Surprise

It's so surprising how quickly things change. If I am eating well and have a day "off" then I immediately feel like shit and seem to "give up" on health. Thankfully though, the opposite is true as well. I have been back on track all week. I can honestly say that I have counted every calorie I have consumed since Monday morning. I am so happy and feeling completely better (well, minus being exhausted. I just can't seem to adjust to 5am wake up calls.). Interestingly enough this is the week I went back to Hal Higdon's training schedule. It is so nice to have such sort runs right now. Even though they are totally kicking my ass. It is at least keeping me moving through the start of the cold months. Today I did 1.5 miles on the treadmill. I did have to walk once, but that is still improvement for me.

I still feel like I need to recap from the weekend so hopefully this will be the last 'all over the place' entry; at least for a little bit. So this weekend we had 5 of our favorite friends come to visit us. We had a race to run together. I know, how could I not have shared that I was training for a race? Well, this was a .1k. Yes, you read that correctly, a point one k. It was amazing! It was a fun run/beer run. It was being sponsored by some of the bars downtown and they had a block closed off for the run and then drink specials at the bars after we ran. It was definitely fun and I would probably do it again, but I definitely drank way to much. We were lucky enough to have Nate's sister in law spend pretty much all of Saturday with little lady. It felt really good to spend a day being carefree. However, it did take me until Tuesday to feel recovered.

Another recent surprise happened on Tuesday morning. Little lady and I were headed off for the day. I backed out of the garage and noticed a huge wild turkey next to the driveway. I thought it was insane and quickly ran back inside to grab a camera. I walked across the driveway to find out where that thing went and as I passed the garage something behind it caught the corner of my eye.

suburban turkeys

There was about 15 turkeys in my yard! I thought it was hilarious and shocking. I was walking towards them to try to get a better picture and spooked them. They started flying over the fence into the neighbor's yard. I sort of paniced for a minute, not sure if I should take a picture of them flying or video. In my panicked hesitation I snapped of pic of the last one over the fence.

Also, tomorrow is weigh in day, but this is the final week of my competition that I joined. It officially ends on Sunday so I will probably just use that as my weight. I will post a current weight by Monday. (We have another set of friends coming to town this weekend so I may be busy.) I have actually been not focusing on the scale. I haven't weighed myself since last Friday. I know I didn't help the weight loss with all the drinking I did over the weekend, but I am hoping the week helped me out. If not, I actually feel ok about that. It is feeling good to just focus on living healthy and not stepping on the scale every time I see it.

Weekend recap and more

As the weekend comes to and end I can't help but think this was a perfect weekend - slightly lazy, but still accomplished a few things.

Friday I was thinking a lot about my new love of healthy living. I really want to focus more on enjoying life and still being healthy. I don't want to feel like I have to turn down fun events because I don't know if I can control myself. I also want to live in the moment and enjoy life while losing weight. I tend to turn down fun ideas from the husband all of the time because they may involve eating or drinking. I was trying to come up with something fun to do at home on Friday that he would really enjoy. I know that he loves sitting by the campfire and I usually turn him down because either I don't want to drink a ton by the fire, or I think it's to cold.

Oddly enough before I even asked him to enjoy the fire with me, he asked if I wanted to have a fire. I was excited. I had already decided that I would just wear my winter coat to the fire to stay toasty. (I don't know why I have never thought to do this before. I always just wear a hoodie and then complain that it's cold.) I also wanted to enjoy one drink at the fire. I was thinking about my wine, but then realized it's in the fridge and will be cold. I wanted to make a nice warm drink so I looked through what we had. The only alcohol we had in the house was wine, beer and peppermint schnapps from last Christmas. I decided I would make a hot chocolate and add the peppermint schnapps. It was pretty tasty and I had enough calories to cover it and enjoy guilt free.

spiked hot cocoa in a cozy mug

We sat out by the fire and talked for awhile. I sipped my hot chocolate and stayed bundled up in my sweatshirt and winter coat, while the hubs stayed warm in a hoodie. It was nice and I truly enjoyed that. We also planned some fun for Saturday.

What a blazin fire we had!

Saturday morning we woke up early, well little lady woke us up at her usual 6:45. We all got ready for the day and left the house around 7:50 to get my car back to shape. The hubby checked the tire when he got home from work and said that I ruined the actual rim/wheel of the tire and that can be costly. I was feeling really bad about it, but he was super sweet about it and went down to Discount Tire with me in the morning.  I have a temporary wheel on until they can call for parts on Monday and let me know.

ugly tire, but drives nice

After what felt like forever we were on for the fun portion of the day. We went thrifting!  I love that we both really enjoying thrifting and can enjoy that time together. I found so many fun clothes. I only had 2 sweaters/long sleeve shirts in my closet. I always felt to fat to wear sweaters so my whole wardrobe consisted of jeans, t shirts and cardigans. In the winter I would just wear a cardigan over my summer outfits. I felt like it hid my muffin top much better than a sweater. Lately I have been wanting to wear actual sweaters and long sleeve shirts. We went to 3 thrift stores and I bought 6 shirts, one hoodie and one pair of jeans. I am so excited. Each shirt and the hoodie were about $3 each, so $21 on tops  and the jeans were $7 but they are seven for all mankind. I was excited about the jeans, but they don't fit me yet. They will though! I also love the hoodie. It feels slightly quilted and super warm. I also love that I feel confident enough to start wearing brighter colors. I don't feel the need to blend in.

$28 worth of clothes

Sunday has been much more laid back. Little lady and I decided to head out for a few things, mainly diaper cream. I decided to go to Target instead of the much closer Meijer because (a) little lady was cranky and I thought a long car ride would help and (b) my Target running running shorts size large seemed a bit big and I wanted to buy clearance shorts for next summer. We spent a lot of time looking at all the wonderful Target things. They had some really cute coats! I loved that I could try them up and zip them up! I didn't buy any coats though because I don't really need any fall coats and they were $40. I did end up buying a new cardigan. I have wanted a mustard yellow one forever, but haven't found one/wasn't sure I felt confident enough to wear yellow. I have one now and I will feel confident enough to show it off! I also bought a size medium pair of running shorts. They are a different cut than my size large though so the mediums are tight. I can still wear them though, but they really accentuate the muffin top. I think they will be perfect for next year.

As we were at Target, I realized that we were super close to Kohl's (I don't head to this side of town often). Kohl's is one of the few places that I can buy bras. The bras that I had been wearing were finally getting ridiculous on me. The cup went up so high on my chest that it was very noticeably peaking out in a tank top. It just looked odd and the band was starting to feel loose and spend most of the day riding up on me. We headed in to bra shop. I wasn't sure what size the bra was that I was wearing. I thought it was 38DD (the size I always claim to be) so I looked at 38Ds. I don't know why I didn't think to try a smaller band on. I was in a panic, I hate bra shopping. I tried on a few but they didn't fit right. As I was trying bras on I looked to see what size and brand my current bra was. I knew I bought it at Kohl's and figured I would just get a smaller one of the same bra. My old bra was 40DD. I didn't like seeing that and was glad I had blocked that out of my memory. I couldn't find the brand that I wanted, but ended up finding a brand that actually carried a 36DD. It's hard to find larger cup sizes with smaller bands. I tried it on and it feels perfect! I am wearing a 36DD bra! I feel great and am excited that my band size is 4 inches smaller than last time. Although the old bra was always worn on the tightest fitting and wasn't tight at all. I am wearing my new bra on the loosest fitting, but it feels perfect!

Bodacious Biking Babes

I am almost thinking that my weight loss weigh-ins are not going to happen. I have not been focusing as much as I want to. I felt much more confident when I was focusing on my running goals and just trying to control my eating. It took me 5 months to lose 20 pounds, but it felt easy and right. With my weekly weigh-ins I almost feel to rushed to try to see results. I feel so much extra stress. I am going to stick it out for one month and then reevaluate. I may just switch to a monthly weigh-in. I think this week has been extra rough on my weight because I have been drinking more than I would like to (I know, whoa is me).

While my mom and grandma were here they let us go out one night for an early celebration for our upcoming anniversary. We went out to a bar and had a few drinks. Monday is our date night and we had a sitter for the first time in forever. We went out for a wine tasting. Tonight is my first MOMS night out. Which is at a bar. I am excited for it and I know I could go there and not drink but I don't want everyone's first impression of me to be the quiet awkward girl that wouldn't have a drink. Also, our actual anniversary is on Thursday and we bought a growler of sangria from our wine tasting night and we wanted to have some on Thursday.

Lately I have been able to drink and not overeat with it. That used to be the huge struggle for me. I was proud of myself that I could drink and still make wise food choices. Yesterday though, I had a light dinner to try to account for the alcohol calories and then overindulged after we got home from the wine tasting. I knew better than to under eat before drinking. Tonight I am making chili which is usually filling so hopefully I don't blow today in the last few hours.

I did my cross training today. The schedule called for 35 minutes, but I did an hour and 45 minutes. I am not trying to overdo it, but I know that it's going to get cold out soon so on my cross training days I am trying to get out there with my bike and enjoy it. Plus, we didn't have anything official on our schedule (no playgroups, library group, or "school"). If it rained we were going to grocery shop, but the weather looked like it would hold out for the morning. It was a little chilly, but beautiful out. I was excited because I decided we would ride to the beginning of the White Pine Trail. We always run around mile markers 6-8 so I figured that would be the perfect distance for a morning ride. We made it to the start and I think we went a total of about 16 miles with our ride to and from the trail. My legs feel pretty sore from it. I was really working it on the ride back. Right around the start of the trail this group of 45-60 year old ladies were heading for the trail. I thought, oh I better speed up it's such a hassle to pass people with this baby trailer. I regretted that almost immediately. They were going just as fast as I was and I had to much pride to be passed by older ladies that looked like they were just out on a casual bike ride. I kept thinking I would just ride for 10 more minutes and then pull off for some water and to check on little lady. At each 'ten minutes' where was always something. Once it was a giant hill that I was pretty sure they would walk up and I could lose them. They didn't. Two of the ladies passed me on the way to the hill picking up speed, but took a two second break at the top of the hill and I was in the lead again. The next stop I thought about taking two of the ladies pulled off to use the restroom so the group slowed down. After that point there were no real stops and I thought I would look weak taking an 'emergency break.' I had to keep pushing it the whole time. The only thing that is redeeming about this story is on the back of one of the ladies' jacket it said something about bodacious biking babes. I am guessing that they go out biking much more than me :) I also couldn't help but think that I hope that I am that awesome when I am their age.