August + Back to Basics Challenge

I know it has been a long while since the last post. The two grad classes I took as summer sessions took over my whole July. I learned a lot, enjoyed them, and also got A's, but man were they draining. I had three weeks left after my last class until work and grad school started again, so I felt like I had no summer. I spent the last week before work school running around trying to get some things in order in my classroom. I still have things I want to work on, but the classroom is looking pretty good. So that was the end of my summer break in a nutshell.

Work school and grad school have been in session for about two weeks now. I'm starting to have a routine going, so I feel it is a great time to start getting back on track with healthy eating, working out, and blogging. I have been either not following my plan or very wishy-washy since the end of April. That is when I had a group project for one of my grad school classes that was extremely stressful along with my spring music program at work. And I also ended up in a boot due to my Achilles tendon injury acting up again. It sucks that all that happened at once, but I should not have used it as an excuse to eat whatever I want and not exercise. This summer I was bound to get on track and let the stress of summer classes take over. The most I lost all summer was 3 pounds. When I weighed in at the beginning of the school year, I lost only 1 pound over summer break. I have lost another pound since school began. Things come up all the time, and I have to be more determined to not get off track and find better strategies for dealing with stress.

I found a challenge through a blog that I read that is called "Back to Basics." That is exactly what I need right now. You can find out about this challenge here. I tried using the "Lose It!" website this summer when I was tracking my food. It is a great website, but I am no longer going to use it. I want to get "back to the basics" of what was working for me when I lost that 35 pounds. And tracking calories was not what I was doing. I instead took pictures of what I ate and posted them on here. I would like to start doing that again along with some kind of weekly progress (weigh in, measurements, pics, non-scale victories...) I would also like to get in some kind of extra movement or exercise at least 3 days a week, if not more. This is how I started my successful weigh loss of 35 pounds and I am going to try it that way again.

I am also challenging myself when it comes to spending and money. There were a lot of expenses in August, so I would like to keep myself more accountable and stick to things that are truly necessary in September. The first part of this strategy is planning out my meals for the month. Second I made a huge list of groceries, toiletries, household items, etc. that we should need throughout the month. I am making one big shopping trip to get this items. This means I should only have to go out once a week on a small trip to buy fresh ingredients and my husband's staples of milk and break and bake cookies (the joys of being skinny and eating what you want...). This should give me more time on the weekends to read and study for my one class I  am taking this semester. I'm taking only one class because of all the changes at work, but it is a way to spend less money a month and make more time for healthy living.

Now that you are caught up with my August, you should be seeing many more posts this month!

May Grocery Shopping Trip

Since going back to school and saving up for new gutters for the house, I have to be more careful and try to spend a lot less money than I used to spend. I've been trying some new strategies for a couple of months which seems to help. Here are the strategies in no particular order:

• I meal plan for three to four weeks (or the rest of the credit card cycle) at a time. Then I make one big shopping trip and get everything I can that will not spoil and can be frozen if needed.
• I've also started shopping at Aldi again. I'm an Aldi kid, so I never had anything against Aldi. I have memories of shopping with my mom and the cart overflowing with a large haul to last us a month or so.
• When I see items I know I use on a regular basis on sale at other stores, I will stock up on them. I hit a great sale at Meijer a while back and stocked up on things like baggies and frozen veggies. I've even found fresh Perdue chicken breasts on sale and bought a bunch of them to freeze.
• I've worked really hard on not impulse shopping or shopping because I'm upset or bored. This gave me more time to do things such as read textbooks, write papers, and other grad school related stuff. 
• Even though I gained some weight back, I haven't been out buying as many sale items as I can to have a variety of clothes. I deal with the fact that I have three pairs of dress pants and three pairs of jeans that fit. I just do laundry more often. I'm not planning on staying a size 16 forever, so I'm not going to give myself any slack to do so.

Here is most of my grocery shopping for May. I might run out of something or need a fresh ingredient once a in a while, but I've gotten pretty good at estimating what I go through in three to four weeks.

My fresh, refrigerated, and frozen foods from Aldi.

The rest of the food from Aldi.

I found these at the Dollar Tree.

This is the stuff I had to get a regular store (Meijer, Wal-Mart, Strack's).


Although this has nothing to do with the rest of my post, here are some cute pictures I got of the doggies today. Since it was nice, they were able to run outside and play at grandpa's house (he has a fenced in yard, we don't). Needless to say, they are tired tonight!