Refocusing

I was down almost 20 lbs! I got so excited I gained back 6 of them. Yuck. And yikes!

I was only half-assing my weight loss program, still weighing in, still exercising, but not tracking foods and not exercising to my fullest ability. I'd walk a half mile and call it good ... for a week.

When I started this program I posted all the time on here about how I wanted to hold myself accountable, be responsible and take this seriously. That worked for about 6 months and then in September I went on vacation for two weeks and when I got back completely let myself go.

It wasn't until I got on the scale last Friday and I realized my weight was creeping back up that it occurred to me that I've let it slip away again.

I don't want to go back to weighing over 330 lbs.

I don't want to go back to being winded walking up one flight of stairs at work.

What I do want is to be under 300 lbs so I can use my Wii Fit board that my amazing husband got me for Christmas a year ago (My original goal? To be there by October...which was totally reachable until I started slacking.)

What I do want is to take my daughter for bike rides, and fit in an airplane seat without being self-conscious of the person sitting next to me.

What I do want is to be healthy.

Ohhhhh hello Mr. Back Problems

I'm getting old.

There's no other way to say it that will make the hit any softer.

I'm getting old. And I'm fat.

And with those two ailments comes problems. Back problems to be exact.

Sunday night I was sitting in my recliner and when I got up, I must've gotten up kind of awkward or something because all of a sudden I was paralyzed. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even talk to tell The Family that I was paralyzed. It was the worst, most shocking pain I've ever experienced. It truly felt like I'd cracked a rib or something. There was a muscle so deep in my back and I pulled it good.

By Monday morning I was in bed and still half-paralyzed, and by now it was spasming like nuts. Today I was feeling a teeny bit better and ended up going in to work. I haven't been able to walk more than a few feet without it spasming, I can't lift my hands over my head, and I was supersuperthisclose to letting The Hubs spoon feed me lastnight because I couldn't move my arms.

Here's hoping I recover quickly! Not only do I want to start exercising again, but breathing without sharp pains shooting through your body is a good thing I hear!

11.11.11

I thought that 11.11.11 was supposed to be some magical day where all the good luck fairies fall out of the sky and make all your dreams come true?

That's not how my day went!

First, I wake up to find that I've gained a pound (*sssobbbb*) and then I go to Starbucks for my Skinny Vanilla Latte and a breakfast bar (Their triple berry coffee cake = to.die.for) and my total comes to $6.66. Not too much of a big deal since I'm not super superstitious, right?

I go to my car and plug in my iPhone so I can listen to it on my drive to work. I put it on my favorites playlist and song number 66 of 666 comes on. OK, now I'm getting worried.

I get to work and try to text my husband this: "Remind me to..." and my big fat fingers misspell "Remind" and my lovely auto correct "fixes" it by putting in "Demon"...

OK. Time to go home, yes? Yikes.

I made it through the day and we ended up having a really nice day that ended with dinner at one of my favorite Italian places, where I treated myself to chicken marsala.

Tomorrow if it's nice out we'll be going to the lake where I hope to go hiking through the woods and enjoy the beautiful fall colors this amazing city seems to have every year!

I'm ALIIIIIIIIIVE!

I'm here! I'm alive!  I swear!  I've been working like an idiot at work, they offered me some overtime to help out another department meet some year-end deadlines.  On top of that we didn't have internet access at home for most of October.  *sigh*

My weight-loss is still chugging along.  After my September loss of 5 or 6 lbs I've sort of plateaued again which we all know I *love*!!!

Granted, I have allowed myself to slip some, I'm still staying within my weekly and daily points but the food hasn't been the healthiest and I really need to refocus my energy on that and get back to work on that.

Anyway, I'll have a weigh-in this Friday.  I've been doing my weigh-ins, but I'm not sure I'm going to write posts about each of them.  I will post them over on the right hand side but trying to go back and write out how I felt after each one is going to be almost impossible, so I'm just going to pick up where I left off on Fridays weigh-in.

If you're still reading this, thank you!  If you're someone like me who's on a weight-loss journey, I hope it's going well for you and I encourage you to stick with it!

Back to life...back to reality

Oh my goodness, these last 4 weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. A WHIRLWIND I tell ya!

My hubs and I started our vacation/long-overdue honeymoon in Washington DC.

And ended with this...

Cape Town, South Africa

Walker Bay, South Africa

Franschhoek, South Africa

And our personal fave...Kruger National Park, South Africa

With all of that amazing traveling came lots of great food.  I tried new things, like Ostrich steak and grilled Kudu.  I had beef tar tar, which I still don't get why that's even a food and I ate a leaf that our guide in the bush told me was edible and would save my life should I ever find myself lost in the bush without a cushy 5-star lodge anywhere close by. 

Food phases and cravings

A friend of mine and I were talking about lunches and how we go through "phases" ... Like when I ate a salad with a grilled chicken breast on top everyday for three months and then got burned out on it. Then I went through my chili phase (I ate it everyday for two weeks before coworkers started asking if we were doing alright financially. *sigh*) ... Now I seem to be in a Lean Cuisine phase with a piece of fruit, some string cheese and baby carrots on the side. Right now I'm convinced that I could live off of Lean Cuisines. I want to eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner.
 
I've also recently had a serious craving for hotdogs. I bought at Costco for lunch a few weeks ago, I ordered one at Five Guys, and I think about making them for dinner every night (I don't. I couldn't do that to my family.) I feel like I just need to eat them, like eating one RIGHT NOW would make me feel better, I'm imagining them like they're some sort of mouth watering delicacy that will just melt me to the floor when I take that first glorious bite. Sick. I know. It's a freakin' hotdog. But this is what I deal with!
 
When I was a kid and I'd have cravings for something I wouldn't normally eat, my mom would say it's your body's way of telling you that you need a key nutrient that the food you're craving has in it. So if you're craving spinach when normally you're all like, "Ew disgusting. Don't TOUCH me with spinach"... then maybe your body is trying to tell you that you need an iron boost. I don't hate hot dogs, I'll eat them but I've never craved them the way I've been craving them. And since hotdogs are kind of made out of leftover animal parts, I'm wondering what kind of nutrients they have in them. I'm a bit afraid to google "hot dogs" though because of what may show up...so I'll do some more research on that some other time.

Anyway, I'm going to go find some hotdogs now.

A giveaway!

I love free stuff! One of my fellow weight loss bloggers, Diaries of a Fat Girl, is giving away a BondiBand...go here to enter!

A day to myself!

I suffer from serious wife and mother guilt. It takes a lot to get me to be OK doing things for myself (My husband has to nag me to buy clothes for myself sometimes).

On Friday a co-worker, who's become a good friend of mine, invited me to The Tulip Festival. I almost didn't go because my dad and I took The Kid on a bike ride first thing in the morning, we did almost 10 miles. When I got home my muscles felt fine, legs were a little jelly-fish like, but the part that hurt the most was my buuuuttttt...it is still a bit on the sensitive side tonight, but I had a fantastic day with friends at the festival!!! We walked through the gardens at Roozengaarde, and visited the fields, the gift shop, had some ice cream and took lots and lots and lots of pictures!

I took 103 pictures, posted 58 to Facebook and created a new slideshow for my computer. I got to play with a friends Nikon D40 which totally made me drool. I love photography and would eventually like to work my way up to a "real" camera and take some classes on photography. Right now I use my cute little Samsung point and shoot, which I love...it's red and was a gift from The Hubs. It takes great photos and I can manipulate them with iPhoto, so I'm happy with it but boy I'd LOVE the Nikon!!!

Sunny Southern California

I've missed you.

We've been living up North for almost 5 years now and while things are definetely better financially, we all really miss the sun and our friends in LA. Our ultimate goal is to eventually buy a house here and move back, but I have some serious family guilt that I have to work through before I can truly be happy living down here.

My family is estranged. It's a long story, but in the end I'm the 1 of 3 kids in my family that are a constant in my parents life for one reason or another. I live in the same city, and get along with them. We spend holidays together, have dinners together, they spend lots of time with my daughter and we house sit for eachother. We are fairly tight knit with them. I love them. Whenever I talk about wanting to move away though, I get the face. You know what face I'm talking about because it's the same face we all gave our parents when they told us no as kids...or the face our kids give us when we tell them they can't eat ice cream for breakfast. They don't want me to go and guilt me for it. My mom is subtle about it...my dad not so much. He lays right into me about why I need to stay and why I shouldn't leave them.

I can't imagine why I'm stress-eater, suffer from depression and fat.

I did end up getting some exercise while we're here though. The Husbands brother called us on Saturday while we were still driving down and said that some of the family were looking for a distraction and decided to take kids to Disneyland and did we want to go with them? Yes. We have annual passes and would not pass up an opportunity to spend the day there. I walked until my little (big) feet melted right out of my shoes. It was fantastic.

The food is about what I expected. I'm eating salads and In N Out Burger (I KNOOOOW! But hello? YUM!?) OH and today I had tacos at a mexican place in Disneyland and passed on the beans and rice and got steamed fajita vegetables instead. I still am not eating 3 full meals a day though, still not much of an appetite. I'm worried about family stuff and helping The Husband and Daughter deal with the passing of someone we all loved very much.

Family

My husbands mother passed away yesterday after battling illness for several years. We are on our way down to Southern California in the morning to be with family and attend the funeral. It's very quiet in our house and there's a black cloud hanging over us. I'm asking for strength and patience to get through the next few days. My husband has 6 older brothers and our relationship with them has been strained. I am hoping that we can put those feelings aside in memory of their mother and at least be civil to each other. I still feel sick to my stomach though, imagining being surrounded by them for the next week.

I'm thankful that I'm not necessarily an emotional eater, in fact I'm kind of the opposite. I've hardly had an appetite for anything since yesterday. I've been forcing myself to eat and stay on plan, but I'm really not interested in food.

*sigh*

I didn't walk tonight

It's so freaking mother-effing cold here that even sitting inside is almost too cold to bear. The Dog hates me for it and I hate that I didn't suck it up and do it but I'll be at it tomorrow.

Triggers

Anyway, I didn't really log in just to 'fess up about not walking tonight. On my horrific drive home tonight (An hour to go 10 miles...HELP!) I found myself craving food. Not a particular food, but f.o.o.d. I wanted to freaking stuff my face. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't even bored...or necessarily all that stressed, I was just sitting in traffic seething through my teeth about how ridiculous it all is, and something washed over me that said, "STUFF FOOD IN YOUR MOUTH! SCREW WEIGHT WATCHERS! LIE! Don't count it on your tracker! JUST DO IT! You know you want to!" ........ and I did ........... which is why I don't keep food in my car.

I didn't eat anything, since I don't have food in the car, but I'm pretty sure that had there been food in the car there wouldn't be any crumbs left by the time I got home.

What are your triggers? Mine is obviously road rage and traffic. I know I also suffer from stress-eating, boredom eating, anger eating...etc. All the normal triggers, but also this weird little random one.

In serious need of a neck massage

I woke up with a lovely migraine this morning. It's one of those slow burning ones right behind my forehead that goes through to my neck.

Today I was hoping to do this and take The Dog for a nice long walk, but now I'm not sure I'll even be able to get out of my recliner today.

Disgusted

Lastnight I upgraded to an iPhone 4, and when I got home we wanted to try out the video chat.

Let's just say I won't be doing that again. I'm so disgusted with myself and how fat I've gotten it's hard to even look at myself these days.

*sigh* I'm so done.