Three weeks in counting until my first weight watchers meeting, and I suppose it's a good sign that I am counting down. Truly, I am tired of my knees and back aching when I stand up. I am tired of my pants being tight. I am tired of sitting on the washer eating chocolate and pretending that no one sees me, when I know full well that the eyes of heaven are boring holes right through me and the washing machine. That's probably where all my missing socks go.
This morning, I weighed in at 184.5. I am thoroughly disgusted with myself and primed for action. I started on the old Weight Watchers program just to give me a sense of direction until I get back to a meeting. The "Law of One" isn't working for me. It's supposed to help me eat just a serving; however, in the past weeks, I think I've been interpreting it as "The Law of One MORE."
But this is only January, and confession is good for the soul. In the next few weeks, I want to identify some important changes and attitudes that I want to make a part of my journey. The first subject I would like to address is REST. We covet it, we neglect it, we squander it. However, rest is really very important to us. Rest keeps us motivated to do what needs to be done. Rest helps keep our moods positive. Rest regulates our body's clock and metabolism. Rest makes other people like us better.
My family can usually tell when I'm resting well when the sound of my REM cycle resonates down the hallway. That is to say, I snore like the 1500 SLT Hemi on a Dodge Ram.
If you need a witness to this beyond our four walls, just ask my grandmother, who got stranded with me and my snores a year and a half ago at my brother's wedding.
The happy occasion took place in Florida. I was almost eight months pregnant with my third child, but my pregnancy had been healthy, so I decided to make the trip from South Carolina with my grandma and my folks. Dad was the best man, and he planned to spend most of the time with my brothers; so we girls were looking forward to some great times in our shared hotel suite. There was a big bed in the bedroom and a fold-out in the front room. Plenty of room for the three of us. But what we hadn't taken into account was the snoring.
If it had only been me, we might have worked it out, but alas 2/3rds of the vacationers were proficient nighttime noisemakers. My mom hasn't always snored. It just kind of started in the last few years, but she has honed the unconscious art to perfection. Hence the Hemi and the chainsaw joined forces, and it's a wonder the police didn't show up and accuse us of disturbing the peace. We certainly did disturb poor Grandma though, who spent the night playing musical beds, and trying to figure out which one of us might be most tolerable to sleep in the same room with. She required a double dose of coffee the next morning.
The next night, she started out in the king sized bed with me. Apparently, I was exhausted and moved quickly into the land of nod, sucking the walls in with me. Mom had driven dad to my brother's hotel, so grandma moved to the fold-out in the living room. This still wasn't far enough away, and she knew my mom's return was inevitable, so she went to plan C. She made herself a little bed on the balcony. It was nice outside and she fell asleep quickly.
My mom came back and got herself ready for bed. She assumed grandma was in bed with me, so she went through her nightly ritual of pills and door-locking, and she went to bed. About three in the morning, grandma woke up and had to go potty. That's when she discovered she was locked on the balcony. Mom and I were both snoring so loudly, it took us awhile to hear her banging on the balcony door. Groggy and confused, we both started looking for grandma and looking through the peephole on the front door. That's when we realized all at once, "oh my gosh! Grandma's locked on the porch."
As you can imagine, we haven't lived it down yet, and Grandma was very happy to get home and sleep in the peace and quiet. I don't know how my husband sleeps, but he does. I've heard it said that sleep deprivation and stress can make snoring worse, as can sleep apnea. If you think you've got sleep apnea, you should see a doctor, but if you're just not getting enough sleep (most of us), you can work toward a solution. That's one of my commitments in the next few weeks. I need to get at least 8 hours of sleep. That means getting in bed at 11 and getting up at 7 for me.
Life wants to burn the candle at both ends, it true, but if we're honest, we make decisions that eat into our sleep time. We stay on the computer too late. We watch an extra hour of TV, when we know we aught to get to bed. If you're a mom, bad kid karma often eats into your sleep time. Somebody is sick and wakes you up in the middle of the night. Somebody wakes up at 5 a.m. In that case, quit giving yourself the guilt trip about the mid-day power nap. Let your body make up what it lost. Rest does not translate "SLOTH"; it translates to a healthier you.
Commitment #1 for this week: I'm going to get my sleep. I'm not going to be a mombie zombie. I'm going to raise the roof with a good old fashioned snore-down!
Monday, January 14, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Momma-matada
So here I am, and the Nyquil is about to do its worst, so if this blog spirals into oblivion, you will know why. I intended to start some serious exercising this week; however, the annual winter cold dictated otherwise. I managed to make it through teaching Sunday school this Sunday, but when I woke up from my Sabbath rest, alas, my voice was entirely gone. Since then, its been a viscous cycle of Nyquil, Dayquil, Mucinex, Psuedefedrine, and coffee. The coffee happens everyday regardless, but I digress.
I got on the scale this morning, and though I have not lost any weight, I feel like some healthy brain-changes are setting in, and I have been making SOME better choices--not as many as I need to--but SOME. Thus far, I realize my entire approach has been rather laissez-faire. There really has been no plan, and I suppose without knowing it, I've been humming "Hakuna Matata" through my half-hearted efforts.
How does this happy jingle from Disney's "The Lion King" play into the week, you wonder? Well, as luck would have it, I came down with the crud less than 24 hours before our happy home-schoolers were to resume their post-holiday lessons. I'm a stickler about lesson days (especially after nearly a month off for Christmas), so frog-princess voice and all, we were going to start back to school. By this morning, the cycle of medication left me with a nasty Nyquil hangover, and I made the foggy decision to do lessons in the afternoon. Therefore, I gave into the short people's pleas to watch "The Lion King" on Disney channel.
My decision bought me two hours of quiet and an entire day of laughter. Everyone sang "Hakuna Matata" for the rest of the day. Wikipedia says that this Swahili phrase translates, "No worries," which is great information, since I'm not sure how my kids' versions translate. My son's version is rated X. He hopped around happily chanting, "Hakuna-mamas-tatas!" all afternoon. Of course, he thought he had it absolutely right. His father was under the table, (laughing) and I told him he was no help at all.
My daughter's version was a bit less scandalous. She just sang, "Mama-matada!" while setting the table and not worrying a bit about where any of the silverware was actually supposed to go. I think she has pointed out my recent mantra, "Mama-matada!" No worries about this diet and exercise and weight-loss thing. It will all come together. You lost it before; you'll lose it again. All very glib for a person who knows very well that she tried 15 years to lose her weight before she finally lost it."
So a plan is in order. There is now far too much Nyquil in my system for the presentation of anything meticulous, but I'm giving you all, my brave readers, the bare bones. Next week, from the 12th to the 18th, I will be walking for 30 minutes every weekday morning and going to the gym at least three times. I will continue attempting to obey the "law of one." From the 19th to the 25th, I will identify at least five lifestyle or thought changes that need to be concrete in the next year's journey. From the 25th to the 1st, I will apply those changes. On February 2nd, I will get me to a weight watchers meeting.
Now Mama-matada is going to bed. Hopefully, a little bit of worry will inspire a year full of actions that result in a smaller, healthier me. In any case, I hope that if some old monkey walks to the end of a stone runway at the end of 2013 and heaves me over his head, the poor chimp won't get a hernia.
I got on the scale this morning, and though I have not lost any weight, I feel like some healthy brain-changes are setting in, and I have been making SOME better choices--not as many as I need to--but SOME. Thus far, I realize my entire approach has been rather laissez-faire. There really has been no plan, and I suppose without knowing it, I've been humming "Hakuna Matata" through my half-hearted efforts.
How does this happy jingle from Disney's "The Lion King" play into the week, you wonder? Well, as luck would have it, I came down with the crud less than 24 hours before our happy home-schoolers were to resume their post-holiday lessons. I'm a stickler about lesson days (especially after nearly a month off for Christmas), so frog-princess voice and all, we were going to start back to school. By this morning, the cycle of medication left me with a nasty Nyquil hangover, and I made the foggy decision to do lessons in the afternoon. Therefore, I gave into the short people's pleas to watch "The Lion King" on Disney channel.
My decision bought me two hours of quiet and an entire day of laughter. Everyone sang "Hakuna Matata" for the rest of the day. Wikipedia says that this Swahili phrase translates, "No worries," which is great information, since I'm not sure how my kids' versions translate. My son's version is rated X. He hopped around happily chanting, "Hakuna-mamas-tatas!" all afternoon. Of course, he thought he had it absolutely right. His father was under the table, (laughing) and I told him he was no help at all.
My daughter's version was a bit less scandalous. She just sang, "Mama-matada!" while setting the table and not worrying a bit about where any of the silverware was actually supposed to go. I think she has pointed out my recent mantra, "Mama-matada!" No worries about this diet and exercise and weight-loss thing. It will all come together. You lost it before; you'll lose it again. All very glib for a person who knows very well that she tried 15 years to lose her weight before she finally lost it."
So a plan is in order. There is now far too much Nyquil in my system for the presentation of anything meticulous, but I'm giving you all, my brave readers, the bare bones. Next week, from the 12th to the 18th, I will be walking for 30 minutes every weekday morning and going to the gym at least three times. I will continue attempting to obey the "law of one." From the 19th to the 25th, I will identify at least five lifestyle or thought changes that need to be concrete in the next year's journey. From the 25th to the 1st, I will apply those changes. On February 2nd, I will get me to a weight watchers meeting.
Now Mama-matada is going to bed. Hopefully, a little bit of worry will inspire a year full of actions that result in a smaller, healthier me. In any case, I hope that if some old monkey walks to the end of a stone runway at the end of 2013 and heaves me over his head, the poor chimp won't get a hernia.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Being Baked Alaska
Just leave it to dieters to blog using food metaphors, but let's face it, most of us, when we start out on a diet (lifestyle change, walk of doom, valley of the shadow of death--whatever you choose to call your current calorie counting endeavor) we find ourselves constantly thinking about food.
Two days ago, I didn't even know what Baked Alaska was. For Christmas, my husband and I got the family this calendar that has assigns a funky holiday for everyday of the year. January 3rd was the Anniversary of Alaska's statehood, and as an activity, the calendar suggested that the family enjoy some "Baked Alaska." Of course, "what's Baked Alaska?" the family wanted to know, so off I rocketed to search my cook book index for some explanation.
It had to be a dessert, didn't it? Just what I need around the house: dessert. "So, don't make the dessert," you say. BUT I HAVE TO! "Why?" you ask. Because the calendar said so. It's like an assignment. I spent money on the calendar. I got everyone all excited about the calendar. Now I must obey the calendar, right? I simply have to make this mystery dessert. It is my destiny. Bake it and they will come. Bake long and prosper. At times, I am such a sad, sad human being.
So what is Baked Alaska? As it turns out, Baked Alaska is sponge cake, covered in ice cream, covered in meringue, and then baked at high heat for about 6 minutes until the meringue browns. The closest thing I could find to sponge cake at Walmart was sugar free Angel Food cake, so that's what got slathered in all the other ingredients. The fireworks were cancelled.
My son didn't eat enough of his dinner to be included in the experiment. My daughter ate a couple of bites and pushed it away; she thought separating the yolks from the egg whites to make the meringue was much more exciting than eating the actual dessert. The best descriptive term that my husband and I could assign to the sugary concoction was "interesting," so if stickiness is any indicator of approval, the baby was the most enthusiastic fan of the dessert.
So here I am, meditating on the deeper meaning of my dessert--pensively considering the tragedy of wasted calories. Alas poor waistline, I knew thee well! Parting from the melodrama, I realize that most of us who are on the verge of a lifestyle change are one big Baked Alaska.
First ingredient: sugar free angel food cake. We are mostly made up of these lightly considered, empty calories. We are not fat--we're fluffy. "And besides," we protest, "we're sugar free!" The angel food cake is all the lies we tell ourselves in order to back away from true commitments. "Well I use fat free salad dressing, and whole wheat pasta, and 1% milk, and 93/7 hamburger. And I only had one piece of cake."
Insert your own fallacies, but inside the fluff, there are usually hidden contingencies--such as the 1/4 cup of fat free dressing that drowned your salad, or the mega plateful of whole wheat spaghetti that left you in a carb coma, or the cocoa puffs that floated in your 1% milk. Nobody knows it but you, but you ate the whole pound of 93/7 and you scoped the cake out and created a strategy to get the biggest piece of cake with the most frosting without anyone noticing.
Second ingredient: Ice cream. So maybe you think the angel food cake bit was a little harsh. Am I pointing fingers? Absolutely not. I'm being brave enough to be honest. I didn't write anything up there that I haven't done myself, and I'm telling you. Most of us are scared to death for people to really know how we think about ourselves and about the food we feed--not to our bodies--but to our minds and emotions. The ice cream is fear--cold, creamy, brain-freezing fear. I've never met a dieter who wasn't just a little bit afraid of failing. Most are more than a little afraid; most are almost frozen into solid inaction.
Third ingredient: meringue. Meringue is made by separating egg whites from egg yolks, and beating just the egg whites with sugar. You beat them and beat them and beat them until they become something else entirely--thick, sweet, meringue. Our meringue happens, when we choose to let the little white lies we've been telling ourselves stick around. Then we mix them with a nice sugar coating, so we don't take them seriously. Then we go to the gym and beat ourselves up a couple times and week and use that as justification for our next overdone meal.
And there you have it. Next thing you know, it's swimsuit season, and you haven't changed a bit. You and your angel food abs, your ice cream thighs, and your meringues mamacitas are out on the beach in the hot sunshine. One more year as Baked Alaska. Not this year ladies. This is the year of the Tiramisu. This is the year of the Lady Fingers. We're going to be honest with ourselves, we're going to be brave, and we're going to make our exercise count for something. When swimsuit season comes, we're gonna be ready, and we're gonna be oh, so much more than "interesting"!
Two days ago, I didn't even know what Baked Alaska was. For Christmas, my husband and I got the family this calendar that has assigns a funky holiday for everyday of the year. January 3rd was the Anniversary of Alaska's statehood, and as an activity, the calendar suggested that the family enjoy some "Baked Alaska." Of course, "what's Baked Alaska?" the family wanted to know, so off I rocketed to search my cook book index for some explanation.
It had to be a dessert, didn't it? Just what I need around the house: dessert. "So, don't make the dessert," you say. BUT I HAVE TO! "Why?" you ask. Because the calendar said so. It's like an assignment. I spent money on the calendar. I got everyone all excited about the calendar. Now I must obey the calendar, right? I simply have to make this mystery dessert. It is my destiny. Bake it and they will come. Bake long and prosper. At times, I am such a sad, sad human being.
So what is Baked Alaska? As it turns out, Baked Alaska is sponge cake, covered in ice cream, covered in meringue, and then baked at high heat for about 6 minutes until the meringue browns. The closest thing I could find to sponge cake at Walmart was sugar free Angel Food cake, so that's what got slathered in all the other ingredients. The fireworks were cancelled.
My son didn't eat enough of his dinner to be included in the experiment. My daughter ate a couple of bites and pushed it away; she thought separating the yolks from the egg whites to make the meringue was much more exciting than eating the actual dessert. The best descriptive term that my husband and I could assign to the sugary concoction was "interesting," so if stickiness is any indicator of approval, the baby was the most enthusiastic fan of the dessert.
So here I am, meditating on the deeper meaning of my dessert--pensively considering the tragedy of wasted calories. Alas poor waistline, I knew thee well! Parting from the melodrama, I realize that most of us who are on the verge of a lifestyle change are one big Baked Alaska.
First ingredient: sugar free angel food cake. We are mostly made up of these lightly considered, empty calories. We are not fat--we're fluffy. "And besides," we protest, "we're sugar free!" The angel food cake is all the lies we tell ourselves in order to back away from true commitments. "Well I use fat free salad dressing, and whole wheat pasta, and 1% milk, and 93/7 hamburger. And I only had one piece of cake."
Insert your own fallacies, but inside the fluff, there are usually hidden contingencies--such as the 1/4 cup of fat free dressing that drowned your salad, or the mega plateful of whole wheat spaghetti that left you in a carb coma, or the cocoa puffs that floated in your 1% milk. Nobody knows it but you, but you ate the whole pound of 93/7 and you scoped the cake out and created a strategy to get the biggest piece of cake with the most frosting without anyone noticing.
Second ingredient: Ice cream. So maybe you think the angel food cake bit was a little harsh. Am I pointing fingers? Absolutely not. I'm being brave enough to be honest. I didn't write anything up there that I haven't done myself, and I'm telling you. Most of us are scared to death for people to really know how we think about ourselves and about the food we feed--not to our bodies--but to our minds and emotions. The ice cream is fear--cold, creamy, brain-freezing fear. I've never met a dieter who wasn't just a little bit afraid of failing. Most are more than a little afraid; most are almost frozen into solid inaction.
Third ingredient: meringue. Meringue is made by separating egg whites from egg yolks, and beating just the egg whites with sugar. You beat them and beat them and beat them until they become something else entirely--thick, sweet, meringue. Our meringue happens, when we choose to let the little white lies we've been telling ourselves stick around. Then we mix them with a nice sugar coating, so we don't take them seriously. Then we go to the gym and beat ourselves up a couple times and week and use that as justification for our next overdone meal.
And there you have it. Next thing you know, it's swimsuit season, and you haven't changed a bit. You and your angel food abs, your ice cream thighs, and your meringues mamacitas are out on the beach in the hot sunshine. One more year as Baked Alaska. Not this year ladies. This is the year of the Tiramisu. This is the year of the Lady Fingers. We're going to be honest with ourselves, we're going to be brave, and we're going to make our exercise count for something. When swimsuit season comes, we're gonna be ready, and we're gonna be oh, so much more than "interesting"!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Casualty of Candy
And January 1st started out so promising! And then. Well, you knew there had to be a "and then" or you wouldn't be reading would you? The day started as follows: get up, stumble toward coffee pot, pop in TWO pieces of toast. When my coffee cup and I returned to the toaster 30 minutes later to retrieve said hard-as-a-rock toast, I realized my first error.
You see, I've had a while to think about changes that need to be happening--but there are so many! Being my oger-achieving, obsessive, compulsive, slightly manic self; I cleansed my mind with a list. Fortunately, as I am lightly medicated for the afformentioned issues, I knew better than to attempt them all on January 1st. Baby steps, I tell myself.
Consequently, the only change I had planned for the first of the year, was being more conscious of my portions. The "law of one" as I call it, is a basic guideline to limit Hiroshimom to a proper serving. You see, food is my drug of choice. Hi. My name's Sarah, and I love to eat. I have heard many other "substances" demonized in my lifetime, but food was not one of them. I grew up Baptist after all, and the potluck was practically the third ordinance.
But my eating problem is nobody's fault but my mine. I'll own it--just like I'll own to what happened on January 1st, 2013. It wasn't even 8:00, and I'd already made a sub-conscious violation of "the law." I made a choice--a good choice--and I only ate one piece of the toast with some peanut butter and a glass of milk. Mid-morning, I had a glass of water instead of more coffee and a cookie. For lunch, I had an open-faced sandwich instead of my usual dagwood. I resisted the left over stocking candy that seemed to be strewn everywhere.
When the mid-afternoon munchies hit, I started a deep-clean of the kitchen to avoid idle eating. Unfortunately, my medication is not especially designed to keep me from doing certain things I do--like cleaning clockwise. This particular cleaning style led me to clean the refrigerator first--from top to bottom. On top of the refrigerator, I keep the candy--from Halloween, from Easter, from Valentines, from Sunday School parties, and from Christmas. Every time I opened the freezer, it rained candy. Something had to be done.
And it was thus I found myself seated on the living room floor with all of 2012's leftover, sugar-laden treasure. I put the chocolate in one ziplock, the lollipops in another, followed by the tootsie rolls, the Startbursts, the taffy, and the hard candy. They were all so appetizing--so organized. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by wrappers. I wish I could say that I was a black-out eater, but with crystal clarity, I remember the Heath Bar, and the Twix, and the Milky Way, and the Hershey Kiss, and the Gummy eyeball.
So, on the first day of the year, I was a casualty of candy. Unlike failures of the past however, I did not let one (or seven or eight, who's counting wrappers?) ruin my entire day. We ate dinner out, and I cut my meal in half and brought part of it home. I rationed out my evening snack.
2013 will be a series of battles that culminates in a war of the will. Yesterday, I may have been a casualty of candy, but today, the candy is safely secluded in a box atop the refrigerator that I CANNOT see through. Yesterday, it was Candy-1, Sarah-0. Today I intend to even the score.
You see, I've had a while to think about changes that need to be happening--but there are so many! Being my oger-achieving, obsessive, compulsive, slightly manic self; I cleansed my mind with a list. Fortunately, as I am lightly medicated for the afformentioned issues, I knew better than to attempt them all on January 1st. Baby steps, I tell myself.
Consequently, the only change I had planned for the first of the year, was being more conscious of my portions. The "law of one" as I call it, is a basic guideline to limit Hiroshimom to a proper serving. You see, food is my drug of choice. Hi. My name's Sarah, and I love to eat. I have heard many other "substances" demonized in my lifetime, but food was not one of them. I grew up Baptist after all, and the potluck was practically the third ordinance.
But my eating problem is nobody's fault but my mine. I'll own it--just like I'll own to what happened on January 1st, 2013. It wasn't even 8:00, and I'd already made a sub-conscious violation of "the law." I made a choice--a good choice--and I only ate one piece of the toast with some peanut butter and a glass of milk. Mid-morning, I had a glass of water instead of more coffee and a cookie. For lunch, I had an open-faced sandwich instead of my usual dagwood. I resisted the left over stocking candy that seemed to be strewn everywhere.
When the mid-afternoon munchies hit, I started a deep-clean of the kitchen to avoid idle eating. Unfortunately, my medication is not especially designed to keep me from doing certain things I do--like cleaning clockwise. This particular cleaning style led me to clean the refrigerator first--from top to bottom. On top of the refrigerator, I keep the candy--from Halloween, from Easter, from Valentines, from Sunday School parties, and from Christmas. Every time I opened the freezer, it rained candy. Something had to be done.
And it was thus I found myself seated on the living room floor with all of 2012's leftover, sugar-laden treasure. I put the chocolate in one ziplock, the lollipops in another, followed by the tootsie rolls, the Startbursts, the taffy, and the hard candy. They were all so appetizing--so organized. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by wrappers. I wish I could say that I was a black-out eater, but with crystal clarity, I remember the Heath Bar, and the Twix, and the Milky Way, and the Hershey Kiss, and the Gummy eyeball.
So, on the first day of the year, I was a casualty of candy. Unlike failures of the past however, I did not let one (or seven or eight, who's counting wrappers?) ruin my entire day. We ate dinner out, and I cut my meal in half and brought part of it home. I rationed out my evening snack.
2013 will be a series of battles that culminates in a war of the will. Yesterday, I may have been a casualty of candy, but today, the candy is safely secluded in a box atop the refrigerator that I CANNOT see through. Yesterday, it was Candy-1, Sarah-0. Today I intend to even the score.
Hiroshimom
I call 2010 the year I found my waist, but nearly lost my mind. Truly, it was both the best year and the worst year of my life all rolled into one. I started out at 210 pounds, making a last ditch effort to lose the weight I'd been trying to get rid of my entire life. When I succeeded in "the journey to my skinny jeans" I was absolutely shocked.
What floored me even more was that one could have a nervous breakdown in one's skinny jeans. Apparently, being thin did not make life that much easier. Imagine the let down. I had been somewhat overweight for most of my life, and all that time, I attributed many of my fears in life to the size of my skirt--that is--what people thought of me. Without really knowing it, I worried about it all the time.
In 2010, I set out to change my outside in order to fix my insides. In 2010, I learned the inside has to be well in order for the outside to be remade. True, I lost 60 pounds, but I also lost fears, doubt, anger, bitterness, and to a degree, certain inhibitions. The scale that monitored my emotional and spiritual well being said I gained forgiveness, courage, boldness, purpose, and peace.
Alas, one must not rest on one's laurels. It is 2013, and this morning I weighed in at 182 pounds. I really am not tragically unhappy with that number. After all, let's be reasonable! I had a baby, moved to another state and broke my foot, so a certain level of pudginess is to be expected, right? Wait, don't answer that . . .
It's gone beyond pudginess I suppose. Teenagers nowadays call it "mushroom-top." This phenomenon occurrs when girls of whatever size purposely buy low rider jeans that are, at the very least two sizes too small for them. Then, whatever flesh pours over the top of the jeans like so much lava from a volcano, is called their "mushroom top."
The reslutls of these clothing exposions vary in seriousness and destructive power. While some incidents result in tongue clucking from seniors and sentiments such as--"Poor dear! Her mother must be blind!"--other incidents are far more severe,. These upscale clothing crisis usually do involve more full figured consumers, and result in shrieks of horror, covering of the eyes, and permanent mental scaring. Combine a mushroom top with a thong sighting at the a mall, and an entire city population may need therapy for years!
And now, oh friends, it has happened to me! From the holiday feasting, Hiroshimom has emerged! January 1st, I went to put on my pants, and my ankle fat rolled into my knee fat, and my knee fat rolled into my thigh fat, and my thigh fat rolled into my waist fat, until it all rolled over at once. What a sight I must have been with my ankles and knees all hanging around my pockets!
If 2010 was the year I found my waist and lost my mind, than what follows must surely be known and Sarah's-Waist-Lost and Sarah's-Sanity-Regained. It will be another year of great changes, but this time I'll start on the inside and work my way out!
What floored me even more was that one could have a nervous breakdown in one's skinny jeans. Apparently, being thin did not make life that much easier. Imagine the let down. I had been somewhat overweight for most of my life, and all that time, I attributed many of my fears in life to the size of my skirt--that is--what people thought of me. Without really knowing it, I worried about it all the time.
In 2010, I set out to change my outside in order to fix my insides. In 2010, I learned the inside has to be well in order for the outside to be remade. True, I lost 60 pounds, but I also lost fears, doubt, anger, bitterness, and to a degree, certain inhibitions. The scale that monitored my emotional and spiritual well being said I gained forgiveness, courage, boldness, purpose, and peace.
Alas, one must not rest on one's laurels. It is 2013, and this morning I weighed in at 182 pounds. I really am not tragically unhappy with that number. After all, let's be reasonable! I had a baby, moved to another state and broke my foot, so a certain level of pudginess is to be expected, right? Wait, don't answer that . . .
It's gone beyond pudginess I suppose. Teenagers nowadays call it "mushroom-top." This phenomenon occurrs when girls of whatever size purposely buy low rider jeans that are, at the very least two sizes too small for them. Then, whatever flesh pours over the top of the jeans like so much lava from a volcano, is called their "mushroom top."
The reslutls of these clothing exposions vary in seriousness and destructive power. While some incidents result in tongue clucking from seniors and sentiments such as--"Poor dear! Her mother must be blind!"--other incidents are far more severe,. These upscale clothing crisis usually do involve more full figured consumers, and result in shrieks of horror, covering of the eyes, and permanent mental scaring. Combine a mushroom top with a thong sighting at the a mall, and an entire city population may need therapy for years!
And now, oh friends, it has happened to me! From the holiday feasting, Hiroshimom has emerged! January 1st, I went to put on my pants, and my ankle fat rolled into my knee fat, and my knee fat rolled into my thigh fat, and my thigh fat rolled into my waist fat, until it all rolled over at once. What a sight I must have been with my ankles and knees all hanging around my pockets!
If 2010 was the year I found my waist and lost my mind, than what follows must surely be known and Sarah's-Waist-Lost and Sarah's-Sanity-Regained. It will be another year of great changes, but this time I'll start on the inside and work my way out!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
The Wiggly, Jiggly Facts
This week was all about the wiggly, jiggly facts. If I'm to take the pants half empty perspective on things, I'm not doing half bad. Two years ago I was just finishing my first week of Weight Watchers, and having weighed in at 206 pounds, I was looking at a downward journey of 60 pounds. I really had so little faith that I would actually succeed. After all, the last fifteen years had been full of countless failed attempts, and my relationship with exercise could be described as volatile, at best. Two years ago, my blog titled "Jitsu of the Plus-Sized Momma" crowed over the fact that I had walked SIX WHOLE MILES over the course of the week, and very sheepishly shared the future aspiration of possibly (be still my heart!) RUNNING!
Almost two years later, I have experienced so much. Sixty pounds lost. From a size 20 to an 8. From a breathless walker to a half-marathoner and Zumba addict. In a nutshell, for once, I SUCCEEDED. And I am still succeeding. Not because I've arrived, because I've stopped giving in to the occasional temptation, because I've stopped loving dessert, because I don't still really deep-down want the biggest piece of meat on the platter, or because my food psychosis no longer requires a very long couch. I am still succeeding because I haven't given up on good health, and at least some of what I've learned seems to have stuck.
Last Tuesday, I drop-kicked the sugar habit, sucked in the gut, and got on the scale. When I found out I was expecting my most recent arrival, I was floating between 146 and 148 pounds. At my last doctor's visit, which was four days before Noah was born, I weighed 199 pounds. My goal had been a 35 pound weight gain, so obviously I had overstepped the mark a little bit. It probably had something to do with a low iron level and excessive cravings for cheeseburgers and braunsweiger in my first trimester. Yes, the braunsweiger probably had a lot to do with it.
Anyway, I forgave myself quickly, when one week after d-day, I had lost 17 pounds and found I could pack away my maternity clothes and slide back into a size large/14 wardrobe. Considering, I spent the six months after my last two pregnancies wearing maternity clothes because they were all that would fit, I was outrageously happy! In fact, I even lost another 5 pouns in the next week! I was feeling pretty cocky, but then Santa brought on the Christmas cookies. Ha, ha, ha. Or should I say ho, ho, ho. Regardless, the jolly man in red must not have left any coal in my shoes because when I got on the scale, I was still 22 pounds lighter than I had been before my little sack of joy shot down the chimney. After all I had eaten, it had to be a Christmas miracle.
So on with the wiggly, jiggly facts. Last week, I weighed in at 177 pounds. I stuck to my guns and stayed on target with points; I only ate three desserts all week long--a small slice of pie, a kiddie cone from McDonald's, and four tea sized cookies after Sunday lunch. I lost two pounds. Twenty-nine to go. Still to come: what it's like to actually be HEALTHY during a pregnancy, goals for the gym, stuff I'm still struggling with, new goals I'm setting for myself as a healthy momma, how all this has effected my kids, the little stuff that seems to be helping at the moment, and as you've all come to expect, a whole lot of laughs along the way!
Almost two years later, I have experienced so much. Sixty pounds lost. From a size 20 to an 8. From a breathless walker to a half-marathoner and Zumba addict. In a nutshell, for once, I SUCCEEDED. And I am still succeeding. Not because I've arrived, because I've stopped giving in to the occasional temptation, because I've stopped loving dessert, because I don't still really deep-down want the biggest piece of meat on the platter, or because my food psychosis no longer requires a very long couch. I am still succeeding because I haven't given up on good health, and at least some of what I've learned seems to have stuck.
Last Tuesday, I drop-kicked the sugar habit, sucked in the gut, and got on the scale. When I found out I was expecting my most recent arrival, I was floating between 146 and 148 pounds. At my last doctor's visit, which was four days before Noah was born, I weighed 199 pounds. My goal had been a 35 pound weight gain, so obviously I had overstepped the mark a little bit. It probably had something to do with a low iron level and excessive cravings for cheeseburgers and braunsweiger in my first trimester. Yes, the braunsweiger probably had a lot to do with it.
Anyway, I forgave myself quickly, when one week after d-day, I had lost 17 pounds and found I could pack away my maternity clothes and slide back into a size large/14 wardrobe. Considering, I spent the six months after my last two pregnancies wearing maternity clothes because they were all that would fit, I was outrageously happy! In fact, I even lost another 5 pouns in the next week! I was feeling pretty cocky, but then Santa brought on the Christmas cookies. Ha, ha, ha. Or should I say ho, ho, ho. Regardless, the jolly man in red must not have left any coal in my shoes because when I got on the scale, I was still 22 pounds lighter than I had been before my little sack of joy shot down the chimney. After all I had eaten, it had to be a Christmas miracle.
So on with the wiggly, jiggly facts. Last week, I weighed in at 177 pounds. I stuck to my guns and stayed on target with points; I only ate three desserts all week long--a small slice of pie, a kiddie cone from McDonald's, and four tea sized cookies after Sunday lunch. I lost two pounds. Twenty-nine to go. Still to come: what it's like to actually be HEALTHY during a pregnancy, goals for the gym, stuff I'm still struggling with, new goals I'm setting for myself as a healthy momma, how all this has effected my kids, the little stuff that seems to be helping at the moment, and as you've all come to expect, a whole lot of laughs along the way!
Monday, December 26, 2011
Cutting Myself Off
Tomorrow I am cutting myself off. The eating must stop. At least the kind of eating I've been doing. The holidays have been killers this year. I feel like I have been perpetually too full since I came home from the hospital with my newborn son on November 23rd, just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. I did fairly well controlling my intake for about a week, and then the fatigue from being up around the clock to nurse Noah blurred my senses, and I started to eat for all kinds of reasons that felt vaguely familiar. I had a sensation of dajavu as I ate because I was bored, because the TV was on, because I'd eaten a meal so fast I forgot to taste, because I was lonely, because the food looked good, because the food was there, and because no one was looking. Surely if no one was looking, it didn't count. Those are the kinds of mindsets that had me at 210 pounds in 2009, and desperate to lose weight. I've heard it said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, so here I am to learn!
Currently, I have no concrete plan, other than to get back on the weight watchers program that I came to know so well in 2010. That I have no plan yet is significant, since I am the kind of person who has a list for everything. So what's the problem? Well, YOU try having a new born who eats every two to three hours, a busy five year old boy and three year old girl, home schooling, keeping house, doing laundry, and having a house on the market--all at once--and see how effectively you construct a list. Heck. If you can do all that and manage not to lose your list paper by ten in the morning, I want to know your secret!
Today, my only goal was to open up my old blog, and be reminded of how it all started. What I saw there, was that I really didn't have a well thought out plan back in 2009 either. The blog was a way to clarify--to start on a journey that didn't have concrete direction. So that's the plan. I'm going to start reading the old blogs, make one change at a time, and slowly return to the lifestyle habits that transformed me from a 210 pound-sedentary-size 20, into a 146 pound-active-and-athletic size 8/10.
So what's change #1? I'm going on a goody-fast. Although I do also plan to get back on the scale and back on Weight Watchers tomorrow, I don't expect perfection out of myself this week. My schedule with a hungry newborn is very challenging, but I know that cutting all the sweets, cookies, and desserts out of my life for the next month will likely accomplish two things. 1) It will automatically diminish the amount of points I'm taking in and leave me more points for good filling foods. 2) I know for a fact I've developed some sugar addiction issues that are only going to go away if the sweets do, so
Adios chocolate, stocking stuffers, cookies, left over Halloween candy, stollen, pumpkin pie, coffee cake, ice cream, baklava, pecan pie, whipped cream, ginger snaps, brownies, syrup, cheesecake, doughnuts, danishes, fritters, hot cocoa, fudge . . .
You get the idea. Until I regain some self control, yep, I am cutting myself off.
Currently, I have no concrete plan, other than to get back on the weight watchers program that I came to know so well in 2010. That I have no plan yet is significant, since I am the kind of person who has a list for everything. So what's the problem? Well, YOU try having a new born who eats every two to three hours, a busy five year old boy and three year old girl, home schooling, keeping house, doing laundry, and having a house on the market--all at once--and see how effectively you construct a list. Heck. If you can do all that and manage not to lose your list paper by ten in the morning, I want to know your secret!
Today, my only goal was to open up my old blog, and be reminded of how it all started. What I saw there, was that I really didn't have a well thought out plan back in 2009 either. The blog was a way to clarify--to start on a journey that didn't have concrete direction. So that's the plan. I'm going to start reading the old blogs, make one change at a time, and slowly return to the lifestyle habits that transformed me from a 210 pound-sedentary-size 20, into a 146 pound-active-and-athletic size 8/10.
So what's change #1? I'm going on a goody-fast. Although I do also plan to get back on the scale and back on Weight Watchers tomorrow, I don't expect perfection out of myself this week. My schedule with a hungry newborn is very challenging, but I know that cutting all the sweets, cookies, and desserts out of my life for the next month will likely accomplish two things. 1) It will automatically diminish the amount of points I'm taking in and leave me more points for good filling foods. 2) I know for a fact I've developed some sugar addiction issues that are only going to go away if the sweets do, so
Adios chocolate, stocking stuffers, cookies, left over Halloween candy, stollen, pumpkin pie, coffee cake, ice cream, baklava, pecan pie, whipped cream, ginger snaps, brownies, syrup, cheesecake, doughnuts, danishes, fritters, hot cocoa, fudge . . .
You get the idea. Until I regain some self control, yep, I am cutting myself off.
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