KD

Well, I haven’t blogged in awhile.  I am committing this week to stepping things up. I haven’t been totally off plan the past 2 weeks but I haven’t been so great about logging my food and definitely not good at exercising.  I am going to commit to logging my food daily and taking a 20-30 minute walk after dinner now that it is light out later in the day.

On another topic. . .I’ve noticed that quite a few women here have PCOS.  I also have it and was diagnosed about 4 years ago. My OB/GYN ran the tests and said that I was insulin resistant and it either caused my PCOS or my PCOS caused the resistance. Either way, it is going to be more difficult for me to lose weight even by doing the same things that someone else without PCOS is doing. Let me say that I immediately added that to my treasure trove of excuses as to why I couldn’t lose weight (it had nothing to do with my overeating and underexercising!). For the past 4 years I have secretly held onto that as the reason I am overweight.   Well - NO MORE!  I have decided to take control of my own health. I had been perscribed Metformin (a medicine used by diabetics to control sugar levels & sometimes to help with insulin resistant PCOS) back before I had my youngest daughter and lost about 20 lbs pretty quickly.  I discontinued it while I was pregnant and have put off going back on it but last week I finally called my doctor and began on it again.  It has taken some adjustment but it has really helped me to feel full and not really want to eat at times too.  Now that I am taking that to control insulin levels, I am scratching off PCOS as an excuse for my being overweight.  I am committing myself to exercise, eat right and take my medication.  Those 3 things will keep me on the right path to lose weight.

Have a great day !

Katie

I have been thinking lately about who lives underneath the layers that I have put on my body.  What would I be like as a thin person?  I haven’t been thin in so long. . . I don’t remember at all what it feels like.  I seems to be that, out of all of the other things that I am, being overweight defines me and has for awhile.  Now, I don’t always consciously think of it that way but I know that many things that I do, I would do differently if I were at a normal weight.  I went to a party tonight and more than a few times I found myself studying the skinny (mostly  younger) people who were there and thinking about my own body and how cumbersome it feels.  I think I would feel such freedom as a skinny person - not held back by my weight, the clothes that I have to wear at this size, and what I think others think of me.

I remember back in college when I lost a lot of weight.  I had had mono and the weight fell off of me.  I was actually underweight but I had SO many compliments from friends and family.  I worked at a bank during the summer and a lot of the guys who came to the drive up flirted with me and it felt great but also a little scary too.  Maybe that is what I am afraid of - if I lose weight I will get (possibly unwanted) attention from other people and I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with that.  I’m not really sure why.

I know, thinking logically, that I am many other things besides an overweight 30 something.  I am a Mom of 3, great wife, real estate agent, singer/actor, lover of animals, great sister, daughter, volunteer, etc.  All of these things are who I REALLY am.  So how come every part of my life seems clouded by being overweight?  And why can’t I use that feeling more effectively to help me lose the lbs that I need to?

Things I think I’d do if I were at a normal weight:

Proudly put on a bathing suit and play sports on the beach with my kids.

Not hide behind long, baggy clothing - wear something form fitting and be proud of the way I look.

Have my husband pick me up (kind of funny but he’s tried before and can’t even get me off the couch LOL).

Wear my husband’s clothes (too small for me right now).

I would go audition for a lead role in the professional theater I’ve worked with before and feel like I could legitimately be considered for the part.

Now I could do some of these things right now but would have self conscious thoughts because of the weight that I am.  I don’t want to let being overweight hold me back but I don’t want to use the “I’m already living my life to the fullest” excuse to keep me from losing weight either.

These are just ramblings - emptying my brain. . . hopefully I’ll find the answers so that I can truly be free from this (heavyweight) burden I have been carrying.

‘Night!

K

Well, I have been away on vacation for the past couple of days and I’ve been really tested.  I had a great groove going on for the past couple of weeks and was feeling positive that I would stick to my plan while away.  I went to visit my sister in NY who lives by herself and is used to making quick, pre-prepared meals for herself and she doubled the amount she normally buys and made us all of her favorite meals - so generous and delicious but full of fat & calories.  I brought my oatmeal and ate that each morning and I’m proud that I did that but I did slip up many other times - we went to Olive Garden on our way home from NY and had something really yummy and extremely fattening.   We walked around to see the sites so I did get a lot of exercise and I felt very thankful when I came home and weighed myself and had still managed to lose 2 lbs.  I felt as if I’d gotten away with something.

Now tonight, my parents came to visit us and my Dad says “I’ve got a huge craving for Olive Garden - we’ll treat” and my hubby and kids were psyched (even though we just went there the other day).  We went out and, again, I had it in my head to eat something small.  Well - not planning ahead enough cost me. . .  to the tune of 1533 calories and 48 grams of fat in one meal!!!!! I can’t believe that one plate of food can contain that many calories. . .

This just makes me think of how I was eating before I started coming to this site.  I was just  eating chips, peanut butter on a bagel every morning, etc. and then also eating out at restaurants often.  No wonder I have gained so much weight.

This is all a journey on the road to self discovery.  I know next time I need to look at the menu first and decide what I am going to eat.  I am thankful that I ate oatmeal and yogurt for breakfast and had a very light lunch. That minimized the damage.  I will have to be more conscientious in the future so that I can stay on track.

Have a great night!

Katie

Alright. . .here is a little Rah Rah blog because I think a lot of us - including me - need this tonight.  Holidays can be especially hard - even if you don’t actually eat anything that is bad for you. It is just the thought that treats are either in the house or even just that today is a day when our brains have been programed to want chocolate or other stuff like that and we’re feeling deprived.   Re -programing the brain is a tough one - we go to the movies and we think of popcorn, we go out for dinner and “treat” ourselves, and here it is on Valentine’s Day and it sounds like  a lot of us are either feeling badly because we ate the wrong things or feeling sorry for ourselves that we “can’t” eat what we want.

We are MORE than slaves to food!  We are strong, intelligent, beautiful people who were made by God to have strength we don’t know we have.  Food is here to fuel us and also to enrich our lives in many ways.  We can have control over it!

We are MORE than the size and shape that our bodies have taken on!  We are not sloppy, lazy, stupid or unmotivated just because we need to lose a few pounds.  We are friendly, helpful, smart, people who will persevere and bring about the changes that we need to in order to live our lives as fully as possible.

WE CAN DO THIS!  We are here! Each and every one of us has made the effort to come to this site in hopes of helping ourselves overcome the weight challenges that we have.  We can encourage each other and draw strength and resolve from other’s successes and learn lessons from other’s struggles.   We are IN ACTION - taking an active part in our weight loss, even if it is only a pound a week or less.

WE CAN DO THIS!

Happy V-Day
K

I am resisting the urge to say “ONLY” one more pound down because I am disappointed that I only lost the one. I am remembering the poem that someone posted about the lonely pound who is happy that no one ever just wants to lose 1 lb because it is not enough. I have to be happy and tell myself that it IS enough. The scale is still going in the right direction. The reason I am mostly disappointed is that I did get to the gym and I did eat well this week - WAY better than I have been. I had been in a bad habit of going to Dunkin Donuts almost every day or eating at McDonald’s with the kids. I haven’t had any fast food since I started this program except one day I had a McDonald’s grilled snack wrap (I looked up the nutritional info first) because I was running between client appointments during the day. I have been eating fruits/vegetables and tracking every day. Why only one pound? The most frustrating this is that I am finally being honest about what I eat - making sure that I am not sugar coating my food journal (literally! ) and it seems like I should have lost more.

Anyway, I am going to start my day off with my oatmeal and move on. I really need to lose this weight - even just a pound - to meet my goals.

K

I’ve been Ok the past week - really doing well with keeping track of my food intake. I am not doing WW but I decided to calculate points for a couple of days this week and I am still struggling with eating too much - even though I have cut WAY back and I am eating mainly healthy stuff.  I have been staying within my deficit for each day. I feel like I am eating so much less but am shocked at the number of points in some things. . .3 points in oatmeal?  I am eating oatmeal for breakfast instead of my usual bagel & PB because I know it is healthier but I don’t think I like it enough to waste 3 points on it.  Any suggestions of good, healthy low cal/point breakfasts?

I worked out a couple of days this week - not strenuously but more than I have been doing recently.  I have a weigh in tomorrow and am a bit discouraged  because I sneaked a peek this morning and the scale doesn’t seem to have moved much, if at all.  I keep thinking tomorrow will bring a big drop but that is unrealistic.  I need to just keep plugging away and take it day to day, week by week and in time I will get the results I am hoping for.

Hope you are all doing great!  Happy Tuesday -

Katie

I wanted to thank all of you who made comments on my blog yesterday when I was craving chocolate.  It really helped me to get through it and I didn’t eat it which I am very proud of myself for!  I had a small snack of pretzel sticks and then had my regular dinner and I felt great.

Your support has been amazing!  I am humbled by the advice and encouragement that I have gotten so far.

Thanks!

Katie

For some reason today I am roaming the house trying to resist rummaging through my cabinets for snacks - mainly chocolate.  I had my normal breakfast and snack and then I went to the Y and did 10 minutes on the treadmill and 30 minutes of weights.  I just ate lunch and I’m hoping that that will cure the craving I have but I wanted to write this down to imprint it on my brain:

I DON’T NEED TO EAT ANYTHING ELSE.  I AM NOT REALLY HUNGRY!

Hope you all have a great day!

Katie

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve struggled over the years to lose weight.  I know two of the major reasons:

1) I HATE when people tell me what to do!  This includes me telling myself that I “should” do something, i.e. I “should” lose weight for my health, I “should” volunteer for something I don’t really have time for, etc.  My Mom didn’t let us eat sweets very often when we were kids.  We never had Oreos, sugar cereals, etc. in our house.  She fed us soy beans, wheat bread, yogurt smoothies, and stuff like that for our meals and snacks.  She was very health conscious because she had had cancer (which was in remission) and she knew that she needed to do that for her health.  Now me - I’ve always had a sweet tooth.  I remember secretly eating Nestle Quick Chocolate powder (the only chocolate in our house) out of the container with a spoon sometimes.  I also remember that when I was finally old enough to bring lunch money to school, I would spend it all on Nutty Bars and Little Debbie Oatmeal Sandwiches.  I was always active and into sports so my weight was never an issue but I got into a pattern of “sneaking” food. It was like freedom to me!  No one was going to tell me what I couldn’t eat!  On to college/ adulthood - I realized that I could go to the store and buy whatever I wanted (with my OWN money) and eat as much as I wanted.  This really began a pattern of just having no self-denial.  I just ate as much of whatever I was in the mood for that I wanted.  This is when  my serious weight gain began.  I remember eating whole packages of Oreos and making a batch of brownies and eating the whole thing. I was a music major and sports were not widely available at my school.  With no exercise, the weight began to pile up.  I ended up with mono my sophomore year and lost a ton of weight so the gain didn’t really show up on me until the year after I graduated.  Since then it has just been a bad pattern for me.  Eat whatever I want - get depressed - try to lose weight - lose some - give up because it is too hard.  The control that I thought I had on eating whatever I wanted had turned around and now the food was (is) controlling ME.

2) I’ve had it pretty easy in a lot of ways in my life.  I give up when things get too hard.  I’ve never really had to study hard in school to get good grades or work hard to get a job or really struggle for much.  When times have come when things are a little difficult, I just back off and do something else.  This has been a major problem in my weight loss struggle.  I get about 3 months in and then it gets too hard - too monotonous and I don’t want to be bothered.

My goals right now are to get over the 3 month hump (I will NOT give up at the 12 week mark. I still have a ways to go but I have to prepare myself now because I know me!) and also to take control back from my body.  I want to be in charge.  My body is not going to tell me that I can’t lose weight!  Because - like I said - I HATE when people tell me what to do!

Have a good night!

Katie

I weighed in this morning and I’ve lost 4 pounds.  I’m happy but strangely not as happy as I’ve been in the past about it.  Again, I think my skeptical nature is keeping me from jumping up and down because in the back of my mind I am thinking of all the times I started off like a shot and then fizzled. . .

I didn’t exercise much this week and I did have a couple of parties that I went to so I should be pretty happy with 4 lbs.  It’s a good start.  I’m going to try exercising a bit this week and see if I can start making a habit of it.  I read another blogger’s post on why she wants to lose weight and it inspired me to make one too so that I can look at it every time I feel like this losing weight thing is too much work.

1) I want to be healthy.  I am going to be 37 this year and when I think about turning 40 and still being overweight, it scares me.  My mother and my grandmother both died of cancer at age 40.  I’m not being fatalistic but on my 41st birthday I will give a big sigh of relief :)  Other than cancer, diabetes also worries me.  My husband is a diabetic and I am borderline right now. Any more weight gain and I’ll be one for sure.

2)  I want to have more energy to run around with my kids. I have been feeling really sluggish in the afternoon when they come home from school and just wanting to veg when they want me to play outside with them.  I don’t want them to remember me as the Mom who was always too tired to play.

3) I want to sit down in chairs and not feel uncomfortable. Just in the last couple of months my weight has jumped up and sitting in the movie theater, airplane seats, and even a chair I have at my kitchen table feels a little tight.  This is something I am pretty embarrassed about - when I look at the size of those chairs I can’t believe that my backside is that big!  I’ve been secretly living in fear of not fitting into a seat somewhere or just being really uncomfortable.

3) I want to wear all of the cute, stylish clothes I used to wear.  Plus sized clothing just doesn’t do it for me!  I remember back in college when I weighed 100 lbs less than I do now.  My friends always told me I had a great sense of style and would ask me where I got all my cute stuff.  It’s been about 15 years since anyone’s told me I have a cute or stylish outfit on.

4) I am a singer/actor and up until about 2 years ago was doing it professionally in theater productions and cabaret shows.  I have had to pull back because my husband went back to school and our family is going through a very busy time but one of the reasons why I haven’t pushed to get back into it more is that I am self conscious with my weight.  I did the show Showboat a few years ago and while we were getting fitted for our costumes the designer told me he would have to give me a certain, unattractive style because that was what all of the “big girls” wore in the show. Talk about a self confidence buster!

5) I love the beach - I grew up near the beach and used to go every day of the summer. I still like to go but my enjoyment has been severely limited because I look terrible in a bathing suit - I even look bad in the beach cover up I want to be able to walk on the beach and not feel self consious.

6)  I want my husband to continue to find me attractive.  I’m glad that he has never commented about my weight gain but I wonder what he really thinks. When I meet his friends, colleagues and students (he is a teacher), I don’t want them to be thinking about how he has a fat wife.

7) One of my son’s 5  year old friends told my son that I was “chubby”.  At 5, kids are pretty honest.   He says what others might not but I know that that is how people see me.  I know it is all about how I feel but I would be lying if I said that it didn’t matter to me.

I don’t want to be a slave to anything.  I feel like I let food control my life - when I have  craving, I feel like I NEED to eat that thing right away. I don’t want my mind to be a slave to my body.  I know I can have control over what I eat.

There are definitely more reasons but I think that is enough to write for now.  Hopefully writing them down will imprint them in my brain.  I need all of the motivation I can get.

Hope everyone’s day goes well!  Thanks for all of the support!
Katie