Overweight Mermaids

   I love how I think of such random titles, even if later I go back and wonder, "What the heck was this blog post about?!" However, this one has to do with a hilarious picture I was shown on Saturday of a picture of Ariel (from The Little Mermaid) photoshopped to look super obese with her stomach hanging over that rock with the waves splashing behind her with a caption of "Me this summer if I don't get my $h!+ together". Yep, all the posts from now on are going to be about me losing weight through July and then being skinny for the rest of my life!!!
   Today I weighed 124 and was ecstatic about it since four days ago I was 126. I've never lost two pounds in four days without being sick, so I was very pleased. However, I have Vanessa Hudgens to thank for that. I read on Saturday that she has been doing Intermittent Fasting, (she claims it was more for the energy and not so much for the weight loss) so I gave it a try and it was surprisingly not as difficult as I thought it would be. Today is my third day on the 16:8 schedule. That means 16 hours of fasting, most of it being while I'm sleeping, and 8 hours of eating. I picked 10am-6pm and that has been working well for me. Today was easier because I have the day off so I didn't have to get up until 8am compared to 5:20am on work days.
   Lately I have been hitting over 10,000 steps on the day I work, but on my days off and I have to stay inside with Emma until Michael gets home, (except on January 31st when it was 60 degrees we walked a bunch of loops around the neighborhood) so I only get to walk from about 5:45-7pm, but I don't stop walking until I hit at least 10,000. Last week my total was 102,032 because of the Wekiva Springs day and I got the most steps in our group, so Carlos is supposed to owe me lunch now! Today I walked to the library and back since I needed to drop off some of Emma's books. Boy, was it steamy out- in the middle of February!! Anyway, here are all my "skinny mermaid" related pictures from the past few weeks:

When I got an hour massage at the end of January (with a gift card)!!

Eating well even when I was sick with a cold/congestion & cough for a week!

For my morning smoothies with almond milk, peanut butter & chocolate.

The book I'm reading & some nasty veggie burger boats. I didn't eat them all. 

Chicken that Michael made & then his dinner below.

What they had at work VS what I ate!! :D

  I also want to talk about the great deals I got on some clothes the last weekend I was off. I call that "financial health". I was excited because it doesn't happen often that I get a bunch of outfits that I like- and that fit and look good on me when trying them on. I remember in October 2013 I hit the jackpot at Ross in California and think I came home with 17 items?! But this time I got an email saying Clothes Mentor was having a clearance sale and everything that day was only $2. I ended up getting four items, including one sweater shirt, an Old Navy top, plus a pair of black star pants and a black and brown sweater, both which were pretty tight on me at the time, but I know will fit great when I'm back around 115! Then I went to Platos Closet and got three more items, two for $5 and one for $6 that still had the mall tag on it saying that sweater shirt was originally being sold for $68!! That gets me excited. So much savings and since it still had the old tag, that makes it seem like it was never even worn before. :)