My Nutrisystem Journey

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "If you get tired learn to  rest,  not to quit . " Today is day 909 of Nutrisystem. Learning to rest sounds easy but I've struggled with this just as much as I've struggled with consistency and motivation. Most of my "rest" ends up being forced on me by circumstances. If I'm at home I feel like I have no excuse not to work out. Yesterday I was not 100% after a rough night but I still felt guilty about not pushing myself harder to get on the treadmill. I wasn't "ok" with taking a day of rest. Same goes for Saturdays. I'm usually out all day and decided to designate it as my rest day. Still - I schedule workouts and "hope" to complete them. Most of the time I don't and then I end up feeling like a failure. It's pressure that I put on myself and it's disappointment that I create for myself. The question is: why ? Why do I torture myself this way ? Again, it's a comm...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 Today is day 908 of Nutrisystem. I had no inspiration today. I got up resigned to the fact that this was not going to be the kind of day I planned on when I went to bed last night.  I woke up during the night with a stomach ache and just before 5 am I was up vomiting. Once my stomach was empty I felt better and was able to go back to sleep. I have no idea what made me ill. Something in my salad ? (we'll see - I ate from the same bowl of salad today, lol) The fresh cherries that I didn't wash ? (I didn't eat any today) The veggies I roasted yesterday ? We'll see, had some for dinner tonight ! I don't suspect any of the Nutrisystem food but you never know. It could just be a bug, though I have not been out since Saturday. Whatever it was, I did not feel 100% when I got up and I decided to give myself a break from the treadmill today. There is no earthly reason to kill myself. During lunch I cleaned litter boxes, along w...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "You have a choice. You can throw in the towel or you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face . " Saturday was day 905 of Nutrisystem but only breakfast complied with the Nutrisystem plan. After breakfast I headed out for a casino day with mom. I started the day at Wegmans picking up my usual supply of veggies for the week then headed to mom's. We stopped at Point Place Casino first and spent a couple hours there before heading to Turning Stone Casino. We had a wonderful dinner at Pino Bianco and then spent some time at the slots. My dinner was chicken marsala which on the calorie scale wasn't awful, but those 3 slices of bread ... well, that's more carbs than usual for me. The tiramisu I had for dessert was off the charts delicious and probably off the charts when it comes to calories but I enjoyed every bite. After dinner I had my usual caramel macchiato coffee but skipped the cookie since I'd already had d...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "It's not the will to win that matters, everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters . " ~ Paul "Bear" Bryant ~ Today is day 904 of Nutrisystem. The will to win and the will to prepare to win is something iFit trainer Knox Robinson alluded to in the last couple workouts I've done with him. In searching online I found several versions of this quote and most were attributed to athletic coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bobby Knight and Bear Bryant. They all know something about winning and preparing to win leaves no room for losing ! Knox basically said the will to win is nothing without the will to prepare and that has a slightly different meaning.  I took it to mean winning isn't guaranteed if you don't prepare for whatever task you want to win. It's kind of like hoping to place first in a 5k without spending any time training to perfect your pace and increase your endurance. How ...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "The fact that you aren't where you want to be should be enough motivation . "  Today is day 903 of Nutrisystem. I was thinking about motivation today because it's a common theme among anyone trying to lose weight or get fit. People ask how you motivate yourself all the time and everyone has a different answer ! There is no sure fire trick to finding motivation. It's unique to each and every one of us. I also think we make the mistake of expecting motivation to be a 24/7 thing and in reality you're not going to be motivated all the time. At least I'm not ! Some days I am more motivated than others and some days I am not motivated at all. I've reached a point in this journey where I'm trying to put a little less pressure on myself. Week after week I would schedule workouts on Saturdays and week after week I didn't do them ... and felt bad about that. I finally had enough of the negativity and desi...

🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "Hold the vision. Drop the excuses .  Remember your why. Swerve around  the obstacles. Trust the process . "  Today is day 901 of Nutrisystem. Seeing that number automatically sent my mind ahead to day 1000 and the fact that I've been at this for over 2 years. At first I was upset about that, because I was thinking I didn't expect it to take this long. However, when I really thought about it and was honest with myself I realized that I started this journey with zero expectations. I did want to be at my goal weight by January 4, 2021 but back in the beginning I didn't dare to dream. In all honestly I expected to be a complete failure. Why would you expect success when you had always felt like a failure ? I was at a point in my life where it was easier not to get my hopes up because then there would be no disappointment. I've had a lot of that in my life (who hasn't ?!?!) and at that point I had pretty much give...

🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "Don't let the weekend become  your  weak end. "   Today is day 900 of Nutrisystem and this is the perfect quote after a lazy weekend. The weekend seems to be my undoing more often than not. I do great Monday to Friday (most of the time) but then stumble on the weekend. There are those who would say I'm expecting too much from myself, and they may be right, but I know myself all too well. Lack of discipline was my undoing for years and I'm determined not to go back to that. It's about striking a balance and I'm not quite there yet. My biggest fear is going back to my old eating habits and not exercising, so every time I hit a rough patch I tend to imagine the worst. Sunday was hard because it was Father's Day and my dad has been gone since 2012, but that's no reason not to exercise. I probably would have felt better if I did get on the treadmill but it was easier to sit around and feel sorry for myself...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "I want to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don't  want to shrink back just because something isn't easy. I want to push back, and make more room in the area between I can't and I can . " ~ Kristin Armstrong ~ Today is day 897 of Nutrisystem. This is the perfect quote for today ! I had to give a 20 minute presentation on a call with many of my colleagues and upper management and I was nervous ! I did a presentation back in December and it went okay, but I knew I could do better and I was determined to keep working on it, so I signed up for the same task again today. I felt like I did a better job but I stumbled here and there and came away with areas I will improve on next time ... since I am signed up for September too ! I have suffered from shyness my entire life and many people probably put different labels on me over the years. Conversation has never come easy ...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "Accidentally went grocery shopping  on an empty stomach and now I'm  the proud owner of Aisle 5 . "  Today is day 896 of Nutrisystem. Today's quote cracked me up because it's so true ! Every time I go to the grocery store hungry I end up coming home with a bunch of stuff that was not on the list. Every time I go to Walmart I roll through the deli and check out the hot foods, looking for jalapeno poppers. They never have them but I keep looking anyways. When I had to go to the office every day I used to grocery shop on the way home one night and they always had the hot foods stocked for the 5 pm crowd. I would buy a couple of chicken tenders (they were huge) and 4-6 poppers, which I'd eat in the car on the way home. Now I seem to go at "off" times and there is nothing, which is probably a good thing ! I usually roll through the hot foods at Wegmans too but it's not as tempting anymore, since most e...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "Everyone you meet is fighting a  battle you know nothing about.  Be kind. Always . "  ~ Robin Williams ~ Today is day 895 of Nutrisystem. Prophetic words from Robin Williams. He was fighting a battle we knew nothing about. You see celebrities with money and fame and you think what an amazing life they have. In reality they bleed like we do and they hurt like we do. We all bleed, we all hurt and we all want to be loved. Whenever I encounter someone who is rude or unkind I assume that something is wrong in their life and this is their way of (not) dealing with it. How hard is it to be kind even when someone else isn't ? Considering what is going on in the world today I try even harder to be kind to others, especially the service workers that showed up to work every day for the past year ! Where would we be without the grocery store workers and the restaurant staffs and the convenience store and gas station clerks ?...

  🖤  Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤 "Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into 4 pieces and then eat just one of those pieces . " Today is day 894 of Nutrisystem. Today's quote highlights one strength I DO NOT have ! A couple weeks ago I opened a Caramello bar that had been lingering in the fridge, with the intention of just eating part of it. Yeah right .. I ate the whole bar, enjoyed every bite and never looked back ! Then last night I saw a commercial for Caramello miniatures ! I would like to believe I could eat just one since they are individually wrapped. The problem there is I start off with just one .. but then it becomes 2 or 3 and before you know it the whole bag is gone. I've already been through this with Hershey Kisses. 1 or 2 became 5 or 6 and a giant bag disappeared ! I need to put them in one of those timed dispensers they have for pets .. every day at a certain time it would pop one out for me ! LOL !! Sweets have always been ...