Saturday, February 27, 2010

Giddy With Excitement...Or Frustrated Dieter?

And the winner is....giddy with excitement!  Yes, I stepped on the scale this morning with great anticipation and was nicely rewarded for all of my hard work this week.  I am down 4 pounds and couldn't be more excited!  One successful week down...countless more to go.  But that's okay.  I've got the time.  I'm off to a great start and feeling very motivated.

I want to thank all of you who are following me and sending me words of encouragement.  It really helps!  You are a huge part of my success.  That's all for now...busy weekend going on here, but I wanted to share my excitement with you all.

Until next time...

Friday, February 26, 2010

I’m Going To Start My Diet Monday, For Sure

If I had a nickel for every time I said that, I’d be a very rich woman.  It always sounded so logical to me all those times that I said it.  Who wants to start a diet on the weekend anyway?  And who starts a diet mid-week, right smack in the middle of all it’s busyness?  Monday has always been the starting point for every dieter I know.  Live it up one last weekend, eating and drinking everything in sight, buy all the necessities to start your diet successfully, and then jump in on Monday morning…full steam ahead, and hope for the best.  I guess really, the ultimate question here for any dieter is, who wants to start a diet at all.  Nobody WANTS to start a diet so we just say we’ll start on Monday and hope that this will be the Monday that we really mean it.

I can remember the first time I told my husband that I would start my diet on Monday.  “Why wait until Monday?  If you want to go on a diet start now.”  He just didn’t get it.  Of course, he’d also never been on a diet before either.  He didn’t understand that there was A LOT of prep work involved in dieting.  First and most importantly, there were about a hundred cravings that I had to get out of my system…things like pizza, anything and everything on the McDonalds menu, and basically, anything that fell under the category of fried, processed, and really bad for you.  If it’s not good for me, I want it.  And secondly, if you’re a junk food junkie like me, you have to rid your house of all that temptation, and the only way to do that is to eat it all, right?  After all, you can’t let it all go to waste can you?

The ironic thing here is that I started this blog on a Friday, the same day that I decided that the diet must begin immediately.  Maybe it was the fact that I’m 43 years old and have started living every day in fear for my life that made me realize that waiting until Monday was just plain stupid.  Did I really need to pig out on every kind of food that’s bad for me before another Monday rolled along?  How many Mondays had I wasted already and how many would I continue to waste?  And you know those wasted Mondays came on the heels of several days of pure gluttony in advance of diet deprivation.

I finally understood my husband’s reasoning.  For someone who had never dieted a day in his life, he actually made sense.  Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, wait several days to get healthy?  I should have enough respect and love for myself and the people who care about me to start taking control of my life immediately.  I had finally awakened to it:  Life is too short and too precious to waste it slowly killing myself on junk.

So here I am one week into my diet that started on a Friday and doing and feeling great.  I actually achieved and maintained success without having to wait until Monday to do it.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been successful when starting a diet on a Monday.  Has Anyone? 

I’ll be weighing myself tomorrow morning (always get weighed in the morning), and I can’t wait to see what the scale says.  You know I’ll be checking in here tomorrow to let you all know how I did.  I’ll either be giddy with excitement over my success or I’ll be one very frustrated dieter.  But either way, I will turn to this blog instead of into the drive-thru at the closest McDonalds.  Wish me luck!!

Until tomorrow…

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

YOU ATE IT?…I Could Kill You!!

I was so mad last night, blinding rage mad.  And this anger was directed solely, squarely and directly at my husband.  I had so much anger coursing through my veins that he is lucky to have made it through the evening.  Here’s what happened…

I had just put the kids to bed and was reveling in the peace and quiet of that wonderful time of day.  I enjoy saving a snack until this time because it is the only time that I can savor a treat without interruption.  Now I just had to decide what I felt like eating…salty or sweet?  The salty was going to be pretzels and the sweet was going to be sugar free Jell-O with a dollop of light cool whip—or at least that’s what it was supposed to be.  Normally, I tend to steer towards the salty snacks as I don’t have a very big sweet tooth, but occasionally that sweet tooth kicks in and I need to satisfy it.  Tonight was one of those nights.  So, I knew I wanted sweet, but did I really want sugar-free Jell-O?  I think not.  By now, this little debate I was having with myself only made me want a serious, hardcore sweet.  And that’s when I remembered it…

On Saturday I had bought three chocolate bars for a fundraiser at my son’s basketball game—one bar for each child.  Two of them got theirs right away and proceeded to eat every last bite right in front of me.  Not even the smallest of bites was offered to me, but that’s okay.  I’M ON A DIET.  I put my son’s candy in my purse fully intending to give it to him after his game was over.  Well, things got busy after the game as they usually do on a Saturday, and I forgot to give it to him.  It just sat there in my purse forgotten and untouched.  Until last night.

Of course, remembering that that sweet, sensuous morsel was sitting in my purse only sparked another debate with myself…do I really want to be bad and devour all that chocolaty goodness, or do I want to be good and stick with the Jell-O?  After several minutes of debate, a decision was made…I wanted to be bad.  It was thrilling!  I was going to sit there in the peace and quiet of my family room and watch my television shows while savoring every last bite of that chocolaty goodness.

I went to the kitchen to get my purse and opened it up with great anticipation.  I put my hand in there and searched for that forbidden fruit(?).  I couldn’t put my hand on it so I stuck my face in there for a better look--still no luck.  A little flutter of panic started to run through my body, but I told myself to take it easy.  It’s in there.  I know it is.  So I started feverishly emptying everything in my purse onto the counter…no candy bar.  WHAT?!  Where was it?  Nobody knew it was in there but me.  And then I remembered…my husband went into my purse to get my car keys.  That #$%&*!@!!!  HE STOLE MY CANDY BAR!!!

This is the part where I came as close as I probably ever will to actually killing him.  How dare he?  He ate my candy bar (yes, I know it was really my son’s…that’s not the point).  The point is he denied me that sweet, chocolaty nirvana…and that could easily have gotten him killed.

But after several minutes of trying to decide exactly how to off him ,I realized that he had actually done me a favor.  Did I want that candy bar for myself?  HELL, YEAH!!  Did I need it?  HELL, NO.  He saved me from making a choice that I know I would have regretted immediately after swallowing that last glorious bite.  For that, I owe him thanks, even though he didn’t do it because he loves me.  He just wanted my candy bar!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The “O” Word (No, It’s Not The One You Think)

A couple of years ago I had a slight accident while sledding with my kids.  I took a step to push them down the hill, but my knee didn’t like that motion—I felt a snap, searing pain, and a torn meniscus was born.  Needless to say, surgery was in my future.

As I sat and waited to go into surgery, my chart was left on the bed with me.  I was curious to see what was on there so I picked it up and began to read.  And there it was…the “O” word.  It was just sitting there, staring up at me--Obese.  This was the word that the anesthesiologist had used to describe me.  WHAT!?  I am NOT obese.  I’m just a little chubby, right?  Wrong!  I was that word, and seeing it on my chart felt like that doctor had just punched me right square in my “obeseness.”

This word just sat there with me in the back of my head for these past two years.  It stung in a way that I had never felt before.  It should have been my wake-up call to get healthy, but all it did was make me feel so much worse about myself.  Good-bye self esteem.  And as usual, food made everything better…temporarily.  It’s that vicious cycle that so many women know all too well…feel bad, eat to feel happy and comforted, feel worse.

So now I am taking action to change that description of me.  I will no longer be described as obese.  I’m too many other things—kind, caring, loyal, funny and sweet are a few that come to mind right now.  And soon I will add healthy, fit and thin to that list.  And who knows, maybe even hot and sexy too.  We’ll see…

Friday, February 19, 2010

And So It Begins….

So, I'm 43 years old, and it's time to face the facts. I am FAT. I have been dealing with this weighty situation ever since puberty struck. Although I must admit, at 11 years old and being a very active girl, it really wasn't all that weighty of a situation. I was a competitive swimmer and swam four days a week and on the fifth day I danced. But unfortunately for me time did not freeze—I did not stay 11 forever. As I got older and my life got more complex, the pounds started to add up, and it got more and more difficult to get them off.

I've decided today's the day. It's time to stop making excuses and putting off until tomorrow what I can do today (I'm the eternal procrastinator). Now, I also know that in order for me to be successful and to stick with this LONG journey that I am about to embark on, I need to be held accountable. That's where this blog comes in. I am going to put it all out there where the whole world can see it, or at least my own little corner of the world. You will get it all here--the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I want to share this journey with you all as a way to keep myself motivated and maybe even inspire someone else to join me. 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to sit here and preach to people about how to lose weight.  Who am I to say what the best best way to do this is?  If I had all the answers, I would already be thin, healthy, and fit, and we’ve already established that I am most definitely not.  What I will do is share with you my triumphs, my failures, my struggles and my determination.

So now I guess the only thing left to share with everyone is what my actual goal is.  There are things like wanting to be healthier, wanting to be able to have fun with my children, taking them skating, skiing, bike riding, but in order to do all this, I have to LOSE THE POUNDS.  That is   the ultimate goal here.  And  the best way to begin   losing them is to face the ugly truth about how many pounds I actually need to lose.  So here goes…are you ready…do I dare even say it?  Okay, here it comes…I am going to lose 125 pounds.  There, I said it.  The elephant in the room has finally been noticed!

I KNOW.  It’s a LOT of weight to lose, but I AM going to lose it—just watch me!  So follow along with me, check in often, keep me motivated and most importantly, hold me accountable. 
Until next time…