Wednesday, February 16, 2011

You Guys Have Got To Read This!

Ok, so I fell in love with Jack Sh*t Getting Fit a few months ago, but the man has just outdone himself this time. I am a HUGE Dr. Suess fan, and The Sneetches was my favorite book when I was a child. I just loved those silly little sneetches and the lengths they would go to be the best Sneetch on the Beach!! If you've never read the originial story, you can go here. In fact, here's a reading of the book on YouTube. Watch it. Right now. It's got a great message and you need to hear it! NOW!!!! Ok, well, just whenever you have time. ;)



Anyway, the POINT of all of this Sneetch ranting is that I woke up this morning and found that Mr. Sh*t had posted his own version of the Sneetch poem. With an awesome weight loss message! You should go read it, he did a great job.

I printed it out and it's going on my fridge so that I have to look at it everytime I open it. Because I am going to be a Fit-Bellied Beetch!!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Monday Weigh In

Well, the new scale hasn't changed in the few days since I bought it. I'm staying steady at 206.6. But that's okay. It hasn't been a whole week yet. I'm just doing the weigh in today to get back on track with my official weigh in days. But the real reason that I'm not upset is because I KNOW that I'm doing everything right, at least for the past 3 days. Green smoothies? Check. Lots of water? Check. Staying within my calorie range? Check. 30 Day Shred? Check check check check check.  Also have NOT binged at night, haven't eaten anything after dinner as a matter of fact.
I had a major victory last night when my next door neighbor (major food pusher....she is all the time cooking and baking delicious things that don't have a lick of nutrition in them) asked me to come over and when I got there, she had an entire plate of mini cupcakes waiting just for me. Her cupcakes are my favorite in the entire world---and ya'll know how I feel about cake anyway! But I just had 2 little bite size pieces to be polite. The real victory is that I stayed at her house for well over an hour after that and they were right there the entire time and I didn't eat them, wasn't even tempted.
Also Jeremy offered me a Valentine's breakfast at our local doughnut shop and somehow I turned it down. Green smoothie it is. Yummy. Oh!! I upgraded my handweights for the Shred from 3 lbs to 5 lbs. Yesterday was my first day with the heavier weights.  I managed not to commit suicide.
I hope all of you have a great Valentine's Day!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I'm back!

Hi. I don't know what my problem has been with blogging lately! I start to, and then decide not to. In reading some blogs lately, I've just noticed kind of a trend of calling people out. I don't agree or disagree with that, but it really has made me more hesitant to post anything on this blog that could...I don't know...make people roll their eyes at me? If that makes any sense? I just don't want to be one of those people who have all of these grand plans and no follow through. I don't want to waste anyone's time.
It's no secret that I've been struggling since Christmas. I was doing really well, had completed a half marathon and lost about 15 pounds and then I just...stopped. It didn't happen all at once, and I fought against myself every day to try to make the right decisions and stop making the wrong ones. I had less success as time went on, and then I went into a week long binge. That just sort of set the tone, and mentally I felt as if the past year hadn't even happened.
It is so easy, when you're losing weight, to look back and say, "How did I ever eat like that before? I was poisoning myself! I love the way my body feels now that I'm treating it right, and I'm never going back!" And then, when you do revert back to your old behaviors it is equally easy to look back and say, "How was I ever able to control myself with food? That seems so far away right now, even though it was only two weeks ago. I feel so helpless, and I just can't see out of this place." Whatever phase that I'm in, its just so easy for me to forget about how I felt BEFORE.
Feeling like a failure is natural to me. I would go so far as to say...comfortable. Feeling like a failure is comfortable for me. I use failing as a crutch so that I don't have to make the effort to make the effort, if that makes any sense. At heart, I'm a lazy person who just likes to be comfortable.  Hence, failure.
The thing with that, though, is that over the past 10 months enough change has happened within me that I just can't let myself STAY in that place. I keep going back to visit, but I can't bring myself to throw in the towel once and for all.
I've stayed away from the blog and have just done a lot of thinking. This process isn't linear. There is never going to be a moment when the path just lights itself up and from then on out, struggling is over. But that's what I always expect, over and over again. That there will be a lot of struggling in the beginning, but if I can just "get through it", things will get easier and easier until this new healthy lifestyle just comes naturally. Bull shit!!! I have good days and bad days. And now I see that the bad days are to be expected just as much as the good ones. The trick is to not let them derail me. Just because I have a day where all I crave is sugar and fat doesn't mean that the process isn't working. I'm not doing anything wrong. And it doesn't mean that I have to give in. And I will continue to blog about it---good, bad, and ugly because blogging helps me, and I don't want to give it up. That's all part of the strange self sabotage that I am so good at!
With all this great thinking I have been doing has also come some action. I'm now on Day 5 of the 30 Day Shred and loving it so far. If nothing else, I can give all that I have for 20 minutes.  That much I can handle! I'm drinking my smoothies again daily, which is imperative for me. They really help me to regulate my food intake and control my sugar cravings. I bought another scale last week and weighed myself - 206.6. I'm not happy about it, because now I've gained back 5 full pounds I'd lost. BUT I'm on my way to losing it, and much more. I do believe this. After all, I have a cruise coming up. :)

Friday, February 4, 2011

Help

I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've been hiding from life. There was no weigh in this Monday because my downstairs flooded on Saturday night and my digital scale was one of the victims. I guess the batteries fried...which sucks because it was a really expensive scale that measured your body fat percentage and all that fancy stuff....so anyway, I have no idea what I weigh.

I need help. I've been struggling a lot, and while I could sit here and analyze all of the reasons to death, I'm going to spare you. They would all come across as excuses...they are all excuses. I have noticed that its actually much harder, in a way, to eat unhealthily and avoid exercise. Because then I have all this self-loathing and guilt to constantly deal with, and I am drained. But whatever.

The thing is, I have a Bahamas cruise coming up at the end of March. There are 6 weeks and 6 days before this trip, to be exact. This is a very important trip for me. First, I've never been on a cruise before. In fact, I've never been off the East Coast my whole life. Second, this is my husband's and my 10 year wedding anniversary. We never got to go on a honeymoon, so in a way this is a really really late honeymoon too.  I want this to be a perfect trip. I don't want to spend the entire time worried about how I look in a bathing suit, and feeling bad that I don't have the body of all the beautiful girls that I am sure to see. I know that I don't have enough time to get even close to goal weight, and I'm okay with that. But I would like to lose 15 pounds...I think that would at least allow me to feel good enough about my progress that I can get on the boat proud of myself and my body instead of ashamed.

15 pounds is a lot to lose in 6 weeks, and I need a plan. Please help me figure out what to do. I know that the way to lose weight for life is to "eat a little less and move a little more." But what I'm interested in right now is a plan that will allow me to lose weight safely, but rapidly. What should I eat? How many calories should I take in? What kind? What about exercise?  I wish I could afford Medifast or something like that, but that isn't in the budget right now. So what I need is a plan that has a similar calorie intake that I can just do at home. I really need some good advice here. I'm directionless, and (I'm starting to believe this) clueless about the right way to lose weight. So, help, help, help!!