End of February Check in

Well - It's the last day of February and I am still working out on my Wii Fit everyday and hitting my treadmill everyday. My Treadmill afghan is slowly growing. I took a couple of pictures of it yesterday since I haven't taken a picture in awhile. I have almost another row of squares to sew on already. It's kind of time consuming to sew the squares on - I tend to save them up and hit them all in one shot.

I have dropped around 15 lbs and my BMI has dropped almost 3 points. I am down one size in my clothes as well. :) Feels nice to have more of my wardrobe back again!

I have three complete rows on my afghan now. Each square takes around 30 minutes of treadmill time - 16 squares in a row - so three rows is right around 24 hours of tradmill time. Nice!

I'm Back in the saddle again!

Well - I made my first square on my treadmill afghan today. Again. I believe it was March last year that I pooped out on this thing. We got the dog, Tom lost his job, excuses, excuses....

So. We got a Wii and I have been doing the wii fit faithfully for 10 days in a row for 30 minutes a day. And today I dusted off my needles and headed down to the treadmill and made a square for my afghan.

I know it's cliche to start trying to be healthy again at the New Year - but now that the holidays are over and I have months of ice, snow and cold to look forward to, it just seems like a good time to work it out.

I am trying to not obsess over the numbers but facts are facts. I want the numbers to LOWER. One thing that is a blessing and a curse about the Wii is the tracking of the BMI and the Weight. I love it when it does what I want - hate it when it goes up. (guess that is a du.)

I am having a hard time setting goals in terms of numbers. I want to drop a lot of weight. If I do the math - and I set a goal of 2 lbs a week from now until June 1st - that would be a 52 lb weight loss. That would be amazing and wonderful - but it still would be well above an ideal weight for me. I am struggling with what is reasonable. Should I set my goal at a weight I haven't been since high school? As a woman pushing 40 - that seems a little unlikely. I guess that is why I have been silenced in my goal setting. I just know that I am not healthy right now and I know movement and a healthy diet are key to what I need to do going forward. I feel like I should not worry about where I end up so much as just putting my head down on the path toward healthy and just keep trucking up the mountain. I will know when I get there.

My new Favorite Emma Shot

Pout baby pout! Yeah that's the stuff. Look all distant and thoughtful. Like "Where did I put that chunk of bone I was chewing last night?" Yeah - That's the stuff baby.

Emma is 1 year old today!

Our sweet little Emma is one year old today. (We adopted her on April 28th and they said she was about 11 months old - so that makes her about 12 months old today - so why not?) I took her to the vet to get a lyme disease booster shot. Happy Birthday Emma - Have a nice needle in your leg!

In other news....

Tom starts his new job on Monday. I could probably right for a week on that - but I won't. At the moment he is outside building a Deck for Emma. Eventually we will put her house on it. We don't have a house yet - so for the time being it's just a pup deck.

In knitting news - Well. Not knitting much these days. I knit two rows on my scrap afghan in the last week or so. A row takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending. The yarn I am using right now is slippery and puffy - so I am a little worried I may have dropped a stitch in there somewhere. What evs.

This weekend we are taking Emma to the Charity Dogwash. That should be interesting. I am really happy Tom is off graveyard shifts so that we can do stuff like this together. If he was on the night shift I would have to go alone and I am a raging chicken shit - so mostly I would just get drunk and hang out in my house.

Joined Facebook this week. Just what I needed. Another addiction! ;) I posted a video of me singing to my dog. I am such a dork.

Our New Furr Baby!

So we adopted our puppy this last week. On Tuesday April 28th we drove an hour and a half away and picked up our sweet little girl. Her name was Prada - but they said she doesn't know that name so we changed it to Emma. She is 11 months old and she weights 24.7 lbs. They think she is an Australian Cattle dog (Blue Heeler) and probably some Border Collie - which explains her blue eyes, and maybe some sheltie. She loves her ducky and today I bought her a sheep toy that she threw around and got all excited about. We came up with a schedule where I walk her in the morning and Tom walks her at night. I found out quite quickly that walking a dog who pulls you along up and down hills is a better work out then I was getting on my tread mill. :) I am hoping once I get used to the morning walks (whose training who here?) I will pick up the tread mill afghan again. But for now I am content with walking the dog.

We hope to add a cat to our family in the next month here. There were hundreds available at the Animal Humane Society when we checked 2 weeks ago. They only had 22 dogs at that time - and they were all "Bully Breeds" so we opted to use a different rescue shelter for our puppy needs.

I am looking at dog sweaters to knit her. I picked out the "Buster" pattern on the Berroco web site - but I am not too thrilled with the yarn choice. It calls for Berroco Softwist which is wool and rayon. Hand wash or dry clean only. Um... For a dog? My girl gets dirty! I am thinking a machine wash wool would be a better choice. Maybe I will cruise the KnitPicks website to see what I can find.

Totals and photos for the first row

The first row was completed on Friday March 27th. I took 2 pictures of the first row on it's own for posterity. This is what it looks like laid out on my dining room floor. If I was more confident about myself I would have lay beside it for scale - but I am so not there yet - so this will have to do.

Here are the stats as of the completion of the first row:

Total time: 9.45 hours

Total distance: 24.96 miles

Total calories: 3222

I missed two days in total on the project so far. And the last couple days I ate hella bad - so my weight loss is in question. (Big sigh here.) Friday I gorged at a pizza party at work and Saturday Tom and I hit Red Lobster. (And the food I ate was the equivalent of shoving a stick of butter in my mouth...So....goood.)

So I am now on row two and have sewn the first two squares on row two. I realized my stitching abilities are a little .... sad. Also - my gauge is all over the place from knitting on the treadmill. One day I power through in under 30 minutes and my square is tight and hard - the next I plod along and finish in 40 minutes and my square is loose and pliable. So this is going to look VERY homemade when I finish it. (Which is the nice way of saying Ugly as all heck.) Whatevs. Ain't nothing going to breaka my stride!

So here is what I want for row 2:

Since I am being fairly diligent with the treading every day I want to work on the food and water consumption. I can't break every time someone thrusts pizza or Red Lobster in front of my face. I need to find healthy alternatives. My day to day is a huge struggle with food. I never know what to eat and when. Mornings I am not really hungry. Lunch I tend to eat in my car while reading. And dinner? Oy. So I need to find healthy meals to eat that will make me feel good.

Probably that means more time planning out menu's and grocery shopping and cooking more. I know a carb heavy menu makes me sleepy and crabby - so I want to focus on veggies and protein. I think breakfast is the hardest because I am soooo sick of eggs and I feel like if I eat it starts the hunger up - and then I want to eat more and more. But I know I can't keep skipping breakfast either. Argh. Where are the magic food pellets when you need them.

Sometimes when you are feeling low the world smiles on you.

I had a tough week. I missed two days on my tread mill this week and Tom finally got his severance package from the EVIL EMPIRE. One of my dearest friends who I have worked with for 7 years now - today was his last day. I pigged out on pizza and came home feeling pretty low. When I went to go get the mail this evening I was surprised by a little package with some tea and a pen and a post card that read "Keep up the good work on the treadmill afghan!" (HalloweenTango - You ROCK!)

I was so touched! So I took a picture of it so I could post it up on ravelry as a proper thank you - and then put on my work out shoes and headed down to the treadmill. I completed my 16th square tonight - which means once I stitch them all together I will have completed my first row. 1/16th of the way to an afghan. Wow. I am tickled!

And now - off to a nice hot bubble bath and a glass of wine with my book. Awesome!