then and now

the 19th was my birthday. for the past 4 years it has been tradition that i celebrate my birthday with my good friend sarah. this year of course was no exception. so i took off for fayetteville, nc on the 20th, i also made a stop in myrtle beach, sc to see my aunt and my cousin for the first couple of days of my trip.

i had a great visit with both my family and my friends. it is always nice to get away from home for a bit. this trip meant a lot to me because it was a reward for my hard work. plus i had some great conversations with the various people i went to see.

one of the things i wanted to do was recreate some photos that were taken on my trip in 08. sadly we didn't actually get that done but i wanted to still share some photos of then and now. it is sad to say that i look at pictures of me then and realize i had no clue how i looked. i didn't realize how large i was, how unhappy i was, and how oblivious to my obesity that i was. i can for sure say these photos help reassure me that i will NEVER be where i was before. plus it is fun to see photographically the change i have made! :o) enjoy!

This is sarah, me, and greg at The Highlander last year.

This is me and sarah at The Highlander this year. :o) sorry for the fuzziness, the bartender kinda sucked at the photo taking.

This is me and sarah at Charlies last year (i now seriously hate that shirt!)

This is me and Sarah at Beef O'Brady's (Charlies was closed on Sunday) this year. So my hair and NC weather... doesn't get along but that is ok. :o)

Final photo of me and sarah at the house last year "getting our booze on".

This is the photo wendy took of me at her house on Thursday after we spent the afternoon on the beach and driving around town.

Does anyone else think i might have changed a bit in a year? :o)

photos

since they have been "demanded" here are some photos from the last two nights. enjoy!

This is my friend jim. he and his wife are being re-stationed to germany so not only were we celebrating my b-day, we were also enjoy the last time we would get to see each other. i will miss him.

tricia... what can i say. she isn't even close to being drunk here. i have to love her. she made night 2 of birthday celebrations FANTASTIC.

and last... me. this is what tricia and theresa did at dinner. i don't know why i thought that they wouldn't. i look hot though... right?

keep truckin

about the middle of last week i hit a new milestone. i officially hit 195 lbs. i am OUT of the 200s!!!! I honestly can't remember the last time i was there. I am pretty sure it was some time in high school but even then it would have been like freshman year or somewhere close to that. so we are looking at at least 12 years. it feels AMAZING!!!

that said... the past couple of days have not been the best at sticking to plan. with my birthday just around the corner, my celebrations have started. we had a couple at work, i went out friday night and had a few drinks, and then last night we went to dinner and had a couple drinks as well. i don't think i went completely overboard but i am sure the numbers will show tomorrow. so i am just jumping back on the wagon and trucking along.

i leave on vacation on wednesday so i recognize that while i am away from home i will still not be completely on plan. however i will be on the east coast so fish/seafood should be plenty and fresh so i can spice up my life a bit with that.

i hope all is well with everyone.

pay it forward

back in january i met a girl named rebecca. rebecca is by no means a big girl. in fact she is, in my opinion, a perfect size. however i learned through this whole thing that i really don't get to judge when people who are unhappy with their appearance. that said, i find it rather irritating when girls who are of a healthy size sit at a table and constantly make comments about "i'm so fat" more to have others validate that they don't actually need too. i digress...
i met rebecca in january and she found out how much weight i had lost by then. i actually even showed her a picture from then so she could see the change. at that time i think i was around 53 lbs down. that is when she told me that she wanted to lose a little weight, not a lot but enough that she could feel healthy again. i promised her i would get her the information about slim4life that i have so she could follow it on her own. sadly, i didn't see her again until mid march.

when i saw her again, i gave her the packet aka "tool" she would need to follow plan in its most basic format. basically it was the food list and portions for the plan. i told her if she ever had questions to please let me know and i would gladly help her in any way i could. i didn't see her after that night. it has now been about a month and tonight i got to see her again.

she asked me if i was still losing and i told her the magic number that i have hit (68lbs) thus far. then we started discussing her progress. she started the plan and has lost 18lbs thus far (she wants to lose around 30 she says). she was so excited to tell me about her progress and how easy she found the plan to follow. she raved about how she wasn't hungry or starving, and she liked what she was making. she asked a couple questions and i gave her a couple extra tips to help keep the spice up in the diet. mostly i told her about seasonings and ways to cook things so they maintain their flavor and don't take as long. you see rebecca has 4 kids ranging from 12 months to 13 years old so her time is a little tapped.

i was so excited to hear that i had helped someone through my journey. i still believe that this diet isn't for everyone but i think that most people could follow it and see results. she is doing it without going to the clinic and i could be happier for her. so tip your glass to rebecca today for all of her hard work. maybe she will pay it forward and inspire someone as well (i do know she is trying to fix healthier meals for her kids more often).

beating the muffin

it is no secret that bread is one of my biggest weaknesses. i love sandwiches, toast, muffins, and i guess if you wanted to throw cake/cupcakes into the mix since they are kind of like bread right? at work the cafe has these very yummy chocolate chocolate chip muffins. they are bigger than the average muffin and oh so tasty. in doing a google search on them, i found out they are also at least 350+ calories, sometimes much more. obviously... NOT GOOD for plan. really any muffin, even the fruit ones, are not good because there is so much sugar in them. this chocolate muffin has become my weakness.

for the past month or so this muffin has been a part of my morning routine. while having my morning coffee and supplement (usually one of drink mixes in my coffee) i have had a muffin. seeing how i am trying to get back on track the muffins really need to go. however i seem to hear them calling me through the 3 floors between my office and the cafe. today i decided, instead of getting this really bad for you muffin i would go for the healthier option. the cafe also offers a weight watchers chocolate muffin. i am assuming it is lower in calorie and i will have to check that when i am done blogging. they are also much smaller than the other muffin. amazingly enough, this new muffin satisfied the craving for the other one and i didn't feel as guilty about eating it either. my goal is by the end of next week to not even need the muffin (wow it sounds like a drug huh?).

here is to hoping i can beat the muffin! :o)

back to the land of posting

... with an accurate drivers license!!!

after almost 3 months of not posting i have hit the goal that i wanted to for a while now. but before we get to the present let's go through a quick run down of the past 2+ months on/off the diet.

over the past several months a lot of things have gone on. i found out it is really hard to be in a relationship with someone and stick to plan when you aren't comfortable telling them you are on a diet. it is also hard when most of your relationship involved eating or drinking (and while that also means other things about said relationship we won't get too much in to that). i realized i stopped caring about the diet as much and sort of threw everything i had been so disciplined about to the wind. i am still trying to figure out why it was so hard to tell him that i was trying to lose weight but i have absolutely no problem publishing it to the world wide web. to add an extra twist to this confusion... he and i met and actually started a relationship last summer a couple months before i started the plan (it didn't go anywhere then). that means it isn't like he couldn't see that i had lost a lot of weight already. then again i can't say that he really cared either, perhaps that feeds in to why we weren't/aren't meant to be.

i also found that i still turn to food for comfort, just less so. in march my grandmother passed away. while this is a difficult thing for anyone, i hurt a little more because with her passing went a few dreams i had had. she was my last grandparent that was living and i had always found a comfort that at least that generation of my family would be represented on my wedding day because she would be there. i know that sounds weird, and in typing it almost selfish, but it is how i feel. i hate the fact that whatever man comes in to my life will not truly understand the stories we share about her and her feisty personality. through the sadness, i found i turned to food for comfort. no where near like i would have a year ago, but more than was appropriate for attempting to lose weight.

shortly after my grandmothers passing i went on a vacation (of sorts) to new orleans. i went down for a conference but had two friends join me for the weekend so we could spend some time together. it was the first time i had seen one of them in 4 years and the other had only seen pictures of my progress. let's face it, photos don't really show the changes as well as in person as many family members can attest to when they came to visit. a couple things occurred on this trip. the first is that i did not eat on plan at all. i figured that would happen since the whole month before i hadn't really been "behaving" and i was in my favorite city that it is filled with good drinks, yummy food, and so many choices to partake in both. the other thing that happened was a response i was not used to about the weight loss. almost all of my friends have been supportive of the loss, and while some of them might make comments that are a bit out of line, they have always expressed how happy and excited they are for me. sadly, that trip produced more comments about "well you're the b***h that is a size 12 now" or things along those lines. instead of support and excitement from the two people i thought would be the happiest for me (they were after all my best friends), i got slams and insults for my weight loss and many other things. it goes to show you, not everyone will be supportive of your weight loss when it impacts their life. in these cases you need to just chalk up the loss (or at least change) of a friendship and remember that you are bettering yourself. After all, had i not lost weight i was taking years off of my life and that was years less they would have had to spend with me.

so that brings us to the last month. unfortunately with a month and a half of eating off plan it was hard to get back on. more so now than it was when i started. i was lucky that in my choices i had never gone above 210 lbs (which is about 3 lbs above where i was when i started this diet sabbatical). over these couple of months my weight has fluctuated between 210 and 205. perhaps part of the reason that i found it so hard to get back on plan was because in one aspect i had reached my goal. i was able to purchase size 12 clothing. however, i decided this past week that being a size 12 wasn't good enough for me. i wanted to get that number when i stepped on the scale!!! so i rededicated myself to plan, and with a few hic-cups here and there, i am doing well. so well in fact that today when i stepped on the scale, i was at 200lbs. this means that 1) MY DRIVERS LICENSE IS ACCURATE for the first time ever i think. 2) i only have 20 more lbs to lose, and 3) i have lost 67 lbs.

i also got to have a little motivational chat with my friend carrie. if you recall she is the one who got me started on this whole thing last summer. she started in feb 08 and to date has lost 196 lbs and she looks AMAZING. she still has about 15 more lbs to go to reach her goal weight, but she has also told me she wants to lose about 35 more lbs over-all so she can be classified as "normal" on the bmi scale. she has been struggling the last couple of months as well. her fluctuations have been a bit more drastic (up 8, lose it again, up 9, lost it again, up 7, lose it again, etc.) but she is getting back on plan too. we both found comfort in knowing we weren't going through it alone and being able to voice our frustrations and concerns with someone who is living the EXACT SAME SITUATION. i think we also both provided the swift kick in the back side that we needed to move on. we have come SO FAR and in just a little bit more time we will be able to start living life normally. we both realize that we will always have to be cautious about our food choices but if we can get this far we know we have the tools we need.

ok, well that is your update for now. in a nutshell... a crazy 2+ months of getting on and off plan, going up and down in weight, and several changes in my personal life, and we are finally back on track. i'm so excited to be where i am and to celebrate i bought some new clothes. although i was able to purchase a size 12, it was only from a couple stores. i am now able to slip myself into a size 11/12 from almost any store (unless it is a dress). i am also wearing a size L in most shirts with the occasional XL or M thrown in the mix. it is so nice to have the new clothes and be able to enjoy the new body a bit more. plus with it being spring time that means more skin exposed... i am ok with this now. i might even start wearing shorts! :o)