My New Ending

It’s another one of those benefits that makes all the effort worth it.

I have to add that getting my rest is vitally important as well, though it’s something I struggle to get enough of. Each person requires different amounts of sleep and I am an 7-8-hours-a-night girl. When I take the time to get to bed, or am willing to put off some things to get to bed on time, I feel so much better in the days that follow. When I don’t get my rest I feel like I’m dragging and not like the healthy, vibrant person I want to be.

So, today I’d like to encourage you to make your health a priority by following some basic rules that are becoming more and more cemented in my life:

• Taking care of what and how much you are eating. Track your calories or food choices for a while if you aren’t sure where you’re going wrong. It will help, I promise.
• Get some exercise in each week. I don’t workout six days a week, but I do try and get a good, solid, 30 minute, sweaty workout in at least 3-4 days a week, more if possible.
• Drink that water. Yes, I added this one for free. 🙂 It will help you be in top shape for your workouts…trust me. (I’ll write about my dehydrated workout later.)
• And get that rest. Your health is important. Getting an appropriate amount of rest is vital to your health. If you only need six hours to make it through a day, then that’s fine. We are all different, but that doesn’t mean we don’t all need rest.

Believe me, I understand the duties of wife, mother, working woman and the fun of hobbies too, but something I’ve really come to learn is that when I take care of the few basic guidelines I’ve outlined above I’m in better shape to handle all my duties and even my “play” time.

I’m not at all into the whole “me time” mentality that many people have. You know, that attitude that gets abused so that everything and everyone has to cater to the person lacking their “me time”. However, if life takes all my time and I no longer have time to worry about my health, then everything I apply myself to will suffer the consequences.

I have to make my health a priority in my life. By doing so I will be able to continue enjoying full days that do not zap me of my energy. How about you?

Having said that this week was dealing with handling difficult food moments, such as:

• Eating at a party or celebration. Will you eat whatever you want, or will you choose according to the plan you’re following? I had this experience last weekend with two different birthday parties. The first one I ate according to plan. A light lunch and only one bite of a cupcake simply for the purpose of tasting my friend’s new frosting recipe. It was perfect and I was very happy with my decision. Sunday I ate a little more at the party and then had the cake incident later that night. Not the best way to handle things, but Sundays are always a little different and I would’ve been fine with what I chose to eat at the party had I not eaten more cake and junk later that night.
• Alcohol consumption. This was by far the easiest chapter for me…because I don’t drink. 🙂 At all. Never have, never will. I’ve cooked with wine once or twice, but that’s it. It was nice to have a chapter that wasn’t a huge challenge, for once. I can’t imagine having to battle the love of brownies and an alcoholic beverage while losing weight. Oh, the calories….
• Emotional Eating. This is something I was already on my way to dealing with, so it wasn’t so hard for me to address it this week. My emotional eating problem is boredom and avoiding tasks. I am not a so-depressed-I-ate-a-half-gallon-of-ice-cream girl, more like I’m a so-happy-to-be-enjoying-the-food-and-friends type of girl. A happy eater, so since “happy” is also an emotion I fall in this category very well. I’m learning to either, step away from boredom by reading a book for a few minutes, or making myself get to my task, whether or not I want to instead of munching on food to avoid it. This is still a work in progress, and I have a feeling that it always will be.

Have a great weekend!

Loss/Gain: -1.5 lbs.

Total Loss So Far: -35.5 lbs

I had to work today, but let me tell you that I was walking on clouds all day with this 1 1/5 pound loss!!!! It’s the lowest I’ve been so far on this journey.

WOO HOO!!

I will come back and talk about what I learned from The Beck Diet Solution Week 5 tomorrow. I wanted to post this in the morning, so you could all have a happy moment for me today, but here it is none the less…when I actually have a few moments.

G’nite for now.

I also jogged for 30 minutes straight and the majority of the time my pace was 4.7 mph. I slowed to 4.5 for a bit and that was wonderful. “Slowing” to what used to be my fastest pace was a wonderful feeling.

WHEE!!!

Today I was having moments of wondering if I’ll ever lose the weight, so I decided to remind myself of the awesome, VERY HARD, yet spirit lifting jog I had yesterday that also lead me to a non-scale victory in my weight loss journey.

It’s truly a BIG victory for me to be sure and I shall dwell on it in those “will I ever??” moments this week, because I can honestly say that I never thought I’d see the day I’d jog for 30 minutes straight. 🙂

I did not know this until last Friday night.

We have new military friends that just moved to town. He has run a marathon and she has gotten into running and ran her first 6 mile race this year. They eat healthy are quickly becoming good friends of ours here.

Being that he is so into running I asked him if he knew anything about Nike Plus. I got out my running shoes (that I bought two months ago) and my iPod touch and told him I couldn’t get it to work.

He asked me if I bought the transmitter, chip thing to put in the shoe.

HUH?!?! What chip? Transmitter? No one told me about a chip or that I had to buy anything else besides the app to sync my shoes to the iPod touch. When I asked a kid at the Nike store about it he told me to “Call nike.com.” (Yea, I kid you not…CALL a dot com…another story for another time…)

Anyway, back to the story.

“Um, yes”, he replies as his wife is agreeing with him, “there should be a little chip, like a transmitter that goes in the sole of one of the shoes. Let’s look.”

Sure enough inside one of my shoes is the symbol for the Nike Plus and when I pull out the insole there is the compartment for the transmitter …. with nothing inside but a piece of foam to fill the hole.

LOTS OF LAUGHTER HERE!!!!! 😀

I reminded him I am a blonde and had no clue.

The funniest part of this is that when I got the shoes I downloaded the app onto my iPod and then proceeded to spend an evening hopping around the dining room, jogging around the house and more trying to get my iPod to sync with the shoes, but the iPod kept saying that it could not locate the Nike Plus. I would hop and try and hold my iPod close to the shoe to help it pick up a signal. Finally I gave up and haven’t given it much thought since then.

Um, remember that song “Here’s Your Sign” ? Well, that’s how I felt last Friday night as we all had a good laugh at my Nike Plus mishap. So, go ahead and laugh…I sure did and am still giggling as I type. 🙂

I’m not sure if I’m going to go get the Nike Plus transmitter, but at least I know now that mine isn’t broken. LOL

Have a great day!

I ate cake again tonight after dinner. *sigh* I wasn’t too thrilled with myself, though not just because I ate cake, but more because I ate it (A) without knowing if I had the room in my calorie budget for it and (B) I ate it out of the cake box, standing at the counter and it left me very full and upset that I gave in to sweets when I know they are not the most helpful in a weight loss journey.

It wasn’t a huge piece of cake, but size doesn’t matter when it’s not something that I need at the moment. Eating out of the box is usually the first sign to walk away from it and I didn’t. I just gave in. Darn it.

My gut feeling is to be so vexed with myself. I knew better and I just let myself go without even stopping to think. *sigh*

I still need to read my Beck chapter for yesterday and today, but I decided to read blog updates first. I’m glad that I did. I’m serious when I say that weight loss blogging is like a continuous Weight Watchers meeting for me. I can hop on at any time and find the encourage, direction and words of wisdom I need to keep going.

Lindsay over at Prior Fat Girl was the one who brought the inspiration to me tonight. She shared a moment of vexation in her weight loss journey, but she wisely started off with this quote:

Twice yesterday I found myself in this food situation: I was faced with an opportunity to eat and didn’t want it.

The first time was when I stopped at Starbucks to purchase a gift card and decided I would treat myself to a tall non-fat white mocha with no whip cream, iced.

I wanted this drink, but at the same time I didn’t. It was weird. It’s like I really only wanted a little bit of it, but really I didn’t want to spend the calories on it. I ended up sipping on it for the next hour and throwing out about the last quarter of it when I realized I was fine and really didn’t want to finish it.

My second situation of not wanting food was after church in the evening. As I drove home I pondered what I would eat for the usual after-church snack and nothing sounded good. I thought to myself, “I’m not even hungry. Weird.”

For the next almost two hours I battled with this, wondering around the house doing little things, meanwhile picking a bite of this, “Nope, don’t want that.” and even heated up a Weight Watchers snack, took one bite and threw that out as well.

Finally, I went and read in bed, realizing that we were home earlier than normal and maybe that was why I wasn’t really hungry yet. Usually I eat a larger lunch on Sundays and by the time we get home I’m ready for a light snack before bed. Not last night. I was home and very much not in the mood for food.

There was birthday cake from my son’s birthday, cupcakes from my friend’s birthday on Saturday that I hosted, leftover pizza and Thai food from lunch, and the aforementioned Weight Watchers snacks, but nothing sounded good.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Not eating something is so out of the normal for me and it was strange.

I’d like to say that I stuck to that, but after reading a book I finally found myself getting a little hungry and decided to eat a slice of cheese pizza and a small 8 oz. cup of Pepsi. At the time I knew it wasn’t the healthiest thing, and I knew it was too late – 11:15 pm to be exact – to be eating, but I was a smidge hungry and it sounded perfect.

I went to bed happy and not too upset about my choice. On the way home from church I had told myself that I didn’t want pizza because the grease always leaves me feeling yucky, but I was feeling fine since I had just eaten cheese only pizza.

However, today I am thinking that I really need to learn how to handle these moments. I’m excited that I’m finding myself not wanting food, but I’m also still a little unsure of what to do when those situations arise.

Dr. Beck would say that I should’ve read my response cards and then obeyed my rules for myself. Well, as I was eating the pizza I wondered if I should make myself a rule to not eat after 10:00 pm, so that I’m not tempted to eat something “bad”? hhmm…. it has me thinking…

In the course of your weight loss journey did you/do you find yourself in a similar situation? Do you have certain rules for yourself? Or did you have certain rules that you followed more strickly during the weight loss portion of your journey and found later you were able to be a little more slack on them when you were in maintenance?

I’m looking for a little shared wisdom here and I thank you in advance to anyone who is willing to share.

Loss/Gain: -1.0 lbs

Total Loss So Far: -34.0 lbs

I’m happy with being down one pound considering I didn’t give it my all every day this week. It puts me back where I was two weeks ago, so that’s kind of a bummer, but I will press forward and it will come off eventually. At least it’s no longer 200.0!! 🙂

This past week with Dr. Beck has really got me thinking. It was a week of dealing with sabotaging thoughts and how to combat them. There was a lot of journaling and writing that I haven’t had time to do to the full extent. I have read my daily chapters, and made response and reminder cards as needed, but there’s a journaling project to do that I need to start a.s.a.p. so I don’t fall behind.

The concept is to write in a diet journal what you are thinking every time you want to eat something you shouldn’t, or overeat, etc. Those are the sabotaging thoughts that you have. For example, without even writing them down I know some of mine are:

• It’s just one bite.
• It doesn’t really matter.
• The food’s there and I’m so drawn to it…oh what the heck.
• I’m not hungry, but I have room for this in my calorie budget today.
• I know I shouldn’t, but I don’t really care right this moment.
• I’ll make it up by eating lighter the rest of the day.

It sounds time consuming, but I think this is something I’m really going to set time aside to do. I do not have a problem knowing if I’m truly hungry. My problem is usually telling myself no when I know I really don’t need the food. Yes, I admit it. I often eat, and overeat at a meal, even when I know I’m not/no longer hungry. I’ve learned that eating when not hungry, even if you have the calorie room for it, is still wrong, but that’s another subject for another day.

So, I think I’m going to leave my little journal on the counter and every time I want to eat when not hungry I’m going to jot down what I’m feeling at that moment. I won’t analyze it then, but just observe what I’m thinking. Then I can sit later and figure out what needs to change in my thinking to battle these non-hunger moments of desire for food.

I’ll let you know how I do with this over the next week. In the meantime, I need to get myself to the gym and get on with a busy day ahead.

Have a good weekend blog friends and thanks for checking in. I’m still here, still working on my weight loss goals and still pressing on that I will reach my goal someday.

Happy Friday to you! :o)

Oh my. I ate a little too much of stuff today, but I’m okay with it.

I’ve done well over the weekend so far and I look forward to getting back on track. It’s got me thinking though….I need to learn a better way to handle sitting around playing games around all the food. hhmm…

Definitely on my list of “things to learn how to handle” in my weight loss journey. 🙂 Meanwhile, I’ll get some sleep and start back up bright and new tomorrow. It was a fun day of swimming, games and food and I enjoyed myself a bunch and tomorrow is a new day!

Loss/Gain: +1.0 lb

Total Loss So Far: -33 lbs.

I am not surprised with this gain and decided not to let it bother me. I am down from earlier in the week, so I’m pleased with that. The brownies are gone and I am leaning towards deciding that I really can’t eat any of those right now, because even one bite leads to a binge of sorts for me.

I’m already feeling back on track and grateful that I didn’t gain more during TOM.

As for what I’ve learned from The Beck Diet Solution this past week…

• Quit fooling yourself! Yes, that would be me…I’ve fooled myself many times into think that just one bite is okay, or I can lose the weight and still eat anything I want whenever I want. I’ve even fooled myself into believing at times that I can’t lose weight. This was a good wake-up call for me.
• No Choice. To prevent unplanned eating (snacking while cooking or out of boredom, desserts brought to work or a function that I didn’t make room for in my calorie budget, etc.) I need to remind myself that I don’t have a choice in the matter. I will make a set of food rules and then stick to them. Sticking to those rules will help me not have to deal with “Should I or shouldn’t I?” or “Maybe just a small piece..” etc. I will remind myself, “No, this goes against your rules for losing weight, so not today.” and then walk away.

Am I putting these things all into practice already? Kind of. 🙂 I’ll be honest that I am still working on my rules and I haven’t ruled out any foods completely yet, though brownies are sure taking the #1 spot right now. My main rule is to stay within my calorie budget daily and get at least 3-4 days of exercise in a week.

I might set up some more strict rules in the future, but this wasn’t the week to do so. 🙂 This week I did well to read my Beck book daily and follow the prompts, journal all of my food and get some exercise in. Sticking to those basic things helped my week go from worse to better, so I’m grateful for that.

As I finish up here I’m reminded of the little train who could, “I think I can. I think I can. ” Here’s to a nice weekend wherever you are and another week of losing ahead for me. 🙂