Losing Half, Gaining More

When I really think about it, if I mirror the food I feed my 2 year old and give myself the same – I would totally lose weight and have a much healthier diet. Seriously. This little one lives on: Yogurt, Eggs, Cheese, Whole Wheat(or some sort of whole grain)Toast, Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, Fruit of any kind, Cottage Cheese, Chicken, fresh/raw veggies, Cheerios and a popsicle thrown in here and there. Obviously she eats more than just that stuff, but those are our go-to foods for her. Why am I not just feeding myself the same things that I always have around??

I wander into the kitchen mindlessly opening the fridge for something to eat and never grab the healthy options right in front of me. In the past week (or so) I’ve started grabbing these things and it’s coinciding with more exercise to create the week that I’ve felt better and more energetic than I have in literally YEARS.

Things I’ve started to grab when I want to shove something in my mouth:

-Baby Carrots

-Celery

-Pepper Strips

-A banana

-An apple

-A yogurt

Seriously, the only thing on that list that I was really eating before is the apple. I have texture issues sometimes, so I just didn’t love to eat a banana or yogurt. WHATEVER. I just told myself to get the heck over it and deal with the texture so that I’m not dealing with the “texture” of cottage cheese on my arse as a result of liking the “texture” of a McD’s cheeseburger and french fries more than a banana. Plus, it’s cheaper and I don’t have to waste gas driving to get a banana since it’s already in my kitchen.

Lesson learned.

My body feels good. Well, actually, it hurts. That feels good. The kind of hurt that lets me know that I’m actually using my body again. Getting moving just feels so good. Achy good.

It’s amazing how the little changes fall in line together when you make a decision to commit to something. I’ve been telling myself that I need to get my rear in gear and get it moving regularly for what feels like years on end. It feels great to finally be doing something about it and have the motivation to want to continue feeling good about myself. Even with a number on the scale that I may not love, I know that I feel a ton better about myself in general when I am actually taking care of myself and prioritizing exercise and being healthy in general. I’m well aware that I won’t feel this way every day and every time I need to exercise, but I’ll take feel like this some of the time over doing nothing all of the time! Plus, it’s already making the day where I’m dragging a bit easier to just get myself up and moving.

At our Weight Watchers meeting this week, we discussed this and someone made a really fantastic point that resonated with me:

“At some point, someone was discussing weight loss with me and fitting time into your life for exercise, food planning, etc. and how it just seems so time consuming sometimes. But, it’s necessary. We make time to brush our teeth. We make time to shower ourselves. We take time to feed our families healthy, nutritious foods.We need to place the same priority and necessity on taking care of ourselves in relation to weight loss.”

It’s so true. I would never in a million years let my kids eat the way I have been eating. Never.   Diane pointed out to me in the comments of my first post that her youngest children don’t have any memory of her looking any different than she does today. I’m so thankful that my kids are young enough that they won’t ever know me like this and that they’re young enough that they won’t learn the bad habits I have been modeling for them.
p.s. Want to know how I know I’m changing bit by bit? I bought some Little Debbie 100 Cal packs at the store last night thinking that might be good for my husband to take to work or for me to grab as a snack. I don’t know what I ws thinking, I should have known better.

1. I can’t control myself with stuff like that. I’d eat the whole box in two seconds flat.
2. It’s still JUNK, even if it’s only 100 calories of junk instead of a few hundred calories of the regular size.

So, I opened the box and the “100 calories” is literally a maybe 1″X2″ tiny cake. TINY.  Not even slightly worth 100 calories and 2 WW points in my day that I could be using for something that will actually fill me up and make me feel good.

I threw the box away. In the outside gross, stinky trash can that goes to the curb. That’s how I know I’m changing.

Stats on the Progress page(I added measurements – should have started that when I initially started the info, but oh well!). I’m up 1.2lbs this week and I’m actually ok with it. I know that I wasn’t as careful as I need to be about my portions and keeping track of what I was eating. I’m also really proud of myself because although I didn’t lose on the scale, I have so many positives about the past week!

• I went to a wedding and actually made conscious decisions about the food I chose.
• I joined the gym and actually went!
• I didn’t eat fast food once. I don’t think I even went through a drive-thru window(except maybe Starbucks for a Sugar-Free/Fat-Free Cinnamon Dolce Latte;).
• I got myself a few new sports bras and t-shirts to stay motivated and not feel slobbish going to the gym(so that I can’t use that as an excuse!).
• Oh, yeah – and I started this blog!! Can I please just state for the record how much I can’t believe I was missing out on in the blogging world?? There are so so so many amazing and inspiring weight loss blogs out there and I am so glad I started searching around for them. It’s such incredible motivation and support to see how many other people are on a similar journey!
• I’m committing to signing up today for the FitBloggin Conference in March. I know I’ve just started with this blog, but this will be one more source of inspiration and something to look forward to. Anyone else already making plans to be there?

All of this and I don’t even feel completely overwhelmed – I call that a successful week!

I went to my cousins wedding in Philadelphia yesterday and had such a fantastic time.  We knew that it was in Old City, but didn’t really realize what that meant, which is sort of sad since it’s only about an hour and a half away from us! The hotel was literally half a block from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The wedding looked out over Independence National Historic Park and Second National Bank and in such an interesting part of the city – tons of amazing shops and restaurants. We were disappointed that we didn’t have time to spend just walking around, but having a 6 month old at home who needs his food source sort of limits longer excursions for now. This was the longest I’ve left him so far and it was still just so nice to get away for more than just a couple of hours.

The food was FANTASTIC. It also helped me to realize a few things within the context of “celebrations.”  This journey that I’ve committed to has been a long time coming. I’ve been going to Weight Watchers meeting for over 4 months now without actually really keeping track of my food. But, the fact that I’ve continued to go is a huge testament to the psychological aspect of losing weight and how I’m slowly changing. This process seems so daunting and overwhelming as a whole, but it’s the little things that I can control in a day that make me realize that I really am doing this! I really am making lots of little changes in my life, and especially in my thinking!

At the wedding, I didn’t eat perfectly by any means. But I did eat much differently than I would have in the past and that’s a really big step.

• The things that I wanted to eat that weren’t the healthiest, I took one of and just took a bite.
• If I didn’t love what I was eating after the first bite, I didn’t finish it.
• I didn’t take appetizers from servers simply because they had it in front of me.
• I didn’t try one(or more!) of everything – I chose the few things I thought I’d enjoy the most and took smaller portions of them.
• I danced about 10 times more than I otherwise would have because I knew I was burning some extra calories while having some fun.
• I also just committed to completely putting aside my normal feelings of awkward self consciousness that usually keep me from something like dancing in a social situation and it felt SO GOOD.

As a whole, I still ate much more than necessary. But I also would guess that I easily ate half as much as I may have eaten in the past and that makes me really happy. Thinking about all of this and seeing these baby steps that I am actually doing is so empowering. Believing in myself that I really can, and WILL, do this is an incredible feeling. There hasn’t been a defining/”A-HA” moment for me when I just decided that this was the point where I wasn’t turning back. I read so many weight loss success stories where people talk about the one thing that happened that flipped a switch for them, but for me it’s just been a recent consistent realization of small things that have made me realize that I truly an changing. Knowing that I can deal with each situation as it comes and take small steps to get to each thing along the way feels fantastic and it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt that about myself.

I was reading the post on Roni’s Weigh about her inspirational first marathon over the weekend and I love the info she included on Operation Beautiuful.

The concept is so simple and beautiful in and of itself that it just brought tears to my eyes. In their words, “The mission of Operation Beautiful is to post anonymous notes in public places for other women to find. The point is that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL. You are enough… just the way you are!”

It was inspired by this video and Fat Talk Free Week:

I love to see the pictures they have of notes on the Operation Beautiful site, especially this one:

I can’t wait to post some notes myself and I especially can’t wait to see all of the creative ideas everyone has in the pictures on their site!

Eating in public comes along with so many feelings of shame.  Part of me wanting to start this blog was to vocalize this publicly and begin the process of dissociating that food/shame connection. It runs so deep and the more I think about it, the more I need to just get over it!

Last night, I went out by myself before my Weight Watchers meeting. My husband started to go with me 2 weeks ago and it has been really nice to have him going and do this together. But…Monday nights used to be my time away. I’d leave when he got home from work, go run errands or read quietly by myself, go to my meeting. Basically, just have an evening to myself. So this week, I decided to at least leave the house as soon as he got home from work and meet him at the meeting – that would give me a good 45 minutes alone.

When I have “time alone/away,” my intention is always to go read by myself somewhere. This always translates to EAT and read by myself somewhere. It’s one of the biggest things that I need to work on because eating and spending money are always my activities of choice and there is SO MUCH MORE OUT THERE that I’m missing out on! {Namely: moving my body!}

So, where am I going with this? Here I am, having alone time, wanting to read and I go to my favorite coffee shop. It also has a sandwich area and bakery. It’s completely habit, but I decided to get dinner. Even though I’m on.my.way.to.a.WEIGHT WATCHERS MEETING.

This is my trigger point.

This is my trigger point.

This is my trigger point.

Do I not get that???

Yet I continue to make the same choices. The point where I need to make the choice to have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a soda, iced tea – something other than food that I don’t even need.

So, I got the food. Chips. A sandwich. To a normal person, it wouldn’t be a huge deal. To me, it is. It’s the food I eat mindlessly, the food that’s not healthy, the food that I didn’t need in the first place.  Not only do I eat it, but I take it and go sit in the most hidden corner I can find. Just in case someone I know might see me, especially someone in my WW meeting that’s right down the street.

Eating in a shameful way is the worst. It’s the way that I eat so many meals. In the car going through a fast food place(and wishing that I don’t know the person in the window because I’ve been there so many times). Before I go to an event or situation with new people who I’m nervous will judge me for my weight. After my kids are down for their naps in the afternoon and I can sit and eat without anyone else around.

I am an adult. It does not matter what anyone else thinks of me, let alone what they think about what I’m eating. But I can’t shake that feeling in public of being hyperaware that someone is looking at what I’m eating and thinking, “She does NOT need to be eating that!” Probably because I know in my mind that it’s something that I don’t need, but I project it onto others who probably could care less in the first place because they’re thinking about themselves as well.  If someone is actually judging me:

1. They probably know me and just wonder what’s going on with me to cause me to gain so much weight.
2. They probably just want to see me get healthier/happier/taking care of myself(and I’m clearly not.)
3. Both of the above.

So, I ate in the corner. And I don’t want to do it ever again. Regardless of what I’m eating, it’s my choice to make and I’m the only one I need to answer to!

I’ve been stalling on starting this blog.

First it was because I couldn’t(and still can’t!) get my template to install correctly.

Then it was because I needed to read and read and read other weight loss blogs.

Then it was because….I don’t even know. Except, I do. I HAVE to accept this and move forward. I want to do it positively and with joy as much as possible. It’s going to be a hard journey, but the rewards will be so much greater. So while I paused to consider eating at McD’s “one more time” this morning, I thought about having that much more to lost and stopped.

That’s where I think I’ll start.

Instead of going to McD’s(with a baby who needs a nap and a toddler with a cold, both who don’t need to go anywhere!), I started catching up on some blogs. As I was reading, I came across this post by Diane at Fit To the Finish and something in these words just touched me:

“Day after day I found myself uncovering forgotten willpower, lost self esteem, and hidden abilities. With each reclaimed ability my fat suit got a little less puffy. Even before I had lost all 150 pounds, I was able to reveal more and more of myself. I learned that even when I was all covered in fat I was the same Diane I had always been. It was a bittersweet lesson to learn, because I grieved for the missed  opportunities.  Part of the uncovering process was accepting what I had missed, and promising myself to miss no more.”
So, this is it. The part where I start to document my journey. I’m over wasting time worrying about my appearance, feeling like a slob, catching glimpses of myself in the mirror and feeling ashamed, not doing things because I don’t want to see someone I know who I haven’t seen in years, having hardly any pictures of myself with my husband and kids and family and friends because I can’t bear to look at them and I can’t bear for anyone else to even possibly see them…and so on and so on it goes as I’ve continued this upward spiral. I don’t want to miss out on a second more of the things I want to do in life.

Here’s my first attempt at stepping outside the comfort zone – a picture of me with my kids. Posted publicly for all of the world to see. The face that I don’t have many more pictures of these is just one more reason to get myself healthier.

Happy and comfortable with the two littlest ones who love me for me and don’t even have a concept of judging someone because of what they look like.