giving thanks

as thanksgiving day is coming to an end i thought it only right that i post what i am thankful for. like many people there are so many things that i am thankful for. my health (even more so now, right?), a roof over my head, a good job, and the most amazing family anyone can ask for.
tonight we had thanksgiving dinner at my house. after the family left i spent some time thinking about how lucky i am to have them and all the things that they have done for me. since i try to keep this diet oriented here are my thanks to them in regards to the diet, but know this is only a small part of what i am thankful for with them.
my dad is so enthusiastic with every milestone that i reach. i can't wait to tell him because i know that he will be just as excited or even more so (i mean who else gets batman to comment on their blogs AND via text?!?!?!). he also provides those words of guidance when i start to struggle. my mom watches my day to day actions with and provides that much needed ear to listen when i have frustrations. she tries not to let me stray from the diet too much but also recognizes that a little "cheating" may be necessary (just maybe not dq). my sister provides that motivation, even from so far away. with our talks of the future, my better health for a longer life, and just the excitement about feeling better about myself... she reminds me of them. when i start to get discouraged she picks me back up and reminds me of why i am doing all of this. she also seems to make the hard times not so hard with her twisted yet positive attitude (cold food today would be a good example, right jen?). finally, while many of my aunts are very supportive and i am thankful for that, ila has been such a hoot through this process. my phone calls to her and her comments on the blog make things so much lighter. her excitement about things like new clothes and recipes (even if the green beans weren't great) makes those joys that much better. she also helps to remind me that it isn't just about losing weight, i am learning to live/eat better as a whole. the benefits thus far are amazing!
there are so many more things i could say about them and others, but i don't want to make this a novel (wait for the book for the rest). i hope that everyone in my life knows how much i appreciate them through this process, without you i think this may have been another failed attempt at a diet. the funny thing is i thought i started out doing this for me, and for the most part i did. however, looking back i see that it is for them too. this diet means that i will be healthier, happier, and around longer to enjoy many more thanksgivings with them! granted that last thing may or may not be a good thing with my dry turkey! :o) next year will be better i promise!
i hope all of you were able to share the holiday with the ones you love and when you go to bed tonight your heart and bellies are both full. i know mine is! *and i even stayed on plan (minus the wine and a bite of creamed corn).

keep rollin rollin rollin

i was going to wait to post these for a couple days since i am so close to the next milestone. unfortunately i have been slacking on my updating and since it has been requested to post more pictures of my large noggin (and now i am thinking it is really i have a large noggin and a large shnauz) i will do it now.

as of my weigh in on friday i was down about 37lbs since i started. i am thinking i will hit 40 by the middle of the week. not much will probably change between now and then so i am not too concerned about it.

a couple weeks before starting the plan (yes this one is new):

*i look HORRID in that photo by the way!

2 days before starting the plan:

20 lbs down:

30 lbs down:

AND NOW... 37lbs down:

bmi

tonight i decided to do something i haven't done since i started my journey with slim4life. i decided to calculate my bmi. prior to starting this thing my bmi score read obese (severe) and was teetering towards the side of obese (very severe). i had a bmi score of 38.3, 40 and up is what is considered the very severe side. tonight, using the weight i had on saturday morning at the center, my score was 33.7. i not only moved away from the very severe side, i am actually down to moderate. it will be another 27 lbs before i am out of the moderate and placed in the "overweight" category.
something about this just made me feel so good and also more determined. it is nice to see that bmi number go down because it means that i am getting healthier! it means that i am lightening that load on my heart! yes i knew this before looking at this number, but being a stats person i see this number as factual! it tells me where i stand! well sort of, this is a general number and it doesn't really take into consideration the damage that may have been done from being obese for so long. either way, i was happy.
the motivation came in the thought of how quickly i could get to that point. in about 11 weeks i have lost 32 lbs. i am running just shy of 3 lbs a week, but seeing how i have had a few weeks of being really bad on plan, i think i am doing ok. but now it is time to get serious again. by my calculations if i abide by plan and lose the 3-5 lbs a week i could be down to that next bmi set by new years at the earliest! this does mean that i will have to be very strict on myself and practice self discipline. i have faith! :o)

orange on a toothpick

i went to take a new photo of myself tonight. mostly because i wanted to sport the look of straight hair. i have become a big fan of straightening it because it is easier for me to deal with and i think it looks better with this cut. the sad thing is, in looking at all of the pictures... i have a HUGE NOGGIN!!!

this may be somewhat tragic!

the traveling pants

i have a pair of pants that i bought YEARS ago. i honestly don't remember when i bought these pants, i think some time in college. perhaps freshman or sophomore year. since it has been so long i don't really remember if they actually fit when i bought them, but for the past several years they really haven't fit. with the weight fluctuation i have been through they have been everywhere from not being able to even zip them up to zipping them but with a very unattractive roll spilling over the top.
i actually have thought about throwing these pants away. with every move to a new house i look at them and think about how much heartache this one pair of pants has caused me. yet with every move something has compelled me to keep them. i guess i have always viewed them as my "motivational pants".
today as i stood staring into my closet(s), thinking how nothing looked like something i wanted to wear i just stuffed my hand in and started moving things about. there, in the midst of several shirts and skirts were these pants. i have not tried to put these pants on since i moved into my house this past summer. i thought to myself, what the hell! so i pulled them out and put them on. not only did they fit... they fit well! even the thigh area was a bit baggy but that seems to be a bit of a trend.
that was my exciting news for the day.
toodles!

inspirational tv

it is amazing sometimes where inspiration comes from. yesterday a show premiered on style network (my favorite channel) that of course i dvrd so i could watch it tonight instead. the show is called ruby and while i am not quite sure that i would say you need to run out and watch it, i am saying i will probably be tuning in.
ruby is a woman living in savannah, ga and she weighs 473 lbs. the show is documenting her weight loss and the different struggles and accomplishments that she is going through on her journey to lose the weight. i couldn't help but find her endearing and so many of the things she talked about i related to. granted i am not as big as she is and there are things that she experiences that i have never had (she can't take a bubble bath, she can't sit in chairs with arms, and she has to support her bed with bricks so it won't break when she gets in).
one of the things she talked about was the fact that she has dreams, but her dreams are different than that of someone who is "skinny". she spoke about wanting to sit on a guys lap, to hear she is beautiful, and how she get shivers when she thinks about how she will feel when those things happen. i think this offered some sense of validation to me. there are things that i have wanted to experience that are simple things to people that aren't obese. i would love to have a guy give me a piggy back ride and i would love to not feel embarrassed by my weight when someone picks me up.
another thing that they show that will happen through the series is her relationships being tried. i think that is an important part of weight loss that is often over looked. relationships with the people in your life can be changed dramatically by weight loss. people get jealous over your loss, friends who may not be jealous over your loss now view you as a threat (for dating, popularity, etc), and then there are people who will unintentionally place kinks in your goals. plus, weight loss is a very emotional thing. with a flood of hormones running through your body and a constant change in the way you look and feel affect your mood. let's face it, if you get to the point that you are obese you also have some pretty strong addictions to certain foods (mine is cheese and sweet candy like jelly beans) that are hard to break. they are just like an addiction to drugs or alcohol. i can't wait to see how the series handles these.
the many different areas of this show cover ruby going to see a family dr, an obesity specialist, a personal trainer, a diet place (similar to a jenny craig it seems), and the most interesting one... a therapist! i think this could be a good thing for people trying to lose weight and for people in the life of someone trying to lose weight.
that's all for today. new episodes of ruby air on sundays on the style network or you can visit their website.
happy eating.

water-colored memories

i was lying on the living room floor today playing with the dogs and i had a flashback. this memory is actually two-fold.

this first memory was from 8th grade. during gym class we were lying on the floor doing our stretches while the teacher was taking role. mind you i was always teased about my weight, i was one of the biggest girls in my grade, hell my school for that matter. let's face it middle schooler's are cruel people!!! well i remember lying there and making the comment "look i'm skinny too". *i will try to describe this as best i can* when you are flat on the ground your excess fat moves into your body and you appear flatter than you actually look when you are standing up. i was pointing out to the girls around me that i wasn't that big (i was on a diet at this time mind you). their response was "yeah, we can suck in too". i don't remember making a comment about my weight.

the second part of the memory comes from my senior year of high school. my sister and i were in her room in the basement of our old house (one of them). it is the summer after i graduated and i
am about to go off to college. i am at the lowest weight i can remember being after i was done growing up. after months of work, i was starting to feel good about my body. again i was lying on the floor and i remember feeling my hip bones. i remember the feeling i got from being able to feel my bones without having to push aside my fluffy stuff. unlike the last time, this was real. this wasn't just because i was sucking in. i had worked hard and lost weight and gotten to that point and it was real!!!

back to tonight. while playing with the pups, i realized that once again i could feel those hip bones. please don't think that it is a need of mine to be bone thin, it isn't. however to me there is something nice about realizing that i have hip bones. i have the bones that my jeans can rest on instead of rolls of fluff. i don't know that someone who has never experienced this feeling accomplishment can fully understand what this means to me. just understand that i am very very happy with this.

i did go weigh in today. as of the last time i went to weigh in (thursday) i was up 1.6 lbs. while this is a little bit depressing if you look at the numbers, i reminded myself that i was up a lot more than that by the end of this weekend. we mapped out a plan and with some minor adjustments i should be fully back on track by the end of the week. i can't tell you how much i love the people at the center. between nikka and angie specifically, i am so thankful that i found this place and that out of the 7 centers i could have gone to, i went to this one!!!

so cheers to them!!!

finding my way

today on plan wasn't terrible. ok so maybe it was a little bad, but not as bad as the days before. i think getting my mind back on track for this is going to take a couple days. honestly i am a little hesitant to go to the clinic tomorrow. oh well, i am honest with them and so they will have to work with me as i get back on track.

i decided to post a couple pictures from halloween. i was so excited about my costume (even though my boobs were pretty much out there) because i felt like i looked good.

this is my friend jen and i on halloween. she was dressed as one of the many earls. i was supposed to but i decided i didn't want to wear the overalls. what can i say i wanted to flaunt the weight loss! :o)

this is my newest art project. i started decoupage (think of it as therapy). this is my first attempt. i cut out pictures from a book called icons of photography (the 20th century). i then picked my favorites and put them on canvas. i am pretty happy with how it turned out.

run away car...err diet

well the past few days have been less than stellar in the diet department. staying on plan has really been the last of my concerns. truthfully, in my head i think i deliberately tried to break plan because in a week of things that were out of my control, it was the one thing i could control. it was my one vehicle that i was driving and i decided to drive it off of a cliff. today i called the tow truck to pull it out of the ravine and get it back on track.

starting on thursday i went off plan in several ways. thursday i had beer and ice cream, no not together, i still maintained my taste buds. that alone wouldn't have been that bad, i can actually recover from that fairly quickly. then friday i had beer, no breakfast, both lunch and dinner were off plan, and i forgot to take my meds for the diet in the am. then came saturday, i started to get on plan but if i sleep in (which i did) it messes up my schedule so i try to squish it all in and end up feeling miserable. beyond that part i was good up until dinner. in honor of my staying at my parents house to dog sit, i HAD to get thai food. i ate every bite last night with a smirk on my face as if to say "screw you diet". perhaps not the best plan right? the final blow to my diet was that i also did not get my 80 oz of h2o in on thursday and friday. i could really see it by the end of friday and saturday morning when my hands were swollen.

today i got back on plan. meds as required, plan worthy meals, and minus the few extras (blast my parents for having pretzels out) i have stuck to it. i even avoided going out to get chinese because i was trying to be good. while not going in to a lot of detail the past few days have been slightly rough and in true fashion i turned to my comfort. food. they say most anorexic and bulimic people are that way because food is something they can control. they feel like they have no control over anything else but they can control how much they eat (and keep down in some cases). well the same can be said about overweight people, if not more so. i have no control over a lot of the things going on in my life so i manipulate the one thing i know i can control, i just manipulate it in the opposite way. either way, i realized that this isn't what i have planned and so i need to stick to plan.

since i am sure you are interested in knowing, the damage of the 3 day debauchery was significant but fixable. when i stepped on the scale yesterday i had gone up about 6lbs. i made sure to get in my 80 oz of water, i think i may have gone just slightly over in that. today i made sure that i ate lighter meals on plan (egg, cottage cheese, and salad) and stuck to getting my 80 oz in. when i go to bed (which will be shortly) i will have had all of the required items and about 90 oz of water. stepping on the scale earlier the numbers showed an increase of +3 instead of +6 (down 3 lbs from yesterday). for those monitoring how "rapidly" i lose my weight remember that this is all subject to a variety of things (liquid consumed, bathroom recency, clothing, and time of day). i should be back to my former weight in a few days. sadly, my staying at my parents is limiting my ability to go to the gym. oh well i will survive.

happy day light savings time everyone!