Donuts Always Win

a collection of weight loss antics, random thoughts, observations and recipes by a food-loving girl who's fought calories and fat grams all her life…and lived to tell about it.

Donuts Always Win header image 1

…and I’m still alive…

June 8th, 2010 · Weight Watchers Points, weight loss (again)

I’ve tried this Weight Watchers Points thing before. Come to think of it, I’ve tried every diet known to mankind and then some. I’ve tried eating diets, starvation diets, one-food diets, soup diets, veggie and fruit diets, protein-no-carb…carb-no-meat…if you can name it, I’ve tried it (with the exception of Nutri-System. One of my oldest besties tried it earlier this spring and had a hankering to hunt down Marie Osmond and kick her lying, overprocessed-food filled body for fibbing about the deliciousness of what my friend termed “expensive cardboard crap”.

And every single one of the diets started with a bang. No one ever has a bad first day of dieting, do they? There’s something intrinsic in the human spirit that makes us excited, thrilled, wound up to start something new, whether it’s a lifetime eating plan or a college class. That first day is always exciting, always hopeful and full of promise, easy to navigate because there’s some invisible boost of happiness that keeps us facing even the worst pitfalls with a smile on our face.

Until reality sets in. Today was reality. And for the first time in my dieting life, I did not lie. Not on the scale, because I still don’t really have the courage to weigh myself (tomorrow, I promise)–instead in my point accounting. Might not sound like a big deal, but one of my biggest problems in trying to shed this extra ass over the years is not being honest when it comes to calorie counts. In some cases, it’s because I’m ashamed that I’ve eaten so much. In some cases, it’s because I don’t think “a little bite of this” or “a tiny taste of that” will matter. In some cases, I’m just being a lazy ass and don’t want to take the time to poke in my points.

But today was different. Yesterday I managed to turn off the constant urge to shove stuff in my mouth, what with all the extra post-graduation party food lying around, and I tried to build on that. I made a healthy breakfast, decent lunch, chose wisely with the help of my iTouch at dinner and even added the small cone from DQ that Dogger made me order against my will. Am I scared that I spent 10 more points on my food today than I was allotted at the start? Hell yes. But I am also watching my activity points increase and like the sense of challenge they are creating in me. I’ve tallied 8 total activity points, which will begin being used once I burn up my extra 35 points, so in the meantime my new temporary goal is to work toward growing my stash of activity points to 20 by the end of the week. It’s alternately difficult and easy to grow those points, and maybe I’m just a little bit jr. high in the fascination I’m getting by calculating point possibilities, but I’m ultimately proud that I didn’t lie by omission on those points today.

There is always tomorrow…but donuts are only a measly 7 points…

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My Summer Project

June 7th, 2010 · weight loss (again)

So I was going to start this post with something like “it hasn’t really been that long since I’ve blogged”, but then I forgot my password to log on to the blog, which kind of goes against what I’m preaching.

So, yeah. It’s been a while. I successfully parasailed (though all photos have been destroyed, especially the ones of us coming back to the boat), finished up another school year (the kids were great this year) and officially started my first day of summer vacation today. How, you ask?

By dieting. Actually, not really dieting. I have to quit using the word diet because it implies that at some point I will stop and magically be able to keep off weight I’ve lost with minimal effort due to my new, wonderful lifestyle. This has to be a whole-brain transformation kind of thingie: more exercise, healthier food, more activity, smarter portions…it’s enough to make me want to give up and bury my face in what remains of my son’s stale leftover graduation cake (and if it had been buttercream icing and not whipped, I’d already be there. Again.).

But I’m not. I’m forging forward. Armed with my newly installed Weight Watchers Points app on my iTouch and a serious revulsion to all the photos of me over the last few frenzied graduation weeks, I am planning to live a little differently this summer.

And today actually went well. The dogger and I started the day with a two mile walk (intended to be a one-miler but due to my horrible math deficiency, it was actually 2.17), a healthy breakfast and lunch, carrots for a snack. No candy, no junk (despite the remnants of the kid’s graduation party, including everything from Coke to buttermints to Doritos and the afore-mentioned stale cake). Only one hour of TV (I’m not giving up the Y&R. Just not going to do it), no nap…

The only place I faltered was dinner. I had been insistent all day that I was NOT going to eat leftovers from yesterday’s shin dig (wings, shredded chicken sandwiches, meatballs…doritos)….but when the hub got a reffing gig at the last minute and came home famished and I had nothing ready–it seemed a waste to make something. So we did have leftovers, but I did so with a mind on portion control. I only slipped up when the kid brought the bag of Doritos outside and we munched mindlessly and chatted. But I didn’t go hog-wild and I added the points on my tracker.

I’m done eating for the night, and am going to take the dogger for one more mile walk before sunset. Let’s hope that today’s success replicates itself tomorrow…and tomorrow…and tomorrow….

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Parasailing? Seriously?

April 27th, 2010 · FoodLife, P90X

Yeah, life’s a little crazy again. Hopefully things will settle down after this weekend and I can get into some type of blog routine. More for me than you.

Still chugging along on the P90X project. Even though I started two weeks ago and am a workout away from completing a two week cycle of workouts, I’m still doing it. That’s nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention my 39th birthday (and dinner out with friends) thrown in there for the fun of it. I really have gotten myself into a good mindset of working out as soon as I get home from school (or, more correctly, as soon as I get home, change clothes, log on to Facebook for a bit and then work out). I feel a difference and I see a little difference. I have much more energy–no real urge to nap after school like before (if you’re not a teacher and you laugh at that, come to school with me one day and see how much other people’s hyper kids wear you out–just try it). I feel I’m getting stronger even if I can’t do a pullup yet without a chair. There’s a little less muffin top froth on the capris. All in all, a good thing.

Now, to work on the eating thing. Did ok the first week, the honeymoon phase. I just don’t do well with lots of protein. I mean, the body loves the protein. Always slims me down, especially in the gut. It’s just a matter of finding protein I like. I can’t do eggs for breakfast. Never could. But I’m trying. And I really don’t dig chicken all that much unless it’s fried with 11 herbs and spices (the right herbs and spices), so I’m trying to find a handful of new protein sources I love as much as fish (I know, I’m not right) and cottage cheese to add to the variety. You think growing up on a farm I’d be more of a meat eater, but I have a harder time battling my donut tooth than I do my meat tooth.

So anyway, I’m hanging in there and being a good girl. Tomorrow is the last day of that for four days, though. Hub and I managed to wrangle a free cruise last year that we never got around to taking and Thursday night we ship off for three days in the Bahamas. I hadn’t planned to take a bathing suit (I only wear one in my back yard, protected on four sides by 10′ fences for the safety and vision protection of all involved) but he just informed me that we’ll be taking a parasailing excursion. Has he not heard me make fun of fat people parasailing before and now is subjecting me to this horror? For a fat girl, I can’t imagine a scarier moment than realizing you’re flying half-naked in a clear blue sky in a bathing suit giving those below the ability to look at you from underneath. The idea frightens me. I think I might just wear jeans.

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I know what you’re thinking…

April 18th, 2010 · P90X

You’re imagining some sort of horrible accident involving me, a Krispy Kreme truck and a broken latch. Kinda like when the armored lotto trucks forgot to lock their back doors years ago and pennies spilled all over the highway, only to be grabbed hand-over-fist by greedy passerbys–except this time, the aforementioned breakfast treat truck spilled its warm-glazed goodies on the interstate and in my rush to stuff my piehole, I was smeared on the roadway by an oncoming 18-wheeler?

Yeah. Sorry. Nice thought, though. Especially for my donut-neglected self. And especially because the truth is far more boring.

It’s just been life in the way of blogging. And vacations in the way of life. Yeah, rough, huh? First a trip to Vegas in late March with friends, the first time as an adult I’ve taken time off work to go on vacation. Amazing time had by all. Home one week, then the hubby and kid had their school spring break in Florida, just in time to return to take me to the airport for my week in Tucson. Add in a couple of rough issues at work, a lot of nice spring weather and an urge to spring clean everything in sight and you’ll have more of the real truth.

And there have been slight changes on the weight loss front. Slight, not as in actual weight loss, but slight as in approaches to shed pounds. After a week in Tucson where I allowed myself the luxury of eating whatever I wanted without repercussion (not as exciting as it sounds. I don’t think I had a single donut, just tried lots of local cuisine), (and there were plenty of repercussions in the form of a higher number on the scale and less wiggle room in the capris on the way home), I came home to decide just what I was going to do to work toward my goal for my birthday next year…weight loss.

So I did what every intelligent, red-blooded, credit-card equipped infomercial watching American does: I ordered P90X. Now, don’t think this is on a whim. I’ve adored Tony Horton since my days of the original Power 90, back when my workouts came on VHS. However, I’ve believed that P90X is somehow more advanced for my skills. Now that I’ve finished all of the first week (only took one day off but did the workout the next day–and did not miss the workout because I wanted, missed because my schedule would not allow it), I am more assured that I indeed *can* do this workout for 90 days (some days off mind you) and it *will* make a difference.

I am loving the workout. How funny that I can’t even do one single pullup (yep, I bought the pullup bar and had the hubby install it) but I don’t let that deter me. I use the chair for the pullups. It’s better to try and modify to reach a goal than it is to not try at all, right?

So now that you know where I’ve been, what I’ve been up to and that I’m still fat enough to keep on blogging about the state of my waistline, I’ll let you go for now. More soon, I promise. I’d like to blog about the P90X stuff daily but I don’t know that time-wise I can do it. I promise I’ll keep you updated, however. Maybe even throw in a couple of essays for old-time sake. So stay tuned. At least now if I give in to the donuts, I’ve got a way to burn it off…

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I Don’t Trust Myself With Loving You

March 17th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Yeah, you’ve heard that line before. It’s the title of a great John Mayer song. It’s also the title of my post. Deal.

So as I decided, or am at least slowly coming to realize, maybe what*I* see in myself in regards to all this fatness and these weight issues is not what the rest of the world is seeing. (read up on I See You See Me…Or Do I?)

I teach middle school kids from different countries. Mostly Somalia, though I do have a smattering of kids from other locales. I’ve been working with these kids for almost 17 years now, and very rarely have I ever thought of a kid in terms of their culture. I’ve never been angry with a kid because they speak a different language, wear different clothes or have different religious customs. I’ve been angry because the kid behaves like a jerk. I also work with regular American kids and I don’t find myself mentally judging them on the basis of their clothes, their grasp on language or their family life. Now, I might look at a 250 pound 6th grader who waddles down the hallway and worry about how she’s going to get picked on and bullied when she’s older, or what kind of health issues she’s going to have before she even gets to high school, but I don’t judge the quality of her character based on her outward appearances. In my job, I can’t do that. I mean it when I say I love people, regardless of where they came from and what they look like. I see religion, ethnicity and language tear down people, cause wars and continue to create hatred all over the world, and I don’t want to be associated with that. People are people when you strip it down.

The problem comes in applying this fundamental belief–that people are people regardless of their external appearances–to myself. Thinking back to this post’s title, I don’t trust myself with loving (other people’s opinion of me). It’s like this: because I’m fat, I can’t let myself believe that other people are capable of seeing through the fat to see the real me. Why? Because, often times, I can’t–therefore who else can?

I’ll be honest here: I hate compliments. I always have. Secretly, I love them, because I don’t hear them often, so I tend to relish them and replay them over and over, like my first radio-created cassette tape back in the early 80s (Tainted Love, anyone?). What I hate about them is the shock they create to my system, the jarring impact they have upon my brain. My brain tells me that I’m not supposed to be good at anything, or look nice, or have anything worth positively commenting on because I’m overweight. I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good mother, I’m not a good person because my jeans are size 16 and they should be an 8. I can’t possibly look nice in this shirt/sweater/dress because fat people don’t “look good”–they are lazy, no good gluttons without self-control. And who’s gonna really like someone like that?

Then I get a compliment and it sends me all out of whack. Until about the last two years, my immediate–and I mean IMMEDIATE–response to a compliment was to degrade it. Say something nice about my clothes and the standard reply is “Oh, it was the only clean thing in my closet.” Give me kudos for a job I did and it’s “Oh, geez. Even a monkey could do that.” Don’t even think about noticing my hair or lipstick or anything even closely personal, because my reaction becomes personal. “Really? You need glasses.”

I’ve always been this way–unable to accept even the simplest compliment. I remember years ago, someone commenting something about me, my smart-ass retort and mom being horrified at my reply. “Why can’t you just say thanks,” she’d hissed in my ear, my comment obviously embarrassing her by virtue of being her ungrateful daughter. I’ve had friends tell me the same after commenting positively on something. One friend got snippy with me: “Why don’t you just say thanks and shut the hell up?” Another replied that since I didn’t take his compliment, I was commenting on his lack of taste, which he did not find funny.

I have learned, since then, to at least superficially accept the compliment. Now, most times, I just quietly mumble, “thanks” and move on with my day. I may be able to accept kind words more graciously but that doesn’t mean I must (or can, or will) believe them. And this is what’s bothering me most: why can I not trust my own friends to make the same type of unbiased observations–based on the real me, not just the fat me–about me that I make with them? I’m friends with them because they offer me something I need in my life: a sense of humor, a listening ear, unconditional love and friendship…yet I don’t trust them to make a sound decision when complimenting me?

Maybe this fat thing has me more screwed up than I originally thought…

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Checking In

March 16th, 2010 · Uncategorized

I know, I’m behind in my Ten in 10 Weeks post (and the final one, no doubt!) I will get it up here–I’m shooting for today. I’ve got a new ten week plan to start, and I’ve no doubt you’re all on the edge of your seat for that LOL….

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When My Mom Sees This Blog, I’m Gonna Be In So Much Trouble…

March 12th, 2010 · Just Thoughts, weight loss (again)

Actually, I probably won’t be in trouble so much as she’ll just consider me crazy (again). And most of my family will, too. See, they’re a quiet bunch–for the most part, anyway. Get us together at a hog roast or, as dad and his friend Dann thought in my mid-teenage years, at a square dance, and we may tend to get a bit rowdy but nothing too wild. My family is a low-key group. We do lots of stuff together, and there are lots of reasons to call and ask others to help: building a chimney, putting up a new electric fence, laying a new bathroom floor. But there are some things you just don’t broadcast, some jobs you just don’t ask others to help you with.

Namely, self-improvement projects. No, if you want to fix yourself, you’ve got to do it yourself. Putting together a deck? It’s fine to ask one of the three uncles to help. Need to eat healthier? Screw you, cupcake. You’re on your own.

It is against the law of the family to ask for help with self-based projects because it’s absolutely blasphemous to ask for help unless the job is bigger than yourself. Asking for help is a sign of weakness, of personal failure. Both sides of my family–dad and his large brood of brothers and sister, mom with her smaller but strong-willed sister and nephews–are independent souls. We don’t sit around whining about doing something, we do it. We don’t wait for tomorrow, because today is when we make a difference. We don’t wax poetic about the good old days (except occasionally during holidays) and mourn days gone by.

And we don’t ask for help losing weight. There may be nothing that signifies personal weakness more than asking for help or advice when it comes to getting your eating and exercise under control. How do I know?

Back when Judy Blume was all the rage and I devoured her books like mom’s secret stashes of frozen Girl Scout cookies, at one point I recall my mom, my aunt and my grandma being in TOPS together. TOPS (Taking Off Pounds Sensibly) was a cheaper, less glamorous version of Weight Watchers. Mom et. al. weighed in one night a week (Mondays, I know this because we tagged along since it was in the local library and it granted my nerdy self with a heavenly hour of books each week), celebrated losses, booed gains, and sometimes went out to the Ponderosa buffet as a reward. (I always felt that part was simply hysterical). Mom found her groove at TOPS–she dropped a total of at least 40 pounds as I recall, maybe more. They did silly retreat weekends together and came back with a fresh perspective on eating and exercising that sustained them for weeks at a time. It was like a Free Mason’s club for fat people (there were men, but on a limited basis as I recall). You had to have a secret password and your secret decoder ring could project a scale on the wall if the sunlight hit it at the correct angle. It was no secret that she went but it was a secret what she did once she got there.

Grandma and Aunt N. were also members at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great to have your family, those people you find as your backbone and support at times, join you in a journey for a better body? Not in my family. With three women on the same quest together, it’d make sense that our family gatherings (always centered around food. Always) would have changed, or that they’d talk calorie counts and portion sizes and healthy substitutions.

There was never a veggie tray in sight. In fact, I believe during those years, the dessert section of Grandma’s Easter countertop grew to massive proportions. There were never, ever food discussions that would lead to weight loss for Monday’s check-in. It was almost as if admitting that paying dues to a weight-loss group was failure in and of itself, even though that group helped my mom become a much more confident and beautiful woman (even if she did gain a lot of the weight back over the last twenty years).

The message I picked up? Asking for help for yourself, even if just a listening ear or a thoughtful response, is not acceptable. In fact, if it’s coming from one of the women in our family, the headstrong and independent types upon which genetics I am built, it’s an absolute indication of personal weakness. Personal issues–weight loss, addictions, marital issues, career dissatisfaction–should never see the light of day or fall on the ears of another. It’s all meant to be internalized and dissected from within.

And that’s what brings us back to my post title. When mom finds out I’m broadcasting to the world my shortcomings–the fact that I ate an entire sleeve of Thin Mints on Sunday without so much as a blink of remorse–I’m sure I’ll be in some sort of trouble. Of course, I’ve got an extra box of Thin Mints to subdue her with. And if that doesn’t work, we can always hit the buffet…

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I See You See Me…Or Do I?

March 10th, 2010 · Just Thoughts, weight loss (again)

Since I’ve started examining myself and my thoughts about fat/being fat/living fat/calling myself the fat girl, I’ve had a couple of realizations. One, I’m a much more complex person than I knew. Two, writing about myself and putting it out into the public does motivate me to do what I say I’ll do (most times). And three, I am not alone in my obsessive worry about how others see me as a fat girl.

To address the third, you can read up on “Losing Fat–And Losing the Voices” from earlier this year. This will give you an idea of how it is to be in a fat girl’s brain, what with our constant nagging and thinking and comparing and self-degradation. These voices eventually find their way out of the single-minded hatred of self in our heads and morph into a twisted type of mental conversation with the people we meet each day. Long story short, instead of constantly judging myself from inside my mind, I imagine the judgmental comments others have about seeing me.

I didn’t realize this for years. Decades even. I mean, maybe there are people out there so shallow in their worldly interaction that they do take great glee in seeing I’m sporting an extra roll or that the chub rub won’t stop, but the more metacognative (thinking about my thinking, in short) I get toward my fat girl issues, the more I’m starting to see that what I think others see in me might not be what they’re seeing.

And, even worse, as I’ve realized this, I’ve felt as though I’m the only person who thinks this way. I felt as though I’m the only person around who imagines others only see me for the fat–in a most obsessive-thought-type way, I might add. But today, in catching up on my blog reading, I discovered that I wasn’t alone.

If you’ve never read Jeannette Fulda’s Pasta Queen blog or her wonderfully fun, serious, thoughtfully emotional Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, you’re missing out. Through both, she’s chronicled her plummet from 372 pounds to 186 pounds and back up just a smidge. I stopped over at her blog this morning since I’ve been very slack in my blog visits lately, and found a recent post of hers that put into words exactly what I’ve been thinking on this issue:

The only bad thing about my current weight is all the time I spend thinking about what other people think about my weight. It’s a problem caused only by itself, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s a cyclical worry cycle, and I’m getting dizzy spinning around and around in my head all the time. I’ve wasted so many hours worrying about food, the scale, what I ate, what I should eat, and nagging myself to exercise, all because I’m worried people might be disappointed about how big I am if they meet me. Aaaaaaah!! It hasn’t been about about me and my health, it’s been about other people.
(from PastaQueen blog)

My reaction was one of pure relief. There’s something about being trapped with all those voices, those mean, smarmy, fat girl voices rattling around in my skull, that tends narrow the focus of my thoughts so much so that I think I am the only person in the entire universe fighting this stupid, crazy, mostly-losing-to-this-point battle. It’s not a good, mentally-healthy place to be. Jennette’s words gave me a tiny bit of hope toward the thought that I really can shut those voices down, turn my ways of thinking around to be successful at this. She proved this to me with her next statement–one realized after gaining some of her weight back:

That’s why when I’ve gained a few pounds, I freak out a bit and feel like I should do something drastic, because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?! When really, I should just chill out, and get over myself. People don’t think of me half as often as I think they do, and people who judge me on my weight aren’t people I want to like me anyway. I should just get my slow burn on and take care of myself for my own sake, not because I want people I don’t know to like me. It’s so easy to make up a reason that I should be ashamed of my weight. At my thinnest, I worried I was still fat. Now that I’m fatter, I worry that I’m not thin. It’s got to stop. There’s no way to win.

What is it about losing weight and the interior thoughts that accompany our actions that lead us to believe we’re alone in this? Or that the world is against us? Or that everyone else judges us based on outward appearances? The worst part of feeling as though everyone sees me as a fat girl, not a great person, is that I don’t see that in other people. Sure, I tend to notice size but I don’t slap a judgmental label on someone. I love people for what’s inside–heart and character. That’s genuine–I really don’t judge people by their weight and looks. So why do I do it to myself? Even worse, why do I do it on behalf of others to myself?

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Happiness and the Ho-(Hos)

March 8th, 2010 · FoodLife

I sometimes think I have this weight problem thing backwards. From what I’ve seen in the movies, on TV and in books, it seems to me that women are most prone to eating tubs of Ben & Jerry’s followed by a dozen Jolly Pirates following a breakup of a relationship, a bad job review, a fight with a friend or a nagging phone call from mom. In essence, drowning their sorrows in a box of Twinkies.

Not me. I have the exact opposite problem. Bad news sends me into a welcomed tailspin of appetite suppression. Not even a fistful of Dexatrim has the same effect as finding out bad news or being publicly castigated or humiliated. When I fail at something, I succeed at losing weight. I just don’t care enough about food to eat.

On the flip side, when things are going well–like getting good news about a trip or selling an article to an editor or hearing from an old friend or having an earth-shattering conversation with someone important–I tend to run for the Ho-Ho Hills. I can’t find enough junk to stuff in the piehole (as my friend Lewis would say). These are the rare days I would make myself stop at the corner UDF or CVS or Walgreens and actually buy a candy bar, Coke and cupcakes (the holy trinity of sugar) to eat on the way home if I still did things like that. Now, I just scrounge around my writing reward shelf and scarf squares of raspberry dark chocolate.

Still, doesn’t this seem totally ass-backwards? If I’m depressed, shouldn’t I want to eat to bolster my confidence, my belief in mankind, my sinking heart? And if I’m happy, shouldn’t I just feel like dancing around in all that good energy? Of course I should but somewhere along the line my synaptic connections got all messed up. Maybe when I ate that box of cake mix as a teenager or when my sister and I made a secret donut run to the Valley General when the parents were gone.

It’s hard to tell why I’m backwards on this. What’s interesting is that the whole happy/depressed continuum is not a normal thing for me, food or not. If I’m happy about something, I’m reservedly happy. I have a very difficult time believing something is as good as I think, and I hold back in my celebration, knowing the other shoe will eventually drop. But if I’m depressed, nothing can stop me from sinking to the lowest of lows. When I’m sad, in other words, I hit a sort of low-high. Why is it easier to believe the bad stuff instead of the good?

Over the last few months I’ve hit, quite possibly, the lowest of the lows. The absolute low was on my son’s 18th birthday (not the birthday, the low just ironically happened on that day) and I truthfully think I lost about three pounds that week. I sustained myself on water and soup. Maybe a little bit of cereal and milk. I could barely even stomach those. Think about this: the kid wanted Golden Corral for his birthday dinner and I spent almost 50 bucks on the three of us and stomached half a plate of salad and a chicken wing. And I only ate a bite of the wing. If I could bottle that feeling of food hatred and revulsion, I’d be a bazillionaire.

I mention this because I notice my life (in regards to that issue) is improving and I notice myself unconsciously picking up bits and pieces of the junk that repulsed me for most of the last two months. While the pain those two incidents caused in the overall scheme of my life, by limiting my desire to eat, they also granted me some odd perspective I haven’t had before. I took the time to notice what was going in the piehole, and in many cases, ate only because I had to–which led me to make better choices. I don’t think there was a fast food day in there at all. Not even the interest of one, which doesn’t say much because I’m not a fast-food type of girl anymore. I wasn’t really an any-food kind of girl.

So now it’s back to pitting the mind against the urges. Sounds much more perverted than it is. All it comes down to is eliminating the junky garbagey-type stuff: a handful of jelly beans (which I don’t even like!) on my teaching assistant’s desk, a cookie in the teacher’s lounge, a bite of this or that while I’m making dinner. These are the little things that wrecked me in the past and got my ass into, at one time, size 18 jeans.

Never again. As God (and WordPress) is my witness, I’ll never inhale Ho-Hos again.

What is your emotional eating cycle? I’m really curious to know if anyone out there is a happy eater like me or if I’m just out in left field (not the first time nor the last). What sends you over the edge into a binge eating everything in sight? Happiness, sadness or a combination? A certain emotional trigger issue? A certain person or situation? I’m just curious here…

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Ten in 10 Weekly Update #9

March 8th, 2010 · Ten in 10 Challenge

One more week, huh? Not bad. All in all, a good experience, but with tweaks could be much better. Ah, well. That’s the point. Improve little by little to get where you’re going…

This week had a little bit more depression in it again so I ended up losing via just not eating. But the sun’s been shining full-strength here in Ohio the last three days and I didn’t see snow in the forecast. Things are looking up! (But being depressed *is* a good appetite suppressant LOL).

No fries or pop

No fries–easy. No pop…well, I had two Jack & Cokes with my brother yesterday at Grandma’s 80th birthday party. So the pop was there but I consider it a necessary evil. I could have had diet, but grandma only turns 80 once…

Walking the Dogger

Much to her pleasure, dogger got two walks this week. I’m going to shoot for three walks this upcoming week. I don’t know what my schedule holds–haven’t looked it over–so we’ll play it safe with the anticipation of doing more if it’s feasible. It’s so nice to see sidewalks.

30 Minutes of Workouts 5/7 days

According to my newly refreshed sticker calendar, I worked out four days. Not bad. I’ll take that. This week I’m really shooting for five since I’ll be heading to Vegas on the 20th. Of course I won’t lose much between now and then, but I do want to go into it just plain feeling good. Not good enough to take a swimsuit but good enough.

Yoga/Meditation

I did do a yoga session this week and felt all the better for it. I also did a short meditation. Ya gotta start somewhere. And last night I perused the weekly yoga class schedule from my favorite studio thinking I might take a class a week. You never know. Spring is in the air.

Next week is the finale for this ten week session and I hope to leave it with a bang. Of course, that means I’ll start the next one with a bigger bang. Looking forward to new goals and more weight loss…

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