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Weight Check-in Week 1

So I did weigh myself on Tuesday but neglected to post it here. Here's the catch up so that I'm on schedule for the next weigh in on Tuesday.

It was a disappointing 140.8 lbs. how can it be - I gained a pound! Hope to be going in the right direction next time.

Reality Check and Goal Setting

Well, after months of avoiding the scale I finally decided to step on it yesterday and see what the damage was from a European vacation, two major eating holidays and the onset of winter. It wasn't pretty, y'all. Tuesday morning 1/8/13 I weighed in at 139.6 pounds. Not cool. Ive got my work set out for me, that's for sure.

I'd like to lose 15 pounds by March 15th - that's in two months so it should be a reasonable amount of time - we're heading to a wedding and seeing a lot of my husband's family that we haven't seen in years. I'd like to look reasonably good, so I hope that's motivation. I'll do a weigh-in each Tuesday to see how I'm progressing. Wish me luck!

Another New Year's Resolution

Another one of my New Year's goals is to get our grocery spending under control. We spend an embarrassing amount of money on groceries and I know that we can cut it down a lot. To start I'm going to try and spend $400 this month on groceries - that might seem like a lot to some people but its quite a cut for us. My strategy has two main pieces 1) use cash only for our grocery purchases and 2) make things from scratch as much as possible. I guess there is also a third component which is to cut back on our meat consumption. We've been in a rut lately of meat being the main component of our meals so I'm going to try and get it down to an accent or a smaller piece of the whole instead of dominating the meal.

Today I'm making a savory strata to serve for dinner, using a rosemary rustic loaf and some leftover ham and feta cheese, plus some of the overabundance of eggs from the dairy delivery service we use. I'm making up the recipe, since every recipe I looked at had different proportions of eggs to bread to milk, so we'll see how it goes. I think it might be delicious though - if it turns out well I'll post a recipe either here or at my other site. I'm not sure how the kids will like the strata, so they're getting english muffin pizzas. 

New Year's Resolutions

I've been thinking about New Year's Resolutions the past few days - one resolution of course is to lose weight (sooo uncreative, I know)! Another one is to learn German. I speak English and Spanish right now, and ever since I learned Spanish I've loved knowing another language. This year I'd like to make a real push to learn German.

Last summer I came across the site Duolingo, which is a free language learning site. I used it a bit before our fall trip to Germany, and now I'm ready to really dedicate some time to it. Its pretty fun, because they have points and levels, kind of like a video game. I'm a lowly level 4 right now, but my resolution is to get through the course by the end of the year. What are your resolutions?

Back to Business

I think I'm ready to come back to this blog - I left it as I was just getting started because I wanted it to be something it wasn't, or maybe because I thought it needed to be something more than it was. Now I'm just looking for an outlet to express myself, and on this dreary day after Christmas when some of the holiday glow is already starting to wear off I'm in need of a project.

Something I do need to start back up with is weight loss - after a series of events this fall I've gained a ton of weight back that I'd lost over the past few years and its time to start putting in the work again. Of course I'm already telling myself it'll have to start after New Years, which is a damn poor excuse actually. A better excuse is when I've eaten all of the Christmas cookies in the house, obviously.

I'm going to check in here with my progress and document what's working and what's not - maybe if I'm brave enough I'll post one of those horrid before pictures.