Successful one-week challenge and strength training

I didn't weigh in today - mostly because I forgot, but also cuz I didn't want to. I ate poorly over the weekend, so I worried that I'd be up on the scale despite working out so much last week. 

In other news, my one-week challenge was a success! I got a bit of break over the weekend and hit the gym today. I was super proud of myself because I did a strength training workout today during the after-work rush. Usually, I don't like to do strength workouts during the week because it's always so busy and I don't like to have to wait for machines. But today I was all, "I fasted today and doing cardio would make me wanna die." So, obviously, it was either strength training or nothing at all. And I definitely needed to do something. It wasn't that bad - I did have to watch the benches like a hawk so that I didn't have to wait for one of those. And I did all my bench work at once so I wouldn't have to worry about finding one again later.

Now that I'm home, I'm going to video chat with some of my best friends from undergrad and I can't wait! I also need to do some laundry and clean up a bit. Cheers!

Shopping and challenges!

Well, day one of the challenge was a success! I woke up nice and early at 7:30ish and fiddled around on my computer until the gym opened at 8. I distracted myself enough to not get to the gym until 8:30ish. Anywho, I did a good hour of strength training since the gym was pretty empty that early on a Sunday morning. The busiest times are definitely after work hours. Sometimes all the treadmills are taken during those times. It's crazy! And I'm not really one to wait for machines or try to sneak in to get machines, so I prefer the gym when it's a little emptier. So, this morning was lovely.

After my strength training, I came home, showered up and then Skyped with Nasur. For those of you who are new to the blog (welcome!), Nasur is my Ugandan boyfriend whose fiancé visa was recently granted. He'll arrive at the end of December and we'll have 90 days from that point onward to get married. That's a bit terrifying. I've never been super excited about the thought of marriage, so I guess that'll be...fun? I am pretty excited about growing old with Nasur though, so that's something.

After Skype, I headed out to get some Christmas shopping done and finish up getting things for my Secret Santa. All the residents are doing an exchange and were supposed to spend about $25 on our gifts. The rest of the afternoon, I caught up on some charting that I probably should have done earlier...

I also finally cleaned off my dresser. It's the first time that's happened since I moved here back in June. It had to happen eventually!

Anywho, I'm going to head to bed! 27 days until Nasur's here! And 6 more days of my one-week challenge!

One-week Challenge and Getting Back on the Train

Since I last blogged, I really didn't make much of an effort to eat any better. I kinda figured I'd wait until after Thanksgiving, which would allow me to eat whatever I wanted without guilt tripping myself. So, I did just that. I also let myself skip the gym more than necessary, telling myself [again] that I'd wait until after Thanksgiving. Now, however, I'm working on getting back on track for two reasons: 1) I can feel the effects of not exercising (I'm waaaaay cranky all the time) and 2) Nasur's fiancé visa was approved (!!!!!) and I want to feel like I look at least a little better when I see him next.

So, I've begun intermittent fasting again and going back to the gym. This week was my first week back to the gym after a two-week hiatus and today was my first appointment with my personal trainer in a month. I don't think we did anything super remarkable, but I felt like death afterwards. It may have been because I've been having diarrhea since yesterday, but when I got home, all I wanted to do was lay in bed forever. However, I only laid in bed for an hour because my friend Adam and I had planned to go to see the Nutcracker at the Detroit Opera House. I've never actually seen that ballet live before and it was a great performance. Afterwards, we braved the cold to go get some sushi, which was worth it. Since getting home, the diarrhea has picked up in frequency and decreased in viscosity. It's pretty miserable. I'm hoping it magically resolves overnight because I have a lot I want to accomplish tomorrow.

In other news, I'm going to do a one-week challenge for the gym to really get myself back on the train. I work every single day from the 7th until the 30th, so I figure I'll work really hard for this first week and taper my gym visits to 3-4 times a week as I get more and more and more exhausted. So, the challenge starts tomorrow! Wish me luck! 

Some recent eats/dog photos:

Cold spaghetti - yum!

Breakfast

Bailey

Bailey, Mayzie (and Katniss in the background)

My go-to sandwich

Phone seizures

Well, for having run over my phone, it's not functioning that poorly. I mean, on occasion, it has a seizure and won't do anything I want it to do, but I can't afford a new one. So, it'll have to do.

In other news, I was in a poopy mood today. Even though some good things happened, I was being a poopface. I was just down about everything. And if it weren't for this one week challenge, I would have stayed in all night in a poopy mood and likely have eaten my feelings. But, I was like, "One week challenge, Danika." Sooo, I went to the gym and was glad I did. It got me moving, it got me out of the house, and it got me out of a poopy mood (and helped me avoid eating my feelings).

Tomorrow I don't have to be at work until 9:30, which is excellent. I can hit up the gym and do my weights during non-peak hours and I can make a quick trip to the farmer's market to replenish my sourdough bread supply and maybe grab some cinnamon rolls for my trip home this weekend. And then because it's a conference day all day at the hospital close to where I live, I can just bike there. It's going to be awesome.

I think that's about it for now. I'm pooped (but not in a poopy mood anymore) and want to hit the hay. I'm actually getting up earlier than usual to run all those errands before work. Cheers!

Breakfast today

After work snack

Dinner: mini chicken tacos and homemade quacamole

Today's positive: making a gym trip despite really not wanting to...and then being so, so glad I did!

Day four of my one week challenge

Today was an awesome day four of my one week challenge. I got out of work early enough to get a nap in and hit the gym before the after work/5pm rush and do my strength training without having to wait for any machines or weights. Baller. I also got some reading in and practiced some knot tying. I'm teaching some third years how to suture and tie knots tomorrow, so I needed to brush up a bit on my own. I also made a decent dinner and set up my food for tomorrow. 

The biggest thing that I'm doing this challenge that I've been having a hard time doing is good food planning: I've been packing food and I've been having legit dinners rather than just munching on food when I get home from work. I'm going to have to keep myself motivated and keep that going because it's definitely helped in the calorie department!

Also, I finally applied to all my residencies today. Yesterday the site crashed and so they took the site down until today and reopened it at 9 am. Thanks to getting out of work early, I was able to come home and review everything at a leisurely pace and then called it good and paid a buttload of money to have people consider me for their program. Hopefully some good comes of that!

And here are today's photos!

Breakfast (with baby bananas!)

Packed snacks

Pre-gym fuel

Post-gym snack

Post-gym protein

Another post-gym snack

Pre-dinner snack

Dinner

This takes forever to cook, so normally I don't have the patience to wait

Dinner

Practicing tying

Today's positive: Lisa's rocking out on her version of the one week challenge - check out her blog to see for yourself! Also, productivity for me! Hooray!

Looking back

Lately/the last three days, I've been reading through some of my old blogs. Mostly because I'm narcissistic, but also because I wanted to see what I'd been thinking and eating when I started this blog in 2011. Some things I've noticed is that visiting old med school entries is an invitation to misery. Yikes. My life was studying and gaining weight/hating myself for gaining weight. I was (and still am) scared of failing each exam (though I never did) and always, always, always doubted myself and the work I'd put in. I also let my fear of failure control me a lot - I'd put off studying because I was scared I'd have a hard time; I'd put off practice tests because not doing well was terrifying; I'd put off going to the gym and eating well because I was scared to do something that wasn't studying. Some happier posts were written during my year off when I was just working and going to the gym everyday. I was working out with a personal trainer, learning how to make healthy meals, going out for bike rides, and trying new things. I want to go back to that place. I want to be more confident in me and my abilities. I know that making that change is going to take some time, so I'm hoping that I can make some progress this year.

Also, yesterday, while I was looking over my application (the website was soooo effing slow), I was also watching an older episode of extreme weight loss (Melissa's episode this season). I almost turned it off because she was such a downer. Like she cried all. the. time. And she presented herself as a victim and I was sick of it. No one forced you to eat all the time. No one forced you to drive your lawnmower down your driveway instead of walking down it to get your mail. No one forced you to shove away all your problems. But then as she was losing weight and dealing with her problems, she started turning things around. And then it was all epiphany all the time. And there was one for me: I have totally done what she's done. I've totally made excuses and made myself the victim. Oh sure, med school makes things a million times harder, but I could never tell myself it's going to be okay and taking an hour or two for me is not going to ruin my success.

Anyway, today was a good day 3 of my new one week challenge. Lisa struggled yesterday, but she's still kicking day three's butt, so read about her day three on her blog! For me, if it hadn't been for this challenge, I totally wouldn't have gone to the gym tonight. But holy crap, I'm so glad I did! I got in an awesome workout on the elliptical (while watching another episode of Extreme Weight Loss) and I got to chat with my old neighbors who also go to the Y. So, so glad I went. And when I got home, I made myself a kick ass dinner.

That being said, I was dragging during the day. I didn't exactly pack a legitimate lunch. I packed some fiber plus bars, a banana, grapes, watermelon, pretzels, and blueberries. The fridge is super far away, so I ate the fiber plus bars, banana, and pretzels. And then I really wanted something more substantial, so I grabbed a chicken salad sandwich from the patient food room (the nurses coaxed me into it when I said I was starving and didn't have a proper lunch). And then I was like "Oh shit! Did I just break the challenge?" I'm going with no, but it means I have to do better with packing food for tomorrow. And I also need to take it upon myself to tell the doctor when I'm hungry and thirsty so I can go grab a snack. I tend to wait until I'm extremely hungry or thirsty instead of keeping things level throughout the day.

Anywho, here are some pics from the day:

Breakfast

Snack after work

Pre-gym snack

Snack while I was making dinner

Tomatoes from my mom's garden - I'm almost out!

Dinner!

Dessert!

Today's positive: Owning up to some of my own faults and learning what I need to do to be successful food-wise.

Apply to all the residencies

Today was spent mostly working on applications, cleaning up my apartment, grocery shopping, and sleeping. I didn't get out of bed until 10ish and then set to work on my application right away. Bailey sat on the arm of my chair to support me. I finally finished my program list. I'm applying 74 places because OH MY GOD I NEED TO GET IN SOMEWHERE and the more places I apply, the more likely I am to get an interview. Also, apparently I hate money or something because this is going to be hella expensive. Like over $1500 expensive. Yikes.

I hit the gym as a break in application work and did weight training. I opted to do my pre-ankle sprain workout and it didn't really bother my ankle too much. What did bother my ankle was me shoving my foot back into my shoe after taking it off to try on shoes at meijer. I hobbled around the store after that. I probably should have taken the time to sit down, unlace it, put it on, and tie it back up. But who does that? Not me. Guess that was a poor choice. 

Hmm, what else have I done lately? Well, I've bugged Lisa a lot today to make sure she's doing her best with day two of our one week challenge. You can check out her progress on her blog. I've done pretty well. It's hard to track all the things I eat, especially when sometimes I mindlessly eat whatever, but I've been doing it. It's going to be harder tomorrow now that I'm going to have to pack food. Packing lunches is my least favorite past time. I just don't like having to think about what I'm going to want the next day. And then when I'm opening the lunch I've packed, I realize that I never want what I think I'm going to want. It's no good. But I have to do it because if I don't do it, then who is going to? No one. And then I'd have to buy something and that's against the rules of this one week challenge. So, after blogging I'm going to suck it up and pack something.

And now, photos for today so I can look over my application one last time. It goes live tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. which means I have to submit it 74 times and pay a buttload of money. Lovely.

Breakfast of champions/me

Pre-gym snack

Post-gym protein

YUM

Post-grocery shopping snack since I was too hungry to wait for dinner

Dinner

Evening snack

Today's positive: Not freaking out about my application and just taking it in stride.

Day one of my one week challenge

Today was day one of the new challenge I set for myself yesterday. So far, so good. But day one is usually always a good day because you're usually willing to stick to your guns. I know if I want to, I can keep it up.

So I turned off all alarms last night so I could just sleep until whenever but Bailey decided to thwart my plans to sleep in and came in around 7 a.m. and kept meowing. I recall his food bowl being on the low side last night and immediately regretted forgetting to refill it last night. He's usually pretty good about leaving me alone in the morning until my alarm goes off, but since it was past the normal alarm time and I wasn't up yet, he let me know that he was hungry. So I stumbled out of bed, filled up his food, and fell back into bed. I laid there and fought with myself about whether or not I should be sleeping or starting my day, but I opted to go back to sleep until 9:30ish.

Upon getting up, I set to work on my week challenge. I weighed in (photo below) and then made some breakfast, hit up the farmer's market, hit the gym, and then came home to hurriedly pack up my dirty laundry, shower, and eat lunch before heading to Kalamazoo to see my sister, do laundry, and work on my residency applications.

Latest weigh in (check out my weigh-in page)

I want to talk about this morning before moving on. First of all, it took a bit of convincing to tell myself that if I was tired, I deserved to go back to bed. Sometimes rest is just as important as exercise in weight loss. Then, I purposely ate breakfast before the farmer's market because an empty stomach makes me way more likely to buy more. I kept it pretty light - I got some celery, lettuce, San Francisco sourdough bread (sandwich style), apples, and blueberries. Then I headed straight to the gym where I ran into Krista, a fellow healthy lifestyle blogger. I met Krista for lunch once before as we were both going to school in Grand Rapids and she recently moved back. I stumbled upon her first blog via SparkPeople and she has definitely been one of my biggest influences in the blogging part of my weight loss. It was through her blog that I learned what a huge blog community there is. Anywho, we chatted for a bit and she gave me the deets about spinning at the Y before I hit up the elliptical for the day.

While I'm on the elliptical, I like to be doing something else: reading or watching TV. I couldn't decide if I wanted to read or watch the season premiere of Biggest Loser. I opted for Biggest Loser and I'm certainly glad I did! Watching that show while working out really made me push myself harder to keep my heart rate up. I mean, I'm currently heavier than some of the contestants on this new season! I also love their new trainers, Jen and Jessie. Some of the things Jen said really resonated with me. She talks about how you can operate from a place of fear or a place of love and that it's operating from a place of love that really allows you to accomplish your goals. I was just talking about that when I blogged about how I needed to believe in myself and how I need to love myself a bit more! And she's so right. During my year off between undergrad and med school, I totally loved myself and treated myself like I was worth it. Now that I'm in medicine (where you can never know it all), I feel inadequate a lot of the time and those feelings of inadequacy and fear have become so commonplace that it's definitely my normal operating mode. I'm working on breaking out of that and I'm hoping this challenge and publishing all of my recorded weigh-ins will help me work towards positivity again. And I recruited my friend Lisa to help me with this challenge and get me off to the right foot. You can follow her challenge on her blog!

Spending the afternoon with my sister was also a positive thing for me. She just started PA school (she's studying to become a physician assistant) and she's learning the basics. It totally reminded me of first semester of med school where I was completely overwhelmed almost all the time. I cried at least once a week for probably the first semester. And though I know it definitely doesn't feel like it, I realized that things do get easier and that you learn to work with what you've got. Starting anything new is going to be difficult. But it's worth it. And that's keeping me motivated with these residency applications. I'm applying EVERYWHERE and it's terrifying to think that I'll be starting something new, but it's also exciting. It'll probably suck major at the start (like my sister's realizing now), but it'll be okay.

Since I spent the afternoon with my sister, I packed snacks and made us a steak dinner. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so you only get photos from this morning.

Breakfast with sad-tasting grapes

Snack before heading out for the morning

Lunch with my delicious sourdough bread!

My goal for this one-week challenge is to get the scale down to 239.8 next week. I know that seems like a lot in a week (6.2 pounds), but breaking into the 230s again would totally boost my confidence. I'm going to achieve this goal by adhering to my challenge pretty strictly: working out, counting calories, packing food, and not weighing in until next Saturday. The first week of getting back on track usually leads to a pretty big change on the scale for me, so I'm hoping that's the case this time! I'm also going to stay hydrated as much as possible. I'd also like to set the goal of being in the low 220s by the end of this calendar year (220-225). I think 26 pounds is a lot, but if you think about it, I have half of September, all of October, all of November, and all of December to bust my butt to get there - that's 15 weeks that I need to lose 1.5-2 pounds per week and I think that's reasonable.

Today's positive: making awesome strides on day one of the challenge and setting some lofty goals that are totally attainable if I treat my mind and body positively. Also, my other positive for today was motivating Lisa to make some changes too!

All my weigh-ins since March 8, 2011 and a new challenge

So I decided upon updating my weigh-ins page that I should put all the weigh-ins I've ever had (since getting this computer and uploading my photos) on that page. And it became clear to me that you can see when I was working on losing weight (and had lots of weigh-ins) and when I didn't give a shit (I weighed myself 4 times in 2013). It also has become painfully apparent that this is the heaviest I've weighed since March 8, 2011. 

Then this thought occurred to me: This could either be just the motivation I needed or something else I'll choose to write off. I'm hoping it's not the latter, but lately...yikes.

You see, tonight I went to Zumba for the first time since spraining my ankle 3.5 weeks ago and it was probably the least fun I've ever had in Zumba. First of all, I went back way too early. My ankle was definitely not ready. It wasn't painful per se, and I'm not really hurting now, but I just didn't feel stable. And I half assed it because I didn't want to do any more damage because some of the moves did cause some painful twinges (nothing that's lasted or bothering me now). I think weights and the elliptical are going to have to be my friends for the time being. And that's okay. But I got really down on myself and afterwards, I nearly ate an entire pizza. I told myself yesterday that it was okay if I had to modify or couldn't do anything, but what I should have realized is that it's me I'm dealing with and modifying and not being able to do something the right way was going to bug this shit out of me. So, I'll go back to doing things that I can do well, that burn calories a bit more effectively, and don't make me feel shitty about myself. I will probably put off going back to Zumba until after my one month rotation in North Carolina (which ends October 24).

In the mean time, I need to get tracking and get my butt back to the gym. Sooo, I'm going to start a one week challenge (which I'm going to con my friend Lisa into doing with me). It's going to be an extremely hard challenge for me because I have a lot of shit going on in my life right now (residency applications, an away rotation coming up, some relationship worries, some financial woes, etc.) but I think I need a challenge to make myself see that I'm worth the work, that I can achieve my goals, and that I sometimes require a bit of force to get back on the horse.

So, this week's one-week challenge begins at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, September 13 and ends at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, September 20. It includes:

1. Some kind of workout everyday
2. Tracking all my calories
3. Packing food and not buying it
4. Weighing in ONLY on the 13th and 20th.

The reasons this is going to be hard: I've been being so, so, sooooo lazy lately and it's hard to get yourself into a routine again; tracking calories is hard because next weekend I go home to celebrate my Mom's birthday (and I'll have to bring my food scale and my willpower); and because packing food sucks major. Weighing in only twice should be no problem. The scale and I aren't exactly friends right now because its honesty is a bit too much.

I'd also like to set an end of the month weight goal tomorrow as well as an end of the year weight goal. I also want to work on some sort of list of 10 things I love (I was going to write "like" rather than "love," but I think I need a little push in the self love part of life right now too) about myself to post in my bathroom so that I have to see it several times a day.

Alright, I've got 11 minutes to prep myself mentally for this one week challenge.