Meals and Workout Plan for 9/10/12 - 9/16/12

Workout Plan

Monday - Rest or Zumba or BodyPump (not sure what my plans are tonight yet)

Tuesday - First night of dance!!

Wednesday - BodyStep

Thursday - Zumba

Friday - Rest or BodyPump

Saturday - Up in the air...will go with the flow

Sunday - Rest

Meal Plan

Salad of the Week - Sweet Talk Salad (greens with cottage cheese, mixed fruit, unsalted nuts, & bell peppers)

Tuna Noodle Casserole

 - With Green Beans and Rice

Seco De Pollo

 - With Lentils, Rice, and Plantains

Chicken Drumsticks

 - With Lentils, Rice, Egg, and Avocado

Chicken With Gravy

 - With Green Beans and Rice

Meatless Night

 - Lentils, Rice, Plantains, Avocado

Egg Night

 - With Rice, Maruchan, and Eggs

Turkey Meatloaf

 - With Green Beans, Rice, and Egg

***All my meals have rice, but that doesn't mean I eat rice at every meal.  My boyfriend is Ecuadorean, and it's common for them to eat rice with every meal.  I plan on either eating only 1/2 cup, or none at all for my meals, and just adding a side salad.

Week In Review / Goals for the Week

This is a little late.  I'd like to be able to get these "Week in Review"s up on Sundays, but my weekends are usually spent off the computer.  We shall see.

So let's start with my week in review.  Below is my weekly report from LoseIt!  Mind you, I didn't log anything on Monday (Labor Day), so my calories are really low.

Not good.  That's way too many days where I went over my calories.  We'll see what damage I caused when I weigh in on Wednesday.  As far as exercise goes, I'm a little happier with that, but I was obviously grasping at straws with the house cleaning and dancing (that was done at a night club, and not very strenuous).  And my weight obviously hasn't changed since I've only logged my weight once.

In all, I'd maybe give myself a C-.  While I didn't completely fail (I tracked my calories and exercise, and I was mindful of my food choices), I didn't excel either.  And with the adrenaline and excitement of a new plan, I definitely should have done better.

What did I learn?  I eat when I'm stressed.  I need to find ways to cope with my stress and calm down so I don't eat everything in front of me.

I also learned that it would be best if I set aside one day a week to put all my salads together and ready to go for the week.  That way I can just grab and go.  Right now I don't have enough tupperware containers to do that.  Maybe I can assemble them in sandwich bags for this week?  I'm not sure yet.  But I learned that if I don't have the salads ready to go, I'm less likely to pack them for my lunches each day.

Another lesson learned is....I need to have some snacks on hand for volleyball.  My boyfriend plays volleyball a few nights a week, and chips and soda are my mainstays every time I go.  Even if I'm not hungry.  It doesn't sound like a lot of food, but it is, and it's a lot of calories.  I'll be searching the internet for some fun snacks (I'm thinking kid snacks.......shut up, you know you like them too) to take along with me.  And maybe some type of flavored water pouches to bring along.

And one final lesson - I am not a morning person.  Okay, I already knew that.  But my plan was to workout both in the morning and at night.  I just can't get my lazy ass out of bed.  I need to work on getting to bed earlier.  I'm not going to give up on the morning workouts yet.  I think it will definitely help with the weight loss to try the two-a-days.

What are my goals for the week?  I already kind of outlined them above, but I'll put them in nice little bullet points here...

• Find other ways to cope with stress
• Put my salads for the week in individual ready-to-go containers
• Create some go-to snacks for volleyball
• Stay within my calorie budget at least 5 out of 7 days
• Workout at least 4 days this week (afternoon)
• Workout at least 2 days in the morning

So there ya go.  Now let's get to it!

Stress Eater

By the Numbers from Yesterday (9/6/2012):
Calorie Intake Goal: 1462
Actual Calories: 2228
Exercise Calories Burned: 0

I guess you could say I'm a stress eater.  I was bummed and in a horrible mood yesterday.  It all started when I went to check my balance in my bank account.  Then it all just snowballed from there.

But it was a learning experience.  Today is a new day.  And I'm in a pretty good mood right now, considering the financial situation.  I got paid today, and although I don't have as much in my account as I'd like, I feel a little better.

Breakfast for today was another vending machine breakfast.  Cashew Crunch, and a coffee.  I didn't get out of bed until 7:15.  And I'm supposed to leave my apartment by 7:30.  Yeah.  Didn't have time to make a breakfast shake.  Luckily last night I put together some leftovers for my lunch today (dinner last night was amazing, if I do say so myself).  1/2 C white rice (I know), lentils, 1 chicken drumstick, 1/4 plantain, and 1/4 avocado.  I didn't have time to hard-boil another egg, so don't have one today.  But that's okay.

I know I mentioned before eating salads of the week for lunch.  I just don't know if that's something I want to do still.  It's so boring.  And I've never been a huge fan of salads.  BUT.  But it keeps my calories low, and I think it's cheaper to have to buy ingredients for only one lunch for the entire week.  So I'm still thinking about that one.  I guess I've only done it one week (and, um....I only had my salad of the week one day this week), so I should give it more of a chance.  We shall see.

Tonight I'm planning to go to BodyPump Express and BodyStep Express (each 45 minutes).  I'm ready to burn some calories!!

McDonald's

I am so stressed right now.  Nothing in the world is worse when you have money problems, and it seems like I just can't get a break.  Every time I feel I'm catching up, something happens and everything snowballs.  I was able to get my savings account to a good amount.  Now I have $20.  And this morning I checked my bank account - I was in the hole at -$25.  I had to do a cash advance just to keep me above water until I get paid tomorrow (which will be a lower check because they had to dock hours since I went in the hole with vacation time when I was sick).  I've been spending the morning trying to figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

And all I want to do right now is go to McDonald's and drown myself in their grease (and hey, it's cheap, so that will help with the money front!).  Which I know will make me feel worse.  And yesterday was a good day, until I went to watch my boyfriend play volleyball.  My lunch wasn't big enough, and I was starving.  So I had doritos and soda (even though I'm not supposed to have soda).  Then when I got home I was still starving (mind you, it was 10:45, and still hadn't had dinner).  So I had 2 lemon loaf cake slices while I was cooking dinner.  For dinner I had white rice, a hard-boiled egg, and 1/4 avocado.  The chicken wasn't done, so no chicken.  We had to get to bed.

Ugh.  What to do....

What I Weigh Wednesday

Today's weight....

(Please don't mind my ugly toes and ugly paint job    :)

Well, I did it yesterday!  Like I said, I picked out the health(ier) choice from the vending machine for breakfast.  For lunch I had a Chinese Chicken Salad (very fresh) from the local deli with a low fat oriental vinaigrette; I also had a ciabatta roll.  Then after work, I looked at another YMCA location schedule and saw that BodyStep was at 5:30 (rather than the TurboKick - which I don't like too much).  So I went there and did an hour of BodyStep.

Earlier in the day I made a meal plan for the week, so I went to the grocery store right after BodyStep.  $100 later (ugh, shoot me now), I went home and had a yogurt because I was starving.  I then made dinner (a frozen pasta dish) and put together my salad of the week, along with other snacks for today and packed my lunch.  It was a good night, and I came out with a deficit (after the workout AND before the workout).  My allowance is 1462 calories, I ate 1446, and burned 450.  I came out with a net of 996.  That's a little low, I know.  So I'll certainly be more conscious of my deficit/net.  And since yesterday was kind of a "fly by the seat of my pants" sort of day, it was a little more difficult.

But I'm so proud of myself.  I didn't plan, but I made sure to make healthy, conscious choices throughout the day!  Now today I have my planned lunch and snacks here.    =)    For breakfast I had a Dashing Dish shake (chocolate/PB), for snack I have some cantaloupe and string cheese, lunch is a September Salad (more on that later), and for my afternoon snack I have popcorn (TJ's Organic with sea salt and Olive Oil).

Here's to taking it one day at a time!!    =)

Back-Up Plan Day

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend (all 0 of you that ready my blog)!  Mine was good...nice and relaxing.  It's this time of year that I really miss high school.  I loved the feeling of going back to school.  And my high school days were the best years of my life.  Not college, high school.  I had a real hard time making friends in college (I came out with none), so college wasn't as great as many had said it would be.  I blame my very shy and self-conscious personality.  I was starting to make friends towards the end of my 2nd year in Mankato, but then I decided to transfer to be closer to my then-boyfriend....who I'm not even with anymore.  Huge mistake.  NEVER pick a school based on where your current boyfriend is.  I probably missed out on all the great friends I could have had.

Anyway, moving on.  I weighed myself this morning, even though Wednesdays are my planned weigh-in days.  The scale said 150 even.  Gross.

And you'd think with all the planning I did this weekend, I'd be ready for this week.  Wrong.  I didn't do any grocery shopping or meal planning.  I have no food in the house to make salads.  And I woke up way too late this morning (had only 15 minutes to get ready) to make a breakfast shake.  But I'm still being conscious of my decisions.  Had a health(ier) option out of the vending machine - cashew crunch.  It was about 300 calories.  I also had a cup of coffee.  Mind you, normally when I don't have breakfast, I get peanut butter and cheese filled crackers (you know those orange ones?) that come out to be almost 500 calories, plus a Mountain Dew.  So this is much better than what I've done.

                     YES                                                                                               NO

I'm also planning on heading over to the local deli for lunch to get a fresh salad.  Even though I didn't plan for my "Salad of the Week," I still need to stick with the salad for lunch thing, and have a back-up plan.  So, so far so good.  I'm happy with the decisions I've made so far.

And obviously since I only had 15 minutes to get ready, I couldn't get my butt out of bed to workout this morning.  I do plan on going to the YMCA tonight, though.  Not for my planned workout, but I have a schedule I can look at to see what classes I can go to as a back-up plan.  So tonight instead of BodyStep and BodyPump at a location further away, I'll be doing TurboKick at a location that's only a couple miles away.  We'll see if I have time to do a workout at home (the one that I missed this morning) too.  If not, no big deal.  At least I'm making an effort.  And you always need a back-up plan!!

Planning Part 3: Rewards Plan

Now that I've gone through the details of how I plan to lose this weight, I'm going to go through what I'm get to get as I do lose weight.  I weighed myself this morning - 150.   :-(     So I think that a reward for every 5 pounds lost would be a good way to go.  Here are the rewards for each weight loss bench mark, all the way down to my ultimate goal of 115 pounds.

145 Pounds: Manicure/Pedicure (I'll be browsing Groupon for deals!)
140 Pounds: New Bedding
135 Pounds: X-Box Kinect Game
130 Pounds: Lululemon Outfit/Bra (I've been dying to go here ever since they opened a store near-by!!)
125 Pounds: $50 at Charming Charlie's
120 Pounds: Shopping at Victoria's Secret online (because I'll want to shop for my svelte new figure!)
115 Pounds: Spa Day!