Update

I can't believe I haven't posted all week! It's been a little crazy, and the craziness will continue into next week, and then I get to relax, thank goodness! I've been tracking everything I eat, and am doing fairly well at it. I weighed in this morning at 275.6 and all I can say is thank goodness I'm staying in the same area-ish. Three days ago I was at 278, so this is a loss, but I still can’t seem to break through the 270’s. I’ve seen the 260’s before on my scale, so I know what it looks like, but it has not been anything permanent so far. I’m still keeping it up though. Something is bound to change, let’s just hope it’ll be for the better.

I don’t have much else to write about so I thought I’d answer some questions.


1. What time did you get up this morning? 7:30 AM

2. How do you like your steak? As done as it can possibly get.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Avatar

4. What is your favorite TV show? Criminal Minds, Bones, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Scotland

6. What did you have for breakfast? Cheerios and skim milk

7. What is your favorite cuisine? Italian

8. What foods do you dislike? Brussels Sprouts

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Prime Time (A Sports Bar near us)

10. Favorite dressing? Ranch

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? A Toyota Corolla or a Ford Windstar. Depends on the day

12. What are your favorite clothes? Sweatpants and a tshirt

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? 1/2 full

15. Where would you want to retire? Beach

16. Favorite time of day? I like the night time

17. Where were you born? Oregon

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? None

19. How many siblings? 3 brothers, 4 sisters

20. Favorite pastime/hobby? Reading

22. Bird watcher? No

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? Definitely a night person

24. Do you have any pets? Benny our dog

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? My husband has finished school!

26. What did you want to be when you were little? A mom.

27. What is your best childhood memory? Going on a roadtrip with the whole family, before my dad left.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? Dog definitely. Can’t stand cats.

29. Are you married? To the most wonderful man in the world.

30. Always wear your seat belt? Always.

31. Been in a car accident? A couple

32. Any pet peeves? Bad drivers, (a short truck nearly ran us off the road last week, and then flipped us off when we passed him later, hence the) rude and/or inconsiderate people

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Pizza hut stuffed crust pepperoni pizza, or Canadian bacon and pineapple on a white sauce base. Delicious!

34. Favorite Flower? Daisies

35. Favorite ice cream? Caramel Butter Pecan

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Sadly, still Taco Bell

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? Zero

38. From whom did you get your last email? Spark People!

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Kitchen Kaboodle or Barnes and Noble

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? No

41. Like your job? Partly. The days where I just do my job, I enjoy it. On the days when others act like I’m their employee, and bring up work for me to do for them without asking, and just assuming I’ll do it, not so much.

42. Broccoli? Cooked lightly.

43. What was your favorite vacation? Our honeymoon. We drove from Portland south to San Francisco, East to Lake Tahoe and Reno, North to Idaho and back into Oregon. We camped in lake Tahoe where I’d heard all about the bears, so I slept with my pocket knife (like that’d help, LOL) and the car alarm button. I figured that would probably scare anything away. LMAO

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Jeff

45. What are you listening to right now? A radio station on-line

46. What is your favorite color? Green

47. How many tattoos do you have? None, but maybe one or two in the future

49. What time did you finish this quiz? 9:42AM

50. Coffee Drinker? Ugh, no.

A bit of a rant, but then something nice.

I came across a website last night, I can’t remember what I googled, and the entire website was devoted to people spewing their filthy vitriol at fat people. Their posts were so full of hatred and rage, it made me feel sad. Because their hate, their rage was based upon what they see daily. None of them realize what hypocrites they are. They don’t realize that by their attitudes, they’re saying we should treat people who are overweight as though they’re non-entities. Not a person because you’re unable to walk fast, or take care of your hygiene, or exercise alot. They forget that a person could have already lost 100 pounds, but they don’t know. I hate it when people judge others based on face value. How insulting. How childish.

I also get offended at the thought that someone might see me in the store (or take a picture of me from behind) and make fun of me or write online about how much they hate someone they’ve never met, because she’s fat and unattractive. Even on the news when they talk about the “obesity epidemic” and show a large person from behind, I bet they never asked if that person was ok with it. I wouldn’t be. I keep telling Jeff that if I ever see my butt on the news, I’m going to be so pissed off at them, I will call them and let them know.

All this makes me feel like it’s a horrible world to live in, when you have to be afraid of someone taking a picture of you. Whether I’m fat or skinny, dress great, or like some of those people who are on the walmart website, it is so wrong to treat people like that.

[breathe] Ok. Rant over.


Anyways, I read this today on Kim Bensen's website. It’s really a great way of putting the daily, weekly, monthly, etc. struggles we go through, in trying to get healthy. I had to share it.

Everything in life has a cycle. Not to sound morbid here, but even businesses, ideas, all forms of life – are conceived, born, grow, peak, decline and die. Even diets have a lifecycle that is familiar to us all.

Conception: “I think I need to lose weight. I know I need to lose weight. I’m going to go on a diet.”

Birth: “Yes, I’d like to sign up for your program. Where do I weigh in? I weight HOW MUCH? Are you sure?” “I’m going to get to the grocery store on the way home and start planning and eating right!”

Growth: “I lost 2 pounds?! Whoo hoo! This isn’t so bad! As long as I measure and plan and stay ahead of the hunger, I can do this! One day at a time. Now, I’m going home to make some of that delicious FREE SOUP!”

Peak: “Look! I’m wearing jeans from two years ago?! I love shopping in my own closet and now I’m out of the plus size section. Yeah baby! This isn’t bad at all. I can do this thing with my eyes closed!”

Decline: “It’s still six days to weight in. I can eat this and still have time to undo the damage. Besides, as long as I’m ‘off’ I might as well eat the rest of the row of cookies before I get back ‘on’ again. I can’t believe I have to do this forever!”

Death: “I know I’ve gained. I’ll skip this meeting, work real hard this week and go back next week just staying the same. But there’s no way I’m facing the scale tonight. I definitely don’t want an ‘up tick’ in my pass book!

And the cycle continues …
The death of a diet really comes down to that SKIPPING part. It’s the pulling away from meetings, from the blogs, from the chats and from updating your diet profile. It’s avoiding emails from your weight loss buddies as the negative thoughts inside start to grow. “I don’t like my leader – who’s she to talk.” “If I didn’t have so many demands from my family I’d be able to focus more on my weight.” “My coworkers are just trying to sabotage me!”

It’s amazing how quickly even the most avid enthusiast, the ‘star’, who was leading the weight loss pack in meetings and offering up great ideas and tips, can fall away in such a short time.

I know. I’ve been there.

Fortunately for all of us, there is also rebirth. (Oh yeah, didn’t I put that in?) Well, it is there! And we don’t have to wait for a gestation period (that period of time where we gain it all back before beginning again.) Though we often do … Why do we do that?

Rebirth – starting over – can be instantaneous. We can cheat death and jump right back in to the life we want so desperately.

Short update

I'm still doing well. I've continued to track what I eat, even when I know it's not a good food to be eating, nutrition-wise. I have been too busy to exercise intentionally, but I am moving more due to the business, so I'm going to have to count that for the time being, but either way I'm making some decent deficits consistently.

Tonight I'm going to spend most of the evening decorating for our Halloween party at the end of the month, and shopping for some things we're going to need. I'm really excited, and am hoping I can make it the best party yet!

That is all.

Le sigh

I am so stressed! First off, the good news. I have tracked everything I’ve eaten for the last 7 (plus today so far) days, and am doing well at paying attention to what I’ve been eating. I wasn’t able to exercise this weekend, but I’ll get into that. For a nice change, I feel on top of my game, which makes me feel even more motivated to keep it up.

Every so often, I do some caregiving for a couple of elderly people. It helps with the money, but I also mostly enjoy it. This weekend, Friday night to Sunday evening, I stayed at a woman’s house near my work to take care of her. I was in for a bit of a shock though because she had been failing pretty badly last week, and had just gotten on hospice earlier Friday. She was in a hospital bed all weekend, and us caregivers made sure to make her comfortable and try to feed her, give her water, etc. She’s such a sweet thing, I’ll miss her. Then I got home on Sunday, and got a phone call from the daughter of another woman I occasionally care give for (and was going to take care of her this coming Friday) and she told me that Iris had a stroke last week, and had some bleeding in her brain. She could talk fine, with sentences occasionally mumbled, but sounds like she’s going downhill as well. It’s possible that she will be put on hospice when she comes home from the hospital this week. And last, my great uncle has cancer all over his body and has been on hospice for awhile now. The family was looking for caregivers, and I’ve volunteered for that, so I’ll be taking care of him for a couple of evenings a week, and maybe sometimes on the weekends. So you can see why my weekend was stressed.

I’m also dealing with some old roommate drama that just plain pisses me off. The last one, who moved out about 3 months ago now is a completely different person than I’d ever thought she was. We had been friends since high school; I helped her move out of her parents house when things got really turbulent for her, I drove her around to help her find a job and even gave a reference so she could get a job on the campus where I work.

While we lived together, after Jeff and I got married, we got an internet service, where you plug the modem in, (don’t know computers that well) and after a month, we agreed to put her on as well, to help both of us save money. Now, she refuses to return the modem, despite that she was leasing it from us, via the provider. They’re trying to charge us for it monthly, and we’re really fighting it, but it’s definitely getting old. We communicated several times, trying to explain that she didn’t own it, and she still refused to return it. Now, I threatened to file a police report if it doesn’t get returned, because it is registered on our property and she took it off of the property.

Then her daddy got involved and really pissed me off, accusing me of lying to her and changing the terms (of what, I know not), and trying to over charge her. I guess the part of me that is most disappointed is that she is behaving just as her family does. Sadly, they have no problem using and taking advantage of others (this is a fact, not me making anything up) and now she’s doing the same thing. I always thought better of her than this.

[sigh] Sometimes, it really would be easier to be a cynic about people in the world, but I simply can’t be that way. I have too much faith in mankind. I hope someday she regrets how she treated me, and realizes the kind of person she’s turned into before it’s too late to turn back.

Ok, I’m done, and I feel a bit better. Whew!

Back onto the exercising this week. Water aerobics tonight, YAY!

These crazy days!

I was given a cute “Cherry on Top” award from Ericka at Thunder Thigh Bride. Thank you Ericka! I don’t do these often, simply because I don’t know what to say, but this is a fun one that I do in fact have an answer to. I have to answer the following question, and then pass it on to 6 other bloggers.
"If you had one chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you and what would it be?”

I would kick myself in the a$$ and teach myself proper money handling skills and write out a budget, and how not to go to money lenders, not be scared to call hospital’s accounting offices, and in the end avoid the debt collectors I’m now dealing with. I’d also tell myself to not mess around with people I shouldn’t have messed around with. I’d have avoided a several yearlong route down the wrong path. It’s not regret though because had I not made those decisions then, I’d have never met Jeff when I did.

Last night, I decided that it was going to be my rest day. Actually, I didn’t feel like exercising, but since I’ve decided I only get 1 rest day a week, I have to exercise for the rest of the week. I’ve tracked every single bite I’ve eaten for the last three days, and except for yesterday (when I only went over by a bit) and stayed under my calories, and had a big deficit. I’ve been weighing myself in the mornings daily, and (knock on wood) it’s looking good. I know I’ve been doing the right things to get my weight moving in the right direction again, and anticipate a reasonable weight tomorrow morning, which I’ll share. I can’t wait!

This morning when I woke up, I discovered our (new; I’ll share sometime) dog had peed on the side of our nicest suede chair, and it had run about 4 feet across the floor, and he pooped in the hallway, a couple of times. He’d been doing so good about going pee outside, and had only gone poop a couple of times in the house. But it’s starting to drive me crazy. I had to clean that up this morning, so that the house doesn’t smell when we get home, which made me not have enough time to make my lunch, and made me late for work. We’ve been taking him out quite regularly, and it’s very obvious he’s been able to hold it until we’re home, so we don’t know what we can do at this point. We make sure to give him a treat when he goes either one outside, so what do we do now? Anyone have any suggestions?

Anyways, I ended up getting Subway for lunch today since I didn’t bring a lunch. I planned it all out ahead of time, and got exactly what I wrote down. A 6” turkey sandwich on wheat bread, with mustard, almost all of the vegetables and provolone (one of my weaknesses, but only 100 calories worth), and had a very filling lunch, that came in at a fine 390 calories. Not too shabby, and very well within my calories.

I love being in control of myself

I did a re-write of my plan/goals the other day, and I know I am motivated now. I’m not sure what did it, but it made me write out my plan again. I will eat under 1400 calories each day, which is on the low end of my calorie intake from SparkPeople, and I will exercise 6 days each week, to burn 3500 calories per week. I figure that will at least help me drop some weight somehow.

Monday was day one and I was successful! I packed my breakfast and lunch with lots of fruits and vegetables, as well as 1 cup of soup and a cheese stick. I had my water aerobics class Monday night, which burns 501.8 calories for the class, at my weight. Then I got home and cooked up one of those frozen bagged meals, which was delicious. When I got hungry around 9 o’clock, I peeled a small zucchini and ate that at the computer. The day was great; I definitely had my temptations but I remained strong and made the right decisions.

Then on Tuesday, we got news about our auto insurance, blah blah blah, I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that the whole mess made me cry, and I happened to be on lunch, so I drove to a store, very intent on stopping by their deli and getting a bunch of their foods. Again I resisted though. I actually got to a parking spot, and the car turned off, before I realized I didn’t want to do that to myself. Like they said on BL the other day, every time I eat something like that, I’m killing myself slowly. Sure, I don’t have any health problems now, but in the future if I stay where I’m at, I likely will, and they’re avoidable. Why on earth would I want to deal with something that was avoidable?!?

Last night, I did exercise. Unfortunately Jeff called early and told me he’d be ready to be picked up earlier than planned, which cut into my hour of walking. So I sped up my pace to 150 steps per minute, and kept that up for 34 minutes before I left to pick him up. Not too shabby!

I told Jeff the other day that if he wanted to go out to eat, he had to tell me a day before hand so that I could eat a little less so that going out to eat wouldn’t make me go over my calorie intake. So tonight we’re getting something from King Torta, a Mexican restaurant that has the most delicious food! They don’t have calorie counts for anything, as far as I can tell so I’ve had to guesstimate and I’d bet that my guess is somewhat close. Either way, I’ve been good all week, and tonight’s meal won’t put a ding in my streak. I’m going to do it!

The next few months make me happy

I cannot believe its October already! It seems like it was just August be here we are, a whole two months later! What happened?!?!? I'm really looking forward to my whole week off, the first week of November! It's my vacation that I take 4 times per year. I love Paid Time Off!!!

I'm really excited about the next few months. I know most people worry about gaining weight, or watching their food over the holidays, but I've been lucky that I've never gained over that time. I bake cookies and treats, but I mail them to everyone else to enjoy. And when it comes to the actual celebrations, I enjoy the socializing enough that I eat much more slowly, drink more water and eat less because of it. I even eat desserts, and don't have a problem, because again, I just eat them slowly. And if I don't like it, I don't finish it. But most of all, I love the preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The decorations, and color that is brought into the house and main street just make me feel warm and very happy. I'm this [] close to decorating the house for fall this year, just for some color. I might just end up giving in. LOL!

I’m going to be having a small graduation party for my husband’s graduation at the end of the month. He’ll be finished on the 22nd (YAY!) and his parents are coming the next weekend. By small, I mean 19 people, and it’s going to be a 4 course Italian dinner, that I cook. I’m really excited about this. I even took off the day before so that I can cook it. It’ll probably be a nutritional nightmare, but this really is an event worth celebrating, and I know I won’t actually eat as much, because I never do when I’ve cooked as much as I’m going to be.

I’m going with Bruschetta as an appetizer, Zuppa Toscana and Caesar salad for the next course, my amazing spaghetti, meatballs and garlic bread for the main course, and Panna Cotta for dessert (if I’m still feeling motivated). Otherwise it’ll just be a cake.

Then, after that’s over, we’ll be having our annual Halloween party where I’ll be serving a bunch of appetizers and drinks. I won’t tell you what, but our costumes are going to be fantastic! We always have a costume contest, most unique, best couple, best costume, etc. which everyone gets to vote for, and we (or one of us) has won every year for the last 3 years. So fun! And we’re determined that this year is going to be our best yet! I’ll make sure to put up pictures, so you can see how great it is. Gee, now it sounds like I’m bragging. LOL.

This morning, I forgot to weigh myself, however I know it’s up because AF arrived. So I think maybe I’ll just skip it for this week and jump back on next Friday.