Survival Guide

I'm excited for tomorrow. I will be setting up my resource book. I have a binder that I keep my meal plans in that I subscribe to. It needs updating badly. Tomorrow I'll be printing out all of the materials I am behind in and make sure they get into a book. I notice that I eat much better and my portions are in better control when I use a meal plan. Also, I have a small books worth of healthy eating/living information that I want to have all in one accessible place. I'll be printing that out also and putting it all together in a binder. Very soon, I also want to put together my visual goal poster. I've never *really* grasped the concept of these things. So the approach I am taking is to put things up there that remind me of my journey and why I am on it. Sometimes, I need those things to stare me in the face.

I also find, that when it comes to reading materials, I read better and more attentively when it isn't on a screen. This is one of the reasons that I want it all printed out for me. I should clarify, not on a computer screen. I have no issues at all reading on my Nook. I guess what it boils down to, is I am starting my own survival guide. I already record my food online on WW, otherwise I would add food recording sheets to the survival guide also.

It's by no means complete. I am sure I will be adding to it as I go along. This is my November and I intend to explore the ways I can best take care of myself. It sounds selfish to say it that way. How I am supposed to take care of the people around me whom I love, if I am not taking care of me though.

I'm hoping also that moving my body more will become easier again. I think most people slack off on their exercise in winter time when they can't go outside anymore. For me it's the opposite. I do pretty well during the cold months. (Cold is a relative term btw) Once the ungodly hot, humid, buggy, awful months show up, I don't go outside anymore. It's too hot. It's too buggy. I've literally been chased back to my house by CLOUDS of mosquitoes. It's disgusting. So with colder temps, I am looking forward to getting back outside, very much.

So tell me, what's in your weight-loss/healthy-living survival guide?

Clearing the cobwebs and a November challenge

Swish....
...swish...
......swish...

Don't mind me, just clearing the cobwebs out. It's been a while hasn't it? I've been hiding. I've been hiding from a great many things. When you hide though, you can't really make any kind of progress. You put yourself in a fantastic position to slip backwards though. That is what I did.

Apparently, I was hiding in a hole... with a rock on top. There was plenty of room to go backward (AND BOY DID I EVER) but not much room to go forward. So I have climbed out of the hole. It took a long time to move that rock off. There was a house sitting on it. Literally.

I've been dealing with a lot of stress. (Who hasn't? I know...) My husband and I lost our house to foreclosure. Well it's been getting closer to the end of the process and the closer the end got, the more freaked out I got. We have a public sale date now. I finally feel as though I am not stuck under that house anymore.

So I have decreed the best way to kick off this November it to have a challenge. November is about me. It has begun well so far. True, I haven't eaten very well, and I haven't begun working out again yet, but I have started doing things for me. I have begun to do much neglected research into eating better for my body to help with my specific health issues. I've have been doing laundry and cleaning my room, trying to make the space I inhabit feel like home. I've been trying to sort through the pain and the STUFF generated by moving out of the old house. I've been working on me.

Some questions elude me. fatgirlvsworld gave me some great advice at one point. We were talking about emotional eating and she suggested I try and get to the root of it. Question myself until I found whatever the fear and hurt was that drove the emotional eating. This answer eludes me. I haven't found it yet. I'm still looking. I don't know why my brain shuts off and I go into a sleepwalking state of emotional eating. The scary part is, it's not just emotional eating. It's completely un-mindful eating. Sometimes, I have no idea what I've eaten that day.

See, that is the start of the zombification process. I know it's happening. There was a zombie in that hole with me. I didn't manage to hide at all. They are slow and relentless those zombies. You can't get lazy around them. Fortunately, this isn't the movies. The process isn't permanent. You can still change your fate as long as you haven't let them kill you.

So November is about me. I don't expect to FIX everything this month. I expect to reverse the zombification process so I am aware. You need to be aware of what you are doing and what is going into your body. If you don't know what is going into it, you'll never know what you can get out of it.

Down but not out.

I've been dreading writing this post. Writing this post means that I am ready to look at my behavior and actually do something about it. Writing this post means becoming accountable for my actions as of late. Mostly, writing this post means telling you all what I've been keeping inside.

I really fell off the wagon. I let myself get into a very bad place. I didn't fall off. I jumped off with abandon. I ran from it. I went completely off my healthy lifestyle. I was struggling for so long with the healthy choices I had made. No, I was struggling with sticking to them. The weight stopped coming off and I got sad and depressed. I began to think, what is the point of working so hard for no reward?

Of course that was the completely wrong way to be looking at it. I knew that then, but I couldn't shake it. So I went back to my old ways. All of my old ways.

Guess what? Predictably... ALL the old weight came back. This isn't completely true. I'm not back to my original weight. I did put a lot of the weight back on though. I feel awful. I look awful. My skin and hair are a mess. My clothes are tight. I just feel awful.

So I decided it was time to come clean about what I've been doing to myself. It's time to face the fact that I am making myself feel awful. I am being my own worst enemy. No one came make the good choices for me. I've been hiding away not wanting anyone to know what I was doing. I almost felt like if no one else knew how badly I was treating my body, then I wouldn't know either. You can't hide from yourself though can you?

You can't hide from those damn zombies either. They always know. They are drawn to the unhealthiness. I will beat you zombies. Just you wait! I'm coming for you... now that I've stopped hiding....

Today for the first time in a long time, I got the measuring cups out. I had a non sugary cereal for breakfast with fat free milk. Next time I'll use my Almond Milk, but I need to get more from the store first. I've began to look for healthy recipes again, and using Pinterest to pin motivational quotes and images. Want to see one?

Look how curvy and beautiful she looks. I honestly don't want to be a stick of a person. I know that the images we're confronted with each day are distorted. So I realized that I don't know what healthy looks like. I went looking for pictures form yesteryear before .... well before mass media did what it does. I've been looking at a lot of the old black and white photos from the 50's and 60's. Of course the women are beautiful and trim... but they don't look like today's Modern Concept of Beauty... at least not to me. See that roundness to her stomach? That is my favorite part. I love it.

So I need to make changes. Again, unsurprisingly, there has been no change with the infertility issues either. I didn't think I would need a stronger motivator to take the weight off than that. It's phenomenally hard to me for some reason to keep my long term goals in my mind at crucial moments. I wish there was a way to train myself to not be to instant gratification oriented.

I guess the important thing to note here... is that I am taking the steps to get my life back. Living for food is lame. Let me tell you... SO LAME. I have so many other things that are more important to me that there is no real reason for me to feel enslaved to food. So... a small list of things I find more important...

Walks in the park with my Love and my Puppy.
Finally getting to have my own babies.
RUNNING... like a real runner...
Treating this temple of mine like it deserves to be treated.
Many long years with my friends and family.
Walks on the beach.
Splashing in the waves.

I think a new project needs to be started. I need a new motivational/goal poster so I can see the things I am aiming for every day. Look for it in a future post.

Monday

I meant to post this yesterday. Oh well. The message is still pertinent even if I am, in general, running a day or so behind.

First allow me to say, I do not like the new blogger format AT ALL and I can't figure out how to change it back. BOO!!

Now on to the point of this post. I love Monday's. I know! Who says that, right? It's true though. Monday is such a great day for New Beginnings. Things are just getting going, the week is starting (despite what the calendar says) and I am gearing up for a brand new beginning. Monday's are resolution days. This is the day of the week where I decide how I want the week to go. (Am I always successful in that? Of course not)

Obviously, I've been struggling with my health and weight loss goals. Don't we all from time to time? Well last week, I did very poorly. Bad decisions and laziness lead to one heck of a gain... and I don't mean that in any kind of a good way. So it was time for a resolution. Monday would be better. Monday I will do things right. Monday there will be no sweets, no sodas, no fast food. Monday I will get it right.

Monday came and I felt alive and excited with my new beginning. I was hopeful and more importantly confident. Monday was here, welcoming me with open arms.

(Here is where I would have started today's post)

Today is now Tuesday. I was not perfect. I have not been perfect. I disappointed Monday. I disappointed me. Now, this is where my insides want to say... well, this week is a wash. Start planning for Monday again. You see, Monday can become kind of a crutch. It can hold you up and ease you along allowing you to continue to make bad choices with the illusion of no consequences because there is always another Monday. (You'll find this to be true. I'm am positive the Zombie apocalypse will happen on a Friday just to ruin everyone's weekend plans)

But I can't afford to do that anymore. I'm struggling with some serious things here. Not the least of which, is depression. The further into THAT I get the harder it is to do anything 'right'.

I look to myself... and think... Really? You want to wait until MONDAY? It's only Tuesday for Pete's sake! (I don't know who this Pete is, but we do a lot of things for his own sake) I can't possibly have lost the entire week already. The zombie behind be shuffles closer and what he says is... "Bbbbbrrrrraaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnsssssssssss" but what he means is... Go ahead and eat the cake. Have fries with that. What is one soda? Because the fat part of me.. the zombie part of me... doesn't want to be strong. It doesn't want to succeed I guess. It is maybe afraid of success. Afraid of having to be afraid of food forever.

But there is another part inside there. It's the fit girl. She is ready to fight the undead. She is the one who wants all the energy in the world to play with her kids... (Pete, for your sake, let there be kids!) She is the one who wants to be a runner, a dancer, a nutritionist, a physical person and teacher... She is the one who is dying inside this body trying to get out and become better.

And it's only Tuesday.

Rise from the Dead

Undeath!! AHHHHH!!!

No, not really. I haven't fully succumbed to the grasp and bite of the slathering undead. I've come really close. I've been attacked and mauled and scraped and crawled my way into a hole to heal from the experience. See, this isn't exactly like the movies, or the video games. One bite or scratch isn't going to do you in and turn you into one of the legion of brain eaters. You need to be fully beaten in order to turn. You need to really give up in order to go back into the land of mindless eating and killing yourself.

I was close. I admit it.

Since I started to seriously try and change my life, escape the zombie horde and get healthy, I've made a lot of progress. I'm down a total of about 40-45lbs, depending on how I'm doing at the time. I've also been stalled for about six months. I lost the drive and the will and maybe even the want to get it done and stick with it. I've been yo-yoing the same 10lbs since then. This past week has been horrible, and I am sure I am close to the top of those ten pounds instead of the bottom.

I'm finally peeking my head out of the hole though. I pulled myself out of my hiding spot and went for a long walk today. I've had a lot of time to think too, about why I've been in the hole. Sadly, I haven't really come to too many conclusions, and the process of thinking it all through is honestly kind of painful. I've had to examine a lot of my behavior and try and decipher WHY I am behaving that way. I haven't been really proud of myself in a long time. That is a hard feeling to examine also.

I'm experiencing some health issues, and they aren't getting better. I don't know if I actually have addressed it in the blog or not, but I'm suffering from infertility. My body doesn't work properly and I don't have a cycle. I was very excited that the healthy lifestyle I was embracing was helping, as things started to actually become cyclical. However, things are now close to being as bad as they have ever been and I'm feeling depressed more than not. Depression, leads me to a whole host of unhealthy behaviors because they make me feel better "RIGHT NOW". I'm still working on improvement here.

There is just so much I am trying to do and want for myself and my life. I sort of feel like I've failed as an adult. I'm 31 years old, still trying to have my first child, and now I don't even have a place of my own to call home. This is not where I pictured my life. Mind you... I don't have a bad life. I have a lot to be thankful for. But when you know inside you that a piece of you is missing, you can't just overlook that.

I guess the point is... no promises of regular blogging... no swearing to myself I'm going to 'get it right' right away this time... I'm just going to crawl out of my whole and start moving again, away from the zombies, and hope that I'm faster.

Vanished?

No. I haven’t actually vanished. I just haven’t felt as though I have had much to share. I certainly haven’t had much in the way of positive things to share.

The truth is, around the end of October, I completely fell off the wagon. This is the wagon that helps keep you in front of the zombie horde. I mean, we can’t walk/jog/run 24/7 now can we? So for a short while, they got their mangy decrepit mitts on me. Now, when you are on the wagon, instead of walking, it’s because you’re already tired. So, being tired already, I didn’t do a fantastic job of staying ahead of them.

I haven’t been gobbled up. No fear! I was however, chewed upon a bit. I would rally myself together and make a lunge for the wagon. I caught up to it! Each time I tried to hoist myself back onto it though, I would fall on my face in the mud. Falling on your face when you are outrunning the zombie horde presents a distinct advantage for the zombies.

The zombies, would then catch up, and we would start the whole process over again. This lasted all through the month of November. Consequently, my weight fluctuated up and down, but never really getting any lower than the start of October. I began to lose faith in what I was doing. As I call it, the honey moon period of the diet was over. It didn’t become hard. I got bored. I got bored of recording and measuring everything. Also, things that in previous months I had NO TROUBLE at all deciding that I didn’t want because they weren’t good for me, were suddenly irresistible.

I admit it, I was in a downward spiral.  My best friend finally intervened. She told me… HEY STOP BEING DUMB… only not in those words. And I suddenly though… hey, I should stop being dumb. I recorded my food. I stayed within points. Last night I had a bad evening and I did some really bad binge eating in the middle of the night. This morning when I got up, I recorded it all. I’ve planned my eating for the rest of the day around the excess points I spent in the middle of the night.

I have finally hoisted myself back onto the wagon.

So here I am. Resting my legs as I continue on the journey to outpace, out maneuver and outwit the zombie horde. I’m writing my blog so you can share my adventures with me. I how to write more often, and to have encouraging things to say. On that note, is there anything you would like to know? About me? My weight watchers experience? The zombies at large? What socks I’m wearing etc?

15%

Yesterday was Halloween. It was also Monday. Monday’s around here are weigh in days. I was very excited for this one, because my mid week weight check showed me being down 2lbs. However, Halloween being home to Tricks or Treats… I did not lose 2lbs. I did however lose .6lbs. The really exciting part is that .6 brought me to a total of 15% of my body weight lost since I started this. Fifteen percent!? That is amazing if I do say so myself. That is 42.lbs lost. I’ve carried my dog’s food into the house and it comes in 25lb packages. THAT IS HEAVY. I’ve lost nearly 2 of them. Wow.

As I said, yesterday was Halloween. It is my absolute favorite holiday of the year next to my birthday. So I had candy. Oh boy the candy. I also made an amazing beef stew for dinner. Then of course there was popcorn for watching scary haunted house things on TV. Well at the end of the day, do you know what I did?

I entered all of my points. I knew it was going to be over, and the number was probably going to be scary, but I did it. Because I am vowing to not miss days recording food. I went 5 months without missing a day recording food and then the lazies began to set in. Well I don’t have time for them. No more lazies.

The damage? 60pts used yesterday. My magic number is 34. You know what? Those points were delicious and I felt completely spoiled and decadent. I’m reading to have an amazingly healthy month. I hope your Halloween was joyous, and if you like me indulged in candy… I hope you don’t feel guilty or like you failed. Just get right back to your healthy routine. Those high point days are apart of life. Enjoy them, and then relish in the feeling of having a delightfully healthy day afterwards. It’s really quite amazing.

PS… I saw no zombies yesterday… weird for Halloween.