Weekly update with pictures!

I've been pretty busy now that school has started again but I'm gonna try and at least do a weekly update, hopefully more if anything interesting happens. 

So as far as school, in my anatomy class we started doing cadaver lab which happens twice a week.  It was kinda freaky when we first walked in and saw the bodies but once we got started cutting it wasn't that bad..actually kinda cool! I'm sure a lot of people can not imagine this statement actually being true but it was for me! Also I had that class where I was afraid because we were gonna have to take our shirts off.  It wasn't that bad because the teacher wanted us to practice our draping skills so I was able to wear a hospital gown and wasn't fully exposed from the waist up minus the sports bra.  I know we will probably not be using the draping too much but at least I am able to ease into this new kind of learning.

My exercise and diet routine have changed somewhat since going back to school.  It is definitely harder to make myself go exercise after being in a full day of classes. Even harder to make meals for myself. Hardest to wake up extra early in the morning and actually eat a good breakfast while also making a healthy lunch to take to school with me.  I've been doing pretty good with it so far but I'm nervous for later in the semester when the work starts piling on and it is much more tempting to stop the exercise and healthy eating.

As for exercise I have been trying out some of the group exercise classes offered at the UF gym.  I went to Zumba with two different instructors but I wasn't too happy with either one.  I think since I had such great classes over the summer, it's hard to like these since I dont think they are as good.  I have also been doing a lot of treadmill and stairmaster.  I am trying to get better with running but I can't seem to make myself run more than a mile! I need to get outside and run but it has been raining almost every day and it is super hot when its not!  Winter come faster!!

My last update for the week is my weekly weigh in which was yesterday.  I was kind of disappointed in the new weight watchers meeting last week but this week it was better so that was good.  What was also good was that I lost 2.6 lbs for a total of 45 lbs exactly!! So exciting!  I was happy to reach another 5 pound mark.  Later I went with friends to the country bar in town and it was fun.  I ran into a friend from classes last year in the bathroom there and we only spoke for about 10 seconds but she said I looked really good and I was happy!  I love getting all the compliments :-)

I haven't put many pictures but here are a couple that I have taken since being back at school and one at the bottom from the end of last semester before summer:

Me with the HUGE drink I got on South Beach that I talked about a few posts ago

Most recent picture from 8/24/12

Me on the right before starting Weight Watchers over the summer

classes and new weigh in meeting

Hey all!

I've had a pretty good first week of classes.  It hasn't been that hard to wake up for all the early days but I'm sure that won't last long. The classes have been interesting and I found out that in my functional anatomy lab where we are learning to palpate (feel for) the bony landmarks of the body we are all going to have to take our shirts off! So I will only be in a sports bra and shorts in front of 50 of my peers! It will definitely be embarrassing and I will feel self-concious the first time but hopefully I'll get used to it.  It will be even worse that not only will my shirt be off but my classmates will be feeling around my body.  Its hard to explain why we have to do this but yup we do. On the first day of class we had this lab and we were dressed professionally instead of the usual dress code which is gym shorts and shirt.  So the teacher didnt make the girls take off their shirts but he encouraged the guys to do so if they wanted to. We had to feel around the shoulder blade and locate different parts of the bone.

Anyways, since I moved up to gainesville I have to join the weight watchers up here.  I went to the first meeting yesterday and it was definitely a different feel than the meeting at home.  I like the one at home better but hopefully I like this one the more I go.  But I did like my weigh in this week....I lost 4 lbs!!  So now my total loss is 41.6...so happy to be past the 40 mark!  Only 9 more lbs until exciting things..50 lbs lost and I'll be under the 200s!! 

Now I'm off to start my first weekend in gainesville with all the party animal college students :)

have a good weekend!

Happy picture!!

So I had my PT orientation today and it went pretty good! Everyone is really friendly and we are all just starting to get to know each other but I think it will definitely be an interesting 3 years! I mainly wanted to post to just show this picture I took of my new student ID next to one from 2009.  I have only been losing weight since may but I had pretty much been maintaining that 2009 picture weight or I was probably higher by the start of weight watchers in may.

and its the first student ID picture I actually approve! (and this is my 4th UF ID)

Move in and first meal

So I'm officially in my new apartment and loving it so far!  I still have a long way to go as far as decorating and organizing my room but its coming along nicely.  Today after my parents left there was a pool party/potluck that some other first years in my program organized. By the way I'm going to school for physical therapy and have orientation tomorrow!  I was pretty nervous about it being a pool party because I didn't want to have to get in my bathing suit in front of a bunch of people I don't know yet.  Although I've lost a pretty good amount of weight so far and see some changes, I still don't feel comfortable presenting myself to the people I'm gonna be spending the next 3 years with in a bathing suit.  Luckily for me, it started raining right about the time the party was supposed to start hahahaah. So everyone quickly changed plans and we had an indoor meet and greet instead.  It was fun and everyone was really nice so I'm excited to get started.

When I was home for summer, my mom cooked pretty much all my dinners so now I have to get back in the habit of cooking.  I know keeping up my healthy cooking will be harder when school starts but I had a pretty good start tonight.  I made tilapia with sugar snap peas and a sweet potato..it was yummy :). I also got my workout in today before dinner.  A great part about being back at school is the amazing gym that UF has!! There are sooo many different types of cardio machines and the machines are really high tech.  Each cardio machine has an individual tv on it and you can connect your ipod to the machine and pick songs from the touch screen.  Some machines even have little fans you can turn on!  You can also set the screen to look like you are biking or running through a city or other setting. Overall its the best and I'm excited to take full use of it.

Not sure how weigh in is gonna go this week since I've been kinda off diet during the move in but I'm gonna try and be really on track until thursday..which will now be my weigh in day instead of wednesday due to my class schedule.

Have a good week!

Birthday weekend craziness

So I wanted to blog earlier in the week to talk about my eventful weekend but I've been pretty busy packing all my stuff cause I'm moving back up to Gainesville on Saturday to start grad school! It's crazy and I'm trying to enjoy my last week of freedom while getting everything ready for the move.

But anyways, like I said previously my friend's 22nd birthday was Friday and some of our friends came down to south florida to celebrate for the weekend. We were planning on going to the beach on friday but there was tons of rain so we stayed in and just hung out for most of the day.  At night we went to Cowboys, which is a country club that recently opened up.  It was ladies night (get in free and drink free) so sounded good to us. It was fun but some of my alcoholic friends were not happy that they couldn't take their drinks on the dance floor like they can at the country bar in gainesville.  I stuck to rum and diet cokes through the night and felt good about that choice.

On Saturday we woke up late and ventured to South Beach for the day and luckily it was nice and sunny.  We headed straight to find a place for lunch and drinks and found a little cafe with 5.99 meals and 2 for 1 drinks.  Of course my friends were all over this..the only problem for me was the food choices for 5.99 were very limited and included things such as fried shrimp, pizza, hamburgers, and stuff I didn't really wanna mess my diet up with.  I decided the best choice would be the quesadilla. I thought that it meant chicken quesadilla for some reason and was pretty sad to find out it was just cheese in a tortilla..oh well it still tasted good :). The 2 for 1 drinks were HUGE and the 6 of us were able to each get 1 drink on our own on the special.  I got a Mai Tai and it tasted amazing. We were all feeling the alcohol after leaving lunch. To the right is an idea of just how big these drinks were.  After lunch we went on the beach for a while and then it was off to get the next drink (told you my friends were alcoholics)!  We went to Fat Tuesdays which has the BEST frozen daiquires!  I got a mixture of strawberry and lemonade and it tasted great!  I was obviously not thinking very healthy in these drink decisions but I decided to take a break and have fun for a day off.  Also we drank a lot but I didn't eat too much so I figured that was a pretty good trade haha.  Overall it was a good weekend seeing friends and a great way to end the summer.

Sunday, some of my family from NJ was in town so we all got together at my Aunt's house for lunch.  She made a salad bar so I didn't have any problems sticking to the plan that day.  After the weekend I went pretty strict back onto weight watchers and hoped I would get a loss by today.  Since the weekend I did a few exercise classes and ran around the neighborhood (twice around which is farther than ever and I was able to run longer than ever too!)  Today was my last day of membership at the gym with all my exercise classes and I got to end on a happy note there for a couple reasons.  First it was my favorite class, cardio mix, and second because a lady who goes weekly to the class gave me a compliment on my weight loss.  When I walked into the exercise room she came up to me and said "I have not been to this class in a month and now I can really notice that you have trimmed down alot!" It was great and that is the SECOND person in that class who has said something to me!  It just feels that much better when someone you don't even know comes up and compliments the hard work!

Finally I went to the WW meeting and I lost 1.8 lbs! I was so very happy with that number considering my possible overuse of alcohol during the weekend.  It makes me more hopeful that I can keep this up when I go back to school and am faced with challenges of going out with my rowdy alcoholic friends on a weekly basis.

So this was a pretty long post but I had a lot to say so hope you enjoyed reading!  Oh and I'll post pics from the weekend when I upload them to my computer :)

You Only Live Once

Hey all!

I had my weekly weigh in day yesterday and it was good news!  I lost 3.4 lbs for a total loss of 36.8! So happy with that number and the work I have been putting in. I'm a little nervous for the coming week though because I'm gonna be very busy and faced with a lot of temptations.  It's my friends birthday tomorrow and a few of our college friends are coming to visit for the weekend.  So there will be a lot of eating out and drinking this weekend but I'm already mentally preparing myself haha. 

Yesterday after the WW meeting I went out with some of my friends to YOLO, a restaurant/lounge downtown, for ladies night.  I got a glass of wine because I'm oh so fancy ;). Afterwards we went to Roccos Tacos which has some of the best tacos I have ever tasted!!  I got three tacos but I have a new technique for lowering a few of the calories I take in. I eat two of the tacos and for the third I take the ingredients out of the tortilla and just eat it like a mini salad.  At least I can get rid of a little of the bread.  Also I usually like going out to eat or eating something less healthy on wednesday nights because I have the whole week until I have to get weighed again :).  Overall it was a good night and I had a lot of fun without feeling guilty about what I ate! yay me!! 

I'll let you know how my friends birthday weekend goes..wish me luck and everyone have a great weekend!

Weekend updates

So I've had a pretty good time this weekend.  On Friday I decided to do something a little different for exercise so I went to a local park and ran around the trail there. I did a few laps (about a mile) and then I did a lap using the exercise stations along the trail.  Some the the stations were easy and some were definitely harder. I tried my best and it was fun to do something different for a change.  At night I went to Hard Rock with my friend and we went out to a couple of the bars. When I first saw my friend she told me I looked really good and said she could definitely see changes.  I love getting comments like that! Keeps me motivated for sure!  So one bar, called Wet Willies, was a daiquiri bar and I got a frozen sex on the beach.  It was very tasty and probably very off diet but I sipped on it for most of the night so I only had the one.

Today I skipped my step class because I hurt my foot yesterday and it was throbbing this morning.  Soooo I knew it would be really painful to be stepping up and down for an hour on my foot. I took it easy today and tried to stay out of the kitchen so I wouldn't eat that much. Later in the day my foot was feeling better so I decided to run outside in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is a big loop that is about a 1.6 mile distance. Running outside is definitely harder than running on the treadmill but I think I did pretty good today compared to when I have ran outside toward the beginning of the summer.  So I ran around the loop once and then biked around twice.  Biking after the run felt SO GOOD because of the amazing breeze on my sweaty face. hahah overall great workout to end the weekend :)

Kickboxing, weigh in, and piercing pics

Hey blogger friends!

I have been MIA for the last week mainly because nothing too interesting has happened and I don't wanna bore you with the same topics over and over. I went to my usual gym classes and did a couple treadmill workouts this week.  One new class I went to this week was kickboxing yesterday with my one of my favorite instructors at the gym. Usually I can't go to this class because I always seem to be babysitting on Tuesday nights.  Since I wasn't babysitting I decided to go..and it was intense (which I expected). I love that the instructor uses all hip hop music though because it makes it more enjoyable for me and I found some great new songs to download!

On to other news, here's a random fact about me: Up until this summer, I did not have my ears pierced. I was pretty much the only 22 year old without a single piercing until my relative got me a pair of earrings as a graduation gift. I told her they were nice but I didn't have my ears pierced..her response was "well I guess you are gonna have to get them pierced!" hahah and we went to claires in the mall that night! So now I am finally able to take out the starter earrings and start trying on some new ones.  Today I tried on my first pair of hoops..it was definitely weird seeing them in my ears.  Here are some pics of me with my brand new pierced ears :)

The earrings that caused my pierced ears

Getting ready to go out to dinner wearing the new earrings

Today when I tried on hoop earrings for the first time

Last but not least, its Wednesday so weigh in day again....I lost 3 lbs!!!!  YAYY so 33.4 total!  Also I updated my weign in section of the blog with a more complete week to week weight loss since the beginning of my journey so you can go check that out if you feel like it :)

Hopefully I'll have a more interesting week this week so I have something more to blog before the next weigh in.

Have a good rest of the week and weekend!
-Ronna