More ups than downs last week

I had a fantastic time at my knitting retreat this weekend! But I ate terribly. There were cookies and chocolate and candy everywhere and I tried not to, but my willpower just didn't work as well as it should. And because of all of that, I was up this morning at my weekly weigh in. But I'm not going to let it get me down. I had a talk with James last night and I said to him that I was frustrated because I was not losing but telling myself I wanted to lose and I wasn't sure why I felt like I still wanted to lose more weight. And, as simple as it could get his answer was "you want to lose more because you aren't at your goal yet".

Duh.

Why can't I look at the simple answers all the time. I am not at my # goal yet. And I deserve to get there. Simple as that. This isn't rocket surgery people. I can do this. So, even though I said I was back on it a couple of weeks ago. I really wasn't committed to it. Something clicked in my brain last night. I have 6 weeks until the date I set originally for my goal of 175. That will be a little harder now, but I'm still going to shoot for it.

My birthday is in 3 1/2 weeks and I don't know if I'm excited about it or not. It's a big one, 40 years old. I certainly don't feel like I'm 40. And nobody thinks I look like I'm 40. My age has never really been a problem for me before, as to my feelings about it. Why now? When I look and feel better than I have in years? I don't get it. I'm trying not to let it bother me. That's all I can do, right? :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend. And thanks for reading, it helps me to get some of this stuff out and off my chest.

Love y'all!!!!

Better today

So I'm not freaking out as much these past couple of days. Thanks for all the words of encouragement!

Today is my Friday, woo hoo! I am going on a knitting retreat, leaving tomorrow at noon. I don't know what the food situation will be like exactly, but I will do my best with whatever the options are. I am quite excited to get away and hang out with some friends and think of nothing but knitting and fun.

This is going to be a short post today, I have a lot of work to do before the day is over :)

More later!

Failing

So this morning, the scale didn't like me. Even though my food journal shows I was only 431 calories over my weekly goal, the scale showed me up 1.5 lbs for the week. 1.5 lbs = 5250 calories. Not 431. I don't understand. I know I wasn't great last week with the eating, but I promise I wrote every single thing down that I put in my mouth. And I erred on the side of caution when I wasn't sure how many calories were in something. So how in the world does 431 calories translate into 1.5 lbs?!

I feel like a failure. I know that sounds completely absurd. I am consistently maintaining a 100 lb loss. That CAN'T be a failure. But that is how I feel today. I don't have a lot of motivation. It seems like whatever I do, I stay the same. I am hesitant to get a fill, I am afraid of having a dilation. And I feel like my restriction is fine. I don't eat too much at one sitting, I don't get hungry in between. Is it possible that this is just where my body wants to be?

I know I need to get with the exercise program. But I hate exercise. Seriously hate it. With every single one of my guts. The thought of exercise makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry. I don't mind activity. I like to ride my bike, I like to swim, I like to go on walks. And I do that as much as I can. Do I just need to accept that if I choose not to do strenuous exercise several times a week that I will probably remain pretty much where I am scale wise? And am I OK with that?

Typically in my life I have had a "give up when it's too hard" attitude. Life is too short to make myself miserable. I wish I could find a happy medium. And maybe I'm at it. I just don't know. Help!

Weird Day

Today has been a weird day. I have been at work all day but can't do anything. The server where all my files are kept that I need to access ... disappeared yesterday afternoon. They've been working all day to restore it from a back up but it is a HUGE drive, the entire Marketing department uses that location to keep their work. So it is taking forever!

I don't think I've done very well this week. I am a little scared of the scale for Monday. I don't want to put too much pressure on myself but I also need to push myself. Does that even make sense? Probably not. I wonder if I need to have a fill. Although the amount I am eating at one meal is on target, that makes me think that I just need to be more careful with WHAT I am eating, not how much. Sometimes I do really well with saying no to things I know I should stay away from, and sometimes I just don't. One minute at a time, right?

Next weekend I'll be going to a knitting retreat! I'm so excited. It is located in Grandbury at Pecan Plantation. I went last year and had a great time. Nothing like sitting around knitting all weekend with no distractions!

That's all the news I have for now .. have a great weekend!

One Week and One Pound

So, I have completed the first week of my 9 week challenge. My goal is to lose 11 lbs in the 9 weeks. Weighing in on Monday's ... and I'm down 1 lb. So not a bad start. Especially since I feel like I did not great with my eating on several days this week.

Today is Valentine's Day, and that's not a big deal for me. Never really has been. But I have been a little concerned because of all the chocolate that is usually around during this time of year. So far I've been pretty good about staying away from it (except for some Reese's Pieces on Saturday, couldn't help it). This morning at work we had an email to come down to one of our conference rooms and get a "Valentine's Day Surprise!". The surprise was a bottle of water and a big heart shaped cookie. I am super proud to say that I took the water but left the cookie!

That is one thing that I have noticed lately. That I am becoming more particular as to what I choose to have. I LOVE cookies. They are my favorite. My #1 cookie is a gooey chocolate chip one. I have a hard time resisting those. Before losing all this weight, I would eat any cookie. Even if it wasn't very good. Because it was a cookie! And I love cookies. But now, if I'm going to eat something, I want it to be delicious! So I don't settle for just any old crappy cookie anymore. I am sticking with the uber delicious gooey chocolate chip cookies. So seeing that plain boring (probably) hard as a rock heart shaped sugar cookie with gicky blue frosting on it just wasn't appealing to me. So I said no thank you. Yay for me!

I finished reading a book last night. Fallen by Lauren Kate. It was alright. Seemed to drag at points and then out of nowhere, bam! They packed all the fast paced important stuff into the last 2 chapters. There are more books in this series ... not sure if I'm going to read them or not. Next I'm starting Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin - to read it before the TV series comes on HBO in April. I'm a little nervous about it since it is in the fantasy genre and I tend to have a hard time with those because of all the weird names and places that are made up and thus unfamiliar to me so I have difficulty keeping everything straight. But I'm going to give it a go! Of course I am also still listening to the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon on audiobook. I'm on the 4th book in the series, called Drums of Autumn. It is fantastic! I highly recommend it as outstanding reading.

Tonight is my monthly support group and I can't wait to see my friends (Hi Beth!) tonight. Last month it was canceled because of weather and the month before that I missed the meeting so it has been ages since I've seen everyone and I am super excited to get back into the swing. I need some pushing and encouragement to get through these next 10 lbs. Here we go!

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Birthday Wishes

My birthday is March 23rd! This year I will be .... 40, gulp. I just found out that my favorite band E-V-E-R is going to be playing on Friday March 18th at Winstar Casino in Oklahoma. I am sooooooooooo excited I can't even express it! Tickets go on sale in 15 minutes so I am waiting to buy them.

Duran Duran, here I come!!!!!!!!!

Positive

I'm trying to be positive today. It is proving to be a more difficult task than I would have imagined. I think all the snow days have messed with the tolerance I built up to the stupidity of people in the world.

So, lets think of some positive things to say, shall we? Today is more than 1/2 over! Yay! It has stopped icing outside. Yay! I haven't been in any car accidents throughout the past week of winter weather. Yay! I haven't gained any weight. Yay! It's almost the weekend. Yay! The book I'm listening to is reallllly good. Yay! I'm getting my hair colored tomorrow. Yay! It should be nice enough for me to ride my bike this weekend. Yay!

Hopefully that will get me through the next few hours.

Help me out with some positive things of your own!!!

1 day on the books

Well, I made it through yesterday. Some times during the day I wasn't sure I would! It's not like I've been eating crazy lately ... but it is quite different to eat while trying to lose rather than eat to maintain a weight. I think part of my calorie problems is my daily smoothie. I really don't want to give it up ... so I must make an adjustment. I get a medium - I think I'm going to have to go to a small. I will give that a try and see how it does.

Other than that, eating yesterday was alright. I was super hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I had a baked potato, not all of it though. I wasn't hungry again for the rest of the evening, but I wanted to eat. Nothing in particular, just wanted in general to eat. I refrained though. My kitty Nova was in my lap under a blanket all snuggly and I told myself that I couldn't get up and disturb him. So it forced me to stay where I was. Hey, whatever works right?

Today I have my pedometer on again, I haven't worn it in over a month! I am going to go to Target during lunch today so I should get some walking in. OH! And last night after I got home, James and I went out to dinner (for said potato) and then walked around Best Buy and also PetSmart. So I got some moving in yesterday after all, yay me!

Just get through today. Worry about tomorrow when it gets here. I can do this!

Ice Ice Baby

This was a weird week here in North Texas. I only went to work on Monday and Thursday. We got several inches of snow and lots of ice, which people here are just not equipped to deal with. So even though I might not have been too worried about myself driving to work or other places, I've lived here in Fort Worth long enough to know that there are a lot of people here who have overly large trucks who think nothing of speeding along with no regard to others on the road. I was more afraid of them than I was of myself on the ice.

Because of all this weather, I didn't move very much this past week. I stayed home and bundled up as much as possible. Usually on the couch! I knew this was going to be the case so I tried really hard to watch my food intake since I wasn't expelling many calories to make up for anything. And I was pretty successful thank goodness. I'm going to get out today at lunchtime and go walk around Target or something just to move my body.

I've been hesitant to make any goals because I am afraid of failing. But I think it is time. I am stating that I am setting a goal of 11 pounds. That will take me from my current 186, to 175. I would love to say I could hit that by my birthday (March 23) but that might be a little much. So, how about this ... I attend a support group the 2nd Monday of every month, I will be at my goal by the April meeting which is April 11. That is 9 weeks from today. I can do this for 9 weeks. I will log my food, move my body and lose 11 lbs. I can do this!

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Better late than never

May 27, 2009. 1 year, 8 months and 6 days ago I had my first appointment with True Results to check out this whole "LapBand" thing. It started before that. I don't know if I can pinpoint exactly when, but it had been building up for a while. But that day in May was when I just couldn't handle it anymore.

It was a process. There were times I didn't think I could go through with it. But I knew deep down that I had to. I had run out of options. I was sick. I was tired. I couldn't keep going. My life was not worth anything. I was merely existing, and that was terrifying to me. I'm not sure how, but I made it to the next step.

December 23, 2009. 1 year, 1 month and 11 days ago I had my LapBand surgery. It hasn't always been easy. It hasn't always been fun. There were many days I just broke down and cried. I cursed myself for having done this. But the #1 reason that I chose to do this, is because it would force me not to give up. Giving up was no longer an option. That choice has been removed from possibility. And that choice ... I honestly believe it has saved my life.

Today is February 3, 2011. My journey is not finished, but it has come a long way. I don't know if it will every be completely finished. It is still a struggle at times. But those days come less and less frequently now. I never would have believed it if you'd told me 2 years ago. But because I took a terrifying leap of faith, my life is worth living again. And I've never been more grateful for that.

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