Cara's Weightloss Journal

Well, today was weigh in…

Didn’t do so good—according to the scale!

Gained 1 pound.

However, and this is a triumphant “however”, I am not upset in the least little teeny tiny bit!

I HAD A GREAT WEEK!

• I ate truly healthy—no cheating.
• I exercised every day—yes every day.
• I didn’t depend on the scale to tell me how I was doing—wow, was that hard!
• I drank tons of water every day—I think I can swim, now, without being in a pool.
• I exercised much more than I ever have—added two new regiments to my routine.
• I resisted extremely tempting food—twice.
• My cravings changed from wanting junky food to craving healthy food—never thought that would happen, seriously!

And most importantly, I feel great!

You know, if you look at the list above, for just one of these things to have happen to me last week would be a triumph. But to have all of them happen, is monumental! I really feel like I’ve turned the corner in my weight loss.

Sure, I’ve made changes in my weight loss program over the last 18 months by changing my habits or changing my regiment and I’ve seen some amazing outcomes. But this one is different. I no longer want to be a slave to the scale. Now I totally get why Scale Junkie only weighs herself 2 or 3 times a year. I don’t think I could dare go that long in between weigh ins. Maybe some day I’ll be able to. But for now, not weighing myself at home is so incredibly liberating. I totally feel like a new woman.

I’ve really been noticing changes in my body and my life, lately. And I’m so happy with myself.

I remember feeling so embarrassed when I’d go to the grocery store or a restaurant. I was so fat and being in a place where they sold food was like saying to the world “look out, here comes fatty, fatty two by four, she’s going to eat all of the food in this place”.

Now… It’s so cool. I walk around with my head held high. I’m so proud of my new body. I’m even getting the feelings back that there might actually be a man out there that would look at me and say to himself “wow, she’s hot”. Can you believe that?! I used to want to hide my head in the sand and now look at me.

I started in a size 26/28. I’m in a 12/14 now. I’ve lost a total of 93.4 pounds.

Side note: You might notice the Healthy You Challenge badge on the right side of my blog that says I’ve lost 95 pounds. Well, I did, a few weeks ago. Well, actually a little over a month ago. I’d lost 96.2 pounds as of Oct 18th. Then I hit my proverbial brick wall. Things just started to fall apart for me. I’ve never unraveled like this before. I knew I’d make it through, because my glass is always half full, but I didn’t know how. But I think I’ve made it through and I think I’m going to be okay.

Anyways, 93.4 pounds is amazing! I’m so proud of it! I sometimes still can’t believe I’d done it. Sure, I still have about 35+ pounds I want to lose, but I’m not obsessing over it any more. When it happens it’ll happen.

I was watching a show, tonight, about these ladies who had gastric bypass surgery and how much weight they’d lost. One lady in particular was so amazing. She’d lost 180 pounds. And you should see her. She looked amazing! She’s a hard body, now. She actually teaches people at the gym, now, about how to exercise and eat better to lose the weight. She works with obese people mostly. And it was so amazing seeing her work with these women who I can (and she can) totally and wholly identify with. We know their shame. We know their pain. We have been through it. I said to myself, I want to be just like her some day. And at first, I meant my body. I want to be a hard body just like her. But I think I want to be more than that. I want to be an inspiration to all those women out there who are just like I used to be. I want them to know that they can do it. They can. I did.

My husband is sitting next to me at his computer playing the guitar (reading the music online) and he’s playing The River by Garth Brooks. Wow, how appropriate! It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the lyrics. It’s like he’s playing the sound track to my life right now. Listen to this verse…

You know a dream is like a river
Ever changin’ as it flows
And a dreamer’s just a vessel
That must follow where it goes
Trying to learn from what’s behind you
And never knowing what’s in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores…

My dream is to be a whole and happy person again. I’m learning from what’s behind me. I don’t know what’s in store for me. And each day is a constant battle. But I will sail my vessel until the river runs dry. Until I make it through and reach my destination.

That being said, one journey comes to an end today. Today is the end of the 18 Pounds in 18 Weeks challenge that I started last July. I had hoped to lose a total of 100 pounds by Thanksgiving so I could sit down to Thanksgiving dinner and be thankful for losing it all. Alas, I did not meet the challenge. But I gave it my all. And I’m not sad that I didn’t make it. I am astounded that I’ve made it as far as I have.

Some of you came along with me on my journey to lose 18 pounds in 18 weeks and I want to honor you and your efforts today. Some of you have gained and some have not lost as much as they wanted to (welcome to the same boat I’m in). But we did try. We did persevere. And here’s to you…

Mary Fran gained 14 pounds. Please don’t be down on yourself for this. You’re still in it. That’s what counts. If you’d given up, that’d be a different story, but you’re still here and going strong.

Karyn lost 10.4 pounds. Way to go Karyn. I’m so proud of you. Quite an accomplishment!

Katschi has lost at least 15 pounds. She doesn’t know for sure if that’s her total loss since the start of the challenge, because she accidentally deleted her blog and doesn’t have the records. :( Still 15 pounds is impressive in only 3 weeks! You’re such an inspiration for me!

Donna has lost a total of 8 pounds. Not bad considering what’s been going on in her life lately. She completely dropped off the blogsphere for two months. But she’s back now! Yea!

Cathy lost a total of 8.6 pounds. (She doesn’t have a blog.) She even lost 2 pounds just this past week so she’s doing awesome!

Spunky Suzi has lost 13.6 pounds. She’s going strong. I love following her food blog!

There are one other member of the challenge who I haven’t heard from as to how much she’s lost. But I want to mention her here, because she deserve the attention just like the rest of us. So here’s to Bento Diet — the last she logged in with me, she’d lost 5.5 pounds.

And then there’s me. I lost a total of 10.4 pounds. Not quite what I had hoped for. But that’s 10 pounds more than I had lost before July, right? That’s 10 pounds that I’m not carrying on my body any more. Be happy, Cara!

Great job, girls! We did it! The challenge is over and we’re so much better for it. Even if we gained more than we wanted or didn’t lose as much as we wanted, we’re still in this and we’re still going strong. Together we’ll make it all the way to the end!

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I am so sore!

That workout yesterday morning really did me in. I can’t believe it! Jillian kicked my butt! — Literally!

My legs and butt and arms are so sore. I had no idea. It really looked like an easy workout.

I went walking last night. Took the dogs around the block 4 times. That’s a little over a mile and a half altogether. Half hour at a leisurely pace.

I have two dogs, one is an 8-year-old Chihuahua and the other is a 2 1/2 year old shepherd/lab mix (rescue animal)—Emma.

When we first got Emma, she was very sick. We didn’t know it at the time, but she had distemper. It totally freaked me out because I’d always heard that dogs who got distemper died—there was no cure. Well, there is no cure for it, actually. We found out that the only treatment for it is antibiotics. We took her to the vet, 2 days after we got her, and the vet immediately put her on antibiotics. She seemed to get better, for a day, but then she got worse again. So we took her back and they tried different antibiotics. They didn’t work either. So we took her back and they “admitted” her into “puppy hospital” where she stayed for a few days so they could give her intravenous antibiotics.

That seemed to do the trick, but there were some side effects from each of the antibiotics. Things like, she’ll go blind when she gets older, she’ll have hip problems and a couple of others and the one that is a problem now, is the pads on her feet are extremely thin.

She’s the toughest dog I’ve ever seen, you can do anything to her and she tolerates it and never whimpers or shows any kind of pain (no I haven’t inflicted pain on her intentionally, but on accident things happen). So when she’s out walking, her paws get raw (they’ll even bleed if she walks for too long). But she won’t tell us. She just keeps walking and wagging her tail and having a blast. So she can only go once around the block with us then she gets dropped off at the house and her “big” brother (ha ha, he’s a 10-pound dog and she’s 85 pounds, but he’s big brother to her) gets to go around another 3 laps.

He needs the exercise the worse. He’s supposed to be 9 pounds and he’s one pound too heavy. But we’re working on that. He’s working on his first 10% :]

I posted her blog entries, from her MySpace page, if you want to read some really cute stories about her illness. They’re written from her perspective… Here.

So, anyways, I’m still extremely sore, but I haven’t let that slow me down. Walking every night for 30 minutes and walking with the girls 2 days this week for an hour. I’m going to try another workout tomorrow morning, but this one will be level 1. Although I know I won’t be able to do much, I know I do need to keep exercising.

Eating has been going great, too. I bought some fresh baby spinach at the store yesterday and cooked that with some grilled chicken (with onions and peppers). Was very yummy. I’ve never cooked fresh spinach before. I didn’t even know how to cook it. I had to look it up online. Ends up its about the easiest thing in the world to cook.

Thanks for all of your responses about the 18 Pounds in 18 Weeks challenge. I’ll post everyone’s final weights this weekend after my last weigh in.

Still no scale this morning. It’s driving me crazy!

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I found something wonderful this morning! I found this channel called “Exercise TV” on my cable. I had no idea it was there. I’ve never seen it. It’s ALL exercise videos!

I can’t ride my bike out because its in the upper 30s in the mornings so I need to find something I can do inside. I only have Billy Banks’ Cardio Circuit Tae Bo video. It’s a great workout, but I’m kinda getting tired of it.

So this morning, I chose Jilian Michaels. I’m a die-hard Biggest Loser fanatic! Bob Harber has a workout on there too. I’ll do his next. I can’t make up my mind which trainer I like the best, but I lean more towards Bob because he works alot with yoga and relaxation, which, face it girls, we need a lot of—relaxation!

So anyway, I did her 30-Day Shred workout. It was level 2. I missed level 1 somehow. It was 20-minutes of hell! Man am I TIRED!!!

I previewed the video before I started and it didn’t look very hard at all. Man was that deceiving! I worked my butt off!

I feel real good! This is the first “real” exercise I’ve done in weeks. Sure, I walk every Tues & Thurs mornings for an hour, but that’s more medium/low-intensity cardio. This was a great change.

Now I’ll just have to see if I can get my lazy butt out of bed on Friday to do a different work out.

I’ve had a really great week since I’ve decided to stop beating myself up about not losing like I want to. I’ve actually done some really cool things this week:

• I only ate ONE piece of pizza when the family ordered a large pizza from Pizza Hut (my favorite pizza place on the planet!). It was loaded with everything I like. But I said I could only eat one piece and I told them I couldn’t order it. I figured I didn’t want to be the catalyst to bringing pizza into the house. And I stuck to my guns … ONLY HAD ONE PIECE!

• Then a day before yesterday, we had a coupon to a local restaurant (35% off!) so I met hubby after work and I was running a bit late. So he ordered an appetizer. POTATO SKINS!!! I couldn’t believe it when I sat down and saw those awesomely scrumptious delights sitting there waiting on me! And loads of sour cream too! … I DID NOT EAT ONE OF THEM!

• Then, I decided to try not weighing myself this week, at all. Well, the week started off rough, because I weighed myself Monday because I just couldn’t not do it! Then I talked to hubby about it that night and he said he’d hide the scale for me. (Isn’t he mister wonderful?!) So, perfect! I wouldn’t have to even see the scales so I won’t be tempted. Well, Tuesday morning came and the scales were still there. … so I weighed myself. … I have no restraint. None! … This morning when I got into the bathroom, you’ll never guess… the scales were gone! Woo hoo! I’m free! It actually feels liberating right now. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the week, but for now … I DID NOT WEIGH MYSELF THIS MORNING!

• I’ve also been drinking more water. That’s been a struggle of mine for soooooo long. Some experts say you should have 8 glasses a day. Some say, take your weight and divide it in half and that’s how many ounces you should be drinking each day. Well, for me, that’s about the same. So I’ve been trying to drink 5 bottles (16 ounces or .5L) a day … YESTERDAY, I HAD ALL FIVE BOTTLES!

• Oh, and I’ve walked for 30 minutes every night this week. This is in addition to my regular exercise routine. I still exercise and walk in the mornings for an hour. But this is a new addition. The nights have been so wonderful and I figured the dogs could use the exercise. So every night after dinner, I’ve been taking them out for a half hour walk around the neighborhood. I know that’s helping with my digestion and keeping my metabolism reved up. So here’s to … WALKING FOR 30 MINUTES EACH NIGHT!

I’ve also been making extremely healthy choices for my food. I’ve been reading Tosca Reno‘s Eat Clean Diet book and getting some great ideas for the types of foods that will hype my metabolism and will make me feel fuller longer and feed my body with the proper nutrients.

Yesterday, for breakfast, I had 3/4 cup steel cut oats with a half a cup of pumpkin, a tablespoon of honey, a shake of pumpkin pie spice and 2 tablespoons of dried cranberries. It was like a sweet Thanksgiving treat! Was so yummy!

I’ve made very smart choices this week for my food. So far, this “break” is going great.

By the way, this is the last week for the 18 Pounds in 18 Weeks challenge and I didn’t want to ignore you guys that are still on the challenge. I would love to hear what you guys have lost since the challenge started on July 12th. I’m sure everyone else here would love to hear also. So, let me know: Karyn, Katschi, MaryFran, Donna, Spunky Suzi and Bento Diet, Cathy. Even if it’s a loss or a break even or even if it’s one pound, we should be proud of our efforts. So please let me know so I can post a final post this weekend with our final results.

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I really hate that I haven’t been blogging that much lately. I think my problem is that when I don’t blog for a while, I write a really long blog. I think I need to get into the habit of writing short blogs, that way they’re not so intimidating and I’ll do them more often. I just don’t have time to sit down and blog very much lately.

But I know I must. That’s the only way I’ll keep myself on track and keep losing. You guys are such a huge help for me to keep on track! THANKS!

Weigh in was today. I lost 4 pounds! I’m so happy. After gaining 2 pounds last week, I really needed this big loss.

I worked hard for it, too. I rode my bike both Saturday and Sunday of last weekend. I didn’t ride my bike or walk on Monday and Tuesday because I was having bad dizzy spells. Probably vertigo. I would sit up and my head would just spin and spin like I had just spun myself around 50 times. I just held on for the ride until it stopped. Then I was extremely light headed in between dizzy spells. If finally went away Tuesday by lunch time. So I went biking Wednesday and walking on Thursday. Then, UGH!, it was raining Friday morning so I couldn’t go biking. But at least I did get those two extra days in of biking over the weekend so that helped alot, I’m sure.

I stuck to the basics—high protein, high fiber, veggies, fruits, dairy, and not snacks or indulgences at all.

Here’s my favorite day of eating that’ll help me lose up to a pound a day:

Breakfast: (3 points)
1 cup Kashi Go Lean cereal
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk

Lunch: (3 points)
1/2 cup pinto beans
chopped onion
1/2 cornbread muffin

Snack: (3 points)
South Beach Protein Cereal Bar

Dinner: (6 points)
3 cups mixed fresh fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries, pineapples, honey dew melon, or whatever else I can find on sale in the produce isle)
1/3 to 1/2 cup 2% sharp cheddar cheese (cut up into cubes)
All Bran baked crackers (herb & garlic)

Snack: (4.5 points)
1/2 cup fresh pineapple
1 cup low fat cottage cheese

By the way, I didn’t endulge on the powdered donuts. I won’t eat any until I reach my 100 pound victory. I know I’m not supposed to set food as a reward for losing weight, but this is the exception.

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“18 Pounds in 18 Weeks”

Challenge Update! -
Week Eight (updates in bold below)

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Well, folks, I gained 2 POUNDS this past week. :,,[

Oh my gosh, I hate weight loss!

I’m so tired of sacrificing. I’m so tired of denial. I’m so tired of being so “dedicated” to it all. I just want to be 30 pounds lighter (excuse me, that’s 32 pounds, now).

I think I might have to step up my game, now. My usual bag of tricks have stopped working.

Last week, I counted my points and only ate about half of my flex points. I exercised 4 days—biked for an hour 3 times and then walked for an hour once. But here was my problem… Last Saturday, we went to Aunt Edris’ birthday party and I ate real food (home baked macaroni and cheese, smoked ham (not light), potato salad (real mayo), deviled eggs (mmmmm)) and I had a huge piece of birthday cake (of course the corner piece) and then a piece of chocolate cream pie. So when I weighed myself Sunday morning, I was up 2 pounds. Then, instead of getting back on track, we went out to breakfast before church and I got a real breakfast (sausage patty, egg beater omelet (with cheese) home fries (with grilled onions and peppers) and a huge piece of wheat toast with real butter and jam—the kind where the first ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup!). I was back on plan after that meal, though, but it didn’t do any good because when I weighed myself Monday morning I was up another pound.

Then I couldn’t get those 3 pounds off all week. Not until Friday when I finally dropped one pound.

So this weekend, I’m not splurging. I think I’m going to have to go die hard (ugh, I hate the sound of that). Because if I don’t, I’m not going to make my 100 pound goal by Thanksgiving. Now I have 9 pounds to go and only 8 weigh ins left. So I’m behind the eight ball again.

I went biking yesterday. Though it was a leisure ride with my daughter, it was still exercise. I’m going to go again today. I’m trying to talk hubby into going with me, but if he doesn’t go, I’ll go by myself. I’m going to exercise 7 days this week. And so far, I haven’t eaten any of my flex points. Yesterday I had a half a point left over. Today I’m doing good so far. We went out for breakfast again this week before church, but this time I was sensible. I had an egg beater, veggie omelet (no cheese) with oatmeal and wheat toast. The whole meal was 11 points (mainly because I had to use real butter and jam on my one piece of toast and real milk in my coffee and oatmeal).

I’ve already decided what my “congratulations splurge” food item will be when I hit 100 pounds—
a whole bag of powdered donuts (I’m sure I’ll puke). These things have been haunting me for the past several months. I’m not usually a big fan of powdered donuts but I think because I haven’t had any in a year and a half they’re looking so good right now. I keep seeing them in the store EVERY TIME I go. It’s like they’re hiding just around the corner of every isle just waiting for me to pass buy so they can jump out in front of me and try to trip me. Most times, they don’t actually trip me, but a couple of times, they’ve actually slapped me across the face. Don’t they just look heavenly.

This past weekend in my WW meeting, the leader (we had a sub this week) was talking about denying ourselves of food—like on the “fad diets” and how it’s not good to do because you’ll end up binging. (On a side note, any weight loss program that tells me I can’t eat what I want to is considered a diet to me. I mean, I get the whole “lifestyle” thing, but seriously, a diet means—you can’t eat this or that. And on WW, I can’t eat all the powdered donuts I want. That’s a diet to me.) But anyways, here’s my problem… I don’t know how to eat these donuts without overeating. See, here’s the problem. They come in a bag. There’s like 50 of them in a bag (or 30 or however many there are). So say I was to buy the bag and only eat one—which I seriously think I could do. Then there are 49 more of them just glaring at me through the little cellophane window—EAT ME!!! Can you hear them? I can. And I know that the next day I’d have one. Then maybe another one in the afternoon. And many one more before dinner. They’d probably all be gone before the end of the third day in the house. I just don’t see how I can satisfy my craving without overeating.

I thought about going to Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme and getting one powdered donut. But, oh my gosh, there’s no way I could even step one foot inside one of those places. I know I’d totally lose it and get just one more and maybe another one and before I left would have a whole dozen and have eaten half of them on the way home. I can’t be trusted in a donut shop, that’s for sure.

So I’ll resign myself to setting that as my 100 pound goal and keep dreaming of that day.

Until then, sacrifice, deny, and under-indulge in EVERYTHING.

Oh, hey, I just found a link to Rocco’s recipes from a couple of weeks ago on The Biggest Loser. Check these out. I’m definitely trying the Chicken Alfredo. You know how long it’s been since I had Alfredo sauce?? I can’t even remember!

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“18 Pounds in 18 Weeks”

Challenge Update! -
Week Eight (updates in bold below)

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