Rebel Scale

This morning when I stepped on my scale, it read '0' and stayed that way.  When I stepped off, the numbers jumped up to somewhere in the 360's.  The scale has continued to behave that way, regardless of changes of batteries and everything else I've tried.  I guess my scale is in rebellion.  Time to go to Target to get a new one.

I had salad and chicken for lunch every day.  Finished off the last of the salad I made Sunday night today.  I'm quite proud of myself for sticking with it.

I did have a celebratory treat this evening, though, and I'm not beating myself up for it.  I had a job interview that I was really nervous about, and did really well.  I don't want to keep celebrating with food, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it when I do.

Weight Loss Inspiration

It's Wednesday, and I've done pretty good so far.  Healthy meals, healthy snacks.  I didn't exercise much yesterday, but I walked a mile today.  Woohoo!  I've checked my weight on the scale and while I'm only officially weighing in once a week, it's been nice to see the scale go down a bit.  I'm drinking lots of water, too, so hopefully the loss isn't just water weight.

A friend is trying to eat better, too, and she shared this inspirational story on Facebook:  Get Down with Dani.  I've been having fun looking through her past posts - maybe you'll find some inspiration, too!

Exercise on a Rainy Day? Nah..

This morning started out nice enough.  We had plans to meet up with friends at the park, so I got up, had a healthy breakfast, got everyone ready, and packed lunches (raspberries for me, figuring I'd have my salad when I got home).  We had a wonderful time at the park, but it started downpouring while we were there.  After the first storm passed, there was about 45 minutes more to play before the next downpour started.  My kids love the rain, so they continued running around like maniacs, getting drenched.  We waited for a pause in the storm before heading home, and the break in the rain held until we were indoors.. and now it's been raining ever since.  It's so hard to convince myself to do anything worthwhile when it's raining.  I've got the door to the patio open beside me, and the sound of the rain is so lovely.  There's even some gentle thunder in the distance, and all I want to do is curl up and read.

Thankfully, I've got a lovely new book!  It Was Me All Along, by Andie Mitchell.

(don't mind the low light, I told you, it's dark and rainy out!)

I'm almost done with it, to be honest.  It's well written, and a brutally honest story of what it's like to be fat and to lose weight, what it's like to grow up in a dysfunctional family, and most importantly, it doesn't present the 'after' of weight loss as rosy perfection.  I love how she discusses the reality of losing weight only to find that you're still you, just thinner.  There are some good Twelve-Step messages in there, too, like "One Day At A Time."  This book is absolutely fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

Oh, and speaking of Andie Mitchell, I'm following her recipe for Chinese Turkey Lettuce Wraps for dinner!

So I'll just go back to my reading.. and maybe, if I'm disciplined enough, I'll do some OA work.  We'll see.

It Could Be Worse, Right?

I finally got new batteries for the scale and weighed in this morning.  It definitely could have been worse - I only gained back about half of what I lost last year.  I'm now at 297.4 lbs.  This is what that looks like:

Please excuse the dorky avatar head protecting my anonymity - love those Overeaters Anonymous traditions!  Following taking this picture (thanks to my husband for doing the dirty work), I headed out to the grocery store to do our weekly shopping trip.

I've always found it really hard finding a balance between buying snacks for the kids to have, but not getting things I find too tempting.  Hopefully I did okay for the week:  the cookies I bought them are not my favorites, and I didn't get any ice cream.  I did, however, get a bunch of fresh produce and enough food to make healthy lunches (and dinners) for the week.

We had feta and basil stuffed grilled chicken breasts for dinner, with veggie kabobs.  While the grill was fired up, we also cooked chicken for me to use in salads for lunches this week.  I've got three healthy meals a day planned out for the whole week and fruit for snacks.  My goal is to walk a mile four times this week, either by doing two laps around the block or using the treadmill.  I know that's starting pretty slow, but considering my size and fitness level, I figured that's the best way to go.  I'm also setting a goal of doing step work three times this week (which I'll post here, obviously).

Wish me luck!

Seven Months Later...

Talk about falling off the band wagon, right?  So it's been seven months, and surprise surprise!  I've gained some weight back.  To be fair, it's been a crazy seven months, fully of huge amounts of stress, major life changes (we moved across the country, if you can believe that!), and binge eating like nobody's business.

But I'm ready to get back to work, so I'm announcing it to the world (or the Internet) - I do not want to be fat anymore.  I do not want to run away from my problems, to ignore my feelings, to not be the best version of myself.  Hopefully getting back on track to being healthier mentally and emotionally will, as a side benefit, make it easier to lose weight.

I have no illusions about why I'm overweight and why I have a hard time dieting.  I know that I can't just white knuckle another diet (which one is popular right now?  I sure don't know) and hope it sticks.  'Cause it won't.  I've spent a lot of time over the past few years getting to know myself and finding out how I can actually live my life and deal with my problems.  It's time to put that knowledge back into action.

Check-In

Progress with weight loss is going a little slower than I'd hoped, but maybe that's not a bad thing.  I'm down to 288.2 lbs today.  I started at 312 back in January, so not too bad I guess.  I'm being forgiving with food, which is both good and bad.  The good is that I don't feel like I screwed up and need to just give up if I end up having something less than healthy - making diet changes the way I have been has let me focus on the bigger picture than worrying about every bite that I take, which keeps me making slow progress.  But the bad part is that it is slow progress.. very slow.

Warmer weather means I've been a little more active than usual, going to the parks and whatnot with the kids.  But I know that making a concerted effort to exercise would really help, and I keep promising myself I'll do it, only to be too tired.  And yes, I do know that exercising will help increase my energy levels.. and somehow I still can't bring myself to do it.  Maybe I should tap on my reluctance to exercise.

Check-In

I've been making slow progress.  Very slow progress.  Today I weighed in at 291.2 lbs, which is fantastic, but I really hoped I'd be farther along by now.  My eating has not been as clean as I'd like, and I haven't been exercising, so I know what the problem is and how to fix it.  I'm trying to be grateful for the progress I've made, while still pushing myself to do better.

Part of the problem is that I still don't have a great repertoire of healthy meals.  I'm not willing to spend a lot of time on meal-prep or cooking, which eliminates a lot of foods I'd otherwise like to eat.

I've been working on journaling the steps, which is good, and I did make it to an OA meeting recently.  I'm going to commit to going again this week.

Check-In

I'm celebrating today!  I weighed in at 295.8 this morning, woohoo!

The reason it's such a celebration is that I did not do well over the weekend.  We got take-out from a new-to-us wings place and oh.my.god did it make us sick.  Plus, I was annoyed that my husband had to go in to work for a little while on Saturday, so I may have eaten some cookies.  I didn't track anything on My Fitness Pal all weekend or even yesterday, because we were out of town all day.

The upshot to my weekend of unhealthy eating was that I just felt sick the whole time.  Gross, unhealthy, yuck.  I have a renewed commitment to eating better this week because I don't want to feel like that again!

Check-In

I didn't have high hopes for the scale this morning, so I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped on it and saw 299.8 pop up!  That's a pound down since Sunday.  Not bad!

Yesterday, my food was not so great but still came in under, calorie wise.  We were out of town all day so that complicates things.  I haven't yet figured out how to bring something healthy for lunch.  I had my usual breakfast drink on the drive, then a slice of pizza for lunch.  I thought the pizza would have made me worse off than it did, though, so I was happy to come home and put my food into the calorie tracker and see that I could still eat a decent dinner.  My husband had made Korean shredded steak tacos with the crockpot, so even with that junky pizza, I was able to eat a big enough portion of dinner to keep me full all night.

If you want to track my progress on a day-to-day basis, you can check out my profile on My Fitness Pal.

Check-In

Today I'm at 300.8 lbs.  I'm excited about this - in the last two and a half weeks I've lost 8 pounds.  I'm hoping to cross into the 200's by Monday.  Cross your fingers for me!