Then and Now

I was telling Boy #2 about the dog we had when he was born, and he wanted to see a picture. I was trying to find one and came across this picture of the husband and me from Easter 2006. Granted, I had an eight week old baby, but still. The husband has no excuse. I was SHOCKED when I saw this. I really don't remember him looking like this at all--and I look awful, even for just having had a baby!! To compare, this was us at Christmas this past year:

So far, so good!

I'm on Day 6 of no carbs this go-round, and so far so good. I'm down to 164 which makes me happy (for now). That's what I weighed before we went to FL at the start of June, and just one pound up from my pre-CA vacation weight. It hasn't been too bad going no carb this week, although I did let myself imbibe in alcoholic beverages on the 4th of July, but foodwise I stuck to no carbs. Yesterday my BFF and her family came over to swim and ended up staying for dinner. She and the husband were having wine and cocktails, and it was REALLY hard to not join in, but I managed to not do it and stuck with water. That is HUGE for me! I'm still amazed at my willpower. Tonight we're going to dinner with some friends, and I'm not drinking there either. I may have half a glass of red wine, but I'm not sure. I'm currently eating some tomato soup because I have a cold, so I probably won't let myself have the wine since the soup is carb-laden. For next week I'm going to stick with no carbs as far as food goes, but I will allow myself the occasional glass of wine if the husband is having some. Exercise-wise I feel pretty good about my week. My youngest son has swim lessons right smack in the middle of the day Monday through Thursday last week (and next week, then both kids have them the two weeks after that), so that complicated my gym trips as we either had to be out of the house by 8:00 to make it to the gym for me to get a decent workout and be back in time for swim lessons, or we had to go after. Monday we went before and it worked out okay. I did a great upper-body workout and then did 40 minutes on the bike. I really prefer riding a real bike! Tuesday ended up being an unplanned rest day. I had planned on going to the gym in the afternoon to do a long swim, but I was meeting with someone from church to learn about some reporting I'm going to be doing. That ended up running longer than I anticipated, so by the time we were done it was really too late to drive to the gym, swim an hour, come home, and not be frantic and rushed getting dinner ready and all that. I'll admit I was pretty bummed. Wednesday morning was one of the races in the summer 5K series I'm doing, but it was a four mile race for the 4th of July. None of my friends and I were feeling it that day. There was talk about skipping it altogether and just going to breakfast instead, but we went. Jen and I ran the first mile, walked miles two and three, then I ran the last mile. My only motivation for running the last mile was that I didn't want it to take me over an hour to do just four miles. I finished in 59:06. Interestingly, I was the 1,000 finisher! Sadly there's no award for that. It was insanely muggy that morning which did not help. Thursday I made it to the gym and ended up doing a 2,000 meter swim. I felt pretty bad ass. That's roughly 1.25 miles for those of you who can't convert metric to miles (don't worry, I can't either, I had to calculate it on my phone). it was a great ladder swim, and I really enjoyed it. Friday Jen and I were finally able to work out together. I think it had been almost a month, with all the traveling I did in June, and then her kids were sick. We did a great full body circuit that we both really enjoyed. Then I did 30 minutes on the bike. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to take my running shoes and run on the treadmill. I guess I was just thinking strength, not cardio. Today the husband and I were going to go do some sort of strength and swim, but I woke up with a full blown cold and decided I didn't want to go. he opted to take a rest day as well. Now I just need to come up with a workout plan for next week, coordinate with Jen what days we can go together and then figure out what to do on days that I'll be there by myself (if any). It's so much nicer to workout with someone than doing it by myself, plus I really need to plan out what I'm going to do ahead of time so I don't wander around the machines or free weights trying to come up with exercises. Hopefully by the end of next week (another week of no carbs) I'll be back at 160 or just below.

Operation Bye-Bye-Fat-Claire commences today!

We spent the weekend with some friends at their cabin up north. I went pretty balls to the wall with food and drink, knowing that come today I would start using loseit.com again to track my calories, busting my ass at the gym again, and working on getting down to my goal weight of 155. So my official starting weight this morning after pretty much a month of eating and drinking and barely exercising? 170.8. Ouch. That's a number I haven't seen on the scale in a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time, and I did not like it one bit. I guess it was a good experiment/lesson to see what would happen if I was lax about my diet and exercise, and it just goes to show that if I want to stay fit I have to work at it, it won't come naturally for me! I was originally going to do a week of low carb diet, but I think after being shocked by the number on the scale this morning, I'll plan on two.