The Big Five-Oh!

Today was a good day.

It was Weigh-In-Saturday at Weight Watchers this morning.
And it was totally awesome, because I have finally hit the 50 lb mark!  (Fifty-two to be exact.)

I am now at 240.2 pounds of Dorian lusciousness.
I am 23 lbs. lighter than when I graduated from college.
I am only 9 lbs. away from being the smallest I've ever been in my adult life.
I am 10 lbs. lighter than my driver license says that I am (and we all know THAT was a total lie for so many years).
I am merely 20 lbs. away from my weight at 16 years of age.

Let's face it.
I AM  a rock star.  Boo-yeah.

So I'm feeling good about me today.  I'm starting to feel good on the inside as well as the outside.  My knees don't hurt quite as much.  I'm having fewer headaches than I had in the past.  My back doesn't hurt quite as bad at the end of the day.  And my inner self-talk is much more positive than negative.  I'm starting to say things to myself like, "You can totally do this!"

OH!  And I have to tell you about this AMAZING accomplishment I had at the gym on Friday.
I took Lily with me, and while she was playing in the kids' club, I was working my ass tail off (quite literally) on this weird elliptical/treadmill/stair stepper hybrid.  It's called an "adaptive motion trainer."  I've included a link to a video on how it works, just in case you're itching to know what it does.  For the short version of what it does, let me tell you, It kicks butts and is taking names!

Okay, so I'm on the freaky, hybrid machine, which is actually a lot of fun because it has this neat little bounce to it, and it really doesn't put stress on my knees, which is what I like about the elliptical.  I like to imagine it's what it would feel like to exercise on the moon.  And as I'm watching an episode of Glee,  45 minutes pass by and I hardly notice.

The thing about the freaky, hybrid machine though, is that it REALLY works me out, and it's somewhat difficult to really cool down on it.  So, I decided to move over to the treadmill and walk slowly for a few minutes to my cool down groove on.  But, when I stepped on there, I couldn't help thinking, "Gee, it's been a long time since I've ran on the treadmill.  I wonder if I can still run for 30 seconds without stopping?"

So, I bumped up the speed till I was running, and 30 seconds went by....and then....ANOTHER 30 seconds went by.  And I didn't die!  Even after a whole sustained minute of running, I wasn't in pain, or so short of breath that I'd be in danger of passing out.  It was...well, it was ok.  And it was so ok, that I thought I'd go ahead and give it another try in a couple of minutes.  And so I did.

And did again.

And did again.

And then the last time, I wondered how long I could run without stopping, before my legs started really complaining.  Well, it turns out that I was able to make it to the 2-minute mark!  This was very exciting for me.  I haven't run in several months.  I wasn't sure I even could.  Two minutes may not seem like a very long time, but for someone who is carrying around 80 lbs. of extra fat on their body, running for any length of time is somewhat of a miracle.

But here's the REALLY miraculous part:
As we were leaving the gym, I asked Lily if she had fun.  She said she did, and before I could think to stop it, I said, "Me, too."


I don't think I've EVER felt like exercise was fun.  Unless you're a masochistic psycho who considers an hour of torture fun, which I'm not.

But Friday night, for the first time that I can ever recall happening, working out was actually fun.
Who knew THAT was possible?
Personally, I think that change in attitude is just as much of an accomplishment as losing 50 pounds.

Another Pound (or two) Bites the Dust!

Yes, yes, yes!!  For three weigh-ins in a row, I've been on the losing side.  And when you're trying to lose weight, being on the losing side is a good thing.  I've lost 8 lbs in 4 weeks (I skipped a weigh in because of that mean ol' Aunt Flo), and I'm super-duper happy with myself.

I am getting close to being in uncharted territory for me.  Uncharted territory is a weight that I have not been in during my adult life.  I'm within 15 pounds of being at my lowest weight (since I started paying attention to my weight when I graduated from college).  My lowest weight within my adult history is 232.  I remember the day that I reached that weight.  It was pre-Lily, while I was still living in Colorado Springs. After Weight Watchers I went to my friend Tracy's house for a Creative Memories scrapbook party.  I was so excited to be the lowest weight I'd ever been, and to be sporting the smallest size jeans I'd ever worn as an adult, size 18.

I'm not quite back into the size 18's yet.  I tried a pair of size 18 jeans this morning just to be sure.  I can get them on, and even buttoned, but they create quite the unattractive muffin top, and I'm not about to knowingly do that to myself.  Besides, just a few more weeks of continued dedication and I'll be able to wear them without the problem of looking like any sort of baked good.

This is really exciting for me.  I tried on those same pair of jeans this past winter, and I couldn't even get them over my big ol' booty, much less have any hope of getting them buttoned.  I love this kind of affirmation that I'm actually doing something right and making some progress.  When I tried on clothes a few weeks ago on a big ol' Back to School shopping spree, I was really surprised that I was buying pants that were 2 sizes smaller than I was wearing only a few months ago.  I honestly thought that clothes sizes were really getting larger, not that I was getting any smaller.  Being able to get those size 18's on today though, helped me to really see that progress is happening.

Yea for smaller clothes!!  Hopefully soon I won't have to shop in the chubby chicka stores anymore.  I will not be sad to say goodbye to the overpriced Lane Bryant, Catherine's, and CJ Banks.  I will, however, still continue to shop at Torrid, because they have extremely awesome clothes, even if they are a little pricy sometimes.  But I am INCREDIBLY excited by the prospect of someday, in the foreseeable future, being able to shop at a REGULAR sized clothing store.  Ahhh....wouldn't that be oh, so lovely!

Just When You Think I'm Gone...

Poof!  I'm back!!

Now, don't go and get all excited now and start breaking out the popcorn.  Who knows just how long this will last.  I just knew that I needed to get some things off my chest and into the vast wasteland of the internet.

So....there's some good news and then some bad news.
Let's start with the good news, shall we?

Over the course of the past 3 weeks I've managed to lose 6-ish pounds.  I'm sure this is most likely due to the overtaking physical demands of getting up off my lazy summer butt, putting my classroom back together and actually working again.  Luckily, my butt didn't have the opportunity to suffer from too much summeritis due to working for 5 weeks in the dark bowls of Hell summer school.  Then, I was so lucky to get incredibly sick for about 2 weeks, where I could barely eat, or even move other than to run to the restroom ever so quickly and delicately.  You know the diarrhea dance, don't you?  You can't break into an all-out run, because things can leak.  You have to do a quick little hopping movement, dancing on your toes, not unlike a ballet dancer en pointe suffering from acute dysentery.  What a beautiful moment I've just created for you in your head.  Aren't you lucky?  Luckier than I was for two weeks, I can tell you that.

The amazing thing about that experience was that I lost 15 pounds in two days.  That's right, two days!  And as soon as I started to feel better, and could actually eat again, I gained it all back in 5.  That was not to amazing, I guess.  But, it's okay.  I knew it wouldn't last.  It was just nice to see those numbers on the scale.  Numbers I hadn't seen in years.

So that gave me motivation, I guess, to actually get back on track.
And that brings me to my present loss.  Six pounds over the past few weeks has brought me down to losing 45.4 lbs. total so far.  Yea me!!  Getting awfully close to that 50 pound mark.

So that's the good news.

Here's the bad...

For the past 3 summers I've gone in for a yearly physical.  It took my brother passing away for me to start to do this, to be aware of what is going on with my body, and to try to take responsibility for keeping it healthy.

Well, this last time, some of my blood work came back funky.  Evidently some enzyme for some liver function is either too high, or too low, or something.  Whatever it is, it's not doing what it's supposed to do.  So, my doctor ordered a Hepatitis B test, as well as a sonogram of my liver.  Negative on the Hep B test.  Yea!  Not so great prognosis on the sonogram.

Evidently, the sonogram shows that my liver is fatty and enlarged.  Now my doc is sending me to a GI specialist to get more info.  I have yet to have that meeting, but from what I've learned from my research so far (thank you Internet, I love you!) is that if I start being more careful about the amount of fat that I eat, and lose weight gradually to a healthy weight, then my condition can be pretty much reversed.  If I don't make these attempts, then there is the possibility that I will contract cirrhosis of the liver, which can be fatal.

Bad, bad news.
And yet, there is a silver lining.

God knows that sometimes we need a 2x4 smack to the head before we'll move our stubborn selves to action.  I guess seeing the failing health of family members and the death of my brother due to obesity just wasn't enough to get me to do what I know needs to be done.  God had to scare me into action....and so far it's working.

I'm scared.  And I'm acting.  First week of school, and I've been going to the gym, and eating within my points.  I'm even using Weight Watchers "Simply Filling" technique, which is eating almost entirely from vegetables, fruits, lean meats, whole grains, legumes...all that healthy, natural crap that I've been trying hard to avoid dealing with for so long.

Turns out, it's not so bad to eat healthy crap.
And if it means that I'll actually be a thinner, healthier person who has a beautiful, healthy liver, then I'm happy to have the chance to change things around and do it.  Finally.

The Road Less Taken

I find myself this week having traveled on the road less taken.
At least, it's been less taken by me over the course of about a year now.
It's the road towards good health.
And I finally got on it!  At least for a week.  Oooh, a week and a day now!  I'm on my way to actually making this a habit if I'm not careful.

My Weight Watcher leader, Becky, issued a 12-week challenge for all of us Weight Watchers who have difficulty...or inertia....when it comes to tracking what we're eating.  So, we have a 12 week tracking challenge, and I accepted the call.

Thank God she sent out an email the next day to remind us, because I'd already forgotten about it.

But, her email spurred me to action, and not only did I track that day, but I've tracked every morsel of food I've eaten for the past 8 days.  I began by telling myself that it didn't matter if I went over my daily Points Plus allotment, the object of the game was just to track what I ate.  And at first, I did go over my Points.  By a lot!  But throughout the week, I stuck to it, and even exercised, which helped me earn back some of those points.  And by the end of the week, I had only eaten one point more than I was allotted.

That one little point didn't seem to do too much damage though.
Because I lost 3.6 pounds this last week, my friends!
I'm doing a lot of celebrating because I'm only 2 pounds away from the lowest I've been since I started Weight Watchers, AND I've lost 40 lbs. since I first started Weight Watchers, which was not all that long after Lily was born.

It's taking me awhile to get the hang of it, but at least the scale is going down bit by bit!
I'm just so incredibly proud of myself.

Another proud moment just happened today.  My family went out to an AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS Italian buffet called Cinzetti's.  (And yes, it's so good that I had to say AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS in capital letters.  It really is that good.)

Yesterday evening, I actually planned out exactly what I wanted to eat today for lunch.  I started with desert, knowing that I wanted some of several things, and then worked my way backwards to main course, and then starters.  I added up all the WW points that it would take, and even though this one meal used all of my daily points, plus a big chunk of my weekly bonus points, I thought it was worth it.

And you know what?
It SOOOOOO was!!

I started out with a big antipasto plate filled with fruit, veggies, and salad.  Then, I went back for some chicken, fried rice balls, glazed carrots, and fried potato pancakes.

Dessert was half of a molten chocolate cake, bread pudding with vanilla sauce, ice cream, and tiramisu.

Was it a lot?
YES!
Am I stuffed?
YES!
Is that okay as long as I count it and am accountable for what I choose to eat?
YOU BET YOUR ASS!  YES!

I'm just really, really happy with myself, in spite of eating so much I felt the need to unbutton my pants on the drive home.  In the past (and by "the past" I mean 2 weeks ago), I would have eaten that much, and maybe even more, and not have been at all mindful of how many points the food was worth, much less bother to look it up and write it all down.

So yea me!  Unbuttoned shorts and all!

The Game

There's a game that I play every Friday night.
It's called:  How Little Can She Eat?

I hate being wrapped up in this game.  The game takes place because of my Saturday morning weigh in at Weight Watchers.  See, if I don't eat very much on Friday night, then I have a better chance of losing a couple pounds (more like ounces though) on Saturday morning.

I'm trying hard to get my mind out of this game though, because I know it is really a sign that I'm still treating this whole thing as a diet, and not a change towards a healthy lifestyle.

So, I tried harder today to not play the game so much.  I ate all of my points for the day, just most of them before dinner time, so I'd have to have a small dinner: popcorn and an apple with peanut butter.  There is no other day of the week where I would call that dinner.  So, okay, I'm not fixed yet.  I'm still broken.

I wonder how long it's going to take to get through my thick skull that I need to do more than the minimum, because the minimum is not working worth crap.  I've just been barely inching down the scale, only losing about 20 pounds in a year.  That's pretty pathetic.

So, I've got to get my head out of this game.  Because it's not a game, it's my health, and ultimately my life, and I only have one life, no Super Star Power, no Magic Mushrooms, and no way to earn Extra Lives.  I am not Princess Peach, and this is not Mario Brothers, so I need to stop living like it is.  Even if I am cute and blonde.

Money Maker

I'm just going to say it.

I like to boogie.

There.  It's out.  No more hiding this deep inside me like it's some kind of dirty secret.

Oh, I see your little smile.  You must not understand.
I don't like to just dance.  Not that dancing isn't fun.
I'm not talking tap, ballet, or interpretive dancing.

Oh no.
I'm talking boogie.

Butt shakin',
Hip thrustin',
Naughty grindin',
Pole dancin',
I'm-surprised-no-one's-trying-to-shove-money-down-my-pants-boogie-style-dancing.

I'd like to take this moment to say how thankful I am that I was raised in a Southern Baptist home where this kind of dancing was deemed as a one-way road to hell strongly frowned upon.  It helped keep me decent.  If I had been born into a non-Christian, non-religious family, I likely would have ended up as a go-go table dancer or a stripper.  The thought of that frightens me now.

Anyway, all this has recently come to mind because, after weeks and weeks of being away, I have finally returned to Zumba.  If you've never seen Zumba, it's a Latin-based, dance aerobic workout.  It's a lot of fun.  It's very sweat-inducing.  And when it's lead by a booty-shaking leader, who I think secretly wants to be a go-go dancer, it can get a little risque.  BUT IT'S SO MUCH FUN!!

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to shake my groove thang.
It was nice to be reminded that even though I'm sweating and exercising, I can still have fun.

I like to boogie.
I like the night life.

Crap on a stick.

That's how I feel.  Like crap on a stick.

I'm so disgusted with myself.  This is not where I wanted to see myself a quarter of the way through the year.  I have lost virtually no weight, and I can't seem to get my butt in gear for the long haul.  I'll be okay for a few days, and then something will happen, and my whole motivation will get derailed.

I know what I need to do.
It's not a matter of knowing better, because I do know better.
It's a matter of commitment.
It's a matter of wanting to be thin more than I want to stuff my face.

I think part of the problem is that I don't truly believe I can do it.  I've never done it in the past, so I must not be capable of losing a significant amount of weight. I know that's a crappy thing to say to myself, but it's kinda how I feel right now, and I'm just having a hard time believing in me.

So, what am I going to do with myself, hmmm?
Am I going to spend another day stuffing my face with whatever I feel like, or am I actually going to take control of my eating and my bad habits and do something healthy with my body?

I guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.
I hope it brings a better attitude than this though, because this is just shitty.