sparklebear00’s BodyBlog

Big decision today - I am officially going to give up alcohol.

I am aiming for a month, as in making it until New Years. I can feel that I am depending on alcohol more to have a good time or feel better, and although it is not a "problem" yet, it very well could be in the future. I am trying not to freak myself out by saying that I can sense the early onset of alcholism, but I think I can. Truth hurts. It’s scary because I remember a time when one or two was all it took for me to be okay with my night. Now I want 4 or 5 and a shot.

Not only is drinking too much bad, but it is also a lot of calories and carbs that I can’t afford. A light beer is 90 cals per 12 oz bottle. I would probably have to drink 6 to be satisfied, so there goes 540 calories. And really, when trying to eat 2000 a day, I would rather not get a quarter of my cals from alcohol. Alcohol is also an impulsive splurge, and i tend to drink to get drunk most times, and at that time I don’t give a crap how many calories I am consuming. And we also all know the cravings that come along with it so at the end of the night it isn’t only 500 cals. It’s well over 1000 because I ate anything fried in my sight.

Oh, and this will also save me money, as I spent $40 last night on alcohol and debts I owed from drinking the other night.

Ugh. In fact, what I am going to start doing is putting cash in a jar for every night that I go out. Drafts here in NYC are about $6, and when I go out I probably have 3 or 4, so I would put $24 in the jar. This way I can see exaxtly how much money I am saving by not being irresponsible and just throwing money down on beer.

So, the big test will be next Saturday, as I am going to a Holiday party, where the entire purpose is to get wasted. Sadly, the party will have alcohol AND eggnog, and I am going to try to consume neither. Yikes. We’ll see how it goes, but I totally have faith in myself

I need to get my own special water cup to take places.

And final thought, I sleep like ass after a night of drinking. I don’t feel well, my head hurts, and I don’t want to talk to anyone. That really sucks. I never realize how much I love sleep until I have a night of craptasticness.

I made a support thread in the nutrition section. I hope others come speak out! http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=112295311

I have done this once before and I felt SO good! I can’t wait to feel that way again.

This morning I weighed myself (like I shouldn’t have) and I was down from 225.7 to 223.2! I can smell 220 coming, and I can’t wait so I can smash it. Then after that 210, then 200…and once I am under 200 I won’t even know what to do with myself. The smallest I ever remember being is 211 and that was about a year and half ago. My confidence was fabulous, and I loved eating well and working out. That has since changed with such a stressful career and just going through life, but I am determined to get back to that!

I have been eating very well over the past few days. I’ve been keeping my cals at around 2200, which I think I will drop down to 2000 on days that I don’t work out.  But for now, I am doing well with just eating my 2200 so I won’t start shaking things up yet.

Sometimes I love the scale and other times I want to smash it. Today I love it

So, I got quite a bit done today, health wise.

I got to my 2,200 cals for the day! Woo woo! My problem with eating is that I either blow my cals out and eat like 4,000 or I don’t eat enough and I barely scrape like 1,200. So, I was a police officer today with myself and I am determined to get my 2,200. All I have left is a shake and a super healthy muffin that I made earlier today. I was even so proud of myself that I allowed myself a 50 calorie piece of chocolate. Well, mostly because my final tally was going to be 2,155, and I needed to get to 2,200, but it still tasted rather lovely.

I have never eaten 2,200 calories cleanly before. The most I have ever done was 2,000. And y’all know how hard it is to add 200 cals of straight up good stuff without blowing your macros out of whack. I did pretty well though, so guess what I’ll be eating for the next 4 days or so? THE SAME THINGS AS TODAY.

If it ain’t broke, dont fix it.
I also did some more killer HIIT. Brutal, but it feels good to know that I am kicking my own ass.

I have lost over 60 pounds, but I still feel like the same girl I was when I was close to 300 pounds. Like, I know I weigh less and I can see how my clothes are smaller, but I have serious issues when looking at pictures. Either I feel like I should look smaller than I do (in recent pictures) or I think that I still look the same (in old pictures).

Well today I went on an overly ambitious grocery store trip, in which I bought a lot of food in hopes of not having to go back for a little bit. But, living in NYC means that I had to walk back carrying all of the stuff that I bought. I had a backpack full of soy milk (3 half gallons) and veggie broth (3 quarts), a shoulder bag filled with produce, oatmeal and rice, and in my other hand was a bag of two cartons of eggs and detergent for washing clothes.

The walk to the store is about a mile, and on the way there I was walking with ease. The walk back was ROUGH. I was SO tired! My back was sore, and my right knee was really acting funny, and all i was doing was WALKING! I have bad knees, but they haven’t hurt me while walking in a long time.

What I realized was that I added probably 30-40 pounds to my body weight, but I am no longer used to being that heavy!  So, my knee was acting up because I added more weight to my shoulders and it was having trouble supporting me. I was also walking slower because it takes more effort to move that kind of weight around as fast as I move myself around now.

Talk about motivation. I NEVER want to be that big again! I can’t believe I used to walk around with pain in my knees and shoulders like that. Now I know what it feels like to be carrying more weight than what I am now, and I hated it.

That was a free workout though! My back is going to be super sore tomorrow, I know that for sure.

I looooove moments like these! It puts everything in perspective.

So, I did HIIT with a jumprope today and I killed myself. It was awesome.

It was only 10 minutes, and I think afer a few sessions I will add another set. It was 30 secs jumping, 30 secs walking in place…which turned into a dancey side step, but I was really feeling my music.  I will slowly up to 11 min, then 12, then 13 and etc. I don’t know if I would ever go above 15 min. I may lengthen my intervals to a minute jumping a minute rest.

That is the beauty of HIIT. You can switch it up however you want to.

It has taken me a while to get used to the idea of not walking around for 45 minutes to an hour to lose weight. But, now, if I feel like doing that it’ll be a treat because I WANT to. I won’t have to schedule in 60 minutes for cardio 5 days a week. I guess I won’t know until a few weeks from now if the HIIT is paying off. I will give it until after Thanksgiving. I think that is fair.

But yeah, best part is that jump rope HIIT is free! No gym required. I can do it in my apartment, in the park, in the stairwell of my building, or anywhere I so please.

Step step is loading up on body weight exercises. I am looking at slowly stopping paying for my $80 gym membership. It’s over in December