Conference Weekend and Reaching My Goal

Conference weekend was really nice.  It's always nice, but I think it just went really smoothly this year.  We streamed it from the Mormon Channel with no problems.  In the past it seems there has always been some kind of issue.  I didn't even have a backup recording on our TiVo box in my room.  So it's a good thing it worked out.

When I was growing up I don't actually know what kinds rules my parents had, but the impression that I got was that Conference was just on Sunday and we had to sit and watch.  It wasn't until I was in Jr. High that I realized that Conference was on Saturday too and had been for a long time, apparently.  When my boys were young I guess I sort of did the same thing, we'd have conference playing on all the tvs and radios but they could keep playing if they wanted to, but Sunday we'd all have to sit and watch.  The rules changed over the years as we had more flexibility with start times.  First, we noticed that BYUtv aired it two hours later which was great when we were still sleepy at ten.  Then we got a TiVo box which was amazing, especially when we started getting sleepy.  We'd just pause it and take a 15 minute power nap and wake up ready to hear more.  Then we got one in the family room so the kids could watch it while they played.  Now, we have our Roku box and can stream it from the Internet.  We have the flexibility to start it when we need to and pause if we need to.  This technology thing is really awesome.

One thing I noticed this year was that the boys just knew that we watched Conference together, even on Saturday.  We all just sat down together to watch.  They did great.  I wasn't sure how much they were paying attention though so for Sunday I tried a game I had heard about from a friend of mine.  I bought several different kinds of candy pieces, like M&M's, Reece's Pieces, Skittles, etc.  I put them each in their own bowl and made a sign with a word on it like: temple, family, prayer, faith, etc.  So, whenever that word was said during conference we'd get to eat a candy from that bowl.  It seemed to work pretty well.  The first time a word was said we had to pause it because it was so exciting that we stopped paying attention to the talk, but we got better at it and it stopped being as disruptive.  In the future though, we might want to pick less used words or pick different treats, we were all a little sick from candy by the end.  We normally have breakfast for dinner on Sunday's that we're home, but we were so full of sugar that I made a tasty casserole instead which was perfect.  I wish I had taken a picture, you'll just have to trust me I guess. Not of the casserole, but the candy bowls.  Conference was great, though and I've already downloaded the talks as podcasts.  It's my favorite thing to listen to when I'm driving.  It keeps me relaxed.

Saturday night was the Priesthood Session.  Nathaniel has been a few times now, but I still love it that he and Jaaromy go together.  They even went out for a treat afterwards.

I think they had a good time.

The rest of us needed dinner too so we went to Village Inn.  They did great and I didn't have any trouble with the two of them on my own.  I had a super tasty sausage skillet that I'm sure was a thousand calories but I decided that it was okay, just for today.  The only reason I mention that is because it has to do with the next part of my post.

Since January I have been using MyFitnessPal to lose weight.  I've gained a little bit with every pregnancy over the years and, in the case of Brigham, a lot.  I wasn't happy with how I looked.  The last few years had been really hard for other reasons and even though I didn't like how I looked, it honestly wasn't forefront on my mind.  In a way, I felt like I was just surviving and I didn't even feel guilty about not exercising.  I'm not entirely sure what made me change my mind.  Jaaromy had found this app and was using it and exercising regularly.  He was having success and maybe that's why I decided to start.  I've never loved the idea of counting calories because I love food and I felt that it would make it less fun.  Turns out my analytical have-to-make-the-numbers-add-up side of me was stronger.  So, I credit my success to the fact that I'm so annal.

Here's a before picture:

 This was taken on our trip to St. George about a year ago.  I didn't know I was going to do this or even that it would work so it didn't occur to me to take an official "before" picture.

It did occur to me, however, to take an official "after" picture:

Overall, I lost 40 lbs.  My goal was actually 45, but it started evening out on it's own and so I decided that I was happy with it.  I really don't want to do anything more extreme to lose the last 5.  If this is where I fall naturally, then I'm good with it.

The reason I tied this in with Conference is because I hit the 40 lbs. lost mark on Conference weekend.  This was especially funny to me because of the 1,000 calorie skillet that I mentioned and all the candy we ate on Sunday.  Back in the beginning when I was having a lot success, I didn't dare take a day off of counting.  I guess I was afraid it would stop working.  I finally got to the point where I felt like I could take a day off and start again the next day.  I wasn't going to suddenly gain all the weight back that I had lost.  This was illustrated perfectly in early April when we took our trip to Seattle and Vancouver.  We did a lot of walking but there's not a lot you can do about food.  So, even though I tried to make healthier choices when we ate out, I still had to just let it go and not worry about it for our trip.  When I got home I had gained 5 lbs. back.  But a week later I had dropped it and it went right back to where it was.  That was encouraging for me, I think.

I feel so lucky that this worked for me so well.  I know how hard and insurmountable it can seem.  I'm glad I did it.  I wish I had done it sooner.  I wish I had done it after each pregnancy.  It's a lot harder to come down 40 lbs. than it would have been to just lose 10.  Oh well, better late than never.

Anyway, so that was our Conference Weekend.  Good times.