My weight loss struggle.
Getting my stuff together.Archive for January, 2008
Samosas, Cookies, and Cheesecake
Okay, so disappearing seems to be a theme for me these days.
My mother was in town for a week, which was nice. It’s hard to live in a city where we have no immediate family. If I could give advice to new parents, I would say to make sure that you live in a place where you have the support of family, preferably immediate.
In addition to all the help that my mother provided around the house, and with money (she purchased a bed, mattress, with linens, and curtains for The Little One; bought us groceries for a week; gave us spending money; and paid for our outings on Da Da’s (my husband) 32nd birthday on Saturday) she arrived with snacks…Lots of cookies!
The short version of this week is that between the wedding reception (with INDIAN food. Do you know how much I LOVE tandoori chicken, samosas, and nan?) the mom sanctioned snacks, and Da Da’s birthday (elaborate breakfast, lunch at Thai restaurant, movies with popcorn and soda, home cooked dinner by MAMA, and Cheesecake factory cheesecake for birthday cake!!!!!?) I am way off….
BUT
It’s all good. While I shouldn’t have taken the week off, and should have “saved” my calories for Da Da’s B-Day, I don’t feel completely spun out of control. I refuse to hate myself.
I am not letting this bad week ruin what I started….I just won’t be weighing myself anytime soon…:)
Peace,
Mjaay
The tortise won the race.
I’m back.
I didn’t mean to disappear for the last nine days. I’ve just had a lot on my mind. About my life, my future, my past mistakes, etc. and I haven’t felt like writing haven’t wanted this blog to turn into a pity party about everything that is wrong with the world. So I didn’t write.
I’ve also been trying to decide whether this blog should be dedicated only to my weight loss or to writing about other parts of my life.
It’s all connected, right?
My feelings of spirtual depravity, community frustration, and boredom tie directly into what I decide to put into my body. I do know this, but somehow I don’t want to write about this here. If I was being completely honest with you, I’d be ranting right now about how I am tired of pretending to be something that I am not. I’d be writing about feeling frustration with the fact that I feel like I have made some really bad decisions over the past couple of years that have sent my life on a path that I don’t want. I’d be writing about how I feel this country is going to hell in a hand basket, and how I feel like I can’t do anything about it.
But this is a weight loss blog. So, who wants to read about that? I have a blessed life. A life that many would envy. I have a kind, faithful husband who loves me dearly. A beautiful, bright, loving son. A great house. A job where I am respected. etc. How dare I whine about clothing sizes, missed opportunities, and credit card bills that I created? How dare I?
So, I won’t.
I have not stood on the scale in a while. On purpose. I’ve just wanted to focus on being healthier, and making my habits natural. I feel like I have been doing a good job. Of course, there is still room for improvement, but my clothes feel looser, my skin is clearer, and my cravings for ice cream are down. Making exercise a regular habit is still so hard for me. I don’t know whether it’s laziness or fatigue. I do know that if I keep doing what I am doing, I will lose weight. It will just take a long time. But didn’t the tortise win the race. This pace feels organic, but I want to be even better.
Today, on the way to work, I heard that the FDA approved the sale of cloned meat in the US. No labels will be put on the products to alert consumers. “Caveat Emptor“(Let the beware beware) has never rang truer.
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Inspired by a friend who has lost 30 pounds walking with the “walk away the pounds” dvd, I went out and purchased the 3 mile walk. I haven’t put in the dvd yet, but I plan to tonight. If I don’t exercise in the morning, I just won’t exercise. I plan to weigh myself on Saturday morning. I will post the results then.
I will also post some pics in the coming week.
Sometimes, people are just BADDDDDDDDDD…….
Today was not a good day.
Do you ever have one of those moments where you feel that the last of your innocence has been chipped away?
Where the last vestiges of the belief that people are fundamentally good is erased?
When you realize that you’ve fully arrived at adulthood, and that cynicism is right around the corner?
I had one of those days.
The good news is that I didn’t eat because of it. I did get angry. I did say not good words….. I did sob uncontrollably. But what I did NOT do is go and eat us out of house and home.
I taste PROGRESS.
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In other news, I feel lighter. My clothes are hugging the rolls a bit less. I have decided not to weigh myself again until the 18th of January. That date will make one month since I started this journey.
Off to put the Little One to bed…The Little One who just put 30 crayons in a bottle of water and is drinking that water…Ah, motherhood!
Cheers,
Mjaay
We have progress.
Finally.
This morning, I got on the scale again. At first it said 251. But then The Little One got on the scale and I noticed that it said 24 pounds, which was correct, or maybe even higher than his actual weight. So I got on it again. This time, it said 246 pounds.
I am going with the 246.
That’s one pound LOST.
I have never been happier about ONE pound before.
It’s just what I needed. Yesterday, as you know, was not a great day. I just felt overwhelmed, crappy, my foot hurt, Da-Da (my Hubby) came home with The Little One, just as I was about to take a nap. I forgot that it was Da-Da’s late night at work, and the thought of dealing with toddlerhood was just too much. I spiraled. Chips out of the bag were consumed. Sherbet was consumed. Trail mix was downed. I was not dealing very well. I don’t want to dwell on yesterday, but it definitely reminded me that I MUST be prepared. I dealt with the stress with food, and that’s what got me here. I felt fat and ugly and bad and just that my life was awful and that I made lots of mistakes and howdidigetherewhatbaoutgraduateschoolandallthiscreditcarddebtandshouldwehavepurchasedthehouseandwhydoimakelessthanimademyfirstyearoutofcollege………………….wallow, wallow, wallow. Yea, it was a bit pathetic.
I plead Human.
I know that I keep referencing the Year I Lost Weight, but things keep coming back to me. That year I made audio tapes to myself that told me that I could do it, that I could lose weight. I was rewriting the script in my brain. A little bit of self-hynosis. I got that idea from Stephen Gullo in the book, “Thin Tastes Better.” That really helped me. I may have to create some tapes again. About stress, eating, and leading a purposeful life.
Bah, humbug.
Is it okay to post when I feel blah?
Yesterday’s walk was great, but today, I am feeling the reprecussions. I think that I hurt my foot. I’ve been limping all day, and I think I pushed myself too hard. (And yesterday, my back hurt for a while after the walk!…It was if all the fat came together and just moved stuff around!)
I just want this weight off of me N-O-W. Plus, my house is a mess, and we’re low on healthy food that I want to eat. This weekend was hectic, which left us with little time to prep for the week. So, now, my house is a mess, and I don’t have the energy to clean it.
I am going to go plunk down and meditate for a few; maybe take a nap, and then I will see how I feel. I think that I am going to skip walking this afternoon, in order to save my energy for a trip to the Y in the morning…on the treadmill…a nice, flat surface!
Put one foot in front of the other…
Update: I just got finished walking for about 40 minutes! Now off to do 20 minutes of “PM Yoga.”
Well, I finally did it.
On yesterday, I finally put on my sneakers (or tennis shoes, as we used to call them growing up), put on my workout clothes, and went for a walk! (Is that applause that I hear? Thank you! Thank you!)
But, I had forgotten for a moment. “Forgotten what?” you ask? How out of shape I am! I started out walking like I was 80 pounds lighter than I am…My body quickly let me know that I was trippin’. So I slowed my behind D-O-W-N. I walked for 35 minutes. Walked around the “enclave” in my subdivision.
It felt good.
I felt like I was finally doing something right. The entire time that I walked, I envisioned myself 100 pounds lighter than I am now. I WILL LOSE THIS WEIGHT. Shoot, it’s only MATH, right? Eat less, exercise more. It’s all the emotions that come with our weight that makes it hard.
When I lost weight my freshman and sophomore years of college, I focused my attention on being healthy. That’s how I lost the weight. And that’s what I am doing now. It feels good to be thoughtful of what I am fueling my body with. I have had some slip-ups…that Coke Saturday night at the movie theatre…and a few other moments. But I am doing such more better. And I feel good! I am so proud of me! I know that I keep saying that, but I am.
Sometimes in life, we fall down. We stumble. We mess up. But a few years of being fat should not doom me to obesity for the rest of my life. And it won’t. I wish I would have accepted that in my life a few years ago.
I changed my weight loss goal. My weight loss goal used to be 155 pounds, even when the weight charts and doctor said I should weigh a bit less. But I resisted. Because I was afraid of what it would take to be 140 or 145 pounds. But I am afraid no longer. I want to know what it would be like to not be even the “littlest bit” “chunky”. I think I owe it to myself to try to work up to my “ideal weight.” To be the healthiest I can be. Why not?
My goal weight is 140 pounds. That will give me a little room to grow when we have another child (No time soon!). And G-d willing, I am going to get there!
Here are few thoughts/updates:
–Yoga in the morning?…Ain’t gon’ happen. But going to the YMCA will. For some reason, putting my behind on the floor in the morning, it’s not going so well. But driving to the Y for an early morning session on the treadmill is OK. Hey, if OPRAH can do it, so can I!
–No more eating directly out of bags…I eat too much when I do that!
–No more eating in front of the computer.
–I’ve been drinking lots more water. I pee alot. I forgot what it feels like to drink this much water.
I’m out to go WORK IT OUT!
Peace,
Mjaay
Reflections…
Oh, and here are some thoughts from this week…
- Must drink water. I just don’t drink it. Days can go by and I won’t drink water. My goal is to drink 15 glasses a day. (I mean I am a BIG girl.)
- Exercise must be done in the morning or it won’t happen.
- I may have been too ambitious about my schedule, with all that Yoga and stuff…will revisit
- I like cooking more now that I am being conscious of the food that I put into my body
Progress and Frustration.
I have got to get a new scale.
When I got married three years ago, I registered for and received a digital scale as a wedding present. (In a moment of prescience while creating my registry, I figured that I might need to watch my weight more carefully after marriage…and watch it I did…I watched it go up, and up…) Anyway, that scale has served me well, but now it seems to not be as reliable as it used to be. I’ve been weighing myself everyday to keep track of things, and the scale is just off. I guess I can try and calibrate it, but still, when you are trying to lose weight, false “positives” and “negatives” cannot be tolerated. (Within the span of a few minutes, this is what happened: I got on it and it said 239.5, stepped off and got back on and it said 251…and then fluctuated back and forth, before settling at 251…which is a higher weight than the 247 when I started watching my weight…and now is at 248.) I don’t have time for this games…My self-esteem is at stake here!
Now, I know that some of you would say, “Why are you weighing yourself EVERYDAY? You should only weigh yourself once a week…!” I do understand that logic, but I think that I got to this weight that I am at partially by just not paying attention to what was going on. Yes, of course, my clothes were getting tighter, my face bigger, my neck rolls larger…BUT I was a bit in denial about my weight. Weighing myself everyday forces me to stay focused, and to pay attention to what is going on with my body. When I was actively losing weight in college, and really paying attention to my body, I would go to GNC and weigh myself weekly. The cool thing about the GNC scale is that it prints you a weight ticket, so you have a paper trail. Somewhere in a box in my parents house, there is a journal with those old weight receipts. I may have to do my daily weigh-ins AND the weekly weigh-ins at GNC.
In other news, I also joined the Discovery Health Challenge (www.health.discover.com)
It has excellent tracking resources, and I even got a free 8 week pass to Bally’s Fitness. (Let’s see if they try to make me sign up for a membership…)
Well, it’s Saturday and I have lots of things to do. Have a great weekend!
PS…If anyone is look for great motivating tunes to work out to on their IPods, MP3’s etc…try Mary J. Blige’s new CD, especially the tunes “Work That” and “Just Fine.” I am off to “Work what I got!” ’cause my life is “Just Fine!”
Time to take it up a notch!!
I should be asleep right now, but I have been up preparing for my first day back to work. Vacation is over. The kids arrive back on Thursday, so I will not be up this late tomorrow night. Being a working mom is hard. It takes lots of organization! I am going to pray & meditate a little bit, and I am off to sleep for a few hours. Please think good thoughts for me!
In the place of food…I vent!
The next few days may be stressful. I return to work on Wednesday. I am worried about getting flack from parents regarding some of the grades their children earned. I wasn’t as organized as I should have been last quarter, and I honestly, I don’t want to get called to task. I keep worrying, “Have report cards been mailed yet?”
And going back to work in general, is just not that exiting. I have enjoyed being home the past two weeks. Even though The Little One has been a handful, he brings much joy to our lives. And I love him much. Going back to work means sending him back to daycare. It means missing out on so many things….I don’t hate my job, but I have started to realize a lot of the issues that exist at that place. The incompetence. The racism. The insincerity. It was much better when I didn’t know.
I am also really stressed out about the future of my little family. Not stressed out in the-we-have-no-food-on-the-table kindof way. I should be grateful for that. I am stressed out, however, about, our future. Sometimes, I feel that we have no real vision. We are just living from day-to-day.
When the semester ended, I made a pledge to myself and to G-d that I was going to finally make a decision about what I want to do with my life. And I have. I have finally figured it out. While it does involve obtaining three to four additional degrees, I have come to terms with my ambition, and with the fact that I don’t have to do everything by tomorrow.
So, yeah, I am venting here. Trying to get it off of my chest so that I don’t put it in my stomach!
I hope to begin the New Year with a clean house (much more to be done on that front!), my bills paid, and a renewed commitment to living a good life.
Happy New Year!
