holy sh!t

man, i haven't done an end of the month recap since June.

I'm pretty excited to say that as of the weigh-in this morning...drum roll please.....i weigh 175.5!

holy fucking shit!!!!!! i'm so geeked...that means i'm only 1.5lbs over my lowest recorded Blog weight!!!!!!





that also means that since Tuesday, i've lost another 1.5 lbs!!!!!!! and since i re-commited myself this month, about 3 weeks ago, i've lost 5 lbs.

i dont really know why i'm acting all surprised. i'm truly busting my ass. i'm counting what i eat, i'm eating mindfully. i worked out twice during the week and hopefully adding another workout tomorrow, which would mean i've worked out 3 times this week instead of the 1 time the past 2 previous weeks.

i guess i'm finally realizing, i mean really realizing, that if i bust my ass all week instead of just half-assing it 5 days outta the week and then trying to save the weigh-in, you see actual results!
months ago, i would have bummed that in 3 weeks i would have only lost 5 lbs instead of a crazy 15, but i'm seriously trying to be more realistic in what i'm capable of and i'm above elated about these 5 lbs i have been able to get rid of.

Onward and Downward baby!!!!!

my fab weekend

so, i had been looking forward to this weekend for months!

i mean we had pretty much planned for it the minute we found out his cousin was getting married (he lives outside of chicago) and figured we'd roll a long weekend into it. hell, we hadnt done that in nearly 2 years and we only live 4 hours away from Chi-Town!

we decided to leave thursday night so that we could at least sorta sleep in Friday and then after a day of shopping still be fit for a night out on the town. since we really wanted to take advantage of this weekend, we opted to pay a couple of extra bucks and stay right downtown. i mean, we werent even a block away from the Mag Mile.

we rolled into Chicago around 11 and although we had originally planned to go get a nightcap somewhere it was best we went to bed instead since we were both exhausted and we'd rather party hard the next night. around 4 am, i wake up just feeling nautious. i mean crazy bad. not the kind you get when you take motrin on an empty stomach but the kind that makes you wake up and dash into the bathroom.

FYI, TMI ahead....read if you dare! i didnt know whether i should plant my ass on the toilet or stick my head into the bowl. i started in one place and ended in the other. pb started an hour later. so, we alternated using the bathroom. hell, we even shared the bathroom. one of us planted on the toilet while the other was throwing up in the sink. it was THAT bad.

come to find out that my mom and bro had it too. we decided that it was the salad we had two nights before then. seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?! as if i don't anguish enough about my weight and all things diet related, now i cant eat a staple?! and no, there wasn't any spinach in it. i'm assuming perhaps the chicken that was on it went bad but i dunno.

anyways, pb and i, between bathroom breaks slipped in and out of a fitful sleep. around 2, i felt good enough to venture out to wahlgreens and grab some gatorade, water and crackers. the rest of the afternoon was spent in the similar fashion.

saturday morning we tried eating normal food. we had a bacon english muffin sandwich and coffee. bad idea. i mean we had been doing ok. the throwing up had subsided the night before, but we were still experiencing diarrhea.

we were pretty terrified the majority of saturday, i mean the minute we felt that we had to go, it came. there was no warning. no grey area. it was black or white.

we didnt eat the majority of the day so by dinner we were famished! we had some hor dourves, and that was the worst idea ever! pb and i routinely excused ourselves from the table, and forget dinner. we had none of that! no booze. nuddin.

by sunday we were better, but my spirit was broken. pb and i had gone over our budget to stay in downtown chicago, and we were just really looking forward to a weekend by ourselves. it happened, just not like we had expected it too. plus, we were downers at the wedding. i mean, we were just constantly worried about when we would have to go next. plus, we were still so fatigued.

seriously though, it was none of our faults. it happened.

of course monday i was pretty excited to see what the scale had to say but i decided to hold off another day for fear that the loss may be pure dehydration but alas it was not.

TIP OF THE DAY:
to lose weight quickly, acquire food poisoning!!!!

oh my...

i've become one of those people who disappears for a week because shes been that busy.

i just wanted to say a quick Hi! I'm here.

LOST 2 LBS!!!! this week.

Hope everyone is doing well, and hopefully I'll have more time to talk about my fab weekend ;) later today.

ayudame

ladies, i need help.

typically, after a week where i lose weight. i decide that i need a "treat". i mean hell, i just lost a frickin pound! let me eat 4 pounds right back!

that was why i was trying NOT to do a weekly weigh-in but lets be realistic, if your a weight loss blog and you arent showing some numerical progress, you get dropped like hot cakes.

monday during the day was fine. even yesterday during the day was fine. it's the evening thats killing me.

and, that i'm typically only sleeping 6 hrs a night. i need at least 8, preferably 9. i just dont get anything done if i am sleeping that much.

decisions are taking place which i'm not happy with so i'm pretty anxious about that.

work is stressful. sorta. between the drive and that i'm working more hours than i had anticipated, i'm not 100% happy. although i can honestly say, i enjoy what i'm doing, but then again, right now its new. give me 6 months!

i worked out monday night at 9:30. yesterday nothing and probably today nothing either. for sure nothing tomorrow because we are leaving for chicago tomorrow night.

we have a wedding saturday and friday we are just spending some time in Chi-Town. it should be fun.

i miss running. i miss how i felt. i miss how i looked. i need a gym membership or a treadmill. i think the first is more attainable.

i NEED NEED a plan. a system because i'm tired, cranky and eating whenever/whatever i can.

I'm a loser

yes, i lost a pound this week. which means that i maintained my weight over the weekend!!!!! hells yeah!!

keep it comin baby!!!!!

first week

i cant believe the first week is already over. it went by ssssoooo fast. it's crazy.

the first week ended well. i've been doing more and more on my own, so hopefully by the time P. leaves I'll be all taked care of. my super comes back next week too.

the workplace is good to. i mean, they arent a whole lot of women, and unfortunately everyone but the front office has to take lunch at the same time so i end up taking it by myself. which isnt too bad, i'm reading blogs on my break so i can keep up.

oooohhhh, and get this: Friday is jean day!!!! isn't that cool?! i've never heard of that before. well, PB gets to wear jeans the last Friday of the month, but he has to pay for it. It's Charity Jean Day so at least its going to a good cause.

i'm so tired at night. i went to bed a couple of times at 9:30 this past week. i've been getting up at 5:45 to be outta the house by 7:07 so that I'm at work by 8:15 at the latest. I need to be coming in to work by 7:30 so I'm gonna have to be leaving the house by 6:45. ugh!

food wise things have been pretty decent. from 7 till 5 or so i'm golden. counting points, drinking mad water (thank god their's a bathroom right outside my office!) it's the evening thats been getting me. not even the beginning of the week was bad. i wasn't counting points, i don't know how nutritious it was (i was eating at my moms) but i ate till i was full and that was it. i had dessert a couple of times and then the end of the week was spent eating take out, pizza and burgers. not the greatest but still, eat till i'm full. weight wise, i'm doing good. now i just need to get through the weekend with the same determination.

i went to a going away part for P. last night at this club, and i borrowed this wrap sweater from my mom. it was from LB size 14/16. it was a little loose, and with all my clothes being at my house i had no choice but to wear it but i felt HUGE. i just felt so self-concious. i'm not happy with where i've gotten back to. i want to end this year lighter than last year!

i've really let my body deteriorate since i've been back from Jersey. I'm not even running. I worked out once this past week, on Thursday, I spent 45 mins on the elipitical. i'm having a difficult time working in working out. by the time i'm ready to workout, after dinner and stuff, it's 8:45. I hate working out at 9 considering i'm trying to be in bed and asleep by 10.

so, this weekend, i'm trying to cook a bunch of meals ahead. i dont want to waste my time during the week when i could be working out instead. i also ran out of produce around wednesday, so i need to plan better for that. i'm really not bringing processed foods to work. I guess you could say i'm sorta doing Core.

my breakfast is typically oatmeal. i eat that while i'm on the road. i tried making a smoothie but i got hungry around 10, which i guess i could have a snack of veggies. i could probably then accomplish my servings of fruit and veggies.

my lunch was a variety of things this past week: salad, chinese food, english muff pizzas. not all core but i feel it's no junk either.

and then late afternoon snack is a pc of fruit and some raw veggies. like i said, i'm quite happy with my food. even when i'm not counting my dinner points, i know when i've had enough and thats good for now too! at least until the scale stops moving.

i'm really happy with how this week ended. i just have to keep this momentum going!!!

sandmaennchen

i was a little grouchy last night.

i'm still trying to figure things out.

i was tired. disappointed with my food choices. nobody forced me, i was just tired and impatient.

today was better. although after dinner i inhaled 5 mini ice creams! still better.

now i just need to figure out how to work in the exercise

i never really talkd about my position. i'm an adminstrative assistant, which i think is somewhat of an unfair title. i think i do a lot more meaningful stuff to only get an admin assis position.

lets see, i assist the VP, i'm in charge of the interns, and i deal with event planning. pretty exciting eh?

the only thing i dont like is that there isnt a cafeteria so theres no place for us to sit and eat. i feel rushed, but i'm doing good during the day at least.

i've been eating my weight watchers oatmeal, lunch has been salad or sandwich/salad, snacks include fruits and raw veggies.

gym-maennchen, please, please, come and bring me something to get back in da groove!!!

Day 1

went fine.

Work was fine. Nothing overly exciting but nothing overly boring. I'll be the keeper of secrets, more or less.

Food wise went well until dinner where i was so starving i dived head first into the salsa bowl.

Goal wise I only hit the drinking of 2 liters, my Breakfast and Lunch and Snack were great too! It was dinner and dessert but you know what? I dont give a fuck because this has been the best eating day I've had in a very, very long time!

Tomorrows only gonna get better baby!

clothes

yes, i had to go shopping. and it went ok.

perhaps NOT beating myself up about it made it that much better. oh, and not putting a time frame by when i had to find something made it good too! i just went out, with a list of stores i wanted to hit up and if i found something, regardless of size, that i liked and thought made me look good, well i bought it!

the hardest part was shirts. i've always considered myself a pretty proportional person, an hourglass, but i'm beginning to think perhaps i'm a more top heavy hourglass because i had the hardest time finding shirts to wear!

the majority of pants that i bought were size 12. yeah!!!!!!!!!! size 14s were just too large, and although size 12's aren't completely perfect yet; i know they will be shortly ;)

shirts, yes, well, i could never get them button. not even 16's! i found a Tommy Hilfiger blouse in XL that fit me, I bought 2 right away. then today, i went to a few more stores and still only found 2 that fit in a way that looked ok.

i even went to LB, remember I'm not stressing out about the size, but i didnt find anything that i liked!

it's been hard, and i still dont even have enough clothes for a week. tomorrow i plan on hitting up Target since I didnt get around to it this past weekend. seriously, for any of my big busted ladies out there, where do you go?!

me NOT beating myself up over what i could or couldnt fit into really made the situation a whole lot easier on me. i wasnt crying or beating myself up over my size. i just looked for my size when trying stuff on and then forgot about it. it's weird.

while out and about i also bought myself a new journal. i've packed my lunch for tomorrow since i doubt ill be taken out because there is NOTHING around there (a plus of course because now i MUST bring my lunch or else ill be eating out of the vending machine!).

i'm more or less ready to tackle my weight again. i need to get back into the swing of things. my weight was back up to 181.5 and my thighs are getting flabby again. it's been over 2 weeks since the last time i exercised.

not only will i be OP tomorrow, but I will be drinking 2 L and exercising! pretty ambitious eh!?

i don't know what else to say because i feel like i'm being redundant.

ladies....let the ride begin!

J * O * B

yup...it's official. i start Monday.

what fuckin drama seriously. i'm so over it. i'm tired of being low balled just because they can. because they know that jobs are so hard to come by right now that the majority will take anything!

well, NOT me! seriously, i wouldnt have been so mad/upset/disappointed if the Recruiter, who works for the company so he doesnt make a commission off of my salary, hadnt sat across from me, asked me what i wanted and been like "oohhh yeah, no big deal, youll get that!"

and then i get sucker punched. jerk. i was seriously torn, do i counter offer or do i just accept because yes i am THANKFUL to finally have been offered something. the majority felt i should accept. but NO I'M MAD, mad i was frickin lied too! seriously, at this point i was hoping they wouldnt accept my offer. even if they did accept, i still wasnt making what we discussed but it was about half way there.

so they call me at 7 yesterday morning, apologizing of course but still saying i had to be in at 10 for paperwork! the funny thing is though the minute i told peeps they accepted my offer, everyone was like " you should have demanded MORE!" ummm, fuck youy because werent you exactly the same person who said " take it! your not gonna get offered anything else!"

THE POINT: stand up for yourself! seriously, i'm worth more than i was offered, more than i counter-offered but knowing that i did counter-offer and they accepted just proves to me only YOU are in charge of your life/future/career!

so ladies and gents.... we'll have to see how this all works out.

on the weight front, i've been doing better. i'm not counting yet, but i'm incorporating more water and trying to eat more mindfully.

todays weight 179.5.....wwwoooohhhhoooo

by monday i will FOR SURE have a plan and be back on plan, so if any of you want to start a little support group that would be awesome.

i can't do some wild and crazy x amount of OP days, i really need to focus on a day by day goal.

i'm getting there ladies....and i'll be ready to kick some major ass!!!!

abundance

so, i've been putting off writing this post for a while now.

originally because i was tired of thinking/writing/living the whole weight loss/life style change/ whatever you wanna call it drama. not like it's drama, but it's not only frickin time consuming but i feel like it's all consuming. does anyone else ever feel like that? it's like it possesses me, i'm not me anymore because this thing has taken over my mind/soul/life.

i'm more than just my weight and i think i've really let that go. i've let other priorities replace who i am. i'm not quite sure when i realized this but one day it was apparent/ clear as day light that my life revolved around only one thing and that was my weight.

so, here i was, i had just come back from Germany and I was determined to not go back to my old ways, to become that person that had somehow disappeared. i had proven to myself that i could maintain my weight by eating mindfully. i was determined to continue on with that and for the first week back it did work. partially because i was determined and i think partially also because i still ran like a crazy fool. training for the marathon. and honestly, i was semi happy at my weight. i mean yes, i could still lose some but i was content and that was good enough for me then.

then i found out my dad was gonna be here in the states for 2 weeks and wasnt bothering coming home but spending it with his gf in NJ. that sorta hurt. he suggested we come and visit him, which we did. it was the days leading up to me visiting him that i resorted to eating like crap. i was nervous meeting the gf, because honestly i didnt want anything to do with her. i still dont know how i feel about her. it was just a weird week. it's like finding out you have a week to live and although you enjoy every minute of that week, you still fear the end because your not ready for it to come to an end. then knowing he still has to spend at least another 6 monthes over there. all this anxiety made me seek out food.

i'm not even back in MI for 10 mins, when I get extended an offer at the place I interviewed at the previous week and I'm a basketcase again because although this isn't my ideal job, it's the first one that has been offered to me in over a year of searching. I should be ecstatic but I'm not. I'm already dreading the 45 minute commute one way, that i have to buy work clothes in size 14, and how in the hell am i gonna continue losing weight now that the majority of my day will be spent either at work or in the car? i calm down, realize it'll all workout because i know there are a ton of women out there who do the same thing i'm gonna do here shortly and the company decides to pull a dick move and offer considerablly less than what we talked about, so now i don't know what to do!? i'm in a tizzy all over again!

food has been very comforting the past few days, so comforting in fact that when i stepped on the scale today it read 182. WTF?! i swear to god it read 177.5 on Saturday.

i'm just in a funk. i know i need to get back on the program but i lack the energy. i'm tired. i'm sick with a cold. it's all just too much right now.

Princeton, NJ

Is where I've been for the past week.

My dad got his 2 weeks R-n-R and visitied his gf so we went out and visited him there. It was my first time in Jersey and wow, is it completely different from the MidWest.

First off, can I say that I only saw 2 fat people the entire time?! That totally blows my mind since everywhere I turned there was an ice cream stand. I kid you not, every block had at least 3 ice cream stores on it and they were all well visited. Even at noon. I have never seen so many skinny people eat ice cream at the most random times of the day!

Secondly, we only ate at a chain restaurant the first day. Our plane arrived way late due to many delays so an OTB was right outside our hotel and thats where we ate. Anyways, after that we only hit up local restaurants and I noticed that their portions were considerably smaller than what we here in the Midwest are used to. Now, one could say that perhaps that had something to do with the type of restaurant. Ok, lemme say that we ate Thai twice and at both Thai places the portions were normal. Not small but NOT as huge as what we typically get here. Not also that but typically here you also get a soup. Not there, everything was a la carte. Ok. Honestly people, I AM NOT complaining because I'm a clean plate person so Ill typically eat whats on my plate and by having normal portions I was NEVER stuffed!

oooohhhh, and our first night we went to this organic ice cream store. they had similar sizes to Coldstone however the small was perhaps half the size of a small at Coldstone. Does that make sense? Anyways, the majority of people who came into this store not only got a small but some even shared that small! WTF?! Seriously, I don't know about yall but whenever PB and I go to Coldstone not only do we get the middle size but we NEVER share! it's really a different eating mentality.

Thirdly, the majority of restaurants did not give free refills on soda! WTH?! I know here in the Midwest, the deal breaker on choosing a restaurant may be whether or not you get refills on your soda because well we need a HUGE soda to wash down the fried steak we just inhaled!

Fourthly, we were walking around Princeton and it started raining. My brother starts freaking out because we didnt have an umbrella but also because I suggested we continue on, even though my dad too wanted to stop. Now, not only do we have little chance to walk around in MI because sidewalks dont exist and if they do exist you wouldnt be caught dead walking on them because you may not only elicit stares but people might pull over and ask if everything is alright because they are sure youd only walk if your car broke down! Oh no, Jersey folks not only continued walking in the rain but continued sitting outside enjoying their company!

i know, all this seems like small individual things but i think in the greater scheme of weightloss these are pretty big. in the long run, to me at least, i think this decides whether or not your going to be an obese person or a normal weighted person. if you as a child are raised to share x-small ice creams, enjoy the outdoors, and drink minimal soda then yes you are much less likely to indulge in destructive eating behaviour. whereas kiddies here, at least the ones i know, drink solely pop, can't go outside and definately enjoy their share of larger ice creams.

are our demographics a precursor to whether or not we become an obese person?