Sorry so late

Ok, I'm crappy at getting my posts up on time. But Linz, I loved your last post. I failed on the accountability part this week because I didn't put up my results, but I will be better. For my goals from last week, I didn't do so hot.

I stayed in my calorie limit 3/7 days. 

I had a treat 4/7 days. 

I did work out 3 times and they were all an hour long, so that was good.

I only wrote down all my calories 2/7 days, need to do better on that. 

I lost my one pound, and nothing more! :)

I think that was all of them. I am copying and adding

Don't eat after 8 pm

because this is the time when I am most tempted to eat crap. It is good to see our numbers and what we need to improve on. I will add one last goal

Post on time, by Monday at the latest

Ok, happy Friday!

my weekly evaluation

I am going to evaluate my goals in this post.

Last weeks goals and how I did:

Keep track of all my calories and stay within my limit. I didn't keep track as well as I should have. However I did better than I did from the previous two weeks combined.
Exercise 5 times-at least 30 minutes each. I only did two official 30 minute workouts again better than I did the week before. But I took a walk 4 out of 7 days on top of the 30 minute workouts.
Start getting back in to running, even if it's just once this week. My main workouts were running this week. Of course since I haven't ran in a while it was my own variation, well a program that I found online to help work me up to running 20 minutes straight. It felt really good to run actually.
No eating past 8:00pm. I did this maybe 2 out of 7 days. I need to work on this one.
Drink 8-10 glasses of water daily. I didn't get 8-10 every day but I almost did. I kept track of my water and put forth the effort to drink more.
Lose 2 pounds by next Monday morning. check!

This weeks goals:
I'm actually keeping with the same goals as last week. But I'm going to really focus on not eating past 8:00 and exercising. I really didn't think I did that well this week but as I evaluate myself I'm feeling more confident and realize I need to focus on the things that I did do rather than those I didn't. I'm starting to feel my habits change recently too. I bought some very yummy chocolate from this Christmas expo I went to this past weekend. When I got home I opened it and Michael, Noelle and I shared some pieces. I was able to limit myself to 1-2 pieces instead of completely losing control and eating 10. That was kind of a breakthrough for me. Yesterday something happened that got me pretty discouraged. I don't really want to share it but it kind of opened my eyes. I was sad for a little bit and mad at myself again for all the things I haven't accomplished, weight loss wise, and for letting myself get this overweight. But as I evaluate myself this morning I'm reminded that I've accomplished little things this past week. And though I wasn't perfect these little things will add up to a lot in the end.

'tis the beginning of a season

Lets not talk about the last two weeks of my life as far as eating goes. Let's just say part of it was due to my daughter's b-day and Halloween. Anyway. I realized this last Friday that the beginning of the "eating season" is upon us. Our ward had an early Thanksgiving dinner and I had to make some things for it. My egg nog pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheese cakes and my sweet sweet potatoes. I thought, "Oh no, it's here and I haven't even gotten very far in my weight loss." But as Nina's last post said "We just need to get back on track." So I'm feeling optimistic. One reason I think I'm feeling this way is because I weighed myself this morning and even after two not very good weeks I haven't gained any weight. I was totally shocked. I think it's due to walking a couple of times a week. I'm not even close to my "big goal" that I set. I was really ambitious back then and thought I could lose weight faster than I have been. So I'm going to have to set a more realistic big goal. For now I will share my smaller yet important goals for the week:

Keep track of all my calories and stay within my limit.
Exercise 5 times-at least 30 minutes each.
Start getting back in to running, even if it's just once this week.
No eating past 8:00pm.
Drink 8-10 glasses of water daily.
Lose 2 pounds by next Monday morning.

Can I add some different kind of personal goals as well? These might not be as measurable but I need to put them somewhere so I can personally see how I did.

Turn my negative thoughts in to positive ones.
Play with my kids more this week.

Re-evaluating

So I've been thinking about this blog and how we can better use it to help us towards our goals. I felt like we were so motivated at the beginninmg and it has gotten harder to know what to blog about except our frustrations. That is definitely a part of this, being here for each other, but we are lacking the accountability that we said we wanted in the beginning. The goals we set are still great, and we made them realistic, but they are still so far, it is hard to stay focused. I realized we need to set goals in a smaller time frame, like week to week. Since we are trying to post once a week, I think that is a good start. I really think this blog is so great and I don't want it to fizzle out, so let me know what you think.
I know this sounds like we're back in elementary school, but I just want to put down for myself the necessary components for setting and accomplishing goals. They need to be specific. Our big goals have specific numbers, but not how we are going to get there. This is definitely something I'm lacking. They have to be measurable. Not just meaning pounds lost, but examples are calorie counting, how many time per week we've exercised, etc. The last three are achievable, realistic, and time-targeted. I feel like we really have been doing this, but if we shrink it down to one week increments, it will help us work towards our overall goals so much better. It is realistic to recognize that we are losing the weight over time and don't have to lose it in 6 weeks, but sometimes it's hard not to cheat when our goal met date is so far off. So overall, we will still have set them for our dates set up before. But we will set our smaller goals each week. It is up to each person how many exact numbers they want to share, but I will say that the more specific and the more we share, the more the accountability part works. If I set a goal to lose 2 pounds this week and I don't, I don't really want to share that, but I know that if I put it out there and have to publish real numbers rather than just saying I didn't do well. I'm not saying we want to make each other feel bad, but I know I'll feel more pressure (in a beneficial way) to do well if I have to write numbers down. Again, there is no pressure to put it down if you don't want to, this is just what I'm realizing will help me more. I just know that it is easier not think about it when I mess up, so this is a helpful way to stay focused, but not get so overwhelmed.
So for this week coming up, here are my goals:

Exercise 5 times a week; each day at least 30 minutes/day, but I would like at least 3 of those days to be 1 hour/day.
Stay within my calorie limit 6/7 days. I am not going to post what my calorie limit is, but I will be posting next week how much I go over if I do mess up to help me stay focused. Do NOT do this if it will only make you more stressed. This is just something I'm trying to see if it helps me.
Only have one cheat meal/week. Keep this goal through the weekend!
Only have one treat/week.
Lose one pound by next Sunday.

Tanner's goals are:

Record calorie intake daily.
Stay within calorie limit 6/7 days.
One cheat meal per week.
Lose 2 pounds by next Sunday.

Tanner and I were talking today and one of us said, "I'll start on Monday." The other person said, "We are already started, we just got off track." We don't have to think of it as all or nothing, do it or blow it big time. If we go out to eat, enjoy it and we can eat better the rest of the day. Weekends are so hard for me right now. Here we go, it's going to be great!