Casey Gets Fit: Week 20

Current Weight: 151.0 lbs (14 lbs lost overall)
BMI: 23.6

I know this shows a 1lbs increase from last week, but I really thought last week was a crazy drop that wasn't accurate. So I am not mad at all at 151! I also had a couple cheat days this week #shh.

So in big news- boot camp ended! I went for 6 weeks and all 12 classes (there was one rain day that we made up at the end too). Going to be kind of weird not going this week as I really enjoyed getting my butt kicked at boot camp, but alas, I need more time to focus on my running because my 15km race is only a month away!

Now a couple weeks ago I got some comments that I should be doing measurements to really see the changes in my body (vs weight, which can fluctuate a lot). I totally agree, I just forget to measure myself a lot! However I do have a few measurements that I will share today- the beginning, about a month before boot camp, and after boot camp!

	Feb 20th	Apr 28th	July 12th
Weight	165	157.8	151
Bust	38.5	36.5	36.5
Ribs	34	32	31
Natural Waist	32.5	30.5	30
Waist at Belly Button	39	37	35
Hips	40	39	38
Butt	42	40.5	39
Thigh	22	22	21
Calf	14	14	13.5
Upper Arms	12	12	11.5

I think the biggest difference is in my belly- 4 inches of flab gone! I 100% can notice this in the mirror too! I'm also excited to see my thighs are finally starting to shrink- I think boot camp is to thank for that. Especially last class, which seemed especially devoted to my thighs and butt.

So what am I going to do now with boot camp over? Well I have a plan! I am going to be running 3-4 days a week to get myself ready for my 15km (adding 1km every week to my long run at this point. I am currently up to 12km). And my building is starting up free yoga classes on Tuesdays, so I am going to hit that up. And then I hope to fit in one good strength workout every week so I don't lose all the progress I made at boot camp. I can actually do 5-10 real push ups, which was unheard of 6 weeks ago. I can also hold plank pretty easily for a full minute. I think my once a week workout will look like this:
- 25 push ups
- 50 crunches
- 25 lunge jumps (on each leg)
- 25 squat jumps
- 10 burpees
- 25 bicep curls (on each arm)
- 1 min plank

Though, I will probably switch up the moves every now and again!

Now, of course, the biggest problem I have to deal with is the ol' body shrinking is clothing- so many of my clothes are baggy on me now! And I have nice clothes, that I spent good money on :(. However, it is pretty fun to slowly replace all those size 12/14s with size 10s! And it is fun to put on the shorts that were a little tight last year and find them sliding off my hips. 

I should say- the other day I bought a skirt that was a little too small on me, which is usually a HUGE no-no, but I am pretty confident that after 5 months of sticking to this diet & exercise plan fitting into that skirt is not a matter of "if", but "when"!

New Plates!

I have discussed many times on here that I have a recent obsession with buying pretty bowls. What I don't think I have mentioned is that I keep finding pretty bowls to buy when I am in fact looking for pretty plates.

Back up to January 2009 for a minute. I was moving into an apartment with my friend Ginny and we needed basically everything for a kitchen. We hit up a Kitchen Stuff Plus Outlet and bought a whole whack of things, including a set of white dishes with black roses on them. I think we got the whole set for $60 (big plates, side plates, pasta bowls, teacups, and saucers). I have had those plates ever since.

They were okay, but quite a few had chips and the flower was fading and honestly I got bored of them. Hence why I have been slowly transitioning out of them with new bowls and plates! I thought it would be fun to have non-matching plates for once and I have really enjoyed hunting down new pieces. Kind of sad that I am almost done (you're next, pasta bowls!).

I am almost done with my great plate hunt because on Thursday I hit up HomeSense and scored me some new plates! I had often been looking for colourful, patterned plates like my bowls, but realized that a plainer white plate would probably be better suited to making my food look good and coordinating with my older dishes. Except I can't resist a little pattern, so I was happy to find these large white plates with a subtle silver flower design on them for $5 each! Plus they are bone china (which I just googled and found out is actually made of bones. Just lovely...).

But then, as I was about to leave feeling victorious in my plate-finding abilities, I stumbled across these beautiful aqua salad plates. I love salad plates because they are somewhere between a large dinner plate and a side plate and usually all the plate I need for 80% of my meals. For some reason this size (8"-9") is hard to track down. I loved these plates and they remind me simultaneously of the beach, geodes, and all things pretty. They all seem slightly different from each other too, which is fun. $15 for 4!!

They look great layered together too, if I ever got around to hosting a fancy dinner party with layered plates. See what I mean about how white plates can be a good idea? They go with everything!

So now I have completed my plate collection as I have 4 dinner plates, 4 salad plates, and 4 side plates (and about a million bowls). I can't wait to eat off these puppies! Somehow I feel like will make my food taste better.

Pannier in my Neck

Now, I often show a clean home on the blog. But people who know me in real life know that I am kind of messy. They also know that upon entering my condo there is usually stuff lining the front hall- bags of donation clothes, things to go to the locker, random shopping bags...my hallway is basically my junk closet. Recently, I also got some pannier bags (or saddle bags, whatever you call them), for my bike.

They are great for toting around a change of clothes and my purse on the rare days I bike to the office (boot camp has basically eliminated my butts & legs ability to bike much lately!). However you cannot leave panniers attached to your bike 24/7 because they will probably get stolen #torontoproblems. Interesting side note- my building has indoor bike lock-up area in our visitors parking area and someone recently had their tire stolen- from inside our building!!!

Since I remove the bags when not in use, they have joined the hallway clutter. Not cool. There really isn't a good spot in the front hall closet either so I needed to get a little creative in getting them off the ground- I hung them from my yellow shelving unit!

Now, I do apologize for the lighting in this photo- my front hall light needs some bulbs replaced and I have been a lazy Casey :)

Setting it up was very easy- I bought some cheap one-armed drunk octopus hooks from Canadian Tire and measured it out so they would be centered and level. It does look a little bit like one bag sits higher in the above photo, but that is because one bag's handle lost it's comfort grip.

The stool that used to sit to one side of this shelving unit has been relegated to the locker for now (truthfully, it is in the "go to the locker" pile in the hall out of range of this shot- shhh). The stool was only being used to hold my purse, however, so I think it was time to get rid of it. With only 400 sq ft in this place I can't afford to have furniture designated solely for purse-holding.

Overall, this shelving unit is pulling a lot of the load for storage in the front hall, but I use it constantly and I really like having my stuff handy! If only I could figure out how to make the actual closet more useful...

Casey Gets Fit: Week 19

Current Weight: 150.0 lbs (15 lbs lost overall!!!!)
BMI: 23.5

Umm...so I am not exactly sure what happened here but the scale said I weighed 150 on the dot Sunday morning- which means I hit 15 pounds lost since Feb!! I am fairly certain it will bounce up a little next week because I have a hard time believing it after almost 5 months of grueling slow weight loss. Like my body woke up this week and was like "oh, you want to lose weight? I just thought you were taking a break from french fries! Sure we can lose some weight!"

Anyway, another reason I think it is a tad lower than usual is that I was sick with a migraine Saturday night and threw up and was generally no fun. So I think Sunday morning I was probably dehydrated and malnourished or something. I plan to make up for that :)

The reason for the migraine is, of course, too much fun on Saturday! I met up with a friend and a couple of people she knew for lunch at a Mexican Restaurant (El Catrin) in the Distillery District. It was also a big Cuban festival down there this weekend with lots of Cuban food and Cuba libres :) It was so much fun! We had sangria and mojitos with freshly made guacamole at the restaurant, then wandered around drinking some yummy drinks and delicious Cuban sandwiches.

After too much sun and drinks, I headed home for a nap and ended up sleeping for 2 hours which is NEVER a good idea. Woke up groggy and headed out to watch one of Cam's friends, who had a gig at a local bar. I tried to eat some dinner, but I just started feeling worse and worse and eventually we headed home where I proceeded to be sick, stuff myself with drugs, and go to bed at 8pm. Sigh! 

Anyways, on Sunday I woke up feeling great so I went for a 11km run!! My 15 km race is coming up in just 6 or so weeks so my goal right now is to add 1km onto my Sunday long run every week. Let me tell ya, that last km was TOUGH. These legs need a lot more training before I am ready for that race!

Sunday afternoon was a pool party and pizza at my Mom's house! I had full plans to enjoy that pizza seeing as how I threw up all my cheat food on Saturday and I ran a bajillion kilometres on Sunday morning, and while I didn't gorge on pizza, I sure did get my fill of nachos and cheese as an appetizer! Dieting is all about moderation ;) (ps- I feel I need to add in here that you should never ever ever throw up food unless you are legit sick. I really don't want anyone thinking I did that on purpose).

I am so happy to be at 15 pounds down and I am so grateful to February Casey for finally getting her butt in gear and actually sticking with a diet! After nearly 5 months it has become so routine to me to stick to my calorie and workout goals (with the odd cheat meal) and I know that I will continue to slowly burn off a few more pounds. 145 is my goal and I hope to hit that by the end of summer and then I will need to reevaluate my plan and how I want to go forward from there! 

So far this diet has been all about moderation, but that feels good because I am not missing out on delicious things and my weight is slowly coming down. 15 lbs lost is pretty amazing to me! I don't think I would have gotten this far with just salads and chicken!

Liz Lemon gets it

Pillow Talk

I was out on the balcony watering the plants (the dying plants, to be precise) last night when I noticed that my newest throw pillow wasn't doing so hot in its new outdoor life.

See how the bottom corner colour is all muddled looking? Not good! I am actually not entirely sure what caused it (sun bleach, water, colour-stealing gnomes etc), but it certainly wasn't fixable so I just threw the cover out. It actually kind of worked out because I had been hankering to do some sewing for a couple weeks now, but couldn't think of a good project- now I had one!

I decided to see if I could cobble something together with the fabric scraps I got from Tonic Living last December. Most of the pieces are awkward triangles or narrow strips so I decided to go with a bit of a striped look and piece together some strips. I used some heavy navy and brown fabrics, paired with a sample of Vintage Blossom in Dove (such a pretty fabric!).

There is no tutorial here...I didn't even measure or pin anything because I am lazy and like to wing sewing projects (hence why I gave up on doing real patterns). In fact, I didn't even pre-wash the fabric. I won't even show you how bad my fast hand-stitching along the side was. #bloggersecrets

However it was pretty simple- I sewed three strips together to make the front piece and three together for the back piece, and then I just sewed the two pieces together on three sides, stuffed my pillow in and stitched it closed. Very easy!

I am not sure how long this pillow will actually hold up with the weather as this chair does get some of the elements on it, but considering it was free and fun to do I don't mind replacing it if I find some nice outdoor fabric I like better!

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day Everyone (even if you aren't Canadian)!

I had Monday off as a surprise from work, so I am enjoying day 4 of an extra-long weekend today, working on a project that you will see up here in a couple weeks! Are you celebrating this day in any way? I might go in search of fireworks, but I heard it is supposed to thunderstorm so perhaps I will just cuddle up at home instead :)