Weekly Construction Update

Week Ending Monday April 11

I had a really good week last week - at my weigh-in at my meeting I lost 1.2 pounds.  I was hoping to have lost a bit more as my scale at home said I was down 2.4 pounds, but I'm still very happy with 1.2 pounds.  That puts me down 6.2 pounds since I've started going to Weight Watchers meetings, and down 7.8 pounds overall according to my home scale.

Here are the things that helped me this week:

• My big night out last week was Saturday, when my fiance and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary at the New York Botanical Garden and dinner afterwards in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx.  While I drank and ate a lot that night, there were several things I did well:
• First we walked A LOT.  We walked nearly 20 minutes from the 2-3 stop to the garden, a good bit of time around the garden looking at the orchid show, another 20-30 minutes to the restaurant, and another 20 minutes to the Metro-North train to head home.  
• Second, I counted all my points.  Also, at times when good beers (i.e. microbrews, craft brews) were not available, I switched to light beer.
• Third, when we went out for dinner after visiting the garden, I ordered GRILLED seafood, no frito like last week!

Here's a photo of me from that night:

Yes, if you are wondering, those are THE skinny jeans.  They look pretty awesome, right?

Just as an aside, I became a New York Botanical Garden member that night.  While I do attribute part of my joining to drunken enthusiasm thanks to the excellent cocktails they were serving at Orchid Evenings, I also think that it was a really good deal ($60 after what we had already paid that night) and I think it will be a cool WW-friendly activity as the gardens are so large and there is so much walking involved.  I'm excited to visit again soon.

There were a few other things that contributed to my success last week:

• I continued my habit of cooking one large casserole a week.  Last week I cooked Weight Watchers' Baked Pasta with Butternut Squash and Ricotta.  It took me about 10 hours to make this (okay, exaggerating, but it took a while) but it was exceptionally tasty.  So much so that my fiance loved it, despite it containing wheat pasta, which he calls "dirt pasta".  Even though it took me forever to make this, it was totally worth it and I plan on making it again soon.  I will write a post on this dish soon.
• I worked out 5 days last week an earned 25 activity points, which really helped with my nights out last week.

I tend to lose weight in an every-other-week pattern, so I don't expect next week to be as good in terms of weight loss.  However, I'm going to keep at it as I'm close to breaking into a different decade on the scale!

Inaugural Blog Post!

Hello Interweb!

It's been a long while.  I'm a former blogger who burned out several years ago (2 posts a day and a full time job will do that to you) and stopped blogging.  I have since turned my attention to work, school, and life.  However, I have tended to focus more on work or school than on myself, and I would like that to change.

Though there are many things about myself I would like to work on, this blog will be focused on my attempts to lose some of that junk currently residing in my trunk and on fitness in general.  I have to thank Ms. Bitchcakes for inspiring me to return to the interweb.  I can see that chronicalling her successes on her blog has been a major motivator for her, and I am hoping it will be the same for me.  Though my dog does pant happily when I tell her I've lost weight, I'm hoping writing it down and sending it out into the internerd will help me celebrate my successes even more, thus inspiring me to keep going.

To lose weight and get fit I am a Weight Watchers meeting member, I do yoga, and I run.  I have been an on-and-off Weight Watchers member since I was 19 (wow), but for the most part I always did it online.  I started going to meetings about 5 weeks ago and I have lost 4.4 pounds.  In the past I was always too embarrassed or busy to go to meetings, and on the rare occassion I tried meetings, I was the youngest person in the room by 20 years.  Now I'm not embarrassed, I'm making the time, and the meeting I'm going to has a great cross-section of New Yorkers, several of whom are like myself - youngish kidless career-types who like beer (well, maybe not exactly like that, but close enough).

I plan to write about once a week (no blogger burnout this time!), but as I'm a very busy career lady, I might miss a week now-and-then.

Thanks for reading.

-Ellen