Posts by lbalthazor

Black Team

Week 0.   12/30-1/1: 167
Week 1.   1/6-1/8: 167.5
Week 2.   1/13-1/15: 165.5
Week 3.   1/20-1/22:
Week 4.   1/27-1/29:
Week 5.   2/3-2/5:
Week 6.   2/10-2/12:
Week 7.   2/17-2/19:
Week 8.   2/24-2/26:

Hello everyone!

This is my first post and I'm short of time, but here's a brief intro.

I am a 28-year-old female from Madison, WI.  I work at a newspaper, am a piano teacher, and am a student - I am working towards earning my teacher's certification.  I graduated with my Bachelor's in Music and English 4 years ago. 

I started gaining weight my freshman year (started around 130) and continued to gain up to my current and all-time-high weight of 167.5.  Yes, my current weight is actually a half pound higher than the starting weight I recorded last week!  Grrr..  I've actually been on track with diet and exercise this week (for the first time in a long time), so hopefully it's just water fluctuation.  I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow and then record on the Biggest Loser thread, hoping that the half pound will come off. 

My weight loss journey has been up and down for the last 4 years.  I've gained about 10 pounds just in the last year.  I am really frustrated, but I think that this time, my habits will stick.  I just switched gyms to one that is open 24 hours and is right across the street from me!  I actually love to work out, but had a difficult time fitting it in, so this should help!  I have also drastically cut down my consumption of alcohol over the last few weeks.  I haven't seen results from that yet, but I'm sure that I will.  (I quit drinking for a year once and lost 10 pounds in a couple months.)  I am not quitting this time, but I have cut myself down from an "often" drinker to a "sometimes" drinker and now to an "occasional" drinker, which I feel like is a long-term change that I can stick with. I can at least be proud of that!

Leigh-Ann

• GW 160
  
• CW 165.5
  
• Bust-Waist-Hips (in inches, please) 37.5-33-40 (my measurements last week were 38-34-40, the measurements posted in the first post are incorrect)
• Worst Food-Choice of the Week - pizza hut
  
• Best Food Choice of the Week - Total cereal with cranberries
  

I'm stunned that I lost weight.  I've been sick, so haven't been working out, but I suppose that my appetite has been affected as well.

OMG - Christmas cookies are starting to arrive in the office.  I'm doomed!

• GW - 160
  
• CW - 167
  
• Bust-Waist-Hips (in inches, please) - 38-24-40 (I measured incorrectly last week, so let's not count those)
  
• Worst Food-Choice of the Week - Rocky Rococo pizza today
  
• Best Food Choice of the Week - lemon pepper fish on a bed of lettuce
  
• Recipe to Exchange - French Toast

I gained half a pound!  I'm actually happy that I didn't gain more, because I had a number of dinner and drinking events last week.  It was a bad week to start a challenge, I guess.

Original Post by mspw:

Y'alls bad foods are funny!  My favorite so far is the 3 tootsie pops lbalthazor had!  I used ot LOVE those when I was kid.  Been a long time.  Will be a long time.  My concern is more for the $10K+-worth of dental work I have in my mouth and have still managed to lose a molar.  Me + Sugar = Payday for my Dentist! 

Oh yeah!  My roommate bought a big bag of them, so I've been stealing them out of her cupboard.  I love them so much.

That is a good idea.  I tend to drink too fast.  So, that might help to slow me down.  I tend to gravitate towards red wine, though, so I'll have to come up with a good mixer for that.

I've been watching the Alias DVD's lately, so right now, I would say Jennifer Garner (as she looked on Alias).  Too skinny, I'm sure, but she can kick ass! 

I also believe it's highly unlikely, but I just checked the settings again and they are right.  I'm also very disappointed that I just spent $100 on a contraption that is so wrong.  Also, I was not in a car.  But, I wonder if there was something interfering with it?  The polar F4 has a special feature where it isn't supposed to be affected by other people's moniters, though.

I will say that I do have a high resting heartrate.  At least I think it's high.  The lowest I've seen this thing go is into the mid-70's.  A high heart rate is not healthy and something that I'm hoping to bring down by exercising, but could it make it appear that i'm working harder than I really am.  I don't believe that the workout affected anything, because I was already up to a 2,000 number by then.  The weird thing is that the heart rate moniter seemed to be right on during my workout.  The 400 calorie burn for almost an hour on the elliptical seemed reasonable.

Okay, here's my side of the story. I do not claim to be a vegetarian. I tell people that I eat mostly vegetarian, except for occasional fish. I do this because most people don't know the word pescetarian. I did choose this diet for ethical reasons after reading "Animal Liberation" by Peter Singer. He spoke a lot about the ethics of your diet and the different levels of vegetarian/vegan-ism. His argument wasn't that we shouldn't eat animals, because they are living creatures, but because the farming industry is cruel and animals shouldn't be made to suffer. He didn't focus so much on the death of animals as he did on their lives and how inhumane they were treated on farms. It was a long time ago when I read the book, but I believe that he argued that while fish do suffer in death, they do not spend a lifetime of suffering. Anyways, back to the many "layers" of vegetarianism.

The question that it comes down to is where do you draw the line. Some people reduce the amount of meat they eat. Some people don't eat red meat. Some people don't eat any meat. These are all good things, because they reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Singer believed and asked that his readers, at the very least, did not eat farm animals. If they were willing to do more, even better if they could cut out fish, and incredible if they could cut out eggs and dairy.

So, yes I'm doing the minimum. I don't eat factory farm animals, and I choose not to eat any other land animals, even if they do die a humane death, simply because I am accustomed to not eat meat. I eat fish and seafood on occasion. I avoid products that have been tested on animals, I give money to the ASPCA, I only adopt my pets from shelters, etc. I do what little I can and I think that's better than doing nothing.

For those of us who do this for ethical reasons, we cannot be black and white. We cannot expect people to do all or nothing. Nothing will change then.