What a Difference a Year Makes!

(Excuse the double posting today, but I'm an optimist at heart!)

As I mentioned in the previous blog or family went to DC. If you have ever been to DC on a family trip you know you walk and walk and walk. We took the subway everywhere, which was very convenient but rarely did it drop you at a main entrance of anything. We did the traditional Smithsonians, Monuments, Mt. Vernon, the Capitol and even a daytrip to Gettysburg program. Very fun, put a lot of walking.

This active vacation made me put a couple things into perspective. First, it gave me a tangible milestone to go back to next year, wherever our family vacation takes us, to compare my weight too. I could really picture what I would look and feel like with a large weight loss and was really excited.

And secondly, much more quietly in my brain, but much more important, was the realization that one year ago I would have never been able to make this trip. I absolutely could not have done the walking we did. The pain in my knees and especially my heels last year would have kept me home. This year I tied up my decidedly un-hip tennies with every outfit and breezed through the nation's capitol, wincing at all these crazy people in $3 flip flops! I guess that makes me officially old. I'm ok with that!

Also, today is the 4th of July. As we were making plans to view our town's fireworks I remembered last year I didn't/couldn't go. We live in a lakeside community and my family had found a place on the beach they thought would be perfect viewing and it was. However, last year I knew I could not even be dropped off as close to the spot as possible and make it. They went without me and I could get out the front door and see a couple big ones from the street. I was very sad. But this year, since I've taken the necessary fitness steps, it didn't even cross my mind that I couldn't go or would need to be dropped off. I can walk anywhere! I'm still a long way from my ultimate goal, but life is so much better just from taking the steps I have thus far.

So as I continue to look forward with excitement that next year I will be 100 pounds lighter I'm going to be mindful to also look a little bit back and remember and be very proud of how far I have come already. Happy Fourth of July to all!

Deprivation Depravity

Ok, my vacation is over - my family took a trip to Washington DC for about 10 days and then after a week at home I'm back to the blog. (I did blog my vacation, which was fun and completely diet and exercise free - the blog not the vacation.)

I didn't watch what I ate during the vacation. I started out strong on the turnpike getting there, but then the first museum we visited had only McDonald's as it's food vendor. I haven't had McDonald's, since February of this year! It was funny, I had a cheeseburger and fry, I was really looking forward to the cheeseburger, but it turned out it was the fries that really knocked my socks off.

I don't want to go on about the details of my poor food choices because I don't want to make myself or any readers feel deprived. Because as I have learned this week, with my re-entry to healthy eating - I am not deprived by missing junk food, I was actually depriving myself by eating like crap for 10 days. The first couple days I went without junkfood were awful!

It sounds crazy to even me and I lived through it. The first day I didn't eat anything bad for me, (this past Wed.), I was nauseous, in extreme pain in every single joint and had one step below a migraine headache all day. Just ridiculous. Fortunately, I know this is how my body reacts when I take away all it's junk, but it still shocks me every time. Just like a heroin addict knows how horrible another round of heroin will be for him, I'm sure it sure feels a lot better to feed the craving. The stuff that is bad for you - whatever your thing is - sure does some weird things to your body.

Today - Saturday, I'm still fighting the headache but the other side effects are pretty much gone. I've written down in great and graphic detail how miserable I felt this time and plan to review it the next time I try to talk myself into a little Healthy Food Hiatus. I'm a slow learner, but I keep trying.

Why I'm Going to Exercise Today

I keep wishing I would find a blog or website that I could go to everyday to get the "perfect" inspiration to motivate me to exercise. I haven't found it and really that kind of motivation would be quite impossible for any one blog to aspire. So when I feel this way, I guess I'm going to be my own motivation.



So my motivation to haul myself to the gym for 3 miles on the treadmill and a nautilus circuit is....If this is truly going to be the "once and for all" weight loss I need to be a grown up -"man up" - and do what needs to be done! Otherwise I'm just kidding myself. So at 3pm on a Friday, I'm going.

UPDATE - I made it - 2.5 miles on the treadimill and upped all my weights on the Nautilus. Woo Hoo!

Recording - Not Music, I Promise :)

One thing I have learned about myself is, the best, (only?), way I get things accomplished is through careful recording. A second is that, I am really bad at careful recording, but I LOVE the concept - and oh, those office supplies! I am a great planner too, but it is that act of recording that drives results. I have been successful at this for job hunts, special events, work projects, housekeeping and personal finance, but weight, well, not so much.

I love the WW food journal and do lose when I follow those "points" to the letter and record it. I do not do so well with the program because I used to be able to tell you exactly how many chocolate chip cookies would fulfill my daily points value. Not good for long term weight loss or long term health. Plus, I would just think about those cookies constantly. So for this go around, I am taking a different approach.

I am really trying to adjust my mindset, and it is working pretty well so far. The adjustment is to see the decision -"I am NOT going to eat the, (fill in the junk food of choice)", as the reward. The "Yay Me!" moment if you will. This is instead of focusing on the "Poor Me..." of, "I guess I don't get to eat the cookie."

I believe the experts might call this a paradigm shift, but it seems to be working - and by working I mean it's easier to forgo the things that just do not fit into my goals. So - "Yay Me!"

The White Bread THEORY

Not a great day, but nothing to damaging. I didn't exercise at all today, by design. I know "rest days" are supposed to be built in to any exercise plan, which is great, but boy was I cranky today. Not good. So, I think on my "rest days" I will try to do 20 min. of yoga on the Wii Fit and/or a 30 minute EASY walk or bike ride. Though I am shocked all my vacuuming and floor scrubbing didn't reach the level of real exercise. Hmmph!

Also, we took my daughter to an Italian place for dinner. I started out very well - I looked up the menu before we got there and knew what options might work for me. I did have to ask the waitress about pizza with no cheese but did draw the line on asking if pasta removal was possible from various dishes. I really don't want to be an obnoxious eater, but I don't want to blow it either. So I got the BBQ Chicken Pizza sans mozzarella. It was actually very good.

However, the sneaky "oh, I'll just have one piece" bread on the table got me. White bread to boot, dipped in olive oil, of course. It was good, but honestly, not that good. At home I do eat bread but it's always the best whole wheat I can find. I prefer it. But, tonight's baguette got me. In the past I have trained myself to view any white bread as a pile of table sugar, which it virtually is.

So, with that said - THEORY TIME -maybe my lack of endorphin stimulation, from my lack of exercise led me to view the white bread as a sugar fix to get those little neurons firing. I like that theory. You'll learn I'm quite attached to all my half baked theories. :) Fortunately I did not consume the same level of bread that would equal a cardio/nautilus workout. So, I got that goin' for me.

Tomorrow back to the pool and hopefully a bike ride. C'mon summer weather - for real this time!

The Rules...

I am not a big fan of the word rules, but rules for my eating is what is working for me right now. I keep referring to my "eating plan" because I know I cannot do a diet, any diet, for an entire week not to mention a full year. So I have come up with these "rules." I can follow rules. I obviously cannot follow meal plans, point counts, good/bad food charts so I'm goin' with rules. Here they are so far:


1. No sharp foods. I include in this, any chips, popcorn, crackers or crunchy cookies. I have decided raw vegetables are not actually sharp.

2. No dairy. This was HUGE for me. I LOVE milk and all its luscious counterparts - cheese, yogurt, ice cream - but for now they are gone. And the word luscious will never be applied to a calcium supplement - just choked on one today!

3. Never eat more than the size of your closed fist in a sitting. I learned that if you close your fist it becomes the same size as your stomach. I found this revolutionary. It gets rid of all that portion control stuff and fills you up at the same time.

4. No horrible food. Brownies are bad for me, but High Fructose Corn Syrup, trans fats, fake sugar in all it's forms and their ilk are a special kind of unhealthy. The HFCS is hard to avoid and at some point I'm going to have to go cold turkey on "sugarless" gum, but other than that I steer clear of the really nasty stuff.

5. If I am hungry - I eat. I try and make the best choices I can and they sometimes are rather unconventional, (cucumbers dipped in garlic hummus for example), but I am not going to spend the next year starving.

So those are my food rules. I am very open to adding to them if I learn something new, but for now they are working. I'm pretty sure at some point I'll have to start calorie counting too, but for now I am getting really good at these and do not want to get overly fancy with myself.

Any tips or rules of your own you would like to share are always welcome.

"Nobody Trips Over Mountains"

I've been thinking a lot about perseverance today. I found this quote:

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. ~Author Unknown

Pebbles seem to come in all forms: brownies, cookies, laziness, self-doubt, procrastination, brownies... The one I've been up against this week is impatience. I said to my husband, "OK, I've been doing this new lifestyle thing since February, I'm done, I should be skinny now." Sound familiar? Me too.

The truth is, I have been doing very well. My eating plan is working, my exercise is going better than I expected and my weight goals are being met. Apparently I still need to take the huge step of internalizing that this is permanent. And it has to be if I'm going to get over the mountain that is my weight. I'll get there - and now I know where I'm aiming. Woo Hoo!