Sleep, Day 1: Still Getting Yelled At.

So I lost ~ 2.6 pounds last week.  That’s still utterly amazing to me.   I really meant it last night when I said I’d be fine with just staying the same and not gaining anything, so this feels like an unxpected bonus.

And of course, even though the loss this week didn’t tip over the 3-pound mark, I’m still getting gripes from my Weight Watchers Online account.  “While it’s normal to lose an excess of 2 pounds per week in the first few weeks of your weight loss plan, a normal rate of weight loss is between 1 and 2 pounds per week.  Anything greater than this can result in muscle loss, heart complications and other health issues.  You will want to moderate your eating habits to reduce your loss to between 1 and 2 pounds per week.”   It’s getting so that if I’m NOT scolded, I feel like I’ve failed.

Exercise+, Day 19: Looking Down the Barrel

Today was another good day, I’m happy to report.  When I got up this morning (which was around 7:30 am), I found that Zack had already been up for an hour and was through most of his lessons.  He actually finished everything by noon.   I was only TOO THRILLED to release him on his own recognissance for the rest of the day.   After all, being done with one’s schoolwork by by  noon is supposed to be one of the joys of homeschooling: you don’t have to wait for the rest of the class to finish their work before you can move onto the next thing.

And I, in turn, was equally industrious.  I did three loads of laundry, three loads of dishes (No, I’m not kidding… and the dishes weren’t even piled up to start with; we just go through a LOT of dishes around here.)  I got dinner made and in the oven on time, and I even made pudding for the kids for dessert.  As if to underscore our good day, the weather cheered up to a balmy 50 degrees, and promises to be even better tomorrow.  Mmmm!

Exercise+, Day 18: Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day…

I used to be a huge Monkees fan.  Back in 1986, when they resurfaced for their big reunion tour, I was one of those pre-teens who hopped on the bandwagon and decided to moon after men who were old enough to be my father.  Somehow at the time this didn’t strike me as nearly so lame as it appears now in hindsight, but I guess in the broad scheme of things it was a safe enough crush.  My friends and I were effectively crushing on the 20-something versions of these guys, so the targets of our affections effectively no longer existed.

At any rate, after yesterday’s school-related drama, a Monkee’s song has been running through my head (hence today’s title).  Of course, until I wrote this, it didn’t hit me that the song doesn’t necessarily say that Tomorrow will be a BETTER day.  Only that it will be ANOTHER day.  Hmm.

Exercise+, Day 17: Hard Decisions Made Harder!

BAH!

Today was the sort of day that I cannot describe without swearing.   Since I am not, as it happens, a great fan of swearing, hopefully this underscores just how horrible the day was.  Nothing I attempted to do seemed to go as I hoped, and by the end of the day the only member of our family who hadn’t spent an inordinate amount of time in tears was Andy.  What a mess.

While once again, I realize that this entry will have little to do with the diet and exercise regimen for which my blog has become so famous, it nonetheless follows up on yesterday’s entry…so I must beg the patience of my vast audience as I once again dedicate a blog entry to the wrong things.  Please feel free to skip.

Exercise+, Day 16: Life Changes

Today was a weird day.  Tuesdays usually are, actually, because we have music lessons in the morning, Livelessons around midday for both boys, and then Scouts around 3:00.  Used to be worse: right after Scouts came soccer practice, but that season’s obviously passed now.

What’s on my mind tonight isn’t strictly relevant to weight loss, but it is related enough thanks to Whiny Week last week that I’m going to go ahead and talk about it here.

Exercise+, Day 14: WOOT!

If I needed a pick-me-up day, this was definitely it.   All that whining and gnashing of teeth from earlier this week is just downright embarassing now, and I’m almost tempted to go back and delete that entry.

Today was Sunday, which of course meant we had church first thing.  After the service ended, I saw my father up in the balcony waving down at me and trying to tell me something.  It took me a second to understand him, but I was kind of floored when I did: he was telling me my HAIR looked nice.   My Dad has many good qualities, of course, but being rampant with praise about such things is just not his way usually, so that was kind of neat.

I barely had time to process the novetly there when an older member of our congregation appeared beside me and was complimenting my hair too.  This woman is one I don’t talk to a lot, though we’ve always been friendly, so her sudden attention was sort of a surprise too.

Throughout the course of the morning, I was complimented at least four or five times more, too.  Mostly it was my hair, and I can appreciate that; I guess one of the unexpected benefits of letting your hair go too long before cuts is that when you finally DO get in to get it done, the change is so dramatic that everyone notices.  But the change in my hair also drew attention to the other changes, which apparently was noted to my Mom later.  “Wow..Jen looks good!”  That was just so nice.   I really needed that.

Exercise+, Day 4: It’s a Beautiful Morning

Well, I guess it’s a good thing I ditched the school and work goals, or today would have marked my first official failure.    The weather here is pushing 60 degrees in our area, and considering this follows months of winter drear, I was only TOO HAPPY to declare the day a Warm Weather Holiday and send the kids outside.  We dd no schoolwork, no work-work.  I trimmed the bushes while the kids ran off a whole lot of pent-up, cabin-fever energy.  It was WONDERFUL.  It’s supposed to get cold again tomorrow, so we can just make up the lost time then.

Exercise+, Day 1: Lame Labels

Wow… I feel completely off my game today.   I mean, it was a busy day, and an unusual one for starting a new cycle, but still.  Wendy and her boys came out and spent lunch and the afternoon with us, so I didn’t really have a ton of time in the end to dedicate to the goals I set down for myself.

Nonetheless, I did enough to count today a success.  I walked my 120 minutes, and I spent part of the evening sitting down with Daylite’s Concept Manual so I could finally get my brain around everything it can do.  It’s a great program, but it’s one of those things where it’s designed to be applicable across a rather broad spectrum.   Big companies with a huge workforce and a diverse array of clients can use it to delegate duties and track project progress, etc.  Given that, I have a lot of fat trimming to do to get it to work for me.

So, I spent part of today setting up categories and keywords that seemed applicable. It doesn’t sound like much, I guess, but I didn’t have a lot of time.  Anyway, it needed doing.

Zack is caught up on his schoolwork.  Noah didn’t have any.  Success there too.

I think I will amend my exercise regimen somewhat this time around, actually.  I know I said I would walk for at least 120 minutes, but I think I’m going to amend that to ‘do at least 120 minutes of exercise’.   I’m wanting to give the Wii Fit another shot, particularly the Yoga, but I want credit for it if I do that.   Especially since it’s something that eats up time as a standalone activity; I can’t do computer work while doing Yoga, after all.  I just want to feel like I’m doing something for upper body once in awhile too.

Exercise, Day 21: Walking Really Late AGAIN!

Yeesh.. This needs to stop.   Andy and I spent the entire day today cleaning (well, admittedly, except for the time I spent sleeping in today and then chatting for awhile online.  Bad Jen!) and then my parents came by to play some pinochle.  Ergo, it’s going on 11, and I’m just now walking.  Once again, score one for the blog and the 21-day goal, because this was definitely a day when it would have seemed only prudent to skip it.  But man, who dies on Day 21?!

So, here I am.  And really, it’s sort of nice.  It’s been a busy day, the house looks really good now, and this is kind of a good opportunity to reflect and consider what the heck I’m going to do for 21 days starting tomorrow.