staying the course.....

For some reason for the past several days my mind and body have completely gotten on board with the whole idea of eating healthier...something i've wanted to do for a while but the love of food was getting too overwhelming. Some how the hate of being fat outwieghed the love of food and common sense took over. I have been eating totally healthy for several days now, no fast food, barely any carbs (especially the pointless ones in pasta and bread) and i've lost 5 pounds. I cannot believe this....i don't know where it came from but i hope it sticks around for when my hcg diet information and drops come, i could use this kind of mindset! I'm already day dreaming about what it will be like to be thin again and have clothes fit me in any size smaller than the one i'm in now! Guess that's what's keeping me going, the day dreaming of thin-ness....i can do this...so can you!!!!!!

Eating to live, not eating to die.

Do you ever have a moment where things just suddenly click into place? Like where you're hard studying finally got you the "A" on that test? It's strange but that's how i feel today.

I've known for quite sometime that the two main obstacles to weight loss for me are
A)portion control
B) THE EVIL CARB!!!!!

The problem for me is so often that I use food as a comfort and it is always the carbs that do the comforting the most, then of course compiled with the fact that i eat too many of it when i do and you've got a recipe for disaster to any diet plan. I've been reading a lot about healthier diet plans and praying i could have the will power to stick to one, I had that will power once a long time ago and i haven't had it back for years.....until today.

Yesterday I danced with my kids in the kitchen with the radio up and the windows open with a cool breeze blowing in. It was a freeing feeling, it made me feel so good that at dinner (grilled chicken, white rice, and green beans) I totally felt like i could eat just the chicken and green beans and be completely satisified. I didn't think much of it, i ate the rice anyway, but only a small scoop and didn't go back for seconds because although it's not terrible for me , portion control on all things is key.

I sometimes will have a moment like that here and there, a moment of self control and good eating but then i go to bed and wake up reset to my old internal monologue of how much fattening food i can shove in my face all day to make myself feel less stressed over everything else which i have less control over. I reset back to that every morning. but this morning was different somehow, it's like i woke up reenergized and ready to eat healthy, and not only that but i did not cheat the whole day, seriously! I am not on a specific diet at the moment, but it was things like not eating the snack i made for the kids, but rather making myself something else. It was choosing at dinner not to eat the baked potato (which as far as potatoes go is just about my favorite!) or even the sweet hawaiian roll and not even batting an eye about that choice. Like somehow it was an easy choice.

Yesterday i let myself really dwell on what it could feel like to be thinner and healthy again, how amazingly great it would feel and i think that helped, helped me point my mind toward that direction. I don't know if this will last after this so i had to write about it because it was so wonderful, I haven't had a day of not craving junk food for so long i can't even remember. Today is the start of something new i hope.... the start of eating to live not eating to die.

(PH)at pictures

Here they are, a few official "fat pictures" but since fat feels like such an ugly word, i'll chose to say "phat" instead. It sort of makes it sound cool....but there's nothing cool about it. I am beyond tired of being overweight and the aches and pains associated with it as well as the awful job of clothing this body with curves in all the wrong places. (and a few in the right places just wish they weren't so prominent)

31st birthday and party. new hair cut and new shirt can't hide the (ph)at.

the same picture but with a worse view of my quadruple chin.

this is included to remind me that no matter how unhappy i am with my figure, my husband loves me and thinks i'm beautiful no matter what :)

These aren't the worst pictures because of course i don't really have any, i avoid them. But it does show the truth, that i can't hide, i right now am severely over weight and even by some standards 'obese'....that's a scary thought.

Strange though i can still for the most part look in a mirror and find something good about the way i look, whether it's my hair or my makeup or something, and that's good, focusing on the positive is good, but i don't want to ignore the negative or i'll never do anything about it!

I am thinking of doing a diet called the hcg diet. I have friends who've done it and all with rave reviews. It seems like something that might work for me, if you've tried it please comment and let me know what you think about it!

A little healthy competition

Ok so if you know me at all you know I am a bit competitive, certainly not as bad as I was in my younger years but still i have a competitive side. So on facebook someone invited me to join this healthy daily challenge app. I checked it out and i have to say what tipped it for me is that when your friends join you can see how you compare to how many of the daily challenges have been completed. Now granted this isn't exactly going to turn me into a supermodel, but hey a competition that helps me get healthier in any way sounds good to me!

Getting all "scaley"

No, I'm not talking about growing scales on my body, I'm talking about the scale and the ugly number it produces. So many things I read say that you shouldn't weight yourself at all but just judge your loss by how your body feels and clothes fit.......really though?



When you're just starting out (as I am) it seems to me that the little differences which are hard to see in your shape and clothes can at least be a motivation to keep you going. I feel like if i were to step on the scale and see three pounds lost i would be overjoyed and feel like i could keep going....but i don't think I would notice it much in my clothes. So my question to anyone reading this is how do you feel about scales in your weight loss plan? I think I'm going to stick with the scale at least until I can see some real difference in my clothing.....how about you?

As a response to a request I'd like to post the official size of dress/pants I wear right now because some people are choosing not to use a scale as their guide. For some reason this number doesn't really bother me as much as the scale number does. I wear a size 18 in most pants and dresses. Now I could totally lie and say 16 because there is one pair of pants in my closet that do fit and is a size 16 but truthfully i think they were tagged wrong. Truth of the matters is also that even an 18 is tight which is a first for me, usually i wear something between a 16 and an 18 (too bad they don't make a 17 for women) 16 was a little too tight but 18 always fell off. Now it's strictly 18 and it's tight which is scary for me to think of gaining any more weight. We live in a house with stairs now and it's hard enough hiking up and down the stairs carrying my own body weight around but then add to that the two growing babys i have and carrying them up and down as well, often both at once....at least it's a workout right?!

I think small goals are important. My first goal is to get down to 215....why that number you ask? In order to qualify for breast reduction surgery (which i have wanted and needed for years) I have to meet a certain BMI (body mass index is a terrible way to judge health or weight but it's what the dr's office requires) and with my height I cannot weigh more than 220, so I don't want to think i'm the right weight at 220 and go in to the dr's office and have the scale tell me i'm 221 or 222, because different scales say different things....so 215 is a good first goal. Rewarding yourself with small things for shorter term goals is a good way to keep motivated i think. I'll be rewarding myself with smaller breasts and cheaper bras once i reach this first goal.....can't wait!!

It's funny how I was feeling so undermotivated because yesterday was my birthday and I had cake and ice cream and didn't feel like working out today at all......but then after writing about the goal I have it's made me really want to work on it today! So now that i've exersized my fingers on the key board i'm going to go down to the play room and put on a workout DVD for Katie and I to do together! Thanks for the motivation!!

Weight Not, Want Not

There is a reason that the only pictures of myself I can find are from the shoulders up. Because I can't stand to be reminded of the fact that I am the largest I have ever been in my life, sadly even including pregnancy. I have never weighed more than I do right now....never. And I'm going to do something that is so taboo it's so rarely been done I'm going to announce to the world how much I weigh. Why? Because I hope never to see this number again. This is the weight according to my home scale which is what I plan to use to weigh myself on each time I do a weigh in (hopefully once a week) and the ugly number is:............

241

Now in all fairness I am a tall woman. I spent most of my adult life thinking I was 5'10" but found out a few years ago that all this weight is weighing me down and I'm actually only 5' 9 1/2" it may not make much of a differnce but it does to me, somewhere down the line someone rounded my height up and it was a number I've always known as my height and on this blog I plan to be completely honest about everything so that's the honest truth of my height.

Sad to say that as I mentioned before the only pictures of my body below the shoulders is with one of my kids hiding the front of me, so I'll be taking a picture in the next day or so to use as my before picture....my fat picture as it were.....because I hope that eventually there will be thin pictures of me too. I don't dare hope to ever refer to myself as skinny. That word, even if it ever described me, carries with it some negativity because skinny does not always mean healthy. And health is the point of all of this.

The point of this blog is that you the reader are who I plan to be accountable to. I can't ever seem to find a workout partner that sticks around for very long and my schedule of when I can workout isn't the best either. So you are my partner, and I'll be yours. If you want to comment about something you're doing that works for you, that would be great. I know very few people who are the weight they want to be, this blog is my effort to use my own poor motivation to motivate myself and others, share workout ideas, and track my own progress as I attempt to become a healthier person, one blog post at a time.

Today I chose apples instead of crackers for a mid morning snack....and I took a first step in the right direction.