Grave Peril - Jim Butcher

Overview: (from BN.com)

In all his years of supernatural sleuthing, Harry Dresden has never faced anything like this: the spirit world's gone postal. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone-or something-is purposely stirring them up to wreak unearthly havoc. But why? If Harry doesn't figure it out soon, he could wind up a ghost himself.

This is the third installment of the Harry Dresden Series, and my favorite so far. I've definitely enjoyed the first two books, but while reading this one, I was actually curious as to what is going to happen to Harry and the other characters. The characters are starting to evolve, and we are learning more about their lives. I also really enjoy the writing, in that it's a dark book, but there are some great laugh out loud moments which lighten it up a bit. I'm really looking forward to reading more in this series. 

Rating: A

Week in Review: 3/9-3/15

I thought I would do a week in review to help keep myself accountable in my weight loss journey. I know this is probably not going to be the most excited post to read, but I feel like if I put it out there for the world to see, it might give me another reason to stay mindful of this stuff. I also picked Mondays to do the week in review because that is when I weigh myself - I find that also (sometimes) helps me reign it in a little on the weekends. And speaking of weighing in, I was up 0.6 pounds this week. Not the direction I want to go, but I'm not too upset about this being that I only tracked my food for 3 days.

So last week, I started off Monday with a baby goal of drinking at least 64 ounces of water a day. I'm usually not great about drinking water - I would much rather have coffee or a Diet Dr. Pepper - but I've found that drinking 64 ounces isn't really that hard if I am actually thinking about doing it. I did awesome at this this week, and only missed hitting this goal on Wednesday and Saturday when I only drank about 40 ounces.

My step goal each day is 5,000 - I sit most of the day at my job, and this one is hard because I hardly get close to this most days. The majority of days I get about 3,000 steps. I've been a little bit more mindful about this this week and have tried to get up once in a while and walk around our showroom to get some extra steps in.

My food's not great. I just started tracking all my food on Friday and for the last three days that I've tracked it, I've been over my calorie allotment. The weekends are when I typically go overboard and eat out a lot, so I'm not surprised by that. My goal this upcoming week is to continue to track EVERYTHING. I'm not super concerned right now about really staying within my calories, I just want to get in the habit of tracking everything I eat - that in and of itself will help a bit and make me more aware of what I'm eating and how much of it.

EJ and I were having a conversation about this last night - we've lost weight before, we know we are physically capable of it, but I think it is mostly a mental thing. It is so hard to break out of those habits and not rely on food when we have relied so much on food in the past. I told him that I am doing this in super baby steps. When I start graduate school in the fall (yay, me! I'm super excited) I will, no doubt, be incredibly stressed and tired, and if I can have these new habits in place, maybe I won't gain 60 more pounds in the next 2 years!

So in this upcoming week, I'm still drinking the water, I'm going to track all of my food everyday, and I am going to try to work on getting more steps in during the day.

What are some of the goals you're working on this week? Let's keep each other accountable!

My Promise to Myself

When it comes to weight loss and fitness, I have been known to say that I not only fell off the wagon, but that it also backed up and ran over me. Seriously! I have a major addiction to food. If I've had a bad day - I want to eat, if I've had a wonderful day - I want to eat, if I'm tired - I want to eat. It's a real problem when trying to lose weight.

Last July I wrote a post explaining why I wasn't going to weigh myself anymore. You can read that here, or the basic run down is that I would weigh myself and feel pretty depressed and then do really well for a week or two, and once I would lose some weight (even just 4 or 5 pounds) I would totally allow myself to be terrible and then I would gain that weight back and start right back over. What I've learned in the past 8 months of not weighing myself (granted I had a wedding and a honeymoon in there) is that instead of at least maintaining, I gained a LOT of weight - almost 20 pounds. At the beginning of February I was at my heaviest - 242 pounds. This past Monday I was at 236.6 (headed in the right direction!), but I definitely have a lot more work to do to get where I would like to be - my first short term goal getting to about 212 which would be about 10% weight loss.

 So I've decided to claw and climb my way back on the wagon - I'm not doing great, but I'm trying. This week I've started again tracking my food - again, not great but better than not doing it! I purchased a Fitbit a couple of months ago and it's kind of fun to see how many steps you take in a day, and miles you walk, and I'm really trying to pay a little bit more attention to it throughout my day. When I first got it, I would just check it at the end of the day, and see that I was like 2,000 steps short of my goal, whereas the last couple of weeks I'm checking it multiple times during the day and trying to get up and walk around a bit if I know I've been sitting for a while. I also just got back on My Fitness Pal app and started tracking my food. You can find me HERE if you would like to be my friend and support me! I like that app because I can also link it up to my fitbit so it gives me an extra place to keep track of how I'm doing each day.

So in conclusion to the rambling - I promise to TRY. I promise to be mindful of what I eat, and even though it might not be great (like the pizza I had for lunch - which was delicious and totally worth it), but I will track it. I promise to drink AT LEAST 64 ounces of water a day (which, by the way, I'm totally killing this one!). I promise not to give up and give in because I've gained some weight back. This has become a real struggle for me, and it might always be a struggle for me from now on, and I might not always have it figured it out, but I will continue to try baby step by baby step!

 

*photo from Snoopy's facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Snoopy