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Charting one woman's journey February 9, 2005 Sorry it has been so long since I updated. It seems like I have to climb every mountain and swim every river just to get computer time lately. No, I didn't fall off the wagon. Well, not completely off. I was dragged behind for a while, but managed up pull myself back up by my fingernails. I've lost a total of 8 pounds since I started this incarnation of the journal. Gained back 3 and I'm working to take them off. Both new weight and new weight loss doesn't sit well on me and fights to get back to where it was. I am so whipped today. I don't know why I don't fit the mold of exercise giving me more energy right away. I'm reading below and seeing that I did get there, so maybe it's just a process. Today, I decided to do something different. I didn't exercise all last week and knew I needed some way to break out of that lethargy. I decided to bundle up and take a long walk. I was debating between the bicycle and just walking and decided to go with the walking for now. I lit out for a path through some of our smaller roads. They are paved, but there is no snow plowing or anything going on back there. I was wishing about 1/4 of the way through that I'd brought my camera. There were a lot of interesting things to see. I must have see at least 30 robins in little groups of 2 or 3 at a time. I never knew we had so many around here. I didn't encounter a car the whole time I was walking, so it was fairly remote. I was looking for landscaping and house ideas, mostly. There were no other animals at all. Just birds and birds and birds. It was a nice walk. I didn't get to a sweat at any point, which was a little discouraging. I got into some serious transition (that's Lamaze talk) breathing on some of the hills and wondered if I was going to collapse in a twitching fat heap. I ended up walking for about 50 minutes. Now I feel really tired and woozy and kind of disconnected from my joints. When I walk, it feels like the floor is closer than it is. Maybe 50 minutes was too long. I didn't intend it. It just worked out that way. Meh. I'll get it. It sucks, but it has to happen some how, some way and it has to happen this year. Now, I have to mediate the war between wanting a nap and needing to clean house. Such is life. -K- January 21, 2005 I'm trying a new supplement that I actually got in the bargain bin at Albertsons. It's called Ultracarb 3000. I'm going to see if there is any more when I go there tomorrow. It's specifically for low carb dieters and is chromium based. So far, I've felt really good taking it (but not in that buzzy way, just balanced) and until today, it has helped control the cravings. I'm having PMS cravings today and I guess nothing can override that. Well, nothing except Divine Intervention, which kind of pisses me off. Sure, I was poked by The Universe to do this diet thing, but I don't like being sheriffed about it. When I went to town last week, I bought a package of brownie mix and a bag of semi-sweet chips for making brownies and toll house cookies for the family. Now, today, when PMS cravings are raging, neither the brownies or the chips are anywhere to be found. My kids are terrified to steal anything from my kitchen (under threat of death), so I know they didn't take it. Eric just cleaned out the jeep, so I know it's not in there. Strange. I'm carbohydrate thwarted. I've lost 2 pounds, despite some masterful cheating. I'm also on the brink of a period, so that's quite an accomplishment. Just a day at a time, you know. I'm hanging in there. Right now, I'm going to hang on the couch and take a nap. Why? Because I can! Take care, January 12, 2005 I walked two miles to and from the post office yesterday, so got good exercise and I want to keep that roll going. It was hard, but it's going to keep being harder if I only exercise sporadically. I just hate it and it is really hard for me to do things I hate with little or no immediate results. Any one who has tried to lose a substantial amount of weight knows that it is thankless for quite some time. I have trouble with thankless, which in one of the greatest inhibitors of my own weight loss. Hmmm... shall I go for immediate gratification or go for denying myself fun stuff and instead, doing a bunch of crap I hate? Yep, that's why I don't normally get very far on the weight loss path before "screw this" comes into play. Today, I have to just do it. I also have to "just do it" tomorrow and the next day and a whole lot of days after that. I have to find a way to stop rebelling against it and accept it as a way of life for the foreseeable future and possibly for the rest of my life. Of course, once I am down to a good weight, I will know exactly why I'm doing it... to avoid going back to where I was. Since I've been dieting for about 13 years or so and probably have lost and regained hundreds of pounds, it is reasonable that I doubt my own ability to succeed. I can't say that this time is any different than the others, but for everyone who succeeds, there has to be a first step. I've taken hundreds of first steps, many second steps and a couple of times, I made it to third steps. Now I have to master the 10th and 100th steps. Today I'll just do it. K January 4, 2005 I've been sloughing off on the exercise, but I've been carefully watching what I'm eating and have lost 2 pounds! Hurray! Granted, that is not much for 3 weeks, but regardless, it is 2 pounds less than I was before! Of course, I did have a period in there, so water weight could be involved but check it out! I don't care! Today, I get back into the swing of the exercise, plus this is "water week." I've been changing my way of being in the world a little at a time, hoping that if I ease into it, it'll stick better rather than abruptly making a ton of changes. I am bound and determined to be significantly smaller in July for the GH Fan Club event than I was last year. My goal is to have lost 50 pounds by then, which is a lot for 7 months, but I think I can do it if I get really serious about it and work hard. Now that the kids are all in school for the entire day, I have lots of time and flexibility, which helps considerably. I have stopped wearing my really flowing, roomy clothes during the day and have started wearing pants and close fitting sweaters. That keeps me very aware of my size and doesn't let me hide in the flowing material. :) Now, when I look down, I see my boobs instead of my stomach under my boobs, so either boobs got bigger or tummy got smaller and I'm good with that. I didn't expect progress to be quick (if I did, maybe I'd have faster results!), so I'm good with taking it a little at a time. Also, since I am the only one who is here in the day, I can keep just the food in the house that works for me, plus dinners for the family. It's funny how many diet plans I have around me. I'm using Insulin Resistance. My son and daughter-in-law are using Weight Watchers. A friend of mine just lost 40 pounds since October on LA Weight Loss and I am enormously proud of her. This deal definitely is not for sissies. I am finding myself increasingly irritated with Trim Spa for their Anna Nicole campaign. Of course, she is the most annoying person on the planet but now to have her touted as some kind of ideal makes me a little nauseated, which is good because nausea staves off cravings pretty well. This new contest they are having with her saying, "Wanna Viper? Wan' sum munny? Wanna play? Like my body?" is just... icky. For one thing, I get really queasy hearing grown women talk like children. I also get extremely uncomfortable around men who find that attractive. Sure, she has a lovely body and I am certain she worked really hard with her private cooks and personal trainers to make that happen. She definitely went through an amazing transformation and I am very happy for her. She has the best body that money can buy and no, I'm not resentful about that. If I had the options she has I'd sure use them too. It's the whole package that I have a hard time processing. It also bothers me that it's being marketed in an "I did it and you can to" kind of way when she didn't do it on $40 bottles of Trim Spa X32 alone. She had plenty of advantages that the people forking that much over for the product don't have and I think that is misleading. Plus I'm sure she got her Trim Spa pro bono. >:< Bitter? Not really, just wish marketing didn't have to be so obviously deceitful. So I am keeping on keeping on, bound and determined to knock the pounds off a few at a time! Didn't want you to think a lack of journaling was some wagon tumbling! K December 27, 2004 Those of you who have followed my (many) journals over the years know the struggle I've had with my weight... or rather, the lack of struggle because I really don't fight it very hard. It's not really much of a source of anguish for me. I would love to feel better, health-wise and I look forward to that. I look forward to better sex and to wearing nicer clothes. Beyond that, I'm not really torn up about it. I watch "I Lost It" on the Discovery Health channel, as well as the Dr Phil weight loss challenge shows and I hear people talking about how miserable they are and how much they hate themselves and their fat. I'm just not there. Perhaps I'd be more motivated if I were. I have a good, strong self-esteem, I think I'm pretty and I love to eat. I've really examined, and I mean DEEPLY examined all of the reasons why I eat what and when I eat, why I am fat, why I am resistant to exercise and what feelings I might be numbing and needing to heal. After years of exhaustive evaluation and research, I have determined that I don't exercise because it sucks, I don't drink water because I don't like the taste (or lack thereof) and I eat because food tastes good and makes me feel better right away. I do it for the rush of how good the food tastes and that it makes me really, really happy. I like the texture. I like the taste. I like the feeling of fullness. So that's the deep dark mystery. I have given a half-assed stab at food changing and exercising and have genuinely found a few things that work for me and a whole lot of things that don't. Eat less in quantity, balance proteins and complex carbs at about a 7:16 ratio with no more than 32 grams of carbs within a 2 hour period, drastically eliminate refined carbs, exercise and drink the water... day after day after day and eventually it all strings together to equal healthier you. So how is it working? Except for the water (I haven't gotten to that part yet), I did OK for the past three weeks. I exercised quite well 5 days out of 7 each week. I've gone between treadmill, Walk Away the Pounds (2 miles), Yoga for Weight Loss (Suzanne Deason), Body Flexing and this week, the mini-trampoline I got the kids for Solstice and it kicks my ass. I do about 20 minutes on it until I am weak and sweaty and achy and then I do about a 10-15 minute work out on the exercise ball and the resistance tubes (second level of tube even!). I just integrated the tubes this week (read: today since it is Monday) and I can really feel that I've used them. Since I started exercising 3 weeks ago (and I really can't count the "eating right" I started three weeks ago since I made plenty of exceptions for the holidays), I haven't lost any weight that I haven't regained. I lost 3 pounds, but it came back with a friend. I am, however, a good bit healthier. I can run up the stairs now without stopping, my clothes fit differently and I have a lot more energy (but some of that is the B-12, which I took for a few days before I started exercising). I am sleeping much better (which, I am sure, is why I am back to getting the cool dreams again) and feel better overall. I think even if I never lost a pound, I'd still exercise just to feel healthier as I do. Granted, I still have to force myself to do it every day. I don't enjoy it, but I enjoy the effects, so I will continue to do it. Having a lot of options to choose from makes it much easier because I get bored so easily. One of the things I have learned is that if I am not accountable for what I do and don't do, it's much easier for me to slack off. Eric wants this so much of me. He has never made a secret of the fact that he is not attracted to me. In fact, when we were just friends the year before we married was the first time he came straight out and told me that he did not find me attractive and because of that, we would never be a couple. My stunning personality won him over, but he has admitted over our marriage that I am not sexually attractive to him. It's not like it's something about which I ever deluded myself. He loves me to distraction and I am secure in that, so doing this is very much giving him a gift he has always wanted. Of course, there is always the chance that once I am trim and fit, he still won't find me attractive, but that's a risk I am willing to take. It isn't as though I am putting myself in harms way or somehow making myself worse off to do this. I'll be in a better place regardless. Anyway, my point is that I can't really confide any of this to Eric. (He never reads my journals EVER unless he is pretty sure I've said something about him - in fact, he never reads my writing at all) For one thing, he would be completely freaked out if he knew how much I actually weigh and how far I have to go. I'm even a little freaked out about it. He also doesn't have a clue how to support me in this and I don't even know what I need from him. I think from him, I need him to ignore me until I make good progress and then yap constantly about how good I look as it is happening. He is just too invested in the outcome and tends to make me really nervous about it, so I keep him on the fringe. So this, as so many times before, is where I will be accountable for how things are really going. Funny that because of how badly he wants it, I am confiding in the whole world, but not in Eric. Yep, strange old world, it is. I'll check in a couple of times a week. Yes, I am nervous about this because of the two (failed) weight loss journals I have had before. The first was rather dark looking and my beginning efforts. It is here. The second was light and flowery and talked a lot about self-nurturing, blah, blah, blah. It is here.
Not the first step on this journey, but I am still walking. Interestingly enough, my body does, at this time, look a lot like the Venus of Willendorf goddess statue at the top of this page. I'm shooting for this ==========================>>> I have no interest in being a size 4. I don't even think I could if there was only skin on my bones. The smallest I have ever been as an adult is a size 9 and I was completely anorexic then with bones hanging out everywhere. I am not interested in being there again and don't know that I could since I am 20 years older and now have had 6 children to the 3 I'd had back then. I am looking for about a size 12-14, 140-145 pound range. I can look at that as a goal that is far, far away (around Halloween of next year when the harvest ends) or I can see that in the meantime, I will continually be getting more fit, healthier and more energetic all the time. It's a lifelong process, not a trip I take once, then sit on my ass and rest once I am there. What I keep thinking is that if I am this cool now, when I'm a size 12, I'll be downright dangerous... and 44... so time's a wasting. Gotta get it done now before another year goes by of being fat. So that's the Fatastic Journal for now... It'll be around more. Love, |
This one
goes back to the first premise, but integrating the things I have learned
and takes me full circle to continuing the process I started all those
years ago.