Week 14 and 15 recap

I missed my week 14 recap due to being quite busy with work and other aspects of my life, so I'm just going to fill in everything for both weeks 14 and 15 now. Since week 13, I've lost another 5 pounds which puts me at a total of 39 pounds lost. I lost two pounds in week 14 and three pounds in week 15. I'm really happy because as I mentioned in a previous post, I was at my sticking point from before, so I was worried that it was going to be a bit difficult to move myself past that previous threshold. But, the weight just came off the same way it has throughout the program so far.

I got potatoes and starchy vegetables back this week, but I haven't even had anything other than some corn in my black bean and corn salsa yesterday. Basically, if I want to have starchy vegetables, I need to make a trade off with whole grains and I'd much rather have the whole wheat bread for a sandwich than a baked potato. That might change eventually, but for now, I'm not too worried about incorporating potatoes. My nutritionist, C., gave me the name of some oven-baked french fries that I can have, but I didn't make it to PCC or Whole Foods this weekend to find them. So, I'll have to try and make it over there sometime this week to see what I find. I know that I need to stay away from french fries in restaurants, since they're all deep fried and definitely not anything resembling a whole potato with skin and hence totally devoid of nutrients. I have noticed that my fat intake inches up slightly on weekends, so I need to watch that. I'm never outrageously over my range, but sometimes I'll go over by a few grams. C. hasn't been too worried about it, but it's something that I want to make sure I keep better track of. At least it's healthy fats like nuts, avocado, olive oil, etc. But you can get too much of a good thing, so I'm putting myself on notice.

Exercise has been going well. My trainer, J., and I have been playing squash once a week and it's really fun. I'm getting a little bit better each time. My IT band issue is getting a lot better. My left leg tends to have more problems than the right, but it's getting slowly better. J. did the foam rolling on me last week and really dug in on an area that was sore. After a few rounds of that, I begged for mercy. It's progress, though. J. has me do a lot of exercises to strengthen my glutes to help with that whole issue, too.

Yesterday, my pedometer tracked just over 20,000 steps, which is the highest count so far. L. and I went for a run/walk along the Burke Gilman yesterday and it was so beautiful out. We wandered over to Marymoor park and then headed back the other direction once we'd walked through the park. Having our headphones and music with us made us able to run a bit farther than we typically do. Usually we set a goal in the distance to run to and then walk, and repeat, but with the music we try to run for a whole song and it typically works. I'm really impressed that my endurance has improved so much. Then we went to the Bellevue Mall to pick up some things for my mom and get Mother's Day stuff. And last night we went to a swing dance. So, that all worked out to over 9 miles of walking, running, and dancing for yesterday. Not bad. Previously my best step count has been just over 15,000. I generally get at least 5,000 a day if not more.

As I was getting ready for the dance last night, I put on a pair of black pants that I had kept after my try ons a few weeks ago, and they just hung off of me. So, I'm starting a new pile of clothes to give away. I still have a pile of things to try and take to a consignment shop, but I'll probably just take everything at one time to sell. It will be a bit more organized that way.