A New Semester, A New Me! (hanabi's diary no. 2)

H

hanabi

New member
Hey everyone!

Loooong time, no getting on WLF for me. I'll admit, it came along with a fair amount of backsliding. But, I was just inspired yesterday to get back on the body-improvement wagon, with a new goal now that the summer's over.

I've been super busy with work lately, baby-sitting that kid like all day every day. It's fun at times, but also super stressful! But I'll be done with that job after this week, when I move back into my apartment on the 1st of August (at least, that's the tentative plan).

Now, my immediate goal is to be quite strict with my calories and exercise for the next week, because I've got to fit back into my bridesmaid dress by the wedding next Friday. vv I got it like two months ago, while I was doing really well, and was admittedly a bit smaller than I am now and managed a size 6. I haven't gained back too much weight, thankfully, but I notice the dress is quite tight, so I'll have to stay away from dairy and wheat, which I am allergic to and tend to cause excessive bloating. Same goes for artificial sweetener- no diet cokes for a while! Plus lots of water drinking and such. I know it's impossible to actually lose a lot of fat in a week, but I'm okay with artificially slimming down extra so I can happily wear the hideous dress. xD

Beyond that, my larger goal is to stay on track and continue losing weight, SLOWLY, throughout the school semester. Hopefully 5 pounds per month or so, over the 5 months until Christmas break. I plan to continue with my good habit (tea drinking, regular exercising, plenty of veggies) whilst adding in a new exercise class or two for fun and keeping track of my calories to stay in a slight deficit. And I'll re-eval as I go! Oh, and of course, to keep posting here.
 
It sounds like a good plan Hana. Im sure you will slip into that dress just fine. especially if you are this focused. Good luck with moving back into your apartment!
 
Okay! So, I braved the tape measure this morning, and surprisingly, I haven't put on as many inches as I would have thought! Even after a really horrid day of eating and a stomachache, my waist is 27" and my upper thigh 22.5", compared to my previous 26" and 22". I'm disappointed to have regressed at all, of course, but it could be a lot worse! My metabolism must be amazing... Regardless of the measurements though, I still look just more bloated and less in shape than I did when I was eating well, less definition and such. But oh well, no place to go but forward!

Plan for today is to work out on my elliptical for an hour during What Not to Wear (my favorite show ever!), plus I already did some free weights this morning. Drinking lots of water and tea, no set plans for food though, just because my stomach still is not feeling too hot. :/

On a non-weightloss level, I also plan to go get a hair trim and go to the car cleaning place! And wash the new towels I bought. They're bright red, sure to discolor any white things I wash them with if I don't do it now. I'm going for an all red theme at my apartment this semester. I'm pretty excited about it. :)
 
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Yesterday went very well, I think!
lunch- grilled fish and salad with balsamic dressing
dinner- hard-boiled eggs, miso soup, another salad
snack- baby carrots

And for exercise, I ellipticalled for half an hour and, like I wrote, did some free weights. And I am SO sore today! Literally, all over my body. A combination of doing something different (have been sticking to weight machines for quite a bit) and forgetting to stretch. :/ And I also went for a walk in the evening, just for fun, but that counts too.

Today.... I think I'm going to head to the Y, though I certainly won't be running today. I'll have to just do some easy walking or using the elliptical. Also will stop by the grocery for more vegetables to eat today!
 
Well, things are still going as planned!
I'm not eating quite as strictly as I'd originally planned, but that's probably a good thing, keep me from going to extreme and then just rebouding! And I decided to use the weekend as my "cheat days" and drink soda and coffee. xD But for the next few days, those are out! Got to un-bloat myself as much as possible; not helpful that it's TOTM!

I actually haven't done any intense running for the past few days, but instead, I've been going for walks in the park, 5 miles or so, which is actually further than I would run normally. It's just so fun, I feel like I could walk forever! I'm heading back into the gym this morning, but I'm going to keep up the walking for the extra calorie burn, however small, and for the extreme relaxation. 2 hours away from everything is really quite nice. Plus, I think my body could've used a break from the very hard workouts for a few days, perhaps!

So like I said, plan for today is to go in and hit the treadmill for about 5k, then the weights. And eating shall continue as normal: I'm having about 4 meals a day, protein each time, along with some fruits and lots of vegetables!

I can't decide how I want to proceed with tracking my progress.... in the past, it's been that I intend to do it at a certain interval, then eventually decide I want to do it every day, which turns into a bad thing, because it's more imperative that I see immediate improvements to satisfy my immediate gratification syndrome, which means more extreme (too extreme) weightloss measures and a subsequent binge. So if I commit to any measuring or weighing at all, it's going to have to be like every two weeks or something....maybe that would work...
 
Okay! Well, things are still going very well on the weightloss front, I think!

I continued eating as clean as I could, with one off-day, and kept up the walks in the evening. And yesterday evening, I fit into my dress just fine, thank goodness! So I guess it was mostly just bloating after all.

I don't have much control over my food choices these couple days, since I'm out and about at wedding events and such, but I'm still trying to make moderately good choices while still having a good time. :D

Better updates coming later, I promise. Am just very busy at the moment!
 
Congrats on being able to fit into the dress! I understand what you mean about weighing every day because I'm the same way and start overdoing and freaking out about it. If I feel like I had some noticable change though I will sometimes check it in the middle of the week since I weigh in weekly. Enjoy the wedding!
 
I'm right where you are, girl! I've been slacking here lately and of course with my eating and exercise. But I'm going headstrong now back to counting calories and exercising regularly. Time to get back in shape! Cheers!
 
Well, the wedding and everything went off great!
It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. :D
And a few days after, I got to take my little vacation to the Mall of America, which was very awesome! Quite an experience.

Anyway, I'm now moved back into my apartment. Got everything all cleaned and nice looking. I'm the only one moved in so far; everyone else is moving in this Friday.
The only bad thing that's happened is I got a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign. :p Cops are much more sensitive to that sort of thing in the city where my university is, compared to where my family lives, got to get my driving under control now!
But, I am back in my hometown for a day or two to get some extra baby-sitting money for the ticket. Plus, I also did some AWESOME shopping yesterday at this consignment store near the house. All ready for back to school!

I've already gotten a lot of comments from people about having lost some weight! I'm pretty pleased, of course. In a way it's weird though....to think that everyone is just seeing me thinner for the first time since I've been in college, while for me, I've known myself as thin, and I feel like I'm just returning to the body I'm supposed to have. Just knowning that other people don't know that is kind of strange, I guess.

But aaannyway, this semester is going to be the one to finish up my efforts. My school class load isn't terribly heavy, and I only work part time, so I should have time to devote to working out and eating well and such.

My plan, at least initially, is going to be to put my workouts in a three-day cycle sort of thing: 2 days of an hour or morning cardio, and then the third day, full body weight training. And repeat! So stepping it up a bit. As to the eating, I'm going to stick with what I've been doing, not a lot of calorie counting or anything, just a lot of vegetables and fish and all the healthy things that I like to eat.

I haven't weighed myself in quite a while, but I think what I'm going to do is make my first weigh-in next Monday (first day of classes!), and then do it bi-weekly after, shooting for 2.5 pounds every two weeks. :)
 
Looking good Hanabi! I like the goal of 2.5 pounds every two weeks!! I'll be checking back to see how that goes!
 
Thanks, Lisa!! :)

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I'm very ready to get back on track today! The past few days have been not so good....going back home when I'm settled in to my own apartment really throws me off for some reason. So sort of have been eating a lot of crap. Although, I woke up this morning surprisingly un-bloated-feeling, so that's nice.

I moved my little elliptical into my room early this morning (when there was no one out yet to see me struggle with it, lol), and I'm going to try getting my workout done on that today, see how it goes! Probably will make me sore since I'm not used to the motions on this machine, which will be nice. Haha.
 
OK! So, classes begin tomorrow, as well as my little challenge here!

I've been doing pretty well lately, not terribly strict or anything, but haven't messed up in a big way for a couple days, at least.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to write here every day, though! I'm going to record my exercise and some of my food. I've pretty much got a good system going, doing some exercise every day and have a few staple breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with a good daily base of 1200 calories. The only things I want to improve are a) getting a full hour of exercise and b) improving on my fourth and fifth meals, which tend to be the ones where I screw up and overeat, at around 1:00 and then 6/7:00. So those are the things I'll actually write down!

Also, I'm going to stick to weighing only ONCE EVERY TWO WEEKS. More than that just is not helpful for me, I know from experience! My goal is, assuming I start out at around 140, losing just 1 to 2 pounds a week for the next 4 months.

One interesting thing: even though I am weighing about the same as I did at the end of the last school year, at the higher end, even, I am much thinner! I've only gained about half an inch on my thighs and waist up from my thinnest earlier this summer, even though my weight is up 10 pounds or so. So that's good, and yet another reason why simple scale weights don't mean a whole lot!
 
Well, things did not go quite as well as I had hoped on my first day!
I know this is a weightloss diary, but if everyone will permit me to expound on the rest of my day...

First off, I planned on going to the little gym in my apartment center, but I couldn't find my card key to get in! So that was distressing. I then decided to go to the campus gym instead, but it took me like fifteen minutes to find a parking space, so I only had like 20 minutes I could stay and work out before I couldn't park on campus anymore. So that was a bad start to my morning...

My first class wasn't bad at all. But then, I decided it would be fun to walk home...um, it's like 100 degrees outside, so by the time I got back, I was really gross. I just took a nap for most of the afternoon before my next class. And THEN, the next class, someone pulled a fire alarm, so we all had to stand outside in the heat for almost an hour, only to be sent home and not finish the class anyway. And that meant I did not get the announcement about the review tutoring session happening in the evening which I desparately needed to go to.

So, I wasn't too terribly pleased! But whatever, it was just one day.

Since I've realized that it will be pretty impossible to go to the campus gym for my workout in the morning because of the parking situation, I'm going to have to stick to the one at my apartment, which means only running for cardio! I'll only be able to cross-train on the weekends. Which is fine, but it just means that I'll be revamping my goal to do an hour of cardio every day, because 3 miles is my limit for every day running; more is too hard on my knees! So that's my plan for this morning.

Also, for my fourth meal yesterday, I just had a can of tuna and a spinach salad with vinaigrette. Plenty healthy, but it was mostly because I was too worn out to make something else.

Today, the plan is to, like I said, go run 3 miles, then hit the weights. Going to grab lunch as soon as my first class is over and I get home, around 11:00, and then dinner around 5:00. Going to have to make my meals bigger, because it's too difficult to eat so many small meals with the school schedule!
 
For yesterday...
run 3 miles: check!
protein plus vegetable meals: check!

I do need to drink more water, though. Going to try to get that in today.

Short post, not much to say!
 
Hi Just Checking iN!

hanabi said:
For yesterday...
run 3 miles: check!
protein plus vegetable meals: check!

I do need to drink more water, though. Going to try to get that in today.

Short post, not much to say!
Click to expand...

Great idea to drink more water, it's always a bonus.

"Also, for my fourth meal yesterday, I just had a can of tuna and a spinach salad with vinaigrette."

Good stuff, I make this too sometimes. It's very filling.

Well good for you for running and I'll check back soon.

Have a great day, Hannabi!
 
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