Cara's Weightloss Journal

Okay, so who likes yogurt?

• Antioxidant vitamins A and E (now with 20% of your recommended daily value)
• A blend of probiotic cultures & fiber (3 grams of fiber per 4-ounce serving) for digestive health
• Calcium and vitamin D for bone health

Each 4 oz container was only 2 points. It had 3 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein, so it made a wonderful afternoon snack. It tied me over quite well ’til dinner.

I can’t remember the last time I blogged twice in one day. But this one was important to me.

I had something happen this week that’s shook me up a bit.

Before I get into it, I want to explain what I mean by “transparency”. In my weight loss journey, I’ve learned that it helps me, and the people going along the journey with me, if I’m as honest and open as possible. It helps me learn things about myself and it helps others identify with my journey so they can grow in theirs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “that really inspired me” or “thanks for being so vulnerable, I can totally relate” or “your honesty has helped me work out my own issues”, etc. So I’ve tried to be as transparent as possible in every walk of my life, not in just blogging. No holding anything back.

Well, it backfired a bit on me this past week.

You might know that I’m an avid Twitter-er. I tweet about absolutely everything. Conversations between me and my daughter. Comments on idiots driving in traffic. My favorite movies. I’ll pass along professional resources I’ve found. Jokes. Funny thoughts that pop into my head. Bible verses. My struggles with weight loss from hour to hour. Stuff like that.

Well, So last weekend I just finished watching Breaking Bad and I was twittering about the show when I came across a comment Wil Wheaton had made that I thought was hilarious. First, if you don’t know who Wil Wheaton is, he played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was the highly intelligent, geeky teenage son of the doctor. And in case you’re not familiar with Breaking Bad, it’s a new series staring Bryan Cranston, who was the father on Malcolm in the Middle, who plays a high school chemistry teacher gone bad. In fact, he’s turned his knowledge of chemistry into manufacturing methamphetamines to raise quick cash to leave for his family as he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Okay, so Will Wheaton (geeky guy) says he loves Breaking Bad so much that he wants to guest star on it. So I commented back to him, retweeting his original comment, saying it would be hilarious to see him as a drug lord. Stop for a minute to picture that. … Well, I didn’t realize it at the time, but his original tweet had profanity in it. A pretty bad one, in my book (god-d**m).

One more bit of information that’s important to this story… I work for a Christian publisher and I state so in my twitter bio.

The next morning, someone had called me out on it and basically said ‘how dare you retweet profanity when you represent your employer”. I quickly apologized by saying I probably should have deleted the profanity before retweeting it but I’m human and I made a mistake. He didn’t like my response. He said I sounded flip and arrogant and was obviously not sorry at all. He demanded an apology. I told him I didn’t need to ask for his forgiveness, only God’s.

He kept on publicly berating me saying very mean things about me and my character. The thing that really shook me up is that he talked like he knew the owner of the company I work for and he threatened to call him if I didn’t apologize to his liking.

He went on for about a day and a half. All the while, I did not respond to any of his tweets. My silence only made him angrier and drew him to further outlandish conclusions. I still did not respond.

One thing he originally said was that he would have gladly direct messaged me (which only the 2 of us would have seen) but I didn’t follow him so he couldn’t. But I was following him. So my only conclusion was that he wanted this to be intentionally public.

So yesterday morning, I unfollowed him in an attempt to get him to leave me alone. He came back with a sharp comment saying something like ‘fine, if that’s the way you want to be, I’ll have to take a different approach’. That really spooked me. What was this “different approach”.

Everyone kept telling me he was a bully and to just ignore him. I did. But I made one last comment (3 tweets to him altogether). I told him I unfollowed him so hopefully he’d leave me alone.

Well, he didn’t. In fact, he threatened to call the owner of the company I work for and he called him by name.

My husband got involved last night and tweeted back and forth with him trying to get him to back off. That didn’t help. It just made him madder.

So you know what I had to do this morning? I had to go to the owner of the company and tell him my side of the story before this guy called him. I felt like a kid in school. The original offense was so lame and he (the owner) even asked me a couple of times “what does this have to do with me”. I had to tell him that it doesn’t, it’s stupid. But I just wanted to bring it to his attention before this guy did so he’d be prepared.

So by me being transparent and stating my employer in my bio, I feel like I have to watch what I do in my tweets, now. I don’t like being held back from being who I am. I’m not saying I condone cussing. In fact, I don’t cuss and I find it very offensive. But now I feel like I have to watch to make sure that what I tweet won’t offend the readers of the magazine I work on. I don’t like that. I am who I am.

And on top of that, I feel like he’s watching my every tweet just waiting for me to mess up. I think of him every time I tweet and wonder if he’s reading this one. I feel like I’m being watched. I don’t know how to get him out of my head. If feel violated almost. I just want my tweeting to be what it used to be… random and fun. Not cautious and precise.

P.S. I removed my the name of the company I work for from my twitter bio. I can’t wait until “he” finds out. I’m sure he’ll say something like “oh, so now you’re hiding who you work for… isn’t that a little like closing the barn door after the horse has run free?’. See, I feel so invaded.

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Weight Watcher’s this morning was nice. We talked about the Wizard of Oz story and how each of us have it inside of us to succeed, we just have to realize we’ve got it. Hubby went with me, which is always great. And Jen was there too. Jen is the woman I replaced at the job I’m at now. She left work to have her 2nd child. That was 3 years ago. Just a few months later, I started Weight Watchers and she was there, too. So we’ve been WW buds just about ever since. She met her lifetime about a year and a half ago. She only had 50 lbs to lose—I say “only” because of my 130 lbs that I have to lose to reach goal.

Anyway, Jen had quit coming to WW for the past few months. I was afraid she would start gaining it back, so I called her out on Facebook. Publicly guilting her into coming back. It worked, and she started coming again. It ends up she has gained almost 20 lbs back since she reached goal. I had no idea it was that much! I’m so glad she’s started coming back. I would hope that someone would do for me what I did for her if I ever started gaining my weight back again. Of course, I have to lose it first. :)

I tell you, I’ve been having SO much fun playing racquetball with my husband. I’m really quite bad at it, but considering I’ve only played it 3 times in my entire life (and those 3 times were last week), I think I’m doing pretty good. :]

Tomorrow morning, I’m going for another 15-mile run. I’ll take the same route as last Sunday. It was beautiful! I’ve already loaded up on carbs so my energy should be good. Weather.com says its supposed to be in the low 40s but it will feel like the mid-30s. So I’ll definitely dress warm and in layers. I won’t forget my hat and gloves this time. Last week was brutal! I’ll watch my water intake too so I don’t have that painful final 5 miles again. Live and learn.

So my marathon is a week from tomorrow. I can’t believe that this time next week I’ll be sitting in a hotel room dreading the next morning. I would LOVE to finish in less than 6 hours so I can get a picture of me crossing the finish line, but I know that’s unrealistic given my pace as of late. I just hope I can find the finish line once they tear it down after 6 hours.

I hope I get the marathon medal, too. It’s a beautiful Olympic-type ribbon medal (artists drawing of the medal shown here). It says on their website that “all finishers will receive a commemorative medal”. But I wonder if that means you have to finish before they tear down the finish line?

All these questions will be answered next Saturday when I check in and get my race packet and t-shirt.

So until then… Cara, stop stressing about things!!

Oh, and I lost 1.4 lbs at weigh in this morning!! Yay!!!

I’ve lost 1.4 lbs before SO many times. And I’ve lost these same 1.4 lbs SO many times before. I don’t want to lose these same 1.4 lbs ever again. I’m so tired of losing these same 1.4 lbs. I’ve got to get that in my head and get focused. I’m so sick of losing and losing and still being 20-30 lbs away from goal. It’s very tiring.

Oh, and one more thing… I won another case of Chobani yogurt. Can you believe that??!! I love LOVE Twitter!!

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I did something real weird this morning. I’m almost embarrassed to mention it. I think I’m going to come off sounding very bizarre and maybe even mental.

So, I told myself before I went to bed last night that I was going to get up and go running this morning. So I set my alarm clock for 5:30.

I actually got out of bed about 6:15. Getting up out of that warm, comfy, cozy bed is about the most impossible thing for me to do. I swung my feet over the side of the bed and sat up and said to myself ‘I do not want to go running’. But I got out of bed.

I went in and brushed my teeth and as I’m looking in the mirror I say ‘I do not want to go running’. I pull my hair back in a pony tail then walk over and start putting on my workout clothes. I stop and look at my sneakers and say ‘I do not want to go running’. I put my sneakers on.

I sit back down on the end of the bed. I contemplated just staying right there for the rest of the morning. I thought, who’d know, right? I’d be the only one who knew if I didn’t go running, right?

Then I stood up and walked to the kitchen and fixed a bowl of bran flakes with almond milk (quite a good combination for a pre-workout). I sit down on the love seat and eat my cereal while watching the Today Shoe. They’re talking about Tiger Woods again. Ugh! I’m so sick to death about hearing about that man’s problems. Why don’t they just leave him the heck alone!!!???

As I sit there eating my cereal, you guessed it, I said to myself ‘I do not want to go running’.

I put my empty bowl in the sink, grab my purse and iPod and head for the door. I tell hubby good bye and grab for the door knob. I say to myself ‘I do not want to go running.’ I hesitate for just a sec. Hubby asks me what’s up and I say ‘nothing’ and walk out.

I get in the car and drive to the gym. I arrive at the gym and have to park in the back of the lot because they’re a bit crowded. I turned the car off and picked up my iPod & cell phone and I look at the cell phone in my hand. It’s blinking. That means I have a tweet or an email waiting for me. So I unlock it and look to see who’s tweeting me. It was Ali Sweeney (of Biggest Loser and Days of Our Lives). Yea, she’s a twitter buddy, though I’m sure she doesn’t know me from Adam. But I like reading her tweets. She’s fun to follow.

I sit there in the car, after I’ve read all possible emails and tweets and I start starring at the people on the tread mill. ‘Look at them,’ I say, ‘Sure looks like an awful lot of effort’. I look at this one lady who’s younger than me and running faster than the rest of them. I think, ‘I wonder if I look like that when I’m running.’ But I stay sitting in the car watching the people exercise.

I sat there for about 10 minutes. I couldn’t find the will power to get out of the car and go work out. Seriously! I just sat there!

I never got out of the car.

After about 15 minutes, I guess it dawned on me that I was not going running so I turned the car back on and headed back home.

Can you believe that? I went through all that effort to get to the gym but I never got out of the car to actually exercise. Have you ever heard of anything so strange in your life?? I know I haven’t!

In fact, if I’d have read one of your blogs that you had done this, I think I’d think that something was a little “off” upstairs.

The thing of it is, I really did want to go running. I went for an 8-mile run on Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed it! I took Monday off because I pushed it a little too hard on Sunday. I was actually looking forward to getting out there again. Maybe it was the gym that was turning me off. I had even thought about going for a run once I got home from “not running” at the gym. I love running on the road SO much better than on a tread mill.

So there it is. I’m weird. I think I’m a little off my rocker. You agree?

Oh, speaking of Twitter. Check this out. I tweeted to Ali Vincent (the 1st female winner of Biggest Loser) about my 100 lb loss and how she inspired me to lose it and look what she tweeted back to me:

Can you believe that? How cook is that. Ali Vincent thinks I’m a rock star!!

Well, I gotta get off here because the Biggest Loser Finale is about to start. I can’t wait to see who wins. Would be SO cool if Amanda won!!

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I’m really liking Twittering my food. It’s so much quicker than using WW’s points tracker. I think it helps that I already know the points of the food I eat. I’ve been doing this for almost 2 years ya know.

I really like that it’s like jotting down a note. Real quick. Twit and then 2 seconds later I’m off to the next thing in my life. Then all I do is take 2 minutes at the end of my day to copy and paste the code from Roni‘s website to post it on mine.

Oh, and to answer MizFit‘s question, I set up a separate Twitter account that only I have the address for. The only way someone could find me is if they did a search for one of the words I twittered. I don’t have any followers and I won’t follow anyone on that account. To keep it as private as it can be on Twitter.

Enough about Twittering.

I didn’t run yesterday. No particular reason. I know I’m having a hard time finding the motivation. I had been hooked on running for quite a while. Now it’s hard to get out there. I always find something “more important” in my life that needs to be taken care of. Then it gets dark and it’s too late. I do want to go running tonight, though. I’m hoping I can find motivation for it. I have a new CD that I thoroughly enjoyed the last time I ran. I’m hoping it will motivate me to get out there. It’s great. It’s not my usual style of music, either. They’re an Israeli electronica group called Infected Mushroom. They’re supposedly really huge in Europe, but I’d never heard of them. I found them in a random tweet completely unrelated to what I was looking for.

I thought you guys might like to know that I’ve written a few articles on the new Fitago website. I’m trying my hand at writing. I’ve never done it professionally but I’ve always had a passion for it. I think that’s why I absolutely LOVE working for a publisher (though I’m in the graphics field). Fitago is a really cool website, too. It’s just started. I have to disclaim that my husband is the owner of the site. It’s a passion of his. He’s always wanted to have a website where people can come together and share their experiences with each other and grow from it all and become better individuals. So he’s channeled it into a fitness/health venue. Anyways, I didn’t want to do a blatant plug for his site, but I was proud of the articles I’d written so I thought I’d share that with you guys.

Oh, and I made these very yummy muffins last night. I’m so proud of the way they turned out. They’re whole wheat bran muffins. The recipe has real eggs, sugar, shortening and is still only 2 points each. Those nasty ingredients help it taste so rich and moist. Then the bran and whole wheat flour make it healthy and good for your heart and weight loss. Check out the recipe here if you want to try it out. I originally got the recipe from my mom. They’re absolutely fabulous!

So onward and upward. One day at a time. I’m staying on points. I’m not obsessing about my weight (well, not much). I’m trying to keep it all in perspective. I’m taking a deep breath. One step at a time. I’m gonna make it.

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