Closer to my goal!

Happy Thursday!  This morning was wonderful when I stepped on the scale and I had lost another pound :)  Just one more and I will officially have lost thirty pounds since April (twenty since Patrice).  I'm very satisfied with my progress so far.  If I can get over to my parents house, I will try to post a "before" pic.  The picture that I want to post was from a couple years back (2008?) and I was at my heaviest weight of 235 pounds.  Whew, that was painful to say! 

On the road to a healthier lifestyle, I have found some things that I truly enjoy.  One of them I stumbled upon just the other day because I  had a coupon for them. 

Source



I love almonds and I love chocolate so these are a great fit for me!  What I love the most is that you can have a handful of these babies and there is less than one gram of sugar!  AWESOME!  These are my new go-to for a chocolate fix.  There is also a cinnamon flavor that I MUST try next.

Another fun discovery was kimchi.  We have a very eclectic buffet on the main floor of the building where I work and I go there sometimes for lunch or to grab a snack.  I try to keep it to veggies just so I don't blow my day on items swimming in grease.  On one mission to find veggies I noticed some cabbage and cucumbers in a reddish sauce.  I decided to try it and it was delightfully sour and spicy.  I have since googled it and learned that it is kimchi and I love it!

I have also come to the realization that I want to be am a runner.  I feel like I have finally gotten my running feet back under me and it feels great!  Recently, I have really noticed an increase in my speed and my endurance. I'm really looking forward to the Maymont 8-Miler and have no doubt in my mind that I will complete it :)  My goal is to complete the race in less than 1:25:00.  Only two weeks until the big day!

What's your favorite healthy snack?

~Andrea

SparkPeople

Good Afternoon!  I hope you are having a great day :)  So in my previous posts, I have talked about counting my calories and many of you have suggested different sites to me.  I have finally decided on Spark People.  It's a little like the Facebook of weight loss.  I have really enjoyed recording my progress on their website.  It's really centered around rewarding positive achievements and creating a social support for your weight loss journey.  So far it's been kind of fun :)

One of the things I like most, is that you can add friends to your profile/page.  You can find people with similar goals and become "weight loss buddies."  I have encouraged my parents to join so we can help each other. 

So far, I have been tracking my food, workouts, and re-posting some of my blogs there.  It's encouraging to see my weight ticker moving towards my goal and my fitness minutes increase with each workout.  I have a bit of a nerd streak that loves to analyze numbers and graphs :)  Here is a link for my page if you want to check it out   my.sparkpeople.com/ACROOKSTON

After all this talk of encouragement, I have to admit that for the past week or so I have been very DIScouraged.  I will confess I have been committing a cardinal sin in weight loss.  I have been weighing myself everyday and it has been reading the same weight now for about two weeks or so.  UGH.

I wouldn't be as discouraged if I felt that I was seeing a difference in the way my clothes fit or the way my body looks.  Maybe the discouragement is clouding my vision and perception.  Maybe not. 

Any suggestions on how to keep my motivation?  Any suggestions on how to break this plateau??

~Andrea