The Brat Fights the Fat

Well, Angel has definitely bonded with me. She follows me around and gets sooo excited when I walk in the door. When I sit down on the couch, she's like a little rocket and leaps right onto my lap with her paws on my shoulders. She doesn't lick, just stares at you with her face right in yours.

Had a pretty good day. Angel definitely gets me out of the house, even if I don't get much exercise on our walks. She has to sniff everything and then she likes to circle around me and make me dizzy. Still, it was nice to be outside.

Went to White Spot for dinner... we'd planned on going to Boston Pizza. In fact, we went to Boston Pizza, but after 20 minutes of waiting for them to take our drink order... I was too ticked and the kids were tired and hungry. So, when the waitress finally got to our table, I said "sorry, but after waiting twenty minutes for you to finally stop at our table, it's just not worth the wait" and packed up the kids and left. It wasn't even busy and the waitress served customers at the table next to ours that had sat down 10 minutes after us. She took their drink order, brought their drinks and took their food order before stoping at our table, despite the fact that I'd given her the raised eyebrow look and had the menus on the edge of the table. It was very annoying.

Anyway, five hours later I went to White Spot by myself and had the low cal chargrilled chicken burger with fries & a diet coke. I only ate about 8 fries, so dinner was only 11 pts. Ordered the chocolate passion cake, but only ate about a third of it, which is probably another 11 pts. Oh well, it was really good and I didn't finish it. Small victories.

We're picking up our new puppy at the airport tonight!!! I'm so excited!!

Her name is Angel & she's a 1 year old Havanese (Cuban version of the Bishon Frise). She's sable in colour and very cute.

I'd pretty much given up hope that we'd have a dog again. My daughter and I are both allergic and we'd had to find another home for our last dog because of DD's allergies. Well, Angel is one of those hypoallergenic breeds. So she still might affect our allergies a bit, but significantly less than most other dogs. As long as we keep her out of DD's room & vacuum lots (thank goodness for our nanny), it should be good. My DD is obsessed with puppies and will be so excited. For a two year old, she's amazingly gentle with little dogs. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, I'm used to big dogs... dobermans & Rottis primarily. This will be my first puntable dog. But, if I have a choice between no dog and a puntable, I'm all for the puntable.

She's coming all the way from New Brunswick. And she understands French (which freaks DH out, 'cause he's hopeless with french, whereas I'm pretty much bilingual (though a little rusty).) The breader we're getting her from has three kids, the youngest of which is 3, so she's used to kids!! And she's crate trained and housetrained which will make life easier. Have I mentioned that I'm excited yet??!!??

I'll post a picture of her as soon as she gets here!! The kids won't see her until they wake up in the morning!! I'm taking the day off tomorrow to spend with Angel & the kids!! Weee!! We're getting a puppy!!! Weee!!


Update:
We picked her up around 9:30 pm tonight. She's so cute! She was pretty nervous when we first got her (I'm guessing her first solo flight and leaving her family was a bit traumatic), but even with that she was so well behaved. I let her come to me and by the end of the evening she was cuddling with me on the couch. I can't wait for the kids to meet her tomorrow. Night!


Food so Far:
Cheetos (4)
Nestea (0)
Oreo Thins (2)
Subway (6)

Water: 0.5L/2L
Sleep: 6.5
AP: 0

Apparently natural selection isn't working. There are simply too many stupid people. At work, I'm usually pretty patient and professional (Scott, I said AT WORK, so you can stop laughing now), but I dealt with a woman yesterday that made me want to pull out all my hair and stuff it down her throat simply to stem the tide of absolute nonsense. If you can't figure out how to use a basic spreadsheet, then you shouldn't be in a job that requires you to use a spreadsheet. I'm not talking rocket science here. You enter numbers in the colour boxes. That's it. I'm not asking her to use formating or fomulae or anything beyond keying numbers. My four year old could figure it out. Okay I'm done venting. For now. If I have to talk to her again, I'm not making any promises.
At work we had a "True Color" seminar, which basically is used to identify what personality type you are. It was kind of interesting, but my top 3 (of 4) colours were so close together, I'm not sure it will be much help. For those who've done it, I'm a gold with green & orange a close 2nd & third. My DH is almost all Green, so he found it really interesting and helpful.

Anyway, back to work...

Food so Far:
Oatmeal (3)
OJ (1)
Bacon (5)
Hashbrown (6)

Pts: 15/22 (28/35 Flex Left)

Water: 0L/2L
Sleep: 6
AP: 0

For some reason this posted under Friday's date, so just moving it to today.

Yesterday was not a fun day. I woke up at 4 am with intense IBS cramping. Because of that, didn't come in to work until 10 am (thank goodness for a flexible boss), and felt behind all day. Was still feeling kinda shaky when I got home, so my wonderful DH took care of the kids so that I could have a nap. Went to sleep around 6:30 pm. Woke up at 1:30 am. Went back to sleep at 3:30 am and slept until 6:30 am. Weird sleep, but a good ten hours. I probably really needed it, but I feel like I lost the whole day.
Did pretty good with food yesterday. DH & I dropped the kids off at Grandma's on Sunday evening and did a huge grocery shop (it was way overdue). So now my house has healthy options and meal ingredients. Helps a lot.

Food so far: Oreo Thinsations (2)
Michaelina's Pepper Steak (2)
Cheetos (6)
Dr. Pepper (4)
Bacon (4)
Hashbrowns (4)
Total Pts: 22/22

Water: 1.5L/2L
AP: 0 <-- am going swimming tomorrow (even bought goggles)
Sleep: 10 hrs

Thanks for the wonderfully supportive posts. I let my expectations get a little realistic and then instead of celebrating what I accomplished, bemoned the fact that the results didn't match those unrealistic numbers. I went into this as much to get fit and healthy as to lose weight and I need to stay focused on that. I can know do four bicept curls using my son as weights (he weighs 40 lbs), so that's pretty cool. When I flex my thighs, you can visibly see muscle and they feel hard as rocks. I should have been focusing on that. And now, thanks to you lovely peeps, I will. I'm off to my Mom's for the day (since DH is working & then golfing and I don't feel like battling the beasts by myself all day). Will try to post more later.... must go wrangle the beasts into clothes.

Okay... so here's the results of the bootcamp... some were good, some were very disappointing...

I know that some of it was converting fat to muscle, but still, I was hoping for better. Seems like an awful lot of work for little results. Maybe the results would have been better if I'd been able to push harder on the cardio (couldn't do as much due to problems with my shins & knees). Oh well. I'm going to enjoy the next couple days off from exercising and then get right back into things.

Approximately what I'm wearing today... way too many options, but fun to do. Also, sorta what my new haircut looks like. Once I've figured out how the h3ll to style it, I'll post a new pic.

Well, tomorrow is my last day of bootcamp. I went to 17 of the 20 classes. That's 17 hours of exercise over 4 weeks. Not bad. We'll do a timed 1 km run and compare it to our time at the beginning. Plus timed crunches & push ups. Then we'll do a circuit while we wait for our turn to retake all of our measurements. I expect my thighs and arms to be bigger (I've gained some serious muscle) and the rest to be smaller. I can't wait to see. My coworkers are signing up for the next session. I'm not. I want to give my legs a bit of time to rest and heal. Then after a couple of days off, I'm going to workout on my own and incorporate what I've learned into my workout. I want to see what I can do on my own and if I can strengthen my legs before going back. I'll definitely go back as it was the best workout I've ever had. I think it'll be good to switch things up for a bit too; do some biking & swimming, etc.

The speech went pretty good. It was the research your topic speech for toastmasters and I chose diabetes. My dad has Type I and I'm at risk. I think that I got a couple of people thinking, so that was good. It was interesting, through my research I found a risk assessment test. Since I've recently gone from sedentary to active, I did the test twice. Once with exercise & once without. By adding exercise, I dropped my risk factor from 12 (high is 10+) to 7 (3 - 9 is low to med). Pretty cool, huh? I guess I better keep it up, eh?

I think I'm going to go have some bacon for breakfast (thanks for sharing your craving, Goobie!)

Apparently my body decided it didn't want to workout this morning. I woke up at 6:41 am and bootcamp starts at 6 am. Ooops! Oh well, I did enjoy the extra sleep.

Nothing exciting to report. Plugging away at life. Did better eating yesterday and will continue that today. I was up on the scale, but given my weekend, that was to be expected. I'm not worrying too much about it and will continue to plug away. Only 2 more bootcamp classes to go! I'm going to be glad to be finished. I learned a lot and got a lot out of it. It'll be interesting to see the results. I'll post them on Friday. Wish me luck on my Toastmasters' speech today. Did I mention that I hate public speaking?

Will update more later...

So, I was very proud of myself. I got up yesterday at 5:30 am and went to bootcamp. On my birthday. On my day off. But the best part was being able to go home afterwards and go to bed. It was absolutely lovely to say "have fun at work" to my coworkers that are doing bootcamp with me. It was lovely to crawl into bed as my DH was getting ready for work. I slept from 7:30 am until almost noon. Got up, my friend drove down on her lunch break to take me for lunch (ain't she sweet). Spent the rest of the afternoon doing pretty much nothing. After work, hung out with the kids until DH came home and then miandered over to my Dad's for cake. My wonderful nanny made some unbelievable food (including homemade, from scratch spring rolls - so good, don't want to even guess how many points they were (deep fried), a noodle dish and chicken wings. Took the food with me to Dad's to share with everyone. Great time all around.
I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get a card or present from my DH or kids, but DH did take me to dinner on Saturday night and he had some flower dropped off at my work birthday lunch, so I can't really complain. All in all a great way to spend my birthday.

Bootcamp update:
Apparently, since this is the last week our perky instructor has decided to push us. She wants to see results at our assessment on Friday. Worked my legs so hard that when it was time to do the arm excercises, my legs were shaking when I tried to bend them slightly. Tomorrow is going to hurt. Only three more days to go though!! Yeah!!

Back to reporting what I eat...
Menu So Far
BREAKFAST
Rice Cakes (2)
LUNCH


Pts: 2/22 (0/35 Flex)
Water: 0L/2L
Sleep: 5 <-- did not sleep well at all
AP: 3

Okay, so the whole counting points thing completely flew out the window this weekend. And I'm probably not going to count them tomorrow either. (Tuesday is the start of the WW week for me anyway). I did not eat well this weekend, but also didn't go as crazy as I would have in the past. Hopefully I won't pay too badly on the scale next week. Also didn't make bootcamp on Friday... DH was working and while I could have tried to make other arrangements, I was actually kind of glad to give my legs a rest. They've been bugging me a bit this weekend. I am going tomorrow. It kinda sucks to get up at 5 am on my day off, but I'm planning on crawling (literally) back into bed when I get home and sleeping until my lunch date.

Happy Birthday Michelle!! (and anyone else that shares this day with us!!)

Good friends make all the difference in the world. I've been feeling pretty down. Mainly due to money issues (we just found out money we were expecting to come any day has now been delayed another month). It's tough when you're expecting the money and you make plans and then nada. A lot of the plan that we've made may not happen now thanks to the delay. Plus money's a bit tight right now (due to the time of year - my DH is a painter) and it would really come in handy. I was so looking forward to not having to worry about money for a little while.

Anyway, last night when I was feeling blah, I chatted with a friend of mine, who made me feel much better. This morning the blues were back with a vengeance, to the point that I was thinking of taking the day off. Then my wonderful bestest friend (in Canada - don't want to offend those currently in Australia!!) pops by my desk and drops off a little present. She was thinking about me even through her own stuff. It's this cute eye mask (for sleeping) with pink feathers all around the edge and it says "Mom's resting - go ask Dad". How cute is that?!? She's a lot like me in that when we're upset, we don't like a big fuss, just quiet support and she rocks at that.

Monday is my birthday (Michelle's too!!! & Purl's is today!!! Go Aries Women!!) and since I've taken that day off, we're going for lunch today. We're going to White Spot, which means I can keep the points down (they have a very tasty chicken burger for 7 pts).

Bootcamp Update...
Melissa has been taken over by SATAN!! That's the only explanation I can think of. She's lost most of her voice, and is determined to torture us for her misery. Our warmup, you ask? 10 minutes of 12 chair squats, 12 standing pushups, 12 karate kicks per leg and running back to the beginning & starting all over again. Wee that was fun. Then we have our usual strength circuit. No big deal, right? I can do this. WRONG!! After each card (which is designed to torture you in itself and lasts 55 seconds), we got to do a full minute of cardio... yup... bicept curls, jumping squats, tricept curls, jumping jacks, scissor crunches, ski jumping... you get the picture. I seriously contemplated just sitting down in the shower and spending the morning there. Maybe even had a nap (though knowing my luck, I would have drowned). Tomorrow is a special class... we're going to a local park to run the trails/hills. I hate hills. I can't breathe on hills. Is it wrong that I'm hoping my DH will have to work so that I won't be able to go?

Menu So Far:
BREAKFAST
Rice Cakes (2)
OJ (1)
LUNCH
White Spot Chargrilled Chicken Burger (7)
Diet Pepsi (shhh, don't tell my Dad I'm having aspertame!!) (0)
Fries (it's my birthday lunch and I need to splurge a bit)

Water: 0.5L/2L
Sleep: 6.5 hrs
AP: 3
Bootcamp Countdown: 13 down, 6 to go.

Apparently my body is rebelling at the idea of waking up at 5:30 am. For the last two mornings I've been late for bootcamp. Just a couple minutes late, but it means I miss the warmup. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in this weekend. (Yes Lisa, Scott let me sleep in last weekend, so you don't need to kick his butt from Australia).

Nothing exciting to talk about today. Sorry.

Menu so Far:
Breakfast
Rice Cakes (2)
OJ (1)
Lunch
Mac & Cheese (5)
Dinner
Skillet Sensation (6)
Snacks
Slurpee (4)
Chips (8)

Water: 1L/2L
AP: 3
Sleep: 6.5
Bootcamp Countdown: 12 down, 7 to go.

I don't know what happened this morning. Everything seemed harder at bootcamp. Things I could do yesterday and last week I had trouble doing today. Class still went pretty fast, but I felt like I only put in a half-hearted effort. It's probably a combination of sleep deprivation and dehydration (Sorry, Alea, I only had 1 L of water yesterday. I'll do better today).

Day ??/100 <-- I've completely lost track of what day we're on. Talk about being a geek, Michelle... I did up a spreadsheet (with graphs) to track how I'm doing on the 100 day challenge. (Scott, stop laughing! There's nothing wrong with doing a spreadsheet) I've had a few ups & downs, but am doing okay.

Will update more later...

The slug feeling went away, kinda. I don't feel like I'm in water, but I also don't feel like doing much. I drank more water and plan on getting some serious sleep tonight and we'll see how tomorrow goes. Tomorrow's class is usually a hard one for me (a lot of running and skipping, which is hard on the shins).

Menu so Far:
Breakfast
Rice Cakes (2)
OJ (1)
Lunch
Johnny Special (8)
Dinner
Rice w/ peas (4)
Breaded & Baked Chicken Breast (3.5)
Snacks
1/4 Crunchie Chocolate Bar (2.5)
Cheetos (4)

Pts 25/22 (used 3 AP pts, so flex pts left for the week: 35)

Water 1.5L/2L so far
Sleep: 6
AP: 3
Bootcamp Countdown: 11 down, 8 to go

Okay, I've discovered that I absolutely can't miss blogging on the weekend. When I don't blog and am not accountable, I make bad choices. I'm pretty sure I'm okay points wise (but don't think I have any flex pts left), but really just didn't make healthy food choices. Of course, the fact that it's TOM didn't help. But, today is a new day.

Had a fun weekend... went on a date with my DH on Friday night (thanks to my brother - he gave us a GC for the movie theater and a voucher for babysitting for Christmas). DH went golfing the first time this year on Saturday, so me and the beasts just hung around and played. Then Sunday we went to DH's grandparents to help the set up & learn to use their very first computer. Can you imaging learning to use a computer at 80+ years. Good for them. They got a kick out of watching the beasts run wild in their pristine, white carpeted house. Luckily nothing was damaged.

The most fun this weekend though was planning how we're going to rearrange our house. We'd thought about moving, but to find something that fits our needs and our budget... it's just not happening. So instead, we're going to try to make better use of our space. Spend a bit of money and completely rearrange things. I think it's going to be quite nice, but a lot of work.

Bootcamp was good today... my shoulders hurt. Paper is really heavy. Anything above my head is off limits. I'm supposed to go and play badminton today too. We'll see if I can lift the racket first before I commit to going.

Menu So Far:
Breakfast
Rice Cakes (2)
OJ (1)
Lunch
??
Dinner
??
Snacks
??

Pts: 3/22 (Flex pts left 0)
Water: 0L/2L
AP: 3
Sleep: 5 ish <-- lots of weird dreams last night (including my DS being chased by an eel and mud shark?? Yeah, don't know where that came from either). Woke up feeling like I haden't slept at all

I'm half way done the bootcamp! Woohooo!! And I get to sleep in tomorrow (pretty please Scott... please, please pleeeeeaaaaaasseee!). I haven't been paying much attention to changes in my appearance, but man have I ever noticed a change in my strength. I can't believe how much stronger I feel. My legs, my arm, my abs... everything. I can now do 50 crunches in 50 seconds. I can do 4 minutes of squats (okay, I still want to cry by the end, but I can do it). We're up to 10 lb weights on the bicept curls. It's a pretty cool feeling. I know it sounds pretty intimidating, but if there's one near you, I would highly recommend giving it a try. Anyone can do it! We have a very nice man in our class that's probably in the 300+ range and he's doing wonderful. Because you do what you can (i.e. you walk when you have to walk or modify the exercises), anyone can do it. It's funny, but even the skinny minis from work that are taking it with me are finding it challenging. They just run faster than I do (though I kick there butts in ab work). I lot of you have said that you couldn't do it and I think you could. Anyway, I'll stop now.

My grandmother moved this week. My grandfather passed away in August and she's sold the house they lived in for 50 years. It's been really tough on my family (my mom & aunts & uncles) as they lived their whole childhood in this house. It must have been like losing him all over again. We all have so many memories in that house. We were a really close family and would all get together usually every summer. I used to spend at least a week there every year and since they lived on the Island, as most of the family did, it was my chance to play with my cousins. I remember playing in the fields. The games and adventures we all had. Making cinnamon buns in the kitchen with Grandma. Grandpa putting me "to work" in my work clothes that I kept there. The city kid romping in the country. 1001 happy memories. I will miss that.

Will post more later...

Okay, I feel better now. On to WW stuff. I'm joining Michelle's 100 day challenge. So for the next 100 days I will...

• Stay OP Everyday (I will use AP & Flexpoints as needed, but will not use them all)
• Exercise 4 hours per week
• Drink 2L of Water per Day
• I'm not going to set a total weigh loss goal for this as my body is very slow to lose weight and I don't want to set myself up for disappointment (or start to panic if I don't think I'm losing fast enough).

So, thanks again Michelle for another great challenge. Shall we see who can do the most consecutive days on track?

Menu So Far

• Breakfast: Bacon (5) Hashbrowns (3) & OJ (2)
• Lunch: Chicken Strips & Fries (7)
• Dinner: ??
• Snacks: ??
• Pts: 17/22 (flex left: 35)
• Water: 1 L/2L
• AP: 3
• Sleep: 5 hrs
• Bootcamp countdown: 9 down, 10 to go.

Despite my whining in yesterday's post, not going to bootcamp last night was a good choice. My legs were feeling a lot better today and I was able to push myself more today. Had trouble with my asthma towards the end, so didn't finish as strong as I would have liked, but what can you do, I gotta breathe. Thanks for the posts & support. It helps a lot.

I'm exhausted and it's only noon. I would love to crawl under my desk and have a nice little nap. I love naps. Naps are wonderful. Except when you sleep too long and then can't sleep at night.

Menu so Far:
Breakfast
Hot Chocolate
Lunch
??

Water: 0.5L/2L
Sleep: 6
AP: 3
Bootcamp Countdown: 8 down, 11 to go.

I completely forgot that I hadn't made a post yet today. Apparently starting work at 6 am on 5 hours of sleep is detrimental to my thought processes. As you can see, I was working at 6 am, which meant I wasn't at bootcamp. I'm supposed to go tonight, but it will depend on whether or not my husband can get home on time. I talked to the ladies from work that are also doing it and apparently today's class was really hard and had a lot of cardio stuff. Given my shins, it might not be a bad thing if I missed tonight. But I hate the idea of missing a class. It feels like cheating. I want to go. But, I don't.l I don't know.

I'll post more later...

I'm lame. I didn't go. I could have. My DH got home with plenty of time for me to get ready and go. I let fear talk me out of going. I've been worried about developing shin splints. I have had them a couple of times in the past (both times I tried to do the Learn to Run Clinic) and it ended up sidelining me for a couple of weeks. I really really want to finish this bootcamp and am terrified that I won't be able to due to my shins. They've been sore, maybe not quite shin splints but maybe the early stages of. I was worried that going tonight and then again less than 12 hours later might make them worse. I don't know if it would have. My DH, who was a jock for 25 years is of the opinion of just work through the pain and ignore it. 'Course he has no knees left so I don't know how reliable of a resource he is on this. Oh well, too late to change my mind now. I will be going tomorrow morning though.

Menu so Far:
Breakfast
Missed it... was in a store from 6 am to 9 am and just didn't have time (not very awake or organized in the morning)
Lunch
BLTC Bagel (9)
Dinner
LC Skillet Sensation Teryaki Chicken/Rice (6)
Snacks
1 piece of Cadbury Delight (0.5)

Water: 0.5L/2L
AP: 0
Sleep: 5 hrs
Death Camp Countdown: 7 days down, 12 to go

Okay, I'm really ready for a holiday. To go lie on a beach somewhere and read countless books and sleep in and go for nice long walks in the sand. Swim in the ocean. Nap under a beach umbrella. Yup, that's what I need. I'm tired. I'm tired of arguing with my son over whether or not he eats his dinner. I'm tired of getting up really early with not enough sleep. I'm tired. I just want a break. Other than the occassional long weekend, I haven't had a holiday (where I actually went somewhere) since my mini-moon (mini honeymoon - we had one night & two days in Whistler) six years ago. And before that my last holiday was when I was nineteen (went to Mexico with a friend). I'm so ready for another holiday. I just realized, I only vacation once every six years... 19... 25... 31 ('cause I'm going somewhere this year!!) . Should I mention that my DA, I mean DH goes on an ANNUAL golf holiday!! He owes me big time!! In fact, I believe he owes me 5 holidays!!
If you could go anywhere for a holiday right now... where would you go? What's your favourite vacation spot?

Bootcamp update... I hate squats. Enough said.

Apparently, I have a lot of sins...

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	High

Discover Your Sins - Click Here

Menu so Far:
Breakfast
OJ (1)
Rice Cakes (4)
Lunch
??
Dinner
??
Snacks
??

Pts: 5/22
Water: 0.5L/2L
Sleep: 7 hrs
AP: 3
F&V: 1
Death Camp Countdown: 7 days down, 13 to go

I love April. It's one of my favourite months. The sun is starting to shine, the flowers are starting to grow. There's usually a long weekend (the first after a long stretch without). Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that my birthday is in April too :-).

It was weird going a couple of days without posting. I don't think I've done that since I started blogging. I had a pretty good weekend. My daughter's birthday gatherings went well. She got some cute toys, some cute clothes, etc. She enjoyed her cakes. My son was a little jealous and cranky, but after we talked about it, he was a bit better.

I won't talk about my eating over the weekend. Won some battles, lost others. It's a new week.

Bootcamp update:
BAD COMBINATION... monday morning... time change... bootcamp!
Getting up at what was really 4 am was not fun this morning. Of course I didn't go to bed any earlier last night, so I think I got about 4 hours of sleep.
Anyone up for a laugh? Picture 30+ women running around a track at 6:30 am with yoga balls above our heads. We looked pretty silly.
It was a good workout. Forgot to do my inhaler until just before I'd left, so it didn't have enough time to kick in before the timed 1 km run. Felt a bit wheezy through the run, but only walked about 10 steps this time. Getting better. I kick but at ab stuff, but suck at the arms and hips. I did find that it was a bit easier, but I'm sure they'll change that.

Water: 0.5L/2L
Sleep: 4 hrs
F&V: 0
AP: 3
Death Camp Countdown: 6 days down, 14 to go.