As easy as riding a bike...

I did it.  I wasn't gunna, but I did it anyway.  I didn't feel like it, but I didn't let that stop me.  When that infinitesimal window of opportunity presented itself to me in the way of, "do it later when you feel better," I did consider it.  But when it was all said and done, I threw all the stuff that was collecting dust on the exercise bike onto the sofa, sat my fanny down and rode 30 mins vigorously.  I was going to stop at ten.  Then when I got to ten I thought, well, let's ride to 15.  After that, I rode to 20.  By then I decided I could do the whole way.

Sure I wasn't conditioned for it anymore.  No one would have beat me up for stopping after ten or fifteen minutes, or even twenty.  But I felt good enough to keep going, and I decided it was high time I pushed *myself* instead of needing someone else to do it for me.

 

Steven stayed up all night reading My Immortal, so there was no gym today.  By the time he woke up, I'd lost my initiative to go.  I was fighting low blood sugar and all that, my body is in total revolt for all the changes it's undergoing.  So I was jittery and nauseated and weak and shaky - so the last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym.

What I did want, was to get food out.  I have felt so drained and so exhausted that the last thing I want to do is anything for anyone else.  I want to be pampered.  Okay, wrong word.  Spoiled.  I wanted to be spoiled.  When we realized we didn't have the $$ for the Chinese food that I wanted, I got really mad.  I was totally p*ssed off.  I went through a deprivation issue you would not believe.

I'm sure it's related to Brandon and the time of year that it is, but it hit me hard.  I recognized it and I was going to come here and beg for help to get me through the crisis.

Instead I talked to Steven.

 

In that talk, I broke down completely.  I realized that I was terrified of never getting back the enthusiasm to finish this journey.  My inches have gone up, my pounds are fluxuating and I'm basically letting it all happen.  I've ceased being proactive.  I'm reactive.  And I'm reacting badly.

I begged him to give me the kick in the pants I needed, that I wanted a partner now.  I didn't want to go back to the way I used to be.  And here I was, doing everything like I used to do it when I weighed 350lbs.  I was asking him to go get food so I didn't have to cook, I was mad at everyone else for a dirty house I have no energy to clean.  That I'm getting anything at all done with the writing is a miracle.

 

So I came back to the computer after I started dinner.  I saw the bike sitting there next to the computer desk.  There's no reason for me to blow off exercise just because I can't get to the gym.  That's an excuse.  I exercised plenty without the benefit of a gym membership for a year.  It's not Steven or my schedule or my health that's stopping me.

It's me.

And I seriously need to get over myself.  No more excuses. 

Cuz I gotta tell ya, folks.  I'm petrified of staying at this weight.  Or worse.  Gaining it all back.

I need to examine why I'm having such a problem here.  We'll be doing that over the upcoming weeks as I am faced with opportunities to cop out.  I'll either exercise or I'll come here and deal with why I won't exercise.  But one way or another, I'm going to get over this.

Because y'all...this is no way to live.

 

And it's not the way I'm supposed to live.  I'm stronger than this.  I can do anything - my capabilities are endless.  I've proven that if nothing else over the past year. 

I warn you that some of these posts may not be pretty.  I'm not going to be Super Weight Loss girl.  There will be serious imperfections highlighted.  I hate it, but it's part of the process.  Denying it exists isn't getting me anywhere. 

This journal was created for total honesty.  And this is my totally honest problem to work through now. 

Self sabotage.

 

For that purpose the Tips portion of the journal will be suspended while we work through this other stuff.  I'm not exactly sure how I want to set up the entries to include stats and stuff, they may be more than one in a day, depending, and I may need affirmations more than once.

Stay tuned as I work this through.  As always you guys are my lifeline and I appreciate your concern, your prayers and your support more than I can say.

BIG HUGS. 

Happy Birthday Brandon

Today my youngest son would have turned 10 years old.  This is normally a really depressing time for me, so if I seem out of sorts bear with me.  I'll try to come here before I hit the fridge and deal with things.  After how I dealt with the anniversary of my dad's death in December, I'm not looking forward to it.  Pain hurts.  I'm not a big fan, needless to say.

As for today I finally got sleep.  I slept from 9pm last night till 7:30am this morning, which was really good.  I got up, checked on work and then felt tired enough to go back to bed by 9am.  And I did.  I got up about noonish.  I think my body was trying to catch up on all it's missed these last two weeks.

When I got up I weighed in at 284.5lbs on the home scale.  This was after eating over 1900 calories yesterday.  Amazing huh?  Eat more, lose weight.  Whoda thunkit?

Although today my stomach seriously revolted.  Hopefully with the food, the rest and the vitamins I'll be back to my old self in the next day or so. 

Right now I'm beat and will head on to bed.  I did manage to finish the final polish on My Immortal, so here's the link for all of those who want to read it:

http://www.geocities.com/gsvscreenplays/myimmortalweb.doc

Now all that's left is getting it out to the agents. 

Keep your fingers crossed!

I met my nutrional goals today, working up to the exercise.  If I can get five feet from the bathroom, I'll be good to go.  ;) 

 

Total Body Revolt

I cannot share what my body is doing to me after two weeks of starvation, suffice it to say you wouldn't want to hear it anyway. 

It was a harsh day but at least I wasn't hungry.  I ate 1900 calories, which is about right.  That mealsmatter.org agrees with the Tanida that I should eat 2200 calories and it says that I should only aspire to 1lb of weight loss per week (or cutting the calories back by 500 calories a day).

I can do that.

Meanwhile I'll deal with my headache and my poor blood sugar and get some rest.

It's about darned time.

Thanks to everyone for your support!  I hate having to post weaknesses, but you all accept me and let me know it's okay to be human.

I honest to God couldn't do it without you.

Stay tuned, we're about to embark on a Major Fitness Revival.

It's gonna be fun!  I look forward to the endorphins :)

An Epiphany

Yes I know it's 3am.  I've been up since about 1am after having dropped into bed at 9pm yesterday. 

Quite frankly I'm tired of being tired.  I couldn't figure it out.  I'm not sick, I got over the flu last month.  Unfortunately not getting rest also comes with it feeling under the weather.  I've had stomach problems you wouldn't believe.  Headaches on top of headaches.  Generally feeling icky.

Yesterday I went to the mall to get the walk in, trying my level best to meet my goals at least part of the way.  As I'm walking around the mall I feel fuzzy headed and nasty, as though disconnected from the world around me.

I also felt ticked off that I couldn't eat, and I was starving.  I decided then that walking the mall on a diet is surely one of the nine levels hell.

 

That's when it hit me.  A diet.  That's what I am on.  Despite knowing that diets don't work, I'm on a severely restricted diet that leaves me feeling deprived and out of sorts.

When I woke up today it dawned on me.  I was hungry.  I put two and two together and finally realized where my sleeping problems began.  My lack of sleep has plagued me since I started this 1400 calorie diet, which I only started so I wouldn't feel so bad about not exercising. 

Instead I'm losing sleep, which doesn't help weight loss at all (and in fact hinders it).  I'm gaining inches, I'm gaining weight.  The home scale showed me losing down from 285.5 to 283 initially, then yesterday it was back up to 288.

Plainly speaking, this ain't working.

 

What will work is to diet less and exercise more.  My body is reacting badly because I'm starving it.  It needs a certain amount of calories per day, and I'm not doing it any favors by denying it the fuel it needs.

Starving myself to see results doesn't make me too much different than thoseyoung girls on the pro anorexia board on myspace.  They are so excited to meet their goals of 400 calories today and revel in the lightheaded empty feeling I fought my way through yesterday to get things done.  I literally felt like I was fighting my way through a cloud.

 

Dieting doesn't work.  I know that.  I keep focusing on the food when really I need to get my act together with exercise.  I dealt with my emotional issues last year, I dealt with learning how to eat better and make smarter food choices.  What's left is the exercise.

I need to deal with it.  Ever since last year around this time I've struggled with it.  Last year I lost a bulk of weight (from 330 to 300) within about three months by exercising every day.  I walked without fail, I rode the exercise bike even when it wasn't in my house and I was on that Pilates ball every other day - no excuses.

From November to January I lost about as much weight as the entire year since then.  And I have no one to blame but myself.  I got lazy.  Plain and simple. 

 

I can meet my weight loss goals if I just get over myself already and get back in the swing of things.  This isn't about being thin, it's about being healthy.  And the way I've been doing things isn't healthy.  I bet when I weigh in on the Tanida we'll see that I've lost muscle mass by this little starvation routine I've put myself through.

Right now as I'm typing I feel sick to my stomach and shaking like a leaf because I am not nourishing myself.  I'm starving myself for a weigh in, and what's happening is I'm wrecking it by being stupid.

And I'm certainly not doing my body any favors. 

 

It's time to stop talking about things and just getting them done.  There is no try.  There is do or do not.

I haven't being doing it.  I don't know why.  Well that's not entirely true.  I have an idea why.

I'm fighting depression.  December-January is always really tough on me mentally.  I really get a bad case of Stick-My-Head-in-the-Sand-itus.  I just want to find a nice secluded hole to hide in where I can lick my wounds and feel really sorry for myself.

And it's comeplete bullsh*t.  Excuse the language but that's just what it is.  I need to get over myself and realize no one in the world gets a free ride.  We all have to deal with our demons.  I should count my blessings rather than focus on the negative.

There are so many people out there who have major problems - like those people in Asia who just endured unspeakable horror with the Tsunami.  I can't keep going on like the Universe owes me something because I've lost those that I have loved.  I'm not honoring anyone by doing that - and I'm making myself into something I cannot stand.  A victim.

 

My strength is this:  Whatever doesn't work, I can and do change.  This ain't workin, so it's time to start changin. 

My new mantra is to diet less and exercise more.  I'm going back up to 1800-2000 calories and there will be no more excuses with the exercise.  Every time that inner con woman starts to tick off the reasons why I can't exercise I'm going to take control.  I know I'm capable of these things.  I just need to put what I know into what I do.

I know I've become a bit of the boy who called wolf.  I keep saying I'll do all these things and then I blow it all off.  That's not the woman of integrity I know I can be.  So no more promises.  No more projections.  I'll post at night with what I've done, and let that speak for itself.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  Like I said I'm hanging on by my fingernails, but I'm not going to stop now.  I'll do what I know needs to be done.

There's no hiding from it anymore.

An uphill struggle...

For some reason I cannot get enough rest.  It's making me feel really crappy.  I didn't stay on program Sunday because of it, there's just no way to add Blast Off week in the midst of this. 

I did, however, stay on program yesterday.  I went for my walk, I ate the appropriate calories, etc.  I skipped the Pilates because we had company early in the day and I crashed and burned late in the day, so I'll have to make that up on Saturday or Sunday. 

Today I wake up again after only 6 hours of sleep with serious stomach upset.  It's going to be an interesting day.  I plan to go to the gym, but I'm not making any promises.  Hopefully I'll feel better in a few hours.  At the moment, I seriously need to be near a bathroom.

I don't know what is up, this is very frustrating.  I don't think I'm losing sleep because I'm sick, but I definitely know I'm sick because I can't get proper sleep.  Hopefully things will mellow out soon.

I'm still hanging on by my fingernails.  I will meet the 1000 calories burned goal today.  I'm going to be nice to me and keep things that simple.

 

New Year, Old Frustration

I'm still not sleeping in a normal sleep pattern and it's driving me CRAZY.  I went to bed late Friday night to sleep in late Saturday morning and was up after about 3 hours.  I've been getting headaches like you wouldn't believe.  It sucks.  Hopefully when the kids get back in school I can get on some kind of schedule.  This is really getting old.

 

Here's the link to Hal's post as promised. 

Hal's Lair :: View topic - Happy New Year Everyone!

I trust you will find it as motivating as I did.  It's not about losing weight, it's about making healthier choices - being the best "us" we can be.  Losing weight just happens to be a really nice byproduct of that.

 

Speaking of weight loss, I'm seeing stuff I don't like over on myspace.  Specifically, young girls pursuing anorexia or bullemia in order to strive for a skinny body.  Not a thin body, not a slender body.  Not a fit, healthy or normal body.  But a skinny body.  There are groups devoted to starvation challenges and they give each other support to do this really horrible thing to themselves.  It's disturbing.  There are also groups devoted to self mutilation and things of that nature. 

These are our kids, man.  The age of these groups tend to run in the mid to late teens.  It's very disconcerting.  Worse, I don't know what to do or say to help them.  Because they don't want my help, they want to surround themselves with people who will help them literally kill themselves. 

It's just sad. 

And it's made me realize that losing weight is not about numbers.  I used to live and die by that scale so much that I self destructed in the other direction.  As much as I would like to think I've grown, it's all about body image replacing self image.  Instead of finding value in myself for who I am and what I've done, all I can see is that I'm still fat (let's be honest here, obese) and those numbers aren't moving.  It invalidates everything else.

And that's dumb.  It's stupid.  I don't need to lose weight to be a valuable person, I am a valuable person.  It's people like me buying into society's need for physical perfection that paves the way for young girls like this to kill themselves to attain some measure of perfection no one can ever reach. 

 

I'm not going to do that anymore.  Like Hal says, it's about the bigger picture.  It's about doing things so that I can be healthier, not just thinner.  Smaller sizes are nice, but what's really nice is being strong and healthy and knowing I'm not killing myself slowly with food. 

So in keeping with this, here are my "health" goals.  I'll still do day to day goals, but here's what I commit to for the month of January.

Walk ten miles a week
Pilates three times a week
Gym at least two times a week

Today is an exercise free day, so I'll concentrate on my nutritional goals.  It's blast off week, so I get:

3 starches
2 fruits
4 proteins
2 fats
4 veggies
2 dairy
1 extra

This day is going to be tough.....

A New Year, a New Beginning

First of all happy new year to everyone.  As the clock ticked over tonight to 2005 we all got a brand new opportunity to do things differently, to make things better.  To be the best we can be.

 

Which, ironically, was Hal's message for today:  I'll link it tomorrow, because I really think it's profound.  It was a challenge that opposed to the same ol same ol everyone always pledges (and subsequently forgets by about February 15) that we be the best we can be.  And I think that is what I really want to accomplish this year more than anything else.  It incorporates all the rest, just on one simple principle.

 

Here are the goals met for today:

Burn 1000 calories through diet or exercise
Take Winston for a walk at the park
Do Pilates today
Edit My Immortal

 

Yes, I did it all.  I'm really proud of that.  New Years I'm taking off but then we're back on program as of Sunday. 

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Years Eve. 

We hit the ground running now. 

And I know we can do it.  Yay us :)

 

Tip of the day: GET MORE BURN FROM YOUR WORKOUT, PART II

Tip #2: Get plenty of cardiovascular exercise. There's no getting around it -- the biggest burn comes from cardiovascular exercise, she tells WebMD. That means running, hiking, walking, cycling, taking aerobics classes, dancing, kickboxing, or using cardio machines at a gym, anything that gets your heart rate up.

Ideally, you should do this four to five times week for 30 to 40 minutes each time. "The whole idea here is just getting out there and burning as many calories as you can," says Heimburger. "What we say is, you should be exercising at a level where you can talk, but you can't sing."

 

Stats:

Calories: 1375
Fat: 38%
Sat. Fat: 10%
Fiber: 15g
Calcium: 580mg
Water: 72oz
Exercise: Walking/Pilates, burned 219

DAILY AFFIRMATION: A new beginning is a gift.  We honor it with making the most of it.