Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Weight Watchers: Week 3 Weigh-In (& More!)

So, the number after my third weigh-in is...::drumroll please::...

211.8!

Down another 2.4 pounds, for a total of 9.4. Not too bad, for two weeks of dieting. I know it's probably going to be a slow-and-steady type of race after this, but I'm happy that I am making such good progress. A friend of mine (very wisely) had a long discussion with me after my WW meeting yesterday, reminding me that healthy eating habits are a lifetime decision and I can't expect all my weight to slough off overnight - and it would come right back on, besides.

I feel a bit silly writing about weight loss when I just consumed 50 POINTS IN ONE MEAL. I get 28 per day. I'm rather ashamed, but honestly, I had small portions of everything I ate. It was a business dinner and my boss wanted me to 'have fun'...too bad I didn't have my Eating Out guide with me, or I would have only had 3 oz of beef (at 7 points!) instead of six. Let alone the rolls. Or the soda. Or the ice cream...

The long and short is that I have to be good for the rest of the week. It's not like I suffer at all on 28 points per day. Soon, (hopefully!), I'll be going down to 27, so I need to be ready. I think a decadent dinner once in a while is okay - but only once in a while! I'm going to The Melting Pot with my sister on Saturday (she's coming to visit - YAY!!!), but I can still enjoy myself there without totally pigging out.

NEXT TOPIC: FranklinCovey!

So, the reason I went to a super-fancy (and fattening!) dinner tonight is because I am in New York City for the week for a sales strategy meeting and a FranklinCovey training course, which we had today. I've been using a FranklinCovey planning system for about a year and a half now - and while it has helped, I understand now that I was really only using it as a glorified to-do list, and there is so much more that I could accomplish in terms of time management.

I made a lot of professional and personal resolutions that I would really like to stick to - consider this another one of my resolutions for the year. (I should really update with my progress on all of those...perhaps this weekend!) However, we did a really great exercise today which was: Determining Your Governing Values.

Here are mine:
- Moderation
- Tranquility
- Order
- Resolution
- Sincerity
- Justice
- Generosity
- Gratitute
- Responsibility

We did this exercise as an echo of a personal exercise of Benjamin Franklin's. When he was 27 (only three years older than me!) , he sat down one night and wrote a list of governing values in his life. Every day, for the rest of his tenure on earth, he would go over those values and take stock of how he had or had not worked to achieve each of them. He wasn't going for perfection: just an effort towards it.

I find this terribly admirable, and think it to be an excellent exercise. So, with the nine values I have mentioned, I am going to try each day to better myself by following them. I'll let you know how it goes.

But tell me - what are YOUR governing values?

Friday, January 23, 2009

My kitties...

:::sigh::

So, I found out on Tuesdya night that both Freyja and Frigga have HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy). I have known that Freyja has it since this summer - we found out about Frigga when they accidentally performed the follow-up echo on Frigga (apparently it's hard to tell my little ones apart...)

Anyway. It just brought back all the uncertainty and sadness I felt when Freyja was first diagnosed. When I dropped them off for their physicals (I just enrolled them in Banfield's awesome Optimum Wellness Plan), I was having these horrible intrusive daymares about having to put Freyja down.

I need to focus on the fact that they are healthy and I am doing all I can to keep them that way. Ah, the power of positive thought...

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

7 POUNDS

No, not the movie.

7 pounds is how much I lost my first week on Weight Watchers. And honest to goodness, I didn't even really feel like I was dieting.

Sure, I was hungry a bit more often than I used to be - but not bone-aching, stomach churning hungry, just sort of - oh, maybe I should eat - hungry.

I ate tilapia and fruit and even a twix bar and an Arby's sandwich. I had juice and ice-cream and, quite frankly, thoroughly enjoyed myself. I didn't feel deprived. I didn't feel forced. And now, 7 pounds lighter, I feel great.

I know next week probably won't be as spectacular. But today I'm going to the gym, and I've also resolved to try a new Shiva yoga tomorrow night.

But for right now, I am just pleased as punch (which, by the way, is only 2 points if you drink the all-natural, no-sugar-added stuff. Which is quite good. :-D)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Weight Watchers: ENGAGE!

Okay, so, welcome to my first week of Weight Watchers. I'm halfway through now, and it is has been a very interesting experience so far.

I went to my first meeting at 12:30 in Denville, NJ last week. The people there were very pleasant (especially the British woman who weighed me in originally), and the group was pleasant, if a little less positive than I had anticipated. There were a lot of people saying, "I was so HUNGRY last week...". I don't mean to diminish their discomfort, I have had the nips of hunger too this week, but I can't help but thank my lucky stars that I was born in a country where I can pay to LOOSE weight.

Anyway. So, I've been sticking to the points all this week. I weighed in at a WHOPPING 221.2 pounds, which is so unacceptable I can't even begin to discuss it. I'm planning to share my weight loss each week on this blog, to follow my progress along my "New Year's Resolutions".

I get to have 29 "Points" of food every day. And while I was initially quite resistant to the whole Weight Watchers idea, I have to say that I have really enjoyed the flexibility it gives me. For instance, on Monday, I had barely used up half of my points for the day. I was proud of myself, but Mom immediately corrected me and told me to use up all the points every day - apparently that's just as important as not over-eating. So, I went home, made myself a vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup sundae, and watched a movie. And no, the treat was not low-fat in the least. Ordinary, everyday ice-cream that really hit the spot. I just didn't have a huge bowlful, and I ate it slowly. That helped a lot.

Instead of ordering my favorite gourmet macaroni and cheese at a company luncheon this week (at the wonderful Tabor Road Tavern right down the road from our office), I had a caesar salad, beautiful pan-seared tilapia on a bed of spinach, and a goblet of berries. It was a big meal, but still low on points, and you can bet your bippie I enjoyed every bite of it.

Even more interesting, I don't think I've ever really TASTED the leaves of a salad before. At least, not the ordinary non-bitter ones. When I was served that caesar salad, I hadn't eaten yet (an accident of workload, not intentional). It was PHENOMENAL. I really enjoyed it, like I don't think I've enjoyed food for a while.

So I'm excited about weighing in next Monday and seeing if I've made any progress. I know this is going to be a long, slow, road, but I hope I'm ready for it.

Monday, January 12, 2009

LOLZ


To make this Monday a little bit brighter...

Sunday, January 11, 2009

New Class: Accounting

Okay, so. I am a Marketing major (my undergrad degree). I am currently in an MBA program for a concentration in Project Management. Let's be honest and say that I'm not interested in the numbers side of business - I like theory and practice.

My accounting class for my MBA started this past week. I am nervous, especially since I did so badly in accounting as an undergrad (I did pass). I make no pretensions at being good with numbers - but hopefully I'll be able to come out of this unscathed.

Luckily, we are still doing discussions (which should be a great grade boost, hopefully). Here's my first one:

PROMPT: After reading the report, “Control Overrides in Financial Statement Fraud: A Report to the Institute for Fraud Prevention,” tell your colleagues what you have learned about financial statement fraud. What does it mean to “engineer financial results?” What are the challenges associated with this practice, and is there ever any “grey area?” Are there any situations in which it might be considered ethical to engineer financial results? Does your answer change in the context of a small, family-owned business versus a major global corporation?

The most important piece of information I drew from this article was actually a strong, concise definition of what exactly financial statement fraud is. Everyone knows of this fraud; it is prevalent in many aspects of modern business reporting, both in terms of discovery and its repercussions in the market. However, as with any other disease or ailment, this sickness of modern business can be made a lot less scary by properly naming it.

Authors Robert Tillman and Michael Indergaard quoted William Black in concisely explaining the nature of financial statement fraud:
"Situations in which those who control firms or nations use the entity as a
means to defraud customers, creditors, shareholders, donors, or the general
public." (Black, 2005)

Engineering financial results is the equivalent to working with statistics. Numbers can be interpreted to mean almost anything that you want them to mean - engineering results is simply presenting facts and data in such a way as to support your particular view or opinion of the results. While many people believe that facts are 'cold and hard', unfortunately the "Law and Order" version of reality only exists on television. The prompt for this discussion asked us to address whether there was ever a 'grey area' in financial reporting. I believe that any financial reporting can be in a grey area. The truest information can always be found in the simplest presentation that is closest to the information's original source - the further you get from that point, the grayer the area is.

When we speak of distance from the point of information integrity, an important quantifying aspect is time. While scandals like Enron and Fannie Mae remain in the public consciousness, one of the key problems I see in addressing issues of financial statement fraud is the passage of time. While bodies such as the SEC do move to enforce regulations and dole out penalties, the time that elapses between the point of discovery and the point of enforcement speaks loudly to both those who consider committing fraud and those who are victims of it. With an average response time of 4.7 years between the act of fraud itself and an enforcement release from the SEC, there is little incentive in the short term to avoid the temptations of fraud (Deloitte, 2008).

Other major points that must be considered when considering the engineering of financial information are its most popular manifestations. According to a study by Deloitte, 'revenue recognition' fraud schemes are by far the most prevalent (at 41%), and of those the recording of fictitious revenue is the most common offshoot (at 35%). While it can be said that falsification of revenue is a pretty straightforward and (one would think) relatively easy to detect form of fraud, authors Tillman and Indegaard demonstrate that fraud draws strength from numbers.
"Groups that once acted as control agents who enforced formal rules of
accountability on firms are now part of an array of "reputational
intermediaries"

These intermediaries create a network of conspirators in which no-one feels 'directly' responsible for allowing fraud to pass through the cracks - though everyone may be peripherally aware of it, there is no one point at which someone feels directly accountable.

Regardless of whether we are talking about a large or small industry, small or large market, or any other factor, fraud is always an indicator that something is wrong with the way you are doing business. If numbers need to be falsely inflated in order to get to the next quarter, it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. The continued tolerance our current business world has for this sort of behavior continues to breed new and more damaging ways to commit fraud.

Resources:
Black, William K. "Control Frauds' as Financial Super-Predators". The Journal of Socio-Economics. 34:734-55
Deloitte Forensic Center. "Ten Things About Financial Statement Fraud". June 2007. Accessed 1/7/2009. http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/us_forensic_tenthings_fraud01072008.pdf

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

New Year's Resolutions

Okay. So, I'm delving a bit deeper into my "New Year's Resolutions" that I mentioned in the last post. Hopefully putting them out into the ether will be a good way to hold me to them - or at least you guys all get to listen to me bitch and moan about them as I slog my way through. :-)

1. Focus more on schoolwork
As you may (or may not) know, I'm enrolled to get my MBA (with a concentration in Project Management) in November of 2009. I'm studying through Walden University, which I highly recommend. I'm going to really stick it to my classes and actually, you know, try to read all the stuff I'm supposed to. :-)

2. LOSE WEIGHT
Again, as you may or may not know, I'm engaged to be married in the late spring of 2010. My amazing fiance loves me just as I am, but I could stand to be a little less jiggly. I'm joining Weight Watchers (we shall see if they are as lame as I'm worried they will be), and joining a gym (Planet Fitness) where I will go with a friend from work AT LEAST 3 times a week. Well, 2 times a week to start. Then 3 times a week. Totally.

This is starting up next week, on the 12th. My first WW meeting will be on Wednesday. I'm going alone, which is a bit scary, but I'll be fine. As my mother so eloquently puts it, I can "talk to a brick wall". Hopefully it will be at least slightly more exciting than that.

3. Expand spiritual awareness
Okay, so I'm already taking some great strides with this. I've joined the Fellowship, I attended my first group ritual, and am signed up for a class on the Nature of the God/dess for late January. In addition to that, I'm starting a 'journey' (I wouldn't call it a class) through the Sisterhood of the Silver Branch which ought to be interesting. I'm very focused on book learning, and this is much more geared to the personal experience itself - actual ritualwork, which is what I really need experience in. This starts on January 26th (the new Moon), so you'll hear all about it once it starts. I'm hoping for a much more ethereal and far less cerebral experience than I usually craft for myself.

Anyway, that's that for now - hopefully this will help me keep on target. More exciting updates to come...

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Why Does My Hot Tub Hate Me?

My legs are bright red.

The rest of me is a rather wan yellowish-green. I love hot tubs, truly I do. But apparently they have stopped liking me. Every time I've gotten in my parent's hot tub (it was 17 degrees F outside tonight when we went out), I end up feeling rather faint. I can only hope it's because of my burgeoning waistline, and the effect will go away with ::drumroll:: my new year's resolutions!!!

So cliche. I hate resolutions. But it's a convenient time to start, and after seeing myself in photos from family holidays (no, I will NOT post one), I see that I am no longer just pleasantly plump, and need to cut down. A lot.

So, after Sonny (my handsome fiance) goes back to school on the 12th, I'm joining Weight Watchers. I've proven time and time again that I simply don't have the willpower on my own to control my eating. I have made a lot of strides - most of the food I eat now is totally organic, and I'm preparing stuff myself instead of making quick junk from the Stop n' Shop. Trader Joe's has become my grocery mecca, and I hope to keep that up.

Weight Watchers is the next step. Cutting out the junk food really made a big deal with my health - I haven't had ::KNOCK ON WOOD:: any significant colds lately, and I used to get them all the time. So slimming down the portions and monitoring my intake is the next part of this progression.

A friend of mine at the office was also looking for someone to go to the gym down the way with her during lunch - she just wants to do the 30 minute Curves-esque portion, which I figure won't be too humiliating to do with her, despite the fact that I easily way at least twice (if not more) as much as she does.

I am happy with myself in a lot of ways. And I don't feel like I need to be some super-skinny ana type. I just want to feel more comfortable in myself, and hopefully losing the weight and getting more in shape will help with the endometriosis.

Which is a totally different story.

The Lupron (my latest chemical treatment) doesn't seem to work too well. The surgery I had in August is offically wearing off, and after almost collapsing in Best Buy in front of Sonny I really don't know what to do next. I'm going back on the pill (UGH) for now, but I've also started taking Evening Primrose Oil and Salmon Oil to help with the cramps. We'll see how it goes. I'm really frustrated and upset about this still, so I'm not going to dwell on it further.

HERE'S AN AWESOME PICTURE OF MY BABIES TO CHEER UP THIS POST:


AND ANOTHER:


They're awesome. They love my giant tummy!!! Makes for comfy snuggling. These awesome pictures are courtesy of the new, 8 megapixel Kodak EasyShare my parents got for me for Christmas (THANK YOU). It's been great for taking pictures at the shelter, too.

Anyway, I'll be posting more about stuff with the Fellowship soon - reveling in Pagan-ness is awesome!