananas and grapes for my snacks during the work day, and I add celery and carrots to my lunches. I spring for the points for ranch dressing, because otherwise I know damn good and well I won’t eat the rabbit food.  No diet or ranch dressing, either, because it tastes like doo-doo.

After struggling for months to get back on track, the WW points system basically slapped me in the face and said “Either crap or get off the pot”.  I had to either make big changes to stick to my points, or I could waste the money I was spending on WW, keep eating whatever I wanted, and keep gaining weight.  I don’t know why the points system made it click for me when tracking calories didn’t.  Maybe just because it was something new.  I am just grateful I found something that drastically improved my eating habits and got me back to losing weight.

I joined WW while they were running a special price for 3 months, so my membership will expire in mid-January.  WW is a bit expensive when they aren’t running specials, so I am already contemplating whether I want to renew in January or not. 

Thing is, I definitely credit the WW points for getting me back on track, but the WW site and app are just not worth $20 a month.  My food diary is not broken down into macros like fiber, carbs, protein, calcium,  etc.  The features like saving a meal or adding favorite food to MyFitnessPal seems much easier too.  It takes me less time to log my food on MFP than it does on WW.  Editing or deleting my saved meals is easier on MFP too.

The WW app and site don’t come with much of a community, either.  There’s a feature called Connect where you can see posts and pictures from other people, and you can follow certain people, but it’s not the same. There’s no feed specific to me, with just my posts and my friends’ posts, like on MFP.  I can’t “friend” people like I can on MyFitnessPal, can’t send messages like I can on MFP.  There are no message boards or challenges at all on WW, which is huge strike against them for me. 

In a nutshell, the only benefit the WW app and site have for me is quickly calculating the WW points for my food diary.  The community and the support are simply not there, and free sites like MFP have more features on the food diary than WW does for $20 a month.  Nothing justifies the cost for me.  The WW app feels primitive, which is ironic since it is the most expensive food logging app that I know of.  If MFP and LoseIt can offer more features on even their free accounts, then WW has no excuse to not offer the same, and more, with their overpriced app.

I thought about cancelling WW and getting at least a partial refund of what I paid for 3 months, but I am still not 100% on my feet.  I know how easily I can slide back into bad habits.  For some reason, the WW points are keeping me in line, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  I will keep it through January and hopefully get stronger in my healthier habits so I can just switch back to logging my food on MFP, with better eating habits. 

I’m not running WW down here.  I love what tracking WW points has done to improve my eating habits and get me back on track.  But for $20 a month for online only (the website and the app, no meetings), WW really needs to offer more.  Free apps are more sophisticated, easier to navigate, and offer more features and support. 

I have been double-logging my food, entering it into WW to track my points, then entering it into MFP to track calories.  It’s extra work, but I wanted to keep a record of how many calories I am consuming compared to how many WW points I am using each day.  I think it will help when I switch back to logging on just MFP.  A day with the same calorie range as another day, but with lower WW points, means I ate healthier that day.  So later I can review my MFP food diary and see which days were the most successful for me, and I already have a meal plan to follow.  It’s a pain to double-log, but when I cancel WW, I think it will be valuable to me to have that information saved on MFP.  (I use the Notes box to enter my WW points for that day).

I have now officially smothered you in WW talk 🙂  I like to plan ahead, though, and I figured maybe someone else could benefit from a review of the WW app compared to free ones like MFP.  Bottom line, it is worth every penny to me to pay for the WW app for a few months to get me back on track, but I can’t see indefinitely paying $20 a month for outdated and limited tools.   WW really needs to add features to make it more than a points calculator.

FINALLY Lost Weight

Do you know how long it’s been since I had a good loss at weigh in?  I’ve had nothing but gains (or skipped weigh-ins) since July.  This past Saturday, I lost 2.8 pounds and was thrilled!  Finally!

It was a good weekend.  Friday night, before my stepson’s football game, we stopped to eat dinner at a restaurant I really like.  I knew weigh in was the next morning, so while everyone else ordered hamburgers and fries and wraps, I got a small side salad and an unsweet tea.  When the food was served, I joked, “Mmmmm!  Diet food!”

My older stepdaughter asked me why I ordered diet food, and I told her I have gained some weight since the wedding and want to re-lose it.  Without hesitation, she told me, “I think you are gorgeous.”  How can I not love the kid?  Ha ha.

Yesterday I had signed up for Spinning class after work. The closer it got to quitting time, the more convinced I was that I should just cancel class. I was so sleepy and worn out from the weekend.  Just as I was about to go ahead and cancel class, I pictured going home, pigging out, and crashing on the couch.  Is that what I really wanted?  Well, technically, yes, that is exactly what I wanted to do.  But as the day ended, did I want to know I accomplished a good workout, or a pig-out?

I went to class and got a great workout.  But I am still fighting the urge to snack and eat all day long.  What is up with that?  Whether I’m hungry or not, all I want to do is eat, snack, nibble, graze, taste.  It makes it very difficult to stick to my guns and stay on track.  I’m not sure what to do about that.

I’d like to lose at least 2 pounds this week, so I need to stick to my workouts and not give in to these urges to eat everything in sight!

Glutes that Salute

I wanted to try something different, so the other day I searched for upper body workout videos online and came across one called Upper Body Transformer.  Well, that’s a promising workout name, right?  So I gave it a whirl.

Turns out it is part of a workout set I never heard of called JNL Fusion.  JNL stands for Jennifer Nicole Lee, who leads these workouts:

Jennifer Nicole Lee of JNL Fusion

I’ve tried a few of the workouts from JNL Fusion now, since most of them can be found online somewhere.  Upper Body Transformer is 36 minutes long and follows the format of 30 seconds of a strength move followed by 30 seconds of a cardio move, repeated a few times, before moving on to the next circuit.

I was sore the next day, which I love, but I have to warn you if you try these workouts, all of the people in it are madly, hopelessly infatuated with themselves and are highly annoying.  If I had a dollar for every time that Jennifer points into the camera and says something banal, I could retire onto my own private island surrounded by a personal staff serving me fruity, coconut-y mixed beverages.  She likes to yell out “Strong is the new skinny!” and “Kiss my abs!”, then beam with pride each time like she just came up with that on the spur of the moment and hasn’t hollered it 20 times already.

Everyone in the workout is a fitness model/fitness fanatic. Nothing wrong with that, and they all look amazing. 

Jennifer feels the need, however, to dub them with witty nicknames like Hottie Scotty, or refer them as hot this, hot that (ex: hot mama).  Endlessly patting each other on the back for being gorgeous gets old during a 30-40 minute workout.

I tried Lean Legs from JNL Fusion too, which is 30 minutes long, same format (30 seconds strength move, 30 seconds cardio move, repeated in about 6-7 circuits).  I like that one and will probably do that one again.  I thought I would love Shoulder Shredder, but only the first few moves are shoulder exercises.  Then it is mostly triceps and those god-awful cardio moves that require practically standing on your head, so I likely won’t do that one again.

Bottom line, so far these seem like effective enough workouts that I tolerate the whooping, the hollering, the “we are so damn sexy!” attitude, and nonstop chatter and stupid comments.  One of them actually made me laugh though: “We want glutes that salute!”  I’ll drink to that!

See, I wasn’t making it up!

Candy, Candy, Candy Everywhere!

Usually when I don’t post for a day or two, it means I’m busy plowing my way through high-calorie, high-fat food, swigging Coke like a seasoned addict, and pretending that the word “exercise” doesn’t exist in my vocabulary.  Not this time, I promise!  I’m just really swamped at work.  Today I can actually see over the pile in my inbox, so I am taking a break to write here.  Lucky you, eh?

Yesterday every last one of my co-workers hauled their leftover Halloween candy to work, so there was a gigantic basket big enough to hold a small child, filled with candy of all kinds, sitting prominently in the kitchen.  Seriously?  Why buy that much candy in the first place?  And what’s with the “Leftover junk?  Guess I’ll make everyone at work fat” mentality?

I sneaked a fun-size candy bar, then dutifully logged it in my Weight Watchers food diary.  WHAT THE…?   Five points for that tiny thing?  Holy crap!  I nearly gagged it back up.  I thought maybe one point, at most two.  I kept my paws out of that candy basket the rest of the day.  It wasn’t worth five points each, that’s for sure!

I can’t believe this week is almost over already.  Two more days of good workouts, then it’s time for weigh-in!  I really hope I have a good loss this week. The scale should throw an extra pound loss in this week just because I resisted (most of) the Halloween candy.

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