Amanda 6.30.06

Hello to all! sorry i've not been blogging a whole lot lately. I am happy to report that i am now down to 130 lbs. yes, girls that's right, i've lost a total of 19 1/2 lbs. It really started coming off when i quit drinking juice and pop and made water my bestfriend. Of course, tom and i are exercising regularly too. It's so great to NOT fit into my size 10 clothes anymore!!! I think it's time for a little shopping! Oh...another thing i wanted to share is that my mom has been on the Dr. Phil diet and she has a very hard time loosing weight. Well, on this diet she has lost a total of 18 lbs. already. Thought i'd share that with you all. Keep working!!! You can do it!!!

Alicia 6.28.06

Whew. We arrived home late last night and I am DONE traveling for the summer. I look forward to a boring July when I can re-establish our daily routines and focus on my weight goals again.

Chloe and I had a fabulous time visiting my mom and surprising her for her 50th birthday. (I'll post more on the bday party on my regular blog). I didn't do so fabulously with my eating though. My sister was also in Wisconsin visiting and since she only comes to the states once a year (she lives in New Zealand), she was eating all the bad food she doesn't get at home. That made it easier for me to eat badly too. :(

I'm not dwelling too much on my failures. I just want to get started at my exercise routine again and get some healthy food in the house. My new goal is to get down to 140 by the end of the summer. I plan to achieve that goal by jogging every other day and doing my exercise ball dvd in between the jogging days.

What a roller coaster ride this weight loss adventure is! So hard to lose the weight and so easy to gain it. Pray for me as I get going again.

Shannon 6.27.06

Hello all! I have not given up the "fight" even though I haven't been posting. I still have been working at losing. I lost a couple more pounds and did well while at my in-laws. They really eat well, so there wasn't a lot of temptations. I'm going to my parents this next week, so I need prayer that I will be good! I'm hoping my mom and I will get a chance to exercise a lot too. They have stairs - so I don't even need a stair stepper! Karis and I are going to try to swim this week, so that will be good. Hope everyone else is doing well. I have been busy with trips this summer so haven't had a lot of blogging time, but after this trip, things will slow down a bit.

Heather 6.24.06

Hello all! I didn't realize that it has been so long!

I am doing good! I know the last time I had posted I was down a few pounds. I still have managed to stay on top of things! Today when I stepped on the scale, I was happy to see that I am 2 more pounds down! Yeah!! I haven't been able to walk as much this last week, but I think the stress of my work situation and landscaping our back yard has helped me keep the weight off and lose a couple more pounds.

We leave tomorrow to go camping for a week! Please pray that I will make the right decisions! I don't want to have to play catch up when I get home!

Hang in there everyone!!! You ALL are doing GREAT!!!

Katie - 6.24.06

Well, I'm still not doing that great - I'm working on it. Pray for motivation!

I mostly wanted to give everyone a heads up that we have a new member! She'll be posting and introducing herself soon. Maybe she'll give us a second wind. :)

I have to say that I am not doing very well about the whole excercising stuff. BUT . . . I am watching what I eat and taking smaller portions without snacks in between meals. I am happy to say that I have lost 2.5 more pounds. Today I had somebody ask me if had lost weight - I was happy to say "yes."

A friend told me once, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." I am not sure if skinny is the right word there. Maybe it should be, "Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels." However, I think of this quote often. We leave this weekend to go camping and I will be very upfront by telling you that I do not plan on sticking to a strict diet. Nor do I plan on pigging out. It's all about balance. I hope you are all doing well! I appreciate the accountability.

Alicia - 5.17.06

Hello old pals! Forgive my long blogging absence from Fighting Words. I have been back home for more than a week now but I have been prolonging this posting because I don't have good news to report. The bad news is I gained back 5 pounds. :( I have a lot of excuses, but the main reason is because I got lazy during the last week or so of our trip. My defenses came tumbling down!

I started out great and for the first 2 weeks or so of the vacation; I was right on track. I didn't keep up with my jogging but I did lots of walking with Chloe. My mom's refrigerator was helpful in my quest (and I was so worried about that!). I did a lot of eating out but I tried to be good. My mom and I did eat ice cream occassionally but we opted for light Breyer's.

The trouble came during the last leg of our trip at my brother-in-law's home. Everyone had been telling me I looked so skinny - my sister-in-law especially - so I felt I had a license to eat more. Another contributing factor is that I have a mild form of hypoglycemia. That means I need to eat every 3-5 hours and if I don't get food in time I get shaky, dizzy, and sick. While at Ben and Diane's home, I realized quickly that they don't eat their meals within my needed time frame. So, I'd get hungry and shaky and then just devour mass quantities of food (often it wasn't very healthy food).

It wasn't until I got home and saw my extra flab that I realized how easy it is to put the pounds back on and how hard it is to get them off. I guess I had reasoned that when I got down to a skinny me, I could just coast and go back to eating what I wanted. "Not so!", said my 28 year old metabolism. Grrrrrrrrr. So, it's back to the drawing board for me. Like Katie, I'm already slimming a little now that I'm home and am surrounded by good healthy food. I haven't recommenced my jogging routine yet - I'm a little scared to since it's been so long. I have instead been doing a 30 minute pilates/exercise ball dvd my gramma gave me. Yes, I did say my gramma. She's a workout queen. I've also been walking a lot, doing 100 crunches a night and controlling my eating.

Please pray for me to stay disciplined about my workout routine and also for God to give me grace to eat well. Also, Chloe and I are going back to WI on Wednesday for my mom's 50th. Pray that I can make healthy choices and that I stay active during the visit. Thanks sistahs!

Katie - 6.15.06

Hel-loo, anyone still out there movin' their fannies? :)I know several of us have been traveling, and the start of summer means more time outside and less time to blog. Yay! I should've mentally prepared for my trip to WI more, because I ate and ate and ate. Why oh why? Ah, well this is life, I suppose. Time to get back to the old routine - healthy eating, limited snacks and walking away those pounds! To be honest, I gained back 5.5 pounds. Can you belive it? But, it's already falling off since I've been home. Since the move, I hadn't really exercised (other than moving, which was exercise in itself). However, I kept weighing myself, and was shocked to see myself continue to lose weight! When I went to WI, I had lost 16 pounds. As of this morning, I've lost 12, so I have four more vacation pounds to get rid of. Hopefully they'll come off easily too. I would ideally like to lose 10 more pounds before April's wedding on August 5, but I'm not sure how realistic that is. Our bridesmaids dresses are SO cute, and I would obviously like to look okay in it. The good news is, I can now zip it up. So, I've lost a good 2-3 inches to just do that. Anyways, I was able to do my 2-mile DVD both yesterday morning and this morning. This a.m., I went over to my m-i-l's and we did it together, which is fun. Then I spent the day there cleaning, which burned calories, I'm sure! I have plenty to keep me busy at my own house too, so hopefully will stay on the move.

You may have noticed, our chatterbox went away. We didn't use it, and after so many weeks, they delete it.

I hope everyone is doing okay and is enjoying warm weather and lots of time outdoors. We have yet to break in my in-laws pool, but this weekend is supposed to reach the 90s, so I think we'll have to do some canon balls on Saturday! I'm looking forward to hearing how everyone's doing, so log on let your peeps know what's going on!