daisyflower

Can’t try and lose weight anymore. Bye bye buddlyslim for the next 9 months! I’m pregnant!

I search through the blogs and everyone is struggling so hard with the wieght, and that sucks. I want to know is there anyone out there who has hit at least their mini-goal? If not the entire weightloss?

I’ve lost 2 lbs, mainly due to the shift in my hormones, but hey, I’ll take it! This week I’m trying to incorporate salads into my diet, any thoughts? I hate salads! My mom used to force me to eat these sad iceberg salads at dinner and ever since I can’t get myself to like them. Oh sure, if you give me a plate of tomato slices, cucumbers and assorted raw veg I’ll gobble it down, just as soon as you call it a salad though…things change. But I’m giving it a shot. If I can eat just 1 small salad a day for this week I’m going to reward myself with a medium Mickey D’s french fry this weekend.

As the title says. Today was day 2 of my Diet of Indulgence. I went to the gym yesterday and today and logged an hour each +  stretching and abs to boot! Go me! Last night I promised myself 2 cookies and 8oz milk. I think tonight it’ll be more like 1 cookie and 8oz milk just because I want my splurge meal this weekend to really count. I can’t believe I’ve gotten so far off track. Well, yes I can, who am I kidding. But today I feel good, powerful and a little sore. Blah.

Today I weighed in. I have gained back every ounce of the 12 pounds I lost 2 years ago. Every……single….ounce.

This is actually a good thing. It’s good because I saw the number as purely that, it is a number on a scale. It does not reflect how I feel about myself. I am still a kickass girl, smart, witty, funny and that number didn’t have the wrenching effect on my mood that it did a month ago. After getting off the scale I turned and looked at hubby, he was sure I was about to break down sobbing after he heard the number. I just shrugged, kissed him, and said “I lost it once I can do it again.” And went and poured myself some cereal. He was dumbstruck. This is a complete 180 for me.

I can do it again. And it’s ok if it takes a while and its ok if I’ve got extra jiggle for a spell. I love me. I’m not beating myself up anymore. Giving myself nightly guilt trips because,”Why me?! Why can’t I have the willpower of the skinny people?! Wah Wah Wah” I’m not doing it to myself anymore. Obviously it isn’t working. Beating myself up emotionally isn’t making me any happier with myself, so why go through it? If I eat a cookie, so what, it’s a cookie, it’s not poison. If I skip 1 or 2 workouts a week, what’s the worse that can happen? A smidge extra cellulite on the butt, big deal. It’s not like I need to order a casket. My worth is not measured by the scale in the bathroom. My husband would love me if I were 3 times my weight. My family loves me just the way I am, so who exactly am I trying to impress with losing weight?! Myself. And in the past she has been quite the enemy to battle with. So we’re working together on this one. I’m pulling together the forces of my ego AND my body and we’re going to lose weight for health, ok and maybe a teeny bit of vanity. Cuz the only person I have to impress is myself and aren’t I worth impressing?

I’m going to use food as a reward. You heard me right. I AM GOING TO USE FOOD AS A REWARD. I’ve tried and tried using the standby’s of..

Buy a cute top

Buy some lipstick/candle/book

Get a pedicure/manicure/ massage

Blah freaking blah. It doesn’t work for me. Know why? I could give a flying frick about any of that crap. I’d trade 10 mani/pedi’s for 1 good meal. I would in a heartbeat. You know what that tells me? No matter what, food is always going to be my prime motivator. It’s hardwired to all of our primative brains: food=good/safe/happy/healthy. I’m not going to fight it any longer. There is nothing wrong with eating and I’m going to stop treating it like some bad child in my brain that needs to be punished. So what if I’m not “supposed to”. Blah. It’s one of my few passions and I should indulge…on occassion.

I’m thinking once a week. If I workout 4 times and watch what I eat throughout the week I can have 1 splurge meal on the weekend. Now that is something I can get behind. Food is not the enemy to be held 100% at arms length. There’s a reason we derive so much satisfaction from eating, because we’re supposed to like it!! Just like sex. We’re supposed to like eating because it keeps us alive and happy and fornicating. It’s all in there in the deepest darkest corners of our minds. That primal, age old, clawing knowledge that we get a divine pleasure from food. And you know what? It’s ok!! And I’m going with it. If anyone has any ideas to expand on this please feel free to help a sister out. And please feel free to join me.

What else could we do? For every 3 workouts stop at Starbucks and get that Frappa/Cappa/ whipped cream lovely. Or how about: Lose 5 lbs and spend $5 at the fast food joint. Or: Meet your goal weight and hit that fancy schmancy French resturant at $100 a plate. Or workout all week and try cooking or baking a new recipe?

Now that is motivation to me. Who out there feels the same? Who out there thinks they could lose weight easier and happier if they took a similar route? I know it’s unconventional, but conventional doesn’t seem to be working for me. I might just lose weight from being happy. Lord knows those are the only times in my history I have lost weight and kept it off, because I was happy.

The viscous cycle has to end!! I’ll lose a pound, feel great for doing that having an extra serving here, skip a workout there to find I’ve gained it back. So then it continues. I’ll work out, be writing down every morsel I eat and lose 2-3 lbs and then slack for a week or better and am back to where I started. It’s enough to drive a person to madness. I’m also feeling myself tempted by diet pills and starvation (although the latter never seems to stick, I’m ready to kill someone if I don’t eat).

I just so badly wanted to be skinny AND healthy AND look great in my clothing designs. Why can’t I get it together? Part of me wants to blame hubby. If it’s not, “Let’s get some Dairy Queen,” its, “I’m ordering a pizza for dinner…” But I know backwards and forwards that its me and me alone that the fault lies with. He doesn’t shove the food down my throat.

But I have yet to find a substitute for food. I’ve tried tempting myself with, “If you skip the second helping of dinner, you can take a bubble bath later…” or, “Lose 2 pounds this week and you can buy yourself a magazine this weekend.” But the positive rewards also don’t seem to be enough. Sure they last a minute, but after a week or 2 I don’t care anymore. Urgh. This is so frusterating!!!! I’ve been trying to lose 10 lbs for almost a year and a half, and you know what’s happened? I’ve gained 6. So that means I’ve got to lose 16 lbs instead!!! And in case you’re wondering I have tried “just lose like 5 lbs at a time.” Having a goal time in mind doesn’t work, writing down what I eat doesn’t work, working out 5 days a week doesn’t work, substituting an apple a day for a snack doesn’t work. I’m telling ya, I’ve hit a wall. I’ve maintained this weight now for about a month, no gains, no losses. I may have to resort to extremes. No worries this week though. I’m going to give weight watchers 1 more shot. Actually pay the fee, go to the meetings and have people look at me funny. “What’s the normal sized girl doing here?!” But I don’t care. I felt SO much better when I was around 135. I was confident, my clothes fit great, I had a teeny tiny waist and on top of it, I felt great. If I can do it once I can do it again, right?!

Yeah, that wasn’t even convincing to me. This sucks.

Unemployement was going to be great! I was gunna have all this time to work out and get my body together!! Before you knew it I’d be down to the goal weight without the food temptations around like at work.

HA!

Reality hasn’t panned out like that at all!! More like I’ve been so busy trying to get some dresses sewn and working on my designs that I don’t incorporate movement into my day!! I don’t think I’ve walked more than 3,000 steps a day since losing my job!! That’s down from the 8-10,000 I used to get in. I don’t have time for much other than designing. >Ok that’s a straight forward lie. I am really passionate about what I do and I get caught up in the momentum of it. I choose sewing over going to the gym, I know that. But if its any consolation I put everything else on hold too. My house is a wreck, the kitchen is for lack of a better word…crunchy, laundry needs to be done. Most days it gets to be 2 o’clock before I realize that I haven’t brushed my hair or teeth (I know, yuck). I need to work on some time management. Yes have fun making dresses for part of the day and take care of the practical stuff other parts of the day. Urgh.

I’m feeling fat today. Time to get back on track. I promise to myself  that even though I’m making a trip home this week I will get more excercise in AND follow my weight watchers points. I pinky promise to myself that I will put in 5, yes 5 workouts this week. I can do this, it’s just a matter of making it a part of my routine. I will focus on taking as much care of my body as I am taking care of my budding business. After all I am the face of these designs and in less than a month I’m going to be modeling them in my photo shoot. I need to look good if I want them to sell. Enough babbling. Time to get to it.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading over the years on nutrition, eating, and our anthropoligical realtionship to food. While this fad diet says 1 thing another spins the same information to mean something completely else. I’m tired of the bad information out there!! In almost EVERY diet I’ve come across there is 1 common thread in ALL of them, eat your veggies. And through my reading of the humans direct tie to certain foods its hard to believe what we see present at the dinner table most nights. This is going to be a bit of a ramble…prepare yourself.

Yesterday hubby and I went to Trader Joe’s. If you don’t have 1 in your area, it’s an ’organic’ supermarket. I hadn’t been there before and I was hoping to go and see all kinds of fruit and veg I’ve never seen in my life, strange chutneys, homemade grass fed sausages and the like. I couldn’t have been more disappointed!! It was all premade prepackaged food. Now lemme give you the 411 on prepackaged food, 80% of it has MSG in it….yes….even organic! Hubby and I have recently decided not to eat anything we don’t recognize as food. So as I started picking up things and reading names like Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Sodium Caseinate, Glutamic acid, Yeast Extract, Malted Barley Flavor and yes Monosodium Glutamate…..all of these have the same name, MSG!! A known cancer causing agent and poisen showed up under the label ‘organic’. Watch it out there, there are wolves in sheeps clothing. If my great great great grandma didn’t recognize it as food I can’t find 1 reason why I should eat it.

Already I’m feeling the differance, I’m not as tired, I have more energy and the key was just finding a way to prepare veggies in a way I enjoy them. So ladies and gentlemen please please please read up on the chemicals your feeding yourself and your family. Our species survived 150,000 years without this crap and we don’t need it. Rice, potatoes, butter, olive oil…these foods kept my family thriving through the generations, don’t let bad food information stear you wrong. Read, “In defense of food” by Michael Pollan and you won’t look back.  Eat your veggies and food you recognize as food, without all the weird additives and chemicals and you’d be surprised how fast the weight comes off. I switched to eating like this and after 1 week I lost 4 pounds….I hadn’t lost any in the 3 months of being on this site.

Could it be that the low/reduced/non-fat items were in fact making me fat? Probably. I switched to full fat normal everything. It tastes better, so I don’t eat as much. I’m not fooling myself into thinking it’s healthy so I guess I can have more more more.  My kitchen is a mess because I’ve actually used it this week! I feel great. Ladies, forget all the ‘health’ information you’ve heard in the past 50 years, its wrong. Do what great greatgrandma Ruth woulda done and you’ll be ok. Limit portions but really really savor what it is that you’re eating. Don’t eat with the tv on, have a lovely sit down with your friends or family. And fall in love with what food should have been. A cultural expression of celabration, life, love and community.

Ok so we’ve all heard that during PMS we should stay away from sugar, caffeine and salt to help curb the body and mood problems, right?

What I want to know is……

Can it be done? Who really honestly and truly can stay away from the junk while the hormones are raging?