Correlation between lack of sleep, stress and weight gain/loss?

I didn't have time to post yesterday's results last night, so here they are now!

My weight was exactly the same yesterday morning (Which is weird because I would have thought that it would have gone down a little after a day of good hydration and eating that was mostly on the mark... but no. Oh well. Maybe it was a true weight gain and not water weight? I mean, I don't think I ate THAT much but I suppose it's possible.) so that means that my sparkpeople plan didn't change at all. 1200-1550 calories, 240 calories burned from exercise. I did go over on my calories again - thank you, pie! I was at 1633 calories. I did burn 235 calories though in the morning doing The FIRM's Cardio Express video. (I couldn't get On Demand to work for some reason. I had wanted to do Jillian Michael's No More Fat Zones but nooooo...)

I was actually expecting the workout to be harder than it was. I remember it being harder but it really wasn't that hard this time. Hmmm.... Maybe I am just that much more awesome.

Oh, one thing I wanted to mention. I know that they say that it is normal for a person's weight to fluctuate a few pounds even day to day. I've noticed that this is true for me if I'm not tracking my calories. My weight does tend to fluctuate up and down a bit then. However, if I am tracking, my weight hardly fluctuates at all. It pretty much stays relatively the same or only moves very little and then every once in a while it will drop (if I am staying on target) and even that movement is usually small. I'm not sure what that means, it's just an observation.

One thing I have noticed lately is that I feel, and feel like I look, very bloated. Perhaps that's just weight gain since my weight is back up a little. I don't know. I feel like my belly looks puffy, more than just a couple pounds weight gain would account for. And I wonder, can lack of sleep or stress make you retain water/be bloated? I know they say both of those things have a big effect on efforts to lose weight but I don't know what that effect is. I have a feeling it is different for every person. I really wonder sometimes if that is playing a part in all of this for me. I know I should get more sleep. 6 hours isn't really enough. I have been trying to go to bed earlier but I just seem to have trouble actually falling asleep and staying asleep. Which is probably due to stress... I am currently extremely stressed. And there isn't a whole lot I can do about it. I mean, I am stressed due to work. I am looking for a new job but I can't make someone else hire me, so I am stuck there for the time being. So yeah, I am sleeping 6 to 6 1/2 hours a night and I am super stressed. If nothing else, both of those things greatly effect my will power and ability to make myself stay focused.

Which leads me to this morning... I got a little more sleep than normal today because my alarm got turned off somehow. I woke up at 5:45 instead of 5:20, so I decided not to workout this morning. I'll just workout on Saturday instead. No big deal. Man, it was nice to sleep that extra time though. I reset my alarm and made sure to turn it on and then slept until 6:20.

My weight was 145 today, so I am down a little bit but not much really. Usually I lose faster than that after the weekend, so that seems odd but oh well. My sparkpeople plan is still the same. 1200-1550 calories consumed. 240 to be burned. Obviously I didn't burn any today but I will make up for that and I have consumed more than my calorie range, again. (1882) Mostly because my co-worker brought in stuffed loaf for us to try today. More calories in that than the salad I had brought but I wanted to try it.

A health conscious me

So, as many of you know, I am fairly health conscious. I try to eat right. I am trying to improve my fitness. I want to be more toned. I want to be able to run a 5K. I want to lose a little bit of weight. I am going to start tracking my workouts, weight and calories here. A public forum to keep myself accountable and all that.

Lately I manage to exercise about 5 days a week for at least 30 min. Usually longer. That's a pretty good place to start. I have been getting up and exercising before work, which is working out weel for me. I then get in my 5 days of exercise a week and have the weekends off. I know I should probably try and get in some workouts on the weekends but we are so busy. It's nice to not have to worry about it since I have already exercised 5 out of the 7 days of the week. I have a treadmill and I use that fairly often. I am trying to complete the Couch 2 5K workouts. I am on week 5. I've done day 1 of that week but haven't worked up the courage to tackle day 2. I also have various workout videos (I've been doing a lot of Jillian Michael's videos lately), hand weights, an exercise ball and do some CrossFit here and there.

I also count calories and try to drink at least 64 ounces of water a day.

I have been using sparkpeople.com to track my calories, water intake and exercise. It works decently well. I've been changing my goal weight, my time line and my exercise goals to see what effect that has on the plan it gives me. I think it will be interesting to see how that changes. I plan on inputting my weight daily and seeing how that changes things. Just as an experiment.

Right now my current goal is to be 140 by July 4. We are going to the beach that weekend! Woo! I would actually like to be 140 by the last weekend of this month but sparkpeople didn't like that as a goal date because it would mean needing to lose over 2 pounds a week because my weight was high this morning thanks to weekend eating and not drinking enough water.

So this morning my weight was 145.8, 27% body fat according to the scale. So I've input into sparkpeople that my goal weight is 140 and I want to reach it by 7/4. I've also input that I plan to burn 1200 calories a week. To this sparkpeople says: I should be consuming 1200-1550 calories a day.

So far today I have had 52 ounces of water, so I should have no problem hitting 64 ounces. My calories are at 1764, which is, obviously, over their recommended range. I have also burned 400 calories, which is over the 240 I needed to burn today per their dividing up of the 1200 calories per week.

So basically I am just playing with sparkpeople to amuse myself but it is helping me keep on task and it will be interesting to see how things change.

For my workout today, I:

3 min. warm up
3 min run (5 mph)
1 min. walk (3mph)
repeat for 30 min. (I'm not sure how many repetitions this is but I do know that 30 min. was 2 min. into my last running interval, so I just ran those 2 min. and did my cool down.)
5 min. cool down

And then I did:
10 burpees
10 air squats
10 sit ups
10 push ups
10 box jumps

And then I stretched. So doing 3/1 intervals is harder than 2/1 intervals definitely. I kind of feel like I need longer to recover than that 1 min. but, hey, it's making my push myself and my body. I think I went 2.64 miles in that time, including the warm up and cool down. I am proud of myself for sticking with the running because it really is pretty difficult for me. But I think I am doing well. I am going to attempt the week 5, day 2 workout for C25K on Wednesday I think. Maybe on Friday I'll try running a mile. See if I can't do it in under 12 minutes.

I really need to devise some concrete, non-weight related goals. I have some in mind. I need to just sit down and hash them out. Then I will post them.

Tonight I made some healthy banana-strawberry oat muffins for grab-and-go breakfasts. They are cooling right now. I can't wait to try them in the morning. Since I have been getting up early to exercise, it's been harder to find the time to eat at home. I have been but it makes me very rushed. If I had something already prepared that I could just grab, that would make it so much easier. I have made banana oat muffins in the past and really liked them, so I think I will really like these.