Day 1

I signed up for a 12-week body transformation challenge at my gym. I want to win! $500 is nothing to sneeze at! The scale hasn't moved the last three or four months, so this challenge seems like good motivation to get me going again! I weighed in at the gym Saturday, and the official start to the challenge was yesterday. I am tracking my food intake on livestrong.com, as well as a notebook that I'm journaling thoughts and feelings in to. The gym weigh-in is always more than my home weigh-in, since I am actually wearing clothes there. I will just track home weigh-ins on here. I choose to weigh myself every morning, first thing. This doesn't work for everyone, but for me, it helps to keep me on track. Here are the facts:

Saturday weight: 181.5

Sunday weight: 181

Monday weight: 180.5

Yesterday's foods

Breakfast: Quaker oats, 1/2 banana, 4 oz. skim milk

Snack: 1/2 Krispy Kreme glazed donut

Lunch: 10 fresh strawberries mixed with 7 oz water and a protein supplement, blended w/ ice

Snack: 3/4 cup 1% cottage cheese, 2 Lay's potato chips, Brach's Cherry heart candies (like 15)

Dinner: Chicken tortilla casserole thingy

at least 8 8 0z. glasses of water, probably more like 9.5 over the whole day.

I take a multivitamin, a fish oil supplement, a joint support (glucosamine, etc) supplement, and acidophilus every morning.

This blog was helping me the first part of the day to resist some major temptations. I kept telling myself "you don't want to have to tell everyone that you messed up on the very first day!" One thing I learned over the last year, was that I could not deprive myself. If I did this, it made me want things even more, and I would end up falling off the wagon completely. So eventually yesterday, I ate 1/2 a donut and candy. Funny thing is...I can't blame anyone but myself because I bought those donuts and that candy. Self sabotage perhaps? I could point to my 2 hour trip to the grocery store, and putting everything away after, and my extreme hunger after all that, but really, I just wanted a little bit of the 'junk'. I thought because of how serious I am wanting to take this challenge that I could give all that up completely. I know what has worked, so why put extra pressure on myself? By doing that, I think it made me want that junk more!

I did not go to the gym yesterday. My domestic duties got in the way a bit. On livestrong.com, you can also track your activities as well as your food. I was pleased to see that grocery shopping and putting everything away was listed on there as exercise, so at least I did something!

I only got about 5 hours of sleep last night. I'm not sure why my body has me waking at 5 am every day, but somehow I have to get the little ones to bed earlier than midnight so I can get more rest.

I'm trying to eat 'my' kind of meals at breakfast and lunch, and eating along with my family for dinner. I will just make sure my portions of the 'family' meal are smaller than normal. The casserole last night, for instance, had cheese and flour tortillas...stuff with lots of calories and little nutritional benefit. There were veggies and chicken too, so it wasn't all bad. I had a small portion and drank lots of water. My body will get used to the smaller portions again. The holiday season must have enlarged my stomach again.

Day 1: During the day, it didn't feel like much of a success...but in reality, I weigh less today, and stayed within my allotted amount of calories for the day, even with my little splurges. Bring on Day 2!