Wow What A Journey!!

I am kinda stinking at this blogging thing, and the last time I posted it wasn't a very happy post. So here I am... I have been "getting healthy" for three weeks. I just did my weigh in for week 3 and I am much happier this week than last week.

So, about last week. It was the "dreaded week two" and I can tell you that it was BAD!!! Like cry to my boyfriend while taking him to work and then calling my mom and crying to her bad. I followed ALL of the rules, did everything I was suppose to do, and worked my tush off. However, I gained weight... like three pounds gained. I couldn't figure out what I did wrong. I when back through my food journal and looked at all of my workouts and EVERYTHING was there. I did measure myself though and I had lost like 3 inches!!! Needless to say that made me feel a little better.

Anyways, I was saying that this week was better. I weighed this morning and I had lost those "extra" 3 three pounds AND another pound and a half! Apparently last week was just a weird adjustment period week, but everything balanced out and I am back on track.

I just want to remind everyone (myself really) that this is a process. There are going to be weird adjustment periods and "bad" weeks. You just need remember that this is a lifestyle and it is totally worth it in the long run. DO NOT GIVE UP, KEEP PUSHING YOURSELF, IT WILL GET BETTER!

Well... Here you go...

So I have really been putting in the work this week. I am DETERMINED to continue this journey. It is about me, its about MY life, its about MY health. I am going to post some before pictures. Looking at these pictures makes me ashamed and a bit depressed. I cannot go on like this!

RESTARTING

I restarted this week! I am actually pretty happy about this...

I created my own Food Log so that I can keep track of what I put into my mouth. I have a hard time deciding what "plan" I want to follow. I know that counting calories always works and is the base of every single one of those "plans". I also have watched people have a lot of success with Weight Watchers. I created my food log to give me space to keep track of the Weight Watchers Points Plus and also added columns for calorie counting. I am pretty proud of this little gem!

I also created a body measurements chart. I looked all over for a free one to just download and print but couldn't find one just right.... See, my body doesn't grow/shrink proportionally. One arm is bigger than the other and there is always a difference in my thighs! I also probably measure different than other people. My BIG problem area is my belly. So I measure my chest, waist (upper part), belly, hips, arms, and thighs. Now I don't know if everyone just counts their belly as their waist or if they do it as their hips, but I wanted the different measurement because it is the place that I want/need to lose the most!

Ok, so I am done for the day! I am going to post more in the future -- I promise!

Slacker...

Well, I kinda forgot about this blog... and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I have NOT been trying to lose weight. I know I should have... the problem hasn't gone away... but I just stopped caring. I had some problems with my tummy over the last year, and they still don't know what is wrong with me. I know that my weight doesn't help. I am morbidly obese. I need to lose weight. Now something I don't understand is that my doctors are willing to do test over test and all of them come back normal but they pussyfoot around my weight... We both know that it has a lot do with the problem, but for some reason they won't say it. They don't offer advise or suggest I meet with their nutritionist, but you can't meet with the nutritionist without a referral... so explain that! I guess this post is more of a rant about nothing. I am working out a plan in my head. I have to get this situation out of control. The boy and I both know that we need to make significant changes to our eating habits and we need to start being more active. I guess that is the problem, we know what we need to do its just that neither of us want to actually get up and do it.

So, I am going to make more an effort to post on here more often and focus on DOING!

BANG!

I have been researching... well really just reading, a lot about DDP Yoga. My boyfriend is a REALLY big fan of WWE and DDP is a former wrestler, so he found a video of it and showed it to me. We started with just making a salad that DDP had a video for, and we loved it! So I started looking at other stuff... one of the major things you see when looking up DDPYoga is the video of Arthur which is very inspirational! 

There are so many other videos... and I started to get really interested. I looked up the website (http://www.ddpyoga.com/site/index.php/en/) and found that they have a payment plan option so I ordered... 

I started with going through the Diamond Dozen (13 moves that show up everywhere in the workouts) and today I did the ENERGY.... needless to say it kicked my butt! But something that I love so far is that you get what you put into the workout. Its all about engaging your muscles and using your own body to kick your ass. 

I am definitely going to keep doing this and watching what I am eating... wish me luck! 

I Suck...

Well here I am again....

I started this wonderful blog a long time ago. I started and then I quit and got sucked back into my fat, unhealthy, lazy lifestyle. Then I started again, and once again I got sucked in. Something about starting school and going to work just makes me wanna eat a whole lotta junk food.

I know I am making excuses... but I am back. I weigh more then when i originally started and it sucks!

So I am going to try again... try again... and try again.

I have a lot of friends on my Facebook that have also decided to "get healthy" and start working out. Great for them! Their posts are very inspirational! However, I am not going to do that. I know that I am posting on this blog and anyone could read it... but I don't want to fill up peoples walls with everything I am doing. I know I am going to have some trials with this and I don't really want all of those people to know every single time I fall back down.

So all in all... I HAVE NO FREAKING IDEA WHAT I AM DOING!!!! I guess thats kinda the point though, I have to start from the beginning and work from there.

Refocusing

I am convinced that this is the hardest thing I have ever done. I get a good week and then I slip up and then I spiral down, and then I realize how far I have fallen and I climb back up.

THAT IS THE POINT! I climb back up... I have spent my WHOLE life eating bad and enjoying all that "bad" food. My mind frame and the way I have lived is not going to change over night. I am going to have slip up and off weeks, but now I have the ability to realize that I am messing up and that I need to pull myself back on track.

Don't let bad days slow you down, don't let bad weekends slow you down, and don't let bad weeks slow you down!

I CAN DO THIS!

OK, now I am a Believer

This juice has really started to grow on me. I woke up this morning (one of my days off) and CRAVED my morning juice. No coffee, no sugars, nothing but the juice. So I woke up, Friday is my weigh in day... (scary music plays now) and I have decided to measure myself this go around (even scarier), and weighed/measured myself....

7 pounds this week and 9 stinkin inches!!!!!

Now, when I saw how much weight I lost I thought it was just gonna be the usual water weight I lose at the beginning of a diet. But then the 9 inches came into play.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you lost weight, now what? Well, I am going to keep drinking the juice. Maybe not as religiously as I did this week, but really it tastes pretty darn good! I am also going to eat more then a salad for dinner. I love my salad but I need other foods in my life... :) I am really happy right now. If you ever wanna start a new lifestyle, I definitely recommend juicing. I am going to drink it still because it tastes good and I feel so much better... ok this post is more of a rant about how HAPPY I am but its 9 freakin inches I am allowed to celebrate a little.

Hiding Sugar

I have A LOT of time on my hands at work.. so that just gives me more time to look up dieting stuff. I found an article about Sugar that I found pretty interesting. Sugar is hiding in everything! In the article they listed some of the secret names that food companies use to hide the sugar in their food. 

• Sucrose
• Evaporated Cane Juice
• Agave Nectar
• Fruit Juice Concentrate
• 100% Fruit Juice
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• The -oses (sucrose, glucose, and fructose, but did you know galactose, maltose, dextrose, and lactose)
• Blackstrap Molasses
• Organic Brown Rice Syrup
• And Many more... (Barley malt, golden syrup, diastatic malt, diastase, treacle, panocha, sorghum syrup)

On the last page they tell you this... 

"... the key to monitoring your sugar is determining just how much each serving contains. How? Check the nutrition label for total grams of sugar, and divide that by four (each teaspoon of sugar is equal to 4 grams.) That’s how many teaspoons of sugar are really in your cookie, your ketchup, and your no-sugar-added fruit juice."

I did not know that! I thought it was definitely interesting, and a good way to be able to visualize how much sugar you are eating. 

Day 3 Juicing

Yesterday was hard. I think I hit the juice fast wall I think. Its normal, I guess, I did stop caffeine pretty suddenly and I ate like crap for the last 14 years (I am pretty sure my mom fed me pretty well the first 10 years of my life... its when I started choosing what to eat is when the problems started).  There has to be an adjustment period, my body has to get used to be fed, actually fed instead of the crap I have been shoving into it. 

I am going to work out tonight for the first time since I started juicing. I am actually pretty excited I have been missing it the last couple days. 

I'm not creative today...

I am on day 2 of juicing... WooHoo! 

I want to chew. The salad for dinner last night was Great! We did lots of red and green leaf lettuce, spinach, bell peppers, onion, tomato, some sunflower seeds from sprouts, and Chicken! Talk about tasty... and now I am drinking juice again. 

Ok, the juice isn't that bad. This morning I am having Carrot, Apple, Ginger juice. It is really sweet, but  good. I still don't know how I feel about the ginger. It definitely has its own taste... Here are some pretty pictures of my juice this morning. 

Now the Green Juice is a whole different story. Yesterday all I drank was the green juice. (I woke up late and didn't want to have to mess with making two different types of juice) I also did not cut the yellow part of the lemon off, so that made it super bitter. I also learned that I really don't like celery juice, so I cut that in half. 

Here is my juice from yesterday... 

When I went grocery shopping on Sunday I bought 2 bunches of Kale, and used it on yesterday (monday) so I had to buy more after work. But I found purple kale, regular kale, and italian kale. So naturally I bought some of all of them. I tried the purple kale last night when I was juicing, and we found out that purple kale doesn't give much juice when the regular Kale gave a lot more, so I have both in my juice for today. So needless to say my juice today isn't that green today... and actually looks pretty gross, but I think it tastes better then the bright green one.

Well, I feel great so far! I lost 2 pounds last week just doing a normal watch my calories and exercise plan. I wanted to amp it up a little this week before I go back to school. I am really happy I did, I feel great. Yeah, I wanna chew and eat and not drink anymore juice, but energy and just feeling wise I feel pretty good!

Good luck everyone!

The PLAN

I have been posting that I am working on making my plan. There are two that I have made, one for my compulsive overeating and the other to try out this juicing stuff.

I will start with my overeating. I told ya'll that through my research they suggest keeping a journal and letting your emotions out that way instead of eating. Then there is the good old plan of a food journal, we all know what this is, you write down every single thing you put in your mouth to keep track of calories, points, fat, or whatever else you are counting. (I'm personally counting calories) Now both of these journals seem wonderful, and like a great idea that will really work.

So my plan is that I am going to do both (seems pretty obvious), and then Sundays I am going to compare. This is something I haven't seen a lot of, maybe its an obvious step that everyone just does naturally. I am going to look for really bad days emotionally in one journal and then flip to my food journal and see how I did that day. If I ate like crap I will be able to see that I was emotionally eating or if I ate really great I am going to give myself a little pat on the back.

It seems pretty simple, I have gotten a lot better about writing everything in my food journal this last week so this week I will start my feelings journal and see how it goes. I am "healing" myself and it is going to be a process. For example, if I was writing in my journal yesterday I would see that I was super upset with the way the Broncos played in the stinkin' playoff game and then I would see in my food journal that I ate a bag of popcorn to ease those emotions (I was gonna go for a bag of potato chips that my boyfriend was eating but chose popcorn instead, so I should probably put that in my journal as well)

Now for the juicing experiment. I don't think this will be something that I am going to get crazy about. I might be wrong, but there are a lot of blogs about it so if I really enjoy it I will just post links to the blogs that focus solely on that. Like my first post said, this blog is probably going to be more for me then anyone else. So my plan this week is going to be a temporary thing as of right now for a "Kickoff" and then I will go from there.

This is an example of what I am going to try to do...

Breakfast	Lunch	Snack	Dinner	If you’re hungry
Carrot Apple Ginger Juice 3 Carrots 2 Apples 1” Ginger	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Reboot Green Salad Reboot Dressing. Grilled Chicken	Veggies Nuts Fruit
Carrot Apple Ginger Juice 3 Carrots 2 Apples 1” Ginger	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Reboot Green Salad Reboot Dressing. Grilled Chicken	Veggies Nuts Fruit
Purple Power Juice 6 cups Concord Grapes 1 Golden Delicious Apple 2, 2x2” pieces Ginger ½ cup Blackberries	Reboot Green Salad Reboot Dressing. Grilled Chicken	Sunset Blend Juice 1 lg Sweet Potato 1 med Carrot 1 Red Bell Pepper 2 lg Red Beets 2 Golden Delicious Apples 1 Orange (optional)	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Veggies Nuts Fruit
Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Reboot Green Salad Reboot Dressing. Grilled Chicken	Sunset Blend Juice 1 lg Sweet Potato 1 med Carrot 1 Red Bell Pepper 2 lg Red Beets 2 Golden Delicious Apples 1 Orange (optional)	Arugula Spinach Salad 2 cups Arugula 1 cup Spinach 1/3 Avocado ½ cup thinly sliced Red Onion ½ cup chopped Tomato ½ cup Jicama	Veggies Nuts Fruit
Carrot Apple Ginger Juice 3 Carrots 2 Apples 1” Ginger	Green Juice 6 leaves Kale 2 cups Spinach ½ Cucumber 4 Celery stalks 2 Apples 1” Ginger root	Sunset Blend Juice 1 lg Sweet Potato 1 med Carrot 1 Red Bell Pepper 2 lg Red Beets 2 Golden Delicious Apples 1 Orange (optional)	Reboot Green Salad Reboot Dressing. Grilled Chicken	Veggies Nuts Fruit

It seems pretty intense and a lot of juice to me, so I may be chewing on a lot of the veggies, nuts, and fruits. I also incorporated Grilled Chicken into a salad at night because I know myself, and I will want to eat at dinnertime or at least at one point in the day.

Great story though, my dad ordered a juicer from an infomercial late one night. We used it a couple times and then it got put into the box and shoved downstairs. So just my luck my parents had a juicer that I could use to see if I will like this before having to spend a lot of money. Granted, my juicer is from 1999 and its not really "high tech" but it will get the job done.

There it is, I will keep you posted on how all of this goes!

Do this... Don't do this

I have been reading and reading and reading about all of the different diets out there...

I have also been watching a lot of stuff some of which includes:

Food Matters

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

Weight of a Nation

Hungry for Change

and some other documentaries that I cannot remember at the moment.

What a lot of these videos are talking about is Juicing and/or juice fasting. What they were saying really starting to peak my interest, I mean Joe (from Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead) did some amazing stuff for his health! So i started looking up what I could do and how it all worked and stuff. Let me tell you, do a search on juice fasts and you will get a lot of results... but how realistic is this for my everyday life. I know your not suppose to fast for the rest of your life but how do you go about it? So I looked, I recommend you look, and Joe has come up with a program called Rebooting, and it seems like a great idea to kick-off a diet.

My only concern is that you are eating/drinking all fruits and veggies ALL of the time. I know people do this all the time, and I have learned a lot about getting back to "nature" and eating the way we all should. Right now however, I need some other stuff in my life, I need some bread, nuts, and meat. After all  this is going to be my eating habits for the REST OF MY LIFE. So I dug deeper, and I decided to search "implementing juicing into a healthy diet" and all I got was juicing fasts. Now I cannot be the first person to read/watch/listen to all of this great stuff about juicing but still want something that resembles a normal diet. 

I see that juicing is great reboot (look it up seriously) for your system, but if it is so great for that how do you keep doing it and eat other food too? If you find something let me know! I am going to come up with my own little plan for right now though. 

I Eat My Feelings

My last post I mentioned that I had every "bad" eating habit that there was. Well really they are all about the same thing. you can call it binge eating, compulsive eating, overeating, whatever you would like but they all end up being the same thing I think. 

I have learned that losing weight is a physical journey and that is where most people leave it (including me until now). There is a HUGE mental part of losing weight and becoming healthy. I understood this, but how do to attack and handle something when it is something you can see. The mental part is the hard part, you can't see the change and other people don't know that it really exists (half the time you don't know that it does) but at the same time it controls EVERYTHING you do. When your sad you eat, when your happy you go out and celebrate and eat, when your stressed you eat, your tired eat something... 

What do you do when you want to end this endless cycle of eating and then eating again because you feel bad for eating. Well, I'm not a professional so don't ask me. I do have this handy friend Google however, and Google happens to have answers for most questions I ask. I found an article/blog called "Overcoming a compulsive eating disorder" Everything she was saying, I have felt! Imagine that... someone else has fought this battle and they are letting me read about it. If you struggle with something like this I recommend reading it, and if you don't (lucky!) I still recommend you read it, because you never know what you will get from it! 

One thing that she said in the article was:

"Telling a person with compulsive eating disorder to eat smaller portions, go on diet or eat healthier foods is like putting a burger and chips in front of someone with anorexia nervosa: pointless and painful." 

I have felt that. I know everything I am suppose to do. I have read and read and read all about the best ways to diet and know all the tips and tricks that you are suppose to do. It is just actually doing it that is the problem. In comes the mental plateau, I can know everything and try and try and try but if I don't feel it deep in my soul and in my thick head it isn't going to go anywhere. One thing they suggest when you look up how to overcome this obstacle is to make a journal, not just a food journal (like everywhere else) but a old school, honest to goodness, journal. Putting your feelings into words and then letting it out somehow instead of eating those feelings. 

I just started really researching this, but I haven't seen a lot of my plan. (Next post... I am still getting my thoughts sorted out on that one) 

So I'm Back....

So a couple months ago I wanted to lose weight and wrote a couple posts about what I was doing. Then... I dislocated my knee cap (ouch!) and I gave up. I know what I should have done is focus on my diet and keep pushing forward, but I didn't.

I gave in, I have a problem with emotional eating, overeating, compulsive eating, binge eating, basically every kind of "bad" eating, I do it. So I gained and gained and gained. So now restarting this journey I am even bigger then before. I still don't have confidence to do this, so I am trying to start small and to just keep trucking.

Something really cool though is Colorado has the super cool program right now called "Weigh to Win." They are going to pay me money to lose weight! Now I know that I should be losing weight for myself, to be healthy, and to live a longer life, BUT who wouldn't want a little incentive like money? So you go to one of the free weigh in sites (they are everywhere) and weigh in every quarter. This first quarter ends April 17th and the first step of the money is if you lose 5% of your body weight and you get $15. Now its not a lot of money but it is something. So I am making that my first small goal. I would prefer to do it before my birthday on March 26th (so that is my real goal).

Lose 5% of my body weight by my birthday. There now I said it, I am putting it out into the world and am not going to let myself down.

Oh, did I mention that they take a picture of you when you weigh in? Yeah not so pretty, here it goes... I am never going to have to look like that again!

Needing Some Help...

Like last blog said, I am in a bit of pain. It hasn't gotten better and I am really hating the crutches still. I am not going to rant about it today though. I am dealing with it and I literally have the best boyfriend in the entire world. So instead of ranting about how awful life is at the moment because I know it will get better after time.

The boy however has been wonderful! He holds my hand and comforts me when I am crying from the pain. He has been waking up in the middle of the night to take care of me and help me go to the bathroom (I know it sounds kinda weird, but you try walking on crutches in the middle of the night half asleep lol) He has literally taken place for my left leg and I don't know what I would be doing without him.

Now the dieting, I am trying to keep track and focus on it still (if we are being honest though it has been put on the back burner a little bit) but this drinking water business is hard! Its hard because like I said before it really hard to get up and go to the bathroom. Work was the "easy" place to drink most of the water but that bathroom is even further then the one at home. It takes me about ten minutes to crutch to the bathroom and ten back. Now, when you are at work that is a long time to be away from your desk. I am going to keep working on it.

Good luck! Hope everyone's week is going better than mine.

Well This Sucks...

I am realizing more every time I post it is more for me than for anyone. So this is my little rant... THIS SUCKS!!! I can't do anything anymore, I just lay here and lay here and lay here. Before I would have given anything for a weekend to do nothing, but once that wish is granted it sucks. I know I should probably thesaurus another word for sucks but that is the only word that describes how I feel right now.

I can finally bend my leg a little bit, but then its a little bit stuck. I can't put it straight like at all without some serious pain. All I can do is walk on my stupid crutches and lay here with it elevated. I am getting bruises on my palms and arm pits from the stupid crutches, and little sores on my leg from the leg brace. Ok, I am gonna hop off this pity train, sorry about the rant.

I weigh in tomorrow and I know its not going to be exactly what I want to see, and honestly I am hoping I can get on the scale. I haven't quite figured out how I am going to step up on it without the crutches, but I will figure it out.

Good Luck on a new week!

A Bit of BAD News

So 2 months ago I slipped and fell. I felt my leg bend the wrong way to the side and it hurt REAL bad! The Dr. told me to give it a week and if it didn't feel better we would take an MRI. It did feel better, and I thought great that means it wasn't that bad! So I stopped wearing the brace and everything was fine, until yesterday. Getting out of the car last night I felt something pop out again, I was obviously getting out of the car so all of my weight was on that one leg. I ended up falling onto the driveway and as I landed I felt my knee pop back into place. But I was stuck in the driveway :( and can't move my leg or put any pressure on it.
My mom was talking to me / calming me down last night and she said well at least your taking the right steps to lose weight so it will be easier on my knees. Then I started to cry more because I know that I can't work out at all until my leg heals :(
Anyways, I went to the dr. today and we took more x-rays, I found out that I dislocated my kneecap and sprained my collateral ligament. I basically have to wear my leg brace for two weeks, which means I can't move it, I also have to be on stupid crutches for those 2 weeks. Then a follow up visit is going to be with an orthopedic doctor, so hopefully this doesn't happen EVER again!

I will try and keep truckin' and try to keep a really close eye on my calorie intake and drinking all of my water.

Workin On It...

Well the week of blogging about my journey may be helping... it is keeping me kinda focused. I weighed in today and lost another 2 pounds. That makes my total so far 7 pounds. Now after 4 weeks I feel like I should notice a difference or feel a difference, but I don't. I wish I did though.

So onto a new week, and I think this week is going to be equally hard being 4th of July and all. I am going to try to stay focused, but it is a holiday so I am not going to be a crazy person. I don't want to start denying myself things that I enjoy, I have been there done that and it failed.

I don't have very much to say today, but maybe more after the holiday! :) Happy 4th Everyone!

Shopping

Well its been a long day! We went grocery shopping today. So I sat down with all the ads (well sat down at my computer with their ads open lol) I made a list, a hopefully healthy list, and we hit Walmart (no food there but we had to get some stuff) and then off to Safeway and then King Soopers. Man shopping healthy and on a budget is hard sometimes, and includes going to a million stores (OK, only a couple but it felt like a million) and I still have the Sunflower Market to go to tomorrow which I am kinda excited about because it is all produce!

I haven't done very well on water today but I am drinking some now and still have some of the night left. :) On to more and better days... I have to remember that this is a process and I won't be able to break every bad habit I have acquired throughout the years in one week or even a couple weeks.