Finally, a NSV!

Yaaaaay for Thursday!!!! I realize most of my post start with a reference to what day of the week it is. Does this mean I'm officially a grownup, concerned with the weekend getting here? In college I didn't give a shit about the weekends. I partied when I wanted, regardless of what day of the week it was. And, in turn, I didn't feel super lame staying in on a Saturday night cuddling with Winnie and watching Sweet Home Alabama like I do now.

I digress. I'm here because I finally feel like I have a non-scale victory to share!!! No, I wasn't super-awesome at resisting all the munchies placed on the buffet desk next to me yesterday, but overall this week I have been getting back on track, in general.

I've gone to the gym TWICE this week, everyone!!!


source

I know, I know. Not that big of a deal. But considering I've also been really good about cooking for myself this week, too, I'm chalking it up to a victory. No gym today, but I'm going to run when I get home. I have to get the house all ready for the boy to get here TOMORROW!!!! I'm supa excited.

Anyway. Back to the NSV. I'm just hoping that I can keep this up like I was so good about doing at the beginning of the year. Sorry you've been hearing the same things over and over again. I'm really trying. Promise.

Hope everyone is having a great week--hang in there, tomorrow's Friday! Hollaaaaa.

That's all I got. Peace out, fools!

WIW/SS7/4THOFJULY!!!!!!!!!!!

TOMORROW!!! It's my favorite holiday!!! The birth of our fine nation!!!! This is gonna be kinda all over the place, but what's new around here, anyway, right?

So first things first. Update on my Sweet Summertime 7:
Sweet Summertime 7:

<div align="center"><a href="http://ahlmblog.blogspot.com/" title="A Heart Like Mine"><img src="http://i1161.photobucket.com/albums/q512/nmdwards/SS7.png" alt="A Heart Like Mine" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

1. Run a 5k: I'm still debating whether or not I want to do the color run in August or the Hillbilly Run in October on my birthday weekend.
2. Get down to 165 lbs : I weighed myself this morning and I was holding strong at 182. No loss but I'm ok with that considering the amount of food and alcohol I put in my body last weekend. I'm also still maintaining 20 pounds lost since January.
3. Get down to a size 8-10 and Medium : Workin' on it.  
4. Learn portion control: Well yesterday I failed at this. They had rolled tacos in the cafeteria yesterday and I couldn't stop. They were so yummy!!! But this morning I made breakfast so I WILL restrain myself with the mac and cheese they have down there today. One small serving and that's it!
5. Do a fitness class every week : Haven't been to the gym.
6. Feel comfortable in a bikini in a picture without a cover-up : So yesterday I bought a new bikini at Target. The biggest accomplishment is that the bottoms aren't string, they're regular bottoms! I NEVER wear regular bottoms because of my love handles, the string bottoms are nice because I can loosen them and not feel like they're cutting into my hips. I know, stupid. But anyway. It's not perfect, but I'm wearing it tomorrow. We'll see if I get drunk enough to take a picture in it haha.
7. Go on a hike at least once a month : This is turning out to be harder than I thought. But I have to make time.

This is also linked up with Weigh-in Wednesday!

Now moving onto THE FOURTH OF JULY!! I just wanted to share some of my favorite patriotic pins :)



Never forget those who still fight today for the freedom
granted to us by our ancestors 237 years ago.



I just really love this picture.



And this one.



Yep.





Nope, sure won't!

I hope everyone has a fantastic day tomorrow (or 4 day weekend, in which case you better be extra patriotic because I don't get that!), and at least takes a few minutes to remember the PURPOSE of the day. Also, I posted yesterday about my friend's little sister getting asked to remove her cross necklace on her college campus. Well, tonight she's going on the O'Reilly Factor to dicuss it. The Washington Post has run the story. It's turning into national news. Please read it and share it. We cannot let things like freedom of religion get taken away from us.

OK everyone. That's it for me! Happy 4th of July, stay safe, and stay patriotic!!!

God Bless America.

Sweet Summertime 7 Week 1 Check-Up

Happy Hump Day! I really need this week to fly by.

Today is Weigh-in Wednesday, as well as the official 1 week checkup for my Sweet Summertime 7! So here's how the 7 are coming along so far....

1. Run a 5k: Haven't been ballsy enough to run yet with my toe, but I'm planning on it Thursday after work and before kickball.
2. Get down to 165 lbs : Well, today I weighed 184 flat. That's down 1.2 pounds from last week. Considering what I've been eating this week and  how little I've worked out, I'll take it.
3. Get down to a size 8-10 and Medium : Workin' on it.  
4. Learn portion control: This is still a struggle for me.
5. Do a fitness class every week : This week my work schedule has been all over the place and has not allowed for me to make a class that sounds appealing. But next week I have all late shifts (noon-830PM) so I plan on going to a morning class.
6. Feel comfortable in a bikini in a picture without a cover-up :Workin' on it.
7. Go on a hike at least once a month : Perhaps this Sunday?

So, as you can see, I haven't made a ton of progress. But it's only been a week. If you want to join me in setting goals for yourself this summer, please do!!!

<div align="center"><a href="http://ahlmblog.blogspot.com/" title="A Heart Like Mine"><img src="http://i1161.photobucket.com/albums/q512/nmdwards/SS7.png" alt="A Heart Like Mine" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Since I weighed in today, I also wanted to linkup for Weigh In Wednesday.

Like I said before, I've lost 1.2 pounds since last week. Which I'm perfectly happy with. I'm not morbidly obese considering my height and actual size/muscle mass, so I'm not over here trying to lose 6 pounds a week. That isn't healthy unless you're on a ranch with a little crazy lady screaming at you to move your ass and being monitored heavily by doctors. Just a friendly reminder :) 

Last night, I drug my butt to the gym after I got off work (at 830 at night, might I add). With my commute, I got there at 9. I attempted to get on the spinning bike, but my vajay-jay hurt like hell after a few minutes so I used it as my warmup and hopped onto an elliptical for another 20. I increased my resistance and incline a few times to vary my heart rate, and I feel like I got a decent workout in, considering. Then I randomly picked out a few weight machines and did a few free-weight exercises to get Jillian Michaels' arms (in my dreams), and then I tanned. Sue me.

And here's some pinspiration:

And this is a cool pin I found a while ago and actually used. I lace my shoes like in the picture, but there are tons of other ways depending on your feet shape/issue.



I hope everyone has a great Wednesday, and I can't wait to read everyone else's progress :)

Another round of weekly goals...and thank you.

Before I get to the weekly goal linkup, I first want to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my rant on Saturday :) I really thought while writing it that nobody would probably read through it, and I definitely wouldn't receive any comments. So every one of them meant a lot to me and I appreciate it. And I also hope I made you all feel appreciated in my responses.

After my rant, I got off work early and, you guessed it, went wine tasting. Oops. 

It was a gorgeous day in the eastern part of San Diego county, and I got to wear my new Mandy Maxi from Kiki La'Rue!!! I'm obsessed. 

So glad one of my best friends Nicole could come finally!
Yes, together we are Nicole Squared. 

Sweet picture of me and my momma. 

Cheesin' with the bottle of cab franc I spent way too much money on. 

I. Love. My. Dress. And everything else I've gotten from Kiki La'Rue. Speaking of...I also finally got the chance to wear this dress I ordered a while back from their inventory clearance sale:

As far as I know, they still have this dress in stock in Blue. 

That ^^^ was before my best friend/sorority sister Lindsey's birthday dinner at Lips, a local drag queen dinner show. It's SO fun, and I highly recommend going if you are ever in San Diego.

With the birthday Queen :) 

If you're celebrating anything, after the show they call you up
on stage to take a picture. Lindsey went there. Hahahaha

After the dinner, I got to go pick up my new friendboy from the airport. I'll say that we've been dating for about two months and I really like him. He's in the military, so he was gone for two weeks and then here for a few days and then he went home for leave for another two weeks, which is why I picked him up from the airport. We got to spend yesterday together (hence no social media at all yesterday lol), and now he'll be gone again for another week and a few days. But then after that, he'll be back for a while. So fingers crossed this turns into something good!!

Moving on...

Last week's goals were to make it to the gym Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I made it there Tuesday and Wednesday. Which I'm ok with. I also had a goal to make myself sweat there even with my toe in it's condition. Which I did. My final goal was to track better on myfitnesspal. I did ok. I completed two entries, which is more than I have in a long time! Baby steps. 

This week, my goals are: 

1. Go to the gym tonight, Wednesday, and Thursday (even though I have a kickball game Thursday). Friday is a Tim McGraw concert (heck yes!) that I am going straight from work to. 
2. RUN! I want to run again. So bad. But I do hate the treadmill, so maybe this weekend when I'm home I can run around my neighborhood. 
3. Track, track, track!!! Keeping this one on the list. 

I wish everyone luck in their endeavor to complete their goals this week :) 

Again, thank you to everyone who commented on my ranting on Saturday, and I WILL practice what I preach. 

Eff my effing life!!! And a non-scale victory.

OK. Where to begin.

How about from this morning? I had to be at work at 6. It's a 30-minute drive without traffic, so I woke up at 5. Wasn't gonna get super pretty or anything, just giving myself enough time to press snooze, get up, do the bare minimum and get out the door before 530. Wellllll seeeeeee I have this weird aversion to shoes. Any shoes. It's kind of ironic because I probably own over 40 pairs of them, but if i can go barefoot, I will. Therefore, every day after work the first thing I do when I get in my car is take off my work shoes and put them on the floor of the passenger's seat in my car. They stay there until I walk out to my car barefoot the next day, drive to work, and put them on when I get out to walk in. So this morning, in the dark, at 530, I rushed out of the house and jammed my foot against the doorjam. Specifically, my baby toe went one way around it, and the rest of my toes went the other way. It. Was. AWESOME.

My first thought was, of course, F&$*#&% S&@*#!!!!!!!! MOTHER F*$(@&!!!!! Typical toe-stubbing reaction, right? I'm a walk-it-off kinda girl, so that's what I did. Then I realized after driving for about 5 minutes that it was only getting worse. THEN I started panicking, as I do. I saw stars a few times on the commute, just freaking out that I had broken my toe. Welllllll I looked up pictures of a broken pinky toe and it's starting to resemble them, so....I'm pretty sure it's at least fractured. Ignore the chipping pedicure and tell me it's not broken!!! The bruising has shown up more since taking this picture. But my whole foot looks fat :(

This is just wonderful. Considering I still have 10 pounds to lose by the end of the month and one more pants size to drop. Looks like it's under 1200 calories a day for me until I can work out again. So, eff my effing life.

With how down I'm feeling I decided I need to celebrate soem kind of non-scale victory this week. I thought and I thought (it took a while since I've slacked off so much recently) and decided I can't count the hike on Saturday as a NSV because I already blogged about it. So here it goes.

On Sunday I attended a CAbi party. If you don't know what that is, google it. It's awesome. The clothes are amazing. I tried on a pair of white jeans, which I've been searching for for forever, and they were a size 10. I knew they weren't going to fit. BUT THEY DID! Now, they had a little bit of stretch to them and CAbi notoriously runs a little big, but I tried on a different pair of jeans in a 12 and they fit perfectly, so I know it wasn't a fluke. I fit in a 10!!!! I probably would be a tight squeeze in any other jeans, but it was validation that I'm still getting smaller. I chose not to buy them because they actually were a little loose in the crotch area (not attractive), and I'm having a CAbi party of my own at the end of the month. So hopefully (even though I can't work out) I'll be able to fit into an 8 in those jeans and not have a loosey-goosey crotch, and an 10 in regular jeans :)

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing a little better than me today! And congrats to everyone else's NSV's this week!

I am my own worst enemy.

Happy Saturday!!! And what a happy one it is indeeeeeed. 

OK, to be honest, this week has been a little rough. I won't go into any juicy details, I'm just having a hard time with some personal things. But I still LOVE my job and my puppy and my friends and that's all that's really important. 

But today is a new day. And to kick off this glorious weekend (it's seriously gorgeous here in San Diego this weekend) I went on a hike with one of my best friends. She's always had athletic ability and hikes pretty often, so I was already intimidated to be going with her, but I was the only one who screwed myself over. See....we all know by now that I'm a wino. Well last night I had too much wine to not follow up with a buttload of water--especially considering I was planning on waking up early and going for a hike. Instead, I went straight to bed, and didn't even have my first sip of water until we started the 6 mile hike (3 miles up, 3 miles down). Bad idea. Oh, I also didn't eat any breakfast. Because I woke up, got dressed, took a picture (see below) and left. Baaaad ideaaaaaa. We were about a mile from the top of the mountain and I felt like I was going to faint. My first thought was, this can't seriously be happening. I'm in MUCH better shape than I was the last time I went on a hike and I knew I could make it up without much of a problem. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was about to pass out, seeing stars, the whole 9 yards. My friend semi-scolded me for not drinking any water or eating breakfast and it was pretty obvious the problem was that I was dehydrated, not unfit to finish the hike. I finished my bottle and half of my friend's, but we logically decided to head back down because it was already at least 80 degrees and only getting hotter. 

I'm bummed and disappointed in myself.  I feel like I sabotaged this goal in a way. Dunno why, but that's what I feel. I mean it was an accomplishment to make it a 4 mile hike and it was a gorgeous trail up Iron Mountain, but I wish I hadn't have prepared the way I did. Or didn't haha. Anyhoo, next time I know to do it differently. Here's what I wore: 

You can take the girl outta the country but you can't take the country outta the girl. Realtree visor, orange top, and realtree otterbox on my iphone. And of course I just love cheetah too much. Anyway, here's the start of the trail we hiked: 

Pretty amazing, right? Unfortunately that's about the only shade you get the rest of the way lol, and I was too busy trying not to faint to take any more pictures. But there will be a next time, and I will take pictures. 

And just because it's funny, let me tell you about last night. Two girlfriends and I had a relaxed night just hanging out, drinking wine, and chatting. My one friend who's house we were at literally could open a boutique out of her bedroom. She has rows of necklaces, then more rows of bracelets, then more rows of hanging earrings, a bowl of stud earrings, a row of sunglasses, a stash of hats--ranging from fedora to big and floppy--scarves, purses, it's INSANITY. After about 3 glasses of wine my other friend and I couldn't help ourselves and decided to play dressup. When in Rome, right? 

Here's our finished products: 

We could have played dressup all night. Literally. And my other friend actually bought a pair of her sunglasses for 2 dollars hahaha. It was a good time. 

Anyway, follow me on instagram and you would have seen the collage of our looks, and my amazing ThirtyOne bag that finally came today!!!!

I. Am. Ob. Sessed. 

I can't WAIT for it to just be freaking summertime so I can fill that baby with booze, snacks, magazines, and tanning lotion and head to the beach--or to a country concert tailgate :) Ahhhh sooooo closseeeeee. 

Alright, that's all for now. At least I now have completed my goals of going on a hike and taking a class at my gym. Baby steps. 

Have a lovely weekend lovelies!

Weekly check-in and goals (a day late...)

Well. I'm posting this a day late buttttttt oh wellllllll. Sue meeeeee.

Anyway, my goals last week were:

-Go to the gym at least 4 days out of the week

-Take a class at my gym

-Go on a hike

-Track food on myfitnesspal 4 days of the week

I didn't do so hot. But it wasn't entirely my fault...ok about half. I couldn't go to a class or on the hike because of the work schedule I was given after I had made the plans. I have a new job, people, I can't say no! So see, 2 out of the 4 were out of my control. The other two, however....................

I DID track on myfitnesspal 4 days out of the week. It's actually starting to become a nice reminder for me. And still, it blows my mind that it's basically the same exact system as weight watchers online, yet it has every food I've tracked so far already in it. Maybe I would have stuck with WW if it had that and I didn't have to sit and figure everything out I was eating?

Anyway. I went to the gym 2 days last week, had a very glutenous weekend, and then last night I went for a run because it was too late to go to the gym. So I did ok. Not great. But that's ok.

So my goals for THIS week are.....

#1: Go to a class at my gym. I've got a date with a girlfriend for a beginner's cycle class tomorrow at 6pm. God help us.

#2: Go on a hike. I have the whole weekend off (hoollllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaa) and I'm hoping one of my hiker-friends can go with me. Not to be a total downer but bad stuff tends to happen to single women around these parts who go on hikes/runs alone. Chelsea King, anyone? Yeah. I'm not going on a hike by myself.

#3: Track my food 5 days out of the week.

#4: Make it to 180 by Tuesday. That's 2 pounds away. Gotta pull out all the stops haha.

I also got the shirts I ordered off ebay this morning. They actually fit pretty great and, let's just say you can't tell if my high-beams are on or not, so that's always a good thing. I'll post a picture tomorrow since I'll be wearing one to the gym for the cycle class.

I hope everyone else did better on their goals than I did! But that's why we continue to set them, right? Anyway, at least Jess did awesome.

In other news, today was my first day on the phones at work! Basically they let me loose haha. It was terrifying, but I'm slowly getting used to it. I have tomorrow off so I'm sure Thursday will be a little rocky at first but I know it will get easier and easier. I'm loving my new job!!!


Alright, time for bed. Night night, world!

In memory of Sarah

Well. I don't even know how to begin a blog post considering the horrible thing that happened this morning in Boston. Boston holds a very special place in my heart. I haven't told the story of why or how I wound up there for one very important year of my life, so in a nutshell here it is:

I spent my whole life here in San Diego with frequent visits to my dad's house in East Tennessee. I was stir crazy by the time I graduated high school and wanted to get out on my own and experience something totally different. I don't know where my fascination with Boston came from other than maybe it's because I have New England in my blood? My mom's from New Hampshire and that's where her whole side of the family is. Either way something drew me there, and I applied to a few prestigious schools there. Northeastern was the most competitive school I got accepted to and I couldn't say no, so in August, 2008 I packed my whole life up and my mom dropped me off 3000 miles away from home. I spent the first 3 weeks crying myself to sleep every night terrified I had made a mistake and missing home, and then I found the most amazing group of women when I went through sorority recruitment. I finally felt confident in my decision to move so far away from home. I also became best friends with one of my roommates, Sarah. She will always be one of the most amazing girls in the entire world to me, and she passed away two summers ago--something I'll never get over--but anytime I think of Boston now I think of her. She grew up in a suburb of the city, had a classic Boston attitude and sense of humor, was a die-hard Sox fan, and has a huge, awesome Irish-Catholic family. I don't think I would have loved Boston as much as I did if it hadn't been for her. Anyway, back to the story. The the economy tanked in 2008 in case anyone forgot. As a result, my dad lost his job. And the prospect of getting a good job after graduating even with a degree from an amazing school began looking grimmer and grimmer, and I knew I would be literally drowning in debt for the rest of my life if I stayed. So I had to leave. I wound up in Memphis because I didn't want to come home, for 1, and second of all I would have had to go to a junior college and then transfer into any state school in California. Ain't nobody got time fo' dat.

Anyway, looking back I'm extremely thankful for the year I had in Boston and the 3 years I had in Memphis. I learned SO MUCH about life and myself and grew up a ton. And I still have lasting friendships with my sisters from both cities (as different as they may be haha). So you can imagine now how I felt when I saw what happened this morning on Facebook. It was a mixture of heartbreak and extreme anger. And it makes me sick to my stomach to think about the moment we find out who exactly was responsible. I mean the two possibilities would both completely suck. Either it was a terrorist attack from some 3rd world country that hates America, or it was someone or a group of people from America who hate America. They. Both. Suck. I personally love America--like in a "statue of liberty started shakin' her fist and the eagle will fly and it's gonna be hell when you hear mother freedom start ringin' her bell" kind of way.

Anyway, I realize now that wasn't exactly a nutshell of a story but oh well.

I don't know if the pent up anger I had toward today had anything to do with the fact that when I got off work at 8:30 at night all I wanted to do was run, or not, but I've recently decided I hate to run on a treadmill so when I got home at 9, I changed and went for a quick run around the hood.

I feel a little better now. And I'm going to do some arm workouts while I watch The Real Housewives.

In other news, I've been wanting to get some actual tank tops designed for running, with the sports bras built into them. So I found these on ebay:

They're new with tags and were only 12.99 each so I ordered the green one (duh, I'm a Kappa Delta) and the orange one (duh, I'm kind of a redneck).

I hope they look ok and I'm growing increasingly nervous because I went to Khol's and tried a few other brands' shirts on and the bras were hardly actual bras. I don't have necessarily big ta-tas, and they've gotten smaller since I lost weight, so I don't understand what kind of wonder-shirts the girls at the gym who have clearly bigger ones than me are wearing to hold them down so well!

I guess we'll find out in the next few days.

Anyway, that's all for now. Please keep Boston in your prayers. I know I will.

And in honor of one of the craziest years of my life, here's a few throwback pictures:

This would be Sarah. Summed up in one picture.

What a year. Now that I'm getting all teary I'll sign off for the night. Rest in Paradise, sweet Sarah. 

Tonight I'm also linking up with KTJ at KTJ Weighing In for her Spring Training 5K Challenge. 

See ya later, 20 pounds!!!

Yeppppp I woke up this morning (after deciding not to go for a run...) and before I hopped in the shower I decided to weigh myself. Just for shits and gigs. And I'm sure glad I did because I discovered I've lost a total of 20 pounds since I kicked it into high-gear back in January!!!!!!!!!!!

To say I'm excited would be the understatement of the world.

And it couldn't have happened at a better time. I was losing motivation fast. So now I refuse to ever let those 20 lbs back on my body in any way, shape or form even if it means I have to do silly exercises while sitting at my desk at work. Dammit.

Anyhoo, gotta run to work now but here's a picture of me with 20 pounds officially gone :)

I figured out a way to take pictures with the weird lighting and have it turn out OK lol. Yes I know, the dress doesn't really show any figure at all, but I don't care. I see it (and feel it) most in my legs and upper-body (bye bye boobies).

Also, I decided to try making my own workout tank last night. I used the t-shirt my gym gives you when you join. Here's what it looked like before...

And after...

I didn't do anything weird with the back like making it a racer-back by tying a bow around the middle or anything you see in a lot of the tutorials on pinterest because, well, I didn't feel like it #1, and #2, how do those hold up in the washing machine and dryer?

Anyway. Enough of my rambling.







TWENTY POUNDS!!!!!!

My new fitness obsession

I found my new favorite thing to do at the gym (and least-favorite)....the CIRCUIT ROOM! I didn't want to be a total creep and take a picture of it, and this is the best I could find on google...

The machines look similar to that, but in the center of them is a row of aerobic steps, so it's basically like that Curves gym--btw, is Curves still around even???? Anyhoo, it's 10 weight machines and you start on any one of them, do it for 1 minute, switch to a step and do some aerobic exercise for another minute, go back to the next weight machine, and so and and so forth until you've done a whole body workout in 30 minutes. It's legit. 

HOWEVER, and this is a big one, it's clearly very easy for people to 'do' the circuit workout and not actually do anything beneficial for their bodies. In the two nights I've done it I've seen multiple people basically waste 30 minutes. Mainly it seems they don't know what they're supposed to do for 'aerobic exercise.' And frankly I probably wouldn't either if I hadn't grown up watching my mom and her friends do the 90's step workouts in the living room lol. But still. And tonight there was this woman, bless her heart, who was doing 1 minute on the weight machine, then during the 30 second transition period she would do her version of an aerobic exercise and then do another minute on the next weight machine. I'm not sure if she realized she'd been doing it wrong by noticing she completed it in 15 minutes instead of 30...but is that a huge gym no-no to tell someone they're doing something completely wrong? Or is it helpful? What's the gym etiquette on that exactly? 

And speaking of gym etiquette, I almost went mean-old-lady-crazy on a couple of 12 year olds in that circuit room tonight. First of all, when I was a teenager (a TEENAGER, NOT A TWEEN) I was only allowed in the gym if my mom was there with me. So why were these kids allowed to roam freely? Anyway, they just jumped in on random machines, cutting people off, messing with the weights just to basically play, and nobody said a word. I almost lost my mind. Maybe it's because I was half-raised-in-the-south that it drives me nuts how kids act in these parts, or maybe I'm just a prude, but come on. Parents, anyone? 

OK I'll get off my soapbox. 

So far I'm doing well on my goals, but the hike isn't going to happen because of my schedule :( 

But my first day of work was WONDERFUL! I can't wait to see where this job takes me. 

Alright that's all for now. I'm hoping starting this circuit workout regularly with running in my neighborhood (because I've discovered I actually prefer it to the treadmill which forces you to keep a pace when I'd rather do my own thing) will help me reach my Operation Red Bikini goal!! Woot woot!

That's all for tonight. Farewellllll!!

Non-scale victory and stuff

So. To be honest, I have been terrible at going to the gym before work when I go in at noon. Often times my feet still hurt from work the day before, and my diet with my schedule at work has been sucky which doesn't make it any easier to wake up in the morning--it really is amazing how important what you EAT is to how you FEEL in general. Anyhoo, this morning I decided to go for a run around my neighborhood instead of driving 15 minutes to the gym and another 15 back. It's been a while since I went on an outdoor run, and my neighborhood is all hills. Surprisingly I did a longer distance in a shorter time than I have been doing on the treadmill (technology can't be trusted with losing weight and getting in shape, btw) and I felt better about this run since it was constantly up and down. You can pretty much tell on the map of my run where the downhills and uphills are haha.

I'm kind of a fan of the Nike Run app!

So, my non-scale victory for the week was doing this outdoor run!

The biggest downside, however, to just running in my neighborhood is that I'm not super motivated to do anything else afterwards. But I took some small weights we had stashed in a closet (but I had to combine 5 lb and 3 lb ones in each hand to do 8 pounds when I've been using 10 lb weights at the gym) and did some of Mama Laughlin's arm workouts, some squats (which I think I was doing wrong) and a pathetic plank. Womp womp. Clearly I need to find a balance between gym workouts and running around my neighborhood, because in all honest I think I liked running in the hood better than running on the treadmill at the gym. I could keep my own pace and fluctuate it with my music and such much more than on a treadmill. 

Anyway, I'm still keeping my Operation Red Bikini goal of getting down to a size 10/170 lbs by May 31st. Good luck to everyone else in their ORB goals!

In other news, I won't be starting my new job until April 15th, which seems like a year away when you work 11.5 hour shifts (and have zero motivation to be there anymore....) but I'm an adult, and this is part of adult life, right? 

Being a big girl sure does stink sometimes. 

Alright, time to get ready for the dreaded work. Happy Thursday to the real world, it's my Tuesday. Woooooo.