A Great Monday

Okay, so I’m blogging on Tuesday. Shoot me already...LOL!

Yeah, I should have done it yesterday but after the writing binge and the fact we went away for the holiday, I just couldn’t sit in front of this machine any longer than I needed to do so. Once everything was done, I decided to just relax and promptly fell asleep on the couch.

Now, as far as weight loss, I had a wonderful weekend. Holidays are always so traumatic for most but this year I decided to temp it all with plenty of exercise. I also didn’t restrict myself from anything as we went to a posh buffet at my husband’s uncle’s golf club in San Francisco. When my daughter-in-law asked how much I though member ship was, I told her it was more than she wanted to think about. The look on her face was priceless as I don’t think until that moment she understood just how well off my husband’s family is. It took me many years to understand just which fork to use but eventually I got over it and started to enjoy myself.

And on that note, the food was fantastic. I loaded up on the greens and added a lot of veggies so I would be full before I went back for the main course. It works as I only had a little of the turkey, beef, small amount of the mash potatoes and more greens. I did save enough room for the tiniest sliver of pumpkin pie as for me it is a must at this holiday.

The way I compensated for this massive meal was I allowed, notice I say allowed, my husband and his family walk me to death before it happened. His parents walk 3-5 miles every day and I went with them on most of those walks this weekend. The only one I missed was the one in the pouring rain as it was a cool rain and I knew no shower would get the dampness out of my bones. Still, all those walks made up for eating more than normal, the drive through food eaten on the way up and back as well as the lack of exercise on travel days.

Was I rewarded for this diligent behavior this weekend? You bet I was! I lost 1.8 pounds and another .5 inches off my waist. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Hope you all have a great week! See you next one!

Lynn

Positive Small Changes

I am sitting here today wondering why I feel so horrible about what I did last week as far as my journey. I succeed in cutting another 50 calories a day off my totals as well as increase my daily steps. I also cut off another inch from my belly which is a big Yippee! for me.

Yet, the scale didn’t budge. Or at least, I don’t think it did. I just replaced the batteries in my old Weight Watcher one and decided to give it a try. And I hated the numbers. Hated it more than the fact I was allowing myself a handful of smarties a day because if I didn’t, the whole bag would be in my stomach by now. And that would do no one any good.

I need to revel in what I did do right, not wallow in the one thing that didn’t happen.

I did record all my food this week.

I did exercise every day except one.

I lifted weights three times this week.

I did reduce my waist by another inch.

I did reduce my average calorie intake by another 50 calories.

I did write this blog again even though I felt like I didn’t accomplish one thing.

When I list them all out like this, it makes me realize how silly it is for me being worried that the scale didn’t move this week. I’ll have lots of weeks where the scales won’t move and lots of weeks where I’m going to have to remind myself of all the positive things I have done.

It might be hard but I have to do this for myself. Forget about everything else, remember to do it for me.

Until next week.

Lynn

A Bad Case of Body Image

Okay, I’ve been fighting this battle of the bulge all my life and wondered just what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t lose weight. I had tried all sorts of methods, everything in the world to just get rid of enough of my excess weight to get to a point where I felt healthy, where I knew I wouldn’t keel over dead.

Now the keeling over dead can actually happen to you no matter how healthy you are, so I had to quickly knock that one off my list. See, I have a friend who is the healthiest person ever according to her lifestyle. She jogs two to three times a week, takes daily walks, swims, bikes, you name it in the area of exercise. And she eats right, always has by watching it and writing it down. It was her who reminded me the only time I had ever really lost weight was when I wrote it all down and exercised every day.

Then about four years ago, she had chest pain and went to the ER to find herself in a full blown heart attack. The next day she had open heart surgery and now she is almost back to where she was before the surgery. See, unbeknownst to her, her ancestors had heart disease so when her parents lived a healthy lifestyle and died in the eighties, she never thought it could hit her. But hit her it did with a sledgehammer.

So, I started looking at pictures and wondered just what type of body I really wanted. I thought if I could just some positive pictures in my mind of how I wanted to look, it would help me along this journey. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted a body similar to this:

Or this:

Why? Because in my mind, both these pictures represent what I thought was a positive body image. Both look healthy and trim and just a little bit sexy in my mind. In my books, I’m mainly thinking about women who look something like these pictures because I think they look good. And good is great where heroine are concerned.

Then just last week, I started looking at some old pictures of me that my husband had scanned in for my fiftieth birthday and my amazement of what I saw blindsided me. All my life I had thought I was a chubby fat girl even though I would tell everyone I was thin and I wore a size eleven. But the problem was even though I said these things, I didn’t believe them one little bit.

Now pictures don’t lie and as I flipped through the photos, I realized the body under the wedding dress looked just like the person’s body in picture number one. I saw that my legs and arms were just as skinny and firm as those I sought to use as my uplifting image. For more than a minute, I realized I had the body I wanted but like the old saying goes, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. See for yourself:

Why do we beat ourselves up on how we look, only to realize years later if we could just get back there, things would be better? I don’t know but it is something I’m going to work on in the coming weeks as I go from overweight to healthy. Yeah, the old terms, even though they may be the truth, don’t motivate me in the least.

And this week. I am definitely motivated. So how well on my goals did I do you many as? Well, I did very well and this is good. I managed to lose another 3/4 inch off my waist, walk at least 30 minutes a day and reduce my calore intake by 100 calories this week. The only place I didn’t do so well on was on my total step count. I was down a lot of steps even though I increased my walking time. I think the problem is the fact I got a new pedometer and it’s not quite as attuned to me as it should be. Sometimes the sensitivity isn’t set correctly and I do believe this is the problem. After all...how many people actually reduce the number of steps while increasing their walking time? LOL! Not very many I’m sure.

See you all next week!

Lynn

Sticking To Just One

Alright, I told you all about my just one campaign, how I needed to change just one thing to get on my road to permanent weight loss? Well, I succeeded this week with my just one item which was walking every night. Notice I didn’t put a time on how much I had to walk, just that I had to do it.

Now, I’m lucky because my puppy forces me to go. So every night between 9 and 9:30, I get the DH and the puppy to walk around the block with me getting at least 15 minutes exercise which makes me feel invigorated. And I already can feel the pants being a little less tighter as well as other small incentives to keep going.

Next week, since this is almost a habit, I’m going to add another block which should add another 5 minutes to the routine. Also, I started to lift weights to help my arms during me sitting and watching TV. What better way to get my flabby arms tones? I get to feel the burn and watch my favorite shows! LOL!

Now, it’s time to choose my next item I want to change. And here I find myself tossing up two ideas at once. Do I want to write down all I eat? Or do I want to change how I look at breakfast? Well, I knew that one of my biggest problems was I had given up breakfast again up until about three weeks ago. Realizing this was one of my biggest errors in the weight lost regime, I had already started to add breakfast back into my life.

If I truly want to lose weight, I know I need to go back to the breakfast shake my naturopath had me on almost a year ago. The first couple of months, I had been on the weight loss kick when we realized that my allergy issue was overwhelming everything. So for about nine months, we concentrated on putting my allergies in a more manageable position. It worked as I haven’t had any real severe attacks for quite a while now.

So, in my eyes, we’re back to the weight loss track and I’m looking back on what seemed to work so well in that beginning. And one of those things was a breakfast shake made of skim milk, protein powder, flax seed and fresh fruit. Later I modified it to make it even better by adding orange juice instead of fresh fruit and ice making it more of a frappe than a shake. But the taste was more palatable and I looked forward to it daily.

The other item I did then was to journal everything I ate, not to point out what I had done wrong but to point out how to improve my weight loss chances. I found that journaling about life and what I ate made me very, very honest because I never knew who would pick up that journal to take a peek. I wrote down every bite and every drink. And no foods were really taboo except those we were trying to eliminate from the allergy mix. It ends up that I am not very allergic to any food but outside things, like cleaning chemicals.

So given these two choices for the one thing I wanted to change, I was in a quandary. Both were equally important to my overall goal but the real question was which one did I think I would stick to better this week. And this gave me pause to think for a few hours. But after much thought and consideration, I’ve decided to start writing down what I eat.

Now this can be very good for me as I see one of my issues is portion control. I eat all the right foods but sometimes I eat too much. And eating too much is what got me here in the first place. LOL!

See you next week when I give you a report on how well I’m doing with this aspect of my journey.

Until then…

Lynn

Friday, January 2, 2009 - Day 57

Quote of the Day: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. – Aristotle

Breakfast – eggs at my Dad’s house in Idaho as it was the easiest.

This is a travel day and I hate travel days. No matter how good you try to be, it just can’t happen. Hopefully, we’ll have some place where I can work some of it off on the way home.

Lunch – 1 double cheeseburger, 1 small fry, 1 large ice tea

This was just a fast drive through as I really want to get home before it gets dark. And we just might as I made everyone get up at the crack of dawn. They were not happy with me at all! LOL! Don’t care, I don’t like the fact the trip has to be fast and I can’t really eat well. I really have to start packing my meals for these types of things.

Dinner – We’re actually home and we drove throw Jack-In-The-Box and I ordered my favorite salad, southwest. I had this with some good dressing.

I know that there are some great ways to get healthy fast food. Salad is always a good choice. I am exhausted BUT I really want to get away from the boys for a while. I think I’ll go and play some pennies.

Snacks – carrots, cheese

Steps – 4153

Exercise – Yeah, I really did get some because I had to walk the dog at the rest stop. This was good but there was snow and I had to be careful. Still, it made me get out and walk around for about 20 minutes. Who could as for more?

Journal

Okay, trips are the best of times and the worst of times. I love my boys but can’t stand being cooped up with them for so long. This is the reason I have to get away from them for a while EVERY time I am with them. They argue and fight about things. When I tell them to fight about something important, they get mad at me because they think it’s all important.

Still, we made it home fine and all in one piece. Not bad for a 700 mile trip.

Hope this helps some of you! Have a great day tomorrow!

Lynn

Saturday, November 8, 2008 - Day 1

Quote of the Day: You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person. – Scott Sorrell

Breakfast –Protein Shake per recipe. Added blackberries.

Dr. G is right as it doesn’t taste bad at all BUT it is very bland and doesn’t have the sweetness from the berries like I expected. I’m wondering if adding honey might help it. The DH suggested that we mix berries since the BBS aren’t that sweet. Will email Dr. G to ask for sure.

Woke up easily – no lingering hot flash. I also woke up early today to get ready for booksigning.

Lunch – 11:30a – ½ herb chicken salad wrap, ½ philly cheese steak, lots of water

A few spearmint lifesavers (7-8) and okay, I was at a book signing and probably not as good as I should have been. BUT book signings are hard and I need to be flexible. It will all work out!

Dinner – 5:30p – 1/3 plate Nachos, 1/3 basket garlic fries, couple of bits of artichoke dip and garlic bread, 2 cups of coffee 6-8 oz of beer, 2 cups of water. 8:00p – 1 cup green beans, 3 cup brussel sprouts with butter, 1 liter water

After the book fair, we decided to go to a brew pub to relax. I had a great time with my author friends. I was really relaxed and glad I had some social interaction. The book signing was a lot different than we expected and next time we’ll have to prepare. Was still hungry when I came home so decided on lots of veggies to fill me up.

Snacks – 1 apple, 1 banana

Steps –2253

Exercise –I didn’t have a lot of a chance for exercise today BUT what I did manage to do was at least 5 minutes per hour of walking around the book fair. It was more like 10 average as some hours the walking period was longer and sometimes shorter. One good thing was that the home situation was really good when I got home. The guys were very calm and happy! Life is good.

Journal

Still new at this, will work out the kinks as I go.

Hope everyone has a great day tomorrow!

Lynn

Friday, November 7, 2008 - Preparation Day

Quote of the Day: Don’t have one as this is the very first day journaling.

Breakfast – Unknown

My first visit to Dr. G. went extremely well and I felt that it was very productive. Dr. G. is a naturopath in the area where I live and I felt it very important to do this the right way. I had heard great things about her and have hope all will go well. Funny thing is that I had found her first, referred other people and they are the ones who have told me just how great she is. For me, she gave me a whole laundry list of things and I did manage to go shopping to load up on a lot of fresh foods: veggies, lean meats and fruits. I had really wanted to cook myself but I had a lunch date with a friend Kim T. Afterwards, I was really tired and took a nap. Kim T. and I talked about our possible new place and I’m still not convinced just yet.

Still, I purchased this journal and decided to start today as far as journaling goes. For the food journal, I think I’ll do it as I go meaning meal-journal, meal-journal. I also wanted to start cook in the evenings more if I can ever get my kitchen back. Sigh. Right now the chef, my DH – Gordon, loves it too much to really give it up. I will get there. I even plan to start a blog regarding the whole journey.

Lunch – This was at the local Golf Course. Salad w/Balsamic & Oil, Linguine w/chicken breast in cream tomato cilantro sauce (last fling), water & coffe.

Food was great and company fine. Told Kim T. about my visit to Dr. G. Talked about a lot of things, some good, some bad.

Dinner – Stir-fry veggies and chicken breast, 1 liter water

Wanted to do the cooking but the DH did it as usual. Will need to have it started before he comes home. The 16yo, Kyle, wants fast food yet again. IMHO pretty horrible for a diabetic yet he did say something about a taco salad.

Read email and enjoyed my favorite sci-fi shows on the Sci-Fi Channel. I love all the tech stuff – it gives me great ideas for my own stories.

Snacks – 2 apples

Steps – don’t know because I didn’t wear the pedometer today

Exercise – 25 minutes (8:50 to 9:15 p)

Journal

Okay – so I haven’t done any consistent walking recently – just hit and miss. Boy! Can I feel this one! It really hit me just how big my butt and stomach are right now. My lower back and hip joints weren’t happy although I personally feel good. I plan to continue to do this because the long term benefits are worth it.

Took supplements before I went to bed.

Hope this helps some of you struggling as well!

Lynn