down65

Thank goodness for the onset of spring!! I know it has been Spring for awhile now, but you might not know it based on the weather that we have had here in New England. We have had cold, cold, and just to shake it up a bit…more COLD!! I feel that we have had a breakthrough, though. The weekend was BEAUTIFUL! Even a tad on the HOT side.  I will take it! On Saturday, Sunday, and today,  I was able to get my walk in before the troops started waking up! I FEEL FANTASTICAL!!! Fantastical…that is my daughter’s word, and I felt it went along nicely with my mood this morning. I hope that the weather is cooperating where you all are, and I wish you a very successful week…no matter what you set out to do!

So my week started off on a wonderful note! The sun was shining, birdies singing, and I got to walk the neighborhood (nice and early)  without freezing my butt off! Super excited for day two and what do I wake to find? RAIN! Gray skies, cold, the whole bit! When the weather is like this, I have no energy for anything. I, as of this moment, have not exercised yet today. It is pouring out, my basement gym is torn apart which means no access to my treadmill, and the only dvd player in the house is not functioning properly. Let’s see then…when things are not in your control what do you do? Well, I made sure that I used the stairs at work. Even carrying my heavy books. I have also stayed in my ww points range, with a few left for a snack later on. All I want to do is eat chocolate and watch tv and I am sure that it is due to the weather. But, I can’t control the weather and all things considered…I think today went ok.

So, I decided that I was not going to make any more excuses regarding my diet and exercise. That worked pretty well with my weight loss last week, so I knew that if I could just get back into the swing of exercising…I would do that much better! I put my plan into action this morning. The baby woke up at 5:30 as usual. I fed him, put him back to bed and went out for a 30 minute walk! It was so crisp this morning! The colors in the sky from the sun rising were absolutely breathtaking. I spent my walk contemplating my goals, my road blocks, and my plans of action in the event that I find myself in  a situation that is counter-productive to my “get healthy” efforts. I must say, it felt absolutely fantastic to take 30 minutes for myself! No husband, no kids, no students…just me and what I need. For many of us, I am sure, this is a foreign concept. Either we have never known how to do for ourselves, or lost the ability along the way. Now is the time Buddyslimmers. I would like to ask you all to think about this question today. If we can not take 30 minutes out of our day to do something healthy for ourselves…then what possible good are we able to be to those that have come to count on us?? Make it a priority. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. I think that it is MORE than REASONABLE to take 30 of those minutes for ourselves without feeling guilty, don’t you?

I woke up this morning to what looked to be the beginning of a BEAUTIFUL spring day.  I must say, it is about time! I am hopeful that the last of the cold weather is truly behind us.  I love Spring!  There is no better time to get your act together health-wise.  The flowers are blooming, the birdies are singing, everything is new again.  Something about it is very motivational to me.  Believe me when I say, I am in dire need of motivation.  My Grammy always said that when it rains, it pours… and the motivation has just been showering down on me this week.  To everyone that has been so supportive of me during these last few months, I am so grateful.  I hope that I can be as good a buddy to you as you have been, and continue to be, to me.  So here I am again, again.  At the beginning of what I am determined to be my last jaunt down this path.  No excuses, no passing the buck.  The only person accountable for what I eat and what I do (or not do) exercise-wise is me!  It is funny how something so obvious can get lost on us when we have other things going on to divert our attention to other matters.  Before you know it, we have neglected ourselves to the point where the battle to get back to “normal” is all uphill.  I am at the bottom of what seems like a mountain now.  I am sure some of you are as well.  I say that we all figuratively grab a hold to person standing next to us and look straight up that mountain and say “look out peak, here we come”!  When we get there, it will be a good day indeed!

I have been staring at this page for a good 20 minutes now, and it seems that I don’t have much to say today. Anyone who knows me, even just a little, might find that very hard to believe. Alas, I fear it is true. I am not feeling quite like myself lately. I am trying to figure out why. I do think that I am on to something, finally. I had a baby about four months ago, and it seems that no matter how hard I try…I can not get back into the swing of living healthy. You know…eating right, exercise. As a result, the weight is not coming off and it is becoming rather depressing. I do not want to live my life at my current weight. Not because I want to be skinny, but because I want to be healthy. My current weight is not healthy for my height. I need to lose 65 lbs! When I look at that number, I feel hopeless. So I sabotage myself at every opportunity. Before I realize it, I am eating based on my emotions…and my whole day is blown! Then it is like a free-for-all. May as well right? I can always try again tomorrow. “Tomorrow is another day”. The thing is…my days are turning into weeks, my weeks into months. I am afraid that I will welcome my son’s first birthday carrying the same excess weight that I am carrying today. I really need to get it together. I feel weak, and undisciplined. I have never had this much trouble bouncing back. I guess maybe I need to take a closer look at my life to see what is standing in my way. Should be interesting.

Well it has been a tough couple of weeks.  I would like to say thank you to all my buddies for their support and kind words regarding my father’s passing.  It is a very odd feeling being the “eldest generation” in my family now.  I never imagined that I could loose so many loved ones in such a short span of time.  Being an emotional eater, it is no wonder that I have not been able to get on track.  I guess that I should be thankful that I haven’t gained through it all.  So, I am trying to muster all of the enthusiasm that I can to get myself back in the swing of being healthy.  It is such a difficult thing to do, and I can’t stand that I have let myself get to this point.  It is what it is, however, and it is time to suck it up and stop using my emotions as a gauge for when and what I am going to eat.  I will let you know how that works out for me.

It has been way too long, and a lot has happened since my last post.  I am gathering my thoughts and will be catching you all up later today.  I pray that you all are doing well.  Stay tuned, cuz I am back

Well, I weighed in this morning and had a loss of one pound.  I’ll take it!  I was going to compare my weight loss from last week (2.8) where I journaled all my food, to my loss this week where I only accounted for my points.  On the surface it seems that I lost more when journaling, but hold on to your hats!!!  Guess what happened to ME this week!!!  I unwittingly went over my allowance of points by 24 points!!  Yes…on TOP of my dailies and flex points!  How?  Well, as it turns out, I had been assigning the wrong number of points to my DAILY Vanilla Chai from DD.  I truly always ordered it as a Vanilla Chai Latte, and thus thought it was a coffee of sorts.  So, when I looked it up on the DD nutrition page…I looked up the wrong drink!  The one I looked up was only 180 cal/3pts.  It wasn’t until I went to a DD that I do not usually frequent that I found out that the Vanilla Chai was actually considered a tea.  So when I got home, just for grins, I looked it up under tea.  Well my heart absolutely sank!  This delicious hot beverage is like 390 cal/9pts!!!!!!  Holy-going-over-your-points Batman!!!  When it was all said and done I realized that I had gone WAY over and truly…I almost did not go weigh in today.  I was just so upset about it!  Anyone on WW and doing the points knows what I mean.   I would NEVER drink 9 points away…and here I did it every last day this week!  But…I regained my composure and hoped for the best.  How relieved was I to see that I didn’t GAIN due to my error…but rather, I lost!!!  /wipes the sweat from brow…

On another note…I have not been as successful as I would have liked in the exercise department.  I just can not seem to fit it in as yet.  I have been making some healthy changes though.  I take the stairs at work, park farther away from the door.  Stand and pace while I teach, as opposed to sitting.  So I am happy with that for the time being.

Ok, so I have been back on WW for 10 days now.  It is going well, and it has been easy falling back into tracking my points.  Like I said before, I hate journaling my food.  It is a chore, but I did it for the first week and lost 2.8 lbs.  This week I have been just recording my points in the express tracker.  I have been diligent, though, and If I ate it or drank it…I checked off the points.  We will see if I did as well this week without the journaling.  So, now that i am confident that I am back on track with regard to my eating plan…it is time to add the “Big E”.  Yup! Exercise.  I am going to start tomorrow morning before the kids get up.  I plan on doing the WW Walking Fit dvd.  I am going to walk for 30 minutes, three times per week, to start.  It is super difficult to get motivated to do any sort of activity outside of work, kids, dogs, etc…but I need to.  So tomorrow is the day I add the next piece of the “get fit, be healthy” puzzle.  I’ll let you know how it goes!