Initial Move complete!

So after several days of craziness, my move is complete. We're not in Arizona. Wednesday I did a ton of running around, shutting off the electricity, talking to the landlord, getting some records together and so forth and so on. Thursday I had lunch one final time with my boss and the workers at work. Free food, so I couldn't complain. Then we got the truck and started hard core packing. We loaded some of the big pieces, like the couch, dresser ect into the truck to make it easier the next day, since it was after dark and much cooler when we were loading it. Then after it got too late to be tromping up and down the stairs D's parents went home and we continued to pack for about an hour before we were just too tired. 6am the next morning the two of us were back up packing again, and his parents showed up at about 8am and we finished packing, loading the truck and cleaning the apartment. Took us about 7 hours but the truck was completely packed. Stayed at D's parents that night and slept like a log, until the damn rooster woke us up at 4am rofl. Zoned residential yet someone buys a rooster, dumbasses seriously. Anyway.

So Saturday morning we hit the road at 7am and drove all day to get here, and got here at like 4 local time (5 mountain time where we were before). And SOMEHOW I managed to get severely sunburned by DRIVING A CAR! Jesus. I drove with the window down but I didn't have my arm in the window or anything, and when I got to AZ my arm was like a lobster. Still hurts like a bitch let me tell you. Sunday was spent unloading the car and having a good dinner with my cousin and her husband. Then today we're resting and taking the truck back to Budget to turn it in. Mom leaves on Friday to go to IL to visit family and that gives us her house to be in for 2 months before she gets back. D and I aren't unpacking anything really. The hope is that both of us find work within a couple of weeks and will be able to get our own place and therefore we don't want to unpack much of anything so that way we don't have to PACK much of anything when we go to move again. lol.

Anyway so that's that. I have no idea where my scale is so no weight probably this week until I can find it. I know where it is but I don't know where that bin went to right off hand so until I find it (which I will soon because there's a couple of other things I need to look through specific boxes for) I will post a weight.

My mom is also my new best friend, she's got a treadmill in the house. Can we say weight loss?! XD

Anyway I'm off.

Until next time.

Let the Craziness begin!

So I posted a quick blurb that some major shit was going down on Monday and then disappeared on everyone Tuesday. I apologize. I shall be disappearing again here in about an hour and won't be back for a few days at the least. I told my boss yesterday morning that I was unable to work part time and would that it would need to be my last day yesterday and the look on his face was priceless. I think it may have hit him out stupid his idea was and now he's out an extremely good employee that was crucial to his switching to fully electronic records. His loss I guess.

I think what frustrated me was, you know I worked really hard to keep them in touch with what was going on. They knew I was looking for another job because 1) I needed something that would give me the experience I need in order to get an administrative job and 2) I wanted to move out by my mom. And yes they were nice enough to offer me to split my full time job with Anne the part time receptionist they hired so I wouldn't be completely without a job, but I would get like just about 20 hours a week, maybe even less than that, and we pay too much to live up here as it is. So I made the decision to move to Arizona because my mom's gone so we can stay at her place for 2 months give or take a little while she's visiting family in Illinois, and just really look for something out there. I have a possibility or two through a temporary and temp to hire place that I'd talked to prior to all this. Perhaps, if nothing else, I can land some temp jobs out there that'll help to offset all the spending vs the no income thing. So today I'm going to get to packing, here when I wake up a little more and after my shower. Fun fun. Have I mentioned I hate moving? lol.

Anyway, so I should jet. Just one more quick thing though. I'd forgotten to weigh in on Monday, and thought I'd do it Tuesday instead but because of all the shit hitting the fan I didn't get a chance. So I did this morning. I'm at 271.0. I have a feeling that by Monday I'll be in the 260's from all the running around, packing, lifting, hauling and so forth that I'll be doing. Here's to hoping at least something good comes out of all this bullshit.

Until next time.

Frustration.

So. My life has drastically changed in the blink of an eye. I got called into the bosses office today to be told I was going to be moved to part time June 1. That's it. Part time, less than 20 hours per week. So. I'm leaving. D and I are packing up this week moving to Arizona this weekend. I'm excited but scared shitless.

Wish me luck.

Some notes from the weekend

So first of all, I'd committed to participating in the 5k from the Anti-Jared blog. Happy to announce that I walked it this morning, real early. So that's a big checkmark for me today!

Second, some general notes of things I noticed this weekend.

1) When the boyfriend buys you a bag of your favorite chips, don't feel you have to eat them. I ate an entire bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lays over the course of the weekend. Not happy. His heart was in the right place, but when I said "Hon, get me some snack popcorn" somehow he twisted that into "Get me some chips!" >.> Anyway....

2) When you decide to go on an impromptu walk. Check to make sure you have tennis shoes on. I decided that beyond my 5k this morning, when I went to go do the laundry I would try to make up for the whole bag of chips fiasco. So I put my clothes in the washer at the laundry mat and walked to the store to get something to drink rather than buy a soda there or drive. Yeah, great idea, until I got about half way there and wondered why my feet hurt. Realized I had flip flops on. Ugh.

3) Vitamin Water which is supposedly "good for you" flavored water....yeah it's got 150 total calories in it if you drink the whole thing. So guess what, that walk I did to the store? Yeah taken up by that stupid water. Lesson learned.

4) Moving mounds of stuff around in your closet and walking up and down the stairs multiple times to take trash out IS exercise when you're 273 pounds. I don't care what anyone says, I was not only out of breath, but I was sweating profusely by the time I got my closet cleaned out. Kthxbai!

5) I'm ready for a nap after all this weekend excitement and next weekend will be even more jampacked!

That's it, no more notes. I'm actually really excited about this work week, not because I have to go back to work tomorrow, but because I'm hoping to get that phone call that says "We want you to move to AZ and work for us". If I didn't mention it, and I do sometimes forget to, I had a job interview on Tuesday of last week, and the lady I talked to sounded really enthused. I took some test that she sent as the next step of the interview and she said she was forwarding me on to the doctor. So I'm really hopeful that they'll hire me so I can move out that way. If by some miracle that does happen, this weekend will get a whole lot busier because I'll have to work on packing some stuff up to take with us to my mom's since we're supposed to be going to visit this weekend. I'm also hoping to find something while my mom's gone from June 4th to the end of July. Because then I can move into her place and stay there for free while she's gone and house sit for her, and that gives me extra time to get a place. Not that I couldn't move out there when she's there, but moving into her 3 bedroom place when there's already 3 people there makes it a little ... cramped...

Anyway, so I'm off. I have a couple things to get done before bed tonight, and I am tired enough that going to bed early may not be a bad idea.

Until next time!

Small weight loss is still weight loss!

So I had a small loss. Half a pound. But that's half a pound more than I've lost from before. And honestly, considering my weight had gone up after last week to 276, technically I lost more than half a pound, but it's half a pound lower than the first week. Regardless, I posted a slightly lower loss earlier this week but we went to a friend's house this weekend. I didn't eat too bad, we had home made Santa Fe Chicken and in the morning we had home made biscuits and gravy and I tried not to zomg eat too much or anything. But I think I gained some water weight, I had 2 margaretas while I was there, however you spell it, with salt. rofl. Regardless a loss is a loss and this week I'm going to try to tackle getting out of the 270's.

I have a job phone interview on Tuesday, so here's to hoping it gets me a job that will take me to Arizona! XD

But for now it's back to work, switching over to electronic charting is intense!

Until later.

I don't normally do this but.....

I don't normally weigh myself on a non-weigh day. I try to keep to my once a week weighing so I'm not getting all uppity if the scale is slightly up one day and the plummets the next due to salt intake or whatever. But you know, I've really really worked hard this week. Tuesday all the stupid eating I did from when J was in the hospital finally showed up on the scale and honestly I was up to 276.something. Might've been salt weight, or you know the pan of brownies or couple of cupcakes and whatever else stupid shit I ate over the weekend. I was so frustrated that I gained 3 pounds seemingly overnight from Monday to Tuesday! So I got back on point, and started eating much better and keeping track of it and vowed to not look at the scale for a few days. And I didn't! I kept a food log, and pretty much every day I came in between 1700 and 1800 calories a day which is where I want to be. I'd love to be under 1700 per day but usually my just over 1700 comes in the form of a fruit cup, or an apple or whatever, so it's not like that extra 100 calories is "bad food". And if I'm losing, all the better!

Anyway, so I stepped on the scale this morning to see how I was doing because I noticed yesterday that my pants for work seemed to be fitting about the way they were before I starting gaining a little back and it said 271.2. I think if I hadn't been near the sink I may have fallen over. That means that from Tuesday I'd lost almost 5 pounds? Crazy. And this weekend I have a long laundry list of things "to do" that involve a lot of lifting, moving and with some good music probably dancing where no one can see me (I love to dance, I'm just too big to do it gracefully rofl). I have an entire house to overhaul and scrub down and when I do such cleaning I do it all by hand. Meaning I don't mop the floor, I get down on the floor and scrub it by hand, gets up all the crap your mop just can't do. Things like that. So I'm sure I'll keep my downward trend through to Monday.

You know what's really helped me this week? We have nothing in the house. rofl. I don't get paid until Monday, and D's gonna go with me to get a few groceries tonight so we can have food for dinner and such, but there's really no major munchies in the house. Nor are there really any snack type things I can eat except fruit cups. So I do. I have found my new best friend when it comes to my "dessert" that I seem to enjoy having after dinner, which is a black cherry mixed fruit jello cup. It's just sweet enough to curb that sweet tooth, it is 120 calories if I remember right, and it has fruit in it to boot! Having that fruit cup makes it to where I stop prowling in the kitchen looking for something to eat after dinner. That single solitary cup has been my key to 1700 to 1800 calories per day! Plus, if I'm not careful, I sometimes don't realize it and go WAY under my daily calories, not on purpose, I just get into this mode where I'll be rummaging around in the house for food and be like you're not hungry go sit back down, when in fact I AM hungry and when I tally up my calories and such for the day I end up at like 1200 or something insanely low. That usually happens on the weekends, not so much during the week for some reason. I guess because I'm home all day and worried about overeating. It's a real struggle for me, I'm always hungry no matter how good I eat, no matter how much protien in my diet, or eating small amounts all day I could easily eat a huge meal and still go looking for more in the cupboards. It's a constant fight to not eat constantly!

Anyway, so that's that. I just woke up, I way overslept today but evidently I needed the sleep so no worries there. It's 10:45ish am and I have a lot to do, so ....

Until next time!

Good morning!

Good morning everyone! I hope the day finds you well and not like me, ready to just keel over from being tired! lol.

I've been a good girl this week. I've ate a sensible breakfast (oatmeal!) every morning, I've had some sort of good lunch which generally has consisted of soup or a sandwich and some rice or something. And I've ate decent dinners this week, we've had home made spagetti, pasta with carrots, brocolli, sweet pea pods and garlic sauce with a little chicken mixed in, and even some very thin cut steak with stuffing. I've not been scarfing, but rather eating one to two servings at dinner, and only 1 servings at lunch and usually 2 servings of oatmeal (my favorite!) for breakfast which really gets me through the morning.

I have successfully cut back a bit on my soda intake by getting some of that vitamin water. I really dislike just plain jane water. It's so boring! Those little packets are great unless you don't have bottled water (which I don't...I use a Brita Filter), so I got a vitamin water last night, just one, to try it and it wasn't too bad. So I think I'll get a few of those to drink. I had one bottle of soda yesterday, and 3 bottles of water.

Bah I've gotta jet, work is getting busy. I'm just hoping all this sticking to my guns comes through when I weigh myself Monday. :)

Until next time.

86 Weeks is that all?

So we finally got word on J, she's still in ICU but they're going to move her down to a regular room for a couple of days today or tomorrow then to a Psych unit for eval and such. I hope she takes this second opportunity she's been given at life and does something with it. Sounds like she's going to be ok. Which is good, cuz I wanna see her when I go to IL to visit in July.

Now, onto less depressing things! I got this program that a personal trainer from the Y suggested I use when I said I wanted to do some food logging but really hated the clunky feeling of the online ones. It's called FitDay and they have an online log, but they also have a computer program that you can download (relatively cheaply I might add) and if you're so inclined, you can link the two so that if you're not at home, or near your computer but you eat something, you can write it down. So, for example, if I am at work and I eat a cookie, I can log onto my account online and put it in my log, then when I get home, I can upload that data to my computer program and it'll be there. I also like the expanded charts feature of the program. But I digress. I didn't start that paragraph as a product review, in fact, I get nothing out of any sort of review, I just really like the program. :)

Anyway, so on to what I was trying to say from the get go. When you start the program up it asks you the usual customary questions, how tall are you, how much do you weigh, what's your age, and what weight goal do you want (should you want to use that feature and since I do...well I did!). Anyway so I put in some research time last night (!) trying to figure out how many calories I should be eating. I landed on 1700 to 1800 goal calorie intake. Provided I stayed in that range, it would put me at losing about 2 pounds a week. Totally doable. Anyway, so I put that figure into my program and it said that by eating 1800 calories per week I would be my goal weight in like 85.6 weeks or some oddball number. So we'll round it to 86 weeks. At first I was like ugh so long, but then, realistically that's not that long! That's a year and a half. Little over a year and a half, whatever.

At first I was lamenting how long it would take, but then I realized something. My weeks go incredibly fast. Monday is barely here and it then Thursday comes which starts my weekends, and then no sooner is Thursday over and it's Monday again. So realistically it shouldn't take as long as it feels like it should take. Even if it isn't a steady 2 per week (I know, it won't be, don't worry I'm not being unrealistic here. lol), it won't feel like it is taking forever. And once I start losing I'll be able to be more active, or so I hope :) My other biggest hope is to be able to move out near my mom and the kids in Arizona. Why? My mom likes to go for evening walks, she's pretty active on the weekends when she doesn't have the kids around, going to flea markets, rummage sales, and so on. Something that we can do together that gets us out of the house and such.

When I first told D I wanted to move out there he was all "Ok, that's fine...but won't your mom be over all the time?" No....I mean yes, but not really. She'd probably be over for dinner or to pick me up to go do something but to stay extendedly for more than an hour or so prolly not. Just not how she rolls. Hell I lived 5 minutes from her when I lived in Sterling and she never came over much then. Of course she couldn't stand my boyfriend I had then either sooo that could be a mitigating factor there lol :P She aboslutely adores D so that won't be a factor when we move out that way, but damn finding a job out there sucks donkey...uhhh right!

Anyway I should probably get back to work. It's almost 9am and I've done nothing but blog and answer the occassional phone call since 7:30 this morning lolol.

Until next time!

No change is...ok I guess.

So I posted I was having issues, still no word on J. Her husband is being a dickwad (pardon my ... uhh French? lol) and he's blocked out my family from the hospital. It's not the first time he's been an asshat to our family, and so my uncle is supposed to go to Rockford today because you cannot legally exclude the biological parents from knowing the status of their daughter or something like that. Should I see him when I go in July I will give him a swift kick in the nads for being a dickhead!

Anyway, so regardless, knowing that I was having some emotional eating issues, I actually expected to be up today but I wasn't. I must've lost some and then gained it back. Oh well, such is life. I will do better next week. The nice thing about being broke? You can't go buy more munchies when you run out right! lol. Curse D and his need for munchies in the house to begin with...

So instead of focusing on the bad, which I've had more than enough lately kthxbai, I am turning to the good. Such as my upcoming vacation! lol. Ok so it's like 2 months away but I'm still stoked! I haven't been home (Illinois) for more than a day in over a year, and that's hard when I am very close to my extended family and they all lived in a 20 mile radius from me while growing up. Said vacation requires an airplane ride, which, if I don't lose some weight, will require a belt extender. I didn't have a good restart week, at all. I didn't exercise really, I did eat a little better but not as good as I could have, and especially over the weekend which I completely blew my diet. So despite the bad things happening right now I need to refocus and get to work.

By the way, just to throw this out there: I hate my bed. I really need a new one >.< The whole waking up every morning stiff and sore sucks!

But now I need to get back to work, I'll post more in a bit.

A rough spot

So I got a phone call last night, from my mother...'bout 11:30pm my local time, 10:30 hers. Not completely unheard of, but since I've been dating D, she doesn't call real late for fear of awakening him when he's got enough problems sleeping as it is. Considerate mother that she is. I digress though. The point is, what she told me, in the two or three minutes that it took me to get her to calm down really threw my world for a loop. I'm going to be 28 this year, my cousin J, we'll call her for her privacy, is I think 30...31 in December if I remember right. She has 4 beautiful children ranging from 5 to 12. She has a not so nice husband, in fact, our family really can't stand him, but it's summer, and generally during the summer they're all happy go lucky, it's winter they have issues, probably from being stuck indoors all the time with 4 loud kids. rofl. Anyway, again, I digress.

No, what she called to tell me was that my cousin apparently decided her time on this earth was done and tried to OD. How, I don't know. She's in critical condition 1500 miles from here and I can't get to her. Now I've lost people in my life before. For those of you that are just joining my blog, or maybe don't remember, I lost my father in 2006, my grandfather in 2008, almost lost an aunt to cancer in 2008 (she's still alive thankfully), I moved pretty far from my mom, though now she lives closer, I live 1500 miles or more from any of the rest of my mom's side of the family who are the ones I grew up with, including this cousin.

So I'm upset, haven't slept well because I kept listening for the phone making me extremly tired. I'm trying to keep my mom on firm ground, she blames herself for no longer living in IL and not being there to help J out should she need help. I basically feel on extremely shaky ground. What really sucks, I am eating out of emotion and I know it but can't stop my self. I'm not over eating, persay, because I'm not hungry. But I see a cookie, chomp. Brownie? Chomp. Those cupcakes? Yeah, chomp. >.> I want to sedate myself eating wise just to get through all this!

Well, wish me luck, and pray for my family, I don't promise I'll be on the ball with blogging until all this blows over, but I'll try.

Until next time.

Help a chicka out!

You know you wanna! Go follow her, she's funny :)

A revelation if you will.

So I was going to bed last night, about 11 or so in the evening. A little later than I like but not the end of the world. I'd just crawled into bed and covered up, staring at the cealing when I had a revelation. A lightbulb turning on if you will. We bitch, complain, moan and groan about how long it will take to lose 150 pounds, 100 pounds, 10 pounds, whatever. We act like it's the end of the world if our loss is less than 1 solid pound. We think (myself included sometimes) that losing 150 pounds is an insurmountable obstical. OHEMGEE 2 YEARS IS A LONG TIME MKAY?!

But this was my revelation:

If I'd started working hard to lose weight 2 years ago when I moved to Los Alamos, I may be done, or close to done now. I moved to Los Alamos, taking a huge risk on someone I only knew through a video game, a few phone calls and a face to face meeting in May of 2008. Here it is, May 2010! What?! D and I have been together for 2 years now?! WUT HIS DAUGHTER IS 4?! WHERE DOES TIME GO!

Anyway, despite my sarcasm and general laughable twisted-ness, my point is that when you're doing weight loss, the "2 years until I'm normal" thought makes it feel like it's such a long time. But in reality, 2 years goes by pretty damn quick. I guess what made me go "Duh!" is I was reading some article on some woman that lost like 120 pounds in 15 months. One day she decided "I'm done being fat!" and just did it. So the question was, to me, why can't I do that? And my realization was, I CAN do that. I just need to take the time to do it, and stop making up excuses as to why I'm NOT doing it.

If we force ourselves to eat things we "don't like" we expand our taste bud pallet. I've done that this past year. I went from "Eww brocolli" to "Mmmm raw brocolli with a little light ranch please!" Though I'm still "eww salad" I think it's not because I don't really like salad, though, it's not an all time favorite lunch....it's more because I can't eat anything cold that requires chewing at the moment (stupid teeth!). And before you ask, yes, I work at a dentist, and yes he's doing testing but we're not sure why, out of the blue, one side that has no problems at all suddenly got very sensitive to cold. The other side is because I got a crown done, and it's getting better but it's taking a little time to get used to eating on that side. But I digress. I am still, and probably always will be, "Eww Fish" lol. Some things never change.

Regardless, I have been expanding what kinds of food I eat. A year ago you wouldn't catch me dead with a plate of fresh veggies or steamed veggies with a small amount of warmed, well seasoned chicken on my plate for lunch. No, I'd be eating some sort of hotdog or something else equally rediculas. Additionally, you probably wouldn't catch me dead with a container of small curd cottage cheese or yogurt, or something else equally "healthy" in my fridge. You'd see me scarfing down 4 pieces of pizza, or half a fried chicken or something equally unhealthy on a daily basis. Instead, I have a bit of an "amazing" (from my perspective) story for you, that I shall leave you with.

Recently, D found his new love in frozen pizzas. The Garlic Bread Pizza. So much so in fact that he'll get one at least once a week to eat, either for lunch or dinner, whichever. Which is fine with me, I like garlic bread pizza. However, this week, yesterday in fact, we had said garlic bread pizza for dinner. D got home late from the wee one visit, and was hungry so he'd stopped at the store and gotten one to bring home, threw it in and it smelled so good. He even got surpreme because he knew I more than likely hadn't ate yet, and I'm not a huge fan of pepperoni only pizza. Enough babbling right, get to the point already! lol. Anyway, pizza got done, I was pretty hungry but shockingly enough...I only had 2 squares. If you made these squares I cut for myself into a normal "pizza slice" it'd be pretty thin. They weren't very big, maybe a 3inch by 3 inch square. And to be honest, a good chunk of the squares I had were "crust" rather than "toppings". But I stopped at those 2 pieces. No more. I had nothing else to eat. I was famished while it was cooking but I ate those two pieces pretty slow, not because I wanted to, but because I was doing something else on my computer while eating, and basically forgot I was eating between bites for a few minutes.

Which brings me to my new goal. And I think I'm going to make a little widget to write all these down....but my new goal is to eat slower. Instead of SCARFING AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE I want to put my fork down between bites and completely chew each bite. We'll see if that helps eh? :)

So, until my next post! Toodles!

My planning

Ok! So I said yesterday that I needed to come up with a plan I can stick to. I've found that drastically changing every little thing in my life all at once, yeah that don't work for me.

Here's some things I know.

Soda consumption needs to decrease and water consumption increase. I know this, but I <3 my soda. I generally will drink 2 or 3 16.9 oz bottles of diet dew and 1 20 oz bottle of water per day. This needs to change. My plan to change, every time I drink a bottle of dew (and I prefer bottles) I will immediately refill it with water and I am not allowed to drink any more dew until that bottle of water is gone. I will do this until I can get away from so much soda. For obvious reasons, if I'm drinking that water, I'm not in need of a drink of soda right?

Next.

I need to decrease my eating out and increase my better for me food at home. This week I'm happy to announce that I bought a week and probably 1/2 of groceries for about 50 bucks at the store. That was mostly for meat and veggies with a few quick "processed" sides for those days in which I just don't have time or energy to make a full meal. I've been doing a lot more cooking from scratch, or at least cooking from frozen veggies already chopped up. For example, I made breakfast for dinner one evening and we had scrambled eggs and I threw in some frozen onion/green pepper mix I bought at the store and a little cheese. I also made bacon though I only had 2 pieces because bacon isn't exactly the best to be eating, and a piece of toast. Being able to just use the frozen veggies cuts down on the possibility of said veggies being wasted if I don't get around to making whatever I bought it for in time, as usually happens :( So my goal for each week is to eat dinner at home 5 out of 7 days per week. Two days we go get D's little girl and we're kind of at the mercy of his parents as to what we eat, so I can't really control those two days too much, but the other 5 days I want to eat at home unless it's a special occasion!

Finally, the dreaded one. Exercise...

I'm horrible at exercise. Getting me to move my fat ass out of my computer chair to go exercise is like pulling teeth! I want to exercise, but not only do I find excuses, I am genuinely afraid of exercise. Why? I'm afraid of hurting myself (as I did November of last year by going on a 5 hour hike through Carlsbad Cavern!), or of causing myself to have a massive asthma attack. What was holding me back before was that I was without an asthma inhaler because some jerk in July stole my purse and thus my 60 dollar inhaler went poof...But I managed to get a new one! As I explained in my first post ever in this blog, I am genuinely afraid of exercise due to my asthma. When I was about 7 or 8 I had my first asthma attack, and it was not good. I passed out, went to the hospital, was on oxygen and then to "test for asthma" they took that oxygen away and of course I was still mid attack and after a few minutes I was having problems breathing again. That scares me. Try taking a straw and pinch it slightly and breathe through it and see how it feels! Scary right? Yeah well when I'm having a full blown attack, it's like that and I can't get away from it. I can't take that "straw" away to be able to breathe better. On the other hand, though, I don't feel like I'm doing anything if I'm not sweating. Telling me to "go for a short walk 5 days a week" gets me nothing. I feel like a failure if I'm not breaking a sweat, and not just because it's hot outside either >.>

This is the part I'm not sure what to do about. While I have the personal stamina for long walks, I do not have capability physically to do so as I found out going through the Carlsbad Caverns. I'd rather not repeat my pinched nerve issue. :( But just walking around the block a couple of times does nothing for me it seems, plus I'm very self concious about how I look. You know others think "Wow look at that fat ass out there walking like that's going to make them lose weight" and I won't even go there running.

So I guess let's revisit my goals:

1) For every bottle of dew I drink I must immediately refill it with water and not drink another dew until that water is done.
2) Eat in for dinner 5 days out of 7 per week. I already generally eat lunch at home. Generally.
3) Exercise more. I'm going to start small and work up, I guess 3 days a week, 20 minutes per day is ok. Walking to work yeah that doesn't count. The 5 minutes to walk to work I'm already accustomed to.

What say ye?

A long time coming!

Ok, so hiatus is bad mkay? Back on the bandwagon I go! I lost a bit, gained a bit, but I'm still below my original 285 starting weight so I am not completely depressed by my gaining back. A lot has happened in the almost year that I've been gone, so let me give you some of the highlights!

Lets see....in July I moved my mom cross country to Arizona, about 8 hours from me. Lovin' it, I go visit anytime I get a 4 day weekend, which is basically any time there's a holiday on a Monday since I only work 4 days a week anyway. I'm actively looking to move to Arizona where it's warmer and exercising would be more accessable. So if anyone has a job they can hook me up with, do eet! lol.

Fast forward to the last 4 months of the year and my Master's degree program really started getting crazy. Continual 15 page papers can kill a person if they're not already insane. Lucky for me I had willpower the size of the titanic when it came to getting work done. I finished my Master's degree in March with a 3.81 gpa. Now if only my willpower for not overeating and eating stuff I shouldn't was so good!

Couple all that insane stuff of working full time, papers out the wazoo....throw in a pretty nasty winter full of dumping snow on us and my will to go outside and exercise was non-existant and we just don't have enough room in the house to do so. We do but it requires moving soooo much stuff out of the way to make a small area to move around in.

In February I did the ultimate HUZZAH! I got my eyes fixed so no more glasses. Lasik for the win yo! I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I just need a working camera to show ya'll how awesome I feel and look without them. It was a huge boost to my self esteem and kind of got me thinkin' about losing weight again. It's AMAZING to be able to wake up and be able to see without fishing around for your glasses. You know Thelma from Scooby Doo? Yeah that was so me. I'd knock my glasses off my side table and then would be looking around for them by touch going "Man I wish I had my glasses so I could find my glasses!"

Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, all the major holidays I tend to love to eat, and thus gain weight.

So where do I stand? I've gained back about 12 pounds. I'm sitting at 273. Not happy about it, but it's a fact of life that if you don't work at something and just fall into compliance you stop losing and eventually start gaining.

So this is the start of a new period, again, for me. In which I will be looking into losing more, especially since I'm going to be flying to Illinois come July for a cousin's wedding and one of the things we're going to do there is go to a water park. Ugh, swimsuits! lol. Oh well, I have the general philosophy that if you don't like what you see when I'm in my swimsuit, don't look. I don't go showing off anything, I'm in a 1 piece, but I'm not going to cover every inch up just because I'm fat. Sorry. Same way I like wearing tanktops in the summer. Kiss it if you don't like it! But that doesn't mean I don't want to lose weight to fit into a better swimsuit this year! While I've gained some weight back, my clothes are still fitting that I bought a year ago.

My first order of business, I need to come up with a plan. Any advice would be welcome. I think an uber utter change in my entire life would be a bad idea. I've tried that and while I do well for a couple weeks I end up right back to where I was. I need to make some small but significant changes over time, and see the weight loss in order to feel like I'm getting somewhere. >.> Oh, and yeah I tried the whole cut out all soda, doesn't work for me. I need my morning soda! But I drink diet, so that's not an issue, always have drank diet actually...

So my general plan is to eat better by incorporating more home cooked meals (I'm tired of spending 200+ a month on eating out okay? I'll be honest, we eat out that much! Rediculas!). And when I cook said home cooked meals, I want to make them not quite as bad for me. Add more veggies, find a way to incorporate more better for me foods that I like. I don't like fish, so don't even go there. >.> Neither does D! Regardless, I have learned to like brocolli, and many things I used to dislike over the past couple of years, but fish I just can't like. Ugh! lol.

I also want to exercise more, but as I posted waaaaay back a year or so ago, exercise scares me. My asthma is just awful and it's exercise as well as allergen induced. I go for a walk and come home panting and all I did was walk! :( So frustrating. So if you have advice for some exercises I can do that won't kick my ass seven ways from Sunday I'm all ears!

So...for those of you intersted, embark with me, once again, on my weight loss journey and let's see how far we can get shall we? :) I'm reminded of a lyric from Sick Puppies.... It's been a long time comin', the table's turned around...one of us is goin'...goin' down! Woo! Much like that song, no matter how long it takes, it won't be me goin' down for the count, it'll be the weight!