i had a good workout yesterday and pushed myself beyond the recommended 30-mins... i also decided to increase my speed, little by little, on the jogging intervals and went from 5.0 to 6.0 and it felt great... even though i'm only on week #2, i think doing the whole 5K thing won't be as hard as i thought so i feel a sense of relief... since i have off tomorrow, i am going try doing the workout outside and see how that goes - the weather is going to be on the cooler side so maybe that will work in my favor... :o)
in celebration of the long weekend (for me anyway, sorry!), here are some tidbits that i found during the week that i'd like to share... enjoy... :o)
—valerie bertinelli is the latest celebrity to join jenny craig...
—celebrity fit club #5 premiers on april 22nd, this time including tiffany and screech...
—too lazy to do your own exercising? get a dog powered scooter instead...
—create, annotate and share personalized maps with google's my maps...
—roni has created a new, weight loss community so check it out...
—if you're a fan of stuff on my cat, you're gonna love stuff on my mutt...
—not sure how many calories you burned? try this activity calorie calculator...
—to be successful at losing weight, slow and steady wins the race...
—beware of the easter candy breakdown...
and on a more personal note - i would like to give a shout-out to kathleen, who's been suffering w/back problems and continues to share her struggles along the way... she has decided to go back on WW and wrote a really great post yesterday about her decision to do so - i found what she said to be pretty sincere and pretty motivating... she lost an incredible amount of weight (check out her before and after photos) and worked the plan to a T - most of us can relate to getting awesome results when sticking to something, but for others its a constant struggle...
personally, i've had success with WW (and variations like the wendi plan) but i'm not sure if i can really call it that since i've never really got to my ideal weight... i've also gone back and forth between (1) wanting to be a certain number and (2) wanting to feel good about myself at any size - i truly feel the latter is harder to achieve because you have to learn self-love and self-acceptance... does that mean you're giving up if you're no longer working towards losing weight? does it mean that you're less of a person if you'd rather not give up chocolate and pizza? no, but it really goes a lot deeper than that - the question should really be: are you truly happy with yourself, right here and right now? there comes a time when you either have to stick to a plan, no matter what, OR stop beating yourself up because you're never going to be a size 4 (again)... THAT is the challenge we all face, and not whether we can stick to a weight loss plan or not...
i know it may sound like i can't make up my mind but after reading so many WW success stories (anne, amanda, marie, and amanda, just to name a few) and seeing kathleen's recommitment - it was almost like a sign that i need to give it one more shot... so will it really work? i would like to think so and really think i owe myself one more try - i will NOT, however, drive myself nuts, over-analyze things, beat myself up, or hate myself if i don't lose every week... if anything, i HAVE learned that this weight loss journey will never be perfect and to expect myself to be perfect too is just plain crazy... i will still be incorporating what i've learned and read from other books, and continue with my exercise routines since i think i have that portion covered...
so my final question is for those of you that use e-Tools, can you tell me the benefits of that over using sparkpeople? e-Tools is something i've never tried and thought maybe i would give that a shot as well, esp. since my insurance offers a discount...
sorry for the long post but i felt it was time to come clean... :o)
happy thursday...