5 pounds gained,5 pounds lost

This week turned out to be a pretty good week. I heard back from the dermatologist that the results from my excision were clear(no more melanoma) and I also got my stitches out on Friday. The nurse that took them out told me my scar was ,"one of the prettier melanoma scars she's seen." Odd to hear, but i guess that's a good thing. :)
I logged all my food and as I started feeling better I started walking more on the treadmill. Which apparently paid off and I lost 5.1! It's exciting but it's just the same 5 pounds I gained the week prior to and week of the surgery. I really thought it would take me 5 weeks to get it back off. I'm so glad that's not the case. Next goal is to get out of the 170's...again.

I've gotta kick in into high gear because it's summertime and vacation is right around the corner! I'm so excited!

I went shopping with my mom & aunt while in OKC this weekend. There was a great store called Shoe Carnival that had Buy One, Get One Half Off. :) These were my finds!

Starting Over...again

I had my lovely surgical excision on Wednesday to remove the melanoma. It wasn't bad. They numbed it up, so I couldn't feel a thing. My husband came in with me, and my parents waited in the waiting room. My husband was there for moral support with such comments like ,"Wow, look at that!", and "You're gonna have a cool scar babe!" It was great! Lol. But really It made it a little more light hearted and I made it out without crying, and if you know me I cry about everything! Matt told me the incision was about 3 inches by 2 inches and they went down about an inch deep. A little bigger than I'd first thought! But the doctor said since it's on my back they can take a larger area and that is fine with me. As long as they get it all out, I can live with a scar. I'll find out the results sometime this week and I go back to have the stitches removed on Friday.

I haven't done any exercise until today. I walked a mile on the treadmill at a very slow rate, since I'm not supposed to do anything that makes me sweat. I stayed home from work both Thursday and Friday which means I was home all day with food, and food, and more food. I have been eating. Nervous eating. Bored eating. It's been terrible. I stepped on the scale last night and my eyes about popped out of my head. It was so scary! I know the majority of the gain is because of my poor eating and lack of exercise both last week and this week. Then I also have been on a new BC pill that my doctor said would make me gain water weight. It's my 2ND week on them.

After the facing of the scale last night, I decided I had to get a grip! I'm back to logging everything, measuring everything, and eating only when I'm hungry not just because there's nothing else to do. It also feels great to walk a bit, I'll try to do that a few other times today. I know I need time to heal physically I just got to get things under control emotionally and get back to eating healthy. Eating crap = feeling like crap, eating healthy = feeling healthy and HAPPY!

Tonight we have a concert to go to. Nickelback, Shinedown, and Breaking Benjamin!!!!!!
We bought the tickets MONTHS ago and I've been excited to go, but didn't foresee this happening. I asked my husband last night to see if any of his friends would want to go but since it's such short notice, no on can. So I'm going, and I hope I can handle sitting/standing that long. Doors open at 5:30 and I'm sure Nickelback doesn't go on til pretty late. Last night was the first time I could actually lay on my back, I haven't been able to lean back in a chair yet. So we shall see! We will eat an early dinner and I'll smuggle in some good snacks in my purse just in case. :)
I hope y'all have a healthy and active weekend!

My battle wound.

Things are looking up!

I feel so much relief after everything today. I finally heard back from the dermatologist office and they scheduled me for next Wednesday. I read on there website what they will be doing. It's called Surgical Excision & it's the most common treatment for melanoma skin cancers. I feel SOOOO much better knowing this is scheduled, and everything will be fine.

I also had been nervous about my first breast sonogram. Matt knew I was worried(he's actually been worried too), and he left school early to meet me at the office. I thought that was very sweet of him, and it made me feel a lot better. They were super nice and right off the bat after the doctor started the procedure, she asked me if I'd lost a significant amount of weight. Apparently that accounts for the lumps that they found at my gyno visit, and she said had she examined me, she would have sent me to a specialist too. But she said everything was normal and there's no need to worry. I also found out I'm not "high risk" like I thought. But since my g-ma who had breast cancer had no siblings, and my mother had the preventative surgery before she was diagnosed there's no way to tell if I have the genetic marker for breast cancer.

So things are looking up! I got off my bad food wagon today. Today has been great! I've only had 1300 calories. Well under my 1800 limit. After the crap I've consumed all week, I think it's okay to have a couple low cal days.

I'm looking forward to the weekend. We are going to OK to visit family. Normally this is a caution area when it comes to food. My family is all big because we LOVE to eat. I mean who doesn't? But I'm not stressing over it this time, because my brother has been counting calories and wearing his bodybugg so i know I'll be okay at his house. He lost 9 pounds his first week! Punk. No seriously I'm happy for him. :) Hooray for healthy family members to help us in the weight loss process! I love it!

Gotta go get my jog on! :)

Weigh Day!

This morning was my weekly weigh in. I lost another pound! I am pleased with that. We've had a busy weekend. Yesterday I went to a wedding shower, then an art festival, and then saturday night church. Today my husband ran in the Warrior Dash 5K (with crazy obstacles). It was a lot of fun to watch. He's never done any 5k's before and he did a great job!

I'm not really looking forward to this week. I should hear back from my doc and get my dermatologist appt set up. I talked to my good friend who also had a melanoma spot removed and she said she had her consultation on one day and two days later they did the surgery. So i'm expecting it to be fast. Then Thursday I have my breast sonogram.

So it's going to be tough, but I know everything is going to be alright. I just gotta keep eating right, logging everything, and working out. I don't want this to derail me.

Matt right after he crossed the finish line.

with two other teachers from his school that did the race too.Matt finished ahead of them :)

Biopsy Results

A couple weeks ago at my yearly exam my nurse practitioner pointed out a mole on my neck and said,"I can take that off for you." So I decided to have it done and told her I had a mole on my back that I want checked because it was darker than the rest and it popped up in the last couple years (since I was burned badly playing on the beach in Galveston). So last week I had a couple moles taken off and the one on my back biopsied. Today my nurse practitioner called me with the results. They found melanoma around the edge of the mole and I have to go see a dermatologist to have a larger removed. I was in shock. I was at work and I couldn't stop crying. Melanoma? Melanoma is cancer...I have skin cancer. It could be just the one spot, but what if there's more?
I'm feeling a little better after talking with my husband and I went and saw my parents and they took us out to eat. My mom told me not to worry, it's not our kind of cancer. Lol. It's true, breast cancer and colon cancer are the ones that run in our family. Speaking of breast cancer, I have to go next Thursday to do a breast sonogram because I'm high risk and they don't do mammograms for women under 30. So now that they found melanoma I'm even more freaked out about my breast exam.

I'm going to relax and try not to thing about it anymore tonight. I'm all cried out.

Sucess at last with C25K-W9

I just ran for 30 minutes!!!!!!



I'm so excited! I have been doing the C25K program for weeks and have loved it. But when I got to the final week (5 min warmup/30 min run/5 min cooldown), I just couldn't complete it. It was so frustrating because week 8 had me jogging for 28 minutes. So why was 2 extra minutes harder for me? I attempted it multiple times and would have to quit after getting extreme side pain.

This afternoon when I got home from work I googled the issue. I found an article that had some helpful tips on breathing. So I decided to give it a try and focus on that. I'm happy to say it worked! I did start to feel a slight pain creeping up but I knew I only had 3 songs left so I just slowed down slightly and kept on breathing. :)



Here are some other changes I made today that I think really helped me.

• I plugged my iphone into our home stereo instead of wearing it. This helped me because I couldn't look down and see how much time I had left, and I couldn't fiddle with the music.


• I built a timed playlist. I had way to many songs on there before. I also tried some Christian Rock/Rap. Something more uplifting than the angry rock music that I thought was helping me.


• I covered the top of the treadmill so I couldn't see any time, distance, or speed level. I just adjusted my speed for what felt comfortable.


• I prayed. I knew I wasn't going to be able to do this on my own.

I'm off to get dinner going. Another Hungry Girl recipe perhaps? Yes, I'm obsessed.

Weekly recap

I'm sad to say that the momentum of last week fizzled out Sunday shortly after I wrote my last blog. I had a great week & lost over 3 lbs and I indulged a little too much that night...and the next day...and the next. This week I fell apart at night or if I was home alone. Like the calories don't count if nobody sees me eat them!? Then I did something I haven't done since I started wearing my bodybugg-I ate food and didn't log it. I "eyeballed" measurements instead of my usual measuring of EVERYTHING. And just like I expected I weighed this morning and had gained .8. I remember my Weight Watcher leader telling us before if you kind of track your food you will kind of lose weight. Tracking is KEY...and the only way to know what I'm actually eating is to write it all down.

Lately I've been getting a lot of compliments on my weight loss/looks. It has been awesome & makes me so happy! I mean, who doesn't like to be complimented?!? But I think instead of using the compliments to further my desire to work hard I've done the opposite and I know that's no excuse to let myself "splurge" on things. For example this week it was spinach dip with baked tostitos. I found this spinach dip made with yogurt that was only 45 calories a serving...yeah I consumed the entire container by myself in 2 days! Then I tried Kashi Go Lean Crunch with my yogurt and I've had it everyday at least once and sometimes twice. I can't get enough of the Kashi! I've got to get control of myself.

I also wasn't so great with my workouts this week. I wanted to repeat week 8 of C25K and increase my speed a little but everyday I tried to run I quit early. I know I can do it. I'm physically capable of jogging for 30 min straight it's just in my head that I can't do it.
So this week I will try again. My knee was hurting after I did the P90X Kenpo workout tonight so I didn't run. Hopefully I can start back up with it tomorrow.

There were some fun positives things that happened this week.

I had my yearly "woman" exam and my doc was extremely happy at my progress. It was fun. Well, about as fun as that kind of visit could be!

I got to celebrate my birthday with my husband's family and had a great time. My brother in law and I share the same b-day.

We got to go to a large Christian music concert Friday night that included 7 bands. It was awesome & made me feel old because I got a headache 3 bands in and was yawning and sleepy at 9:30.

Saturday I got to spend quality time with my best friend. We got pedicures and went shopping and stumbled upon a new store that super fun. It's an accessories store and it's set up by color. So all of the pink jewelry is grouped together with the pink purses,sandals,cute tops,etc. And so on for every color you can think of. I attached some pics of what I bought. I now think I need to go back and buy more so I can have jewelry and bags for every outfit! I just don't think my husband would go for that.

Anyway I'm just rambling now & I need to go to bed. It was a bad week food/exercise wise but a great week personally. I just hope to get back to my routine this week and be below 170 next Sunday.



1st day finds:some earrings, a heart necklace watch and a Dream,Wish,Believe necklace.






Day 2 purchases with my mom: Hot Orange purse, 2 chunky rings & another pair of earrings.





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