Wow it is April already. And that means my birthday is coming up! April 13th I’ll maybe finally become an adult? Cause I think while you’re in your 20s you can still get away with being young and stuff but once the 30s come, well that doesn’t quite feel so young. As you can see I’m not super excited about leaving the 20s behind, but then again I mourned my teens. So maybe I’ll be OK. In any case I believe you can celebrate your birthday all month long so I hope to have a lot of fun this month I’m definitely looking forward to my birthday trip and getting to spend time with my parents. I’m sad that hubby won’t be here for my birthday but that’s the way it goes.

This past weekend was really awesome. Hubby came home for his final pass before the “real” deployment starts and they leave the country. I took a few days off and we had a really nice long weekend just hanging out and spending time together. I shared him once when we had dinner with another couple we are close friends with, but otherwise it was just us. We watched some TV and movies, played some more Lego Harry Potter on the PS3 (we still have part 2 of year 7 to finish when he returns, so we’re almost done with the game but the finish will have to wait), ate out a bit (had sushi twice!) but I still tried to follow my diet plans and still managed to lose a pound this week! It was a really enjoyable and relaxing time and I needed a break from work anyway since I just finished a major project before taking the few days off and it was a bit hectic.

I have been on Jenny Craig for 3 weeks. I’ve basically gotten the hang of the way they want me to eat as well as making adjustments as necessary. For example, on the weekends when I’m basically sleeping through my normal breakfast time, I can combine the mid-morning snack with the lunch meal to get back on a schedule that is easy to follow. Otherwise, I would be eating dinner at like 9pm! So far I have lost about 3 and a half pounds. I notice a lot of fluctuation in my weight during the week, which I find kind of strange at times especially if I don’t have any “my days” with book club pot lucks that week. I guess I can say I’m averaging a pound lost a week, and they say you should lose 1-2 pounds each week so that is normal, but I’m really wanting to maximize that per week. I guess if I do more activities that would help. I did activities this weekend though. Saturday I went for a long walk while carrying heavy objects (at the mall) ha! And Sunday my neighbor and I walked for over an hour. So that’s something. But I do need to start doing more activities during the week. I’m just so tired after a long day. I’m hoping that with my birthday coming up in a couple of weeks I won’t end up gaining a lot of that back. But I will want a slice of cake!

I just started Jenny Craig. I decided I can’t seem to get this weight loss thing done on my own so I figured Jenny could help me. My first day was yesterday and the food arrived on Tuesday. I also had my first consultation phone call Tuesday evening. Here are my thoughts so far.

Signing up. The website has a call me back right now feature so you enter your contact information and you get a call back right away while someone connects you with another someone who will actually be signing you up. What I found a bit annoying is person 1 either did not send or did not have the ability to send person 2 my contact information so I had to provide it multiple times. I also didn’t like having to spell everything over the phone. It would have been much easier to fill out a contact details form online and then have the representative be able to access that info during the call. I was able to select my food over the phone by looking at their menu and picking based on the photos. It was basically me listing off the names of the foods that looked appealing as I moved down the list. Again this might have been automated better but whatever. They had a promotion of 30 days free just pay the cost of food, and then you can renew with whatever plan is available at that time. I paid over the phone and a month worth of food came to just under $600. This includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack per day.

Welcome phone consultation. On Tuesday a huge box was waiting for me when I got home. Some of the items I ordered could be kept in the pantry so they were in a separate box and below that box was a large cooler with all the frozen items. The boxes are about the same size, maybe a bit smaller than the lean cuisine boxes I’ve been eating. The mailing also contained a welcome packet with a booklet and a week 1 menu. When I got the call from my consultation person I expected a lot of information and step by step details. The call lasted maybe 20 minutes. She basically gave me a brief overview and told me to put together my week 1 menu right away and then check off things as I eat them or make notes of what I changed during the course of that week. She told me to add vegetables and salad with lunch and dinner and a fruit and milk product with breakfast. She also said eat another milk product as a mid-morning snack, a fruit as a mid-afternoon snack and then a dessert as a mid-evening snack. Basically they are having me eat every 2.5-3 hours to keep my metabolism high. I asked about off days when I know I have book club or lunch plans with a friend and she said I can either eat before I go and just go for the social aspect and not eat during the event, or I can eat mostly vegetables or salad and have a small serving of meat and starch. That was kind of an expected answer – don’t eat good stuffs when you go out. Guess I have to bring vegetables as my book club potlucks. No more pasta salads or casseroles lol. Then she sent me an email with some links and her contact information if I have any questions during the week until my next consultation the following Tuesday. I expected a lot more hand holding and I actually expected them to help me make my week 1 menu to get me to understand what I was to do. I kinda felt overwhelmed at first. Especially since their menu has blanks where you can put in what food item you are eating, and then the other additives are written in for you. It wanted me to eat a salad with my lunch, but I don’t want to have to carry salad makings with me to work so I switched it to having a salad with my dinner like I have been doing and then just eating vegetables with my lunch. That overwhelmed me a bit at first because being Tuesday and not a weekend I didn’t have the time to go grocery shopping. So I found some canned vegetables and canned fruit in my pantry and I plan to eat those until the weekend comes when I can go to the store. I also am allowed extras in the form of unlimited items such as vegetables and sugar-free drinks and sweets and limited items (up to 3) of fruits, condiments, hard candy, etc.

Day 1. Breakfast was crazy for me because I’m not used to eating much in the morning. And it didn’t help that I had to get up an hour earlier for a meeting at work that was earlier than I usually get there. So I was eating breakfast much earlier than I’m used to, and I ate so much more than I am used to. I had one of their sunrise sandwiches, a cup of milk, and some canned fruit. I was so full. I couldn’t take a deep breath. And I skipped my mid-morning snack because I just couldn’t bear to eat anything until lunch time. The rest of the day went better. The lunch meal I ate was Swedish meatballs with some canned vegetables. I also had some jolly ranchers cause the food left a weird taste in my mouth. Then I had an apple for a mid-afternoon snack like I always do. Then for dinner I had the cheese ravioli meal and a salad. For the last snack I had their cookie. The cookie’s taste was kind of disappointing but still a cookie is a cookie and it had chocolate. I did have a headache by the end of the day and had to take some medication. I think it is from the food changes, and I’m sure they put something in their food to keep you full from the smaller portions.

Day 2. When I weighed myself this morning I had lost 2 pounds! It is kinda strange that I lost 2 pounds in one day, especially when I didn’t feel hungry during the day. But if this is what I can expect I’m all in. Today went better with breakfast and other foods. I didn’t have such a hard time with eating as much during my normal breakfast time, and I found that eating a yogurt was less filling than drinking milk. It was weird to eat two yogurts today though (the second yogurt was my mid-morning milk product snack). I’m allowed to substitute a string cheese for the milk product so I’m excited to buy some this weekend. Yay string cheese! I haven’t had my dinner yet and I don’t know if I’ll end up with a headache by the end of the day toady but so far I haven’t felt super hungry, just normal hungry when it was time to eat again, and hopefully I can stick with it this month and see what results I get.

So a couple of weeks ago I bought an elliptical machine off someone on craigslist. I’ve been using it almost daily and it is a really good workout. I got a high quality one. I’ve also been tracking what I eat again using MyFitnessPal. I started using it last fall after I quit weight watchers (cause I didn’t want to continue paying for it) and I decided to start using it again since I’m back on the wagon or whatever. Here’s my little ticker that shows my progress. To date I lost 3 pounds already and I just started like two weeks ago

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter

A neighbor of mine has been doing yoga and convinced me to try it out with her. We went yesterday (Saturday) at noon to a beginning yoga class at Joy Yoga studios in Houston. It turned out to be a very intense class and later my neighbor told me it was nothing like a beginning class. So I survived a class that was taught more like an all-levels class. I took the easier modifications or didn’t do some of the poses if they were too hard, and I made sure to be gentle on my poor feet. It was definitely a work out and I was sore and sweaty after the class. On our way home we stopped by My Fit Foods to get a healthy lunch. I felt really good after, I mean really relaxed, and ended up taking a long nap. We decided to go again today (Sunday). Turns out since she referred me I get my first week free, so we took advantage of it and I got two free sessions. I won’t be going during the week since I won’t go alone and she gets off work at 4 while I get off at 5:30, so we wouldn’t be able to go on the same schedule. Today’s class was called Gentle Yoga. It was quite nice and I really liked this instructor. I can really tell I got a work out this weekend cause my legs and shoulders are so sore. Hopefully this will help get me active, since I’ve been so lazy.

Yesterday was not a happy day. We started off the day with a dental appointment for both me and hubby at 9 am. It was supposed to be a routine check up and cleaning. Well they found 3 cavities under my existing fillings! So I guess my childhood dentist sucked and didn’t do a good job so the fillings started to leak. Also, they think I grind my teeth at night (and suspect hubby might too) so we both got fitted for night guards. Awesome. So I had all 3 cavities filled yesterday, followed by a cleaning, and didn’t get out of there till 1 pm! I was so hungry but couldn’t eat until a half hour after my cleaning was done so I attacked my lunch when I finally got to work. Except it really hurt to eat. Not only were my teeth sensitive from the cleaning, my jaw was also in a lot of pain from having to hold my mouth open all that time. I took an Excedrin but it didn’t help.

Then when I got to work my computer had restarted and I lost all the windows and files I had opened but not saved to my desktop for reference (since I didn’t expect they would close) at the end of the day yesterday. So I had to start over and find things. Then the network was giving everyone trouble and my folders kept shutting down and files I had open on the network kept freezing. I finally gave up and copied what I was working on to my desktop to keep that from happening.

Finally, driving home my power adapter mp3 player that broadcasts over my speakers disintegrated. Yes, I plugged it in, and it didn’t work, so I pushed it in farther cause sometimes it doesn’t make contact quite right, and it exploded in my hands into little pieces of dead electronics. So I had to drive home in traffic without being able to listen to my audio books that make traffic bearable. And yes, radio sucks. Also, my power adapter stopped working when the mp3 player broke (I plugged in my cellphone charger to test it), I had hubby take a look at the power adapter when I got home and turned out it blew a fuse, probably when the mp3 player went POOF. So he replaced the fuse and at least that’s fixed.

Yea, so the day thought it was a Monday of Mondays but it was actually a Tuesday and a really bad one.

Well, I’m now in my 3rd pair of contacts and still trying to figure out what works right. At distances, they are fantastic, but I’ve been having trouble seeing at my computer. Why is my screen blurry? My glasses never make my computer screen blurry, so why do the contacts correct at this distance? I guess this is something special to do with contacts. The doctor said some people see better in glasses than in contacts, and they do not work well for everyone. But I plan on trying all the different types before completing writing them off as an option. This third pair is slightly more expensive, but the computer screen looks better than in the previous ones I’ve tried. So maybe there’s hope yet.

I had my appointment with an eye doctor yesterday to get an updated prescription. Turns out, my last prescription is dated 2003! I know you’re supposed to get your eyes checked annually, and I knew I was behind, but I didn’t realize that much time had passed. Anyway I realized this because my glasses (of at least 7 years) started getting blurry and I started getting more headaches than usual. So I made an appointment.

I’ve been wearing glasses since senior year of high school, but since I’m near-sighted, I only actually wear them presentations/meetings (and to class back when I was a student) and when I drive. Oh, and to movies/theater. Otherwise, I walk around without them and usually end up squinting at people who are far away. So I decided it’s time to switch to contacts.

I’ve never had issues sticking my fingers in my eyes to get out a pesky eyelash so I figured this would be easy. I was shocked at how much my eyes resisted and I couldn’t fight back the reflect to shut my eyes every time I tried to insert the contacts. The lady was very patient with me but I’m sure she sees this all the time with first timers. My eyes were so red and teary when I was done. I had black tears all over my face heh. Maybe I should have washed off my makeup before going to the appointment. But I got fitted and I got my prescription. I have a week to try them out and my follow up appointment is in a week. Then we can see how I’m doing and make any changes if necessary before I pick up my 6 month supply. I also got a back up set of glasses and a pair of sunglasses to wear with my contacts. How awesome, I haven’t worn sunglasses in forever since my old glasses are transition lens. I did not pay for transition lenses with my new pair of glasses since it’s another hundred bucks and I hopefully will not wear them much. I’m to wear my contacts n0 more than 5 hours the first day and slowly increase 1 hour a day until I can wear them full time. Of course, I am to take them off at night. Since I have dry eyes I might have problems so the doctor gave me contact lens safe eye drops to help me out. I gotta hide my usual Visine since it will damage my contacts.

I also had my eyes dilated for the first time yesterday. I haven’t had it done before because I was in school and needed to be able to study after my appointment, which was on a Saturday morning. This appointment was in the evening after work and  I didn’t need to be able to read. But I was shocked at how bad my eyes were after dilation. I was so light sensitive, I felt like a vampire lol. But the scary thing was having to drive home after the appointment. I had hubby meet me on his way home from work to help me pick out my frames and I followed him home. I couldn’t tell how far away cars were because all I saw were bright headlights like the sun. My depth perception was completely off and it was really helpful to be able to follow him into lanes and turns. I couldn’t have done it safely if I had to drive alone. Next time maybe I can arrange it so he drives me. We thought that maybe it would have been better to leave my car there until the dilation wore off, but it didn’t fully go away when I went to bed last night so I’m glad I had my car already at the house. It was an interesting experience.

Hopefully I can make this contacts thing work

Well, after a month of physical therapy, I gotta say it helped a bit. My arches are feeling much better. But I’m still having heel pain, so it hasn’t helped completely. My follow up doctor’s appointment ended up being very expensive. Dr. said the next step is to get custom fitted orthodics, which are not covered by insurance so they are expensive (almost $500!) – but he said they are guaranteed to work or my money back, so I figured might as well. I kinda wish we went straight to this option before spending all that co-pay on 12 sessions of therapy. Dr. also gave me a night brace to wear on my left foot, but so far it’s just been keeping me up at night because it is so uncomfortable. Every time I roll over I wake up. Boo. So until the orthodics are ready, which I’m told will take 2-3 weeks, I’m still hobbling around. Which is sad because I was hoping to be done with this by now, but apparently anything that requires medical attention is not a one-stop-fix.

I’ve been having pain in my feet for about a year now. Pain in my arches and heels. It started out small and then kept  getting worse and eventually it got to the point that I can’t even go grocery shopping without pain. I think the Zumba classes at the gym made it worse because they’re so high impact and tough on your feet. I’ve quit going to the gym completely cause now even 30 minutes on an elliptical makes me cry. Anyway I finally got sick of it and made an appointment with a podiatrist. He ultrasound-ed my feet and told me my plantar fascia are inflamed in both feet. So now I’m diagnosed with plantar fasciitis. Great. He prescribed physical therapy for 3 days a week for 4 weeks. At first I was a little upset, because physical therapy sounds like something my grandma does, and people who have been injured seriously have to do. But it turns out it’s not so bad. I have 4 sessions left in my script and I gotta say I think it’s helping. My arches have gotten better but the pain in my heels has increased. The therapist said this is because the heels are the origin of the tendon. So the inflammation in the arch has decreased, and backed up to the origin. So if we keep at it the inflammation should go down in the origin as well. I’m not sure if 4 sessions is enough to do that or if the doctor will prescribe more. My insurance only covers 24 sessions in a calendar year so I don’t know if I will end up using them all up. In any case, I hope to get rid of this foot pain so I can be mobile again. It’s so hard to lose weight when I can’t even walk around!