10 Pounds Lost, Yay Me!

Once again I find myself horribly behind in blogland.  The days seem to be flying by and making my head whirl!  Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to catch up a bit.

Everyone enjoying the Olympics?  I have been, especially the figure skating, of course.  :)  I have to admit though, I'll be glad when it's over.  This staying up until 11:00 pm every night is taking its toll.  Not that 11:00 pm is extraordinarily late, but it is when one is getting up at 5:30 am to workout before work!

Yep, this night owl is trying to turn into a morning person.  Working out after work just isn't practical for me.  I don't like delaying supper and having to take a 2nd shower; plus most days I'm so drained of energy by the time I get home it's too easy to skip it.   So, I'm getting the sweaty hard part done before work and my evenings are free to loaf as I want.  I'm in my second week of doing the 5:30 am thing and amazingly enough, I'm sticking with it!  It's really hard, but I'm a-doin it.  Thankfully, one of our cats, Sisco, has become my 2nd alarm clock as around 5:15 he'll stand outside our closed bedroom door and start demanding breakfast. 

Sisco

Not that this is anything new for him....but now instead of it being annoying, I'm thankful for his help in waking up.  :)

I can officially say I've lost 10 pounds, most of that since just Christmas.  Now only 50 more to go!  Oy....but it's getting easier.  I'm finally in the right mindset.  I can't wait until the weather starts getting warmer so I can expand my exercise options.  I never thought I'd be saying something like that, lol!

The meal planning thing is coming along nicely too...I'm actually looking forward to trying new recipes, and my cravings for fast food - both for taste and for convenience sake - are beginning to diminish.  The bad part is that I'm yearning to bake more and learn how to make more things from scratch, right at the same time I'm trying to lose weight.  I'll need to find a good balance there so that no matter how much I bake, I'll look like this.....

....and not this.

For all you Ginger Rogers fans out there, don't forget that Ginger is the Star of the Month for March on TCM!  The schedule is packed full of not only Fred and Ginger movies, but many of Ginger's more obscure, rarely seen early work.  Huey aka VKMfan over at Gingerology keeps an ongoing Ginger schedule on his blog (thanks Huey!), so pop over there to see what's coming up, and try your hand at some Ginger trivia!

That's all for now, have a great weekend!

In The Market For Patience...Anyone Got Any?

The last couple of weeks have seen some crucial changes made to our life.....and with any kind of change, there usually comes some growing pains as the change gets accustomed to.

Finances have made the need for frugality even more necessary and this year 2010 is going to see a lot of belt tightening - in more ways than one, hopefully!

One change:  meal planning.  In theory it seems like a no-brainer, and I've read for years about how it's necessary to do in order to keep on track with any kind of food budget.  I've had some half-hearted attempts at it in the past, but I finally buckled down and have done it, successfully, for the last two weeks.  This will be week three, and I can say it's been liberating, and just plain hard, all at once.  They say it takes doing something new 21 days before it becomes ingrained as habit.....so it should be easier next week, right?

(right?)

The upside to this is that I'm cooking more from scratch and relying less on processed, prepackaged foods....not to mention less fast food.  Which, of course, not only saves money but is much, much healthier. 

So, the other belt tightening is literal!  Now that I'm over my bad cold (which had turned into bronchitis) I'm really watching what I'm eating more and hitting the treadmill once again. 

It's been a challenge to stay motivated, with both the weight loss goals, and pinching pennies.....and I've only really just begun!  I've realized that what I'm lacking is patience. 


Once I make my mind up to do something, I get all fired up and overly-enthusiastic, ready to plunge in head first and make it happen, NOW!  The problem is.....losing weight, and saving money, take awhile.  There is no snapping one's fingers and fixing in an instant something that took years to go wrong.  It's a slow, daily slog....which after time has passed, one can look at the bank balance, and scale balance, and see progress, but in the meantime, everyday life has to happen and it can feel like everything's going at a snail's pace and I want to bang my head in frustration that it's not happening faster.   The enthusiastic novelty and rush of plunging in dies down and reality sets in.

Instant gratification.....that's what we've become slave to in our modern world, and I admit to it as well.  Not only do we want our food in less than a minute in the drive-thru, we want to shed 50 lbs overnight without having to work at it so we look to the latest fad diet pill to solve the problem.  It's madness!


How do you stay motivated to accomplish something that's gonna take a while?