My New Ending

Loss/Gain: -3.5

Total Loss So Far: -29.5 lbs.

Technically I see this as a maintain since I was 201.5 last Thursday and Saturday, just up on Friday. Nonetheless, I’m glad to see it’s not anything higher.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching on some habits that affect not only my weight but other areas of my life as well. I’ve been reading a couple of books and having some very productive talks with a close friend of mine who is facing some of the same struggles.

I think/know I have some emotional issues related to food and, believe it or not, I’m finding they relate to other areas of my life as well. The same issues keep popping up. I’m probably going to do a small little series on a few subjects to get these thoughts out, but it’s going to take some more time and reflection.

Meanwhile, these are a few changes that will be taking place in my life and my blog right away.

• I will not be jogging/running again until my weight gets down some, or until the fall. I will continue working out 4-5 days a week using DVDs and walks at the park. Once my weight has lowered a bit I’m going to take my husband up on the offer to go to a running store and get fitted for some running shoes. I’m hoping the combination of weight loss and maybe “special” shoes will allow me to get back to my 30 minutes of jogging without hip pain for the 12-24 hours following each workout.

• I am no longer using Lose It! to track my food. Counting calories was killing me, especially when I did great and saw gains that week. I am considering a food journal wherein I will track my level of hunger before each meal and fullness afterwards. More on that later. I must tell you when I decided to quit tracking my food I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I will continue to work towards having a fruit or vegetable with each meal and limiting my sweets to one small portion daily.

• Finally, this will be my last official weigh-in. I am going to try a new idea for a month or so that I saw on another blog. I will post my weights each month and under the monthly totals keep a running 7-day average of my weight. This will make more sense when you see it. I have pretty much always seen my daily weighing as the tool I use to keep myself in check. I haven’t my journaled food, counted calories or points, but I have weighed myself. Except for certain times of the month it doesn’t bother me to see the fluctuations. What does bother me is knowing on Thursday I have a weigh-in Friday and that’s the weigh everyone in blogland will judge me by. The past couple of months my Thursdays have become stressful knowing I have to post whatever shows up on Friday, even if I was lower on Thursday. And I’m a little tired of thinking I was awful throughout the week just because of what I have to post on here on Fridays. Of course, I rejoice in the weigh-ins that are good, but I need to do this for now. We’ll see how I like it and if it stays permanently after a month or two.

He said, “You will never go beyond what you think”, and alluded to the scripture in Proverbs “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he…”

As I pondered it again this morning I had to wonder, what do I think?

Do I think I can lose the excess weight?

Do I think I have the strength to get through a stressful time without turning to food?

Do I think I can ever have a normal relationship with food?

These are things I had already been thinking on this week, so when Pastor said that last night I knew that God has been hearing my thoughts and prayers. God knows these are some things I’m not totally convinced of yet in my own mind. Funny, but it’s the same feeling of “not totally convinced” that I’ve been struggling with in other areas as well.

My desire is not to live a life of mediocrity, both as a wife, mother, woman and in my weight loss journey. I won’t give up the fight to break the emotional ties to food. I will continue to work towards changing my thinking little by little, because only when I truly believe in my heart I can do this will the real, lifelong changes take place.

This is definitely easier said than done for me, but I know it can happen. 🙂

I told you Tricia was the giveaway queen and here’s more proof. She has a giveaway ending this Friday for a pair of Ryders Eyewear. You can read about it and enter by clicking here.

I’m hoping I win to get a pair for my husband.

Though after these dorky glasses I wore (and loved, I must admit) from about 12 years to 16 years old maybe I need a pair also. LOL

Lori Lynn over at Sunflowers ‘N Daisies was kind enough to award me the Beautiful Blogger award last week. I’m supposed to tell you seven things about myself and then forward the award on to a few other blogs.

So, here’s the random things about me:

1. I collect spoons. My collection started with one spoon and a rack that my grandmother gave me when I was in junior high. I now have over 100 spoons, about a third of which are from overseas. Some I’ve purchased myself, some were gifts and some have been purchased by friends when I find out they are traveling and sneak them some money.
2. I got married and had my children at the same ages my mother did. We both married at 19, had our first child (twins for me) at age 21 and our second child (pregnancy for me) at 24. We even had the same sex of children at each birth. We’re also both still married to our wonderful husbands, 36 years for them and 14 years for me.
3. I gave my life to Jesus as a little girl, and no matter how great the temptations through junior high and high school I managed to keep living for Christ. He has been my strength and salvation through all of the ups and downs in life.
4. One of my favorite days is a rainy one, where I can sit down with a cup of coffee and a good book.
5. I can never decide if I love fall or spring more on those email questionnaires – when the time rolls around for each of them I enjoy them both immensely.
6. I’ve always thought it would be fun to a step aerobics instructor. Of all the classes I’ve taken I’ve always loved step aerobics; and how fun would it be to make money while exercising!
7. My natural curly hair didn’t kick in until almost nine years ago. It was very straight growing up and I used to wish I could have curly hair like my mom did. Somewhere around 12 or 13 years old it started to get wavy, to the extent that I couldn’t let it dry natural if I wanted it straight. Then suddenly it started going a little wild, I cut it VERY short and it grew in curly. It’s been curly every since, and I love it!! It’s one of the things I love about the humidity here in Oklahoma…it makes my hair easy to deal with since it curls right up with little effort from me. 🙂

Well, there were little bits of this and that from over the weekend, so I thought I’d do a random post today.

First off, I think I’m an advanced walker now. 🙂 I started exercising in the beginning of my weight loss journey using Leslie Sansone’s Walk Away the Pounds DVDs. Two miles maybe three days a week, then I bumped it up to three mile walks and added another day. I did that until last fall when I started using the elliptical machine at the gym. Well, Saturday night I pulled out one of her DVDs, the 3-mile Weight Loss Walk, and decided to do it for my workout. I have been hestitant to use these DVDs again because they don’t seem to push me as much as jogging or the elliptical does. But I learned something this time….

….if you pull those knees as high as you can with every step, even when the tempo quickens, and do every movement to the fullest that your body can produce you’ll get a good sweat. It may not have been as hard as jogging, but I was sweating just as bad after those 45 minutes as I do with The 30-day Shred. This made me happy for two reasons. (1) I found out I can still use these for a good workout and (2) I was capable of pushing myself to limits during that workout that I know I couldn’t do last fall. Woo Hoo! I think I’ll be adding some more walking at home into my summer workout routine.

That was about the highlight of my weekend as far as health goes. The rest is some lessons I learned:

• I still get rebellious and after a gain want to just eat and eat and not care anymore.
• I’m still having to learn to believe in myself that I can lose this weight. At the same time I almost felt a load come off of me after getting all my feelings out about mourning the loss of food.
• Greasy foods give me heartburn and I had it both Saturday and Sunday.
• Just because a cake looks cool, doesn’t mean it tastes that good. I think I’m going to have start becoming a food snob and only allow a bite of cake to first see if it’s worth spending my hunger on. The cake I tasted on Saturday was not, but it didn’t stop me from eating my small sliver. (Yes, small, that was the best part of that choice.)
• Speaking of things that aren’t worth it….Whataburger shakes ARE NOT WORTH THE CALORIES right now.. First off, the “medium” is 32 oz, of which I maybe had 1/2 to 2/3 of it as a treat Sunday night. All the fun was taken out of my treat when I got home and journaled it only to find out a 32 oz. chocolate shake has 1,000 calories in it. Yes, you read that right, 1,000. I even looked it up online to make sure. When I did the math I figured that’s about 125 calories for a half cup, and I’ve spent that much on a small treat before…now just put a bunch of those into one large shake. Suddenly I didn’t enjoy it as much. I told my husband, “It will be a LONG time before I ever get a shake again!”
• And last, but not least, having water with a grilled chicken sandwhich at Whataburger is just as satisfying as having soda. Actually after having the heartburn, and a soda the day before, grilled chicken and a cup of ice water was just perfect! (and much less calories too…)
• Blogging is a wonderful tool and I’m so grateful I’ve chosen to be a part of the weight loss neighborhood of blogland. Your support and smiles helped me so much this past week.
• Oh, and I am rebellious in another way…I refuse to give up on my weight loss journey because of some stress. I will acknowledge that it can play a big part in my emotions and eating habits, but I will fight it and learn how to win.

Which brings me to my reason for this quick Saturday post.

I was 201.5 this morning. See? I’m not crazy. I know you didn’t think so, but I felt the need to show everyone that it really was a fluke of the scale.

I’ll leave my weigh-in the same, but it makes me feel better to let everyone know that the gain I had to post wasn’t really as bad as it looked yesterday.

Thank you for all your kind comments and words of support and direction. I do think the stress is having an effect on my body, so this is going to be an interesting couple of months. If I can lose weight with everything going on in my family then I will be doing wonderful.

And that’s my goal – to lose weight even in times of stress. We’ll see how I do.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Loss/Gain: +5.0 lbs

Total Loss So Far: -26.0 lbs

When 205.0 stared up at me this morning I just started crying. So very frustrated. These thoughts went through my head:

• What?!?!?! Yes, all week the scale has been a bit over 200, and even though I’m not sure why it hasn’t shown 205 since my weigh-in two weeks ago. In fact, it was just 201.5 yesterday.
• I have been tracking all my food using Lose It! on my iPod Touch for over two weeks and I ate less this week than last…but I show a GAIN???
• Wednesday night when everyone got Sonic I declined and settled for a greek yogurt and some Triscuits when we got home. I had room for a snack on my calories, so I chose a healthier option. For what again?
• I wasn’t as diligent with the water, but the last two days I have been…and yesterday I drank 128 ounces of water…again, for this to happen??
• This is stupid. It seems like I tried to be diligent and it only ruined me.
• I need to stop crying and just get ready for my day…. I won’t give up, but this is the absolutely worst weigh-in I’ve experienced in my weight loss journey, and I’m so embarassed, especially because it was the week I really began to fine tune things. I’m so confused and frustrated.

I went on to get ready, didn’t cry any more, made my coffee and sat down to do my devotions. I was very distracted by this, but I got through that.

Folks as if I don’t have enough going on in my life right now to stress me out I had to add a HUGE gain after a week of eating less. The last time I was up I knew exactly why. I had eaten beyond full all that week and not exercised once.

I have only been over my daily calorie budget of 1,318 one day this week, but last week I was over it SIX days (and higher the week before, so last week I saw a 5-lb loss). This last week I actually had a daily net under my budget on the days I worked out – that is to say that I might have been right on budget or just over, but after the program deducted what I burned in exercise I ended up under my daily allowance.

So, needless to say I’m a bit frustrated and truly at a loss here. I’m not sure if I ate too little this past week, or just having those moments where I didn’t eat when hungry and then ate a larger meal was counterproductive, or not getting 64 oz. of water in daily affected me, or is this like week 2 of The Biggest Loser wherein most contestants maintain after having a large loss?

I’ll keep plugging away and make myself take this weigh-in with a grain of salt. It’s one week, it’s not my entire journey. I have to take the little bit of mustard seed faith I have left in myself and do what I know to do to see my weight go down. It’s not over folks.

Oh, but one thing that is over for me is being a part of the Summer Challenge. One of the requirements is to get a picture of the scale at weigh-in and I just haven’t been getting that done. I’m still setting myself a goal of losing ten pounds and exercising at least four days a week through the summer, but I need to back off being officially involved in a challenge right now.

Thanks for bearing with my long posts recently. I know it’s a lot to take in, but this blog is mostly an open-book journal for me to get my thoughts out and share them with you in case they might help you in some way.

I hope you have a nice weekend! I’m off to clean house, drop girls off for volunteering and get my mind off of my weight for the moment.

While I now realize that mourning the loss of certain foods is very real I also realized something else – you must be careful what you read. As I was typing the portion in Mourning the Loss of Food – Part One about reading Jillian Michael’s very strict diet plan and feeling like a failure before I even tried it a light went on in my head.

That’s where my mourning really hit. When I read something that was meant for direction and clarity on certain issues and left feeling like I could never live up to it I was saddened. I felt hopeless and like I didn’t have any hope of succeeding. Portions of her book were very interesting and even helpful to me, but to set out to follow a strict plan like she teaches was too much for me.

This last week I finally reached a point in my weightloss journey where I felt ready to get serious. I’ve been tracking my food for two weeks. Saw how much I was really eating and where I needed to cut back. I was ready to get serious about my food intake and cut where I need to in order to see more consistent losses. I understood that this would mean cutting out certain foods for a bit, or cutting them to very small portions, and I was okay with this.

To help me learn some more about where/how to tweak my eating I read this book, but suddenly I was hit with a feeling of remorse for committing to a stricter plan. I was almost sorry I ever looked for help, because now I read something that seemed too much, too strict. Back came the old feelings of “I never win at dieting.” and I felt hopeless. Having seen higher numbers on the scale this past week, and not understanding why, had a lot to do with my mournful attitude.

I suddenly felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do this after all, because I love all those foods too much to give them up.

This lead me to realize that I was taking Jillian’s book a bit too seriously for me. I can only read what is helpful and store away was was too overwhelming to draw on at a later time. Later I might need to know how and/or be ready to implant more stricter plans, but for now I still have to take it one day at a time. I have to keep taking one baby step of change at a time or I’ll be so overwhelmed that I won’t try at all. And not trying at all will only lead to failure.

I refuse to give up on my desire to become more disciplined and see more consistent loss. I even have hopes of losing more than 30 pounds in this next year. This is going to mean letting go of my hold on certain foods, but it’s also going to mean learning to rejoice in all of the things I gain by being a healthier, happier me. The mourning won’t last forever, but the small changes for the better will.

First off, check out my fun tank top that I found at Old Navy a couple of months ago. I just had to get it because of the motto on it and because it was my “new” size XL. It’s a little too snug for me to wear in public just yet, but since I workout in my house I can wear it to “my gym”. Of course, posting it online for the whole world to see is pretty “public” isn’t it??? LOL I’m holding my stomach in a lot for this picture, and I just know you guys are more forgiving in health blog land.

In that cup you will see today’s solution to finishing off my last Yoplait greek yogurt. I made a smoothie with greek yogurt, chocolate 100% whey protein powder and a banana. YUM!! My kids tasted it and want one now.

When I compared the nutrition information of regular yogurt to greek yogurt I just knew that the greek is better for me because of it’s high protein content. So, I’ll keep looking around for something more enjoyable, or just keep finding ways to make it more palatable for me. It’s kind of like a workout…I just feel better after I’ve eaten it even if it wasn’t the most enjoyable going down. 🙂