One Day at a Time

I was thinking this morning about the various things I inherited from my mother (I have no idea now why I was thinking this). I got her hands and feet. I got her youthful appearance - people are usually shocked when they hear my age, and when Mom died at 62, she would have passed for 10 years younger than that, easily. And of course I inherited her tendency to be overweight - although I got a different body shape than she did. She gained in her upper body (mostly belly) and had nice, thin legs. I gain in my lower body first, and only gain in my upper body when the lower half is at maximum capacity. But however the weight is distributed, it's there, and since my dad was very thin, I have to think that the weight came from her.

Of course, even if genes are a factor, the fact that I actually gained the weight I'm genetically predispositioned for is my own damn fault. I'm the one who decided that food was the best way to deal with my emotions - good or bad. I'm the one who decided that when I was too insecure and broken to deal with a relationship, that the best way to avoid being in one was to get too fat for any guy to want me. I'm the one who developed a love of sweet things.

I wasn't always this way. I was a normal weight child - I even have picture proof of that right here on my hard drive! See, here I am somewhere around the age of 10:





An old friend scanned those in and sent them to me on Facebook not too long ago. But see what they show? An average sized kid, one you'd never call fat. So what happened?

I started gaining weight in high school, but not much - I still wore a size 7 all the way through, which I wouldn't really call heavy now. I thought I was huge, though. When I started working, more weight came on. When I got to 165 pounds, I joined Nutri System and lost 40 pounds. I eventually gained back a bit of that, but I stayed between 140 and 150 for a few years.

Then I went back to school, and Mom had her first stroke. My weight crept up. Mom got sicker, I was seriously stressed - the weight crept up even further. I finished school and got an office job. Mom got sicker. The weight crept up. Mom died. My weight went up over 200 pounds for the first time in my life.

And really, what it all amounts to, is that I've struggled with my weight my whole life. I've been on a diet or thinking about going on a diet ever since I was a teenager - and I'm now 40! Why can't food just be something I eat to live? Why does it have to be my go to way of dealing with everything in my life?

Of course I have no answers to these questions. It's just the way it is. And here I am, 218 pounds as of Monday, January 5th, and struggling once again to make myself behave and start dropping the weight again.

I have to take this struggle one day at a time. I haven't been doing very well on my eating for the last week and a half. I've been PMSing and sad and lonely, and eating to cope, even though I know the food won't really help me. But today is a new day. I've had my peanut butter toast for breakfast. I'm drinking my water. J will be home tonight, so hopefully we'll have a healthy dinner and I won't snack afterwards.

And tomorrow I'll get back up, and I'll face another day. I'll try to get through without eating too much, and without going completely overboard if I do eat something I shouldn't. And I'll do that the next day, and the next, and the next. I've just started, and it'll be a long journey, but I want desperately to get to my goal, so I'm going to keep plodding along. One day at a time.

Not Going To Fail!

I didn't weigh in yesterday - what was I thinking, promising to weigh in on Mondays? That's never going to happen. Mondays are the worst possible days to weigh in, for various reasons. I've changed it to Fridays.

I hope I'll have some positive news to report on Friday, but if I don't get my act together, it's not going to happen. I went over my calorie limit almost every day last week. Not by a lot - I'd go over 200 or 300 calories and figure it was still way better than I had been doing, so it was okay. But there is one problem with that attitude - those extra calories add up day to day! And they result in the scale not really going down so much as sitting still.

Yesterday I was determined that I was going to do much better, and in fact I did! Until after I got home, anyway. I ate well at work, and had enough food planned for my time at home alone (J was at work) that I thought I should be okay. But no, I went rather crazy and ended up probably a good 1,000 calories over. D'oh! I blame hormones for some of that (women will know what I mean), but mostly I'm just weak as hell and can't have any tempting food in the house AT ALL. Sigh.

Today was going to be different. I was going to have the same game plan for the workday, and then I was going to be good at home, if only because the food that tempted me yesterday is now gone (Hershey's chocolate Santas, for the record). And then I went to lunch, and they were having a food show at work, so people could sample different foods and rate them - to help my work decide what foods to order and put on the regular menu. I had my plain turkey sandwich like I had planned, and then I had a cheese stick, a mini burger, a fried dough stick and bites of pizza and egg rolls (neither of which was very good, so I stopped at a bite). I am now at almost 1,000 calories - and I only get 1250-1550 for the entire day.

What are the odds of me staying in my limit today? Sigh.

No, I can do it. I can! I'll have cereal for dinner, and a glass of milk, and that will be that. I'll chew gum all night if I have to, to keep my mouth busy.

I WILL get this eating thing back under control. 2010 is still my year! I won't give up.

Challenges

I had a two day conference for work yesterday and today. It was being held locally, so I didn't have to travel, which was great - I'd much rather be home with J and the critters instead of on the road and in a hotel room alone at night. Yesterday was the day I had to be there from 8:00 - 4:00, with two meal periods thrown in - breakfast and lunch. I had no idea what was going to be served, so I knew going in that the day was going to be a challenge.

And I did great! I let myself have one cookie and one small brownie with lunch, but since lunch consisted of a bunch of food I either couldn't eat (lactose intolerant) or didn't want to eat, I had plenty of calories to spare for that meal period - I ended up having half of a turkey sandwich (which was disgusting - I can't stand that cheap turkey lunch meat that doesn't even really resemble turkey, ick).

As for breakfast, I would have loved to have a bowl of cereal - they had the single serving boxes out for people to take - but of course, I can't have regular milk, so I had to skip that. I went for some scrambled eggs, instead (a small helping - I counted it as two eggs), with one extremely crispy piece of bacon and a small glass of orange juice.

It's true that I ate some fattening things, but I didn't eat much overall, and when I came home and logged it all into sparkpeople, I found out that I had plenty of calories left over for the evening! Woo! And since I had a Lean Cuisine pizza for dinner, I even got to end the day with some small snacks.

Yay! I felt like I really did well. Go me!

New Year, New Me?

I was cleaning out the storage (junk) room in my house last week, and came across two things that really made me think. First, I found an old journal (diary) that I had written in 1996 and 1997. I read through a few entries, and found the same goals and hopes that I have now - to drop weight, to feel better, to look the way I know I can look.

Fourteen years later and I'm still aiming for the same, never reached, goal? Really? Fourteen years? And really, it's longer than that, of course, the journal I found just happened to go back 14 years.

And then I found two photo album pages that my Mom had put together. It was her own little progress album, in her weight loss journey - it made me realize that if she had been born in the computer age, she probably would have had a weight loss journal of her own, actually, and given her personality, she would probably be one of those super popular bloggers who everyone reads.

Anyway, the pictures reminded me that I'm not the only one going through this constant struggle for a goal that may never be reached. My mother had weight as one of the huge issues of her life too, and so do many other people out there.

So how do I end this cycle of dieting for myself? How do I go from hoping to achieve a goal to finally getting there and staying there? I've gotten to my goal once - I was down to 125 pounds in 1993 when my step-father died, but a year later I had put 15 pounds back on and then I added 10 more, and then over time I've ballooned to the weight I'm at now.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying and failing to lose weight. I don't want to keep thinking about what I could be and hating what I am. So, even though it sounds an awful lot like the words I read in that journal from 14 years ago, I'm going to come out and say it, because I know I have the tools to make it happen this time.

2010 is going to be the year I finally reach my weight goal, and I'm going to stay there once I get there.

I really do have the tools to succeed, too. I have sparkpeople to help me make sure I don't eat too much. I have a treadmill, an exercise bike, exercise videos on Netflix to help me get exercise. And most of all, I have support, in the form of my fantastic fiance, J. He's starting his own weight loss struggle today, too. He'll help me stop eating when I'm at my calorie limit for the day. He'll tell me he can see the weight coming off, and that I'm looking great. He'll love me no matter what. (And I'll do the same for him, of course.)

So here we are. A new year, a new start, and this is going to be the year I make it! I'll list my starting figures in the left column over there, so you can see where I'm at right now. In the future I plan on recording my weight here once a week - I'm starting on Monday, so let's say I'll give my new weight every Monday. I also took my measurements today - they'll be in the left column, too. I'm only going to update those once a month, though - look for them on the last day of every month.

Are you starting a new diet this month, too? We can do this! This is our year. :)

Holiday Eating

I quit my other blog, and I've been all, "la la la, don't have a blog to write in anymore, la la la." Uh, yeah I do! Sorry, I kind of forgot this one existed for a while. Hee.

Of course, there isn't much to tell here right now, anyway. I've gone completely off the diet for the holiday season, because I have no self control whatsoever when faced with chocolates and holiday goodies. Plus I got a new Kitchen Aid mixer for Christmas (early, from J, and I LOVE it), and I had to have fun with it. So I've made cakes and brownies and cookies galore, and oh yeah, I've eaten them, too.

The only good thing about all of this bad eating is that I'm reaching saturation point when it comes to junk and sugar, and it feels like it might be really easy to start being good again in January. In fact, J is talking about how he needs to start eating better, too, so I think two weeks from today will bring a new vow to go with the new year - no more junk in the house! We'll be eating healthier dinners and I won't be baking cookies and cakes and brownies, and hopefully we'll end the winter slimmer and healthier than we began it.

So, for now - I hope you're having a great holiday season! I certainly am already (I've wanted that mixer ever since I first saw one many, many years ago). I'll talk to you next year, if not before!

Get Thee Away, Temptation

A couple of weeks ago in a fit of weakness, I bought two double sized boxes of Pop-Tarts from the grocery store. Why? Because they were on sale two for $5! So I had to! Sigh.

A couple of weeks later, and those things have been ruining my days this whole week. I start out doing okay - sometimes I even make it to 1:00 or so without messing up! Then I start to get hungry again, and instead of eating the applesauce I have sitting here, I grab a package of frosted cherry or chocolate chip and eat not one, but both Pop-Tarts that it contains.

Each Pop-Tart has at least 200 calories - the chocolate chip one has 220. Oy. Way to ruin a day's food intake, you know?

This morning I came in to work, determined that today was going to be the day I got my act back together. I ate my peanut butter toast for breakfast, and not two hours later - more like an hour and a half later, actually, I grabbed one of the remaining packages of chocolate chip Pop-Tarts, and ate not one, but both of them. Ugh! I got so aggravated and annoyed at myself that I threw the two remaining packages in the trash.

My days will no longer be ruined by their high calorie sugariness! Dang it.

Good Decisions

I've been doing so badly on my diet lately that I feel I have to celebrate every good decision I make (because they are few and far between). So here are two good ones for today:

1. I went into the gas station to pay for some kerosene to bring home for the heater, and before I went to the counter to pay, I walked around the convenience store, fulling intending to get some candy bars and maybe some chips. But I said no to everything, paid for the kerosene and left. I was in SHOCK at myself. Me, saying no to chocolate? Bizarre!

2. I baked some rolls for a treat tonight, and was so close to eating the ones that were left over. But I said no and put them in a sandwich bag and into the fridge.

Two good things in one day? So unlike me! But who knows, maybe it's a sign that I'm finally heading in a better direction with this damn diet again. We'll see.