HotBlonde's Blog

HB's Weight Loss Week 9

According to Monday's weigh-in last week I lost 5.6 pounds. This was totally unexpected. The week before I only lost 0.4 pounds and to then lose 14 times that amount the next week was a big surprise! I have officially lost 32.8 pounds in 8 weeks. This is 36% of the weight I'm supposed to lose in this challenge. In just under 2 months. Not bad, huh? I still need to lose another 57.2 pounds, but I don't think it should be a problem. I'm still doing and enjoying doing the things I need to do to lose weight and so the program is moving smoothly along. And speaking of the program...

EuropeanHottie goes to 24 hour fitness and I go to LA Fitness. She had signed me up for a free 7-day pass at her gym. Even though I was not well on Saturday I was feeling better on Sunday and decided to go with her to her gym. I put in a session of regular 45-minute cardio and then we spent some time in the sauna, steam room and I dipped in the jacuzzi there. I went with her back to the gym on Monday where I did my usual full-body workout and then did a 23 1/2 minute HIIT (high intensity interval training) cardio session. I stretched a bit after and we were out. I wanted to go again with her today but she was not feeling well. I planned on just hitting up my gym to put in a 45-minute regular cardio session but I haven't been feeling well either and will make up this workout this coming Saturday instead. EH likes to poke fun at me, always nicknaming me "Anal Annie" for my constant attention to detail, organization and such. She thinks it's funny and typical of me that I carry around a detailed ,organized, and color-coded chart of the exercises that I need to do during my Monday, Wednesday and Friday workout sessions. Here's a pic of my clipboard and the chart I created to keep things organized:



Her gym is pretty nice. I know the staff there wants me to sign up but to me my gym can provide me with everything I need even though it's not as fancy-shmancy as her gym. If hers was closer to me too I might consider it, but mine is convenient and well-enough stocked that I don't need to switch gyms at this point. I still plan on using the rest of my 7 day pass at hers, which ends this Saturday.



I had planned on going through my closet after the 6th week and reassessing my clothing situation then but had been busy. I finally was able to do it today. I think I will do this every 8 weeks, not every 6 weeks. I filled up 3 grocery bags full of clothes that I am giving away to the Salvation Army. I was able to move a bunch of clothes from my "waiting" area of my closet over to my "can wear now" side of the closet. It felt really good to put on clothes and see how they fit on my "new" body. Pretty awesome feeling. The bathing suit you saw me in in my 8-week picture is one that I never wore before cuz I was never able to fit in it!

Anyway, I had started eating yogurt as my evening snack last week which has been fun so far trying out different fruit combinations and such. And this week I swapped out my Monday hummus and carrots dinner with sockeye salmon and kale salad. I had mentioned previously that I was switching these out so that I could have more omega-3's and calcium in my diet (not to mention a bit more protein). The kale salad is pretty yummy and simple. I got the recipe from a link on the Whole Foods website. I also picked up more Mrs. Dash salt-free seasonings (and a couple store-brand ones). I have a total of 9 of them now. 2 of them I use exclusively in my weekday morning eggs. The other 7 I rotate each time I cook my chicken or salmon, which happens to be 4 times a week. I like to find ways to make eating healthy fun. I sometimes put my fruit and nuts snack in a cup instead of a small bowl and also bought a crinkle-cutter on Amazon.com to make my carrots more fun to eat. I can use the crinkle-cutter for other vegetables as well eventually, like potatoes and zucchini and etc.



So I am still on track to hit my challenge goal after 30 weeks which is 10 weeks early. And if all goes well I can still hit my personal goal weight of 134 by the weigh-in date. Not sure if I'll want 134 pounds to be my exact weight at the time cuz I've been considering more important things such as my BMI and Body Fat Percentage. But either way I'm on the right path to success!

HB's Weight Loss Week 8

So… I weighed myself Monday morning and it appears last week I only lost 0.4 pounds. Not even a ½ pound! WTF? Lol.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering, I did NOT cheat on my diet. I also did not skip a single workout and in fact, per last week’s blog, I actually did even MORE exercise than before. I added in a full-body weight resistance workout that I do 3 times a week now, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. I still did my usual 5 days a week of 45 min of high intensity cardio. The thing is usually I work out at 80% of my maximal heart rate (MHR) when I do cardio but last week I had a hard time getting it all the way up to there and keeping it there. I think it had a lot to do, if not everything to do, with the soreness my muscles were feeling from my weight training. And boy was I sore! So much so that one morning last week after I woke up in the morning it was hard for me to stand up and walk out of my bedroom. My muscles were incredibly sore and felt wobbly, unstable and weak. I was even limping for several days. A few times my right quads would momentarily give out and I’d almost lose my balance. During one of my visits at my chiropractor’s office that happened and a couple of people gasped and reached out to catch me, asking me if I was ok and needed help. Luckily I did not fall. When one of the therapists went to use the big vibrating muscle massager on me I could barely even tolerate it on my sore calves. He was nice and since he had a little bit of extra time he put some special lotions on them and rubbed them. So I was kinda bummed that I didn’t get to do my cardio as intensely as I have been. Obviously I want to burn as many calories as I can and working at a somewhat lower intensity overall meant I burned less calories than I would have ideally liked to have burned. I seemed to have an issue more so on the Stair Climber and Stair Master machines but no issue getting my heart rate up to and maintained at 80% MHR on the elliptical machines.

Anyway, I’m still going strong. This is the week that I will be eating yogurt with fruit as my evening snack instead of my usual avocado and pita chips snack. I’m gonna vary up my yogurt snack each day by changing up the fruit and dried fruits in them each day.

Luckily this week I’m not feeling any soreness any more, or very, very little. I stretch my calves and hamstrings 2 minutes each muscle after each weight resistance workout. Also, in regards to exercise I’ve started doing something different this week with my cardio. After talking to my trainer friend he told me that 3 days a week when I do my cardio I should do a 20 minute or so interval training cardio session instead of my usual 45 minute session. He told me that my priorities should be ordered in this way: 1) Intervals 2) Strength Training 3) Regular cardio. For those of you who are not familiar with interval training you basically warm up for 5 minutes then do 6 to 10 cycles of extremely high intensity cardio (95% MHR) followed by very low intensity cardio (60% MHR), each a minute or so long. After doing a minute or so of each 6 to 10 times you then cool down and then you’re done. There are other ways of doing it but this is the way I’m going to start. I’m excited to see what the results of my interval training will be.

I also visited my primary care doctor this week. I had blood work done a week before I saw her and she told me the results. She siad my triglicerides is 70. Don't know what that is but she said it's good. She told me my HDL was 42, my LDL was 77 and that my total cholesterol is 143. Not bad, huh? I told her that I'm eating about 247mg of cholesterol a day and that my nutritionist had suggested I lower that but the doctor told me that since my total cholesterol is at 143 that that's good and I don't need to change anything. I also told her that I keep hearing conflicting advice on how much sodium to consume each day. She told me 2,000 mg a day or less. This is good as my new diet consists of an average of 1742 mg per day. And the best news of all... she took me off my blood pressure meds! So step by step along the way I am starting to reap the benefits of my continuous weight loss.

So if any of you are wondering whether I’m disappointed at the small amount I lost this week, I am not disappointed. I’m still excited about the challenge and going full speed ahead. Even EuropeanHottie came and worked out tandem with me this morning. She even took a video of me working out on the elliptical. I was planning on posting it on here but I am embarrassed at how fat and dumpy I look so I’m not going to show it. I will, however, reserve the video tape and if the Doctor Oz show wants to use it to show a part of my “before” then I’m ok to show it then… after I’ve already gotten into great shape!!

HB's Weight Loss Week 7

So I weighed in today at 224.0 pounds. I expected to lose 3.0 pounds but instead lost 4.2 pounds. I’ve officially completed 6 full weeks. Also, I am officially 15% of the way through this challenge but since I’ve now lost a total of 26.8 pounds I have actually lost 30% of the 90 pounds I’m required to lose. Not bad. And as mentioned before, my personal goal is to weigh 134 pounds which I would like to have accomplished by Oct 17th if I can, which leads me to my next discussion…

If you looked at the chart above you will see that there have been some additions and changes. I’ve decided to add weight training to my regular workout program, doing 3 sessions a week Monday, Wednesday and Friday before my usual cardio session. Each weight session will last approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes which means I will be adding an additional 3 hours and 45 minutes of exercise to each week (and this doesn’t even include the 30 or so extra minutes I will probably add to stretch). I plan on incorporating weight training into my last 34 weeks which begins today. Now that I’m adding more exercise it looks like currently 70% of my weight loss will come from food and 30% from exercise where it was previously 76% food and 24% exercise. I don’t want to get into too much detail but will be following a program that will change twice throughout the rest of the challenge in regards to going from mostly compound movements to both compound and isolation movements and then finally both but with varied and increased intensities. A while back I emailed the author of the weight training book I am about to start using again and asked him how many pounds of muscle I can expect to gain by following his program. He told me that there are a lot of factors that determine how much muscle a person can gain including genetic factors, but if I followed his entire program I could expect to gain about 10 pounds of muscle by following his entire program for 12 months. I will not be following his entire program though because in order to get into his 3rd phase, his “Targeted Bodysculpting” phase I would have to spend at least 9 months in the previous 2 phases. So since I only plan on going through a portion of his program I made my own estimation that I will gain 6.5 pounds of muscle over 34 weeks. This has been reflected already in each week’s “Strt Wt” in my chart. I had considered shortening the length I spend doing the first 2 phases but the Targeted Bodysculpting phase is a phase that requires “tremendous effort” as he puts it, and I’m not going to add that phase any earlier than I need to for fear that I might physically push myself too far and injure myself. The first 2 phases will get me to 90% of my physical potential where the 3rd phase is for fine tuning and “sculpting” what’s left. This will all take more time out of each week which is a small downfall but I will hopefully hit my personal goal weight at the end of this challenge which will be a great accomplishment.



I saw EuropeanHottie Saturday for the first time since I started the challenge. The first thing she said to me when I got in her car was, “Your boobs shrunk.” Haha, it’s too bad it’s that noticeable. I don’t know, to me they still look big. I also pointed out that my double chin and cheeks have shrunk and I showed her when we got to my house how my stomach has shrunk as well and that my pants were falling off. She told me to get new pants and I told her that these WERE new pants! Well, new pants that I bought just before the challenge started. I’ve decided that every 6 weeks into this challenge I’m going to go through my closet and reassess my clothing. I have clothes that range from a size 9 to a size 24! Time for throwing out stuff that’s too big and start wearing my smaller-sized clothing.

I also wanted to share with you something else that was cool that happened on Saturday. Well remember how in last week’s blog I wrote how my chiropractor told me I didn’t look like I weighed 228 pounds? Well two days ago on Saturday I was at the gym and talking in the locker room to a woman who I just met who is a fitness model and been a spokesperson for fitness-related things. I was telling her how I am on a weight loss program looking to lose 117 pounds from where I just started. She said “117 pounds? You don’t have that much to lose!” And I said, “Well, looking at me, how much do you think I weigh?” and she said 165! When I told her that I weighed in last Monday at 228 she was surprised and told me that I carry my weight very well. I am still beaming from the 165 comment. But beside that she shared with me some valuable information. I told her how I wanted to appear on a segment of the Dr. Oz show and she told me that I should contact them ASAP rather than at the end of my program cuz if they’re interested they will start documenting me now and throughout. She also suggested that I contact a whole bunch of places and see if they’d like me to be a spokesperson for their company. I told her I would do that but since I like to be honest I would only want to contact companies that I’m actually utilizing in my weight loss journey. I gave her a list of places and products that I’m using and she made suggestions on which ones to contact. I’m excited and will contact these places this week and hope to find one who bites. So in the end I could possibly have made income off my weight loss! She said it would be easy for me since she thought I was very pretty and that that would be good for promoting companies. I was flattered since her remarks were coming from a fitness model!

Anyway, hopefully I will adapt pretty easily to my new workout routine. I am looking forward to the next several weeks to see how my weight training affects everything.

HB's Weight Loss Week 6

Ok, so it is the end of week 5 and beginning of week 6. I weighed in this morning at 228.2 pounds. I had expected to lose 3.0 pounds but lost 3.8 pounds instead. The last time I was this “low” if I remember correctly was probably late 2006!



This last Tuesday I met with a nutritionist. She was very friendly and nice and told me I could contact her any time and had me schedule a follow-up appointment. Anyway I went through my diet and nutrition with her and she was impressed which I was happy about. I put in a lot of time and effort in calculating everything I consume and printed out a nutritional profile and calorie break down and things like that. She told me that I eat better than she does! As far as criticism she told me that eating half an avocado in my evening snack each evening was too much fat. I told her that it’s good fat but she suggested I scale back on the avocado. Unhappy news to me as I LOOOOOVE avocados. When she looked through my diet she noticed that I only had 1 serving of dairy a day and said that I needed to make sure I was getting enough calcium daily. For a female my age I need to get at least 1,000 mg per day. According to my calculations it showed that between my diet and multivitamin together I was only consuming an 871mg per day on average. She also suggested that I switch from my low-fat cottage cheese to non-fat cottage cheese. My understanding from her was that this was so that I can lower the amount of cholesterol I’m consuming. The only thing is when I went home it showed that I’m consuming only 5mg of cholesterol out of my daily 230mg I have been consuming. Switching out my low-fat for non-fat would only take it to 225mg which to me seemed too negligible. She said that my daily cholesterol intake should be between 200-300 but that I should lower mine. I don’t know why but that’s what she said. She also told me that as I taper down my calories not to go below 1000 per day. I liked hearing this cuz I had originally planned to only go down to 1050 per day. By going down to 1000 per day, I stand to lose an extra 0.3 pounds by October 17th according to the calculations on my chart. It’s not much but I’ll take what I can get.

A couple days later at home I pulled out my “You, On a Diet” book and looked at the recommendations that they had for the minimum amount of vitamins, minerals, and etc. that I needed to be consuming each day from both my diet and supplements. Combined with research I have done online this is what I understand should be guidelines I should follow for each day:


Cholesterol - less than 200 mg or 300 mg
Sodium - less than 2300 mg
Calcium - at least 1000 mg
Vitamin D - at least 600 IU
Pantothenic acid - at least 5 mg
Omega-3 - at least 2000 mg
Magnesium – at least 400 mg


At the time of my meeting with her this is what I was taking in per day:


Cholesterol – 230 mg
Sodium – 1967 mg
Calcium – 871 mg
Vitamin D – 815 IU
Pantothenic acid – 20 mg
Omega-3 - at least 1798 mg
Magnesium – 456 mg


So from that I saw that I did in fact need more calcium in my diet as well as omega-3 fat. Rather than taking a calcium and fish oil supplement I decided to switch around my diet a little bit and by doing this, this is what my new daily consumption looks like:


Cholesterol – 254 mg
Sodium - 1936 mg
Calcium - 1203 mg
Vitamin D - 815 IU
Pantothenic acid - 21 mg
Omega-3 - 2065 mg
Magnesium – 437 mg


So you see with the new adjustments to my diet I basically meet the recommended requirements and now don’t lack in calcium or omega-3’s. In a nutshell, what I changed was my Monday dinner and my evening snack. Monday dinner used to be the same as Thursday’s dinner (hummus with carrots) but now it’s coho salmon with kale salad. The salmon provides an enormous amount of omega-3’s and the 2 ½ cups of kale in the kale salad adds a good amount of calcium. My evening snack is no longer my avocado salsamole with toasted pita chips, I’ve substituted it for a yogurt snack. I’ll be using lowfat yogurt mixed with cinnamon (a weigh-loss helper), fruit and raisins. That also adds to my calcium intake and gives me a 2nd daily serving of dairy. I read online that they say you should aim for 3 servings of dairy a day but since I have my calcium up to where it needs to be it’s not something I’m going to aim for right now. Funny enough the daily calories I’ll be consuming will be just about the same but the nutritional value has gone up. The cholesterol count will go up a little bit but the sodium comes down a tad. So I’ll be under 300 mg on an average day for my cholesterol which, according to one website, is good enough.

The only other things I’m going to tweak is I probably will switch to non-fat cottage cheese to shave off a few calories and a few mg of cholesterol and I’m switching the meat I put in my Turkey Wrap to a little bit lower sodium chicken meat. Also, once I start eating the yogurt (I’m not switching my diet for another couple of weeks to eat through the pita bread I already have at home) I may switch to non-fat instead of the low-fat. I had considered going with Greek yogurt since I found out this week that it has twice the protein as normal yogurt and it comes in non-fat, but the extra protein raises the calories on it and while losing weight I’m going to consume the lower-calorie options of things. Once I’m off and maintaining I can switch to the Greek yogurt if I decide to continue eating yogurt.

Anyway, I’m still going strong and am learning to appreciate patience. I keep finding myself wanting to experience my final results now but I know that I must wait and that there’s no way around it. This teaches me a great lesson in life that in order to get from point A to point B you have to take all the steps necessary in between to get you to where you want to go.

HB's Weight Loss Week 5

OK, so my weigh in for the beginning of week 5 is 232.0 pounds. I expected to lose 3.1 pounds this week but instead lost 4.6 pounds. I’ve lost a total of 18.8 pounds so far which is an average of 4.7 pounds per week.

So the first 4 weeks have been great. The first difference I noticed after the first week or so was a slight shrinkage of my belly. I’ve also noticed a difference in my face and my double chin isn’t as prominent as it used to be. This week I seemed to have noticed a difference in how much my stomach protrudes out and although my jeans don’t feel loose, I have noticed a slight difference in a pair of shorts that I wear. A cool thing is I have also noticed a difference in my skin. My skin feels smooth, very soft almost like I’ve been using lotion but in fact I haven’t. It could be the amount of water I’m consuming or possibly the healthy fats and Omega-3 fats I’ve been making sure to have in my diet. Oh yeah, and I had my blood pressure checked the other day and it’s at a good level. I think I’m going to check my blood pressure regularly at the Walgreens by my house and I think my doctor will soon take me off my blood pressure meds.

So I am officially 10% of the way through this challenge. Wow, 4 weeks have gone by fast! I still am excited about my program and I still look forward to going to the gym each weekday morning. I had briefly considered doing two-a-days in regards to my cardiovascular workouts but realized that it is just more than I want to take on right now. I wanted to do it so that I could weigh 134 by my weigh-in date as opposed to the expected 141 or so pounds but I calculated that I’d have to add in 60 evening workouts and it’s just not something I’m willing to commit to. If I do weigh 141 or so on October 17th it will only take me an extra 3 weeks of following the same diet and working out just once every weekday to get to that number. That just seems more reasonable to me as overloading my body and my schedule is just not something I want to do now. I have messaged a personal trainer friend of mine to see if he’d be interested in training me during my last 12 weeks and he said yes. Since I had only planned on doing cardio vascular exercises throughout the challenge I thought that it might be good to add in weigh resistance training in the end so that I can look more toned up. Since I will be weighing myself in in a bikini I want to look my best! And although I usually don’t like personal training services I figured I could tolerate it for 12 weeks.

I do have to say that I have stuck 100% to my diet although I did have a slight mishap completely by accident. I started drinking one of my sodas yesterday and luckily, about half way through finishing the can I looked at it and noticed it said it had 150 calories! I accidentally bought an 8-pack of regular orange-flavored soda rather than the diet version. Woops! I was kinda bummed cuz I realized that I had just consumed an extra 80 or so calories that I didn’t want in my diet and knew that my weigh in was today. So I quickly looked up online how long it would take me to burn off those extra calories I accidentally consumed and it said for my sex, age, height and weight that I could walk for 15 mins at a 2.5 mile per hour pace and work off 80 calories. So I went for a little walk. It was good anyway cuz my head was spinning from all the work I had been putting in preparing all my print-outs and such to take to my nutritionist on Tuesday. So burned off the extra calories but sadly I threw out the box that the soda cans came in so I am now not able to return them and exchange them for the ones I want. It’s ok cuz although I’m out the money I’ll at least have a tasty beverage for company to enjoy if anyone plans to drop by my place over the next 8 and ½ months.

I have the appointment with my nutritionist tomorrow, on Tuesday Feb 7th at 10am. I’m hoping she’s impressed with my diet and maybe she will have some suggestions as far as supplements I can take to help aid my body in its weight loss efforts. This has been fun, fun, fun! And I do find myself sometimes feeling impatient with my weight loss, but I know that the results will be well worth the wait. It’s funny, when I look at my face in the mirror and see the extra fat that’s missing from my face I tell myself that that’s it, it’s never coming back again! It’s kinda cool and that keeps me motivated in looking forward toward all the other benefits that will start unfolding!