Where Fat Cells Come to Die (30 lb loss)

[Euthanasia Phase]

Weight: 189.4 lbs

LOSS: -0.6 lbs (from mid-vacation weight)

GAIN: +3.0 lbs (from after-program weight)

Exercise: 30 min. Curves workout

Points: 25/25

Lunch: 6 inch chicken teriyaki sub w/veggies, cheese and sweet onion sauce, cheetos, diet green tea

Dinner: spaghetti w/marinara and olive oil, spinach

It's good to be back to counting points - no more guilt now that I know every bite today was "legal".  

[Euthanasia Phase]

Weight: 188.0 lbs
LOSS: -1.4 lbs

Exercise: none (slept horribly and was lazy today)

Points: 2530/25 (damn chocolate...)

Lunch: 1 slice cheese pizza w/parmesan, salad w/ranch, cherry coke

Dinner: spinach w/balsamic vinegar, spaghetti w/marinara

Things are getting chaotic, and the 3-hour time zone jump isn't really helping. I've been going to sleep at 5 or 6 am the past two nights, which is not so great considering all that has to be done. I'm flying to CA for grad school on Wednesday - classes don't start for another month or so, but I'm starting research early. There's a lot of packing and organizing to be done in the meantime, as well as working out housing, funding, etc.
Other than that, everything is going smoothly - the weight is once again coming off and the motivation is there, despite a chocolate craving...  

[Stars in my Pocket]

Do you like dark chocolate at all?
I buy 85% DARK chocolate from Lindt (an 8-square bar I think?) and one square has so much cocoa in it that it completely satisfies my chocolate cravings for a day or two. It's barely sweet, it's packed with antioxidants, and you have to eat small bites slowly, but gosh does it fix up that craving. (:
That's been my solution to the sweet tooth.  

[Euthanasia Phase]

@Stars: I LOVE dark chocolate, and will have to check that out - a small amount shouldn't have too many calories either.

Weight: 186.8 lbs
LOSS: -1.2 lbs

Exercise: 30 min. Curves workout

Points: 25/25

Lunch: 6 inch chicken teriyaki sub w/cheese, veggies and sweet onion sauce, parmesan/tuscan herb baked chips, diet coke

Dinner: chicken parmesan w/pasta, marinara, olive oil, spinach

Snack: kids-sized Rita's cherry ice

Not bad, considering no sleep last night.  

[Stars in my Pocket]

Yeah! I can only eat one square, literally, tiny bites, and one square has 55 calories in it. 3nodding

How is the Curves workout? Is it a DVD or do you go in?  

[Munkers]

If you're not triggered by having a bag of chocolate around, you can also try the Hershey's Bliss candies. Each square is 1pt and they're super smooth, creamy, and delicious. Having three of them feels like kind of a big splurge and yet it still would only be three points.  

[Euthanasia Phase]

@Stars: Curves is a women-only gym that consists of a circuit of fifteen machines designed to work various muscles (resistance, not weight machines). The machines are all in a circle, with jogging platforms in between them. Two circuits take ~ 30 min. and are considered a typical workout, though I occasionally add another circuit to burn more calories. Basically, you work on one of the machines for 30 seconds, jog on the platform for 30 seconds, etc. It's great if you like variety in your workout and want to work on overall strength.
Curves website

@Munkers: Those sound really good, but I can't handle an entire bag of chocolate lying around sweatdrop . My dad keeps at least one bag of dark chocolate Milky Way bars in the house, and that's the culprit whenever I give in to a chocolate craving.

Weight: 186.0 lbs
LOSS: -0.8 lbs

Exercise: 30 min. Curves workout

Points: 25/25

Lunch: 1 slice cheese pizza w/parmesan, salad w/fat free Italian dressing, cherry coke

Dinner: chicken parmesan w/spaghetti, marinara and olive oil, broccoli

Snack: diet green tea

W00t 20 lb loss!  

[Euthanasia Phase]

Weight: 186.0 lbs
NO LOSS/GAIN

Exercise: none

Points: 25/25

Lunch: spaghetti w/marinara and parmesan, diet green tea

Dinner: chicken parmesan w/spaghetti, marinara and olive oil, veggies, chocolate skim milk

Snack: kid's sized Rita's s'mores ice  

[Munkers]

Woohoo!! Major congrats on twenty pounds! biggrin  

[Euthanasia Phase]

@Munkers: Thanks! biggrin

Weight: 186.0 lbs
NO LOSS/GAIN

Exercise: 30 min. Curves workout

Points: 25/25

Lunch: 6-inch chicken teriyaki sub w/cheese, veggies and sweet onion sauce, parmesan and tuscan herb baked chips, light lemonade, coke

Dinner: pasta w/marinara, parmesan and olive oil, broccoli  

[Euthanasia Phase]

Weight: 185.6 lbs
LOSS: -0.4 lbs

Exercise: 30 min. Curves workout

Points: 25/25

Lunch: 1 slice cheese pizza w/parmesan, salad w/fat free italian dressing, cherry coke

Dinner: pasta w/marinara, parmesan and olive oil, broccoli

Snack: diet green tea

Everything is about to get really chaotic. Tomorrow I'm flying to CA to (hopefully) move into my new apartment. There's still no word on whether it's been approved for me to move in a few days early. Luckily my parents are going with me to help me get settled, which is really nice of them. In about a week, my research assistantship begins, and then classes begin during late September. I have no idea what I'll be working on or what classes to sign up for, that'll all be arranged over there. Right now my schedule (hah, like there is one) is very unstructured and if there's one thing necessary for sanity it's a decently structured schedule. That also explains my diet habits, which are about to be tested yet again having to deal without any ******** nutrition facts. Seriously, moving from place to place just sucks, nothing can really be accomplished because once you're settled it's back to packing up s**t and going on. Hopefully life will be somewhat sane in grad school, who knows.  

[Euthanasia Phase]

Ugh, another hiatus.
I have not, under any circumstances, given up. There have been challenges, and I've had a mix of good and bad days, and I'm hovering in the low 190s and back on the bandwagon.
Grad school is going well, though. The subject matter is interesting and there are plenty of possible research projects. In all honesty, I'm not stress eating. Lonely eating, maybe. Or perhaps there are too many tempting options here, whereas in undergrad not too much was accessible.
The exercise situation is frustrating, because I don't have a car and in SoCal that can become a pain in the a**. The campus shuttle only runs on weekdays and only until 6pm. Reasonably, I'm expected to work (research assistantship) up until then, so I don't know when the gym will be possible. I could exercise early, but there's no place to shower and not enough time to take the shuttle back and shower. Once fall quarter starts, there will be an evening shuttle which will solve that problem. However, I've got to figure something out for the summer quarter. My room is spacious, so an exercise video might be possible, though I'm not sure one is accessible within walking distance (and not having a credit card is also looked down upon in SoCal...I love the dept. but hate the surrounding city SO MUCH). Time to check youtube. There's the 8 minute abs video but of course that's not enough.
So basically, I'm following the points and looking for an exercise option. My journal will resume when I get back to or just under 185.6 lbs. This will 1) allow time to find an exercise option so I don't have to write "none" in every entry and 2) allow the weight loss to look more continuous.

EDIT: I found some Tae Bo videos on youtube. Going to see how this works out.  

[Munkers]

Thank you for the update! I've been wondering what was going on with you. I'm glad your enjoying grad school and really hope that the YouTube videos give you a good exercise option.  

[Euthanasia Phase]

@Munkers: Thank you! *feels guilty for not posting in such a long time*
The weight loss is going well, shouldn't be long before I'm where I was, and the Tae Bo is an effective solution, at least during the summer quarter.  

[Euthanasia Phase]

Things took a turn for the worse again.
Since the last journal entry, I was doing well until I got to 187-188ish. Then, I kept staying the same. It was really silly to get frustrated over it because I had been losing weight quickly before that, and I KNOW weight loss is not linear. This didn't used to bother me as much.
So I had a couple of bad days and a couple of good days after that, but today was absolutely deplorable. My birthday is in a couple of days, and it's going to be pretty lonely because my family is across the country and I haven't had a chance to get to know anyone here well. Most people I encounter are fourth or fifth-year grad students who are getting ready to defend, and the other new first-years haven't arrived yet. My roommate is nice but she has her own group, and she seems to have more fun around people she can speak Thai with and relate to more effectively.
Still, it was no excuse to have a pity party, not count points, go way overboard at lunch and then hit the chocolate store after school. Right now my stomach feels queasy and bloated from all the richness it's not used to. It's going to be a hell of a long time before I eat fudge again...blech. I need to stop feeling like I deserve a reward for everything. It's childish, ridiculous and counterproductive. Just because my matlab code works, or I get my recording software working, or it's my birthday does not mean I get to eat more than is reasonable. There's also the issue of cost - now I'm not a big spender in general so the bank isn't breaking at the moment, but thinking of what I could have got with the money that was spent on extra food really puts things in perspective.
What concerns me most is why my healthier habits were once easy to follow and now a burden. It's not stress - I was stressed more in undergrad. It's not lack of friends - I didn't have any in undergrad, and unlike here, I had no chance of having any (people are MUCH nicer here mostly). The only thing that motivated me in undergrad and does not apply here - and this is going to sound unkind - was my intense dislike of most of the other students. I learned to tolerate people who treated me like s**t by following habits that gave me a sense of superiority above them. They were easier to deal with when they were competition and could be figuratively struck down. Here, there are people who are more likely to share similar interests and they don't have the arrogant attitude that a lot of the undergrad students had, so my mind regards them as human beings rather than competition.
One thing is clear - I need my journal and need to account for my actions. The plan now is for Wednesday-Friday to eat 26 points and for Tuesday-Friday to eat 25 points. Saturday-Monday there's a seismology convention, so habits will have to rely on common sense more than point counting. Every day with access to Gaia, I will enter my diet and exercise, but the weight check will wait until a week from Saturday. HOWEVER, if I screw up my points, I'll have to check my weight the following morning and report it.