Sunday, July 24, 2011

I AM BACK!!!!!

I have not posted for a long time, in fact over a year but a lot has happened in the last year and I will share with you the events. I was exercising and making a goal to get to the gym at least 4 times a week. While I was going to the gym and being diligent I lost a total of 25 pounds....giddy up right????? I started school and continued to do great but stress the lovely devil that she is entered and I began to stress eat while I studied. Chocolate, salt and vinegar potato chips and Pepsi are beautiful study companions. I gained every ounce of my weight back which only made me eat and gain more. I have joined Weight Watchers enough times that I am sure I have bought the owners of Weight Watchers their Mercedes so I refused to join again.....until a girl that I work with began to tell me about how it has changed.

Weight Watchers now lets you eat all the fruit and vegetables you want to eat and they are all zero except the starchy ones like corn and potatoes. I joined online which is also another great thing for me. I hated going in and weighing for other people. The ladies that were weighing me were usually elderly and always saying "Ohhhhhhhhh you only lost 2 oz" or "Was it a bad week dear, you gained 2 lbs." NOT my favorite! They of course were trying to help and be kind but I am an angry dieter so with that of course I would want to spank her for weighing me and telling me I had gained or only lost a fraction of weight.

Even though joining has been a good thing I have still felt frustration with not being able to eat the things that I love so dearly. I have discovered that food is an evil thing and this is why. The food that you really, really, really love makes you fluffy or makes you retain water or some other rotten thing, sure it is lovely while you are eating it and pretending to be your friend you know like the mean girl in junior high that we all fell victim to but there is a price to pay ALWAYS. After eating it we step on the scales and feel devastated like we can’t believe that something that made us feel so good now is making us want to weep. Then we feel determined now we will suffer and eat those things that are not so comforting. We will now eat food that we should eat. Food that we don’t really love or desire and it only makes our stomach hurt, makes us feel cheated, unsatisfied and pissed off as we gag it down a bite at a time....

My goal is to do it this time, no more fluffy Melinda, I have to change and keep it off. I will tell you that even in all of my frustration with not being able to eat all of the things that I super love I have felt better physically. The first few weeks are hardest and I have found easy to give up. I need to make it at least 6 weeks and then it will be a habit and I will see and feel a difference I think.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

To the gym, to the gym to the gym, gym, gym!

Ok so I have not been the best at keeping up on this blog but today is the day to write! I made a goal for the month of April to exercise more. Not just to help with my weight but to help me feel better mentally. Sometimes in life you hit a road block, sometimes it is major and sometimes not so much but being 40 has not been my favorite and has made me think of life and where I am and what I am doing. I have not been happy with my body image for a very long time. I have put taking care of myself on the back burner and not tried to conquer what I like least about myself. During the last few week though I have decided that enough is enough and tried to become addicted to exercise.

I really have felt a difference in how I look at things and how I have felt. For the month of April I only missed 5 days of exercise. I found that on the days that I did not exercise I could feel a difference in my attitude and how I felt about that day and life. Not so great. For the month of May I decided that I would exercise every day for 1 hour!!! I have only missed 1 day but have tried to make up the hour for that day a little bit at a time. I am finding that I have a need to get there and exercise. I feel better and I am feeling a difference in my clothes. In the last 6 weeks of me going on a regular basis I have lost 12lbs. That is great for me. Now working on my diet is the next thing I want to do. Putting the both together in the past has been a challenge for me, but I have shown myself that if I can get out of been early in the morning and go to the gym everyday or exercise at home on my bike I can certainly watch what I put in my mouth.

Best reward of this whole thing. I have some jeans that I stopped wearing a year ago, because they were to tight. With my exercise I am back in those jeans. That has helped me also to keep going!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Exercise

Well my goal last week was to fit 1 hour of exercise in each day for a full week, which I did and as much as I would like to say,"Hey I did not feel any difference." I actually did. I am trying my hardest to keep it up and keep going. It is Monday though and I am feeling the sluggish effects of starting another week. I did find though that I rationalized bad eating because I was working out. So dang sad I know. Example: Saturday we walked for an hour, Scott went down and fed the horses so I thought I will get on the bike and ride for 20 minutes so I did and then called him and asked him to stop at this great Chinese place on his way home. To justify it to myself I exercised a total of 40 minutes on the bike and walked for 1 hour. Five bites of that fried food and it was all in vein. Darn it!

So my goal this week is to watch better what I eat, exercise and do the happy self talk. I have a friend I have know since High School. Darling, cute shape ,funny the whole package. I went to college with her also and we just recently reconnected on Facebook. She still looks fabulous as ever, she runs a boot camp for people that are working on loosing weight. I asked her for some advice and sent a lengthy message to her not realizing some of the negative talk I was typing about myself. She sent the best message back not long but very enlightening to me, so I thought I would share it with you and you can try it with me. She told me to stop the bad talk about myself. Stop saying I am fat...old and that I am struggling. She told me to look in the mirror each day and tell myself that "I am HOT" she told me that we say it, we become it and then we stay it because we have become exactly what we have told ourselves. It is so true I remember weighing 125lbs and saying I thought I was fat....CRAZY!!!!!

So now I have been working on telling myself that I love me...I am loosing weight....and I am in control of my appetite. Does it work? Maybe I have lost 5 lbs since I have been doing that and also exercising. The power of your mind....great stuff. Keeping up the positive talk is hard I will not lie. I figure though I have been talking negative to myself for a very long time I will need to do the same with the positive talk. Give it a try and good luck.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Am I Angry? Maybe...

Ahhh the color red is fitting for this blog. When you are done reading you will understand. I enjoy watching weight loss shows, no matter who is doing them. I watch a little Celebrity Fit Club, I know a little white trash but hey even white trash need to watch their weight. This season though I really enjoy the therapist that is on there. She is older, late 50's I would guess but she just gets to the point quickly...I like that. On the last episode she was talking about anger, unresolved anger. She stated that studies have shown that anger and weight gain are correlated.

She explained that anger is unresolved pain. She asked the question "What make you angry?" She went on and explained that real anger usually comes from childhood, but also is something that we suppress in adulthood also. Anger and disappointment gives us permission to punish ourselves with food-by gaining weight cutting ourselves down about our body image. ( OK so no more fat jokes). She also talked about food being a comfort to some. One of the celebrities taked about being bullied in school and coming home and finding comfort in food like warm soup crackers and butter....( I love butter too I thought...dam)

One of the exercises that she did was she had each of the celebrities draw on a pillow or t-shirt what had mad them angry. Some of the things were sad and hard things that parents do to us growing up, or bullies and people who just can't accept others for who they are, one was lame he was angry about traffic....not the sharpest crayon in the box. She then had each of them destroy the pillow or t-shirt to symbolize getting ride of what they were holding on too. Good exercise I thought...if it was still the 80's I could do that exercise and sell the t-shirts.

So I ask the prying question; What makes us angry? I think about a few things, everyday things that irritate me, or thing that happened long ago, the point is resolution. The more I ponder on the complexity of weight the more I realize that it is not as easy as diet and exercise, it goes a lot deeper for sure.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Running Up Hill in Cement

OK so that is a little what dieting feels like lately. Yesterday was bad it was the Super Bowl and that is what I ate a Super Bowl of everything that did not get up and crawl away from me. I must say that this morning I got up with more hope, with a bloated belly from over indulging and retaining Lake Powell, I had courage to start once again.....so I decided to blog about it.

I got up and had a diet mountain dew and a weight watchers chocolate muffin for breakfast. For lunch I am going to have a diet dinner and a diet coke. I have felt a little tired lately, I am guessing that it is due to not drinking enough water so that is also my goal this week.

I did find a good treat for drinking though I must share. It is the Walmart brand cherry lime aide and if you put that in water it is great especially if you have ice in it. I am big on taste and not digging the whole NutraSweet after taste and this does not have that...so happy.

While I was at the grocery store this weekend I saw a friend of mine who loves to run and work out. Weight has not been a issue for her the whole time that I have known her but the last few times I have seen her, she just looks great. I talked to her about what she was doing and she told me running and biking, she went through what she was doing with me. The key to what she was saying was this; she works out an hour and a half a day, no matter what she says she makes time for HER to work out, even if that means getting up at 4:30am to do it. She inspired me. It helped me to shop healthy for the weeks meals.

Some things that I have found to help are cucumbers, snow peas and carrot chips not baby carrots. After doing weight watchers enough times to buy the founder of it a Mercedes I find it hard to eat baby carrots because I burned out on them very quickly. So even though it is still a carrot....it seems different. I am also dipping them in Jalapeno Ranch by Lite House, it has a little bit of a kick to it so I only dip a touch.

The other thing that I am trying this week is to try and cut out some of the bread I eat. SOME not all. I am going to prepare some salads with cut up lunch meat on them and also fat free string cheese. I have found if I add vinegar to my salad dressing I use less and it really tastes good.

I have also found a pretty good diet dinner, because trust me I have tried them all and some of them truly could gag a maggot. A couple that I have found are the Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers. GREAT! They are 6 points and worth it.

It really is about gaining control. I don't remember when I lost the balance of eating right and exercising, or maybe I never really had it and it has caught up to me. This I can tell you that enough is enough, food can not control my life forever, it will take me time but I will do it because I can and I am a strong minded red headed woman...and I will succeed.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

My trip to Disneyland

Ahhh it has been a few days since I have written so today I will do just that. My family and I just returned from Disneyland, which just happens to be my most favorite place on the whole planet. Now Disneyland is a little bit of a sinful place as well for the weak dieter, let me explain. They have this little red cart that is right in between Main Street and the Carnation Restaurant, in beautiful bold gold letters you see the words....Corn Dogs. Now I know what you are thinking...a corn dog is not that tempting. I will tell you that if you are thinking this you have not had one of these corn dogs!! This tempting yummy golden treat is the best corn dog I have eaten in my whole life ,and I am not a fan of the corn dog but these would bring you to your knees. They are about 10 inches long, deep fried, fat and they are great. I was strong and only had one bite of daughters and then I was done. That was a big accomplishment for me.

I will share with you what helped me a little while I was there. I looked around at all the different shapes and sizes of people while I was there. I thought as I looked at different women I would love to be that thin..or she a good size even if I could get down around there, I would be OK with that, but what was a the real eye opener was this, as we exited the Winnie the Pooh ride I saw a beautiful lady, her make up was fancy and her hair was done cute, she was probably in her late 50's, she was in a motorized cart because she was so heavy that she could not walk the grounds with her children and her grandchildren. I thought to my self that if I did not get a handle on this weight issue of mine I would end up just like her. I had joked earlier with my husband that my feet hurt so bad and my legs and ankles were so swollen that I wished I had a little pixie dust to sprinkle on them to help to make them hurt less and feel litter on my feet.

There is no pixie dust only my power to gain control of my life I thought and so I continued to be good even on my trip. I did snitch a bit but I did eat my last ding dong in the happiest place on earth. Kind of fitting don't you think?

My goal this week it to make it to the gym at least 2 times and exercise at least 5 days this week. I will work on my treadmill, and also my stationary bike. My goal also this week is 3 lbs

Monday, January 4, 2010

OK so I am off to a rough start but a start at least. Today I exercised and ran and walked 2 miles. It took me a little bit of time 38 min approx but it is better then not at all. I did have 2 cookies this morning though and a diet mountain dew with a piece of toast.

For lunch I will have a yummy diet dinner and try to drink as much water as I can to help with the urge to eat the ding dongs in the pantry or the yummy golden potato chips that are there. I did buy baked chips they are OK...but not the same...I just have to keep going...RIGHT?