A Check In with Progress!

My temperamental scale was quite a bit more agreeable this morning when I got on but it could have been concerned for it's life being shortened too.  I was very pleasantly pleased to find out I was down 4 lbs.  Yahoo!  It's always nice to see progress.  10 more to go for my goal weight.  Yahoo!  Sorry, I may be going a bit overboard on the "yahoo's" but all my efforts are finally paying off and that's always nice to have happen.  Maybe I'll treat the scale to a new battery; maybe...

This last week, I've really started paying attention to food portions and have purposely been putting my food on smaller plates to make them appear larger than they really are.  A bit of a mind game with myself but it seems to work.  I will admit that I've been visiting the fast food places STILL.  It's not good of me but I will say that I've been avoiding ordering combo meals and ordering from the sides menu.  I've been ordering items such as the side salads and wraps.  But I will say I have fallen in love with McDonald's Real Berry Blends!  OMG!  I love the taste and they seem to be so filling.  I haven't checked the calorie or health contents on-line and I'm a bit afraid to because I'm not quite ready to give them up.  I treat it as a yummy whole lunch meal replacement.

My exercise had a little more variety this week.  I managed to get in some running and time on the elliptical machine too; not just the bike. 

My stats this week..

4.6 miles running

15 minutes on the elliptical

96 miles on the bicycle  

I'm planning on riding my first and only century on the bike tomorrow.  I just hope it's not too windy on this ride.  It's a relatively flat century (as flat as you can get in Utah) from Centerville, UT up to the Willard Bay Recreational area.  I did this same century about 5 years ago in my record time of 5 hours and 35 minutes.  But tomorrow, I'm not planning on doing it THAT fast.  I'm hoping to do it a little slower and come in under 7.5 hours.  I'll report on how it goes next week.  Till then keep your fingers crossed!

Furniture Jenga & Results...

It's that time of year again when I get the free carpet cleaning done.  Each year when I resign the lease for another year they give me a free carpet cleaning.  I usually save it until the Fall time of year just before I ended up having social occaisions and spending more time inside.  So here's a quick picture I took of what is usually my kitchen area....

Furniture Jenga in my small apartment kitchen.

It's always amazing what you can fit together when you set your mind to it and you are also dealing with limited space.  The kitchen has most of the living room furniture and some of the bedroom.  The futon, frame, and mattress filled up my bathroom.  It's funny that I can fit all of this furniture into 2 of the smallest rooms in my apartment.  The other funny thing is that I always forget how HARD it is to move my queen-sized futon mattress into the bathroom.  It's a WORKOUT and then some to move it from the bedroom, down the short excuse for a hallway and straight into the bathroom where I need to lan it against a wall so I can then carefully slide the futon frame into the rest of the bathroom.  I get another workout when I get home tonight and get to move all the furniture back.  LUCKY ME! Who needs weight training when you have furniture?  Really if I worked it out right I could get paid to workout by going door to door and offering to move people's furniture.  NAW~! Maybe NOT!

I finally got to look at the on-line results of a 6K Fun Run I did on October 8th.  It's the 2nd time I've done this Fun Run and it takes place at nearby Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  It's an all female event called "Love Your Body".  There's a choice of a 6K or 10K.  I opted to do the 6K this year and I'm glad I did because it was a rather rainy and cold run; which I didn't mind once I got warmed up but till then it was chilly.  I managed to finish the 6K in 41:32 and had an average mile time of 11:08.  Not too bad though I am now starting to wonder if the time was really off on the last 5K run I did where I average an almost 10 minute mile.  The more I do of these 5 & 6 K runs I think that one was a total fluke.  But I will say that I am happy with having a 11 min/mile average; especially when last year I was averaging a 12 min/mile.  This is good and a definite improvement.  I was 11th place out of 50 that were in my age group and placed 166 overall out of 647.  Not too shabby!