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

Updating My Story

I have a weight loss motivation problem right now and thought if I shared my story from the very beginning and what I'm doing to improve my lot, I would get the zing back.

When the phen-fen thing was going on, I found out I have a true imbalance of some kind as I was in their clinical trials of when the pharmaceutical companies put them together. With little effort, except 40 minutes of exercise daily, I lost 80 lbs in 6 months. They did weekly blood test and the meds actually changed my blood chemistry. They were going to do some more with some special testing, basically testing my brains uptake inhibitors and various other brain things to see why it worked for me, when everything was pulled from the market by FDA. I was one who never had a problem but the meds apparently fixed the chemical imbalance problem I was having. I still remember reading the doctor's book regarding it all and seeing myself in it on almost every page. As with any medication, I was able to keep that weight off for a period of almost two years when everything became very unbalanced again and I started to see my weight slowly go up. My regular GP tried to control things will anti-depressants which bombed miserably because it wasn't the right stuff and she has tried to tell me to this day it's all because of depression. I wish it were that easy. At that point, I mentally gave up and started eating what I wanted again and no exercise. When my youngest son turned diabetic I gained another 50-60 pounds due to stress. I had never gained weight in stressful situations and was shocked. When I realized just what I really weighted, as I'm at my highest weight ever, I knew things had to change. So I'm trying to change them just one thing at a time.

Food has never been my problem and frankly, I wish it had been. See, I eat all the good things just my portion control is out of whack sometimes and even with larger portions, I tend not to overeat. My problem has always been exercise. I hate and will do anything to avoid it if I can. Basically, I have just pared my calories back to about 1200, I watch the portions and carbs. And I only eat when I'm hungry again which has been a huge thing this past couple of years as trying to learn to live with a diabetic is interesting. In September, I got a puppy because our older dog, which was my DH's anyway, died and I knew if I had to walk the dog, I would get out and up. And bless his heart, the dog is relentless as he won't let me do anything without walking him at least once a day, most times two as well as actually playing with him and just moving around in general. This is very good.

I started to go to a naturopath to see what she could do for my menopause which was causing sleep issues. Then there was the part that there were some days I knew I was going crazy...LOL! Once we got those under control, she is helping me tackle the rest like allergies and weight loss. I finally seem to be on a regime with the allergies that is making life better all around. When allergy season starts, it used to be I would swell up like someone having an allergy attack. It would take months to get rid of the extra fluid and drive me nuts. Now it's only for a week max in spring and fall. Next we're going to tackle just why the phen-fen balanced all the brain chemistry and to see if anything will work naturally like the pharmaceuticals did. And overall, I think we're making a lot of progress.

And to be frank, my only problem with how things are going, is just how very slow it's all happening. So far, since September 6 when we got the puppy, I've probably lost around six pounds maybe a little more. I've got to start charting it to make sure. This is a decent weight lost but much too slow in my mind. When on the phen-fen regime, I lost a whooping 14 pounds a month without trying much at all in my opinion. So right now, my biggest issue is keeping motivated. I'm reading all I can regarding weight loss and motivation as well as talking to people like you to stay on top of it. Still, there are days I really want to chuck it all because my waist is too big, my arms are flabby and 17 yo diabetic son makes all the wrong comments in his quest to achieve this goal. And bless his heart, he's had to change everything about how he operates with the diabetes knowing that if he eats what he wants, he has to exercise his butt off with at least 1.5 hours of hard exercise for every fast food meal he has. Which he does but he doesn't get that saying to me various things just makes me sad and want to give up. He's so typically a young, unknowing male I frequently have to tell him to zip it.

Which is why I plan to stop here weekly and vent in a positive way. I know there are many authors, readers and just general people who struggle with weight daily. I'm hoping if we all support each other, we can get it off and keep it off!

Lynn