My 100th Post to end the year!!

Happy New Year's Eve. How fun that my very last post of 2009 is the 100th post. TV shows go all out for the 100th episode...how can I go all out here? Hmmm...

I am now in possession of 2 LIVE lobsters that I will murder later tonight. How's that for exciting?

I weighed today before spin class (even though I said I wasn't going to until New Years) and it was 263.8. This means by some miracle I did not gain any weight during the chow fest that was the last month! Miracle!

I have a fat lip. While choosing the lobsters to murder, my daughter got so excited she jumped up and down, succesfully hitting her head into my chin which caused my teeth to go through my lip. Blood happened and I ended up walking around the grocery store with a bag of ice on my lips. Thankfully it didn't bleed too much! The swelling went down, but what a mishap!!

So there is my 100th post - Murder, Miracles and Mishaps! That's pretty darn exciting!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy beginning to 20-10!

New Years Resolutions

I always make 'em and I always break 'em. Maybe my 1st resolution should be to KEEP my resolutions!

Okay, here are some, in no particular order:

Read 20 pages of an actual, honest to goodness, hardback/paperback book every day.

Stay within our newly established budget.

Workout 5 days per week with 3 weeks of vacation. (Hey, why not treat it like a job!)

Eat less fruit. (okay - really it's eat less bananas).

To be in "one"derland on 1/1/11. (appropriate - don't you think?)


All are doable. All require strong resolve. I'm optimistic...or will be until next holiday season rolls around. Maybe that needs to be a resolution too...learn to deal with holiday stress and depression better....

I have 31 followers now! This is truly amazing to me. Thank you for reading and commenting and helping to keep me motivated! Happy New Year. I'm looking forward to reading others resolutions for 2010!

The Fitness Craze(iness)

So it seems that everyone in our town has decided to shed some holiday pounds. The fitness center has been packed the last few days. I know part of it is due to school vacation and people being home, but seriously it has been nuts. 9:15 spin class yesterday they had to kick someone out because they hadn't signed up for a ticket. There are only so many bikes. The lucky person who had a ticket that had to bring it to the instructors attention - ME! I felt kind of bad but kind of good too. I'm a rule follower, so if you don't follow the rules/laws, you should be disqualified.

Today there were at least 28 people in Body Pump (including 5 guys!) I've never seen that. Feeling good today, tired after work out...having the munchies, but not giving in. Going to cut up an apple with peanut butter in a few minutes. Second good day in a row. Yay me.

A Christmas Picture

I normally hate pictures of myself. But I love this one.

On a funny note, the woman who cleans the locker room at the fitness center saw me today and said "I haven't seen you in two weeks!" Funny how people notice us. She's dead on...but I have shoveled my driveway 4-5 times in those two weeks, so there was some exercise!

So Long Holidays!!

Whew! It's over! 90% of the Christmas stuff is packed away and I can start reliving life. There are no more cookies around, no more chocolate..

Seriously, I feel 900 million times better than I have since Thanksgiving. I went to the fitness center for the 9:15 Power Cycle class. I HATE this class. Well, I HATE that I'm huffing and puffing after about 10 minutes. The instructor is really nice. I left the class after 40 minutes (which is the class I usually take) and the instructor actually got off her bike to come down and tell me I did really well in the class. It was nice. Now she doesn't know that I've been working out since August and so it came off as a little condescending, but if it HAD been my first time and I'd only made it through part of the class it would have been very encouraging.

I have a brand new gym bag that I love from my hubby. It's just the right size to fit in the small lockers at the fitness center. It comes with a bag you can hang in the shower stall for your toiletries. It has lots of pockets. It is awesome.

I also received a tennis racket and some free weights (8 lb) for Christmas so I have quite a few gifts to help remotivate me!

My eating today is on target. It's a little bit hard after eating anything I wanted for the last month to think about it. One day at a time, one step at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time...

Happy New Year!

Is it January Yet?

I'm ready to be done with this year...this holiday season. My spirit is tired. We have not had a wonderful christmas day. Or I should say *I* have not had a wonderful day. Maybe my expectations are just too high. Maybe I just need to accept that no matter how much thought I put into things I can't make other people thoughtful. I just need to stop thinking.

The No Weigh Challenge!!

I am challenging myself NOT to step on the scale until January 1st. I figure that is just going to do more damage then good to my psyche during the holidays. Anyone want to join me?

I went to Body Pump yesterday morning and I am SORE in my chest and arms. SORE!

My psychological thoughts these days..."when did I become so ungenerous?". Ok...truth be told, I am still very generous with my time and always help a friend out when they need it..but I used to LOVE getting gifts for people. If I knew you, you probably got a little trinket of something for Christmas because I like to think about people and what would make them happy. Somewhere along the line I became cynical about it though figuring noone cared one way or the other about getting a gift. Now I abhor buying for people that are not closely connected to our family, including nieces and nephews. That must sound heartless, but really it's not. Here are the annual conversations that happen in our family:

Me to sis-in-law: What could the kids use/like for Christmas?
Sis-in-law: Oh, just get them gift cards from Walmart.

I wouldn't mind gift cards so much if we saw our nieces and nephews more than once a year. And I don't want to be known as that aunt that send $20 every birthday and christmas.

and then there is this:

Me to brother: What should I get the kids for Christmas?
Brother: Whatever, just don't spend a lot because it's going to be light Christmas this year.

Again, not a bad thing, except I've heard this every year from my brother since I was about 15 years old, and there hasn't been a "light" Christmas for people he WANTED to buy for. It's kind of a "don't spend a lot on us, so we don't have to spend a lot on you" attitude.

So Christmas really has become in a lot of ways the season of meaningless gifts. That's why we have instituted a tradition between hubby and I for gift giving. We can tell each other what we would like, but one gift under the tree has to be something we haven't asked for. Something that requires a bit of thought.

Yesterday, the other mom in my girl's swim class brought the swim instructor a gift. AND she brought S & C some candy treats. I never even thought of bringing a gift to the teacher or to the little friend. So it got me thinking. I can't pinpoint the exact point when I stopped caring about getting gifts for so many people. I even attack Christmas cards this way. Do we *have* to send that person a card. Maybe relationships just became so superficial and meaningless that I became indifferent to it. Who knows? It takes some joy out of Christmas for sure.

I'm rambling...it's just what's going through my head....

Yesterday...All my troubles seemed so...

NOT far away.

Yesterday's post was a tongue in cheek for anyone concerned I was throwing in the towel and saying "screw it" to a healthy life style. It was my humorous attempt at confession instead of beating myself up mentally for being such a failure (trust me...I've done this too in the past 24 hours).

I'm set off these days by the littlest things. Sometimes by reading blogs. and yesterday was a day that I got set off by reading very happy blogs. One friend is writing blogs about traditions of Christmas. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking for me. I love to read about other families traditions, but then it hurts because we had NONE growing up, and hubby is not a Christmas fanatic so while he doesn't mind traditions, he's not one to forge them. Some people have traditions for presents, and cards, and ornaments, and even Christmas wrapping! We had zilch traditions except we got presents under the tree and went to nana's to give her gifts and have dinner. That would qualify as a tradition for most, but we went to Nana's EVERY day because she watched us while dad was at work.

Then I read a blog from a dear friend who is in the adoption process. She has a lot of raw emotion over the process that I know very well. Some of the "Why can so many people who don't even want babies get pregnant and abort them and I can't" emotion. I feel that. I have felt it every time someone I know of gets pregnant. It's hurtful and hard when the most natural thing in the world doesn't happen naturally.

So yesterday, my troubles were close to my heart. I had good long cry out last night. I feel a little better. I'm going for a massage today, that should help too... *sigh*

I'm not telling...

Shh....I'm not telling

How much of the cake I made I actually ate...
That I ate the leftover frosting in the can with a spoon...
How many gumdrops I've eaten in the last week.
That I just made chocolate covered pretzels and licked the spoon of melted chocolate and butter....
That I'm using TOM as an excuse not to workout.

What are YOU not telling?

I believe that the more secrets we have the harder our life is... It's almost January...THANK GOD!

Boot Camp - 5AM

I got up at 4:30AM this morning to try a Boot Camp class at the fitness center, run by the personal trainer who lost 200 lbs. It is M W F. I can do a 5-6AM or 5-6PM class. The downside, besides the time, is it's an additional $100 a month. But it's still MUCH cheaper than working with the personal trainer 1 on 1. There were about 4 other people this morning.

On Fridays the Boot Camp is in the pool. We did swimming, water walking, balancing, used the bands for bicep curls, did wall push ups, dips, crunches, squats. I think my muscles are going to be tired later. I was much slower than others which made me a little sad, but they all aren't lugging around as much weight either. I didn't want to participate in the obstacle course that used the water slide. (I don't much like them to begin with, but I was forever terrified of how I looked when Eddie Murphy did that horrible movie being a FAT person and the trailer had the joke of him/her going down a waterslide in all her fat glory) I liked going early, but not sure if it is sustainable. I think I'll try another class next week to see what the non pool class is like.

I do know that when I exercise early it sets up my mind to eat better. Kind of like I'm not going to ruin what I've started on doing. Whatever works, right?

My weigh in today was 266.9 which means I've regained 4-5 lbs. I'd say at least 2 or so is water retention because I'm expecting TOM and I ate a half of canister of Pringles yesterday. But the other 2, I could legitimately say those are real. We shall see. So I'm resetting my goals. I'm going to do 1 lb a week for December (with all the food we are around during the holidays I think this is safer. If I do more - GREAT!) and then go back up to 2 lbs a week in January

Braving the Elements

I went out in 0 degree weather to work out. Today was personal trainer day of the program I am *kind of* doing. I've skipped a bunch of days, mostly the education part. I actually have too much knowledge on weight loss for my own good. That's also the weigh in day and since I haven't had a good thing to report for 2 weeks I figure I didn't need to write it down on paper!

So, NOT working out for 2 weeks straight makes working out HARD. I was breathing and sweating a lot!

But I did it! I did it! I did it! And that is enough to celebrate for today...

Here's something that might make you laugh. My daughter says to me at lunchtime: "I do not "accept" crusts on my sandwich because my tummy does not "allow" hard bread. LOL. She makes me smile..

Where to go from here...

I've been trying to figure out the plan...how to flip that switch. I'm hoping the snow will end so I can go to the gym later. I'm deleting all my achieved and starting over. Since it's been a rocky month I need a "fresh start" and not a reminder of my failure to keep going. Sometimes I think I cling to the "I lost 25 lbs! That's great so if I don't lose more for a while that's okay!" So now I need to begin the next phase. It's great what I've done, but I have to do more. I know that.

Back to my Pithy Posting,,,

Thank you Leslie for a new vocabulary word! I really had to look it up because when I read about you wanting more of my "pithy" posts, I was insulted thinking it meant meaningless when in fact in means the opposite! It's a word like precocious. It sounds terrible, but really means a good thing!

I have nothing positive to report. I will not go into the gluttony that the last few weeks have been. A while back I talked about there being an on/off switch in my brain regarding healthy eating. And it's definitely been in the OFF position now. I've been processing a lot in my head about this problem and I think I might have an idea of one thing that might be causing it. Bear with me:

When you grow up without a mother and a father who doesn't really spend that much time or attention on you, not giving praise OR condemnation you seek out affirmation. I do. I want people to approve of me, like me, and god forbid, LOVE me. I just want to feel like I matter on this earth, that I've contributed something that people will always hold fond memories of me. So when I went back to New England for Thanksgiving and only one person (and a person I generally can NOT stand ) noticed my weight loss efforts it really depressed me. A "What's the point" type of depression. (and adding this on to the other depression I was experiencing from family stuff just made it bad). I guess what it comes down to is I have a lot of reasons to lose weight but most of them are about other people - for my husband, for my kids, so people will give me more respect, think I'm attractive, etc. and when those other people don't notice, it is hard on my psyche. Again today my husband reminded me that I have him and our girls and that should be enough for me. He's very right, but I don't know how to change my mindset.

So that's where I am. There's always hope...I always have it, sometimes it just takes a lot to get through to it!

Delayed Depression

It hit hard. I'm working through it. Holidays are tough because they drudge up a TON of emotions that I'm not good at dealing with. My K tells me I need to focus on the family of 4 we are and not get worked up about the rest of it. It's just hard when there is noone in either of families that are terribly interested in our lives or that of our kids. We get the obligatory christmas card/presents but then we don't hear from anyone until a birthday. One of the reasons I wanted to move from New England was that it was too hard to live so close to my family and have them be so uninterested. It helped to move so far away, but it still is sad.

Only one person noticed I had lost weight when I was on vacation, and it was a person who sees me an hour twice a year. Someone who hadn't even known I was working out. I weigh 40 lbs less than the last time I was there and noone I'm related to even noticed.

I'm coming out the other side now. I made my bed and took a shower. I'm feeling less burdened. I probably won't hit the gym today but soon.

So, if you are a praying person, I could use a few just to get out of this funk.