It's the little things...

I'm down to 279! Happy dance! Tiny victory. That is all.  Stay dry out there!

$hit just got real...

Well friends, this week has not gone so well regarding my new eating and exercise habits. As of today my weight is back up two pounds and my hips and sacroiliac area (you know, the bones/joints that look like a butterfly behind your butt) are in a great deal of pain. That's a big bummer. So how do I figure out the problem here and turn these setbacks into something I can use?

First, I did slack off late in the week with my exercise. This, of course, contributed to my lack of progress on the scale.  I'm thinking this literal pain-in-the-butt is coming from my shoes or my posture. I am going to have my walking/jogging posture and gait analyzed and likely will buy a new pair of shoes. We're going on a mini-vacation at the end of the coming week, though, so this will have to wait until payday when we get back.  {Contrary to popular belief, working for one of the top universities in the country does not have me swimming around in my money like Scrooge McDuck. :) }  So my budget will allow this after our trip  -Updates on this to come. Y'all don't let me forget!  I will, however, be back on the road starting tomorrow and every other day as long as Hurricane Sandy doesn't come in and ruin everyone's fun here in central Virginia. I'll just take it a little easier for a bit.

Casualties of (fat)War

Next, I was lucky enough to have some social outings this week with wonderful friends.  These, of course, generally revolve around two things (other than gossip):  food, and frothy beverages.  I really wasn't nearly as bad as I would normally have been, but I did enjoy myself.  We see how that turned out.

So I spent this wild Friday night  before blogging cleaning out our pantry.  I did let Jason, my husband and best supporter ever, keep his snacks within reason.  I was shocked at all of the absolute crap I have in this house to eat!  Not doing this on day one of my epiphany was a mistake.   Look at all of it!! Ugh. I just threw up in my mouth a little. I'm shooting myself in the foot! How can I be good with all of this here?
Answer:  I can't.  So it's out.  I'll always remember our love affair with fondness, Tony The Tiger.  I'm going to do better. -And I will get where I need to be.  I just needed another "a-ha" moment.  It's on now...

One more week down...

Well here we are again, y'all. It's Sunday. -Another week down that included a few bumps but as of this morning I am at 279.5! My fingers don't feel quite as sausage-like as I type today! :) Honestly, I haven't noticed any differences physically. I'm sure I'll have to get that number lower for that.

I'm very excited that I continue to make progress because, honestly, I thought after one week I would have screwed myself up somehow. That's not to say that I still haven't made some not-so-great choices or enjoyed a treat! I have.  I had a few beers with friends Friday night, but also chose to eat a light dinner to help myself out.  That's the balance I'm trying to create every day so that I don't make myself miserable along with everyone around me.  I'm not saying that I'm ok if I drink beer every day as long as I eat a plain grilled chicken breast.  I know better than that!

Walk buddy  - Leroy Jenkins

I also know that I need to begin to push myself now with the exercise part of this. I've been doing well but I'm going to have to start moving even more.  My dog seems to understand this since he's been brining me his leash and harness and giving me the stare-down every time I come in the house!

Making it through a home football Saturday was a little easier this week since we had an early game and I had to work.  Less temptation!!


I've noticed this week...

...that I'm not nearly as moody as I had been since the start of my
    little project

...that I'm not as stressed if I don't weigh myself every morning

...taking the candy jars off my desk at work brings me less visitors :( but it was really one of the best decisions I've made

...Justin Timberlake finally realized that I've moved on with my life without him so he hit rock-bottom and married that poor girl.


Goals for the coming week...

Move more!
Lots more water!
Cook more meals at home!
Check out other walking/jogging apps for my phone. My LoLo app isn't really cutting it for me anymore. Any suggestions?

Just Monday...

Leroy Jenkins

Long day.  Had a nice walk after work with my husband and Leroy Jenkins.  The good news of the day is that my weight was the same today - was thinking that my little bit of naughtiness on Saturday would catch up to me this morning.  Whew! OH - also - Blue the Fish (candy jar replacement) survived the weekend! Victory!

One last thing -- someone I know started blogging again but she hasn't posted since last week. Where are ya girl??

At least I tried...Also, A New Picture of Perfect...

Well...I can't say that I was 100% percent good this weekend but I should at least get a participation ribbon! The tailgate food was not a problem until the homemade German chocolate cupcakes showed up. I resisted after taking a big sniff. Whew!  My friend also gave me the best birthday present every by NOT bringing me a cake as she had previously planned.  I appreciate that more than you know Angie! I did have a few drinks which are definitely not diet-approved and I did have a Coke. (I had to drown my sorrows after our football loss. :( ) -A great dinner tonight with my hubs and MIL! Little victory there - don't put the dressing on your salad! Just dip it. I didn't even use 1/2 of the container and I was more than satisfied. I normally just dump the whole thing on there and dig right in.  Funny, huh.

I weighed in today and somehow I'm down another 1/2 pound! This was very encouraging considering I'm just getting started. I also got more encouragement this week from a friend who has been working very hard for about 2 years and has seen some wonderful results! I definitely would love to hear any tips you have! A lot of my football buddies came up Saturday and many are actually reading my ramblings (women and men!) and they were so supportive. They also, like a few other male AND female friends, wanted to make sure that my boobs weren't going to go away if I lose weight.  {I do have to say I hope for the same thing - for a larger person I do have a pretty nice rack if I do say so myself. And they have names. Yes, I know, shake your head at me go ahead.}  So to the members of Regina and Latoya's fan club: Fear not- hopefully they'll stick around if all this works out well. TMI, I know.

Size 10

I wanted to talk about something that folks brought up in conversation over the weekend.  A few friends immediately asked something like this after reading my first blog, "So what size do you want to be? I'm with you because I'm so fat I want to get down to a size 2, 4, 6"  Mind you most of these people, I would say, fall in the size range of 6-10. Really? Your'e fat? Check out the model in black - she's a 10. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that body. She's bangin'!  Just think about that ladies - your size 10 body is skinnier than I'll likely ever be! And it's perfect!

Size 16

This is Chloe who's a a size 16.  This is my perfect.  -Just to let you all see that when you say you want to drop a few sizes too, we're likely not headed down the same road.  This is a beautiful body to me - and if I get to a 16, I will have still lost the equivalent of 1 Olsen twin.  Oh - and don't worry- when I make it there, I will not put on a bikini (at least not in public y'all). I'm not trying to scare everyone!

So here's to a good week. I just packed my lunch and planned out our dinners for the week. This should help with calories AND money! I also have a lunch buddy who's going to walk with me!  I'm also back to the drawing board on the bike - it is backordered for 6 weeks so I'm searching for another good one I can afford. Have a good one...

This day in history...

I arrived y'all! It's my 14th 21st birthday. -Good food day though I did let loose a little with dinner but still ok overall.  Good news - down 2 pounds.

Bad news - all of the healthier foods and greens I've had this week have caught up with my digestive system. I'll leave it at that.

I probably won't post again until Sunday night. So wish me luck this weekend - home football game and tailgating with some of my favorite people and a birthday dinner. Whew! Somebody smack me if I pick up the ham biscuits! :)  Until Sunday - yay me and Go 'hoos!

There's An App For That...

Well even with my nonfat mocha this morning (I might this a daily thing!) my head has hurt just enough to bug the tar out of me today! Odd, huh.  I have the bit of caffeine in the coffee so that means, to me, that my body just wants that Coke! Ridiculous. I also noticed it hurt a little more after my Nats lost today. :(

Anyway - not much different today. I'm just still trying to figure this thing out.  For now you all will likely see a lot of "this is what I ate today" and "I choose this when I would normally have this".  I ate well today and didn't really make any bad decisions, but was still hungry a lot. I'll just deal! I think that might have to be my little mantra for a while. I'll Just DEAL!

Victory of the day:  Resisted the candy isle at CVS. Bam!

Oh, also, if you're not getting the Cleo salad (I got mine with turkey) when you go to Bodo's in Cville you're crazy. I had it for dinner tonight - very light and filling! -And the dressing is not heavy either!


To finish up - the App.  My best good friend showed my My Fitness Pal and it's very cool! She's using it to track what she's eating. I played around with it and really like it. I'm going to use it to track what I eat to see if I'm REALLY being as good as I think I am. You can track your physical activity too.

I mentioned the other day that I had a walking/running app.  I want to give you a little more detail about it. It's LoLo Treadmill.  LoLo is my girl!!! She even talks to me a little. What's great about LoLo is the integration between the music on my phone and the workout.  You can create a playlist that LoLo loads in to the app and it then calculates the bpm of each song and pairs the songs to play when you're walking, running, etc.  So fun!


Speaking of walking/running and such-  I haven't done much this week. I'm on it.

I didn't injure anyone today...

Well, Day 2 (really day 1 of new eating) is in the books.  No injuries to report. It's going to take a while for me to figure out how to keep myself satisfied throughout the day without literally stuffing myself full, but it wasn't too bad. I had a small skinny mocha (no whipped cream) on the way to work and a banana and granola bar for snacks.  Scary part of the day - I went out for lunch with the ladies to this place that has the best damn pizza! (Back off, I didn't order pizza) I had water and a nice sized salad with chicken, greens, pear, gorgonzola, tomatoes and a light dressing. Very good - and very filling! No big deal right?  Well all my girlfriends had pizza and it smelled so good - I really did catch myself drooling. So that combined with me thinking of my normal habits made it a little tough.

Let me fill you in on what I might normally have by the end of lunch on a random weekday:

• Multiple Cokes/Dr Peppers
• Some water
• The biggest Mocha I can find (no skim, and whipped cream yo)
• Sometimes breakfast - fast food biscuit and or hash browns
• Any number of treats from my two (yes two) candy jars on my desk. 
• Then lunch - whole 10-12 in. 'personal' pizza, fast food big ass value meal, giant sub sandwich with lots of cheese, mayo etc. Dessert is always in order of course!! 

See? All that we we've barely hit 1pm.  Pair that with afternoon snacking and delivery pizza, wings, steak subs, chips/dip, ice cream, snacky cakes and cheesey poofs at night and I don't even know how I could move around!

I'll add something, though, about lunch).  Eating with a crew who is fun and keeps the conversation going (which we had NO problem doing) makes it easier so you're not totally focused on the food, but on the company.

Lastly, a way to get rid of my candy jars on my desk fell in to my lap today. Meet Blue (You're my boy!!).  Someone at work pawned off a betta fish on me. It was a lab fish in one of our student athlete's classes and he was about to get a 1 way ticket to fish heaven because they were done doing whatever it is they do to lab fish.  Anyway, now he's mine and I put him in the spot were my candy usually is. Baby steps. Let's hope he hangs around for a while....and also that he doesn't turn in to some sort of mutant lab creature.

So many things to consider...

Ok, so I said in my first post that I would try to keep it short....not so much yet.  I'll learn the art of brevity, I promise.  -Just not today.  I want to talk about my plan, but first I wanted to talk about my weight again.  The actual number.  Many of the messages I got when I posted my first entry included phrases like "You're so brave! I can't believe you put your picture and weight out there!" or "I could never tell people how much I weigh!"  And until now I'd say the same thing to myself. In school or even when I was trying Weight Watchers way back, I panicked if anyone else got close to me that might see that dreadful number.  But here's the thing - I have to not be scared of the number itself anymore.  So, I tore the band-aid off.  What's really scary to me (other than my current weight) is the fact that the number has been higher than it is now; and how high it could go if I don't do something about it now.  So if you think I'm brave, that's cool.  And maybe somebody else can be brave too if I can stick with this and show y'all something. On to my plans!

Holy cow!  There are so many things to consider with this lifestyle change I'm determined to make.  Do I focus on diet not exercise? Vice versa? Which 'diet' do I choose? There's the Caveman Diet, Atkins, Raw Food, Gluten Free, Ketogenic Diet...meat meat meat....no meat! no meat!...potatoes, no potatoes!...vegetarian...vegan...Weight Watchers...monthly fee...weekly fee...on and on...Good Lord, no wonder people give up before they even start!

Here's what I've decided so far:  To start, I'm focusing on exercise and simply making better food choices in general instead of starting two hard-core new things at once. I don't think I could deal that way.

Exercise
Burning some calories is going to be my main focus at the beginning.  I am not mobile at all! I always have good intentions and I start to walk for a few days and then I find excuses not to do it. I actually worked my way through our local 4-miler training program a few years back, was able to get up to 4-miles (slowly jogging and a little walking if I remember correctly), AND completed the 'dress rehearsal' run prior to the actual 4 Miler race. Guess what - never did the race, and I haven't run since then. Who does that???? -Me, I guess.  What a waste.

Lake Monticello - my 11 mile goal

I have to get moving, find some energy and get some good habits going.  I'm finally getting a bike to ride around our neighborhood.  I downloaded a neat fitness app for my phone that will guide me through a walking and jogging (when I'm ready) work out using my own music. This way Dave Matthews and Joss Stone can run with me and I'll feel like I have company.  I'm also hoping to get the other half of Team Cavanaugh out on the road with me.  :0)  I am going to take small (no sweat) walks at work at lunch time, etc.  My goal is to work my way up to comfortably jogging/running again. This may take some patience because my knees and hips are jacked up from hauling the rest of me around.  I also want to, eventually, bike and walk/run around the lake where we live which is almost 11 miles.  As long as I feel like I'm actually working and not cheating, I'm not going to put a date deadline on these things.  So the walking starts tomorrow...and the pedaling starts when the bicycle gets here.  What am I going to name my bike?

Food
I'm not ready to commit to a paid diet service nor do I want to dive head first into a strict new diet program while trying to do new exercise things.  I know that about myself.  Immediately doing a 180 degree turn will only set me up to get mad and quit when I feel completely deprived. I refuse to fail for the 100th time.  I want this on my shoulders - with no 'program' to try and blame if I screw up.

I know it's not the same so don't think I do - but I feel like someone who has made the decision ween him/herself off of pain medicine or something like that.  If I slowly back away while making better choices and holding myself accountable, I can more easily transition to a complete diet makeover over time.

My work lunches definitely need a makeover! I will eat out a little less and pack my lunch more. I have to have some sort of vegetable with every meal.  No exceptions. I need more water.  I need more protein and less bread. I need less sugar and JUNK FOOD (My diet, as much as I try to justify what I eat, is 85% junk food.)  I need more natural fruits.  To start, I just need to freakin' pay attention to what's going in my pie hole! I am making one 'drastic' change right now:  No more soda. I did do this before and I swore I was going to die and back to the Coke I went! Soda is gone! Now! Advil may have to be my best friend for the next few days.


So it's a start! Here we go...

Fallout of the diet decision

Well - I knew I'd make waves for finally trying to get healthy. I figured it would snow today and the closest McDonald's would observe a day of mourning.
It was worse:  In reaction to my announcement, our new Virginia Football practice facility burst in to flames this afternoon. Clearly, the tailgate food gods are not happy about this. :(

Jokes, aside. What a sad day at work! Thankfully no one was injured that we know of and the local fire folks are still working to get it completely out.  May take a bit.  Wahoowa.

Day 1

Goals for today: make my plan for this whole shebang tonight after work, order a bike (finally, and thanks to my friend G's inspiration), order my first mocha with skim milk.  Sounds good to me.   Thanks for all of the nice comments, texts, and private messages yesterday. Glad I'm not alone out here in super value meal land.    Baby steps, y'all.

Cankles (Or The Girl Who Grew Tired of Being a Lump)

Welcome to my very first blog post!  I don't know that any of you will be interested in this, but at least I am. :0) I'll apologize now, because this first post may be a little long. I'll keep them shorter in the future.

In a few days I'll celebrate my 35th birthday.  I've been thinking over the past few weeks about what I want for my birthday and maybe what I want to accomplish in my 35th year.  I decided on something that shocked even myself a little bit.  For my birthday, I want to save my life.  I'm too fat for my own good and if I don't finally do something about it I'll die.

How did I arrive at this decision (about 15 years too late, I might add)?  Well, looking at my photo, one might think I'd say "Daaaamn girl! You need to do something about your ass!"just by seeing my size.  Nope.  Or maybe the past three trips to the doctor (throughout the past year) where I saw my weight and blood pressure in black-and-white and should have had a light bulb moment? Nope. Man troubles? Hell no - my husband rocks and honestly loves me in any shape or size.  What put me over the edge? One word:  CANKLES.

I've never been a small person but have generally been okay with being pleasantly plump through the years.  But a few days ago I was in the shower shaving my legs and there they were - looking right up at me laughing "Bwaaahahahaha, we finally got you, you ice cream-eatin' hussy!"  I realized that I now have cankles. -Mother-@#$*!&^ cankles!  I will not have my legs turned in to stumps! It's on.

It's so funny that my cankle realization is what finally made my brain click.  I don't want to be a lump anymore.  I work with athletes and fit people every day and I am looking like a chump!  I am going to do something about this - for real.  I want to be able to run, because I actually like it.  I want to be able to shop in more than one store in my hometown.  I want to be able to ride a roller coaster or play soccer again, or go out dancing with the girls and not have to worry about my boobs or my butt knocking someone's drink over. In thinking about how to do this, two things are clear:   I am addicted to food;  and this will not work if I'm not accountable to someone/something other than myself.  So - I'm going to blog it. That way, if I'm screwing up, friends and strangers alike can put me in my place and I invite you to do just that.  I plan to post at least once a week, but hopefully more, about my goals, progress, and anything else I might find funny, crazy, or interesting along the way.

First goal: honesty. So tonight, as I sit on the couch with the dog having my last date night with my boys Ben and Jerry, I will be (cringe) honest and tell/show something that I hate to look at.  Here's the most recent picture I have of myself at my current weight:  287 pounds.  Good God did I just type that out loud? I hope Ben and Jerry will be able to live without me. I'm going to do this. Giddy up...