Operation Serena Fine Update

As I was looking for photos to compare my current shape with my former shape I was reminded yet again that I really don't take a lot of photos of myself.  I've mentioned the scale and I are battling in that it doesn't move much no matter how good I am with my food or diligent I am with the working out.  That's frustrating to be sure but whenever I send a random photo to a friend of something unrelated or a former student or colleague sees me I get a resounding you look great or you look way smaller.  One or two of them might be biased but probably not all of them.  I'm sure you're wondering what all that has to do with this post and I can understand that as well.  I don't mention #operationserenafine all the time because it just doesn't cross my mind to most days.  But in light of my finally taking a photos and total win related to this whole process it's time for an update.

So you can see my body transforming more here than I noticed on a day to day basis.  The top left photo is me and one of my line sisters in early 2013.  I was in town for a job interview and we had a good time out at dinner.  She is partially who made me get off my butt and say screw it let's do this.  The top right photo is late 2013.  If I have any from 2014 I can't find those bastards but as adorable as I am in said photo I was way too heavy for my frame.  The bottom left photo is me in January of 2015.  Smaller yes but I look kind of frumpy to me and still rounder than I'd like.  The bottom right photo is a few days ago, maybe a week.  I hadn't realized that my stomach looks different, my neck and chin look different and I'm standing straighter.  Gray hair still in effect but yeah different body.  Here's a shot of that without the collage.

I'm not done by any means, there's still weight to lose and muscles to tone but yeah I'm enjoying the journey and even with the crazy scale battles it's worth taking better care of myself.  I just took part in one of those we'll pay you to participate health screens at work and all my numbers were much better than when I did it two years ago.  All except my blood pressure which seems to spike to all hell at the doctor's office and no where else.  I'll still follow up with the doctor about that though.  Oh and I have to thank whoever thought of and chose to market the Mio Drops for flavoring your water.  I haven't ever really been a big soda drinker and after I abandoned most juices because of the sugar content I migrated over to a V8 option thinking it would be a great alternative.  That is until I met with a nutritionist who said it was full of sugar and calories and I needed to find a plan B or C maybe.  That mostly left water and if you know me you know I super hate water.  It hydrates yes but it tastes like absolutely nothing which isn't helpful.  I know it's supposed to taste like nothing but if you want me to keep drinking it then I need something to make it more interesting.  I spent six months at least on the Crystal Light is everything bandwagon, probably over a year, and if you can avoid the lemonade flavors and that horrible aftertaste then yeah they were decent but they were only in packets and just not making me happy.  I tried Hawaiian Punch drops as well as Minute Maid drops and while they took care of the flat taste they were not stocked regularly and not terribly cheap.  Enter the product that I am now using and just scored a great price on.

There's no weird aftertaste.  The size and shape of the bottle means it can easily go into a bag or my pocket as needed.  They have a bunch of varieties and you need to test each one to figure out how much of a squeeze you legit need for the bottle of water you are drinking because some are stronger in flavor than others.  I remember a lemonade with them as well that also had a weird aftertaste so I think it's something about lemonade flavors in general.  Overall, I love most of the ones I've tried except the energy ones.  Good God those are nasty.  Mio is most definitely not cheap which sucks.  Around here it ranges between $3.29 to 4.69 for a bottle.  The store I frequent the most has random sales on it that knocks the price down to $2.69.  During those sales upon occasion they have a buy six save a dollar on each which knocks them down to $1.69 each for every six you buy.  And because both Mio and the store want me to keep buying them I get coupons to save $1.50 for every four I buy each time I buy a few.  So yesterday I grabbed all my coupons (4 for savings of 6 bucks) and grabbed 18 bottles to make sure that I got my $1.69 deal on all of them.  So before coupons the total was 30.42 for 18.  Knock it down to 24.42 after coupons.  Now divide that by 18 and the product that is normally $3.29 just became $1.35 or so per bottle which is normally enough for me to flavor eight 24 ounce bottles of water.