150 and counting!

Heeeeeey!

2010-11-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Miss me much? Prolly not I know >.<

Moved CHECK
Unpacked....partial check.
Stressed...? Eh only a little bit more than my baseline.

I've been busy. Love you all but when life gets busy everything gets put on hold.

So let's recap how my life has been this past...oh month that I've been gone.

You know I'm getting really good at this "not gaining not losing" business when life gets busy. I'm concerned enough to eat well enough to not gain, but not concerned enough to exercise my heart out to lose. Go figure. You'll see why here in a sec.

We moved to our new place October 22nd. Took us all day to unload and return the truck, another couple days to get the boxes in some semblence of order in order to start unpacking and I'm still unpacking....been a month gotta love it. Mostly I'm left with stuff I don't know where the hell to put. >.< Our place is bigger than the one we had in Los Alamos. In fact I think I have two bedrooms worth of space in my bedroom, I can walk around the bed freely, well I could if I didn't have some boxes of junk to throw away but that's another issue entirely. So between moving and unpacking and such most of my weekends are taken up by that, and then I've had to help mom move.

Yes, she moved, back to Illinois (after I moved here for her go figure ugh). She found out after we started ramping up to move that the bank sold the house out from under her to an investment firm and they wanted her out. So she packed up and moved back to IL because she doesn't know if she can work and she doesn't have to pay rent where she's at right now living with my aunt and that was that. I was against the whole idea but it's not my life, I can't really say much. She left the 14th, just before thanksgiving. So...my thanksgiving really sucked, more so because I had 30 bucks to my name and no thanksgiving meal stuff in the kitchen, in fact no real food in the kitchen at all save some random canned goods. /sigh

Work has been pretty...non-eventful really. I am loving the 10 minute drive instead of the hour and a half one way. Been just doing a little bit of training, little bit of work, and a whole lot of yackin' with co-workers and trying to network. And before you say wtf it's a state job, no work ever really gets done there. lol. I mean, we do our work and do it well, but the inbetween is a lot of talking about what's going on at the houses, and depending on what level you work on, they talk a lot about some staffing issues. Luckily for me I'm the one bringing up some of these issues that are training related that need to be done (really a lot of staffing overhaul going on), and so I get to sit in on a lot of their discussions. And the reason I say lucky for me is because this is what my degree is in, so I'm being involved in a lot of the administrative stuff and get to have my input, let's me seem like I'm worth promoting (I hope!). Anyway...

This past weekend I got my brakes fixed, and found out my calipur was shot in the back so it cost me almost 300 bucks out of pocket to fix. That is the direct reason why I had no thanksgiving dinner because I hadn't even bought groceries yet and had to fix it. Ugh. So...I bought a loaf of bread and some ramen. I just keep telling myself it's only 4 more days until payday....

I'm sticking right around 260 and looking for some inspiration here peeps. I need to get back on the bandwagon (for good dammit) and I don't want to be all "New Years resolution" type person either. Nice thing is though with the lack of thanksgiving big get together I didn't gain any unnecessary weight from it rofl! Now Christmas on the other hand....>.>

Anyway Until next time, it's time to help D finish up his homework.

Toodles!

Issues

2010-10-08T20:27:00.000-06:00

Says it all really. Lots of issues this week.

I've been trying to find a doctor in the area, and I've realized just how hard it is to find a new doctor. How do you know if someone's decent? And the fact that I have absolutely NO clue what's "nearby" in downtown Phoenix is kind of killin' me when it comes to finding a nearby doctor. Joy.

I worked this week on getting some stuff switched over to the new place. I had to get our internet switched so that it'd be "on" for when we move in, ready for us to get connected. Regardless if my computer's hooked up, I still need internet access for work, so had to be ready by the time we move in. Got that all arranged today on my drive home from work. Made the drive home go much quicker that's for sure. Now it's just a matter of getting some stuff ready to go, I need to get some packing tape, and a few things that I know I'm going to need, like a rolling laundry basket. I have a laundry basket I can use in the home, but since I have on site laundry and it's not too far away rollng laundry would be nice, especially for those times when you have more than one basket of laundry to do :)

Weight loss is sucking. I don't even want to look at the scale. I have a new office-mate that started on Monday. She's really nice, just having a baby, and is breast feeding so she pumps pretty regularly and that's fine, no big deal we're both women I can handle it. She's really cool about it, asks if it's ok, though lately she's been asking if I had anywhere to go so that way I'm not like doing the potty dance for the 15 minutes. No big deal. But we both like to eat, and we're both overweight and so it's kinda ugh. We ate out two times this week and I'm trying to avoid it! lol. But she said we could always go for a walk at lunch time, that'd be nice to have a walking buddy if it works out alright. We get along, so that's nice. Plus she's real big on decorating, which is awesome since we're kind of gonna be locked into this halloween decorating thing. See, I was going to decorate so I got a couple of small decorations to hold me over until I got paid. But then the office lady next to me, yeah she totally decorated the hell out of her office. And oh it was on like donkey kong! It'll be fun to get some decorations within a budget of less than 30 bucks total. Dollar store is my friend /nod nod lol.

So I'm hoping to lose some, or at least not gain. I'm sure the actual move itself will help in that department. That and being able to eat a "real meal" at lunch time because I won't have to worry about it getting soggy on the way to work will be nice.

I need to work out more, eat less and get off the damn sugar kick I've been on lately. /sigh I hate being fat. >.<

Until next time.

Finally! An end to the Madness!!!

2010-10-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

Ok, so if you've been reading at all since I came back to the blogging world, you know about my current living arrangement situation. I'm currently living with my mother who, bless her heart, tries her best to make us feel welcome, but you know how it is...once you've lived on your own, it's hard to go back and live in a parents house again. *Especially* if you've got a significant other that isn't used to/doesn't understand etc how the parent is. D tries, he really does, but there's 5 people living in a 3 bedroom, two of which are teen/tween's, and it honestly just doesn't work.

Well starting October 22, that'll all change. We're moving to a new apartment on the 22nd of October, up by where I work. I'll no longer have to get up at the crack ass of dawn to go to work, I can sleep in until *gasp!* 7am. Or get up at 6am to work out before going to work. O...M....G! LIFE OF LUXURY! lol. The new place is about 2 or 3 miles from work, and it avoids all interstate driving. I leave the apartment complex, drive to the main street that runs nearby, drive straight south about 2 or 3 miles and pull into the work's parking lot. That's it! Best of all? It's only 599 a month ALL UTILITIES INCLUDED SCORE! lol. For damn near downtown Phoenix, I'll take it! We've visited the complex, the lady is really nice, she showed us around. The nearby area is pretty decent, the houses nearby all have lawns/rock areas that are maintained, there's a row of businesses in front of us and a mall down the street that all don't look too shabby. As neighborhoods go it's acceptable. Might be a little traffic noisy especially during the peak hours, but I don't mind traffic, I used to live right off greek row in college, which had a very busy street and it could be pretty noisy. It's near 3 different grocery stores, a mall, my work, and to top it all off, it's on the first floor which is just freaking awesome. I'm really stoked can you tell?

So I have to talk to my boss person and work something out for that week when it comes to my hours. I'm going to see if I can just work 4 10's and then have that Friday off to pack the truck, or maybe work 4 9's and take off by 11 provided I go in at 7 so I can pack the truck. Then Saturday will be the big move and Sunday will be the OMG I have way too much stuff and I'm too tired to unpack day in which I will attempt to unpack some of the important stuff and order out for the evening's meal followed by some much needed sleep by that point I'm sure.

D's stoked too, it'll be nice for us to have our own place. We'll be far enough from my mom that she won't just randomly pop in any time she wants, but close enough to help out if she needs it.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my mom, but like most parental units as you grow up, you can only take so much of them before you're ready for your own space again. My mom'll do anything for you, and that's great. But sometimes she gets a little over zealous. D and I have an understanding that we'd talked about before we moved out here that the first person to get a job would work, and the other would have to wait (or find a job really close by) because we only have one vehicle (which btw is on "hospice" and is ready to die soon). Well my mom's been really over zealous about it, especially with me coming home so tired about how he should be working blah blah blah and it's really frustrating to both of us. This last time she got started in on it I had to tell her to quit that she'd raised me to be independent and a bread winner so I wouldn't have to rely on a man to bring home all the bacon and that she can't have it both ways for me to be assertive and independent yet willing to sit at home while he worked. I just happened across my job first /shrug.

Anyway, so I'm excited, things are looking up and once we get settled and I get myself a treadmill for home that I HAVE ROOM FOR NOW!....I'll be on the downward trend! Until then, I'm endevoring to get up at least 3 days a week and work out on mom's at 5am, and just trying to watch what I eat so I don't gain much if any until we get settled.

Until next time.

Back on the treadmill...

2010-09-29T07:23:00.000-06:00

So this morning I woke up at 4:30, not very happy about it, but I decided to make the best of it. D had come to bed about 3:30 this morning, not completely unusual, and not what really woke me up enough to make me get out of bed. As soon as his head hit the pillow and he started falling asleep he must have gone into a nightmare because he started twitching and tossing and turning and despite my attempts to snap him out of it by awakening him at least 3 times, he continued to fall back into his dreams or whatever. And so I said SCREW IT and got up lol. I ate breakfast at 4:30 which consisted of oatmeal and a bottle of juice (100% no sugar added I might add!). Then at 5am I decided since I'm up I might as well hit the treadmill. So I did. I went for about 30 minutes, from 5:30 to 6. I would've gone longer but unfortunately I had to get off the treadmill to get ready for work. Gotta be out the door by 6:30 after all. And yes I realize it's 6:21 and I'm on here, but I've already had my shower, grabbed together a lunch and gotten dressed for work in those 15 minutes lol.

My conclusion is I'm going to try to get up at 4:30 every morning to get on the treadmill. I'm just too tired when I get home and I dislike working out at all in front of others, even my own family, and no one's up at 4:30. Gives me half an hour to wake up before I gotta hop on, I just need to have my workout clothes laid out the night before so I can find them quicker, that's what took me so long this morning :(

So one day this week of working out accomplished! I'm going to try for 3! ^.^

Busy busy busy and needing some ideas!

2010-09-27T06:49:00.001-06:00

So it's been damn near a month since I last posted. I've been so busy I honestly didn't realize it'd been that long. Let's recap a bit of what's been goin' on in my world lately shall we?

Weight loss front: I've not gained or lost really. I've maintained within a pound up or pound down from my 260 weight. I was 259 before I started working, and I'm at 261 as of this morning. Sure I'm not losing but as hectic as my life has been, it's acceptable right now. I've started walking again and swimming at night so I'm hoping to lose more here soon. Adjusting to my new job and such has kind of thrown me off my game but I'm back so life is good.

Job front: Love my job. I work for the state and that's awesome. The benefits are freaking amazing. I'm currently waiting for my medical card so I can get in to see a nutritionalist/weight loss specialist which, by the way is covered by my insurance as a "preventative" meaning I only pay a 10 dollar copay and they pay the rest. Can't complain there! I'm sure I can lose weight on my own, but if I can get professional advise to help me out along the way there's no harm in doing so. I don't want fad dieting, or anything, but ideas would be great.

Commuting sucks though. I'm eager to get my own place so I don't have to drive so flippin' far to work. Right now my average commute is about an hour. At least TO work. On the way home there's no telling how long it'll take. I am supposed to work 8 to 5 or 8 to 4:30 if I take a shorter lunch which would put me home between 5:30 and 6, but I seem to get home closer to 6 or 6:30 because of traffic. I've also had some late nights for training reasons mostly. I do get the perk of flexing out my overtime (well it's required but it's still a perk to me!) which means that I can leave early if I'm over a day previous or know I'll be over later that week. So for example, last monday I had to leave work at 3 to get home before 5 to get my car from the shop (a whole different kind of long story there). So I left at 3 and on Tuesday I knew I'd have to stay late and left on Tuesday at 5. Then Wed and Thurs I left at 5:30 and 5 respectively so on Friday I had to leave by 1:30 to make up the difference since I come in at 7:30 every morning to beat traffic.

My boss is very flexible, and she's already started teaching me things to help me get the experience I need to be able to fill her position when she retires (she's probably late 50's early 60's) as she knows I'm interested in moving up over time and that I have the background and education to go far she's said. I'm not going to complain.

So my days have basically consisted of waking up at 5am, getting my shower, getting dressed, grabbing breakfast and leaving for work by no later than 6:30. Dropping the kids off at school on my way because I drive right by their school and then getting to work around 7:30. I work from 7:30 until either 4 or 4:30, or later depending on if it's a late night or not, and then drive back home, eat dinner, relax and go to bed. I've started throwing in a late evening walk lately with my mom. Unfortunately though because of all the pain she's in it takes us almost an hour to walk what would normally take me 20 minutes to walk. I'm hoping she is able to work up to where I was before so I can get in some good long walks again. Maybe I'll just start getting on the treadmills in the morning before I shower and eat. I get up at 5 not because I need an hour and a half to get ready but because I like to wake up a little before I have to drive in the crazy traffic. So maybe by getting on the treadmill every morning I can wake up a little faster. Who knows, we'll see. It's a will power thing, and I'm a little low on the willpower this past month when it comes to getting in exercise, I'm just so tired!

Other weight loss info: I've signed up for a 3 mile walkathon for breast cancer for November. I can't remember the date, which I'm hoping will help me to get my ass off the damn chair and more walking in order to facilitate this said 3 mile walk. I don't have any donation information at this point, I'm still waiting for my finalized paperwork saying I'm golden to join, once I have that I'll post more info. I am also in need of a new weight loss goal for my 10%. I've left my 10% from my first weight loss journey as my first goal, and I'm not far from it, only about 4 pounds give or take. But I have no real goal. I'd originally wanted to go to this awesome japanese style massage parlor in Santa Fe but obviously that's no long a realistic goal. It's too far away now, not driving over 8 hours for a massage sorry! lol. I can't say Oh I'll go get a pedicure or something like that because frankly I do a pedicure every month. If I didn't my feet would be so cracked and such I wouldn't be able to walk. I tried to not do pedicures last time I was unemployed for a length of time and I was in so much pain, ugh. Needless to say my once a month pedicure has stayed...and i'm due for one soon now that I'm thinking about it...anyway...

So I'm wondering if anyone has ideas for a good reward. And this is a big thing for me, I've never lost 10% of anything but my savings account stash lol. I'd buy a new video game but that's a big counter productive to getting me to move more...lol. So anyway ideas welcome!

That's pretty much what's going on in a nutshell. Busy with work, looking for an apartment, trying to eat healthy and lose weight but at least I'm maintaining. I'll try to post more as I get a chance. I've not fallen off the face of the earth, I promise! :)

Until next time.

Some good news.

2010-09-03T09:42:00.000-06:00

So things are falling into place like they should for once in my freaking life. I nailed that job, and I didn't just nail it, I got slid into the higher pay grade. So I'm officially an employee for the state of Arizona. I start that on Tuesday at 8am. I get my own office and everything, I'm stoked. I also finally got my car back, and it's running good. I've also started looking for a place, right now it's a 45 minute or so drive to work so I need to try to cut down that travel time soon, plus I want my own place with D dammit. After being independent for so long I hate living at home.

Weight loss is fine, haven't really exercised this week though, I've just not gone overboard with eating. Been busy getting ready. I had to buy some new clothes for work and I've wearing a size 22 pant now, and a 2x shirt. Nice considering I was in a 26 pant and 4x shirt when I started. I'll take it. :)

So I hope things go well with ya'll. I may be a little quiet for a week or two while I get into the swing of things.

Until next time.

2010-08-31T10:47:00.000-06:00

It's been a long week already. Thursday of last week was exciting, I really nailed the state interview and by Friday they had called me back because the woman wanted me to come back to do a second interview so she can try to get me into a higher pay grade. I'm down for that, more money good! Saturday was spent pretty much all day finding an outfit for said second interview. Then Sunday I relaxed a little and honestly couldn't tell you where my day went.

Now Monday I had to get up early and go to Phoenix for that second interview. It was pretty quick and easy, some similar questions and she sent me on my way. Within an hour of me leaving that interview they'd already hit up two of my references. So I'm pretty sure I'm in like Flynn, and I'm not complaining.

Beware, below is a rant and has nothing to do with weight loss so you're welcome to skip it if you want...

Then Monday took a turn for the worst. My car has been in the shop since the end of July. What I thought was a leaking radiator turned out to be a possible busted head gasket or busted heads or both. That wasn't why Monday went down hill. I called the place on Thursday to make sure my car had been started on. They've had it for a couple of weeks once we found out what was wrong and had said they hadn't started it prior because another car they were working on that had a similar problem was not cooperating and they only had one mechanic. Well once I found out I did so well on that state job and would probably need a car asap I called to find out if they'd started on it yet because if not I was going to take it somewhere else to get it fixed so I'd have a car for my new job. So when I called on Thursday they said "Oh yeah we took the heads off and sent them in a couple of days ago". Ok, so I can't take my car, that's fine just try to get it done quickly ok? Then on Saturday another guy from the shop calls me to tell me that they hadn't started on the car yet. I was like what do you mean you haven't started, the guy Thursday told me the heads had been sent out already! Oh I was pissed. So I told him if you haven't started on it don't bother, I will be down to pick up my car today. So I get down there at about 2:30 after we get done shopping and their shop is closed. Sign says they're open until 5. Pissed off meter rising....

I see my car in plain sight, so I walk over to it and they've got it blocked in and it's unlocked with the key on the floor of the floorboard. Pissed meter rising even more. I do NOT like my car unlocked for any reason. I specifically told them that when I dropped my car off. I said unless it's in their garage locked up I did not want my car left unattended and unlocked. No there's nothing to really steal but I don't need to get my car back missing a radio or something. I digress...

So my mom and I walk over to my car, pop the hood, nothing is touched, heads aren't off nothing. We would've taken it right then if it hadn't been blocked in by an RV and another car. Convinently enough the car had no engine so moving that one was out of the question and the RV was locked. /rolls eyes. Fine, so we locked my car up and took the key so that (we thought) they couldn't try to fuck us by making it so we can't pick it up on Monday. The person that was there doing something else for a different company had said that they left early as they do on Saturdays, and then after we left he must have called the guy that runs the place and said we were there because he called me at about 6pm. Said when they don't "have anything going on" they go home early on Saturdays. And my thought was really, so you have nothing going on, when you COULD have been working on my car since I know they were also closed LAST Saturday. I was like well let me tell you something, I looked at my car and nothing was done. I want no one to touch it, I would've taken it right then but it was blocked in. I took the key I do not want you to work on it and I will be back on Monday to pick it up and get a refund of the 400 dollars I put down to work on this car and he was trying to say oh but we can have it done by Friday (after he originally told me that it takes at least a week and a half to get the heads back and yet they haven't been sent out?) and I said no, don't do it, I do not want you to work on it anymore. I left it at that and hung up.

So Monday comes around and I couldn't get out there at 8am when they opened because of my interview. Finished the interview and got out there at about 11:30 and the guy that was supposed to be working on my car, probably not any older than me, and not the guy I'd originally talked to over the phone tells me oh I can give you the car back but I'm not giving you a full refund. I was like well we didn't expect a full refund because our agreement was 30 bucks to find out what was wrong with it and he smirked and was like well I sent the heads off so you will have to pay for that too. I was like WHAT?! Omg I was so pissed! I said show me my car, now. So he takes me out back and pops the hood and low and behold my engine is completely torn apart. I was like why the fuck did you take the heads off. I specifically said DO NOT WORK ON IT. He had already been getting rude with us and got all pissy and said I'm not going to argue with you, tow your fucking car out of here for all I care but you're getting no money back and your heads you'll have to pick up later. He lied straight to my face and tried to say it was like that before he left on Saturday and stuck to that story even after I said he was lying because we were out here after he'd left on Saturday and it was NOT like that. I said I wanted to speak to Dennis which was the guy I always talked to on the phone and he dials a number continuing to say he's not going to fucking argue with us and then practically throws the phone at me. The person on the line was not Dennis, it was the actual owner, who knew nothing about my car because he'd been out of the office with his dad having a stroke. He said the guy (who by now had walked away) had called him and said he was going in on Sunday to do a little work on the car. It took every ounce of energy I had to not just explode at this guy, seriously. I told him about how rude this punk kid was to the customers, about how I'd been lied to at least twice this week alone, and now I can't have my car taken somewhere else to get it worked on because it's all torn apart. I told him I had a job coming up that required my car and it'd already been sitting here for over a month with no progress.

In the end the owner told me he'd call the machine shop and put a rush on my heads to have them done by Tuesday and that he personally would come down to the shop and fix my car up on Wednesday provided the heads were good. If the heads aren't good it may take an extra day to get the new engine for my car to put that in for me. I said well I don't really have a choice in this matter because it's not like I can just tow my car off but that I, under no uncertain terms do not want that punk kid to touch my car at all. I don't even want him to get in it to move it. Nothing. He also said he'd do it for pennies on the dollar instead of charging me as much as it was supposed to be.

Have I mentioned I hate mechanics? >.>

Anyway, so weight loss is good, car not so much. Here's to hoping I get this job!

Until next time.

Well, lookie there.

2010-08-26T21:27:00.000-06:00

It's been 1 month exactly since I made the commitment to lose weight (again) and I've worked hard this month. Maybe not as hard as I could have, but I've still exercised way more this month than I ever have in the past. I've ate better this month than I have in the past. And I've managed my stress (which if you've read my posts lately is considerable) outside of eating.

And the scale shows it...for once :P

I weighed in today at 260.2. This is a new low for me even when I started the first time I never got to 260.2. I got down to like 262ish but never this low. So I'm glad. Scale teases me by not letting me be under 260 but that's ok, I'll take the 10.4 pound loss and run with it. That's an average of 2.6 pounds per week. Not bad, a little over the "1 to 2 pounds" they say you should lose per week, but it just means I'm doing it the way I should.

I got in a good walk last night. I got up early this morning and got going to my interview which, by the way went freaking awesome. I had a panel interview with 3 people, and I think it went really well. The lady told me as we were leaving that they would "defientally be in touch". So I'm going to let my hopes climb at least a little that it will mean they're interested and want me to join their team. ^.^ Hopefully in the next couple of weeks (you know how state can be) I'll be posting I have a new full time job XD

I feel good, really. I've lost quite a bit of weight this month, and I had a huge NSV today when I put my outfit on today to interview in. I bought it earlier this year for another interview, it's a nice pair of pants, shirt and a jacket and when I bought it it fit, but it wasn't exactly the most comfortable. But today I put it all on and wow, talk about a huge difference. The jacket fit much better today than it did last time, and the shirt wasn't continually feeling like it was bunching up around my rolls, and the pants I could zip, button and snap without feeling like I was running out of air holding my gut in.

Was a nice change that's for sure.

But for now, I'm going to get dinner done so I can eat, I'm starvin' over here, been a very long day.

Until next time!

Tomorrow's the day!

2010-08-25T22:41:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is a big day for me. For many reasons!

1) It's my first weigh in day since last month. I get to see how much I've lost (I hope!).

2) I have a job interview for a state position tomorrow! This could be awesome if I get the position. State benefits? Sign me up!

3) I get to test how far I've come in my walking. When I began all this it KILLED me to walk down to Shell and back which is about 3.5 miles one way, so about 7 miles total. Walked it in about 2 hours. We're going to get up early and walk that same route again to see if I still feel like I'm keeling over after. I can't say I've been so excited about exercise since I was a kid >.>

Check in tomorrow to see how I weighed in, and how the walk went XD

Until tomorrow!

The 26th approaches...!

2010-08-21T14:17:00.000-06:00

So I just realized what today actually was. Besides being a Saturday (win!) and my cousin's birthday bash tonight (win for her, not quite so much for me), it's also the 21st! That means in 5 days I get to see how much my effort (somewhat lacking) has helped in my weight loss.

I know I've lost. My clothing fits a little looser, my ring is starting to really twirl on my finger which only happens when I've lost a significant amount of weight. I don't eat near as much or get as hungry randomly thoughout the day, etc. I also know my walks (albeit a bit lacking) have gotten a little faster and farther since I started this a month ago. I have also learned to say NO (and in some cases HELL NO) to foods or eating until I'm stuffed and so forth.

I just wonder how much I have lost.

As I posted earlier, my exercising has been a bit of hit and miss the last week or two. This week I walked two days during my "official exercising week" time period. We started walking late at night (like 10 or 11pm) instead of real early in the morning. With all the stress going on walking in the morning was just stressing me out because I'm not a morning person. I was having a hard time getting up and going for a walk, and walking at night helps to relieve the tension, D and I can just walk and talk (well he talks, I struggle to walk and talk which is sign of a good work out for me lol).

The home front has quieted a little. I had a long talk with my mom and laid out some stuff that was bothering us. She doesn't think of me as an adult, the whole only child don't want to think of them grown up syndrom or something. But she'll do the same to D and me that she does to the kids (which I also talked to her about) which is just knocking and then immediately walking in. Drives me nuts. I have nothing to hide, but I do enjoy my privacy. D is a very private person when it comes to showing any affection. That's not to say I won't get a quick peck on the cheek or something if we're near family but he's not the type to hold hands, or put his arm around you or something while we're in public. So my affection meter has been really low from him because mom always manages to walk in when we're laying in bed talking (there's really no room in this room for much else than the bed) and it's really frustrating. So we talked for a long time, mom and I, and things seem to have quieted down a little. At least for now.

I've also had an interesting thing happen Friday. I'd applied for job after job out here, many months before I even moved. Some of which involved state positions. I got a letter in the mail on Friday that had gone to my previous address and took forever to get to me, but it's a job interview offer for a state position working with individuals with developmental disabilities here in Arizona. Of course, by the time I got the letter, the deadline set was within a few days. So I had to quickly fill out the information and send it in. I tried calling to set up an interview (as the paper said to) but she wasn't there on Friday. So I'm really crossing my fingers that this job will pan out. I'm working part time, but it's very temporary and I have no clue if I'll actually get a full time position with them. I've seen that of the 8 people working in the little area I'm working there, 6 of us are temps, and 4 of them have been there for over 3 months without being officially hired on. That's a little worrisome to me. Plus some of the crazy stuff they have going on there with their AR deparment and stuff raises an eyebrow. But it's a job, and it pays ok so I do it to have at least a little income. But to land a state job would be nice.

Bah it's time for me to pack up and get going. Got a little girl's birthday bash to get going. Hope everyone has a good one today

Until next time.

Up and Down couple of weeks.

2010-08-18T11:13:00.000-06:00

And no, I'm not talking about my weight. I still have not been on a scale but I don't feel I have gained any weight or anything. I'm talking about my exercise for the past week and a half or so. I started off strong last week like I said I would. I walked Monday and Tuesday, but then Wednesday and Thursday my legs were aching so bad not because I was doing anything different but because I was just walking too much I think. I don't mean the aching you get when you've walked too long, or done squats for 30 minutes straight. This was a different sort of aching. They ached so bad I couldn't hardly sleep. Like a deep muscle ache I guess. So I took a couple of days off to rest them and on Friday I hit the treadmill and walked for about half the time I usually do.

Fast forward to this week and I haven't walked a single day yet. I've been rather stressed this past week and a half. Not job related at all, in fact, I enjoy my job, I feel like I actually get shit accomplished there. No, my stress stems from my home life.

My mom is sick. She's been confirmed to have Bone Cancer. They're trying to now decide is it able to be treated or is she just SOL like my father was in 2006 and if so, how long does she have roughly. The issue she had in IL where we found her not breathing and unresponsive (and despite what she says I swear to god she had no pulse) was a result of the new medication they put her on because of the possibility of having Bone Cancer to try to help with the pain. Bone cancer is very very painful, it makes your entire body hurt, she can barely walk, everything just hurts. So, for obvious reasons, her temper fuse is extremely short.

Now. I have 2 cousins that are going to be 13 and 12 in the next 3 weeks. They're tweens. Hell they're acting like teenagers anyway. And you know how teenagers can be. They can be mean, they can be spiteful, and they're very ungrateful for what they're given. These teenagers that I love to hate sometimes, don't know about my mom's condition. They just know that she's sick, and we chalked it up to her fibromialsia which is something they know she has getting worse. However, they're onto the fact that something else is up. My mom doesn't want to worry them since my dad died so quickly from cancer. The older of the two asked me a couple of days ago if my mom is sick like my dad was. It was so freaking hard to tell her it was the fibromialsia. So that's one stressor for me. I want these kids to know what's going on but my mom won't let me tell them. They, of course, don't get it and they're all pissed off all the time because my mom snaps at them constantly. You can imagine the yelling matches and stuff.

Luckily my job has me working from 2pm to 7pm. So basically I'm gone by the time the kids get home from school and by the time I get home it's almost bed time for them. I miss being around them but I don't miss the drama. But when I get in the car from being picked up from work, D's always got some sort of stuff to bitch about with the kids and my mom. He loves the kids to death but he thinks my mom's way too hard on them, and honestly I feel the same way but we feel like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place with no where to go. We're stuck in one little tiny room in the house, any time we go outta that room with our stuff, it's given back to us within an hour of leaving it out in the living room which drives me bonkers. Feels like we're always being told to go back to our cage or something. My mom is like a Nazi with bed times and going out and stuff, and she wasn't like that before. These kids still have to be in bed by 8, and when I was their age I was staying up until 9 because I always watched Star Trek. Then by the time I was in HS I was up until 10 or 11 every night, sometimes later if I had lots of homework.

But I digress.

My problem is I feel like we're constantly stuck in stress land with no where to go to unwind. You'd think that a good walk would destress me but it doesn't. I feel more stressed because I haven't walked because I feel like I'm failing when it comes to trying to lose weight but fuck me it's hot outside during the day. Usually in the evenings it's still too hot. Or last night I wanted to go for a walk but once I got home I was told I had to stay home because I needed to be there in case the AC guys came. Our motor for the AC blower went out late in the afternoon.

I'm doing fine on eating, and that alone should help me continue to lose albeit at a slower rate than I would if exercising too. As stressed as I am if I find myself looking around for something to eat I just remind myself that it's emotional eating and walk away. I stick to my three meals a day and have fruit while at work. That's all I allow myself. When I do eat some "non healthy" food, like yesterday when I had a brat and some sour cream and onion chips for the first time in a long time, I measure everything out and stick to ONE serving. Last night we had Subway since we didn't want to heat up the already hot house even more by cooking. I had a 6 inch oven roasted chicken breast sandwich with lettuce, tomato, a small amount of black olives, spinach, and red onion with one light swipe of light mayo and a little salt and pepper. Saved the other 6 inch portion of it for lunch today. I also shared half a bag of cheddar flavored sun chips. I was pretty full after that dinner.

Now I just need to get my fat ass motivated again to walk some more...ugh

Until next time...

A review of my accomplishments and a look ahead...

2010-08-09T00:37:00.000-06:00

So, it's Sunday! End of the week for me, new week starts tomorrow both at work, at home, and on the weight loss front. I figured I'd take the time, then, to review my accomplishments and look to next week at what I expect to do.

First of all, I got up every day this week, Monday through Friday and walked. Some days were lighter than others but the fact remains that I exercised 5 times this week! That was my goal and for the first time in a long time I finally met it. So I'm really proud of myself :)

I found my "perfect walk" pattern in the area. I also used the car to figure out roughly how long of a walk it is. It's about 2 miles. That's pretty damn good to be walking every morning which is what I'm going to be doing ^.^ Right now it takes me almost an hour to walk that far. Kind of slow, but my plan is to walk it faster within a month and then I'll look into expanding my walking area.

I have stayed off the scale since the 26th of July. No peeking for me, not bad for a girl that usually weighs every day.

I found and purchased some supplies for my weight loss. I had no real shorts or anything to walk in, just a couple of pairs of jean shorts and I was using my normal shirts thus running out of anything to wear rather quickly. So I bought a few pairs of cloth shorts (size 20 mind you! I wore 26 or 24's when I started all this. Granted, they are the stretchy cloth type but still!) and a headband to keep sweat out of my eyes so I can stop wearing a baseball cap. Now I can walk in my new cloth shorts and a tank top. Don't like it don't look is my motto.

I have stayed relatively on plan for eating. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed eating out now and again but I've done so in such moderation my mother even wondered who I was and what I did with her daughter. For example, D had a hankering for Taco Bell. I had 2 hard shell tacos, that's it. That's coming from someone that could easily eat 6 to 8 of those things. Similarly when D wanted Wendy's (he's having a bad week from nightmares, so I'm not saying much about his eating out), I passed on eating there and ate chicken at home with some veggies instead. Friday we got home real late, and stopped at Jack in the box, I ate half my teriyaki bowl and saved the rest for later, warming up some veggies to go with it. All the other nights of the week we've ate at home and I've been eating whatever we make in moderation then too.

Finally I have completely given up caffinated beverages. I've had one or two sprites this week but that's it.

So let's now look at the week ahead for what I want to accomplish.

I want to walk my perfect walk route all 5 days this week. It'll be hard, my route is not easy for me. It's all flat yes, but 2 miles is a long walk for me. I will push myself to walk it all 5 days.

I want to continue to not drink caffine. I've done good so far, but after a couple of weeks you end up with a craving, yeah that's the one i want to avoid...

I want to eat at home more. It's hard for dinner, for me, to eat at home because I'm just getting home about 7:30 or 8pm and I'm usually really hungry and anything sounds good. So I need to eat dinner at home more, even if I have to make it early in the day and warm it up when I get home. I'd like to eat dinner at home Monday through Friday at least 3 times this week. Weekends I don't count as part of my "goal week". Don't get me wrong, I don't go gung-ho crazy eat whatever I want. But those are my relax and rejuv days. So if we do go out because we decided to go to dinner and a movie? good! lol.

Anyway that's that, I'm going to skeedadle outta here.

Until next time.

Ugh mornings kick my...

2010-08-05T10:11:00.000-06:00

I dislike mornings. I really do. I am not a morning person in the least. However, I'm happy to say that I have been 100% successful in getting my fat ass out of bed every morning this week by no later than 6:15 and getting out there walking as soon as I'm dressed.

In fact, this morning, I walked down to Broadway and around back to my house. That's quite a walk. Broadway happens to be halfway between here and Shell, which, if you remember, I posted last week I walked to and it totally kicked my rear. So I'm working up to being able to walk there this coming end of the month to assess how much better I am getting fitness wise.

See, this is what I'm doing. Last week was a total bust. I started off strong but ended up sicker than a dog for reasons beyond my control that had nothing to do with my weight loss. It happens. I accepted the fact that it royally screwed the pooch for me to start gungho like I wanted to. The first day was just a get up and get moving day. The second day D pushed me really hard to see how far was borderline too much for me. We decided that we'd walk to Shell, which is quite a ways, a good 3 miles away one way. Needless to say I was a puddle by the time I got home. Yes, I made it but fuck if I wasn't dying by the end of my walk. That afternoon my fever started, so I couldn't really walk anymore that week. I did get in a couple of walks over the weekend, but that was out of necessity not necessarily because I wanted to. Weekends are my "rest time" where if I go for a walk, fine, if not, that's fine. I usually end up with exercise anyway because I do housework, yard work, pool time, so on and so forth all throughout the weekend. This weekend, for example, we plan on going to the nearby waterpark. So I'm sure I'll get some exercise there too. If I take a day off during the week for some reason, I may pick up a day on the weekend, but I haven't decided yet.

This week I've been working on finding that "perfect" walk path to take that is enough to make me feel it, but not so much that I am dying by the time I get home. I started off doing 2 blocks Monday, moved it to two laps of 2 blocks around my house Tuesday, was going to try to do more on Wednesday but I had to take my car in to get checked, so I couldn't ended up just doing 2 blocks twice like Tuesday. Then today I walked to Broadway, around and then back down to our house and that was as perfect as it gets. By the time I got home I was sweating, breathing heavier than normal, and my legs felt quite a bit like jello. So I'll do it again tomorrow to finish out the week and do it for the next week or two or three until I feel like I'm adjusting to it then add a streetlight to my walk which would be basically the length to shell and back. Out here there's lots of side streets that I refer to as "blocks" and then major intersections that have lights which are the "light blocks". Broadway and around to our house again is a "light block". It in corporates like 6 or 7 of the smaller blocks.

So there's my plan, and hopefully by the 26th I'll have lost some weight, and on the 27th I'll be able to do my own little physical assessment and see I'm doing better overall. :)

Until next time!

Good morning!

2010-08-03T08:30:00.000-06:00

So I'm back from my morning walk. I walked by myself today, D started having a huge leg spasm at some point yesterday and so his leg is really sore. I decided to give him the day off. Myself, I had a leg cramp yesterday right when I woke up, you know the kind where your whole leg tries to curl up on itself and hurts SO bad? Yeah that's the kind. So needless to say I had a banana yesterday and this morning, potassium might be low. Ain't anymore! lol. I walked anyway yesterday, even though the leg was a little sore, seemed to help. It wasn't hurting the rest of the day but then this morning ugh my leg hurt! Regardless, I got up and did my walk this morning. I walked around our block twice, took a little over half an hour. I also shocked the pool and in about an hour I'm going to go back out and skim off the bugs (thanks to the kids that decided leaving the light on all night would be a good idea) and get in the pool for some swimming exercise.

I am sticking on plan. I've been up both days this week at 6am to do my exercise. I've also been eating well and not overeating or snacking on sweets etc. I eat cereal generally for breakfast, sometimes a half a bagel, other times a couple of packets of oatmeal. Lunch is generally large because I'm trying to get ready to work over the dinner hour so I need to eat a bigger lunch and smaller dinner. Then dinner is generally small. Yesterday I made mini pizza's with an English muffin, sauce, a little meat, cheese and some mushrooms. Wasn't bad at all. Tonight I think I am going to make some chicken, need to get some propane for the grill. Hard to grill chicken if your grill is out of propane rofl.

I hope everyone has a great day!

Until next time.

New week!

2010-08-02T10:59:00.000-06:00

So after being sick as a dog most of last week, a little bit of a crazy rollercoaster of a weekend, I'm back to my old self today. As I posted before, from Tuesday mid morning on I was sicker than a dog. I felt sick to my stomach, was running a fever, and so on. Funny thing is, despite the crazy long walk we did that morning, I didn't ever really feel sore. Probably because I slept through most of the week? lol.

On Thursday I had a total breakdown, was just bawling and even the little things set me off. No, it wasn't that "time of the month" or anything like that. I was just really upset because I'm still unemployed and my bank account has been dwindling down to next to nothing. I don't do unemployment well. Even knowing I have a "free" roof over my head and food on the table I feel bad for having to live off my mom yet again when I'm damn near 30 years old. Sucks. Especially when I was just worried that D would go nuts here and just go back to NM or something. Amazing what kind of dumbass things our brains come up with to upset us right? Anyway...that's over. Moving on.

But then on Friday I got a rather frantic phone call from the agency that I put an app in and even interviewed at a couple of places last month. One of the places I had interviewed for needed people to work some backlogged stuff and they wanted to know if I was interested. Sure, why not, lord knows I need money to replace some of this used up funds right? So I said sure, and went through all the steps to start working this week. I might start today, or it might be tomorrow, depends on if they get my drug test results back before I'm supposed to be to work at 2pm. Hours aren't great, 2pm to 7 or 8pm, but it pays well, 15 bucks an hour which is what I was making before. So 25 to 30 hours per week making more than I was working for 11 bucks an hour at that other place and I have a good chance of getting hired on permanently. I'll take it yo! Part time is better than no time imo. I'll basically be making roughly the same amount I was working for that other position but it's much much closer (like 10 to 15 minute drive) and I don't have to work quite so many hours to get the same amount of money.

The great thing? Working these hours will leave me with plenty of time still to focus on my weight loss. This is really important to me. I have been working hard to get up and move every morning Monday through Friday, even if all we do is walk around the block (it's a big block, about a mile) it's still more than sitting around all day which is what I usually do. That coupled with better eating means I'll lose weight. But no updates on my weight loss for a month, I promised D I wouldn't step on the scale until the 26th. Not that I wouldn't touch it cuz I need to move it now and again in the bathroom but just wouldn't weight myself :P Must admit it feels more...free I guess, not feeling like OMG I FORGOT TO WEIGH or something stupid.

The only really bad thing that happened this week besides getting sick was that my car was SO dead I couldn't open it with the keylocker thing. No big deal right? Just open it with the key? Yeah I found out after owning the car for 6 years that my key works only in the ignition, doesn't work in the doors or trunk. So I had to call a lock smith to have him make me a new key, then I jumped the car and ran it for like 30 minutes. Shut it off, went back inside for a few hours, came back out and got in it and poof, again it's dead. Not quite as dead as the first time, but still wouldn't start. So I think my battery is dead or dying, probably the heat plus the fact that I haven't driven it in like 2 months straight lol. Joy more freaking car repair bills. This car so isn't worth it.../sigh...

Anyway, for now I'm off, I'm going to see if I can get my car fixed.

Until next time.

Day 2

2010-07-28T07:49:00.000-06:00

So yesterday was Day 2 of D and I working out together and losing weight together. We walked down to Shell and back. Took us almost 2 hours, it's that far away. It's about 3 miles there and then we took a different way home and that was probably closer to 4 miles home. So about 7 total miles round trip. I was, obviously, very sore when we got home, we went to the store to get food, and came home and I felt so sick it was rediculas. I thought it was just because I'd overdone it, but when I was laying on my bed trying to get myself together I started feeling really sick, ended up throwing up, took my temperature at my mother's insistance and oh joy running over 100 degrees.

So needless to say D won't let me do any exercising today because I am still running a fever. Oh well there's always tomorrow...

Until next time.

Day 1

2010-07-26T23:00:00.001-06:00

Ok, so day 1 was...well...a little bit of a flop. Not for lack of trying but because of what day it is. Today is D's birthday, so needless to say the day was filled with some exercise (more on my part than his), but also some uber good food (and fattening!). Regardless I got many of the things accomplished that I wanted to today, in the weight loss department...

I woke up at 5:45 and went for a walk about 6:15am. Yes, that early. >.> We walked around the block once. Just once. Basically trying to get ourselves used to getting up and exercising that early, seeing how much D's knee can take (it was hurt in the war), and such. I had a sensible breakfast of oatmeal. Next he went back to bed (Jerk! Think it was his birthday or something!) while I went outside and mowed the little lawn my mom has, picked up stuff to put it into the garbage to go out today, shredded some papers, and then got in the pool for about 2 hours.

This evening we went to a mexican restraunt to eat, had some damn good food and came home and go back in the pool for about 2 hours again. I'm tired.

Tomorrow we're going to the store, D and I, to get food for the house. So our "good" eating starts tomorrow. Joy right? :)

And tomorrow is work out day number 2, involving non-cardio work outs or so D says. O.o

Off to bed, early to rise tomorrow!

Until next time.

2010-07-24T23:19:00.000-06:00

So I'm still technically on vacation. We leave to go back to Arizona well...today I guess since it's after midnight here. It's been busy to say the least. I've had some really good times, a particularly shitty time and some ok times. I've also made two rather life altering decisions, so bare with me while I spell this all out for all of you :)

First the good times. My friend Cathy who I've known for 8 years now has come to hang with us oh...3 or 4 of the days we've been here with her baby Charli and her boyfriend (might as well be husband) John. Her four year old Charli is such a cutie, love her to death. She came over Monday evening and basically shot the shit with us, then again on Tuesday, then again on Wednesday and we went to the water park nearby on Thursday which by the way was another awesome time. No kids, just 4 adults running around a water park having a BLAST. Loved it! We swam, we got drunk, we had a good time wherever we were for the most part. I had some pizza and Candlelight Chicken and mmm food....

On the flip side I have had a particularly shitty moment while here. My mom is ill, I've known it now for a while but didn't realize really how ill until we moved. My mom is pretty good at hiding things as I found out Tuesday night. Without going into detail, let's just say it can be fatal and leave it at that. Regardless, that's not the shitty part. The shitty part was that my friend Cathy (who is a huge family friend if you haven't figured it out and sees my mom as if she was her own more than her own mom if you catch my drift), and John and me and Don were all out playing fooseball however you spell it in the garage where we could drink and be loud without bothering people who were going to be sleeping soon. My friend Cathy went inside to get something...oh, the Skipbo cards so we could all play cards and somehow probably corrupt it into some sort of drinking game knowing her. Anyway, suddenly she comes FLYING out into the garage to tell me that my mom is on the floor. I was like woah wtf! Her kid went flying (thankfully the menfolk caught her) when I moved her evidently to stand up (I don't remember but they say she was airborn for a second or two). We rushed into the kitchen where my mother was indeed on the floor, face down passed out. That's not like my mom at all. Scary thing was, we couldn't find a pulse and she wasn't breathing. I had to call 911, move her to her back and only right before the paramedics got there did she start breathing...mostly when we turned her over. They wanted me to do CPR but she started breathing before I had to get that far. Anyway, point being, she was in the hospital much of that night, and it shot our original plans to go to the Water Park right outta the water and for good reason. I'm trained as a medical professional but let me tell you I was still scared shitless, especially when I heard the words "She's not breathing and there's no pulse!" So yeah, I must say that was a shitty thing to happen, but I'm glad I was here when it happened I must say. I can't imagine being in AZ and her here and the complete helpless feeling I would've had. Yes I felt helpless but at least I was THERE you know?

Anyway, so good times, obviously one bad time. But onward to my life changing decisions.

D and I have been dating for just over 2 years. I've stood by him through thick and thin. I've handled his PTSD, his ranting, and so forth. He handles my craziness at times, my panic I have now and again and loves me regardless of my size. We announced to my family this past week our desire to get married. Well, he officially asked my mom permission (since my dad is no longer with us), and my aunt (who he knows is important to me) and then I got trounced on to set a date or something. No ring yet, but that takes money and considered we're both unemployed our first step is to get employed and a place and then start with all the wedding stuff.

Which brings me to my second life changing decision. I have been trying to lose weight, and D wants to lose weight as well. I told him I didn't want to be a fat woman in a wedding dress, and basically broke down and just bawled (it was Wednesday mind you I was already a bit emotional) when we were talking about what sort of wedding we want (OUTSIDE!! lol) and such. So since he's wanting to lose and I really not only want to but need to for health reasons we decided to not only go into it together but to do it the only way he knows how...military style. And I agreed.

Wait wait, before you go OMG DONT DO IT YOURE GOING TO REGRET IT !!!! 111 !!!....

He's got health issues as well as I do. His knee doesn't allow him huge amounts of exercise, so we have to start slow and build up. But he's going to get me going every morning except weekends, we're going to do our eating together and so forth. But he's not going to take no for an answer and this is something I think I will not only benefit from but need as well.

Until next time :)

Silence

2010-07-15T17:49:00.000-06:00

A quick note before I jet for 10 days. We're leaving to go to Illinois, I'm going to visit family, enjoy some friends from back east before I moved west, and go to a family wedding. My newest low is 265. I'm hoping to cut that down even farther by the time I come back.

It's been a crazy week. I've cleaned, I've put up a pool, I've swam in said pool today and got sunburned for it (stupid sun!), I've gone through part of a garage putting things away, getting rid of papers we don't need, and so on. I've been so busy! If you had told me when I lived in Los Alamos I'd be this active I would've laughed at you and said get real! Scary thing is, when my mom gets back from IL (she comes back the day after we do), I'll be even MORE active. I'm trying to get my mom to stay outta bed all damn day and go out and do. She's got some depression going on, losing my dad, losing her father 2 years later, being away from family, not having me around (until now), losing her job, it's taken its toll. So now that I'm out here I plan on being active, doing things outside even in the dead of heat. I've found 20 minutes outside doing something even in the heat is ok, so long as I do it in moderation, or take a dunk in the pool after :)

Anyway, so as the title says, this blog shall be quiet until I get back. So until I get back, have a good one :)

Another official weigh in come and gone...

2010-07-10T12:18:00.000-06:00

You know, when you're unemployed, all your days run together. It's like being on summer vacation as a kid. You wake up in the morning and have no real idea what day it is. You get up at whatever time you want, and go to bed at whatever time you want and do whatever you want for the most part in between. My days typically lately have involved getting up at around 8 or 9am, eating breakfast as soon as my feet hit the floor, then putzing around outside until about 10 when it gets just way too hot to be doing any work out there. I've been trying to get my mom's back yard to be a paradise instead of just a back yard. And by doing all this work in the back yard, I've lost weight. We'd hired a guy to get rid of all the weeds and stuff in the front yard and mow the law and what not, trim the bushes, you get the idea, back in like the middle/end of June. He was supposed to come back in 2 weeks to mow the lawn again etc. Well needless to say, he never showed up, my cousin called me for my number to give to him because he said he lost it, but he still hasn't called. So I took it upon myself to mow the little lawn (it's pathetically small really, took about 30 minutes tops), trim the edge, rake a little bit of weeds out of the way, and of course we're putting that pool up. No, it's still not up, it's just been so damn hot out there. We're at the leveling the ground part now though. Holes are all filled, we're just trying to get the ground to where it'll be level, which requires bags of sand, which I can't really lift myself, and even if I could get the sand into a wheel barrel, and shovel it out of there my leveling skills leave something to be desired. And while I may be willing to go out there in the dead heat of 110 degrees and work until a bag of sand is laid, take a break in the AC for 20 or 30 minutes rinse and repeat, D is not. So since I can't do it myself (unlike like the rocks, and the filling of the holes, and so on and so forth that I have done completely on my own), and I have to rely on him helping I'm at a stand still. Needless to say it's frustrated the fuck out of me. I was hoping to get the pool up, filled, treated and swim in it for like a week before the kids got home. I'll be lucky if it's up filled and treated before we leave at this rate /sigh.

Anyway, the point of my rambling is that I have been basically forgetting to weigh in. When I first started all this up again the beginning of June I was like...weighing myself daily. Then when I started that fail job that I quit 2 weeks later, I didn't weigh myself at all, and while I maintained I didn't lose. So I've been kind of seeing a pattern. When I weigh in every day I get frustrated and don't understand why if I'm working out and eating right my weight will go up one day and down the next and up the next and down the next after that! But when I don't weigh in at all I end up gaining little by little because I don't feel like I have the scale to have to report to, so I never see the result of my good or bad eating habits. If I weigh in weekly I seem to do better but then I obsess over "Has it been a week yet?!" because I want to see where I'm at.

So I've come to a conclusion. I will weigh when I feel like it. I had my official weigh ins on Fridays because that was when I started in June. But today is Saturday and yesterday I didn't weigh in and today I did. So today's my official day....for this week :P And today's weight is 266.2 Couldn't be happier. :)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some lights to hang around the back yard and some sand to see if I can struggle to put down in the pool area. My only concern is what am I going to do for exercise once this is all finished? lol.

Until next time.

Hey Hey!

2010-07-07T23:07:00.000-06:00

You know, it's amazing. I manage to make it through the Fourth without any major eating problems. In fact, I didn't even realize it WAS the fourth until my boyfriend's dad called for something else and was like, oh by the way happy 4th! I was like, oh, right, you too! lol. Know what I had for dinner on the 4th? Cottage Cheese (1/2 cup), steamed broccoli, and half a burger (lettuce, tomato, and cheese!). yep, that's it. Half. Why half? I forced myself to eat the good for me stuff first, and thus....I wasn't hungry for more than half. Rather than force myself to eat it. I threw it away. Yes, that's right, me! Throwing away food! What's gotten into me?!

I was always taught you clean your plate. Not saying my parents weren't the best parents ever (they really were, and my mom still is!), or that it's all their fault that I'm fat cuz let's face it, no one's forced me to gain even more weight as an adult...

But those teachings stick with you. I go to a restraunt, I feel like I have to eat all my food or someone will think I'm ungrateful. Or that their food sucked. Or whatever. I see there's leftovers from dinner and I feel like I need to eat them or they'll go to waste in the fridge. I go to an all you can eat buffet and I feel like if I don't eat a second plate full of food, I'm not getting my money's worth. These are all excuses I've made up over the years to convince myself the continued over eating was no big deal.

I've met a woman, she's about my mom's age, at the job I had for a whole 2 weeks (long story as to why I said had not have)...she's Hungarian. Funniest woman I've ever met. Anyway, she's bigger, like I am. We were talking one day about the cultural differences between Hungarian/European women and Americans. I told her I was raised to clean my plate, she told me they were raised to leave a bite of each food type to remember those who go without. Wow. What a concept. Leaving food? It got me thinking....why can't I leave food behind? What makes me thing I HAVE to eat everything put in front of me? regardless if I like it or not?

So I've started it. I left a bite of broccoli. A bite of cottage cheese and of course, half of my burger. It's been one month now. Almost to the day. I didn't realize it until today that it had been a month, so I hopped on the scale this morning just to see where I was, how much I accomplished in one month. This month I lost 9.8 pounds. This morning I weighed in at 267.2 pounds. That's an average of just over 2 pounds a week. Considering they say 1 to 2 pounds a week is what to shoot for, I'm not complaining. Considering I worked out a lot in the beginning of the month and then didn't really do a whole lot of "official" working out until this pool thing, I'm not complaining. I'm glad I lost the weight. It puts me down to within 7 pounds of where I was before I stopped last year. That means in another month I could be back down to the almost 250 mark where I was last year when I stopped because I couldn't seem to get over that hurdle.

You know what the change is for me? My mom. My mom is losing weight. My mom is trying hard to be more active, and I am living near her now. My mom is not extremely over weight, in fact I'd say she could probably lose about 20-30 pounds and be good. But my mom wants to do things with me that I honestly can't do right now.

I can't ride a horse.
I can't go for a long hike somewhere.
I can't go for walks as fast as she can.
I can't fit into her clothes like I could as a kid.
I can't go shopping somewhere unless it has a "big" section.

I'm tired of I can'ts. I want some I cans. I want to be able to ride a horse, go shopping with mom in some thrift store that's never heard of anything bigger than a large. I want to be able to go walking with her and my aunt and not feel like I'm bogging the whole walk down because I have to waddle to keep up. I want to be able to go for a long hike around some mountains. I want to be normal. I never have been, not for as long as I can remember, and the only way I can do all that stuff is to lose weight. So I have made my commitment. Now that I can talk the talk, it's time to continue to walk the walk. Wish me luck.

Until next time.

Done!

2010-07-05T10:26:00.000-06:00

No, not with weight loss, but the rocks! IF I HAVE TO MOVE ROCKS AGAIN IT'LL BE ALL TOO SOON! lol. I'm officially in the 260's. I've maintained under 270 for 3 days straight and still losing because of all the rock moving. I'm at 269.2 this morning. I was at 269.8 for a couple days and then today it dropped again.

So I'm sore, tired, and it's only 9:30 and I'm ready for bed. rofl.

Until next time!

Is it possible?

2010-07-03T23:43:00.000-06:00

Man. I'm sore. Not just sore, I'm SORE. We're about halfway done with the gravel. Sure, I cleared a lot yesterday, but today was really finishing the area I'd partially cleared the night before to move away gravel that I couldn't pick up with a shovel alone.

I saw a peek at the scale this morning, only barely cuz I had a hard time looking over my flab to see the scale cuz of how sore I was and it said 269. horray! Now to not have it go back up dammit would be nice lol.

So lots of more work out there done today. We pulled apart the trampoline that's blocking the other half of the area we have to clear in order to be able to clear that area of gravel. Got the pool and got it to our place, it's in the garage. But it got extremly hot really quickly today. Yes, I realize, summer, Phoenix area, hot! But it was too hot to work out there, at least for me, by like 8:30am. lol. I'm a pansy ass. Oh well, D's going to finish up the gravel tomorrow, or so he says :P He wants me to do nothing but provide moral support. I'm sure he can see how badly I'm hobbling around, I spent more time in bed today watching tv than I think I have in almost 6 months. Last time I watched this much tv I was laid up with a sciatic nerve episode. >.>

So I'm off to bed. Sleep's been sporadic. Yesterday after I worked on the yard for a while I thought I'd go to bed because I was really tired, but as soon as I laid down I couldn't really sleep, was too tired, or too sore or too something and couldn't sleep. I didn't fall asleep until about 2am and got back up at 4. Oh joy. I took a short nap this morning but that's about it, so I'm going to go to bed now. :)

Until next time!

Does this count?

2010-07-02T21:05:00.000-06:00

Does clearing gravel (think old school yard type gravel) from a 25 by 25 foot area in 90+ degree heat count as heavy exercise? rofl. This pool better be worth it. >.<

I've been clearing gravel all day, I got up at 7am, worked on it for about 3 hours, did some running around, went back out about 6pm and started back up again and it's now 8pm and I'm taking a much needed break. Summer reminds you of just how shitty being fat really is let me tell you. Hopefully this pool will help me change that. Mom's been wanting one for a while so we offered to get it set up before she gets home. I plan on using it to lose weight, the kids, of course, to play in and mom to lounge in. To each their own right? :)

But I just wonder, is it heavy exercise, moderate? lol. I want to be accurate in my fit day you see...

Until next time, provided I don't fall over from exaustion....

Hiiiiii there!

2010-06-29T19:40:00.000-06:00

Been a while eh? Been busy. New job kicking my ass and it's not even one I want to be at. Weight loss? Not happening, BUT I AM MAINTAINING! Don't see how, I barely eat all freaking day, I get home and I control my eating, but at least I'm not gaining, so I guess I'll take it. I'm between 270 and 271 pretty much steadily, usually more on the 270 side.

Yes, I'm eating enough calories, or at least I think I am. I eat some sort of oatmeal or bran cereal in the morning before work. I drive an hour to an hour and a half to work (for an 11 dollar an hour job ... /sigh), and then I get to work about 9am. I don't eat anything at work until lunch time, no munching nothing. I eat usually some sort of good for me food. I take leftovers from the night before such as spaghetti, left over home made teriyaki chicken with lots of veggies, lately it's been so hot here (pushing 115) I've been taking cottage cheese, yogurt, cheese stick for a snack if I do get famished, or once in a while half a sandwich if even that. I drink lots of water (talking all day dries you out), and when I get home I eat some sort of dinner made from scratch at home at least 4 out of 5 work days a week. Weekends I'm right on par with what my eating should be.

I dunno what I'm doing wrong. About the only thing I'm NOT doing is exercising. I'm just too tired. I leave the house about 7:30 and I get home anytime between 6:30 and 7pm. After I get home it's make dinner, bath time and then I'm just pooped. I usually fall asleep about 9pm and get back up to do it all again.

Any ideas? I'm fresh plum out of 'em....

The scale....it mocks me.

2010-06-19T05:26:00.000-06:00

Title says it all today folks. What am I doing up at 4am? Well, I didn't sleep overnight the night before. I was up from 6am on 6/17 until 5pm 6/18. Dunno why, wasn't tired. So of course at 1pm I start getting tired, I lay down and I'm almost asleep and what happens? The phone rings, and poof I'm up another 4 hours ugh. My mind finally gave up the "I don't wanna go to bed!" fight about 5pm and I slept until 4 this morning which is no biggie.

I ate all my calories yesterday. I refrained from snacking overnight, and I came in at around 1650 before going to bed at 5pm which I knew I wasn't going to be up until late in the evening so I worked hard to get in all my calories before bed so that I wouldn't have a day of like 1k calories or something equally stupid.

So I get up this morning, do my thing, hop on the scale and....

270.0

Yes, that's weight loss, .6 pounds for this week which means I've lost exactly 7 pounds since I started. That's not the part that mocks me. I'm happy I'm down and not up, not as happy that it's not more than .6 but I think my body is just evening out from the massive 6.4 pounds I lost last week, so it's kind of like losing 3.5 pounds both weeks.

No what the mocking part is the fact that it couldn't be 269.9. No that'd be too easy! lol.

I start a new job Monday. It's only seasonal, it pays crap and there's a bit of a commute and I don't really have much control over my hours it sounds like but it keeps me from having to use more of my savings and I can build some of it back up before the job ends but such is life. So I'm going to have to figure out some good lunches and a good exercise schedule. I always do really well losing weight when I have plenty of time to do my thing and then seem to falter when I go back to work. Here's to hoping that doesn't happen again.

So I'm off to eat my breakfast and do a little working out and then it's off to get a new pair or two of pants and a couple of pairs of nice shoes I can wear to work before Monday. My goal for this coming week is 269.9 dammit! lol

Until next time.

Does not compute!

2010-06-16T14:14:00.000-06:00

Ok so out of curiosity I stepped on the scale today. Hadn't been on it since Sunday when I weighed in at 270.6. I've been totally on for my eating, and have really tried to incorporate more veggies and fruits in to my diet! Since Sunday have worked out on the treadmill 3 times. First time was 45 minutes of walking, second time was 30 minutes of walking and 3 minutes of jogging. Last night I pushed myself pretty hard and had 30 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of jogging, 5 minutes was jogging straight, then I got really tired but I wanted to keep jogging so I would do 1 minute of jogging followed by 2 minutes of walking at a slight slower pace and rinse and repeat. I was sweating pretty good after that workout. Was tough but I'm not going to lose weight by just fucking around on the treadmill not really working out right?

Anyway, so the point of this post...

How does upping my working out frequency AND intensity equal losing piddly on the scale?! >.>

Only down .2. That's right POINT TWO

/sigh

Oh well, onto the treadmill again today after I get home from the store.

Until next time.

Some observations

2010-06-15T21:35:00.000-06:00

Have you ever noticed how HARD starting a "diet" or "lifestyle" change is? Our minds rebel!

But that looks so good...
But one nibble can't hurt...
I can always do better tomorrow...

Our stomach growls at the mention of a cookie, a piece of cake, that favorite fast food or restraunt item...It says "HEY FEED ME YOU NUB!!" constantly when we eat "normal portions".

But have you noticed that after a week or two, our bodies stop rebelling? It adjusts to the new "normal size" amount of food we're going to put in our stomachs? It's ok with us working out (though sometimes it still rebels when you find new muscles you didn't know you had".

I've been doing this seriously, as in this is it Amber you're done being fat for one week, 3 days, and some 14 hours give or take. Not much you say, right? To me, that's a huge amount of time. I'm one of those do it for a day and something goes wrong so I quit for 4 months kinda person when it comes to weight loss. Getting back on the "bandwagon" is difficult for me. This is evident in my stopping last year. Granted, I did well for the few months I did it, lost like 20 pounds, but got upset and frustrated when I hit that first plateau I guess you can call it. Wasn't really, I was still losing but I wasn't losing very fast and I think I just said fuck it to be frank. So what makes this attempt different from that attempt? My cooking.

If you'd told me two years ago I'd be losing weight by eating less and whatever I wanted, I'd have laughed at you and said you're on crack. I don't tell myself "NO YOU CANT HAVE THAT ITS FORBIDDEN FOOOOOOD!" But rather I indulge, and enjoy and savor the food and then move on. Let me give you an example. D sent me out to get him some lunch. Well sent me out is a strong way of saying he was hungry and I was going out anyway so I picked him up some lunch from KFC at his request. KFC, ironically is my FAVORITE fast food. I grew up on that shit. I'd eat that chicken every damn day if you let me and it was good for me. Anyway. So I was hungry by the time I got done running around getting stuff and pulled into the KFC. I wanted KFC. I CRAVED KFC! So what did I have? KFC!

Now wait wait, before you blow your gasket and tell me how bad that food is and how I completely blew my diet, let me finish :)

I got the meal for the boyfriend and one extra strip added to his meal and his sides I got the one he wanted and a side of mashed potatoes (no gravy!) for me. That's right, you heard me I had one chicken piece and one individual side of mashed. My craving was satisfied for a mere 250 calories and about 8g of fat and I added some fruit when I got home and some steamed broccoli to make it a full lunch. I can enjoy what I want within reason! I am able and do make choices in my life that positively or negatively affect me. Showing restraint in this sort of situation has built my confidence; however, not getting anything at all from KFC would have bogged my mind down as it complained about how badly it wanted to nibble some KFC! I also made sure the boyfriend knew not to leave left overs, or to throw them away and not save them for later if he was going to have left overs. No need for temptation right?

I digress though. I was going to talk about my cooking. I am currently, as I type this post, munching on my dinner. What's for dinner you ask? Chicken Fried Rice. Home made, and not really fried honestly. I about 3/4 a pound (two chicken breasts) of chicken cut up pretty small and sauteed mushrooms and minced garlic with it in 1 tbsp of olive oil then added 2/3 (one full serving according to the bag) of frozen peas and 3 oz (1 serving according to the bag) of pre-shredded carrots and about 1/4 cup of green onions cut up to the mix and sauteed that all together for a little bit, then when the rice got done mixed it all in, added a smidge of soy sauce (I really need to get the lower sodium kind though, I will next bottle I buy) and walla! Chinese food! I then weighed (ON MY NEW SCALE /NOD NOD) how much the entire batch weighed and then weighed (AGAIN!) about 1/4 of that and that's my dinner. My own customized chinese food without the frying it and it isn't half bad! Though...I think it needs a little more seasoning next time, maybe I'll add a little more garlic, something to mess with I suppose :)

THAT my friends is why this go around is different. Last time I spent a lot of time searching the grocery store for those perfect easy to make no fuss meals that were "good for me". Ha! They really don't exist. They're chauk full of salt my friends! I'm not like "OMG SALT NOT IN MY DIET" but I don't want an overabundance. So I make my own food. And yes, soy sauce does have salt, but I try to limit it, best I can :)

Have you ever noticed when you're being "good" on your diet you stick to the outer edges of the grocery store or within the frozen veggies section/bread aisle for "your food"?

I noticed it last night. Granted I walked down every damn aisle looking for an ingredient that still eludes me, but that's a story for another post. I went to Walmart last night in search of food for some recepies I saw online and also for my rice. First place I stopped, the fresh food section. Got the shredded carrots, the green onion, some fruit, some bananas (my new best friend!) and moved on to the frozen foods section where I picked up my peas and some premixed bags of stir fry veggies that are frozen that I can use when busy or don't feel like cooking but want to throw together some stir fry. They come with prepackaged sauce but I doubt I'll use it. Anyway...then I hit the meat section and got a TON of chicken on sale (I got 12 pounds of chicken for ~18 bucks) which I split into two breasts per ziplock bag and put them all in the freezer except the one pack I used today. And then got a little red meat because I want to make some beef and broccoli and such in the next week or so, and then I perused down the outer aisle as I picked up cheese, yogurt, eggs, milk and some 100% orange juice. The only "inner aisle" I hit was the soda aisle for my fix (I drink 2 per day now wut!) and the cereal aisle for some prepackaged instant oatmeal. The rest of the "inner aisle" shopping I did was for the boyfriend and his snack needs. As much as I'd love for him to lose weight with me, it's not his priority and me harping on him will do no good. So until he's ready, I can only support him not gaining as much weight as trying to cook as good of meals as possible. :)

So that's what I'm doing. Cooking at home more, making better for me with much more veggies in it meals, and trying to have some sort of portion control going on. It's kind of stressful, in a way. Especially if you have a home made recipe such as spaghetti and you're trying to figure out just how many calories DOES this little amount I have on my plate have in it? But I found that if I figure out all the calories individually as best I can and then add it all together, figure out how much the whole shabang weighs and figure out how many servings I think it should be and split it up that way I come out at least a little better off. And it gets easier over time.

I'm not really hungry or constantly thinking of food like I was the first few days. I don't care what anyone says, going from eating like 2500 to 3k worth of calories down to 1600 to 1800 calories makes your stomach go WTF! I'm exercising more. I'm actually having difficulty eating my full 1600 calories (GASP). But you know what, I'm satisfied after meals, I'm sleeping better when my knee and elbow isn't bothering me and overall I am getting into better shape and losing weight.

Here's to continued success!

Until next time.

I did it! cue eye of the tiger music

2010-06-14T18:52:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I'm so excited I had to post it, it probably sounds pathetic but I'm really psyched!

I JOGGED FOR THREE MINUTES!

That's right, my fat ass bounced on the treadmill at a measly 2.5 speed jogging for 3 full minutes!

*celebrate!*

This is also the second time I've been on the treadmill this week. Now tomorrow Imma do it again, you watch and see, this weight is going down!

Until next time!

And so it comes to this...

2010-06-14T17:34:00.000-06:00

Ok, first of all. I don't know how many people actually read my blog, if you do, great if not, that's fine. This is my weight loss journey, and I babble on here about anything and everything.

I didn't have it set to where I needed to moderate comments being left until I had several comments left by Kanji written names that were redirecting people to porn websites. So I started moderating it because I do not condone comments left like that. If you want to go to porn that's fine, but I am not going to allow such posts, kids may read these posts, including cousins of my own and that is not ok to me.

Now I'm getting spam commented to go to weight loss sights offering me the secrets to weight loss through Acai Berries and other crap.

Let me say this here and now:

IF YOU ARE JUST POSTING A COMMENT FOR THE ABOVE REASONS SHOVE OFF!

I get excited when I get a comment. Almost no one ever does comment, and that's fine. I know some people prefer to read not post. I'm also one of those. But if you're going to leave a comment don't waste my time by offering me the secrets to fast weight loss or some porn shop. I know the secrets to weight loss, I've just been too lazy all my damn life to do it! And if I want porn I'm sure my boyfriend's computer has some layin' around and if I asked we could watch it together though I prefer the real thing. >.>

So, that being said, if you read this to enjoy it, I thank you. Carry on with your day :)

Oh and one little tidbit of information I found exciting today. I inched every closer to that 270 mark. I'm down to 270.2 today XD SO CLOSE! :)

Until next time.

A little late in the posting, but an excellent weight loss week none the less.

2010-06-13T13:05:00.000-06:00

I got busy yesterday. I generally seem to when I need to relax the most, but that's life for you. Between grocery shopping, changing my airline tickets, doing some online job hunting, and getting the house picked up it was a bit busy. So I forgot, until well after noon to get on the scale. I don't weigh myself unless it's first thing in the morning and I haven't eaten or drank anything and I've done my business. Just the way I've always done it. And there are days when it keeps me from getting on the scale, if I'm too much in a hurry or something I won't. But anyway. I hopped on it this morning and I'm at (officially) 270.6. That's damn near 7 pounds this week. Huzzah!

I posted last time that my back had really been giving me some grief, but I think it's finally simmered down. Dunno what I did to it but it's decided to be a good back now lol. I can actually sit in this chair without feeling like I'm doing the ouchie dance back and forth trying to find a good position to sit in. So that means it's time to get moving again! So, I'm off to go exercise, toodaloo! :)

Until next time!

Interesting

2010-06-11T11:29:00.000-06:00

So I hadn't really hopped on a scale much in the past couple of days, since my last posting of what I weighed really. Life has been a little hectic, I've been keeping the house clean, driving all over the Eastern Phoenix Metro area looking for work, going to interviews, so on and so forth, and really watching what I eat. I've worked out 2 times this week (today will be the third) by walking on the treadmill, and I did a couple of stretching/weight lift days with 3 pound weights because my back has been really stiff. It's not too bad when walking around after my initial get out of bed, but man if I sit down for any extended period of time my back is like WTF ARE YOU DOING?! >.< So annoying.

Most of my interviews have involved being out and about most of the day, mostly because it's like a 20 minute drive there, a 30 to 40 minute interview and then I usually find a couple of places nearby before I go that I can go put an application in. So I'm generally gone from 10am to about 3pm each day, over lunch joy right? I try to combat the whole not able to eat lunch at lunch time problem by taking some snacks with me. A large banana, a stick of string cheese, maybe a little thing of yogurt, even some low fat crackers once. About 300 to 400 calories worth of snacks that are good for me and provide me with protein, fruit portions for the day nothing that will throw me off my weight loss. Yesterday I ran out of these good for me snacks and had an interview that took me over lunch and omg I was starving when I got home. Instead of having like 400 calories worth of food to munch on throughout the time period I had only a banana which I promptly scarfed at noon after my interview. So by the time I got home it was 3pm and my stomach hurt so bad I thought I was going to throw up. And I knew that the only stuff I had at home to eat was stuff that would take 20 or 30 minutes to cook so I stopped and got a Teriyaki Bowl from Jack in the Box. A bit heavy on the carbs side but calories and fat wise acceptable. So my new note to self is don't run out of the snack stuff! lol.

I digress. I saw a number today that I haven't seen in a good year or so. 270. Woah, say what? 270 you say? And this wasn't on my scale folks, this was on my mom's scale which told me I was at 277 when I started earlier this week. Huzzah! Yes, 7 pound loss seems a little extreme but honestly I can see it happening. Some of it is water weight I'm sure. The week prior to starting over my food intake was pretty much just fast food. From moving there's no time or real ability to cook food. You're so tired from packing boxes and loading the truck that someone says cooking and you say fuck you man! Then when you're on the road you don't exactly have the ability to pull over and cook a good for you meal, nor really pick and choose where you eat as you drive through a town. You find a place and you eat there. That's all there is to it. Then when I got here it was pretty much the same, we're unloading boxes and unloading the truck and getting things we need before my mom leaves and so on. So I can imagine that my salt intake for the week prior was through the roof causing me weight gain because of water retention.

Fast forward to this past week. I've worked out, I've stayed within 1600 to 1800 calories on all days but one, and I've drank a TON of water, more than I have in quite a long time. Still drinking soda but I only drink one or two cans per day and the rest of my fluid intake, especially while on the road has been water. This is anywhere from 2 to 4 bottles a day average. So I'm flushing all that salt out of my system, plus I'm working out and eating better. I gave myself a range of calories for a reason. I know some people are like 1700 and that's it! Well, I like a range better. Looking at my fit day, which is where I put all my information food wise in, every day except Saturday I have eaten anywhere from 1600 to 1700 naturally, generally right around 1650. That extra 1 to 200 calories I use as my "snack calories". You know, that time of night at like 8pm when you're roaming the cupboards looking for something because you have the munchies? I generally don't give in, but I have that choice without feeling depressed that I decided to have a cup of popcorn or a frozen treat. It's hot here. It's 110 during the day and like upper 80's lower 90's at night. Being overweight in such heat sucks balls but until I get my weight down, all I can do is suffer through it and who doesn't like a nice frozen treat? I found my favorite frozen treat, even better than Weight Watchers ice cream: Frozen fruit bars. 100% fruit in a frozen treat form. LOVE IT. It's ice cold, and very few calories, 80 in the strawberry ones. And fat free to boot. Much better choice than Dairy Queen Ice Cream. That's what my life is about right now, moving more and making better choices. I'm not going to deny myself something in my life just because I'm supposed to be losing weight. I'm not going to say "sorry chubby you're losing weight, no frozen treat for you!", I'm going to have a frozen treat, just choose one that's better for me than some 500 calorie blizzard.

So I must say, this week was a winner in the weight loss. Tomorrow is the official weigh in. Maybe I'll see a 269 instead of 270 eh? :) So...

Until next time!

2010-06-08T12:25:00.000-06:00

Just a quickie. I don't have much time, I'm running out the door to go to an interview in a few minutes. I just wanted to post that I am still doing well and for the most part on target with my eating. I've found that having just one brat doesn't work for me. I managed to somehow say I'm only going to eat one....and have two. Ugh, I went way over calories too, by about 300. But such is life, and I didn't let it detour me the following day. I did manage to find something on the menu of Jack in the Box that I found to be "acceptable" in fast food eating, their Teriyaki bowl isn't *too* bad, just full of salt. But compared to a burger and fries or something along those lines I'll take it. I'd planned on making food at home but realized after my interview yesterday that when I got home at 5pm I hadn't taken the hamburger or any chicken or really anything frozen out of the freezer. Sigh! So we went out to eat and I chose the lesser of the evils. One step at a time...

I keep forgetting to get on the scale before I eat, so my weight is probably off but I came in at 273.4 this morning. That was after breakfast (oatmeal and a banana!) and a full bottle of water so who knows. I'll endeavor to get on the scale BEFORE I eat tomorrow to hopefully have a real weight. >.< Or maybe I'll wait until Monday. I use Mondays as my traditional weigh in days because I'm less likely to go overboard on the weekends eating if I know that I have to weigh in on Monday mornings.

Anyway I'm off, until next time!

Day 2!

2010-06-06T17:04:00.000-06:00

Still going strong! I made it to the store today and got some good food. Only "splurge" purchase I made was some weight watchers ice cream. Sorry when it's 108 degrees outside sometimes you just NEED some cold ice cream so I may as well make it as not evil as possible right? Weight Watchers Ice Cream Bar > Large Dairy Queen Blizzard in the calories department. >.> I got some more breakfast stuff, another case of water, the makings of spaghetti, lasagna, Chicken Kabobs, as well as some fresh corn on the cob, fruit, veggies you name it! Some good food right der!

And for the second day in a row, I walked on the treadmill. I think it kicked my ass more today than yesterday but that's probably due to being so sore from yesterday. I'm sure each day will get easier. I just need to keep at it! Yesterday I came in at 1653 calories which isn't half bad. I do need to drink more water though. :) Today I'm at 1185 calories as of 4pm, so dinner may push me to 1700 or so. But that's fine. As long as I'm under 1800 I'm happy. I want to do a couple of weeks at 1600-1800 just to see how much weight I lose. I wasn't hungry yesterday...today I feel a little hungrier but I did 26 minutes at 2.5 speed instead of 20, and I was outside for a while this morning as well as this afternoon when I went to the store and walked around the store for almost 2 hours. So I think between reducing my intake and the increase in general movement this weekend I'm feeling more hungry. Or maybe I'm just thirsty and don't know the difference. We'll see. But regardless, my goal is below 1800, increase veggies and fruit intake and drink more water. I DID buy soda today but I've restricted myself to one can in the AM and one can at dinner time. The rest of the day I drink water, mostly because I don't want to get dehydrated from not being used to the heat here.

But anyway, I'm off to go watch a movie, I deserve some down time now that I've done so much working out today and walking around. Oh! I also found my scale today! I'll give you an update tomorrow!

Until next time!

Do you hear that?

2010-06-06T00:25:00.000-06:00

No? Neither do I! What do you mean, you ask? I mean, mom's gone with the kids and it's...quiet... LOVE IT! lol. Mom left yesterday late evening for the airport to go to IL so it's just me and D again. Nice and quiet. I mentioned mom had a treadmill, I started using it today. I told myself I wouldn't mess with it until mom left. I'm too much of a pansy ass. I don't like anyone, not even D watching me work out, or being awake when I do so. I guess it's the way I make my excuse to not do it. But regardless, yesterday I'd bought a mat for the floor cuz mom has tile flooring to do stretches on before walking on the treadmill as a warm up. I also bought some free weights but I'm going to take them back, mom has the same ones so no need for 2 pairs for now. I am on a budget afterall, no job kinda does that to you.

So this morning I woke up, drank a diet dew and hopped on the treadmill after stretching. 5 minutes at 1.5 as a warm up walk, 20 minutes at 2.5 and 5 minutes again at 1.5 to cool down. I'm telling you what, that kicked my ass from here to Australia! Not like omg I'm going to die, but I probably could have quit after 15 minutes at 2.5 but I wanted a flat 30 minute work out. Mom also has a stair stepper thing, I may try that too as something different, along with some weight lifting stuff.

So day 1. Fresh start, and a serious one at that. I was ready when I restarted posting but with some stuff that got thrown in my way I wasn't really able to put my heart into it. But now I have time (ain't that a joke, not like I have anything else to do atm!), and the want to lose some weight. Mom's going to be gone, I'm going to try to find a job, and exercise will do me good. I want, hopefully, to get down into the 250's by the time I go to IL (provided I can go), or by the time she gets back if I don't go to IL because of a new job. Shouldn't be completely undoable. Mom wanted me to try to get down to like 230 but I think that's unrealistic. That'd be like 20 pounds a month, it'd be nice, but I don't think it's realistic.

Anyway. So here's what happened today for me.

9am Awoke
9:40am: Breakfast (2 packages of maple and brown sugar oatmeal)
10 to 11am worked out. 30 minutes of treadmill with some good 10 to 15 minutes of stretching before and after.
11 to 12 played a new video game I bought yesterday real cheap. Enjoying it :)
12 to 3 cleaned house and lunch was in there somewhere. The house was clean when mom left, but not "clean" to my specs. I swept, mopped, did dishes from the night before's dinner, wiped down a bunch of stuff, vacuumed, really scrubbed down the bathrooms, and so on. My lunch consisted of a low fat frozen dinner I found tucked away in mom's freezer. Beef and Broccoli with rice. Wasn't half bad.
4 to 7 I continued my cleaning and about 5 or so I rearranged the bedroom we're staying in. (I did say I was busy all day today right?). I moved the bed, the desk, went out to the shed and got an old side table for next to the bed, put the 27 inch tv up on the desk so we can watch tv, hung up ALL the clothes, rearranged everything in the closet so it wasn't just thrown in there out of the way and so on. So much done!
7pm I realized what time it was and made dinner. We had well trimmed steak with some mashed potatoes, a little gravy (well, little for me, D had however much he wanted), and I had some more broccoli with mine.
And now it's 11:23pm and I'm tired.

I plan on tomorrow getting up and walking again, and umm...going shopping I guess. We have some food in the house, but not really. The only meat here is pork for some reason lol. So I need to get some chicken and some beef and such. Veggies, fruit as a snack and some low fat popcorn stuff. I love snacking. I also need more water (I'm drinking it like crazy!) and a case of soda for dinner meals would be nice.

So that's that. Not a bad day for my day 1. I still can't find my scale :( I'm still looking though! :)

Until next time.

Initial Move complete!

2010-05-31T08:45:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-05-26T07:42:00.002-06:00

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.

2010-05-24T21:50:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-23T17:56:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-05-17T10:54:00.002-06:00

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.....

2010-05-14T10:29:00.003-06:00

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!

2010-05-13T07:50:00.003-06:00

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?

2010-05-11T07:52:00.002-06:00

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.

2010-05-10T10:02:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-08T18:53:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-05-06T13:27:00.001-06:00

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

A revelation if you will.

2010-05-06T07:56:00.002-06:00

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

2010-05-05T14:06:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-05-04T07:59:00.004-06:00

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!

Victory!

2009-07-15T09:59:00.003-06:00

No, I haven't lost any more weight (though I did gain some and lose some again, see below), but I did have a huge huge non-scale victory this past week. I mentioned before that I was going to be flying to Illinois to pick my mom and the kids and her Uhaul up and drive them all cross country to Apache Junction, AZ so they could move there. I was really kind of apprehensive about the flying because I hate, detest and otherwise loathe flying as a large woman. Well, since I really hadn't lost much weight since my last weigh in (I've been hovering around 260 give or take a pound or two), I asked for a seatbelt extender as I got on. I had the seat next to the window and D had the middle seat and some lady who was the mom to the really really annoying child in seat directly behind me that kept kicking my chair and hitting his window with the empty water bottle he had. Well I sat down and tried to put my seatbelt on and IT FIT. Sure I had to have it as large as possible to make it fit, but it fit, and fit comfortably at that spot. I probably could've made it smaller but m'eh.

Then on the ride, we spent so much time in the truck, and I managed to go the whole way without feeling like I was taking up a ton of room in the truck, or squishing my cousin (accidently there were a couple of times when we squished her between us in playing).

Now, the road trip was a disaster diet wise. I gained about 5 pounds (was at 265 Monday). But today I'm back down to 261 from eating right again. Now I just need to start drinking more water. :) I still struggle with the 4 water bottles a day. Not because I'm drinking other things just I don't have enough time in the day! lol.

Anyway so I gotta end it here, gots me some work to do, just thought I'd do an update :)

Amber

Been busy!

2009-06-10T09:38:00.002-06:00

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've just been incredibly busy. Between work and school and social stuff I've just not really had much to talk about in here. I'm still trying to stick to my guns, and I'm having to knock of some stuff I thought I put behind me. I'm getting sick of water. Even if I put in like crystal light or something I'm just getting tired of water water water and nothing else. I don't like tea or coffee, bleh. I need to reevaluate where I'm at.

But beyond that I just need to start eating more fruit and veggies and less BS stuff that my body don't need, and start working out more. I know what I NEED to do, it's just getting my rebellious lazy ass to start doing it. Sounds easy but it's not.

Only a couple more weeks until I go to Illinois, I'm extremly excited. I miss my mom a lot and I get to see all my family again. I'm not used to being completely family-less. I grew up where my mother's ENTIRE side of the family lived in a 20 mile radius and she had 5 siblings and even THEIR kids pretty much all lived within a 30 minute drive. I'm the one oddball that moved far away. lol.

Anyway so that's about it for an update on my end.

Amber

Going home....again

2009-06-02T14:43:00.003-06:00

So, before I started this blog journey in January, I went home to Illinois for a funeral. My grandfather passed away the morning after Thanksgiving (so black friday had a double meeting in my family this past year), so my fat ass got woke up at 5am after a 2am nighter with some friends of mine to be told the news and to be told I needed to get said fat ass to Illinois pronto. So I did. I booked the next flight out of Albuqerque (at 6am the next morning mind you, my said friends I'd pulled the 2amer with weren't happy that I made them get up at 4:30 to drive my ass to the airport lol). I think it was then that I said FUCK IT I'M DONE! with being fat. I think it started gnawing on me then that I needed to lose weight, I just chose to not take action until January 9th. I had to get seatbelt extenders, on the flights, and the last flight that landed me home in ABQ I had to sit in a seat much to small for me and was completely uncomfortable despite the complete and utter lack of people on the plane.

So now I'm flying home again, albeit for better reasons. My mom is moving to Arizona and lucky me, my boyfriend and I get to drive her and the Uhaul. Honestly I'm actually looking forward to it, I"ll get to ride with D in the cab for most of it, and with my mom in the carwhen she needs a break from driving. I get the most information and fun out of D when he's driving because he's not focused on playing a video game for once :P But I digress. This said trip to Illinois involves every fat person's favorite time....a flight. So I'm hoping (I have 3 weeks) to lose a few pounds between now and then, and to see if I can manage to get through the flight without a belt extender. That would be heavenly. I hate having to ask for one. I really do. So maybe this trip looming ahead will get me out of the funk I've been in and get me into losing weight again since I'll want to impress all my family when I go back home, and be able to fit into some nice tank tops for the ride. I bought two and they fit but they're just a tad snug, tighter than I like to wear my shirts kthxbai!

As I posted earlier, I've stocked my kitchen with good for me stuff. I've been sticking to lean meats again, I'm going to be on a mission to make a food list and dinner menu for next week and buy and cook healthy good for me dinners again, and I need to figure out a good for me lunch. I bought some turkey lunch meat and had a sandwich for lunch with grapes today but it sure didn't seem to fill me up. So that's something to look at. But I left it at that. :)

Anyway so that's today's news reel. See ya back ... possibly tomorrow!

Amber

Nose back to the grindstone

2009-06-01T19:45:00.001-06:00

So. I posted earlier that I needed to get my head out of my ass and get serious about this losing weight goal of mine. I've gotten lax in the last couple of weeks as stress from school and laziness on the weekends became more and more common.

I was going to post a picture but my camera is being stupid. So I can't. But I was going to post a picture of my fridge. It's got several 1/2 cup sized containers that are full of fresh red grapes, a few canned fruit 1 cup cans (I like my fruit cold), and all sorts of things like that all lined up nice and neat on the top shelf. This will help me be able to quickly grab what I need, and keep D out of my shit (he loves to eat my stuff I need like Salsa and what not that I use to make lunches taste better). TOP SHELF IS OFF LIMITS TO PEOPLE WHO DONT WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT! lol.

Anyway, so that's that. I'm off!

Amber

Woo!

2009-06-01T09:33:00.002-06:00

Yeah, so not doing well on the WL front, basically I've been lazy and I'll admit it, we've been eating out more than eating in (bad me!). Mostly because I've just been too lazy and tired to go to the store and get food and make food and do dishes and clean up and etc etc etc.

Well no more!

Putting my foot down again, I've gained enough back (I'm at 262 atm) and I'm just not going there anymore. I'm going to be honest because if I'm not honest and pretend like everything is fine nothing will change and I'll gain all of it back and be miserable again.

But, I got my dishwasher on Saturday and it makes my life so much easier. I was able to make dinner yesterday and put the dishes in the dishwasher and wash a couple days worth of dishes and put them away and not have to devote all evening to it. It's a pain in the ass in a way because I have to have D get between the fridge and the dishwasher and run the dishes because I'm too big (the handle of the fridge gets in the way), but at least they get done. So now with that I should have NO excuse to not cook dinner at home considering I will always have clean dishes! That's usually what stops me from doing dinner in the first place. Who wants to wash their dishes just to cook? lol.

Anyway enough excuses. I got paid today. I totally fucked up my checking account over the Memorial Day weekend. I didn't realize I accidently charged the two plane tickets my mom wanted to my account instead of hers....700 dollars gone out of my account. Thankfully my mom will send me a check tomorrow when she gets home. I need food in my house yo! I hate being so low on money....I'm way way under my little 1k bubble that I can dip into if necessary, I think I have about 300 left >.< Stupid accidental charges.

So I accomplished a lot this weekend. I lost 3 pounds (I was at 265 at the start of last week which frustrated me), I cleaned my house everywhere except the bedroom (hard to clean when your boyfriend is sleeping in there right?) and I managed to work on some other minor projects i've been wanting to get done but just haven't had the time nor gumption to get it done. So I'm proud of myself. We also ate at home all weekend which is a first in a while. Now tonight I just need to go to the store and get some basic food supplies to last me a couple of days and put my check in the bank. Homework galore to do too. Gonna be a busy night!

Amber

A long weekend.

2009-05-26T10:14:00.002-06:00

You would think that a long weekend would mean more R&R for me....NOT! >.< I did get a little rest done on Friday. I worked on Friday for a little over an hour on some charting stuff that needed to get done, and then went home and basically relaxed. I really can't remember a lot of what I did Friday except that I did use my new EA Active. Saturday I got D to help me bring up the coffee table that Ken and Robin gave us a few weeks ago (shows you how often I use my back seat right?) so that I could have an empty car when I went to Albuquerque. I loaded my car with my laundry and off to Albuquerque I went with the intent of coming home Sunday.

Didn't happen.

I spent most of the afternoon Saturday with Ken and Robin and family at Chili's and doing some running around and such, setting Ken's computer back up so I could try a beta copy of Sims 3 (kinda neat) and then helping Robin pack a few things. Then on Sunday we went to Mike's house (another friend that lives in the area) for lunch (nachos, home made, not too bad I guess I tried to make my toppings be more of the veggies than the meat and cheese...) and were there from about 1pm till 9 or 10pm, drove back to Ken's house and I crashed there because my laundry wasn't done yet and so I couldn't just leave it there lol. Then Monday I helped them move a piano from inside the house to the garage so we could get some other stuff out (where it was positioned it basically blocked any large pieces from being moved from the bedrooms). Then I helped them clean out their garage of all the big stuff they were going to throw out and haul it to the dumpster they had delivered. Spent most of the day doing that until about 1 or 2pm then I decided it was best I be getting home considering I had a homework assignment to get done. Got home, did my homework, hauled some stuff upstairs from my car, think I fell asleep about midnight and got up this morning at 6:30.

Such a long long weekend and yet I got next to nothing I wanted to get accomplished done. :(

But, on the plus and very exciting side...I have a dishwasher! /cheer! Ken and Robin have one of those stand alone dish washers you can move around on wheels and I bought it off of them (since they won't need it) it's brand new. I hate doing dishes, especially in this apartment because there's only one sink so it's a pain to do the dishes. So I'm extremly excited to not have to do most of my dishes and it will make my life so much easier. I work long hours and after dinner I just don't feel like washing a load of dishes, so I'll rinse them off and they'll sit stacked in the sink for a day or two until I finally run out of dishes to use or something lol. It's awful I know but I'm just so tired after work and I have so much to do!

So this'll help. lol

Anyway back to work!

Amber

EA Active

2009-05-23T04:36:00.002-06:00

So, I forgot that I had preordered this "game" and it showed up on my doorstep this afternoon (well not forgot, but didn't realize it was on its way to being out for purchase. I popped it in tonight (just a little bit ago, yes I'm up late/early I know) and let me just say I'm pretty darn happy with it.

I've had the wii fit for a few months, and it's great and all (I enjoy the boxing) but my main complaint about it was that I had to stop inbetween each activity to select another, or to continue on with what I was doing (like more reps or something). So there was a lot of downtime because the trainer had to talk and there was no way to skip through it. So while I may have "worked out" for an hour, it was probably only 20 mins worth or 30 mins worth when it was all said and done.

With this one there's a 30 day challenge, it keeps track of how long you go, how many calories you burn (!) and it's continous. I may have to stop to pick up the bands, or put the nunchuck into the little holder on my leg, but that's about it. It gives you plenty of time to do it (stops between each activity) but it has a skip forward button to skip past tutorials so you can get started as soon as you have the equipment picked up.

My only real "complaint" is that because of how short I am (5'0) it sometimes doesn't pick up that my legs are bending for squats because the nunchuck won't quite go parallel enough. I was practically sitting on my heels doin' squats (could be a better workout anyway right? lol). And running is a bitch and it doesn't quite recognize that I'm running either. Something to work on I suppose. nice thing is the time on the running countdown continues irregardless so I don't have to struggle to get around the track if I'm not getting it to work right (for now until I figure it out).

All in all I'm happy with it, it had me sweating even on "low intensity" work outs. Though I wish I could preprogram my "days off" for the challenge because it'd be nice to have a "day off" tomorrow since I won't be home until late (going to Albuquerque). We shall see how it goes.

You can also use the wii board if you have it, or not if you don't. The Wii board just enhances some of the activities I guess. I'd recommend it for anyone who hates going to the gym (as I do right now due to my size) and/or wants to work out in the comfort of their home. It also comes with resistance bands, which is nice for arm curls and such. :)

Amber

Slight downward motion

2009-05-18T10:26:00.003-06:00

So I'm down a little, at 259 on the button. But that's 2 weeks worth, so...I'm beginning to think I've hit a plataue or however you spell it. I've been gaining and losing the same 2 or 3 pounds the past 2 or 3 weeks. Not for lack of trying mind you. I've been relatively OP every day. Especially during the week. I'll be down on Friday and then by Monday I'm back up again to within a pound of where I was.

But, on the other hand, I'm just trying to remember to relish in the NSV's. My clothes, despite not actually losing numbers off the scale, have been fitting more and more loose. I'm wearing, today, pants that I bought about a month ago when I was a similar weight that were really pretty tight. I mean, when I tried them on, I had on older underwear and my underwear was bunching (I hate that). I bought them anyway because I was also buying new underwear, figuring that would fix the issue. Come to find out, it really didn't. When i got home and tried them on to wear one day they fit but were tighter than I'd like to wear them. So I didn't. Now today I'm wearing those pants, and they fit perfectly fine. I bought 2 tanktops because summer is so close to being here, and they fit a little more snug than I'd like, but they work and they're a 22/24. The shirts I wear on a daily basis are a 24/26, so I've lost another shirt size. But yet, my weight remains the same.

Such is life! I'm happy with the feeling better. Though, this weekend I felt very very sick to my stomach all weekend and didn't feel much better this morning, it's not an everyday thing anymore.

I've also found a "new love" for a meal. I made some thin cut chicken tenders and lightly cooked them until it was just pink in the middle, then I poured a little teriyaki sauce on top and kept "basting" it until it was done. The turned out really tender and had a very good flavor. I made some white rice to go with it and had a cup of that and 3 tenders (they're thin and small) and was good to go. Really really good! In fact, I plan on making it again tonight, though this time I will hopefully remember to put the rice away and save it for later. I enjoy eating rice.

Anyway I need to get back to doing some work...there's not a lot to do at work work wise, but I have some homework I'd like to get started for the next class I start tomorrow. Quicker I get those assignments done, the quicker I can just relax. It's my last class before a 3 week off period that I'm giving myself. I've been going non-stop since January, time for a break!

Amber

The light at the end of the tunnel...

2009-05-12T15:29:00.002-06:00

No, my weight loss journey is NOT at an end (no matter how much I may wish). No, my whole having teeth worked on is coming to an end. When my father died, I stopped caring, and when I stopped caring, coupled with my fear of anything dentist related (yet I work for one go figure), I basically didn't see a dentist for a good 3 solid years, hadn't had my teeth cleaned in probably twice that. Needless to say the amount of fillings needed wasn't very pretty. I take good care of my teeth NOW but the year or so that I just didn't care enough to brush them more than I had to took its toll. I had about 12 cavities two of which turned into full crowns, and one an extracted tooth (which happened last Thursday).

Probably close to 4k worth of dental work and my lovely boss did it all for me for free. Thank god. Anyhoo...So I had my tooth extracted last Thursday, wasn't too bad I guess. Not much I could do about it, it was a combination of my own stupidity and the fact that the person that did my last filling didn't do it right. Both filligs she did ended up in either a crown or a lost tooth, what's that tell ya. My final procedure will be done in June with having a crown put on another tooth. I'm eager to get it done. I feel a lot better about myself these days. Like it's worth getting up in the morning, going to work and focusing on myself. It's not just weight loss related, yes it helps but some of it is just me turning a corner I guess.

I have a decent job that pays well enough. I have a loving boyfriend that loves me for who I am regardless of weight or looks, but me as a person (something I don't think I've ever had before). I'm almost finished with my master's degree (6 more classes woo!), and plan on pursuing a nursing liscense when I'm done me thinks. I'm losing weight (even if it's a little up and down right now), and basically I'm getting my life going again.

The last 3 years have really flown by for me. They were a dark time in which I was basically just putting one foot in front of the other trying to get through each day not caring what I did, ate, or if I even spent all day in front of a computer day in and day out.

Now I'm beginning again. Enjoying walking home because it's so nice outside, enjoying listening to music, watching movies, reading books, and doing cross stitch like I used to.

Life is good.

Amber

Weekend indulging

2009-05-11T08:13:00.002-06:00

I'm finding it harder and harder to stay on task when it comes to eating over the weekend. I need to get back into the routine of getting groceries on Friday so that we have groceries in the house for the weekend so I'm not tempted to just "go out to eat" at sonic or mcdonalds or something of the like. Granted, my food choices are better than they have been in the past, but I still don't like to eat out. It's like just inviting myself to start over with the eating out all the time or making bad choices and thus inviting myself to regain all that I have lost.

I need a routine in general but I never seem to want to deal with it. Part of it is laziness on the weekends, I'm pretty tired from working all week that I just want to relax on the weekends, and the other part is because of the time of year. I tend to get a little down this time of year for reasons already previously stated related to my father's passing away.

But, on a completely different and much more geek like note, if you haven't seen Star Trek, GO NOW! I went Sunday and I loved it (though I loved Star Trek in general so it's not too hard to win me over). It's defientally one I will be buying on DVD, and there's not many I do that for.

So for now, I bid ya'll g'bye! I've got a homework assignment to get to working on if I plan on having any time after work for my own thing today.

Amber

Challenges abound!

2009-05-05T08:48:00.003-06:00

Ever have a day like this?

There are times when I feel like the woman above lol. This week is one of them. Over the weekend I had more computer woes. My graphics card, evidently, overheated and was messing up, causing me to not be able to play any video games. It worked out well for me in some aspects, I was bored enough to go for a walk, twice. But it also hindered me in other ways because I ended up in Albuquerque at Ken's house getting it fixed which ment, yep, you guessed it, eating out. We had chinese food for lunch/dinner (I ate enough that I wasn't hungry later for dinner), but then his wife (who recently gave birth 2 or 3 weeks ago) wanted a rootbeer float. So I ended up with a blizzard type ice cream though thankfully I only ate about 1/2 of it before I was sick of it. But still. Impromptu buying for the loss!

I had to plunk down another 250 dollars on my computer for a new graphics card and a new power supply because the one in my computer wasn't heavy enough to handle the required wattage needed for the new graphics card. I figured if I'm going to get a new card I may as well upgrade. Nvidia Geforce 9600 series ftw.... >.> Anyway....

So I got back on Sunday night/Monday morning about 12:30am. I had to hook up the computer before I went to bed, got that all done, was in bed by about 1:15. But unforunately I couldn't sleep well, tossed and turned all night. Ended up going probably getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep before getting up for work. So needless to say I was exausted all day, and had a homework assignment still due yesterday. So I succumbed to the need of caffiene. If you'll remember, sometime in Feb I gave it up. Soda that is. I occassional have a sprite, but not very often. Usually when eating out I'll have one sprite then have water after. Well, because of my need to get my homework done before going to bed, and only having slept for 2 or 3 hours, I had D pick me up my first diet dew in forever...got a 1 liter, knew I'd need that much. Turns out I was right, I did need that much. It woke me up enough to finish my homework in a timely manner, and make it able to be understood.

The nice thing? I am not even wanting another one. It was good to have it available yesterday to keep me going long enough to get something done before bed, but I honestly didn't enjoy the taste of it. It was just too ... I dunno, citrusy? Or something? no clue, but not interested!

So I haven't had time to weigh myself. I woke up at the last minute yesterday because I just couldn't drag myself up, I got up at the last minute today because I was trying to squeeze just a little more lovely sleep outta the morning before work. I really don't feel up or down, just kinda here.

I have noticed my skin isn't so tight as it used to be. not like, hanging off skin flab type, but just....easier to be wrinkled? Maybe? Especially around my stomach. My clothes that I was wearing that were kinda tight are looser now. Those Capri's I found a month or so ago that fit but were just a bit snug can actually be pulled down without unbuttoning them. I thought I had different pants on (elastic ones) and pulled them down to go to the bathroom one day and they came right off and I was like...oh...wait...uhh those aren't the pants I thought! lol. Oh well!

So, I'm just going to keep chugging along.

Post something later when I know what my actual weight is...

Amber

COOKIES!

2009-04-28T14:52:00.002-06:00

Zomg, I hate working in a dental office sometimes. We get vendors and other salesmen who come in, patients, old collegues of Dr. M, and god only knows who other random people that walk through that door and by god they bring cookies, cake, chocolate, oranges (my fav), and all sorts of oddball goodies for us to eat, as if we needed them!

Today is no exception. It's been a while since we've gotten any goodies, since Christmas really. And frankly I had forgotten we got some now and again, until...

This woman walks through the door holding a box of cookies. She sets them down and talks to Dr. M, who then takes them in the back and places them on the mini-fridge. And there they've sat, taunting me all day. Now, normally I would've jumped immediately and gotten a cookie, munching on it, going back for 2 or 3 more and feel incredibly guilty about having ate so many. However! Today, I was a good girl. It took almost 3 hours for me to make up my mind whether I wanted one or not, and another 20 minutes to eat one. That's right. It took me TWENTY MINUTES to eat a cookie! I savored it. It was a good cookie. not too large, not too small, just the right amount of chocolate goodness that is oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The crunchy kind too. The shit I tell you.

So I had a cookie! Sue me! But, I'm very proud of myself for refusing myself (so far) to go back for any other cookie. Willpower at its finest folks! This is what living is about, moderation! I know I know, some people can't do the moderation. But honestly if I don't learn to do moderation now, I never will. I refuse to live life eating nothing but veggies and good crap and being afraid to walk past a bakery, go to a kid's birthday party or make cookies for friends and family for Christmas.

No, I plan on living life to the fullest, through moderation. Eating that small piece of birthday cake at a birthday party, having a cookie every once in a great while...it's all apart of life, and if you indulge infrequently, there's no reason not to! But I digress, the whole point of this was to explain my excited-ness of being able to say NO to more than one cookie :)

Amber

On the down train again!

2009-04-27T08:00:00.003-06:00

That's right, I hopped back up on the train heading south and I'm down out of the 260's this week to 259.7. How exciting! Bye bye 260's! That means that I lost 3.7 this week. Now to me that seems a bit high, I haven't had that high of a loss since I started. However, I think some of my "weight gain" from last week was because my food over the weekend was high in salt, so it was probably a little water retention and a little actual weight. I also did some working out over the weekend, I did a little walking one of the days, hand washed my car another day (it was so beautiful outside), did some running around walmart buying some things to make my house a little less cluttered, and then came home and half cleaned my house (yes my house was so gawd awful cluttered I only accomplished half this weekend). Most of my clutter is cd's and games. Oh the joy of trying to put all the games back away because D continually pulls them out and leaves them out. Someday I'll break him of that lol.

So I'm not far from my 10%. It seems like when I started all of this my 10% was sooo far away and now I'm within a couple of weeks of reaching it. I guess I better save my 130 dollars and make an appointment for my massage huh? :) I am so looking forward to it, it's a genuine japanese bathhouse that offers massages for 100 dollars for 1 hour, and for 30 more you get the VIP treatment where they focus for another half an hour on a problem spot, and then you get to use a private bath before you leave. So worth it! Never done it but it sounds like heaven on earth, and I have a spot in my neck that always seems to be bothering me. >.<

Amber

Doing better.

2009-04-24T22:34:00.002-06:00

I weighed myself this morning out of curiosity, and I'm back down to 261 which makes me happy. Some of it I'm sure was water retention and the rest was just what I ate in general. I really stuck to my guns this week, eating really well and trying to drink a ton of water.

So here's to hoping I'll be actually down for this weigh in :)

Amber

The official weight

2009-04-21T08:15:00.002-06:00

So I remembered to weigh myself this morning. I didn't drink enough water yesterday, I can tell that today. Feeling pretty dehydrated, and most of what I ate this weekend was probably loaded with salt. But regardless, I'm at 263.4 according to my scale (I didn't have time for the Wii fit body test, I was running behind. The scale is generally a tad higher but m'eh). So up 2.2 from last week.

Such is life, and I frankly am not worried. It's not even really a true "set back" because I knew going into the weekend my eating would NOT be on par. Yesterday I stuck true to my guns, I had a small piece of left-over steak from the night before and a salad for lunch. I ate spaghetti for dinner and had a frozen fruit thing I got from the store for dessert, though I'm not sure I'll eat any of the others. They're really sugary, and it tastes sugary. I was looking for something frozen that was sweet to ease sweet cravings I do get from time to time and happened across these and they sounded ok. But, I don't care for them, so I'll let D eat them. Or his daughter :)

So there you have it

Amber

Don't even want to look at the scale.

2009-04-20T08:08:00.003-06:00

First of all, I forgot today was Monday. Like, I knew that I had to get up and go to work today but it's been such an odd weekend I'm all turned around. We had a very nice weekend out, despite the beginning circumstances.

I had to drive D down to Albuquerque on Wednesday afternoon so he could have a friend of him drive him to pick up his car (long story, I won't even go there). So I had the house to myself Wednesday night. Thursday right after work I packed up my stuff and headed down there myself, we'd planned on going down Friday for a big get together with Mike and Ken and their wives. So we stayed Thursday night to hang with Ken and Robin and their new baby (he's such a cutie!). Friday we had a decent breakfast, eggs, hashbrowns (I limited myself to one of those), biscuit (one), and I had a small piece of ham (which I put on my biscuit). Didn't eat any lunch because it was such a filling breakfast, and I knew we'd be having a huge dinner. I was right. We went to a mexican restraunt, and I had 2 tacos and a bite of enchilada off D's plate. I also had the rice and beans and then we (D and I) split a soppapilla (sp?) with honey, I'd never even heard of them. It was ok I guess.

As if that day wasn't bad enough, Saturday we had a small breakfast then on our way home we stopped at an A&W/Long John Silvers. I can't go to A&W without a real A&W drink, it's the only rootbeer I like. I got a 2 piece chicken thing and ate the chicken and 1 hushpuppy and a very small handfull of fries. I had Ramen for dinner (I cut back on the sodium by only using 1/2 a packet of flavoring, it tastes just as good), because D was asleep at dinner time.

And then, Sunday we went out to eat at the local Chinese place. I was actually pretty good there. I had a small sampling of a few things, and then had some fruit to round it off. We had a pretty heavy dinner though, I had a 6 to 8 oz steak, we had mashed potatoes, a tiny bit of gravy (for me anyway), and then some green beans and mushrooms sauteed in a little bit of light butter. Was good and all, but pretty heavy.

This morning I got up and ate breakfast real quick and had an entire bottle of water before I realized that it was Monday which is traditionally my weigh in day. I'll have to try to remember to weigh in tomorrow. If I'm up, I'm up. If not, so be it. I enjoyed the weekend with friends and ate out way too much but unlike previously I am not taking that as the green light to eat whatever I want whenever I want and am completely back to eating healthy again. I had oatmeal for breakfast, with a glass of OJ and then a bottle of water. I'm probably going to have a salad when I go home for lunch, if not, then Ramen, depends on my mood, and then for dinner I have some quick spagetti planned (I have a large assignment due tonight that I didn't really get a chance to work on since I was away all weekend). Tomorrow I plan on making some chicken stirfry, Wednesday I have stew meat that I'll marinade in low sodium teriyaki and bake and Thursday I have the stuff to make some George Forman grilled chicken, have some regular baked beans (no pork!), and something else...maybe green beans or peas who knows. So defientally still on the bandwagon.

The other thing that's exciting me is that I have D excited to start going for walks with me. We'd talked about it but it was so cold he wouldn't go. Now it's starting to warm up and he said probably in the next couple of weeks it'll start warming up and staying warm, not this warming up then dropping down cold because a storm is rolling in or wondering if it's going to start raining while we're out and about, etc. Which means if he starts going for walks with me, I'll have more incentive to go. We won't be able to do any 3 or 4 mile hikes or anything by any means, because he has a messed up knee and can't walk for an extended period without pain. But that's ok, because I can't walk an extended period without getting winded because of my asthma (stupid elevation), at least for now.

So hopefully I'll remember to weigh tomorrow and letcha'll know my damages :) Though, I'm honestly not really worried about it.

Amber

Weight Loss

2009-04-13T16:43:00.002-06:00

Crusing around a bunch of my usual blogs I noticed many people regretting their easter love fest with food. Wish I could say the same. No easter gathering here, so consider ya'll lucky that you had people to spend it with! lol.

No, I'm one of those rare people that actually lost weight this week. Weigh in today, down 1.2. I'm at 261.2, and the end of the 260's and beginning of the 250's is in sight. I'm stoked. Though, I do have a pound and probably 1/4 in the fridge, and I did have left over ham for lunch today, but I will soon be hammed out. I have half a mind to freeze some...wonder if that's practical.

Anyway, regardless, I'm going to try to get more walking in. It's be soooooo pretty out last week, this week is shaping to be pretty similar, so hopefully I'll get the "Let's get out of the house" bug more.

I think I can honestly say that this time around, I'm serious about my weight loss. Never before have I lost more than 10 or 15 pounds without gaining back 30. Never before have I cut off my soda intake to a bare minimum (I'm averaging one maybe two sprites per month, where before I was drinking 6 to 12 cans of diet dew per day, see any time to drink water in there? I sure didn't). Never before have I cooked so much, I usually would eat out more than I'd eat in. Nor go to a restraunt and order something good for me, or even something not do good but only eat part of it. Or go to Sonic and get a jr. candy sundae and be content with that little bit. It's like before I would drop a size in clothing and then go back to eating as I always did and gain it right back.

Now I can say that the shirt I bought a couple of weeks ago that was kind of borderline tight/fitting now fits fine and is actually even slightly loose.

So why the sudden change? Why now and not 5 or 6 years ago? I'll tell you why. I'm sick of it. Sick of feeling big, sick of BEING big, sick of not being able to tie my shoes, sick of constantly being tired, of the caffinee headaches, the constant asthma problems, the bullshit of being a large person. That and quite frankly, I want children. Maybe not right this minute, but down the road. If I get winded and worn out from one flight of stairs what the hell am I going to do in labor?! lol. Yeah screw that! I prefer a normal birth to a c-section, much less pain kthxbai! I want to run around chasing my kids, and being able to drive my car without feeling like the seatbelt is going to kill me just from trying to change the channel.

I want to live, and that's why this time it's different...

Just keep telling myself that and my weight loss should follow suit right? :)

Amber

A more Recent Photo

2009-04-12T23:01:00.002-06:00

So most of the photos of me are a bit older. But when my mom came to visit, she took a new picture of me and my cousins near my house, there's a little senic pull off place and we pulled off there to take a picture.

Anyway, I'd lost about 10 or so pounds in this new picture. I'm down 15 more from that (give or take). The shirt I have on (under the little coat thing) is actually way more loose on me now than it looks in the picture. And you can see my new haircut, I got gutsy and went even shorter lol.

:)

Anyway, so here it is.

Amber

A boring Easter

2009-04-12T18:05:00.002-06:00

So if there's one thing I absolutely miss about being in Illinois it's the huge get togethers my family always did. If it was a holiday of any sort, we got together, had a huge meal, just...was a family. You don't get that much these days, most families aren't really all that close, not near as close as my family is. So I called this evening to ask my mom about cooking the ham (I had a generally good idea of how to do it but wanted to make sure I remembered right), and of course she was at my aunt and uncle's house having a big cookout. All the hubub! My entire family (once they realized it was me) demanded to speak to me to say Happy Easter.

I miss that a lot.

Like. A Whole Lot.

Now that my grandfather is gone (he passed away the day after Thanksgiving this past year), much of my family is making plans to move. The bond that held them all there was my grandparents, and now many of my aunts and uncles are older, in their late 40's and mid 50's and they're tired of the cold and crap of IL, so they're all pretty much looking to move (me being a huge advocate of them moving here! lol). It saddens me to know that my family is all going their seperate ways, not because they don't want to be near eachother, but because they each have their own version of "paradise" that they're looking for.

What saddens me more is I'm not there to enjoy the last few big get togethers. My family was huge, my grandparents had 6 kids, and each of those kids (with the exception of my mother due to circumstances surrounding my father's accident) had an average of 3 to 4 kids. Now most of us that are my age (about....9 of us grandkids) have an average of 2 or 3, I'm the only one old enough to have kids that don't at this point. So you can imagine the size of those get togethers!

But, I'm currently awaiting my ham-goodness to get done cooking. I bought a smallish ham (I wasn't going to buy one at all), so that I could have left overs for lunch (ham sandwich anyone?!). So it'll be small, just myself and D, and we'll just have mashed potatoes and greenbeans and some stuffing (well he'll have the stuffing I probably won't) and call it a done deal.

Just another day.

Amber

Wall of pictures!

2009-04-10T16:50:00.005-06:00

Ok peeps! Be prepared for a wall of pictures! I got ze camera working and finally was able to upload my pictures!

This is where we spread my dad's ashes, down there by that dead looking tree, it drops off and we stood on that rock when we spread them. It was beautiful there.

My "back yard". I get to see them every day :)

Me, my mom and my two "sisters". This was taken in 2007, about 6 months after my dad died. I'm about as heavy in that picture as I was when I started this thing.

Ok, enough pictures. :) I have more but I want to keep you coming back right? lol. I went for a walk today. I walked around the block, which in reality is a mile and a half walk. My block is big, what can I say. lol. Anyway, it's also got half of the really ugly steep climb to get through in order to walk around it. It took me 37 minutes to walk the mile and a half (or so my pedometer says, it says I had 37 minutes of aerobic walking, so I'm assuming that's how long it took). I'm going to have to work on cutting that down! lol.

I dunno why I went for a walk. I guess I was just in the mood. Here's to hoping I get into the mood more often.

Amber

Back to work I go!

2009-04-08T08:18:00.002-06:00

As much as I would much rather lounge around the house some more, I'm back to work today. I'm still not 100%, but at least I'm not trying to decide if I need to sit on the toilet or hug it. I'm still a little queasy, still pretty tired and a little dehydrated (thankfully Dr. M is letting me keep my bottled water next to me today, so long as I keep the cap on). But other than that, at least I'm functioning again. Could be worse I tell myself!

I did next to nothing yesterday. I finally got myself well enough to not be running to the bathroom every 2 minutes (or feeling like I should just pull a blanket and pillow in there to sleep lol) probably around noon. D came home shortly there after with some medicine I asked for him to pick up for me, and thus began my long laying on the couch for hours watching mindless tv (I almost never watch tv, unless it's commercial free, like Law and Order on dvd). I fell asleep a couple of times for a little bit, and went to bed by 11pm. D was such a sweetie, he made sure I had water bottles nearby, got me some orange juice from the store, and some 7up (I prefer sprite but oh well). So 90% of my diet yesterday was liquid. I did have a few bites of some brocolli and cheese soup from Quiznos that he brought home for me but that's it. The rest of it was regular 7up and orange juice (calorie wise of course).

So today I haven't had breakfast, I made some oatmeal but the smell of it was making my stomach begin to flip flop. Gave it to D instead. I'm not hungry, so I'm not too worried about it but I do know I need to eat. Hopefully I'll be able to eat something at lunch, even if I have to go to the store and get some soup or something.

Here's to hoping!

Amber

Ill

2009-04-07T09:26:00.002-06:00

I sit here recovering from an intimate morning with my bathroom. Not cool. Yesterday D wasn't feeling too well, achy and running a fever, very lathargic. I kept my distance, and hoped to not catch whatever it is. This morning I woke up before dawn and not only was I achy and doing the whole hot cold dance that you do when you have a fever, but I'm also throwing up and can't make up my mind if I want to sit on the toilet or throw up into it if you know what I mean.

Ugh.

I hate calling off work. In the time I've worked for Dr. M I've only had to call him once to tell him I couldn't come and that was when my grandpa died and I had to fly home for his funeral. I always feel so bad for calling off at any place, but especially for Dr. M because it's a small office and there's no back up receptionist really. :(

So I don't plan on posting much, I'm going to go watch tv and relax. Hopefully I'll feel better.

Amber

Another week gone by.

2009-04-06T08:59:00.002-06:00

Another week has gone by, and no idea how I lost 1.6. I really didn't do anything especially different. Maybe the less eating out helped, while I haven't been gung-ho let's eat out, the week before last was a kind of odd week because I had the computer break which set me way behind on my homework, caused me to opt to bring home chinese rather than cook so that I could get the assignment done on time (which I did, barely, 30 more minutes and it would've been late).

I guess this week I just spent more time cooking dinner at home than I did anything. I didn't really do anything else different. So, I only have 2.4 more pounds to go before I'm at 260. Dropping below 260 will make me really happy. It'd put me really close to my 10%. I think some of the problem I'm running into is I'm not getting groceries on the weekends like I used to. It's like I get just enough to last a maybe 3 or 4 days on Friday and then I run out by Monday or Tuesday and have to go get more and the grocery store is always so very hectic after work, I hate shopping, but my freezer and fridge is too small to really have much in it. I so can't wait until we get a new place, here or Albuquerque lol. The whole economy size fridge and freezer is for the birds!

I've also realized something else. When I'm at my computer I get the munchies, or if I have something to eat that's too big (like last night, D brought home McDonalds on his way home and I hadn't ate yet so I went ahead and ate it...all of it, despite not wanting to because I didn't realize I was eating it, I was too focused on some other stuff going on on my computer), I tend to just eat it all or eat too fast and I'm like, wow it's gone but I'm still hungry.

Problem is, I have no where else to eat. We have no table (there's no room), and no coffee table to set anything on to eat on the couch. So the only real place to eat is my computer desk. I've gotta figure something out! >.<

I also wanted to throw a big CONGRATS out to my friends Ken and Robin who had their baby boy at 8:25 this morning. A strapping 6 pound 1 oz baby boy. Now to go down there soon and baby-nap him and give him lovin' and such in the next couple of weeks. Newborns are so cute! lol

Anyway, I'm going to get some stuff done here at work.

Amber

Struggling

2009-04-02T04:45:00.004-06:00

No, I haven't fallen off the bandwagon. I am struggling in other ways. Yes my eating is affected by it, and thus my weight, but not a full blown fall off the wagon. It has nothing to do with eating out, and everything to do with being just too tired and too worn out to cook non-easy to make food. I go through a period as the weather warms up and July approaches in which I get depressed. It's seasonal, and it's related to my father's death. My father passed away July 6th, and you may say "But that's months away!" and it's true it is. But this time of the year was always my dad's favorite. He hated winter, we lived in Illinois where winter was just brutal, cold, windy and just awful. So when the weather would warm up, he'd grill out, even in like 40 degree weather he'd be out in the little patio thing and grilled in a short sleeve shirt and jeans as if it was 60 or 70 out, when it's been in the negatives for months 40 degrees out feels like a summer day.

When my father got diagnosed with his cancer in May of '06, of course my entire family was shocked, the whole 2 days to 2 weeks to live just floored us. I tried to get time off from work to go home and help take care of my dad and enjoy the last days with him and I was told no. I quit of course. I had next to no money in my account, I filed for situational unemployment and won, which is probably the only thing that kept me afloat at that time. I spent the late nights watching over my dad and my mom spent the days. I often went without sleep for days, not by choice mind you. My dad, because of the toxins invading his body from his liver shutting down due to the cancer was like a 51 year old 2 year old when it came to getting into stuff. Unfortunately he was taller than my mom or I so putting stuff out of reach wasn't really an option lol. But basically you couldn't leave anything out in the open or he'd get into it. So I stayed up all night, since I'd worked night shift before quitting my job, and then during the day I'd go out and do errands, or go to dinner with a friend of mine or something. Well of course, I'd just fib and say I napped when dad was napping in his chair at night but in reality I'd be up all night and get no sleep.

So when this time of year comes around I have a really hard time sleeping. Tonight, for example, I woke up at about 1:30am. I haven't been able to get back to bed, it's now 5am and I have to be to work in 2 and a half hours. I don't really engage in emotional eating, I go the opposite way, I don't eat. Or if I do eat I feel sick from it. Go figure. What's frustrating is that I am not entirely sure what to do about it. No, medication doesn't help, the side effects are worse than what I go through as it is, and therapy is m'eh. I've been there, done that, and wasn't impressed. I don't have daddy issues, I have death issues, there's a difference, and the last therapist I went to was all about the whole "You have daddy issues"....no, I really don't. My dad and I may not have been on the absolute best of terms throughout the years because of his schizophrenia, but I loved him, and felt loved by him, and know I made him proud while he was alive, so there's no issues. A couple of years before he died he apologized for stuff from my childhood, basically that he made me stay home and have no friends, and that he could be so mean sometimes (very mood swingy until he got his medications working right), etc etc. That's fine, we talked, we cried, we hugged, we moved on. So it's not like I didn't have closure on that aspect, don't need a therapist to try to make it out to be something it's not. If you didn't live my life, you don't know, so don't try you know?

No, my issue with everything has just been his passing, and time does help but it doesn't heal all. So every year it gets a little better, but still sucks to struggle through. My dad was 51 when he passed. My mom widowed at 43. Maybe it'd be a little easier if I knew my mom would be taken care of, that she had a man in her life, but so far she's not interested or even looking. I've made it perfectly clear that I have NO issues with her looking again. Hell she's YOUNG, she needs someone else in her life eventually,and I didn't want her thinking I'd hold her back. lol the day I told her she kinda gave me that sideways glance dog heard something look, but I just explained that I didn't mean she needed to go out right then and there and find someone, but that when she felt the time was right and she wanted to move on, that I didn't want to be the thought that entered her mind to hold her back. That was a little over a year after my dad passed. I think the only thing that keeps my mom sane and continuing to move in this world is my cousins that she's guardian of. My parents were married just shy 25 years. They were the first that either fell in love with, so it was especially hard on my mom.

Basically I'm not sleeping, so I'm tired. Since I'm so tired, I don't feel like cooking the meals I did towards the beginning. Since I'm not cooking, I tend to eat more processed stuff than I had in the past, and that has salt in it. This week I have gained a little but I believe it's salt related due to the fact that today I had some Uncle Ben's rice that has quite a bit of salt, and yesterday we had stovetop stuffing, day before that I bought Chinese knowing that I had a huge assignment to finish. Beyond not cooking and not eating as well as I should, I haven't exercised at all, I'm just too exausted. I force myself to stay up until a decent hour before laying down to sleep so I'm not up all night and end up being up all night anyway.

Talk about frustrating. Sorry for being so long winded and probably depressing and such. But since this is my blog, and this affects my weight loss, I'm putting it in here. lol

For now I shall go see if I can find a spot in my bed (provided D isn't like...sprawled across the entire bed by now) and catch an hour or so of shut eye before work. Hope everyone else has a better day than me!

Amber

A small loss.

2009-03-30T08:39:00.002-06:00

Hmm, I didn't realize I hadn't posted in a few days. I've just been busy. I only lost .5 pounds this week but I'm ok with that. I blame the absolute awesome Outback Steakhouse dinner I had two nights ago. lol. Do you realize how incredibly difficult it is to find a "good for you" meal at outback! lol. I am proud of myself though. My absolute favorite appetizer is their bloomin' onion. I LOVE IT. I've only ever had Outback twice before this weekend and both times we got the onion and I could easily eat half to 3/4 on my own. We also got the cheese fries as well.

I managed to eat 5 of the little petals from the onion and 2 of the fries, for the taste really. I also ordered a 6 oz sirloin rather than a huge 14 oz ribeye or some other insanely large piece of meat. I got the green beans thinking they would be pretty nutritious but they slather them in some sort of butter sauce. I also got the garlic mashed potatoes. I ate all the potatoes, about half of the greenbeans and the 6 oz steak. They also asked if we wanted any dessert, and I got their chocolate brownie thing, but I asked for a small portion, and they gave me about half of a normal piece, and of that piece I ate about half of that. It was very good, I savored every little bite :)

It was a very good dinner. I did not feel overly stuffed when I left. I was pleasently satisfied and it was a really really nice treat. But I know it was just FULL of salt, so that's probably why yesterday and a little today I'm still feeling bloated. I just keep chugging my water :) So I'm not going to sweat the small loss, I know WHY I didn't lose as much as normal, and I don't feel bad about it. It was a nice night out with two really good friends (one of which is expecting her second child any day now), their first kid and my friend's mom. I had an absolute blast!

So today it's back to the grindstone. I have nothing really to eat at the house, so I'm going to have to go to the store before I go home tonight if I expect to eat dinner. lol. So for lunch I plan on getting a good for me subway sandwich, and then get something for dinner. I would love to have porkchops tonight but D's home tonight, so that's not going to happen. Perhaps I will get some Chicken breasts and george forman grill them. I wish we lived in a house or a duplex where we could have an outdoor grill. I really love grilled anything really. lol.

Anyway I need to get some work done here at work, in anticipation of going home tonight and doing nothing but working on my homework assignment. Oh...joy...

Anyway, so toodaloo! Enjoy your day!

Amber

Hmph!

2009-03-25T08:24:00.002-06:00

Why can't I seem to get my fat ass to go out and exercise? I mean seriously! Yes I know part of it is being afraid of my asthma, ok, well, fine. But at the same time I seem to always be so excited and pumped up for the weekends to go for walks and then the weekends come and I sit in my house or something. I'm getting irritated with myself. I find reasons to not go for a walk, I feel silly just walking down the block and back, and our block is so large, to walk around it is like a 3 mile walk (I kid you not!) and a good half of it is I swear at a 45 degree angle. lol. Last time I walked to the YMCA for a meeting, my legs hurt so bad for the next week I didn't want to do anything. That's half my problem too, I get to where my muscles hurt and I don't want to exercise anymore.

/le sigh.

Well, this weekend I had all this awesome exercise planned out and I realized it would probably be dashed to pieces. I forgot that Saturday I promised a friend I'd come over to his house (in Rio Rancho, about 2 hours from here), so I'll be there all day Saturday. Friday I have to work at least half a day, possibly longer. Horray for overtime but ugh I want my 3 days off in a row! I'm so spoiled lol. I also have to do laundry, grocery shopping and clean my house on Friday. So two out of the three days I had plans for exercising is kind of out the window... >.>

This whole trying to exercise around my hectic life schedule sucks.

Amber

20 pounds down.

2009-03-23T08:23:00.002-06:00

So today was another weigh in day. I'm officially down 20 pounds.

TWENTY POUNDS!

I am 8.5 pounds away from my 10%.

I officially stopped weight watchers...I still have access to the site and forums and such but I no longer have to pay for it, and have no access to the tracker, points etc etc. Why? There's things about it I don't really care for and I wasn't using it like I should so why pay for something I'm not using. What I'm doing is working for me so far so I'm going to stick with what I'm doing. :) What's that? Counting calories, making sure I'm eating healthy and exercising. I still have the same freedom that I have with Weight Watchers. I can eat whatever I want, I just have to keep in mind that having pizza for lunch may mean I might have to eat a smaller dinner, or I may be more hungry or something. Not that I generally DO eat pizza for lunch or whatever, but I refuse to live a secluded "I'm on a diet" life. No, I will not say "I cannot have that". Rather I say "I can have that if I eat a small portion" or "I can have something similar such as a cookie dough sunday made by weight watchers made with low fat ice cream rather than a small thing of ben and jerry's cookie dough ice cream.

It's all choices, right? I choose what I eat, when I eat it and exercise and the pounds come off. Simple. Yet so many diets make things so complicated. I've done the low carb/no carb diet in the past, hated it. My personal trainer tells me to stay away from potatoes as a main veggie and I do. I used to eat meat potatoes and maybe greenbeans or corn or peas just about every night. Now it's more meat cooked with veggies. Or meat and a baked potato with green beans. Or like two nights ago, we had a small steak, mashed potatoes with gravy (I limited my gravy to 2 tbsp) and peas. I also had a small salad with it.

The challenge I have in my life is my boyfriend does not need to lose weight, and I do. I'm sure many out there have the same problem. Yes he will generally eat whatever I put in front of him, but there are times when he wants "real" food as he puts it. Last night is a prime example. He loves taco bell, so do I. I used to be able to eat a 7 layer burrito, 2 tacos, a thing of nachos and slam down a baja blast dew with it all. I don't even want to know how many calories that is. Last night he got a burrito, taco and mountain dew. I got 2 soft shell tacos with tomato and a small sprite. I ate it, I was full, life was good. I savored every bite. I hadn't had tacos from taco bell in forever! So each bite was like...immensly good to me. Before I'd scarf it, and I'd be hungry after because I ate too fast. Now I ate slowly, and enjoyed it, and was full.

I've come a long way since Jan 9th when I started. I know some people may say "OMG YOU HAD TACO BELL FOR DINNER!" and do the "shame on you" finger wagging. But I say back why not?! In small amounts, infrequently, there is NO SHAME in having "fast food". What's important is what I do after I've had such food. Do I crave the fast food and go back for more and more until I'm back to eating the way I used to eat, or do I go back to eating healthy, cooking at home, and such? Considering I always go back to eating healthy there is nothing wrong with a small deviation of living life!

My 20 pound loss I think speaks for itself.

On the computer front, it's still not working correctly. /le sigh. We had to go back to Best Buy and get a different hard drive because the one we got wasn't working correctly with Windows XP. Oh joy. So we got it back home and hooked up and got XP on it and it works...but the network card I have for that computer is on board....and I don't know where my cd's went. >.< So we got onto D's computer and found the drivers I needed but...we're both plugged into the modem, and XP don't allow that, we need a hub. /grumble.

Basically I can't get on the internet, so I can't update most of my shit, and I am extremly frustrated. I plan on going to Radio Shack today and see if I can pick up a hub and a new network card so I can stop using all this "on board" bullshit and actually get this working. SO FRUSTRATING! >.> I hate computers sometimes.

I also have my homework assignment due tonight. I worked on it over the weekend but life kept getting in the way. It was so nice out this weekend I went for a couple of walks. Then on Saturday we went to his mom and dad's house to get his brakes worked on, and have our visit with his daughter and I did my laundry. We were there most of the day. Sunday was the whole work on the computer thing, and so I didn't get shit done other than about 500 to 600 words out of the 1400 word paper. Shouldn't take me long tonight to get it done though, one would hope.

So that's been my weekend. Not a whole lot to talk about. Life is good, weight comes off, I still need new pants. I'm about to call my mom and have her ship pants from IL to me if I can't find any here! lol.

Amber

Hazzah!

2009-03-20T08:18:00.002-06:00

I got my computer parts! We actually ended up going Wednesday evening, just D and I. It was nice to get out of the house. It can be hard to get him moving sometimes to get going, part of his problem. But he was in a great mood, I was in a great mood, and Santa Fe is lovely at night. So we hit up Best Buy around 7pm after filling one of my tires with air (I still haven't replaced them, stupid Santa Fe Walmart doesn't have a tire center!). We got my new hard drive (500gig for 100 bucks! not too shabby really), and a dvd burner WITHOUT lightscribe technology, and a new decent sound card so I won't have to use my on board card thus eliminating the whole scratchy voice over vent problem I've been having. Also picked up a new video game just cuz, all in all I spent 250 bucks. When we get all this stuff in the only thing I won't have replaced is Ram and/or Motherboard lol. Ahh well, that'll be next year probably...

So I had an off day on Wednesday eating wise. Though I'm pretty proud of myself none the less. Wednesday afternoon I had this nice little lunch planned, chicken salad with green onion, and black olives a splash of dressing and a tiny bit of cheese. I had the salad already in a bowl waiting for me at home and when I got to work...SURPRISE! We're going out for lunch at the chinese buffet because a co-worker had a birthday and we need to do her birthday lunch...oh...joy...

So I managed to go through the buffet with ONLY getting 1 cup of beef and brocolli and one cup of rice and 2 small pieces of the chicken used for sweet and sour chicken. That's it! ALL I HAD! >.< I wasn't hungry so I had no real desire to go back for anything except I did go back for probably close to a cup of fresh red grapes. HOLY SHIT! I MADE IT THROUGH A BUFFET ON ONE PLATE THAT WASNT EVEN FULL! Can you believe it? I sure as hell couldn't.

Anyway, so I was really excited, I got home and asked D if he wanted to go to Santa Fe, was shocked he said ok on a work night. We went and got the stuff and it was getting late, both of us were starving. So he started to head off to taco bell but I diverted him to Wendy's. I couldn't think of much that Taco Bell had on their menu that would be even close to being a "good choice". At Wendy's I got a large chili a 5 piece nugget and a small fry. I had about 3/4 of the chili, 4 of the nuggets and not even half of the small fry I got. Probably not the best choice ever for food, but I rarely get to eat Wendy's but you can't go to Wendy's without having a couple of chicken nuggets! I should've just stole a couple of D's fry's instead of ordering a fry, but a new idea floated into my head.

I do not have to eat all that I order!

New idea! WOW! I don't have to eat everything I order if I get full before I've ate it all! WHAT A CONCEPT! I got full and still had 2 nuggets and a good half of my fries and I looked at it and was like...why do I feel like I HAVE to eat this food? There's no reason to eat it if I'm full, so...I grabbed one more nugget (they're so good!), picked up my try and pitched it. D kind of gave me that cock-eyed dog heard something look and when I asked what he said it was the first time since I moved here that he'd ever seen me throw away food off my plate. Ever. I've been here almost a year. He asked if I was feeling ok and I said yeah I just was full.

Quite interesting this is. Learn something new every day. I may even try this at home! lol. I've also started putting dinner away into the fridge as SOON as we get our plates. I'm less tempted to get more if I walk near an empty stove than if there's still food out waiting to be eaten I've noticed.

So that's been my week, how's yours been? Oh, and for the record, despite my eating on Wednesday, I'm still down to what weight I was when I was at the end of being sick, so I've still lost so far this week. :) And I haven't even exercised yet, that comes today and Sunday XD

Toodaloo!

Amber

Computer Woes

2009-03-17T08:16:00.002-06:00

Well, peeps, my computer hates me. Feeling is mutual at this point. I went home for lunch yesterday, had a quick bite as normal and sat down to do a little mid day wow-ing for the rest of my lunch hour. After my wow-ing was over, I shut the program off and went to brush my teeth before returning to work and when I came back around the corner, my computer had reset itself. Odd, I thought. So I told it to restart windows normally and...it wouldn't load windows! Stupid computer...

So I frantically called D and told him at work, and he said he'd take a look when he got home. He did, and came to the conclusion my hard drive is dying. Booo...While we got it up and running again, he doubts it'll last long, and I have to spend the next few days backing up all of my information and such. I am just hoping it'll hold out until Friday. I am off Friday and can go get the parts, and D said he'd put them in on Saturday for me since by the time I'd get the parts on Friday he'd be at work already and wouldn't get home until late.

Oh the joys of computers....

For now, eating is on track. My back and legs are still hurting something fierce from Sunday so I've been nursing them, hopefully I'll get to do some exercising later this week.

Amber

Weigh in day again!

2009-03-16T07:42:00.003-06:00

So being sick really messed with my weight loss. I lost 2.9, which is awesome, but not, by any means, in the way I would've liked to. 3 solid days of not being able to eat hardly anything had me down almost 6 pounds, some of which came back when I started eating and hydrating again, and I'm fine with that.

So I guess I hit my 5% mark last week and didn't notice. I had to get under 270 to hit it and I did. lol. Shows you how much I look at numbers eh? Only reason I knew I did was because I joined WW at 281, 4 pounds under my initial starting weight of 285. I put my weight in today and it flagged it as having lost 5%, which perked my curiosity to see when I actually hit it since I started this journey a little before I started WW.

I got to thinking yesterday about reasons I started all this, beyond just the "Oh I need to lose weight for my health" thing. I think it all started when I realized that yet again my clothes were getting too tight, and uncomfortable. I was going to walmart looking for clothes and 4x clothes were either too tight, or didn't seem to fall quite right, too short, or whatever, and I was depressed. I could barely get my seatbelt on without it feeling like a struggle. I was having to take my winter coat off before getting into my car in order to be able to wear my seatbelt. No more! I told myself. Yesterday I noticed that the shirt I was wearing was no longer showing my "stomach, it was just hanging off my shoulders. I noticed that I got into my car and buckled my seatbelt with my lighter spring jacket on instead of automatically taking it off. Life is good!

I went to Walmart yesterday needing to buy pants. Have you ever gone out, as someone losing weight to find clothes, knowing you've probably dropped a pant size or two but still stick to that "oh I wear a such and such size" mentality? Yeah that was so me yesterday.

I wandered around Walmart, and everything I picked up I kept saying oh that's cute, it's a 4x it'll fit. I had about 5 things in my car and I hit the fitting room. First thing I did was try on these cute black pants with dark red thin pinstripes going down....they almost fell off me they were so big. Which actually sucks bad, I liked those pants and there was none in my size. Since I'd grabbed another pair at the same size of the same type only straight black, I didn't bother trying them on, they would be too big as well (I never did find any pants, Walmart's selection sucked, and I need new pants badly, the ones I have for work are so baggy I feel like a thug wearing them or something). Next I hit the 3 shirts I picked out. Two of the three were too big. The two that were too big were 4x as well, a 26/28 shirt. The other was a 3x that actually fit and the only reason I'd grabbed 3x was because there wasn't a 4x and the material was stretchy so I figured it might fit. The 3x is slightly uncomfortable, mostly because it's that type of material that hugs you and so I feel like I constantly need to be adjusting it. But I bought it anyway, knowing that soon it'll fit perfectly. I'm wearing it today actually, at work. It's not easy finding clothing that fits, even with being down a size. Not because there's not much selection (which is true anyway but still) but because things don't seem to fit my body correctly. I tried on this one shirt, and at a 4x it was large around the stomach and such, but the way it went across my chest made it really tight and I didn't feel comfortable at all, so much so it took two seconds of it being on to say "Mmmm NO!" lol.

My legs hurt....and not just a little. I had an appointment at the Y yesterday with my trainer to go over nutrition and such and I had the bright idea of getting my cardio in for the day by walking... Right. So I walked, 1.3 miles to get to the Y but failed to realize how damn steep the hill is to get there. It took me 31 minutes to walk the 1.3 miles and by the time I got there my legs were on fire. I sat around a little waiting for her (I got there early) and then talking with her and you'd think on the way back home it'd be cake because it's all downhill, no my legs hurt sooo bad! It's like right at the hip joint! lol. D kept saying I looked like a duck trying to walk last night. I threw his new game cd holder at him roflmao.

Anyway so that's been my weekend. Eating right, exercising and just chillin'. Hope ya'll have a great day!

Amber

Ho boy here we go again...

2009-03-12T11:23:00.002-06:00

So....I got smacked upside the head with the "guess what!" hammer this morning. D found a new job....in Albuquerque, about 2 hours from here. He starts on the 30th. So of course my first OMG reaction was like ZOMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?! my stress level I think went through the roof, and then some.

After he got me to calm down (I was asking 5 billion questions I guess), he explained that this new job is going to make him 38,000 a year, as much as both of us currently make combined with him working part time at the Lab and me full time at the dental office. We're also NOT going to move right away, he's going to have training for a couple of weeks in Albuquerque and then he's going to be a system administrator and some of the stuff I guess the company he is going to work for is all over this area too, so he MAY not have to move.

I'm torn. In a way I would LOVE to move to Albequerque. I don't really care for it up here on the mountain, I would like to get away from the cold weather, and my asthma does better at lower elevations. But....

I would have to quit my job. <----That right there is scary.

Why? I had a hell of a time FINDING a job when I first moved here, granted it was probably because we lived on the mountain where there's next to no job market....but STILL! What if's started running through my head. What if I can't find a job, how will I pay my bills (I'm very independent, I hate others paying for me). What if I DO find a job and it sucks and it starts messing with my ability to finish my master's degree. What if he loses his job, what if what if what if UGH!. I hate it!

I really hope this works out, and that I can manage to squeeze in all of my dental work before we have to move (if we need to). See, right now, my dental work is free, Dr. M does it. I had one hell of a lot of cavities to fill, and a tooth that was crowned and another that's broken that either may need a crown or may just get extracted (fine with me either way honestly). I'm deathly afraid of dentists when it comes to being in the chair, so I hadn't gone to a dentist since I was 18 probably. So with all the work that's been done, if I'd have to pay for it myself you're talking thousands of dollars, and I still have probably close to 1500 to 2k left to be done. So if I can squeeze the remaining like....5 small cavities and that one big ? tooth....life would be much better.

I don't know, so many scenarios going through my head. Albequerque isn't near as expensive as it is up here, so finding a place to live would be easier and cheaper and probably bigger with more ammenities than here. Could even find an affordable place with a washer and dryer in apartment! lol. That would so make my day.

Anyway, I'm going to go, it's lunch time and I'm starving. Cross your fingers for me.

Toodaloo.

Amber

Sick

2009-03-11T08:38:00.002-06:00

So I've been sick since Monday. I've been going to work and such but I've felt soooo sick to my stomach. Just looking at food has been enough to make my stomach start to go "flip flop" and make me feel even more ill.

I am feeling just a tad better, not by much but I'm getting there. At least this morning I didn't wake up feeling like I had a hangover like I have the last couple of days. I've just been drinking lots of water for the most part....lots and lots. I went through almost 7 bottles of water yesterday, I usually struggle to drink 4 on weekdays but I felt soooo thirsty. I'm actually kind of excited for tonight. D's going to make dinner, I just got to go get the stuff from the store tonight, he wants to make some stuffed bell peppers. I'm down any day that he wants to make dinner lol.

As I've said before, he's extremly supportive of me losing weight. He knows the last couple of weeks I've just been swamped. Between working late (I worked until almost 6:30pm last night, did that at least twice last week), my master's degree program...my house is a wreck, and the dishes are piling up (ugh), I just haven't had time to focus on me. There's been a couple of times when I ask him what he wants for dinner and he says he'll just go get something out for us and quickly disappears, then I am all like "zomg he's going to get me some fast food crap that I can't have!" but he comes back with like...Subway. Such a sweetheart.

Being sick sucks when it comes to the scale though. I'm down 1.3 since Monday yet I know when I get over whatever it is that I have, it'll probably come back. Boo.

My trainer person from the Y gave me a couple of websites ya'll might be interested in. The first is a calorie tracker that I find much more...easy to use I guess than some others I've played with. It's called fitday (www.fitday.com). There's a lot more features to use in it than some other free trackers. It has a mood tracker, good for tracking how you felt that day and if it coorelates to overeating or whatever, it's got a weight loss goal tracker, a weight tracker, body measurements tracker, food and activity tracker. I can put in my minigoal weights and look at it numberwise, or look at it graphically. It tells you what it thinks your resting calorie burn is based on your lifestyle, and then adds in your activities for the day to give you a roundabout calorie burn for the day vs. the intake. It's got a diary feature as well, so you can jot little notes to yourself (ie, today I was sick, or ... whatever, also useful for tracking trends). I've started, I think, to move away from WW. I think it helped me to get started, but there are things about WW I do not agree with, and makes no sense to me. For example. 1/2 a cup of fruit is 0 points, where a full cup is 2. ...double the fruit is 2 points when originally it was 0? Makes no sense. 0 + 0 does not equal 2.... Or another thing, 3 oz of boneless skinless chicken breast is 3 points, double it you get 6....right? wrong, it's something like 6.5 or something silly. WTF IS THAT! lol. Plus, another thing I don't like. Get a WW frozen meal for lunch 6 points but 800mg of sodium. Sodium means nothing in WW. I could eat a cup of fried rice for 8 points, or I could eat homemade fried rice for 8 points and the home made would have a ton less sodium than the restraunt style yet it's the same point value. MAKES NO SENSE TO ME!....

So...I'll wait until my subscription runs out and probably not continue it. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have had that beginning, but I don't think WW is for me in the long haul. I can see myself losing weight with them but then gaining it back once I finished...the whole "eat whatever you want" part doesn't sound right. I'm not saying I need to go gungho I can't eat anything but healthy in my life, but something doesn't seem right that I'm trying to lose weight but if I wanted to I could go have pizza hut. >.>

That being said, I do enjoy a nice night out now and again. Since this journey is supposed to be about a lifestyle change, not just a crash diet, I remind myself that nothing is "offlimits" to me, so long as I practice moderation. For example, a piece of cake at a birthday party is NOT offlimits. I just need to limit the size I eat, and/or exercise it off afterwards. A piece of pizza is NOT offlimits so long as it's just one piece, or isn't loaded with insane amounts of meat or something like that.

Basically, make healthy choices and keep the weight loss going or keep the weight off and still live life to the fullest. Nothing is more frustrating than to go to a party and realize that all the stuff there is self-induced "off limits" and results in cravings and binges. Now, I'm not one to binge, I never have been. At least not in the sense of some of the blogs I've read or anything. My weight is from a self-induced fear of exercising, my lifestyle of being a computer geek, and eating unhealthy foods like fastfood, greasy food, etc. But I do understand that sort of craving one can get that says I WANT THAT and no matter what you do you feel the urge to go out and get it! So I try to counteract my cravings by either having something small that's sweet or whatever if it's sweet I'm craving, or if it is something that's moderately unhealthy (like wanting a piece of cake at a birthday party) limiting how big it is.

It's all about lifestyle, and I keep reminding myself of that.

That was quite the ramble...anyway. The other website she gave me is called www.physicsdiet.com. For those of you that track your weight every day, this is the place for you! You put your weight in each day and it does some averaging stuff to it and tells you what your body is actually doing. So, say you weigh yourself every day and your up one day down the next, etc, it'll average it out and tell you that your body is still losing weight (ie, you're seeing water wait fluxes etc), or that you're gaining weight (usually after you've had several weight gains in a row). I've been playing around with it just because it's kind of neat. I could see it being useful for when you hit a plateau and you're frustrated that the scale isn't moving, this'll help. I don't know if I recommend weighing in every day, but I know some people do and that's fine. So here's a nifty website for you! :)

Now if only I could get my lazy ass up and exercising more....

Amber

Another weigh in, another pound gone

2009-03-09T08:24:00.002-06:00

So it's Monday, my typical weigh in. I'm saying goodbye to the 270's today and beginning the journey through the 260's. I haven't been under 270 since 2006. I've had jaunts up into the 280's followed by a short skip into the 270's then back to the 280's again since then, but never below 270.

This weekend, somehow I found a pair of capri's that I haven't worn since 2006. They are brand new, I bought them the week before my dad passed away when I was about 248 or so. They were kind of big on me then (I like my pants to be a little baggy, tight sucks thanks much!) because they were non-stretch pants I tend to give myself a little extra room just in case, and for when Aunt Flo comes to visit. So they're a size 26 pant, non-stretch and I have no idea how they ended up in plain sight on my floor. Out of curiosity to see if they were my pants or D's (they were folded), I picked them up and was like HEY! I know these pants! So I tried them on, and they fit, comfortably though a tad bit snug. I can wear them all day and zip them up without having to do the "gotta...get...those...pants on" dance, but they're a little bit snugger than I'd normally wear my pants. Score one for me!

Otherwise it was an uneventful weekend. I have a huge homework assignment due this evening and unfortunately I haven't even really started on it. I'm was so tired from the crazy week at work I didn't even want to look at my homework, and now I'm regretting it. Hopefully I can do most if not all of it at work today because I'm really not feeling well either. Before I went to bed last night I was getting a stomach ache and chauked it up to something I'd ate not agreeing with me or something, but then this morning when I woke up it hit me like a ton of bricks again and even now at work I'm still feeling ill. Usually if it's not really me being sick but something not agreeing with me or just me lagging at getting up in the morning (I sometimes wake up feeling icky), it'll go away after I get up and get moving. Today is not one of those days. I really hope I'm not getting sick, or that I get sick enough to go home and snooze and feel more refreshed later or something.

Another good thing to report, my foot problem is gone. I'd been using some over the counter cream at first, and switched to another, different over the counter cream (per dr. advice) and that cleared it up completely over the weekend. Very happy I am. Talk like Yoda I will. Anyhooo...so my feet no longer itch or hurt like mad. Which means I can start going for walks again woo.

Anyway I'm going to stop babbling now. I need to take a look at that assignment and get to work on it. Take it easy ya'll.

Amber

Silence

2009-03-04T10:18:00.002-07:00

I know, I've been quiet lately. Unsure what to post really, not much going on. Work's kept me busy, so busy in fact that Monday I got off at around 6, and Tuesday I got off at 10 to 7, which sucks considering I already normally work 10 hours, so tack on an extra hour or two and bleh!

Food wise I've been fine. I've tried salad the last two days and...mmm...doubtful. I need to find a night to sit down and cut up tomatoes and get some black olives and stuff to put in it. The lettuce, carrots and red cabbage is all fine and well but it's so bland and rabbit foodish. I also don't particularly care for light ranch dressing, but they didn't have any fat free or light western dressing, in fact, walmart in Espanola doesn't even CARRY western dressing....jerks. I have some regular dressing at home but it's like 15g of fat for 2 tsp or something rediculasly high like that. Not worth it... /sigh I dunno.

But anyway, so food has been fine, water intake could probably be better, I'm just barely getting in my 4 bottles of water per day on weekdays, especially this week since we've been going so late at night. I really should talk to Dr. M and see if I can keep a bottle of water up front as long as I promise to keep the cap on (which I always do anyway). He doesn't like water up front because of the computer equipment, and I can understand, but....I NEED WATER! >.>

Exercise could be much better, I constantly struggle with this aspect of weight loss. As I posted at the beginning of my blog, I am afraid of exercise. Before you laugh, read my very first post and you'll see why. Don't get me wrong, when I do exercise, I feel good after and all but it's the starting that scares me. In fact, at one point I was so scared of my asthma when I started exercising that I bought an alert necklace to wear to say I was asthmatic. My trainer said she's going to tackle exercise on Sunday with me...ehh...

I know baby steps blah blah blah. Baby steps feels too small. If I'm going to lose weight I need to push myself. I'm physically fit enough to go for longer than 10 minute walks but too scared mentally due to my childhood to walk fast enough to get my heart rate up. Nothing to do with my heart, but everything to do with my asthma. Hearth rate up = heavier breathing which could = asthma attack = scared Amber. At least that's what the brain says anyway.

Well, I'll have to figure something out. Right now work and school take up most of my weekday time. I'm also large enough that I feel downright silly working out on the wiifit in front of D. I tend to exercise when he's not around...kind of like hiding it or something, why I don't know. He's extremly extremly supportive in my decision to lose weight, and commented a couple of days ago he could tell that I had lost a little, but I've been ridiculed in the past by boyfriends and told I'd never lose it so why bother etc etc, so I guess I just don't want to think he's just saying it to be nice sort of thing, despite knowing he's genuine about it. lol.

I'm so screwy eh?

Oh well, I better get some work done on my homework if I plan on doing anything after work tonight remotely fun.

Toodaloo

Amber

Quite a bit better now!

2009-03-02T10:21:00.002-07:00

So they still itch a bit and they're still a little tender but my feet are like 30 times better today than they were on Friday by far. On Friday they were getting worse, and I went to the doctor and got some medicated cream to use, and used it as soon as I get home, but much as you know, things always get worse before they start getting better and on Saturday I could barely walk on them. It was horrid. I put off my laundry doing and my grocery shopping because it hurt so bad to walk. Probably didn't help that I did a little bit of exercising on Saturday, despite how my feet hurt. Oh well.

But last night I actually got a full night's sleep (last 3 nights I've woke myself up scratching my feet), and woke up this morning and did the soak and cream and was able to slip my shoes on without going OWWWW, and haven't really had any problems here at work either. Hoozah!

So! Still on track with watching what I eat. I did have a nutritional counseling appointment, she suggested a visit to the land of salads but.....ugh I hate salads. It's such diet rabbit food! I'll try it but...we'll see. So despite problems exercising this weekend, I did manage to lose 1.6 pounds again this week, putting me to just under 271. Soon I'll say good bye to the 270's. I haven't been under 270 since my dad passed away in 2006. When he passed away I was 240 pounds, I quickly gained over 30 pounds in the following few months. Kind of hard to keep weight off if you're severely depressed and could care less about anything because one of your most supportive people in your life went bye bye.

Anyway, I need to get some homework done while I'm at work. I'm completly caught up for the manic monday that it is, which is a first, and am even ahead today, so a homeworking I will go! lol

Amber

Noticeable changes

2009-03-01T09:01:00.003-07:00

So I just woke up a few minutes ago (rare for me to sleep past 7am). I'm nursing my poor feet which according to the doctor both have a fungal infection, my callouses make me more suseptable than most, AND of course make it damn near impossible to get rid of it in a timely manner. Nuts.

My left foot is much worse off than the right, though the main area that was really painful is feeling better. I *forced* myself to walk 10 minutes at 3.0 at the gym yesterday when I went for my appointment and did some weight lifting with the trainer. I felt very stupid and very fat for getting on the treadmill for 10 minutes and getting off, as if all the "fit" people in the room figured I couldn't take more than 10 minutes, but alas, it was only my foot giving me the problems. I was going to try for 30 but after the 10 my foot was just throbbing, time to get off! Ahh well, get this cleared up and I'll be back to my 30 to 45 minute walks.

Anyway, my topic today is noticeable changes, both on scale and off. Obviously I've lost a little under 13 pounds and am closing in on saying good bye to the 270s (weigh in tomorrow baby!). That is pretty huge for me. The fact that it's also the end of February and I've not given up, also a huge victory. I think it just might stick this time.

But other things I've noticed, one of which is highly exciting to me. I have a couple of shirts I'm going to have to retire because they're too large. I also have an Eeyore shirt that I bought when I was living in Texas that *almost* fit but was just a tad too small to be comfortable that now fits comfortably, and finally....I'm wearing my ring again.

Let me give you some background on this very special ring. I wear it on the finger you're supposed to wear your engagement ring or wedding ring. There's a specific reason. This ring was my grandmother's (on my mom's side) who was like a second mother to me. She was paralyzed on her left side for 95% of the time I knew her. I only have one memory of her not being paralyzed and I treasure it. She got married at a very young 14 years old, back when that was still ok, to her 18 year old boyfriend. She had 6 children, all but one within 2 years of eachother, that one was 3 years after the child before him and he's the oddball of the family in more ways than one. She went without bras to save up money to help pay for the house. She NEVER turned away any of my aunt and uncle's friends who would come over for dinner...she fed all of them, no matter what the cost (generally she had anywhere from 10 to 12 kids in her house for dinner). When my grandmother was paralyzed due to having a stroke and a heart attack at the same time and given 6 months to live, she couldn't talk, but she "laughed" at the doctor and proved him wrong, living 10 years beyond what they predicted. Even with her paralysis she often watched her grandchildren (especially me), and some of my most fond memories is seeing her walk into the gym (very slowly, she refused to give up her quad cane and walked wherever she could) to watch me perform at a band concert, or playing aggrevation (board game) on the handmade board that my grandfather made and my father painted. She was a total insperation to me in my life. She passed when I was 14. I was very sad.

After her passing before Thanksgiving in 1996, my mom came to me, it was about December or so, and handed me a ring. This beautiful but simple ring was a blackhills gold ring with one simple rose on top and fit my finger like a glove. She told me my grandmother had given it to her a couple of years ago and told her to hold onto it until she passed away and then give it to me. She wanted me to wear it to not only remember her, but to also remind me to keep chugging away at my goals. She wanted to remind me to not get married until after college, to continue to persue everything in life as I always have, gungho. She didn't want me to take it off until I had another ring to replace it from the man I was going to marry.

Now almost 13 years later, I can count the number of times I've had to take it off on one hand. Once for a week when I accidently left it at my boyfriend's (at the time) house when I was putting lotion on and forgot to put it back on, another time directly after my dad had a huge scare in high school and I almost lost him then, I gained a lot of weight from stressing, couldn't wear it for a couple of months, and finally just recently I'd gained some weight and again couldn't wear it. It still fit but it felt too small and I didn't want it to get completely stuck and need to be cut off or something.

But now it's back on, and it's there to stay. I plan on losing this weight and keeping it off this time, so hopefully the next time it comes off is when it's too big and needs to be resized smaller. :)

Amber

No exercising for me this weekend :(

2009-02-27T10:02:00.003-07:00

So starting a couple of days ago I developed like...little bumps on the underside of my foot, right on the ball of my heel. At first they just kinda itched, and which isn't entirely unheard of given my track record of horribly calloused feet (there's a reason I get a pedicure every 2 months, if I don't my feet crack and boy does that hurt). I didn't think much about it until I woke up yesterday morning and could barely walk and the little bumps had spread to my other foot now too.

So I made an appointment this morning for the doctor (I got here in a few minutes). My feet itch and hurt so bad to walk on it's horrible, so unless it gives up a little the most exercising I will get this weekend will include maybe some weight lifting (I Have 2 5 pound weights at home), and stretching.

My weekend is already pretty packed as it is. I have this Dr. appt this morning, an eye doctor appointment this afternoon (I so need new glasses) and then a trainer appointment on Saturday to learn the machines (I missed last Saturday's, I didn't realize what time it was until I was 20 mins late), and then a nutrition appointment with the trainer on Sunday. Talk about lots of stuff to do aye?

Not to mention I have an assignment that's due on Monday that's driving me bonkers. I can't find any of the terminiology I'm supposed to look up in any of the chapters we're supposed to read. /sigh

Oh well, off to my appointment I go. I'll update later.

Amber

I'm glad...

2009-02-25T10:42:00.003-07:00

...that I don't keep junkfood in the house. And that I was too tired and feeling too lazy to go out and get anything too. lol.

I found myself perusing my cupboards and my fridge last night at least 4 times that I can remember. I'm not sure why. I don't know if it was because I was just tired, or bored, or hungry or what, can't put my finger on it but I had the munchies and luckily for me I had nothing in the house to munch on! lol. Don't get me wrong, I have food in my house, chicken, beef, pork, veggies galore, yogurt, applesauce, all sorts of things. But it wasn't what I wanted (whatever that may have been), and what sounded good I wasn't willing to add those calories onto my day so...the fridge was shut, the cupboards closed and back to my computer I went.

I need to invest in some cheese sticks. I didn't buy any this past time at the store (I was in a hurry) and I think that may have been what I was looking for last night. I wanted something kind of salty tasting (so the applesauce and such was out), but really didn't have anything that qualified that wasn't like a thing of Dinty Moore beef stew (curse my mom for leaving the 2 she bought and didn't eat with me).

Oh well, such is life. There's a reason I don't keep junkfood in the house, and that'd be it :)

On a completely different note, I have been using this pedometer just about every day (forgot it at home on Monday) and I realize that I don't walk around hardly at all, even when you count my walking back and forth to work. Yesterday I logged a whole 3500ish steps. That's pathetic! I need to figure out how to put more walking time under my belt everyday or something. I'm usually so tired after work that I put together dinner and I'm ready to just chill. You'd think that with a job of sitting down all day that I wouldn't be tired, but I DO work 10 hours a day, sometimes more and after I get dinner done all I want to do is kick back and relax before I hit the sack around 10pm. I can't JUST work out on the weekends. Weekends I'm usually catching up on things that need to be done (housework, homework, etc) that I don't have a lot of time or willpower to force myself to do during the week, and while I do often go Friday Saturday and Sunday to work out to me it seems like that's not enough or something I dunno.

I have found some good recepies though! I plan on making this one tonight for dinner again (we had it about a week or so ago):

Quick and Easy Chicken, Broccoli and Brown Rice

1tbsp. vegetable oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 can (10 3/4 oz) Campbell's Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup (I use 98% fat free)
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 1/2 cup uncooked instant brown rice
2 cups fresh or frozen brocolli flowerets (I use frozen so I can make beef and brocolli from the same bag)

1. Heat Oil in 10" skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until well browned on both sides. Remove chicken from skillet.
2. Stir soup, water, paprika and black pepper in skillet. Heat to a boil.
3. Stir in rice and broccoli in skillet. Reduce heat to low. Return chicken to skillet. Sprinkle additional paprika and black pepper over chicken. Cover and cook 5 min. or until chicken is cooked through and rice is tender.

Yum yum! Enjoy!
Amber

Something I've noticed

2009-02-24T09:05:00.002-07:00

A lightbulb moment if you will.

Have you ever ate well for so long that if you DO decide to eat something that may not be too good for you it makes you downright ill? I'm sure everyone is going to say "Oh meeeee!" I was just thinking about how I used to feel all the time vs. how I feel now. Sure I'm probably a little more tired in the mornings (lack of soda!), but I no longer feel sick every day. In fact, I've found that so long as I hop through the shower in the mornings I'm MORE awake than I ever was when drinking soda. I have had a sprite or two since giving up soda, but that's a far cry from the 12 pack diet dew I was drinking almost every day. It's usually when I go out to eat that I'll have a sprite. If they don't have sprite, I drink water. I'll have one sprite and then I'll ask for just water refills. And then there's many other times when I just ask for water period. All depends on my mood, the occassion, etc I suppose.

And to think that most people eat this way (including myself until this year) and feel sick yet ignore it. I remember many a day when my stomach would be upset and I'd shurg it off no big deal. I really notice it now because I don't feel that way all the time! I've been eating pretty well since my mom left. I had a really good dinner last night. I bought some of those Frenches fried onions and rolled chicken tenders in some egg that I seasoned, and then into the fried onions. I made half the pack onion heavy for D and the other half onion light. It worked out well. I'd have liked them a little crunchier but m'eh, not bad tasting for my first try at making them. I made some homny to go with it, just a dab of light butter so it wouldn't stick and let it cook for a few minutes. Was yummy. I had an orange afterwards for a fruit, had my full 8 glasses of water over the course of the day.

I was also thinking about something else today, that was brought up in one of my master's degree classes. One of the other ladies was asking if going to the graduation ceremony was really worth it or if it was more like the high school ones that were m'eh at best (I personally skipped mine, I graduated in August of 2000 instead of May 2001 with the rest of my class and didn't go back for the graduation). Anyway, I was thinking about how a couple of months ago I wouldn't have wanted to go. It's mostly because of my weight, as much as I would sit there and deny it. Flying on an airplane, having to sit in a fold up chair for long periods of time, etc. It was just something I really didn't want to hassle with. But now that I'm losing weight, knowing that I have a full year until I get done, and about another 3 months after that to actually go to the graduation makes me want to go. Maybe I'll even be down to my goal weight by then eh? :)

But yea, just something I've noticed, recently. I've got some work to get done and homework to work on here before I get off this afternoon, so I will have to end it here. I hope everyone has a great day!

Amber

Another weigh in day!

2009-02-23T10:18:00.002-07:00

Interestingly enough I was pleasently surprised today at my weigh in as soon as I crawled out of bed. I'd expected a rather even weight or maybe a slight loss considering how much I'd ate out with my mom and the fact that this weekend I was just so tired for some reason...I barely exercised. Instead I hopped on the scale this morning and was slapped with a 1.9 pound weight LOSS. >.> I'm very happy. That puts me at over 12 pounds lost since 1/9/09. I'm starting to notice it a little in my clothing finally. My brand new bras that I just bought at the beginning of this year sometime are actually roomy now. I may have to retire the shirt I'm wearing today soon because it was a little big when I bought it (as I often do buy my shirts a little big) and now it feels *TOO* big. The kind of shirt feeling that you know everytime you shift your weight your bra strap shows? Yeah, I hate that. I also need to buy new pants. I have one pair of jeans (they're stretch) that fit me comfortably now and then even my dress slacks that were a little big are getting to be too big. I hate clothes shopping. I can only hope I'm in a definent size rather than being inbeween. I hate it when I'm inbetween, when the next size down is too small but the size I'm at is too big. lol

So I made a new weight loss challenge for me, 261 by St. Patrick's day. I was at 274.3 when I decided the goal weight, and it gave me exactly 31 days to get there. My original goal when I first joined WW was just 264.5, so if I can at LEAST make that by then I'll be happy. Even if I don't, well, then I don't, but 261 is what I'm shooting for. I also made a goal of 10 points per week starting this week. I didn't do it for last week because I knew it wouldn't be a regular week. With the addition of a pedometer it should be much easier for me to track the little things I do every day beyond my normal walking. My new pedometer has the ability to allow me to count aerobic minutes. Meaning I either walked at 60 steps a minute or I walked for at least 10 minutes continously. I'm only going to count those when it comes to getting my points in. The rest I'm considering "normal" walking for the day.

It's so nice that it's getting warmer outside. It means more ability to walk outside during the evening. :)

Anyway back to work I go!

Amber

A late night....or early morning?

2009-02-20T01:34:00.002-07:00

Well, I took my mom to the airport yesterday. It required me getting up at 4am and of course, I couldn't sleep the night before, I usually can't when there's something important going on the next day. Needless to say after I got back home about 1pm or so, I was exausted. I stayed up until about 5pm but I just couldn't stay up anymore so I crashed...until just now. Ugh I hate being on an oddball sleep schedule! My mom made it back safe and sound with the kids right on schedule, she said it was a pretty uneventful day as days go when it comes to traveling. I'm glad.

As for me, I'm glad it's uber quiet today. It's been a while since it's been this nice and quiet for me as usually I go to bed long before D does so I don't get any quiet time like this unless he's at work, then my phone is usually blowing up.

I'm back on track now, completely, with my eating. Although I ate out most of last week, I haven't gained anything, and lost .4 already. Good to know I can pick good for me food while eating out. Stuff that I picked that wasn't so good for me I just ate in moderation, it seemed to work. I think tonight (today?) I'm going to get some of my homework done and then hit the sack again early this morning, get a little nap in and try to get back on my normal sleep schedule.

So until later!

Amber

Almost over!

2009-02-18T16:28:00.002-07:00

Well my mom's vacation is almost coming to an end, and while I love my mom and cousins to death, I'm ready to go back to my own routine. This whole eating out and such has me tired, irregular and just plain ready to go back to eating well again. Not that I'm eating un-well, but well, you know, at home I can control portions better, what kind of oil I use, etc, and I can't do that when I'm eating out. Plus I hate spending money and when my mom's around I seem to spend a lot of it. I've already spent my check that I just got on Monday between bills, stuff that I wanted and food...thank god for tax returns!

My mom is so supportive of me though. She bought me a Wok, and a good George Forman electric grill thing to use at home and a spice lazy susan for my counter and a thing of small 1/2 cup containers so I can split up fruit and stuff easier. Not to mention my Valentine's day gift was a new better homes and garden basic cook book and I also went to the store and got an easy to cook WW cookbook and an illustrated cook book that has the basics of cooking (such as how to poach things, steam things, etc, dunno how to do all that myself).

I'm just ready to go back to being at home more, exercising more, and chillin' out in a nice quiet room with D. :) I've missed him! lol. I'm sure he's missed me too, he's had to fend for himself pretty much most of the week...we've gone and ate at some places like Osaka's that he can't stand to go eat at because of the smell (fishy smell ick) or doesn't like the food.

And with that I'm going home. I'm at work right now, the girl covering for me had somewhere to be tonight and I'd told her if there were any additions to the schedule for today I'd come in, so here I am. But the day is almost over, I just have to close up shop after this patient leaves (sounds like they're almost done) and off to home I go!

See ya 'round!

Amber

A quicky!

2009-02-17T09:28:00.003-07:00

Hey! Just popping in to say hello to everyone. I have been very busy the last few days, hanging with my mom and the kids. We've been to the Zoo on Saturday, went to Santa Fe to go shopping on Sunday and she met D and his family on Sunday night when we went to Olive Garden. On Monday we went back down to Santa Fe where I got a new phone service because my old cell phone was on the monthly plan (no contract left) and was old, and falling apart and there's no towers out here for that service so I had to pay extra for national service ugh. So I got Verizon cuz it's about the only thing that gets reception up here on the mountain and the phone is a nifty maroon color that flips up so you can type with it. Pretty neat I must say.

Anyway. We had a really nice home cooked meal here at home with me and the kids, D and our friend Ken and Robin. They drove up from Albequerque or however you spell it. Was a blast.

Today I'm going to see if I can't commender the SUV that D has and take the kids to the Four Corners, so they can stand in 4 states at once. They're all excited. Dunno if we can make it, requires driving through the mountains and who knows what it's like up there, but we'll try it. Worst that happens is we turn around and come back home. :)

Tomorrow is really the last day I have with my mom because they leave to go back to IL on Thursday mid morning and most of the morning will be spent getting them together and into the car and to the airport. But it's been a fun visit so far. I know if she does decide to move out here D and I will have to fly back to IL to help drive because she'll have a big UHaul and the car so someone's gotta drive something! lol. It'll be a long drive, it's 19 hours to here from there. Oye. Was bad enough when I drove 16 to get from Texas to here (Texas is HUGE when you drive across it!)

So yesterday was my official weigh in. I was kind of worried what the scale would say because of mom being here and eating out so much, but surprisingly I lost more weight than when I weighed myself earlier this week for the end of the challenge. From 2/9 to 2/16 (which is one week) I lost 2.4 pounds. In fact when I put my weight into the weigh in thing at WW, it "yelled" at me and said 2.4 was too much for one week. M'eh, it is mostly because of how much more active I've been! I'm sure some of it'll come back this week, I've been eating out more and drinking less water but walking around more so I dunno how it'll affect me, but I'm doing the best that I can and that's all that matters to me. It'll come off again easily because I am really watching what I'm eating, and not just going hog wild.

Anyway it's about time for me to pick them up for the day, so I'm gonna get outta here.

Ya'll have a good day!

Amber

Oh the evils of eating out!

2009-02-14T22:54:00.002-07:00

Whew! Today was a long day! I picked my mom and cousins up from the airport and we went to the ZOOOOO! I'd have pictures but my dumbass forgot my camera in my friend Ken's car! Anyway, so we had a blast, we walked around for close to 3 hours, got on the train, rode it to the aquarium where we walked for another HOUR in the aquarium before we had to catch the train back to the zoo and then get in the car and go (it was getting a little windy and chilly by then). We also decided to eat something as a hold me over while we were in the park and my mom got fries, I had exactly 5 fries. I stopped there, and had one bite of my cousin's pretzel bread thing and a bottle of water. I avoided the temptation to eat much there knowing it was all fried food, and not good for me. We decided to go to eat as a finisher to the day and they chose Golden Corral as the dinner spot...all you can eat steak buffet....

Oye

I was a good girl (mostly) tonight. I had a 3 oz (roughly, maybe 4) piece of grilled steak, less than 3 oz piece of pork, about 3 fork fulls of santa fe rice, a small helping of lasagna (about half the size of a pack of cards), 3 fork fulls of mac and cheese, a roll and a full helping of green beans and corn and about half a helping of steamed brocolli (all they had out at the time). I also had dessert, which was a piece of carrot cake but I ate the cake and left most of the frosting. There was a hint of frosting inbetween the 2 cake layers and that was enough for me frosting wise.

I am pleasently surprised. I did not stuff myself. I did not make absolutely horrible choices. I tried to limit my intake while still enjoying the foods I like. Let me put this into perspective for you. Prior to tonight I would've gone up for at least a 3rd if not 4th plate. I would eat mostly meat, fried chicken, porkchops, roast beef, steak....I would have mashed potatoes, gravy and god only knows what else, no veggies and a big helping of ice cream with lots of toppings to finish the night. By spreading my food out on my plate in small segments I cut down my food intake. I made myself think I had more on my plate than I really did!

Was it a lot of calories for the day? Perhaps. Obviously I can't count my points. But having walked around so much all day, I think I worked most of it off before I even got there! lol. In the end I honestly think I made pretty good choices when faced with such a daunting array of food and a good portion of it not being all that good for me.

Well, it's late. I'm tired. I have to pick up my mom and the kids tomorrow morning early, we're going shopping. :) So, until my next post!

Amber

Last post for a week! (probably)

2009-02-13T13:24:00.005-07:00

So I thought I'd post one last time before I jet, got a lot to get done still but I'm giving myself a mini-lunch break. :)

I hit the ground running this morning at about 7, didn't bother with my usual morning shower because I knew I'd jsut be going to work out and want to shower again when I got home. By 8am (after breakfast (Cereal and Milk) and a bottle of water) I was standing in front of the DMV waiting for it to open so I could get my plates switched. Got that done, came back home and cleaned my entire kitchen including the stove, inside of the fridge and microwave, and then picked up any trash/extra stuff laying around. Just have the bedroom and living room to tackle and vacuum and I'm done with the house. I'm waiting until D (the BF) gets one so that I can get him to help me bring the stuff up out of my car. I'd do it myself but going up and down the stairs so much gets me very winded, I'd rather NOT have an asthma attack kthxbai. Good for me yes, in moderation, I'm not in that good of shape yet. But I have brought up 2 things out of my car so far today, from both times of going out and coming home, gotta go up the stairs anyway might as well carry something right?

Anyway, so about 10:45ish am I ran to the gym, did a 45 minute walk at 2.5 speed alternating between 3 and 4% incline. My legs were jello after. Did a little stretching, hopped back in my car, swung by subway (rather than go do grocery shopping on a hungry tummy) and came home to eat. I got a foot long oven roasted chicken with lettuce, tomato, onion and black olives, and one thin swipe of light mayo (about a tbs I'd guess) and a bag of baked lays potato chips. I've noticed when I get a foot long it's too much but not enough with just half. I decided to try the baked chips today to see if that helped and it did. I get the foot long cuz they're 5 bucks right now vs. the 4.02 for a 6 inch. I save the second half for later, whether it be lunch the next day, dinner tonight, whatever don't matter, still good :)

So next on my to do list today is to finish up the house, bring up my stuff out of the car, go to get some groceries for D so he has something to eat while I'm gone most of the time this coming week and do the laundry >.> HATE LAUNDRY but it needs to get done :)

I have some pretty heavy duty stuff planned this week, my mom is flying in tomorrow morning around lunch time. Me, her, the girls, my friend Ken, his wife Robin and their daughter "'Stina" are all going to go to grab a quick bite to eat and then to the.....ZOOOOOOOO!!!!! XD 2 to 3 hours of walking fun woo! After that I dunno, maybe we'll hit up some shopping or something, some other sort of sight with them. I think it'll be a blast! :) I'm SO taking my camera, so be prepared for pictures! lol.

Anyway, I leave now to go get some stuff accomplished. I may post again, especially if I have pictures, we'll see. I know that my mom has to go back to the hotel to sleep sometime (unfortunately my one bedroom apartment is not NEAR big enough to house all 5 of us by far and so my mom opted for a hotel room). So maybe when I come home if I"m not dead tired, I'll post stuff.

Until then!

Amber

A mini-weigh in

2009-02-12T07:42:00.002-07:00

Today marked the end of the challenge on WW, so I had to weigh myself to get the final tally. According to the Wii Fit I'm at 275.1, my own scale that I've had forever (and wanted to see how far off it was) said 274.6. But I'll be good and take the higher of the two numbers. :) I am .1 away from the 10pound mark. woot!

I've been really worried about when my mom comes, what we're going to do, eating out, her meeting the BF (yikes!). You see, my mom, because of all the trials and stuff we went through as a family with my dad, is kind of hard to read and get along with. Don't get me wrong, she's the nicest person ever, and would drop everything to help anyone. But she's got this...gruff bubble exterior you have to get passed, and she's a huge into religion and so sometimes jokes and stuff don't really fly with her. Basically she seems to be like a "witch" but only until she lets her wall come down a little. I'm not too worried about say...my boyfriend not liking her because, frankly I don't think he'd care one way or the other. I'm not worried about my mom not liking him because she knows I'm happy and so she will be happy if I'm happy. I just want everyone to get along! The whole mother in law thing horror stories I've heard, don't want to be a part of that! lol. What's nice is when I first mentioned my mom was coming I didn't get the usual "Where is she going to stay" response I was expecting. My BF surprises me all the time, I guess I've just had a lot of duds in my years of dating lol. He just asked when, and for how long, and when her flight was getting in, if I could have Ken (our friend) take me to the airport since she was coming in so god awful early...But never once did he balk about it, or complain about it, sound annoyed or anything. Was nice. :)

I have so much to do tomorrow OYE! I have to get my plates for my car done, work out (Friday through Sun are my Y days), get some semblence of groceries in the house for BF to have something to eat while I'm off galavanting with my family, finish moving the stuff up from my car, finish my homework assignment that's due on Monday, possibly clean out the BF's truck if I get ambitious, and clean up my house. Wow, I have a lot to do! lol. Maybe I better start tonight while the BF has his daughter...

So anyway, I'll probably "disappear" after tomorrow. Fret not, I will not have fallen off the bandwagon, I'll just be incredibly busy :)

Amber

Morning time it is!

2009-02-11T07:57:00.002-07:00

Ok, much better. :) I forced myself to stay up until 8pm last night, so I wouldn't be going to bed too early and getting up way too early and I slept from 8 until I crawled out of bed at 6:30 this morning. I probably could've slept longer if I didn't have to come to work that's just how tired I was.

But I'm much more awake this morning, by far, than I was yesterday. Yesterday's utter lack of sleep messed up my points day though, that's for sure. I was too tired to get up and eat breakfast, too tired to mess to much with lunch (ended up with 2 pb&j's) and too tired to eat much for dinner either (subway sandwich!). Going into dinner I'd used 12 points for the day, and I had a 6 point sub. Bringing my total to like around 18, out of 32. So I was 14 points short yesterday...not cool. But one odd day isn't going to kill me. Shockingly enough when I woke up this morning I wasn't really hungry either, so I opted for a granola bar and 1/2 cup of milk (something I could quickly eat since I was running a little behind), and off I went.

So I'm getting excited. I just work today and tomorrow and then I'm off for a week and my mom is going to be here Saturday morning. I have SO much stuff that needs to be done. I need to finish bringing up the stuff out of my car, and get it washed and vacuumed out (winter is not kind to the inside of my car, especially this year when we got dumped on twice, lots of dirt and rocks and stuff that was at the bottom of the snow got stuck to my shoes and into my car it came). I also have to pick up my house a bit, it's relatively clean, but by Friday I'll have a few dishes to do and stuff, and I need to vacuum and dust again. I'd also like to get a coffee table before she gets here. We don't have one right now and it'd be nice to have one. I"ve been wanted to get one but just haven't. I also have to go on Friday and switch my plates (FINALLY). They had to send off for my title or something (I still have a loan on it) and they called to say that it came in. That's good considering my Texas plates were set to expire at the end of this month. :)

Here's to hoping I can stay OP when my mom's here! lol

Amber

One of those days...

2009-02-10T14:49:00.003-07:00

Short post today folks. I'm having a good day food wise, water wise, but I plan on going home, eating half a subway sub and going to bed. Last night I think I finally fell asleep about 3:15am and the boyfriend was still awake when I got up for work this morning at 6:30am. Why? I dunno. I was sorta tired when I laid down, my boyfriend said he wasn't tired so he was playing the playstation that's in our bedroom. Doesn't bother me to have music or game stuff playing in the background when I'm trying to go to sleep. I actually find it relaxing. You know how most people complain video game music is too redundant? Well it's good sleeping music lol.

We were just kind of laying there joking and then all went quiet and...nothing. Couldn't sleep. I tossed, I turned, he even gently "woke me" at one point because he said it sounded like I was having a nightmare, don't remember. Needless to say no real sleep came to me. So...no real creative juices flowing today folks (as if there are most times lol), I'm going home to get a much needed long sleep.

Amber

The little things...

2009-02-09T15:00:00.002-07:00

Have you ever noticed the little things in life are what gives you the most pleasure? I have several "little things" that really give me pleasure in life...

Joking with patients as they come into the office. I really enjoy bringing a smile to someone's face.
Being supportive of the ones I love most, including my BF, unconditionally.
Enjoying a nice hot cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter's day.
Playing with a puppy or kitty.

The little things. They're also a huge motivator for me when it comes to weight loss:
Making my mini-goals (even if it takes a little longer than planned)
Seeing the number get bigger of what I've lost.
Knowing that regardless of the change in weight, I'm making overall better choices in food.
Wanting to wow the people in my family when I go home to visit
Being able to throw away clothes that don't fit anymore (and I mean they're too big on me).

It's the little things we take for granted every day in our lives that I really strive to try to enjoy. My dad's death at 51 taught me so much. It taught me that any day could be your last, and that you need to enjoy your time while you can. Once I got past the initial heart ache and anger of him leaving, I've really started to realize priorities in my life.

I have come a long way in the past 3 years, I used to get so mad at the stupidiest things, upset with myself over things I couldn't control. Get angry with my dad over things HE couldn't control about his medical conditions. Angry about past things that bothered me that obviously couldn't be changed and were making me miss out on the PRESENT things that could be changed. I've learned to really enjoy today because tomorrow may not come.

So I'm viewing this journey of mine as a little "big" thing. It's a little step in the right direction. A step that will allow me to more fully enjoy life. Not be winded walking up and down the stairs of my apartment, to be able to freely chase my children (whenever I have some) around, and who knows what else. Each pound I lose is a little thing. All those little things will eventually add up into a very big little thing I call the skinny me.

Are there going to be bumps in the road along the way? Undoubtedly. But for now, I am relishing the little acomplishment I've had of going a full month of thinking of only my health and not of what other people think of me. Of stocking my house with nothing but good for me food, and of the "not so good" food, resisting eating. Of enjoying the support I get from my BF and the support I give him every day with his own problems he's having.

I hope you too can relish in the "little things"

Amber

Weigh in Day today!

2009-02-09T07:46:00.002-07:00

Today's the weekly weigh in day for me, and I'm down 1.7 to put me at 276.7 pounds. Without even realizing it, I've met my goal I'd set a full week early from weight watchers. I joined a small group of people looking to lose at least 50 pounds this year, and we do mini goals each month (weight loss or otherwise). I'd put my goal to be down 5 pounds (to 277) by Feb 13th, which, when I set it was an average of about a pound a week. Something to start me small, very attainable and easily able to boost my confidence. The fact that I reached it almost a week ahead of schedule excites me.

I had a pretty good weekend, I met some of my goals, and those that I didn't well, I just didn't and it doesn't really upset me. I had a lot of fun this weekend and made the choices I did and that's that, no use in getting upset about something in the past. I easily drank all my water, it's getting easier to squeeze it in, especially at night. I did try out one new recepie this week, girlfriend of mine sent me a wendy's chili knockoff, I made it over the weekend it was really good. But for goals met that's where it ends. Sorta. I didn't exercise as much as I would've liked to this weekend, but I DID manage to get my car cleaned out of all the trash and some of the stuff brought up before it turned cold again. I DID manage to sign up for the YMCA AND use it on Saturday, and I DID manage to get my laundry done, house cleaned up, kitchen spotless AND all my grocery shopping done in one weekend! So for not getting the homework done, or getting the cardio exercising in for 4 days (I did 3) I think I got a lot accomplished otherwise.

Besides that my weekend was filled with pushing to get my paladin to level 70 on WoW (she was 63 on Saturday) and I had a blast doing it! So I did a lot of work and some play time and I feel good about that. I still lost 1.7 this week, and that's good. Not too fast, not too slow, just a good pace.

On another note, I can no longer wear my pants. That's right, the jeans I love so much are just too big. I constantly have to pull them up, and even with a belt they don't feel right. So ... I'm putting them on a hook on my door to my bedroom to remind me of just how big I was and where I DON'T want to go back to. I still don't see any changes in myself, except those pants. My shirts pretty much fit the same, those pants were just too big to begin with so it didn't take long before I had to retire them. But I'm ok with that. I've lost over 8 pounds already, which is good. I'm shooting for the 10 pound mark this coming weigh in if I can. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. I have to be very careful when my mom comes to visit because I don't want to gain it all back. But I'm sure she'll have me pretty busy walking around a lot while I'm here, so who knows, maybe I'll lose some while she's here. :)

Anyway, I hope today finds every one well! I'm off to go finish some work up here at work and (ugh) work on my homework assignment >.>

Amber

A successful day

2009-02-06T18:17:00.002-07:00

Today was a successful day! It was beautiful outside, so I cleaned out my car (just have to bring up the non-trash) in anticipation of needing it cleaned out for when my mom comes to visit. I also went to the Y and walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I walked for 10 minutes at a 2.0 pace and then the last 10 minutes at a 3.0 pace (which I will say was kicking may ass at the end of it) and then the other 10 minutes were a warmup/cooldown. I also did some exercises on my Wii, fixed dinner, did the dishes and am now relaxing. Dinner tonight consisted of lean cut center loin cut porkchops (no bones) with augratin potatoes and peas. It was quite yummy. Only time I can cook porkchops is when the BF isn't home, he's not a huge fan of them, he'll eat them but why cook something he'd rather not have aye?

Oh, and I got my hair cut! :) I also found the book to my camera, hopefully I can figure out how to take timed pictures.

Beyond that, it's just another beautiful day. Hope it finds you well :)

Amber

150 and counting!

Heeeeeey!

Issues

Finally! An end to the Madness!!!

Back on the treadmill...

Busy busy busy and needing some ideas!

Some good news.

Well, lookie there.

Tomorrow's the day!

The 26th approaches...!

Up and Down couple of weeks.

A review of my accomplishments and a look ahead...

Ugh mornings kick my...

Good morning!

New week!

Day 2

Day 1

Silence

Another official weigh in come and gone...

Hey Hey!

Done!

Is it possible?

Does this count?

Hiiiiii there!

The scale....it mocks me.

Does not compute!

Some observations

I did it! *cue eye of the tiger music*

And so it comes to this...

A little late in the posting, but an excellent weight loss week none the less.

Interesting

Day 2!

Do you hear that?

Initial Move complete!

Let the Craziness begin!

Frustration.

Some notes from the weekend

Small weight loss is still weight loss!

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

Good morning!

86 Weeks is that all?

No change is...ok I guess.

A rough spot

Help a chicka out!

A revelation if you will.

My planning

A long time coming!

Victory!

Been busy!

Going home....again

Nose back to the grindstone

Woo!

A long weekend.

EA Active

Slight downward motion

The light at the end of the tunnel...

Weekend indulging

Challenges abound!

COOKIES!

On the down train again!

Doing better.

The official weight

Don't even want to *look* at the scale.

Weight Loss

A more Recent Photo

A boring Easter

Wall of pictures!

Back to work I go!

Ill

Another week gone by.

Struggling

A small loss.

Hmph!

20 pounds down.

Hazzah!

Computer Woes

Weigh in day again!

Ho boy here we go again...

Sick

Another weigh in, another pound gone

I did it! cue eye of the tiger music

Don't even want to look at the scale.