So It Begins Again

Wells' Weighs in started again on Thursday. So I have put back on most of the weight that I lost last year, but I'm not all the way back to where I was when I first started losing weight last year. Gonna take the time to do measurements and pics again this weekend so that I can see where I end up again this year. Hopefully I don't let my team down this year. I did well last year. Hoping for a repeat and then maintenance this year. Wish me luck!

New Pants

So this month has been a bit disappointing. We have not had weigh-in yet, but I know so far the scale has not moved for me. I'm not putting any weight on, but no negative numbers yet either. Its only one week until weigh-in so hopefully this week I can be extra good and get some good numbers. It should help that I work this weekend and will not be sitting at home stuffing my face all the time.

The real story I want to share is the story of a pair of pants. I have been told in the last month that my clothes look bad. All of my pants are sagging in the rear area. While I have noticed this, I have not paid much attention to it, because 1. They are still comfortable, 2. I'm cheap and don't want to buy new ones yet, and 3. Most people only see me from the chest up or I have on a white jacket so it doesn't matter. I really want to loose about 10 more pounds before I buy new clothes. This week though I decided to check out the clearance rack at Ann Taylor's when I had a few extra minutes. They had some cute jeans and I decided to try on a pair. I picked up a 14 (the size I have the most of though a size smaller than what I was wearing) and then decided to pick up a 12 also. I actually went into the dressing room and tried them on. Those that know my shopping habits know that I pretty much know what is size I need and hardly ever try things on. I'm glad I went in and tried them on. In the dressing room, I went ahead and just tried the 12 on for S&G. I thought, you never know I might actually be able to fit in them. Lo and Behold, The 12 slid right on and was loose. LOOSE I tell you! I might have freaked out a bit. Then, I decided to not try on a smaller size. Not sure my exact reason, but I will tell you that it revolved around what if this was a fluke and you know if the smaller size fits you'll buy them and do you really want to spend that much.

Well I ended up thinking about it all night that night and then all day the next day. That day I had a little bit of time to kill before going out to dinner and decided I had to go try on the 10s. I went in grabbed the pair and then spotted a really cute sweater. It was only in a size large. I never buy a large sweater always an extra large. I decided to try it on as well. In the dressing room I held my breath and pulled on the jeans. They slid on okay, over my thighs which can be a test, and then I tried to button them. Lets just say that I held my breath. And....They fit. Perfectly! Even after I let out my breath. I felt so awesome! I may have even teared up a bit. It has been forever since I fit into a 10. Needless to say I bought them. Oh yeah and the sweater it looks great too. Holla! I just hope they continue to look good or even get a little to big. Even the hubby agreed once I tried them on for him. So here's to hoping for a good weight loss week.

Missing in Action

So the last couple of weeks have been a bit rough. We have been short of help at work lately and along with me being sick and Mike being sick it have been hard to get anything done. Hopefully, things will start evening out in the next couple of weeks.

I have a couple of updates. I'm still doing P90X, although I haven't been as religious about it. But I'm still trying to keep up. At least 4 days a week I'm belting out a DVD. I can tell that its working, because I can do more of the reps and keep up a lot better. I enjoy most of the videos, but I like the Core and Cardio ones the best. I am in love with the X-Strentch DVD. It is just a relaxing, working jaunt through a lot of different stretching moves.

So has it paid off??? Well I'm gonna be honest and say that I did not take my 30 day pictures. Why? Well one I was worried that I wouldn't see a difference, two I was pretty sick when those were supposed to be taken, and just a little laziness. I did get around to redoing my measurements for 30 days. It was actually around 35-36 days. This was an awesome experience. I lost a total of close to 9 inches. Not in all the places I wanted to, but still they are gone. Hopefully for good. I lost 1 inch around my neck, 3 around my waist, 2 around my hips, and the worst is 3 around my chest. My arms and legs I'm not gonna count because they both went up a bit, but not by much.

I'm still trying to stick to a good diet also. I have been pretty good all in all. I'm actually getting to where I'm getting full. This doesn't happen to me. I decreased the portion size of my food and now I can't always clean my plate. If you know me you know that is odd. I kinda like it though. So has this worked as well? Yep it has. I had weigh-in for Well's Weighs-In yesterday. This was our 60day weigh-in. I was a little keyed up about it, because the last weigh-in was a little disappointing. I weighed my self the day before and when I went in for the official measurement it wasn't the same in the wrong direction. This time I weighed myself at the Y the day before and was pleasantly surprised with the results. So when I went in yesterday I was expecting to be disappointed. I was not disappointed at all! I weighed in at 175.something. Awesome! So that makes an official 13 pounds since the initial weigh-in. YAY!!! I'm so excited.

So as a recap: I'm still on the path, but have had bumps along the way. I've lost 9 inches and 13 pounds. I just hope that I can keep this up and not hit a plateau until I at least hit 20 pounds down. Lets see what I can do.

I also plan to keep this up better too.

Oh yeah and I've been accused of having droopy a** syndrome. My goal is to loose another 8-10 pounds before I let myself buy new clothes. Can't wait!

Jeff-fuh-fuh Dun-Ham! TeeHee!

My last week has been busy. Between the flu and work it has made me a little run down. I have still been trying to get my work out in every day and have done a decent job of it. I am still having a bit of a problem with shortness of breath and coughing, but other than that I've been trying. I start week 4 tomorrow. I hope I can remember that things change next week and the week after that. I'm excited. I have 9 more days until its picture day again. I really hope that I can see a difference. When I look in mirror I really can not tell a difference, but my clothes are fitting differently so that seems like a good thing.

So I had to switch my schedule around and worked a Monday. I don't normally work Mondays. It wasn't horrible, but it was busy. I switched my schedule to be able to go to the Jeff Dunham show in Fort Wayne last night. Mike and I went with my brother and sister in law. Mike and I started watching Jeff Dunham on Comedy Central several years ago. His shows are those that you always stop on and watch no matter how many times you have seen them.

We met for dinner before hand at Ruby Tuesdays. Mike and I both had the Cowboy Steak. It was really good. I had the barbecue sauce on the side and didn't use it at all. I also had a salad and the grilled green beans. I definitely recommend the green beans. I had been to Ruby Tuesdays before and  it was okay, but not my favorite. I really enjoyed dinner last night. I hadn't eaten a lot through the day knowing we were going out and everything tasted good.

We then drove across the street to the Coliseum and braved the cold again to hike inside. By the way, it was really cold last night. Here's a shocker, we were on time. LOL. We had seats on the floor pretty close up. A little after 7:30, the first act came out. It was the Dancing Trombone player. I definitely recommend that you check out some of his clips on his site or on YouTube. He was awesome. My sister-in-law and I were both dancing and laughing. It was great. I think I could have watched him perform for a lot longer. The next act was the Guitar Guy and he was pretty good. Man could he play. His songs were pretty good and I laughed quite a bit. We then had a 15 minute intermission.

Once Jeff-fuh-fuh came out I think I laughed for the next 2 hours. It was great. We all loved it. He did a bit to start out showing old pictures from his past and they were hilarious! OMG! Then we got to see Walter. I love Walter. He cracks me up. Then came Peanut and his craziness. I love purple guys! I also got to see Jose Jalapeno on a Steek. I know that I'm weird, but he may be my favorite. Mike's favorite came out next Achmed the Dead Terrorist. Complete craziness, he is insane. LOL! There was a new puppet last night. It was Achmed's son. I can't remember his name today though. He was different. We didn't get to see Bubba J, Sweet Daddy Dee, or Melvin the Superhero. I was hoping that we would get to see everybody, but figured we wouldn't. I love the other guys too. I would definitely recommend his show to anyone. It was great. Mike and I were still laughing on the drive home.

I downloaded these images from the website. Just so you could see the characters if you were not familiar with them.

Have a great night!

Homemade Chai Tea Concentrate

Yay! I don't know about you, but I love Chai Tea. Anytime I am close to a Starbucks I stop and pick one up. Usually it is the humongous one with some whipped cream. Love them! I like the mixes that you can buy too, but they always seem so expensive. Not that the Starbucks ones are not crazy expensive.

I have been noticing recipes on the net to make your own concentrate. Now this intrigues me, because looking at the list of ingredients I have most of these spices in my cabinet. I have not used much of anyone of them, so they are just hanging out in my dark cupboard. I decided to give it a try. If I did not like it I wasn't out much right?

I found the recipe here. I love Tasty Kitchen. They have some awesome recipes and ideas on here. I studied the recipe. I'm not sure why. It looks really very simple, but I have never made anything like this before so I wanted to make sure I had everything straight in my brain.

It was very easy to make. Basically you throw everything in a pot of boiling water and let it steep for 15-20 minutes depending on how strong you want it. I wanted mine a little stronger so I left it in there the full 20 minutes.

It was awesome! Tasted great, was not overpowered by the milk, and just all around good. My only words of caution would be to watch how much ginger you put in there. I think I may have put to much. It has a bit of a bite. I did not take any pictures because I basically forgot. I will next time I make it so that you can see what I did. I definitely recommend that you try this if you like chai tea, but do not like the cost.

More Snow, Still Sick, and Week 3 Day 1

So I woke up this morning late again. Still feeling bad, but hopefully I'm going to start feeling better soon. As I was getting up I look out side and see that it is snowing again. Yay! At the time it looked like it was just flurrying. I did not think to much about it. I was hoping that my BFF would be up and wanting to do CoreX today. I have still been trying to work out as much as I can without falling over or coughing my head off. I missed 2 days last week, but made one of them up. Today was supposed to be Core. I did it, but it was rough. I coughed and coughed through part of it. That's core work right? I did not really fall over either. I did have to stop afterward and take a nap. It absolutely wore me out. I'm happy I made it through it though.

After working out, I looked back out the windows and realized that we had gotten about 2 inches of snow. Ugh, this is on top of all the snow we already had. Ugh. As the day went on it just kept snowing. Now we have about 4-6 inches. I went ahead and fed the horses early so that I could see what I was doing. It was not easy. Still had to worry about the layer of ice underneath the snow and falling through that to the snow underneath. On top of that though you had to trudge through the extra snow. Once I was finally inside, I snuggled up on the couch.

So I'm kinda proud of myself that I've made it to the 3 week mark of P90X. I really wasn't sure if I would put up with the time commitment for this program. I'm glad I have so far. I put on a belt Thursday that I wear all of the time and it went right past where I always wear it and went 2 inches past that hole. It was great. I actually wore it on that hole all day long and did not feel uncomfortable. So I am thinking that this is working for me even though I have not seen the results myself. I just have to keep going with it. I do not see this as a problem right now. So I am gonna just keep plugging along, even through the Himalayan Death Flu.

Snow, Ice, With No Possibility For Parrole

It has finally stopped snowing for the present time. I have heard mixed reports that the storm that hit us last night is swinging back around and is going to hit us again sometime tonight. I sincerely hope this is not true. Mike and I both made it to work okay today. It was a longer trip than usually, but kinda fun. Mike had the truck and went out first. I followed closely behind. He told me not too close though, that way if he got stuck then he could use my car to pull him out.

I wish I had been riding with him so I could have been taking pictures. It was gorgeous out this morning. Cold, very cold, but it was so pretty out. Ice had caked most of the snow drifts, so some of them you could walk on top of. Others not so much, you just sank. I scraped and scraped at my car windows, until finally Mike got out of his truck and showed me how it was done. LOL. Who knew that the groves on the other side of the scraper busted up the ice so well. I think he has to show me this at least once a year.

So I got to work and my technician showed up shortly after me. She's such a sweetie. We are both sick. We got through the morning with ease though. Only had one person call in. We were dead though. We stayed busy all day though.

On my way home from work I had no problems at all. The roads were not clear, but were not slick. All of the snow drifts my Jeep took with ease. Well at least until I get to our drive way, I looked over the situation. It doesn't look that bad. I'm thinking no problemo. I pull up, then start backing in. Okay, looks like I'm in the driveway. Everything is going good. Then, I feel the back end of the Jeep slide right (and yeah I really mean right, well my right as I was sitting in my car). UGH! I was stuck. I just missed getting in the driveway right. Had to wait on Mike to get home to help me get out. Sucks. How do you drive through snow drifts a couple (2-4) feet high and get stuck in the driveway? Just have the name Jeri. LOL

So once inside the house, I slept, and slept, and slept. I was wiped out. Then I got up and went out to feed the horses. So last nights trip with me was nothing. The layer of ice on the snow kept cracking, so then you had to pull yourself out of the snow and the ice. Carrying buckets was next to impossible. It was made worse by the fact that I was hacking my head off. I got it done though. The boys are happy.

Mike got home and we got my Jeep out easily. Thank goodness! We came inside and watched some Ghost Hunters. One of our favorite shows. I did not do my P90X workout tonight. I'm going to make it up though. I am just having some shortness of breath so I an exhausted even with my nap.

Hope everyone has a great night!