Atkins Day Eight: Halfway There

Well, half way as of yesterday/this morning.

This morning my weight in was 130 lbs. I was a little disappointed since yesterday I was 129.5 when I weighed myself after breakfast (I need to work on not weighing myself daily, it'll only cause disappointment like today), which means I was about 129 before breakfast. But I have a feeling it was because yesterday I barely drank any water, and even though I had a good work out in the morning, it all affects this process. I'm going to make myself avoid stepping on the scale tomorrow morning before showering.

Today I have had a good amount of water, which should help get me back on track. I discovered today that adding three Crystal Light packets to a gallon jug of water really flavours it nicely without being too strong, and it helps get the water down, since plain water gets really boring after a while. It also has no carbs, which is awesome. I'm going to pick up a couple different flavours of Crystal Light tomorrow at the store, though I'm not going to rely on it every day since it does have aspartame and I don't want to consume a lot of that. I like flavouring my water with tea bags as well.

Breakfast this morning was two eggs with an ounce of shredded cheddar cheese. I love having that for breakfast, it's just so yummy, and only 2g of carbs because of egg yolks. Snack was a protein shake and lunch was a salad. Dinner is a homemade caesar salad with chopped up prawns. Mmmmm. <3

Starting weight: 134 lbs
Current weight: 130 lbs
Weight loss: 4 lbs
Weight to lose: 25 lbs

After one week:

I can already see a difference in both pictures, which is really helping my motivation. I don't see the changes day to day, but I do when comparing pictures of last Sunday to this Sunday. I've noticed that there's less chub at my waist and hips as well as on my back, and my stomach is flatter because of the lack of water weight. It's a great start, and it can only get better from here as long as I stick to the meal plan and keep exercising. (:

Finally Going For That Run

My friend Britt and I have been planning to go work out together for a few weeks now, and every time we set a time, something comes up for one of us, whether it's work, school, church, etc. We've rescheduled like three times, and today we're finally going for that run we've been talking about!

I haven't ran in a long time, and we're doing a 2-3 mile run today on the streets behind her house. Fingers crossed I don't die. (:

Atkins Day Five

I have just finished Day Five, in terms of eating. Today it was scrambled eggs and cheese for breakfast, a protein shake and a mozzarella cheese stick for snack, and then tuna salad on baby spinach for both lunch and dinner. My mom just bought these new protein drinks that are only 2g of carbohydrates and 30g of protein, whereas the ones we were drinking before were 7g of protein and 20g of protein because they were "light" shakes. Low fat means higher carbs because sugars are added to make it taste better. I like these new ones because they taste almost exactly like chocolate milk. Yummy foods make for a happy Hannah.

I weighed myself this morning (I'm going to only weigh myself on Wednesdays and Sundays starting now) and I am 130 pounds. I know that most of it is just water weight, but seeing that number go from 134 to 130 in just a few days feels great, and it makes me want to push myself to keep going.

I've let my body adjust to eating less calories and and less carbs for five days, so tomorrow I am going on a run with my friend Brittney to start burning more fat. I want to get a set of small weights to use in my bedroom when I'm watching my tv shows on Netflix and Hulu Plus. That also reminds me that I still need to see if Netflix has any yoga stuff, but if not, my mom has yoga dvds that I can use.

Today I had almost no cravings for any kind of junk food, and the cravings I did have were pretty minor and went away very quickly. I really thought this week would be harder, but it's gotten a lot easier over the last two days.

I decided to wait until I'm out of Induction to introduce pickles into my diet. I discussed it with my mom, and her biggest concern is that it's a processed food and Induction is all about cutting out processed foods. But since pickles are very much like olives in terms of processing, and we're allowed olives, we agreed that after Induction would be a better idea to incorporate small amounts of pickle into my diet. I'm going to look for low sodium ones, try a small jar and see if I like them. If so, those will be the kind I allow myself to have, and only one serving a day at most.

I did cave and allow myself sugar free chewing gum yesterday, and I've found that it hasn't negatively affected my cravings. If anything, I think it may have helped curb them, so I am officially an avid gum chewer.

I am now going to do some sit ups and push ups while watching One Tree Hill and then take it easy for the rest of the evening, drink some Sleepy Time Vanilla tea.

Atkins Induction: Day Three

As much as it REALLY sucks cutting out ALL processed food and almost all carbohydrates, I don't want to go back to it. Not yet, anyway.

The first day of Induction was really difficult, especially considering that I was working for five hours in the candy store, but I made it through and didn't cheat once, even though I had about 10g of carbohydrate leeway that day. I could have chewed some gum, which is typically sugar-free nowadays, but the label said each piece had 2g because of sugar alcohols, so I decided against it. I later found out that in calculating how many carbs you are eating, you minus the grams of fiber, sugar alcohols, and something else. So I now know that I'm free to chew gum, but I think I'm going to hold off for a few more days, just to make sure the sweetness doesn't backfire on me and make me break. Once ketosis goes into full swing, though, you can bet your ass I'll be chewing mint gum ALLLLLL DAY LONG. No thank you, ketosis breath. But each day, whilst experiencing MAJOR carb cravings (watching How I Met Your Mother episodes was excruciating; they're always eating at the bar), gets a little bit easier to get through. I'm already feeling healthier, both physically and emotionally, and I've only just begun.

I was planning on only weighing myself on Sundays, but I really wanted to know if I had lost any weight yet. Granted, I know it's pretty much just going to be water weight, but seeing a smaller number helps reinforce this.
This morning I weighed in at 132.5 pounds. 1.5 down, 27.5 to go.

Yesterday I drank a ton of water, got my entire day's worth before 2PM. Today, I'm a little behind. I've had about 3 out of 8 servings of water so far and it's almost 230PM. I'm going to stop at Safeway before heading to daycare so I can pick up one of those really big water bottles to work on for the next three hours, and then have a couple more between 6PM and bedtime.

Today's food has consisted of two eggs with one ounce of shredded cheddar and half a tomato, tuna with celery and green onion, and for snack at the daycare I'll be eating 1.5 ounces of walnuts with a small chunk of cheddar cheese and a protein shake. I may only drink about half of the protein shake, since it has 7g of carbs in it, but we'll see. This puts me at 15.5g of carbs before dinner, and I believe dinner's going to be pretty light in terms of carbs (I think we're having shredded pork roast on mixed spring greens), so that keeps me either at or below the 20g limit.

Start Of A New Chapter

Today I started the Atkins diet.

Induction lasts two weeks, where I am allowed a max of 20g of carbohydrates a day. Today I ate two scrambled eggs with one ounce of shredded cheddar cheese for breakfast. For lunch I had a can of tuna with a tablespoon of mayo and two pieces of celery. For dinner I had a serving of chicken with four brussel sprouts and four pieces of asparagus.

Tomorrow I am going to the store to pick up a big jar of dill pickles, some slices pepperoni, non-sugar cured beef jerky, pork rinds, sugar free jello cups, one of those Brita water bottles with a built in filter, and a couple filter replacements. I am really excited about this.

I'm 34 pounds heavier than I was in my senior year of high school, and enough is enough. I'm always tired and moody. I'm incredibly unhappy with how my body looks. Because Induction is so drastically different from what I'm used to eating, I have to take it easy with exercise. Starting tomorrow I am switching it up between walking on the treadmill, doing some light weights, and yoga. Speaking of yoga, I need to see if Netflix has any yoga stuff on instant streaming.

I am taking before, during, and after pictures of my progress, along with a weekly weigh in on Sundays.

Starting weight: 134 pounds
Goal weight: 105 pounds
Weight to lose: 29 pounds

So. Tired.

All of December, I was working myself into the ground between my three jobs. I was so exhausted that I needed a full week to recover. Then January has been filled with packing boxes for Calgary and getting myself moved into my old bedroom, which has been moved around and approved by my mom. Now the current dilemma is that I have misplaced the keys to the K-1 daycare room at work, which the site coordinator is less than thrilled about. But! I know the keys are somewhere in this house since my mom said that she remembered seeing them sitting on the bookshelves before they were removed from my room. The keys are here, I just have yet to find them. And now I must be getting to the daycare to tell the coordinator that I still have not found the keys. Hopefully the fact that my mom saw them will soften the blow.

Thank god it's Friday.

Regression

Okay, so I never got around to doing those nail polish reviews when I said I would. I'll get around to it eventually, though.

All last week, I've been packing my house up to move back into my parents' house. Yesterday was the move in day, and while I've got my room set up, it's only temporary, as my mom needs to stage my room for selling the house. So things are just going to be getting moved around again anyway, so I may as well not get comfortable.

For the last 2 hours, I've been getting things stuffed in my closet and on top of the fireplace shelves in order to make it easier to move the desk, bookshelves, and tv stand around. I've already centered the bed, like my mom wanted. I've also been watching back to back episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Which has slowed my progress on moving things off the bookshelves.

Here's to the next eight months living in my old bedroom. Feels like I'm back in high school...

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, etc. I know I did.

I've got just under a week left before I go back to work at the daycare and pretty much nothing to do, so I think this week I am going to go through all of my new nail polishes that I've gotten since Christmas and do some reviews on them. I've got about fifteen to get through, so I may take a couple posts to get through them all, depending on how tired I get, since I've been pretty sick the last couple days. Expect ten Zoya reviews, two China Glaze reviews, one Sinful Colors review, one OPI review, and one Sally Hansen review. The number of Zoya reviews may very well go up to 12 if my latest shades arrive soon. I've been doing a brief test of my new polishes, and some have most definitely surprised me. I will have pictures of the bottles of polish, but since I destroyed my nails a couple nights ago, there won't be any swatches this time around. I will try to remember to take swatch photos of these shades as I wear them in the future.

I'm so grateful to have all of this week off from work to just relax. I've been on the go nonstop for pretty much the entire month of December, and it's finally taken a toll on me in the form of a head cold that had me bedridden all day yesterday. Hopefully the congestion will be gone by this weekend.