Look how beautiful, round and perfect! LOL - I was way too excited about my end of the month cheat day today! Last month I cheated with pizza and same for this month! Gino's frozen Chicago deep dish pepperoni pizza. It looked really small but believe it or not I only ate half and I gave the rest to Michael!!! It wasn't as thick as I thought it would be but it still was amazing. I savored every bite! I have a feeling I will pick pizza to cheat with every month. I love it. The old me could have ate 2 or 3 of these; no problem. It's amazing on how much my stomach has shrunk. They say not to reward yourself with food because you are not a dog but I think if it's in moderation and something that you love it's ok. I don't feel guilty what so ever. I feel that I am still on track. I can't wait to start the month of July! I have a feeling it's going to be a good one!

I weighed in this morning and I could scream!!!! I am at 301!!! I had high hopes to finally be back in the 200's but at least I know by next Friday I most likely will be. I just don't want to wait another week to find out lol. I have lost a total of 6 pounds this week. All together I am down 37 pounds!

2 more pounds and I will be in the 200's. 3 more pounds until I will have lost 40 and 63 more pounds to go until I will have lost 100! Patience right now is my worst enemy! lol

<-- What I had for lunch today. It is exactly 300 calories! 2 slices of Sara Lee 45 calories and delicious multigrain bread; toasted, 2 eggs (I broke the yolks on purpose) and 3 slices of Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh brown sugar ham fried in my new pan that doesn't need butter or oil! 

I don't have much to say today besides that I'm feeling great! I wake up every morning excited to see new changes even if very slight I can still notice :-) 

So my body is changing and I am starting to go in a different direction that I thought I was with my face. I for sure thought I had a round forever fat face but my chin is becoming more defined and my face is turning into an oval shape. It will take me some time to get used to it but so far so good! I still have more to go but I can’t wait to see what it will look like 2 months from now!

Today is so hot! I decided I will work out in the basement tonight where it’s cool. I want to buy a jump rope. I think the next time I get some extra $ I will order one. I have the one I want picked out and everything. They say if you jump rope; within the first 15 minutes you are getting a total body workout. I have always loved it so it’s a win-win for me! I used to jump rope all the time when I was in elementary school. It's amazing on how many of the rhymes I can still remember word for word!

I am so excited for my big cheat day at the end of this month. 3 more days! Lol… At the end of last month I had Scott’s pizza. This time I bought a frozen Chicago style deep dish pepperoni pizza! It’s a little smaller than a medium but thick! Its hand made and packaged by the pizza place that I had gotten my first real Chicago style deep dish pizza when I went to Chicago to visit a friend years back. I was bummed when I noticed the grocery store started carrying it until I remembered about my big cheat day! Since the last day of this month falls on a Saturday I am going to still do my normal diet/exercise routine Friday and go crazy with my pizza on Saturday. Every Friday is my cheat day but 99.9% of the time I still stay in my restricted daily calorie intake I just don’t work out. The end of the month is my guilt free extravaganza with 1 meal LOL...

Interesting information about green tea pictured below… I need to start drinking more! As of right now I have a cup each morning and MAYBE one in the afternoon but after seeing this, true or not I am going to start to at least try and have it 3 times a day.

I cut the back yard with the push mower today and then rode my bike to my Moms and then walked back. I left my bike there because she wants to ride it back to my house the next time she wants to come over. I am pooped! I still have to do the dishes, ugh! I wish we had a dishwasher.

I have been feeling back to normal lately. I don’t know what kind of funk I have been in for the past week but I am so glad I snapped myself out of it. I am in such a better mood since I started walking again. Fresh air can do you wonders!

I know my weigh in days are on Friday but I have been weighing myself everyday since last Friday when I only had lost 1 pound for the past week. I think a big part of my funk was that I was depressed about only loosing 1 pound and that I felt like I was stuck at 306/307! FINALLY yesterday I weighed myself and I was at 305 and then this morning I weighed myself and I am at 303!!!!! I hope, I hope, I hope I will be in the 200’s by this Friday! I have been stepping it up and have been drinking more water and I think I’m back in the game. I won’t weigh myself again until Friday I just felt I had to keep checking because I needed to know what I wasn’t doing that I needed to. Only 4 more pounds to go until I will FOREVER be out of the 300’s!!!!!!!!!

I walked to and from my Moms earlier. It has been a while since I did that and it was nice to get some fresh air. This morning I had my Wheaties for breakfast and then for lunch I had a lean cuisine and an avocado. They say avocados are very good for you but they are so high in calorie!!! 1 larger avocado can be over 400 calories!! The one I had was a small one and was about 250 calories. Since I had a higher calorie lunch than I normally do; I made a large salad for dinner. I got really fancy with this one lol. I sliced my carrots really thin and added spinach. I am starting to use spinach a lot more. I don’t mind it at all.

Sorry this one is going to be so short. I don’t have much to say!

I feel I need to get real again. I have been truthful with my blogs but have been leaving out the nitty gritty details that used to make it interesting.

Today I almost gave up. I felt as if I was back at square one. I have been feeling like this for a while now. Feeling like I have been setting myself up for failure. I didn’t want to deal with this process anymore. My problem is that it doesn’t happen fast enough. Throughout the years I would get all into fitness and when it didn’t happen the next day I said screw it. That’s kind of how I felt today. I’m still really big and I feel like I’m almost at a standstill. It almost seems like this process is never going to get over with. I acted like a baby, sat in silence, cried, got mad at Michael for literally no reason and fell asleep at 2 in the afternoon because all I wanted to do was lie in bed and feel sorry for myself. I slept for 10 minutes and woke up to Michael cutting the grass. I went downstairs and started to make dinner vigorously. I made bacon and macaroni & cheese. I was in the mind set that I was going to eat whatever; whenever and wherever I wanted and not care. When all the food was done I didn’t touch a single thing. I gave it to Michael and made myself 2 eggs and toast. Sometimes it almost feels like I have a split personality with dieting; one side of me is saying to eat junk! - eat junk! - eat junk! And the other side is telling me that I know better. Luckily the side that is telling me I know better is screaming it lol. I am very happy now that I didn’t go crazy earlier because if I did; I would have felt even worse. It took me all the way until about an hour and half ago when I finally put my shoes on; went down in the basement; stood on the treadmill and literally SLAPPED myself across the face. That is just what I needed. It snapped me out of it & I ended up having one of the best work outs I have had. I pushed myself and stepped up my routine!

"Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even when you don’t want to."

Besides all the crazy; I didn’t cheat too badly on my cheat day when I was out of town yesterday. I didn’t have as much water as I would have liked to. I had a banana for breakfast and had some little snacks I packed for lunch because we were busy. For dinner I cheated with food that they had at the event. I had a sloppy joe, raw broccoli, carrots, raw cauliflower and I sat down; started eating and I realized that I had chips & dip on my plate!!! AHHH! I was eating them too! I have NO idea what I was thinking when I grabbed them. Those are my ONE big NO-NO thing. I ended up eating them and they were delicious. I only had a handful on the plate with a spoonful of dip & I did not get up and get any more. My chip addiction was so bad that I am programmed automatically to grab them when they are within sight! LOL! I literally thought “where was I?” when I noticed that I had them.

I am just writing yesterdays post today but shhh lets just act like this was posted last night! lol. Later on today I will post a bigger one for today. I was so tired when I got home last night.

Tonight I am going to be staying out of town at a friend’s house because tomorrow I am going to be taking some pictures of an event for her. She’s picking me up tonight. This is my first encounter with having to figure out what I’m going to do for meals! As of right now I plan on taking some of my snacks portioned out in zip lock bags. She’s picking me up at 7 so I will be done with my meals for today by then. Fridays are usually my cheat days but I am moving my cheat day to Saturday because I know I will be busy all day and I can cheat with food if need be. I am going to go work out in a little while to get that over with. I’m sure she has milk so I can bring my wheaties to have tomorrow morning for breakfast. Also to warn you guys ahead of time I probably will not get to write my blog for tomorrow until late and it will most likely be very short and sweet lol. I am not sure what time I am going to be getting home.

I can’t wait to start next week on a better note. This week has been blah. I feel like I’m still on track and everything but with my monthly visit it just goes to crap! I skip weighing in on those kinds of weeks but today I weighed in and I knew I shouldn’t have! I know I’ll weigh heavier because of water weight, etc... Anyways to get to the point I am only down 1 pound this week. I am glad I am down 1 pound than to have gained 1 pound but I am still disappointed! I can’t wait to redeem myself next week.

I thought I’d share with you guys what my daily 30 minute workout routine is exactly. I haven’t walked in a few weeks but starting next week I am going to start walking again and mix it up with my basement routine. I am always changing things up but as of right now this is what I do: I run on the treadmill really fast to get my heart rate up then I slow down and start to do a walk to get my heart rate back down. I make myself do that 5 times. Sometimes I even stop the treadmill and wait for my heart rate to go down. After that I go on the exercise bike vigorously for about 6 minutes or so. My exercise bike is broken so it's stuck at the easiest setting. After the bike I move to the weight bench and do these arm presses where I’m laying on my back. I do 5 of those and then while I’m still laying down I do 5 leg lifts that are weighted down then I switch back to do 5 more of the presses and then 5 more leg lifts. After that I move to lifting weights. I do 5 for each arm of 25 pounds then with a 12 pound weight I do a lift behind my head with the weight to tighten up any flabby excess skin there may be and then I go back to the 25 pound weight and do another set of 5 for each arm then go back to do another set of 5 with 12 pound weight behind my head. Before I finish it all off with one more good hard run on the treadmill I do some chin exercises to help tighten up my chin. You stand straight and put your arms down to your sides and open your mouth and lean your head all the way back with your mouth open and then once your head is back start to slowly close your mouth so your teeth lightly touch. You should be able to feel that muscle being worked. – I hate working out and mind you I try to do the bare minimum lol! I know that’s not good to think like that but I’ve been meaning to step it up. I was loosing 5 pounds a week before and was happy with those results but I am going to have to step it up because everything has been getting really easy.

I am going to go down and work out after I post this. I need to suck it up! I can’t believe I let myself skip yesterday but oh well. I need to remember the days when I thought working out twice a week was brutal.

I made stuffed mushrooms today. 250 calories for all of the ones pictured! I only had a few, couldn’t eat them all. They were good. Not great. I stuffed them with a mixture of egg, green pepper, onion, a little bit of parmesan cheese and 2 wedges of laughing cow garlic and herb cheese. Next time I make them I need to add some kind of breadcrumb to soak up more of the moisture.