Made it to Judo 1/6
Didn't spend anything today!
Going to zone out for a bit and then sleep.
Hope your day was great!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Shape Up for March Challenge Begins Today!
Shape Up for March:
My official starting weight: 163.2lbs
Goal Weight: 159 lbs
Target Weight Loss: 4.2 lbs
How I'm Going to Do It: I follow Weight Watchers
Workout Goals: Gym 4x a Week, Judo 2x a Week, 17x to Gym in Feb
Today: Went to Gym
Gym, 3/17; Judo 0/6
No Spend February:
Food: 75% remaining (no change)
Other: 100% remaining (no change)
Toy: 2% over (down 1%)
My official starting weight: 163.2lbs
Goal Weight: 159 lbs
Target Weight Loss: 4.2 lbs
How I'm Going to Do It: I follow Weight Watchers
Workout Goals: Gym 4x a Week, Judo 2x a Week, 17x to Gym in Feb
Today: Went to Gym
Gym, 3/17; Judo 0/6
No Spend February:
Food: 75% remaining (no change)
Other: 100% remaining (no change)
Toy: 2% over (down 1%)
I had another toy spend; I realized that I had forgotten to send my Anysoldier package at the end of last month. So I got it sent off today. It mostly consisted of toiletries from the hotel I stayed at last month; I used my own shampoo and conditioner and stashed each day's mini-toiletries in my bag, thus getting new ones daily. I realize that there is a split in the PF world on whether this is allowable, déclassé, or tantamount to stealing. I'm willing to grant that it might be déclassé, but I figure that the hotel prices the rooms assuming I will use the toiletries, so I've paid for them. When I lived in Dallas, I would donate them to the local homeless shelter; as soldiers are also concerned about the weight of their possessions, hopefully these will come in handy. I also sent some magazines and granola bars. I suppose I could have waited and sent it off next month, but then it would have sat in my house for a month, and in a 900 square foot house, even 1 square foot of box has a tendency to get in the way (also why I don't do the stockpiling thing).
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Saturday Shopping and a Question
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| Haul for the Week |
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| Tonight's Unplanned Dinner - Yum! |
Pizza: This haul included ingredients for homemade pizza. (How To Cook Everything
is so useful!) They looked so yummy that we skipped tonight's dinner plan and just had one for supper. Pizza ingredients were flour, water, yeast, salt, olive oil, Ragu sauce, mozzarella cheese, and turkey pepperoni. For all pizzas, about 1.25 lbs flour, cost 50 cents; water, yeast, and salt negligible; 6 tbs olive oil about 10 cents; ragu $1.37 and I still have most of the jar left ; cheese $3.89 for fat free cheese for the 2 pizzas I plan to share and $6.79 for whole mozzarella for Mr. Goat's pizzas; and $3.42 for turkey pepperoni for a total of $16.07, or $2.68 a pizza. DiGiornio is currently advertising $5 pizza, which is $5.28 after tax, so I saved $15.58 by making these. I paid $14.14 per pan, so at these prices I will break even in 27 more pizzas.
Coupons - Is This Weird?
I've started leaving extra coupons at the store on the items they discount. For instance, if I need toothpaste, I'll clip all the toothpaste coupons in the paper the week before, and use the one that gives me the best discount with whatever is on clearance. So I'm left with two or three coupons for something that I'm not going to buy again until after they expire.
I used to just put them in the recycling bin when I got back from shopping, but last week someone had left a coupon in the facial moisturizer section on my brand that was better than the one I had brought. This nice person saved me an extra dollar, so I used her coupon and left mine, thinking that it still beat having none. Saving that extra dollar really made my day because it was a result of someone else's thoughtfulness. Since then, I've been leaving my extra coupons at the store.
Is this weird? I realize that most of them won't get used, but I'd like to think I can make someone else's day by giving them an unexpected discount. As far as I can see, it hurts neither the store, which gets reimbursed, nor the manufacturer, who may get an unplanned sale because of the coupon, or at any rate is no worse off than if I had used the coupon myself. Have you ever done this? If you found a coupon like this on an item you needed anyway, would you use it? Am I just really, really weird?
Friday, February 4, 2011
More Ice, More No-Spend, Temptation Averted
Temptation visited me today in the form of this adorable video:
Not so much for the car, but I was thinking to myself "Why don't I have The Imperial March
on my shuffle
to swim with?" And then I remembered - No Spend Month. If I need it, I'll get it March 1, otherwise I just have find something decent in the 5603 items that I've already got stored in my iTunes collection. (100% legitimately purchased; every album my husband or I has ever bought since the advent of CDs; not all worth the disc space they're printed on.)
The gym was closed for weather, and the roads were icy, so I haven't left the house except to check on the cows and go jogging. I realized this afternoon that Shape Up for March doesn't begin until Monday, but I can't spend the weekend pigging out, because I already have my goal weight set. You should totally sign up, though, and then pig out all weekend:)
Not so much for the car, but I was thinking to myself "Why don't I have The Imperial March
on my shuffle to swim with?" And then I remembered - No Spend Month. If I need it, I'll get it March 1, otherwise I just have find something decent in the 5603 items that I've already got stored in my iTunes collection. (100% legitimately purchased; every album my husband or I has ever bought since the advent of CDs; not all worth the disc space they're printed on.)The gym was closed for weather, and the roads were icy, so I haven't left the house except to check on the cows and go jogging. I realized this afternoon that Shape Up for March doesn't begin until Monday, but I can't spend the weekend pigging out, because I already have my goal weight set. You should totally sign up, though, and then pig out all weekend:)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
No-Spend, Iced in Edition
The entire world is ice out here, so I basically spent the day at home. $0 dollars spent.
I did manage to make it to the gym, to discover that the pool is closed and the entire place is closed tomorrow due to weather. I didn't have real workout clothing, but I did thirty mins on the elliptical machine so that I would have something to show for my time. Judo was too far for iced-over roads, though. Since the challenge starts tomorrow, I guess I'll relive my time in Michigan and go for a jog in the cold. (I'm not supposed to jog, but I can go a bit if I'm careful.) As I recall, it's quite bracing, after the first five minutes.
You know it's the coldest day of the year because we had two calves born today:
I did manage to make it to the gym, to discover that the pool is closed and the entire place is closed tomorrow due to weather. I didn't have real workout clothing, but I did thirty mins on the elliptical machine so that I would have something to show for my time. Judo was too far for iced-over roads, though. Since the challenge starts tomorrow, I guess I'll relive my time in Michigan and go for a jog in the cold. (I'm not supposed to jog, but I can go a bit if I'm careful.) As I recall, it's quite bracing, after the first five minutes.
You know it's the coldest day of the year because we had two calves born today:
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| Beva |
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| Kali (taken through the fence; she's a protective mama) |
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
This No-Spend Stuff is Harder than it Looks
I confess, it's the end of day 2 of Sharon's no-spend challenge, and I've already fallen off the wagon twice. And yesterday, I had a migraine, making it the ultimate no-spend day. So yes, that's twice in one day.
Mistake number 1: At Woman's Club today, one of our members asked for small donations to The Smile Train. She is involved through a friend who is super-involved; the friend has adopted four children from foreign orphanages who had such severe cleft palate that they needed multiple operations over multiple years. Who could resist a story like that? I immediately wrote a small cheque. I was halfway down the road back home before I remembered that I wasn't supposed to spend any money from my toy budget this month. Ooops!
Mistake Number 2: A family friend came into town, and my parents invited us out to dinner to visit with him. It's about a 40 mile round trip, and we took my gas guzzler rather than my husband's economy car, thus using two gallons of premium gas instead of one gallon of regular gas. In our defense, it's below freezing, and here in Southwest Louisiana, we consider that very cold. And my gas guzzler has heated seats, and much better heating. This was a smaller lapse in terms of percentage of budget, but I need to watch this sort of thing if I am going to cut my household expenses in half this month. And once again, it wasn't a conscious decision, I just got in the comfier car without thinking about it. Doh!
As of today:
Food Budget: 100% left
Household budget - 100% left
Toy Budget - 1% over
As for the Shape Up For March Challenge, well, let's just say it's a good thing that it doesn't officially start until Friday. A migraine yesterday and dinner out today meant that I have now worked out zero times this month. Tomorrow we are predicted to have freezing rain; if the driving conditions are as unsafe as the weatherman has indicated, I'm not going to the gym. On the plus side, if I can't leave the house tomorrow either, I am practically guaranteed a no-spend day (unless Murphy visits and my pipes freeze and burst tonight).
It's not too late to sign up for the No-Spend or the Shape Up Challenge. And I've very nicely gone and set the bar low already!
Mistake number 1: At Woman's Club today, one of our members asked for small donations to The Smile Train. She is involved through a friend who is super-involved; the friend has adopted four children from foreign orphanages who had such severe cleft palate that they needed multiple operations over multiple years. Who could resist a story like that? I immediately wrote a small cheque. I was halfway down the road back home before I remembered that I wasn't supposed to spend any money from my toy budget this month. Ooops!
Mistake Number 2: A family friend came into town, and my parents invited us out to dinner to visit with him. It's about a 40 mile round trip, and we took my gas guzzler rather than my husband's economy car, thus using two gallons of premium gas instead of one gallon of regular gas. In our defense, it's below freezing, and here in Southwest Louisiana, we consider that very cold. And my gas guzzler has heated seats, and much better heating. This was a smaller lapse in terms of percentage of budget, but I need to watch this sort of thing if I am going to cut my household expenses in half this month. And once again, it wasn't a conscious decision, I just got in the comfier car without thinking about it. Doh!
As of today:
Food Budget: 100% left
Household budget - 100% left
Toy Budget - 1% over
As for the Shape Up For March Challenge, well, let's just say it's a good thing that it doesn't officially start until Friday. A migraine yesterday and dinner out today meant that I have now worked out zero times this month. Tomorrow we are predicted to have freezing rain; if the driving conditions are as unsafe as the weatherman has indicated, I'm not going to the gym. On the plus side, if I can't leave the house tomorrow either, I am practically guaranteed a no-spend day (unless Murphy visits and my pipes freeze and burst tonight).
It's not too late to sign up for the No-Spend or the Shape Up Challenge. And I've very nicely gone and set the bar low already!
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Kicking off Challenges for Febuary
As I said yesterday, I'm way better at getting things done if it is part of a group activity. Luckily for me, Sharon and Serendipity are both leading challenges in areas that I want to work on.
Serendipity's challenge is Shaping up for March. All participants are to choose a weight loss goal and, optionally, healthy habits, blogging about them to stay accountable, with a weekly check-in at her site. The challenge runs from February 7 to March 7. My goal is to lose four pounds, which would bring my BMI back down to 24.9. I know I'll feel better about myself once the BMI calculator no longer lists me as overweight. To do that, I will (1) eat within my Weight Watchers points every day and (2)exercise 6X per week, 2 days of Judo and 4 days of swimming, with one day of swimming and Judo so that I can make my 17X gym goal. So, basically, I'm making myself accountable for my new years resolutions for the month, which will hopefully spur me to a more faithful execution of them.
Sharon is doing a No-Spend Challenge, which I have already begun by making a dinner menu plan for the month. My non-fixed budgetary items are divided into Food (this covers both in-home and restaurant dining), Household (non-food items like gas, cleaning supplies, and other miscellaneous things that you need to run a household but that you don't eat), Utilities, Medical, and Toys(out of which I pay for my gym and dojo membership). My goal is to cut spending in Food and Household by half, and to spend nothing in the Toy category besides membership fees. I'll use the extra money to pay for some routine car maintenance for both of our vehicles, money which normally would have come out of savings, and thus increase my total savings.
Since these are both day-to-day challenges, I'll be posting daily updates, hopefully as addenda to other things, but in solitary splendor if necessary. I'll start the money tracking from today and the weight tracking on Friday. Off we go!
Serendipity's challenge is Shaping up for March. All participants are to choose a weight loss goal and, optionally, healthy habits, blogging about them to stay accountable, with a weekly check-in at her site. The challenge runs from February 7 to March 7. My goal is to lose four pounds, which would bring my BMI back down to 24.9. I know I'll feel better about myself once the BMI calculator no longer lists me as overweight. To do that, I will (1) eat within my Weight Watchers points every day and (2)exercise 6X per week, 2 days of Judo and 4 days of swimming, with one day of swimming and Judo so that I can make my 17X gym goal. So, basically, I'm making myself accountable for my new years resolutions for the month, which will hopefully spur me to a more faithful execution of them.
Sharon is doing a No-Spend Challenge, which I have already begun by making a dinner menu plan for the month. My non-fixed budgetary items are divided into Food (this covers both in-home and restaurant dining), Household (non-food items like gas, cleaning supplies, and other miscellaneous things that you need to run a household but that you don't eat), Utilities, Medical, and Toys(out of which I pay for my gym and dojo membership). My goal is to cut spending in Food and Household by half, and to spend nothing in the Toy category besides membership fees. I'll use the extra money to pay for some routine car maintenance for both of our vehicles, money which normally would have come out of savings, and thus increase my total savings.
Since these are both day-to-day challenges, I'll be posting daily updates, hopefully as addenda to other things, but in solitary splendor if necessary. I'll start the money tracking from today and the weight tracking on Friday. Off we go!
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