Atkins Again...

Yes, I have done Atkins and then slid off the bandwagon gorging on carbohydrates and licking my bread crusted fingers. I know it works and I know it is the only thing that doesn’t make me crazy hungry. I’m not that fond of fruit anyway but I do love my veggies. I have already had to curb my raw veggies due to IBS symptoms which I might add have cleared up to only be troublesome in a stress situation. I can have salad a couple times a week but cooked veggies don’t cause an IBS flare up.

Called my sister to tell her I was signing up for the duration with her. She is doing the hypnotist thing (I have CDs for the same and will dutifully listen to them every day) and they told her Atkins or protein style diet is what to follow to lose the weight. South Beach diet did help me lose a bunch of weight but somewhere I lost consciousness and stuffed my mouth around bad carbs (French fries, potato chips, potato anything really along with pastries, bread and cookies). Oh, I kept eating the protein along with it so it was an additive calorie thing going on.

Day ½ is what I am calling today. I went out at lunch and bought sliced turkey and some Azurra sparkling water and organic fruit essence (zero carbs but mighty tasty). I also stocked up on unsweetened soy nut butter (my sister’s recommendation) as I have a peanut butter addiction.

At home tonight, I will clean out the pantry and make a food bank donation with the “no” foods that are nonperishable. Starting weight, gasp, 225 lbs (the boyfriend made fresh bread this weekend and I just finished off the 1st loaf). I am aiming for 180 by my birthday in March. That is only 45 lbs.

Welcome back Oprah!

Oprah weighs 200 pounds, again We all go through the denial stage where we say we will never be fat again and then our famine fighting bodies betray us. Our addiction to food becomes overwhelming and we fall off the wagon. Like Oprah, I once weighed a whopping 257 lbs. and lost 60 pounds plus, down to 186 at one point during the recent bout of not eating enough to keep me full. I still remember with fondness coming home from college back in my youth, weighing a mean 127 lbs. My sister raved about how good I looked and my mom began to stuff me with food. “Oh you look so sickly”. To this day, my sister remembers that episode and so do I. It was a conflict of wanting to be thin versus wanting to eat. Let me tell you that 127 wasn’t thin it was just about right for my sturdy 5’2” muscular frame.

Currently, I weigh 223.5 lbs and I am on my way back down the scale, again. Working out a minimum of 5 days a week, lifting weights, doing mat Pilates, treadmill, WII Fit, and any fitness DVD that strikes my fancy. It is the food that is always my issue, I love it, I crave it, I want it... ALL THE TIME.

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=343139&GT1=28103

I hope the above link works to the msn article. I have also switched my goal from being thin to being strong, healthy and fit. My target weight is near the 150 range. All I want is to weigh less than my lean and fit boyfriend so 166 would do. I wish us all luck in the coming holiday season and remember just a teaspoon of peanut butter before a party helps keep your addiction in check (just a little bit anyway).

Cottage Cheese Thighs Oh My

There I was, innocently drying off after a warm exfoliating shower. Foot up on the bathtub, stretching out a tight hamstring and I saw it! There on my thigh, clearly visible, the bumps, the lumps. No it couldn’t be. I slid my foot off the tub and stood bent over looking closely at both thighs. Cottage cheese, on both of them and not just a little patch but filling in the whole area from the top of my legs to my knees.

Glancing over to the countertop a thought hit me as I spied the Good-Bye Cellulite Gel-Cream by Nivea Body (typical price $11.49). I don’t care what anyone else thinks but if my boyfriend spies those same bumps he will surely say something truthful but not what I would really care to hear. Me, myself and my boyfriend are the only people that I care about seeing the cellulite, the rest is just noise. Grabbing the cream I spread it on both thighs, love the smell by the way. Here’s to smoothing the bumps and living in the land of “I am so not aging ungracefully if I can help it.”

Losing Weight on Thanksgiving

I can not believe I accomplished the formidable act of losing weight during the Thanksgiving Holiday. It may be a measly 1.5 lbs but it surely counts for a lot more in motivation gain. How did I do it? Well now, it is really no secret. I did not stay inside watching someone else play football or sports while eating turkey and desserts. The boyfriend cracked the whip and we stayed outside during the daylight hours and some of the dark as well while putting up a Holiday Light display.

This involved a great many things, first of all emptying the storage areas containing the holiday supplies. Heavy lifting, stretching and walking to and fro were all part of the process. This isn’t your momma’s Holiday Display it is a Lights to Music Holiday Extravaganza. As the English boyfriend puts it, “We are the nutters down the street.” Unpacking the decorations, sorting the light string boxes by color, organizing the ¼ acre (yes it is that big) display area and building the manger from recycled fencing. Hauling the hay, holding the light strings, placing the big holiday blowups and shoveling more gravel into the mud puddles. We moved onto labeling and connecting the 145 plus extension cords, bending, twisting, and lifting to help tone that core muscle group.

I was working 8 – 10 hours, being physically active all day, four days in a row with only my hunger (or the boyfriend’s daughters) to notify us that it was time to eat. Lunch was typically grabbing a quick bite, usually while walking back to the front of the property with more lights or decorations in hand that surely helped the weight loss process. I would have lost more but I suspect I was building muscle the whole time as well.

There you have it, the magic of weight loss during the holiday season. Stay outside, work your ass off, eat only when driven to it by hunger pangs or demanding children, have a glass of wine, collapse into bed, get up and repeat 3 more times.

Fat Fat Go Away, No One Wants You Anyway...

Seriously, yet again I have gone down the path of Google-ing the internet for weight loss surgeries. Lapband, new gizmo band, stomach stapling, jaw wiring were all valid for me today. I even went so far as to check out the free seminar times for the Northwest Weight Loss Centers in Everett, WA. Spoke to my older brother this past weekend and he is under the blubber along with me. He has me beat though by approaching 300 lbs. to my measly 225 lbs.

I just want to shout, “What the flipping hell?!?” I watched Biggest Loser again last night and just wanted to shoot the people on that big scale. Yes, they look like me but by golly they were finally losing weight. Albeit took working out 4 – 5 hours a day and eating only authorized controlled foods on “the ranch”. I want a ranch like that and I want to drag my older brother with me. We are the fatties in the family. My younger sister and next oldest brother also struggle with weight but are having some success. My brother and I are definitely the biggest siblings. It just sucks, plain and simple, sucks. ‘

It is like some uncontrollable urge that makes you go through the drive through and order the quarter pounder with fries. I did order ice tea. I am finished with the soda, diet or otherwise and no milk/cheese product either. What I can’t figure out is why the hell can’t I lose weight by just being normal? My freak side-show office mate burns upwards of 4000 calories a day and loses weight because he doesn’t eat after a workout but has a couple glasses of wine instead. I want to pinch his little head right off his skinny ass shoulders.

Maybe if I chant every day… fat fat go away no one wants you anyway. Head is now banging on my desk in frustration. I can’t control my actions, I can’t control my mouth, I can’t control my freakin’ weight. It just sucks. And yes, I continue to exercise every day because I can not imagine what weight I would be up to if I didn’t exercise.

Pesky Weekend Pounds

And here they are again, those pesky two pounds that sneak onto my body over each and every flipping weekend. What gives? I exercised, I stayed on my feet burning calories, and okay I did sneak some candy and the boyfriend baked bread. Hot crusty bread fresh from the oven with butter could explain some of it but I declined dinner in favor of the bread. Can a girl get a break any where?

Read a great except from a fitness magazine regarding exercising versus getting enough sleep. So I am trying a new experiment by sleeping in to 5:30 am Monday and Wednesday rather that getting up at 4:50 am to exercise. Those days will be my weight training and Pilates schedule after work. On Tues, Thurs, and Friday I will continue to get up at “oh-god-thirty” to do my 30-minutes of treadmill and minor weight training. When I am pissed off on the weekends, I can add another workout. Working out the anger or frustration in the exercise room is always a good thing.

I am drinking more water and tea per Dr. Oz advice as well as Acai juice. I ended up adding a concentrate to my liquid vitamin so I have an all-in-one vitamin/Acai mixture. In addition, I found Acai powder at the local Fred Meyer and have it in my desk drawer at work for supplemental juicing. Taking a swig of vitamin or glucosamine is a better alternative for me than pills. I am a gagger.

I’ll post the name of the magazine supplement that I am reading because it is full of great advice. Note to self – the magazine aisle at the grocery store is just as bad as the candy aisle for me. I always end up picking up a couple of unplanned mag-rags if I go that way.

One more poppet of information to leave you with before I sign off for today. I am trying something called Night Skin recommended on the Rachel Maddow show and will keep you posted with results on my skin renewal.

"Oh That's Obese" Wii That

And in all that time did I lose one stinking pound, nope. I gained a couple and struggled to finally get those new additons off but still wallowing around in my overweightness. Have I hit my red flag weight yet? Oh yeah, 225 and it bites big. I am wheezing again on the stairs. Darn it! Lost two to get back to 223 this morning, thank the gods.

Yes, I am still working out on a regular basis. Saturday - kickboxing for 45 minutes, Monday - cardio for 30, Tuesday - weight training for 30, Wednesday - pilates for 50 minutes, Thursday - weight training again and today... well, I slept in until 5:28 am and then rushed around to get to work on time.

Guess I will be working out tonight, probably do a Wii Fit workout. I love my little Mii. She is a sassy fat obese little blonde thing. Every time I step on the Wii Fit board the stupid Wii has to do the "ohhh" like it hurts. When it measures my weight it always has to punctuate with the "oh that's obese" statement. Like I haven't heard that ever since I bought the damn thing.

I must say though, I do like the Wii Fit and it does keep me coming back.

Famine Ready Machine Sam I am....

I did the “thingy” that skinny people are supposed to do yesterday. Fidget, stand up a lot, walk about and generally not sit down and relax. What did I get out of the whole adventure while not overeating (although I probably have a magic food eye that grossly underestimates the calories I eat)? A ½ pound weight gain for my efforts, isn’t that just grand? I also stuck to turkey slices for lunch along with a banana and some pecans with cranberries. Okay the cranberries probably had some organic cane juice sweetener that added too many calories as well.

Really, I should just get my mouth wired shut and call it good. As long as I have to eat food to survive, I will be struggling not to overeat, eat the wrong thing and in general screw up any nutritional plan I thought I had for myself. I am a food addict. There I said it. It is just as bad as an alcoholic except I can’t abstain from eating food.

I suspect at times I have the same problem that Oprah claimed to have with her thyroid. Maybe I have a problematic thyroid that causes me to gain weight. Then reality rears its ugly little head and I realize, I am just an overeating, famine ready machine.

Part Time Vegetarian? Not!

What is it with the hop-on-board vegetarians? I have a dysfunctional girlfriend who tries to replicate the lifestyle of each guy she is with while bitching the whole time. I guess the bitching is just a bonus to the complaints she makes about the guy not caring about her life. ‘scuse me? How would he know as she doesn’t live her life but a smaller dysfunctional version of his life? Anyway back to the part-time vegetarian thing.

We are in a restaurant ordering lunch. She makes a big deal out of nothing on the menu being vegetarian friendly. Note to the readers, I went vegetarian for more than 3-years until my meat-eater voice became too large to ignore and now my waist line is expanding along with the meat eating. It is not like I don’t understand the challenges of not eating something with a face but I never felt the need to broadcast it to the waiter. It was always fairly simple to customize some dish on the menu to satisfy my vegetarian choice. In any case, my DGF (dysfunctional girlfriend) is going on and on about the menu not having anything on it she can order. And then she orders the chicken pasta menu item. DGF blithely shares with the waiter that sometimes she eats chicken (or bacon or cheese or milk products in my experience). What the hell? I can see it in the waiter’s eyes that he really doesn’t care what she orders and long as she orders.

DGF never misses a chance to lecture me about her vegetarianism, how hard it is and without skipping a breath, bitching about the boyfriend’s style of eating. How it gives her gas or the poopies or something else I don’t care to hear about. Argh, I know it is better to just not pick up those cell phone calls from DGF but some self-inflicting misery bot in my brain can’t help itself. Okay back to subject.

You are not a vegetarian if you eat meat. That includes chicken, fish, bacon (really it is a pig product) or any other animal meat. Yeah, I know there are many levels of vegetarianism but this is pointed at my DGF. And while we are at it, don’t be a hypocrite by wearing leather or fur coats unless you are doing it purely for the health benefit. Okay that is enough off my generous chest for now.

Kickboxing or Kicking the Scale

It is another day, another workout, and another chance to follow good eating habits. What a great way to start the day… kickboxing my frustrations away while toning my abs, arms and legs at oh-god-thirty in the am. Breakfast with a perfectly great flax cereal topped with a little almond milk (yeah, no dairy for me unless I want my arthritis to kick up and my face to breakout).

Side note from my esthetician to you, milk (from any critter) is a mucus based substance that does nothing for you other than to snot up your system, clog up your pores and creep into your aching joints.

Now back to me and my battle with the scale. It popped me again this morning with a ½ lb. weight gain after having slept in yesterday and doing a pitiful workout last night. Not drinking wine, not having dairy, cutting a lot of processed carbs and still it has the gall to spank me. At the ripe old age of 45+ something, I am at the point in my life where I can barely hold my own with exercise and diet. Okay really, I am not holding my own as the pounds are starting to accumulate on my hips and thighs again. Background… I had lost about 60 lbs. during the course of a divorce and I’ve managed to keep off half of that amount. It was a lot easier while I owned the fitness kickboxing facility and taught about 10 – 12 classes a week (yes, I said a week). And I was still just holding my own at 194 lbs.

SCREAM, I guess the only solution is to quit eating that addictive substance called food, exercise every waking hour and have no life before I drop dead. That just does not sound fun to me at all. Thank the gods that I love to exercise. Yes, you read that right. I am a freak about exercise and trying new things and reading all the magazines. I just don’t want to spend all my free time exercising with a growly hungry stomach. Meet the ultimate famine survival machine, my body.

Biggest Loser

Last night I tuned into watch the Biggest Loser and got my kick start for the umpteenth time. And then the morning alarm went off, gods 4:50 am. I struggled out of bed yet again and stumbled into the bathroom to get dressed for my workout. The scale smacks me upside the head with a 1/2 pound weight gain for working out with weights yesterday. Greeeeeeaaaaat. Thank goodness my boyfriend loves me enough to build out a workout room just for me so it is only a couple minutes to trip down the hallway to where my workout awaits. Treadmill or DVD? I can't function enough to press the buttons for the DVD player so treadmill it is. It is a battle to get my legs walking fast enough so I have to hold on or lose out to the tread moving too fast (and it ain't fast folks, 2.4 mph) but I pump up the incline to a whopping 5. After 15-minutes it is back into the house to hit the restroom as my body has finally woken up. Back to the workout to lift some weights and do crunches. A few lawn-mower pulls along with my side lunges and it is time to get ready for work. I didn't sweat enough to justify a shower so into my clothes I go. A cup of tea, kiss from the boyfriend and off to my 45-minute commute. If I could workout for the 1 1/2 hours I spend commuting I would be at a "normal" weight. As it is I am at a morbidly obese weight according to the charts, 222.5 lbs on a 5’2” frame. AND I WORK OUT 5 – 6 DAYS A WEEK. My doctor said it right, “You are the healthiest fat woman I have examined.” Wonderful but that sentiment won’t get me into those size 10 (yes I am a realist) jeans or that cool little pencil skirt. That’s all for today, I actually need to get some work done to make some money so I can do it all over again tomorrow. Sigh, when is that melt the fat and build muscle pill coming out anyway?