Saturation

I need to drink more water. I haven't been drinking enough anyway, but I'm even less likely to hydrate when the weather is cool. 

There are so many reasons to drink a ton of water, my favorites being that it flushes out my system and makes me feel healthier, and it makes me feel full so I don't eat as much. 

I've given myself a new rule at work on the weekends concerning beverages, because my not being a morning person leads me to drink a LOT of coffee. A lot. Like jumping around with eyes wide by the afternoon a lot. 

I can start with a cup of coffee, but I now have to drink a full 32 oz water bottle before each additional cup of coffee. 

I have had to pee a lot lately. 

Thank the Lord for cooler weather!

I get pretty excited when it's no longer a million degrees outside and the thought of being anywhere but inside an air conditioned place is no longer torturific.

Enter afternoon hikes and bike rides and mid-day jogs!  I'm fortunate enough to have a schedule that allows me to do these things in the middle of the day.  The downside to that is that most people are in work, so I don't always have people to go with.  When I'm totally motivated and on track, being alone doesn't stop me from exercising, but when I'm trying to get back on track, like I have been for the last year and a half, it can become an excuse I use frequently.

The other day, however, my friend Becky was free on a Wednesday, and we took the opportunity to go hiking.  I also started a new diet bet, so I'm a little more motivated than I have been in a while.  Plus, I'm just not a fan of the way I feel when I'm not living the healthy way that I know I love.  I don't understand myself sometimes.

It wasn't a long hike, because the sun is setting so early these days, but it did make me want to go more often!  I got a couple great pictures on my phone, and I want to spend some time hiking around with my real camera.  Time to get in hiking shape!  Who wants to go with me?

 

Climb every mountain! Or at least "A" Mountain

Life got busy.  I got sidetracked.  And sabotaged.  And my weight loss was basically demolished.

Well, maybe not demolished.  I'm still down 85 pounds from my heaviest weight, but I am 35 pounds up from where I was prior to losing it.  I've gotten back on track and then not stuck to it a few times, but this time I intend to blast through this ridiculous road block and finally lose the rest of the weight I want to lose.  I'm probably looking at another 80 pounds, and I'm ready for it to be gone.

On Sunday I drove to Tucson for a big photography job, doing school photos for a preschool.  When I was packing I made sure to include all of my workout clothes (including a bunch that I just got on sale at Target!  I love finding workout clothes on sale even more than I love finding normal stuff on sale because they're usually so ridiculously expensive!), with the intention of working out while I'm here and eating healthfully.

I don't love working out alone, and I suggested walking to my mom, but she can't do it with her bad knees.  So I thought I was gonna be completely on my own.  However, on Monday my friend Jane invited me to climb "A" Mountain with her.  It's a 1.8 mile hike to the top, and I've been wanting to start hiking anyway, so this was the perfect opportunity, with the added benefit of getting to hang out with one of my good friends that I don't get to see often enough.

At the top, with a great view overlooking Tucson

It's amazing how one kind of workout can become so easy as your body becomes accustomed to it, and then a new kind is really difficult.  The elliptical does nothing for me anymore, but climbing that hill felt a lot harder than I thought it should be and I was a little ashamed of myself.  But then at the top I thought about that time three years ago at Pierce College when I had to climb 185 stairs and I couldn't make it to the top without stopping to rest, and I realized that being able to climb 1.8 miles with only one stop to stretch my quads that were starting to freeze up is not a bad place to be after not being that active for the last year.

The last few days have been sore ones for my legs and butt, but it's a good sore.  I like the physical feeling and what it means for my body.  I love being active and I am going to make it a priority again.  I have to.  If it wasn't pouring rain, I would go for a run right now, even though I would have to go alone.  I might go anyway!  Wait, no.  I forgot that glasses in the rain is super obnoxious.  Maybe I should get contacts again. 

Sabotage vs Self Control: the battle for my midsection

I was hesitant to say it for a little while, but I think I am finally back in control.

I don't know why I allowed myself to be sabotaged.  Why did I give in to the constant barrage of junk food and just too much food that hunted me down for the last 10 months or so?  Why did I gain back so much weight that I worked so hard to lose in the first place?

It doesn't make sense to me.  I am infinitely happier when I am eating well and exercising and looking better and better every day.

I am miserable when I am eating junk and feeling full all the time and not exercising and busting out of my clothes.  Feeling cute is really important to me after spending too many years feeling unattractive and worthless, and I have been letting the cuteness I recaptured slip away.

I haven't been relying on God, and it is too hard on my own.  I need His power to get over these hurdles and I need people in my life to push me and keep me accountable.  So I have once again asked for help. 

A few weeks ago I started walking/half-heartedly jogging two miles every night with my friend Rocio, and I was disheartened when I didn't see or feel results right away.  But I kept it up, knowing that results would come, as I worked on getting my eating under control.  It wasn't hard to do during the week.  One day my roommate came into the kitchen and found me eating a cucumber.

Michelle: "Are you just eating a cucumber?"

Me: "Yep."

And it was good.

The real challenge was maintaining control at the vet on the weekends.  There is always so much food there.  Always. So. Much. Food.

Sabotage

 

Self Control

I didn't touch any of that stuff.  The last two weekends in a row I haven't succumbed to the lure of the bad food, instead bringing my own snacks.  It's just not worth it.  I hate how I feel when I eat that garbage!

 In the middle of last week, the scale finally started to move, and within three days it went down 12 pounds.  I was stoked!  When I went to work on Saturday, my scrub top was looser than it has been in a long time.  The weekend before it was like a sausage casing.

Sunday night I went out after work to have dinner with my family for my cousin's birthday, and I wore this dress, and I felt cute.  Knowing that I still have 30 pounds to lose to get back to my lowest weight from my original weight loss, I certainly didn't feel as good as I know I will, but this is a start.

Yesterday I went to the gym and I was back to feeling discouraged by my backsliding.  I was feeling fat and out of shape.  Instead of letting that feeling continue to sabotage me though, I am taking it as a challenge to get back to where I was and keep going from there.

There's no point in wallowing in my failures.  I am choosing to push forward and conquer this.

Today I'm feeling cute in my new tube top from Target.  My collar bones took a little vacation, but they're starting to come back again.  I love collar bones.

I have a lot of work to do, but I'm up for it.  I'm eating well again, and not even craving junk.  The other day I turned down fruit snacks!  I haven't been in control of the way I eat for almost a year, and being back in control feels amazing!

Fitness K8 or bust!

Alright.  My season of gluttony is officially over.  I'm sick of feeling like a sausage in all of my clothes and even in my skin.

Right now I'm wearing workout clothes because I went to the gym for the first time in months, and I wore the gym clothes all day because I knew I would be about 80 million times more likely to force myself to go if I was already dressed for it.  So on one hand that was smart, but on the other hand, the shirt I'm wearing is a tube top with another shirt over it, and the top of the tube is tiiiiiiiiiiight.  My armpit areas are in pain from the top of this shirt.

This is not good.  And I have no idea how I let this happen.  Why is it so easy to get out of good habits that make you feel amazing, and you practically have to move Heaven and Earth to reinstate those habits?  It literally takes an act of God, at least for me.  Because when I'm not relying on Him, I sink pretty low.

This is how my niece Lilly and I feel about my lack of self control:

I mean, I still look okay.  I haven't gone back up to my epic proportions from the dark years.  And apparently I like to take selfies with my right hand on my hip.  But I am missing my smaller self, and I wasn't even close to my goal yet.

So I have some new goals.  I want to lose 50 pounds in 100 days.  That's about 15 pounds a month, which is totally doable at my size.  I am going back to the gym and I have enlisted a friend to meet me there a couple times a week.  I'm also gonna be doing Blogilates (a free online personal trainer who is really great and posts new videos all the time and comes up with a workout calendar each month) videos every day.  I'm getting back to limiting my portions and not eating as many sugars and breads.  I don't cut anything out completely, but I know what should be limited.  I just need to listen to my body.  Right now I feel full pretty much all the time, and it doesn't feel good.

I don't want my face to look like this anymore:

I miss when it looked like this:

And in 3 months, it will again.  Adios to feeling gross!

Residual self-doubt

A good 98% of the time now, I have killer self-esteem.  I love how I have changed and I have learned to love my body.  I mean, sure... I wish I didn't have the fat that's still here and I know I'll never have a perfect body, but I love it.  I think it looks pretty good as I get more in shape and closer to the way God created my body to look.

I wish I knew as a teenager that I had a great body.  Not a great body like a swimsuit model, or one that makes men drool as they are unable to avert their eyes, but a great body in a healthy, great musculature, awesome build type of way.  I'm strong.  I'm built like an athlete, or a farmer.  My body was made to work hard and take care of people.  And I have an awesome butt.  It's true.  I don't even care, I would tell that to the Pope if I met him.  That's how much I love my butt.  Even when I was super fat, it was still a good butt!

I walk around with an air of confidence these days that gets me a lot of attention from guys, which I really appreciate, because I didn't have that for so long.  I don't mean to be conceited or vain or wrapped up in looks.  I am none of those things.  I know I'm not a supermodel.  I think a lot of it is about my general confidence and not even what I look like. 

But I truly enjoy being admired after being the girl that no one paid any attention to in that way for more than ten years.  That can really destroy a girl's spirits.  For realz.  It made me question my worth.  I know how hilarious I am, that I'm a great friend and will give all I have to the people I love, and that I make the people around me happier.  I also know that everything that I am comes from God and my worth is wrapped up in Him.  But when all I ever wanted was to get married and no guy could see past my exterior to all of the inner awesome, you can bet that none of that seemed to matter much after a while.

And sometimes that feeling comes back to haunt me. 

The other day, a friend said she wanted to set me up with someone, and my immediate thought was, "he probably won't like me because I'm too fat."  It popped into my head before I could even think about it for two seconds.  It was automatic.  It felt crappy.  I wanted to hit that thought over the head with a mallet like it was a whack-a-mole.

I forced myself to stop thinking it.  And then I vowed to re-lose the pounds I gained over the summer that are making me feel self-conscious.

I lost 5 this week.

I bought a cute dress at Target for $17, and I love it so much, but I'm not as happy about it as I should be because I know it would be so much cuter if I was twenty pounds lighter.  And I was twenty pounds lighter not too long ago, so it feels like a fresh wound.

I took a picture in the dress though, because I wanted to have a before and after picture in it.

The dress has POCKETS!!!!!

I can't wait for the after picture.

What happens when you blow it?

I haven't written since the 4th of July.  That's over three months.

If I'm not writing, I'm not doing well, period. 

I just don't want to disappoint people.  I want people to be motivated by my success, not sucked down with me when I'm sinking.

And I sank for a while.  Pretty badly.

I thought I was over my compulsive over-eating, but it appears that there may always be triggers.

So, here it is: I am a compulsive over-eater.  And I'm ashamed.  But I am also human, and full of weaknesses, and if I have learned anything at all, it is that some things are impossible without the awesome power of God.  So when I'm doing really well and I have all this self-control and I'm not being tempted by food, I start to feel invincible, like I can just do this on my own, and I forget to rely on God. 

And then stuff starts to fall apart, and before I know it, my sister has a baby and I spend time taking care of her and her kids and definitely don't have time to eat well, which leads to "well, I'm gonna be driving 3 hours, I need to stay awake in the car... Cheetos and M&Ms and soda will do the trick!"  But those are trigger foods and once I start, I buy them often.  And then my friend Jen comes to visit and we eat a bunch of junk food.  And then I start a new job and there is a bottomless pit of candy and bagels and food, food, food, and I have been poor for so long and unable to eat without worrying about where the money will come from to buy my groceries, so I go a little crazy and eat more food than I need.  And then I start school again and my schedule is so busy that I definitely don't have time to go to the gym.  And then I have re-gained 20 pounds.

I just want to crawl into a hole and cry.

I did put the breaks on about a month or so ago, and the gaining stopped.  I even lost a little of what I had gained.  But I am not at the place yet where I have kicked it back into gear fully.  I have better control, but I need that power of God to do this for me.  And I need a less-full schedule so that I have time to go to the gym.

But having two jobs plus trying to launch my photography business, writing for the school newspaper and for a magazine article writing class, plus copy editing the paper is like having two full time jobs, and I barely have time to sleep.  I am so exhausted all the time... something else that takes a toll on my weight.

I told my cousin I gained 20 pounds back and she said I don't look like I gained that much, but I definitely see and feel it.  And I hate it.  I feel like such a failure.  And I no longer feel comfortable in my skin. 

At least I know what to do about it though.  And I'm still in decent shape, despite the lack of workouts.  A few weeks ago, I was covering a football game for the paper when the visiting team had their lockers ransacked and robbed.  You can imagine the riot that started to break out, and my news friends and I covered the story without missing a beat.  There was a point in the night where we were getting a statement from the sheriff, and he got a call saying that there was another fight in the lower lot.  He took off in his car, and we ran after him on foot.  I thought for sure I would be the first to stop, but I never ran out of breath.  My body still wants to be active.  And so do I.

So now it's time for some pictures.  These aren't pictures I'm excited to put up.  But this is the story of my journey, which unfortunately includes setbacks.

In my scrubs at work, feeling uncomfortable with myself.

Definitely a fuller face.

Aww, look how cute!  A baby sheep!  And also rolls of fat reclaiming my midsection.  Ewe

  So now that I've admitted it out loud, or at least in writing, it's time to turn this thing back around and seek that help I know I need that only God can give.  Because this struggle is not what my life is about, and it's getting in the way.