What a totally awesome weekend!

This weekend was such a great weekend! We left on Friday night to camp down at the beach with my Mom, brother, 4 sisters (2 of their husbands) and 6 nieces and nephews plus my aunt and uncle and their 4 kids. The weather was slightly misty for Friday night and part of Saturday, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves!

We went kayaking on Saturday morning, which was soo much fun! We just want sedately down the river, a group of about 10 or so. But I was consistently paddling, and my arms never got so tired I had to quit. I’ve always had pretty strong arms, as evidenced from several years ago when I was on a dragon boat racing team and we did endurance trips from bridge to bridge over the Columbia. Even as a complete newbie, (it was maybe my 2nd practice) I made it with the whole team who’d been doing that for awhile. They said that no newbie’s ever made it all the way through the endurance on the first time.

Anyways, I really had the best time kayaking, and the scenery was absolutely beautiful. At one point, my littlest sister (15) got grounded over, what I think was, the only log right under the water’s surface. We ended up having my one sister grab her kayak, and then I got my momentum going and as I went by them, grabbed her kayak and yanked as hard as I could, and she finally came undone. It was so funny, watching her on the way back, eyeballing the river, to try to avoid going over it again. LOL. I should have some pictures up any day now.

On Saturday afternoon, Jeff and I decided to walk to the beach, not realizing how far it actually was. We had to go through what felt like jungle and dessert, slapping mosquitoes off our backs (those little bastards can apparently suck through cloth, because I got a bite on my arm through my long sleeved shirt), only to arrive at what felt like a mountain. For every step I took, I lost a half step. It was EXACTLY like the stair steppers at the gym. I really felt like I was going nowhere, and actually wanted to stop, out of frustration, but I pushed on, and after 5 minutes straight of climbing, we finally got to the top where we had to go down a seriously steep embankment to get to the beach. Wow, that was some trip.

But we still had to go back. I desperately didn’t want to climb that steep mountain to get to the other side, so we decided to walk up to the jetty, about ¼ mile away and take in the view and then circle around, since the mountain ended before there, and it was paved. So we finally wound our way back, only to end up at the completely other side of the campground, and discover we had walked about a mile and a half. There’s my exercise! We brought our bicycles and didn’t even use them, which is kind of disappointing, but in the end, I still got a lot of activity in.

At my weigh-in last night, my weight was 277.8 pounds, the same as last week! I think (hoping with all possible fingers and toes crossed) that I finally caught myself and am turning it all around before the gain became anything disastrous. In the last 2 ½ months, I’ve gained 0.6 pounds, which is actually fantastic! Now if I could just get off this plateau and into the 260’s. I feel like I’ve been waiting so long. I know, patience is not my strong suit, so I have to remind myself that the weight loss slowed down because I let myself become sidetracked and start to take back my old habits. I know it’s my fault, and now, I am headed in the right direction. Next week, I just might have a loss!

Oh, and for the last and best part, (I think), my sister gave me her Magic bullet that she never uses so I could make smoothies in the mornings. I’ve always had a hard time actually eating in the morning. Even if it’s cereal, or a hardboiled egg, my stomach will usually (90% of the time) cramp up on the drive to work, and become so painful, I actually want to (A) stop and cry, or (B) find a bathroom somewhere. I’m trying to avoid that, so my thought was that smoothies are probably easier on the stomach than some other breakfast foods, and maybe I’d be able to do it.

This morning, I blended ¼ C. of oats to a fine powder, then added ¾ C. thawed unsweetened strawberries, 1 C. mostly cooked carrots, ½ C. unsweetened raspberries, 1 med. Banana and enough skim milk to make it drinkable, about 1/8 of a cup. It blended to a really nice light pink, and you could not taste the carrots at all! I was going to make it green with spinach but I discovered the bag had gone bad. So I’ll have to get another one. In the meantime, the smoothie I made didn’t bother my stomach at all this morning, AND I didn’t get hungry at all until lunch when I could kind of feel it coming on. Craziness! I also got 3 servings of fruits and 2 servings of veggies first thing. Now it’ll be easier to get to my 8 or 10 they recommended. BTW, the smoothie I made (according to SparkPeople) had 339.8 calories, 116.2mg of sodium and 19.3g fiber. It was only 3 points!