Week Twenty-six

This was a rough week all around. Work was INSANE! We are re-licensing on Tuesday (for those who don't know, daycares in Utah have to re-license every year)and it's a LOT of work to get ready for... A LOT! My boss was also off for half the week which didn't help. I also have many new coworkers who have no idea what they're doing... Rough week! I actually let my emotions get the better of me and stress ate, a LOT! And the scale showed it... I gained a pound. I did a little research and found that the most muscle weight you can put on in a week is about 0.5 pound so I will be going back to eating 26 points again. I actually took the rest of the weekend off and I feel like absolute crap right now. I'm actually excited to get back on plan. Also through my research, I found that while lifting weights if I want to lose weight I will need to be doing cardio. So I will have to find a cardio activity that I can do every non-weight day that doesn't make me want to stab out my eyes *cough*treadmill*cough*. Stay tuned...

On the upside of such a craptastic week, I FINALLY applied to graduate school. Wow... that took quite a while... but I did it. So now I get to sit back and wait. I actually need to send my GRE scores to one of the schools and I can't log on to their online system so I'll have to call tomorrow and do that but otherwise that's it! What a relief! As a reward, I downloaded the new Angry Birds. I'm hoping I will get a response somewhat soon but I know it can take several weeks for them to even get my info from the third party. It does feel really good to have it in though! Yay for progress!

Week Twenty-five

So remember how I've been plateau-ing? Well that came to an end... with a weight gain. I've been kind of anticipating that as I mentioned last week due to the weight lifting. I also increased the number of points I've been eating each day to try and break the plateau and to help my muscles recover from the lifting. I will give it another week (or two, depending upon how I feel) and if I keep going up, I'll eat fewer points. I only gained 0.6 of a pound so not too bad. I've been struggling benching the bar so my brother told me I'm not recovering properly and need to eat more protein and sleep more. I do love sleep but I'm not a huge fan of meat and I'm lactose intolerant. I've been eating nut butters (peanut and almond) but they're not super high in protein, like meat is. Eggs are a good source of protein as well but I DETEST them. They're probably my most hated of all foods. I may just have to learn to love meat! I've actually been contemplating going dairy-free to see if that will help with my digestive discomfort. If that doesn't help, I may try going gluten free, which will be a sad day in my world. Don't get me wrong, I love dairy, but I'd rather have my breads. We'll see how no dairy goes first.

I bought my first slow cooker this weekend. I also bought a Costco membership. Where is my husband and 2.3 children??? I was able to buy a huge bag of Whey protein powder and a big thing of Strawberries while there yesterday and made a post-lifting shake of: one scoop protein, one cup of water, many strawberries, and ice. It was tasty! I am already loving purchasing the membership! I will be back a couple of times this week as well due to the Relief Society Birthday Dinner I'm in charge of on Wednesday... I can't wait until it's over! I decided to have people bring most of the food this time, which has helped my stress level a lot. We're doing soups and I'm bringing a Chicken Tortilla soup in the slow cooker. It sounded good and I don't have to do a lot of cooking (which is good since I'll be at work all day).

Time to go to bed (actually, I should have gone to bed an hour or so go). Here's to a better week!

Week Twenty-four

I had a church meeting (bah) on Saturday at 9:00 so I was only able to go weigh in at WW at 7:30 (double bah). I stayed the same as last week... The leader told me "you're getting to that difficult part"... Great. I set my goal to be about 10 pounds lighter than I am now, probably a mistake. I did start lifting weights with my brother last weekend and have been back twice since (it would have been three times but we had a major snow storm and driving in snow is not usually fun)so maybe it's good that I stayed the same and didn't gain? I guess we'll see what happens next week.

I've discovered I actually really like weight lifting. Sounds weird I know, and I'm always incredibly sore the next day but I don't find myself making excuses to get out of it. I actually took a weight lifting class my Jr year in high school and liked it so much I took it again my senior year. I think the key in exercise is finding something you like to do. If you don't like to hop on the treadmill (like me) then you probably won't keep up with it for very long. My brother has a lot of weight equipment so I'm lucky that way but when I move I'll probably have to get a gym membership or something so I can keep lifting. Even though I didn't lose anything this week, I still took a pic. Overall I have now lost 36 pounds:

On to the school news... I still have not applied but I think I will apply for Summer term. I've also applied to take online courses from Oregon State to try and get more of my prereq's (read: Lots of Chemistry) out of the way. I had a lot of good ideas to work on my personal statement, unfortunately I was on my way to work at the time and now can't remember any of them. I took a pretty long nap today so will probably be awake for a while (that and the fact that it's Daylight saving time and I feel like it's an hour earlier) and will work on it now.

Week Twenty-three

In spite of being on vacation last week and eating plenty: McDonald's (twice), Sushi, Chinese, lots and lots of chocolate, and many other things; I was able to lose 0.4 of a pound last week. Which was exciting since it was my first loss in a couple of weeks. I didn't do much exercising while there either so I'm starting to wonder if I was going into starvation mode. I started a weight lifting routine with my brother today. I can tell I'm going to be sore tomorrow! I do realize that lifting weights will possibly give me a weight gain on the scale for a little while but I'm going to hop on the treadmill every other day and try to run a 5K in May. Maybe that will help... Or not. Only time will tell.

California was fun but colder than I like California to be! I can't complain too much though, it was snowing here. I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow either. My friend from church and I were discussing this and she told me I should hurry and apply to grad school and that will make me feel better. I still think I need one more person to look over my personal statement before I submit it. Everything else is in though... Transcripts: check! Three reference letters: check! Gre scores: (gulp) check! Fees: well I guess I don't do that until I submit so that's one more thing but that won't be too difficult. I ran into my undergrad adviser at a farewell party the other night and she's married to a faculty member in the MPH program at the U who told me if I wanted to go there he could help out. Another back up plan.

I promised lots of pics and there really aren't that many and they're all mostly on facebook but I will put up a few:

These are both from my actual birthday spent in California with my nephews helping my blow out my seven candles and then from my Utah celebration, which took place yesterday. Back to reality I guess...