Advice turn around

Ok team. Ready for the big reveal? 146.0. Exactly the same. EXACTLY. Which is better than slightly higher which is what I was expecting (every day this week has been higher until today, so perhaps I had a gain and then a loss during the week?) Anyway, no change. Which was expected. Though not because I've been off track, but because I've been just dropping the pounds like an arctic explorer (did you know they burn so many calories that they force feed bacon cooked in lard and chocolate bars all the time). I knew I couldn't sustain the 2 1/4 lb / week I was doing. I mean last week I lost 3.8 lbs! I think my body was just catching up. So hopefully the numbers will start going down again soon. But in the mean time...I need some help. I know I'm a total know it all, telling you all to lift weights and eat fruit and whatever. So please pretend I haven't been all superior to all of you previously and gimme some tips. I'm eating my humble pie (made with splenda) and coming back with my tail between my legs and every other analogy you want. I had some nice beginner's luck and dropped 9 pounds in 2 months (which isn't too bad but nothing to write home about) but some of you have had real progress. Not that i'm trying to say you were so obese or something. Geez, this is hard. What I'm asking without trying to offend is for you to critique my plan. I'm not on an organized plan, WW, atkins, couch to 5K, whatever. So i can't say i've been over points or have missed 3 workouts. I'm gonna detail my meals a little bit here and my workouts and whatever and then I'm looking for NEGATIVES! If you just tell me that I'm doing great, then I won't change anything and the scale won't change for me. I won't be offended, I promise.

Ok, so food:

breakfast - today was Kashi-crunch cereal with banana and milk. Usually it's 2 pieces of whole wheat toast with peanut butter. I don't physically measure anything, but I try and look at the package to see what a serving is supposed to be.

snack - i drank 500+mL of kool-aid made with splenda with some benefibre mixed in. And as it's monday, it's office snack day and we had blueberry muffins with some kinda lemon sugar topping. Smallish muffins. there's only about 7 people in the office and we eat at this meeting every monday so I'd really like to be able to continue eating these snacks (somebody else brings each monday so I don't know what it is and don't want to offend anybody and also don't want to explain to everybody here why I don't want to eat it.)

lunch - sorta struggled to find something today, no leftovers and just wasn't feeling the salad since it would have been just lettuce since I didn't have any cut veggies. So I had a peanut butter sandwich. plus ~1.5 cups cherries, a plum, and a 50 calorie sugar and fat free yogurt. I have a feeling this is more food than most people eat for lunch. Let me know if it is. If I have leftovers or a salad or something that just replaces the sandwich, I still eat all the extras.

snack - I have a kiwi fruit, and ~1 cup baby carrots that I'll probably eat this afternoon. I'll likely have ~1/5 cup of trail mix as well to keep me full until supper

supper - plan is roast beef and probably rice and green beans. I'm always craving a "dessert" so I probably will also eat a banana or a peach as well.

late snack, usually don't have one cause I'm full from supper until late and then exercise at night. If I do, it's usually fruit again, watermelon or something. Last night we had a date night in and watched a movie so I made air popped popcorn and put 3 tbsp (?) of butter on it. Plus watermelon and 4 chocolate eggs from Easter. That's not a regular night snack, just a special date night one. Maybe my problem is letting myself eat abnormally on special occasions, I can find a special occasion probably once a week. (if not more, saturday I ate a clubhouse and fries at the stagette, (yes it was supper, not just bar food!), plus 2 drinks, then the next day was the movie night, 2 in a row...).

Every second day I do a weight training thing that takes ~20 minutes. I posted it on here earlier. I've upped the weights, they're now 20ish pounds. I'm not sure. I used to run intervals for 1/2 hour 3 days a week but since we got our puppy I haven't. Now I jog for 1/2 hour about twice a week and walk for 20 minutes pretty much every day. I think walking is good exercise if you're not used to working out. But I don't think I can expect really any benefits from it when I'm used to much more intense activity. About once a week I get a bonus fun thing in like a round of golf or a bike ride.

I drink a billion litres of water a day. Well probably 4 litres. Probably 4 diet cokes a week. My job is very sedentary and I live out of town so I have to drive to get here. I could walk or something at noon. I was going to join the gym in town because it was supposed to be opening last fall, but construction seems to have stopped for some reason and it's still not open. the only thing in town is the Curves and a physio place. During the school year they offer fitness classes for cheap and I was taking a 1.5 hour class once a week that did cardio combat and weight training. But it's not available during the summer. I think I can commit to some sort of serious training schedule if it's just for the summer. (not that anything's happening in the winter, but I won't do it if I think it's long term, it might end up being that way though). I still have access to the school gym if I wanted to go on the way home from work or something but I haven't in a long time.

I have a feeling the main probably is with the eating, not the exercising, though that would benefit from some kind of structured program as well. If you'd like to share what you're doing I'd appreciate it. Or if you can see any holes in my plan that would be great too. I think one problem I've just discovered is in the lack of structure and accountability. I'm just trying to "eat well" and "exercise some". No plan. I don't know if I could actually count points or calories or anything but maybe I should I've also go this elimination diet thing that's supposed to be a great detox and is only a few weeks long, but there's no sugar or flour in it basically. that's pretty rough. What do you all think?

What's that you ask? I'm doing pretty good so why the big push? Well I've got weddings to go to. Plus I saw pictures of me on the weekend and I have a side double chin. Wait I'll put it up.... There. I saw this on facebook and cringed. (I think she did red eye reduction on the eyes, they look funky). My face just looks thick. So do my arms. I like them when I flex, but when I'm not, they're yucky. Plus check out my supermodel friend. Isn't she gorgeous? She's also trying to lose weight, and she is sorta bigger, but it's just so proportioned in her. She's really tall so I wouldn't know what she weighed but I'm so jealous of her. If my fat distributed itself like hers, I probably wouldn't try and lose. She can wear shorts and look good. My legs are smaller than hers, but when I wear shorts it looks ridiculous, bulges here, rubbing there. Anyway, that's off topic. I hate this picture of me, though I do look like I'm having fun. And here's another that's not great. Not terrible, but not great. Again, the arm, and just the general thickness of the torso isn't my fav. Makes my head look too small. That's my fav indicator of size, if your body is too big for your head you need to lose, if your head is too big for your body you need to gain. Really has little to do with actual head size as that doesn't vary all that much. Anyway, that's the bride to the left of me and all her friends. I really only know the 2 girls on either side of me, supermodel and bride to be. But they were all fun. And I completely behaved. I had 1 shot at the first bar, the bar bought one for all of us. Then that rum and diet in my hand at the second bar. And diet cokes for the rest of the night. Oh yeah, my point to all this was, I have weddings coming up and I want to take lots of pictures and be in lots of pictures and have a really good time as it's some of my best friends getting married. But I don't want to be self conscious, nor do I want to hate the pictures I'm in and not put them up or anything. Therefore, I ask for help! First wedding is only 2 weeks away so I will do an emergency no bread diet if I have to (but you have to tell me what I can eat instead!) to get this back on track!

Ok that post took over an hour of work time to write! Sorry for that! Hopefully I didn't turn you off from reading me! Now please, set me straight!