A Lot of Ifs, Ands, & Buts

Damn it, that was a rough weekend!  I'm finally feeling a bit better and am starting to graduate to real food again.  (The girls haven't gotten it... yet...)  Though I'm finding I'm having a particularly tough time trying to stay on track now.  I don't know if it was from how bad I felt, and how awful food was (never thought I'd say that), or if it's because my stomach shrank so much (why am I not EMBRACING this wonderful side effect???), or if it's because after I get sick I crave comfort foods and usually give in to meatball subs and french toast, or if it's because my rag is coming soon-ish, or what.  But it's really discouraging me.  I can't decide if I want to eat some comfort foods for a couple of days but just control my portions and see if I feel better and will get the appetite for better foods, or if I should just plug onward with broccoli for dinner and deal with the stomach ache.  I feel like if I ate comfort foods it might be like starting all over again even if I had portion control, kinda like a starving shark that catch a whif of fresh blood on the current and WHAMO! they're like a caged beast trying to escape with its life.

So yeah... I'm stuck and stressed and freaking out.  Only a little.  But I don't want to blow this.  I don't want to fall back into the fatass abyss like I always do.  And I understand that normal people can eat a 6" meatball sub and have no issue with it, even if they're not trying to lose weight.  Because they're starting low, if one meatball sub bloats them up a half a pound they'll lose it the next night with their typical veggie stir fry.

So what do I do?  Who knows.  But I think I'm going to have a meatball sub for dinner tonight; a small one, plain.  Because I'm finding that that which I truly crave is not substituted by consuming every other food in the house.  Ugh!  So far today I've eaten a banana, a PB&J, a handful of Baked Cheddar Ruffles, about 6 Russell Stover chocolates left over from Christmas, and just now about 1/2 cup of cherry pie filling with frozen fat free cool whip on it.  I TOLD you I'm losing all control!!!  And damn it if it isn't Aunt Flo's fault.  She's a dirty bitch.  I have about a week left of this PMS bullshit and I'm starting to wonder how much weight I can gain in a week.  Probably everything I've lost.  Because we ALL know it's a CINCH to gain weight, and a BITCH to get it off.

Regardless of all that shit, I've lost a total of 13 pounds.  My weight this morning was 263, which is AWESOME.  That's almost a pound a day, even with the wackiness of the flu and rehydrating.  My poop is almost solid again, which might help my body regulate better and use the food better.  I don't know if that's bullshit or not because I just made it up.  Sounds like a good theory, right?

Since I'm so far behind in blogging, I may try to catch up from this past weekend, I may not.  I don't want to be stressed about blogging or losing weight or changing my habits because I know myself and I know that being stressed and discouraged are my biggest pitfalls.  So I just have to change the way I look at things.  And if that means I don't get to go back in time and make 5 posts, then I don't.  I'd rather be unstressed, and posting current, and losing weight.  So we'll see how I feel.  Plus, I have the hankering to play with my sewing machine and I don't think I'd have time for that if I wanted to catch up blogging.  I didn't eat much anyway so I guess the posts would kinds be boring.  I mean, for you.

Much love,

Just Dropping in for a Sec... And a TMI Warning

Just wanted to update everyone that I am hella fucking disgustingly sick.  Like, sitting on the toilet with a bucket in my lap sick.  Well, I was yesterday, and I stopped puking around 2 AM, just around the time Holden started puking.  ::sigh::  I still have the runs, so I haven't eaten anything since yesterday morning's Bear Naked Triple Berry crunch, which I doubt I will be able to eat ever again after throwing it up for 14 hours straight.  In case you're wondering, throwing up granola is kind of like eating it - it has the same consistency either way.

So far today I've had 3 glasses of ginger ale, which I praise Allah for since I was so dehydrated last night I would have to get out of bed just to run my tongue under cold water in the bathroom until it felt wet again.  It was horrible.  Let alone that throwing up is my least favorite activity, next to holding spiders.

The "silver lining" to all this is that I dropped 11 pounds.  Overnight.  ELEVEN!!!  Holy shit.  I went from 265.5 yesterday morning to 254 this morning.  WOW.  No doubt I'll make most of it up, but hopefully I'll at least get a jump-start on next week's weight loss when I do start eating again.  It would be nice to start up at 254, since I haven't seen the 250's since the triplets were newborns.  But I know the best way to lose weight is the healthy way, and vomiting once an hour for 14 hours is not healthy.

I'm feeling a bit better and contemplating dinner, which is hard since I want to go straight for comfort food.  Hm.  Maybe some toast and some chicken noodle soup will be a good avenue to take, kinda not healthy, but still comfort food.  It's not like the waffles my kids are eating that I'm drooling over while my intestines make ungodly sounds.

Here's to feeling better tomorrow, and not having any more pukers in the house.  Please, God.  If you are out there, make my kids healthy.  I don't know if I can handle more throw up in one weekend.  Okay, I've used all the strength I had from the 5 crackers I ate an hour ago typing this, and I must be off.  Plus, I have to hit the bathroom.  Like, NOW.

Much love,

It's About Time!

I weighed in this morning at 267.5 (my scale only does 1/2 pound incraments, thank GOD), which is half a pound up from yesterday's 267.  BUT - what all of this really means is that I kicked 270 to the curb and will NEVER see it again!!!  HOORAY for teensey tiny milestones!!!

I don't know how I gained a half pound, since I was really, really good yesterday.  I was secretly hoping to get to 265, or at the very least hit the 10 pounds lost mark.  Oh well.  Tomorrow is another day, and who knows, with my wacky scale I could step on tomorrow and see those results, so long as I stay strong today.  (I'm picturing myself as a Rosie the Riveter type, except instead of showing off my guns I'm holding up a carrot.  HA!  I'm weird.)

It was a snow day yesterday, we got about 6" of snow, and Tony worked from home.  After seeing the scale yesterday morning I had a HUGE burst of motivation.  I had another bowl of Kashi Go Lean and my standard 3 cups of coffee.  I managed to not snack in the AM, thanks to the 18g of protein (or whatever the insane amount is) in the cereal, and the caffeine that kept me rolling.  Plus, catching up blogging all morning kept my hands and mind occupied so I wasn't tempted to eat out of boredom.

By the time lunch rolled around I was hungry.  I had a WW Smart Ones Ravioli Florentine meal, and it was really good.  It even resembled the picture on the box!  I don't know if it was just me or the meal was too light or what, but I was hungry all afternoon.  That sucked because it led to snacking, but I tried to keep my snacks healthy.  Around 3 o'clock I had about 10 Roasted Garlic Triscuts, 6 with cheddar cheese.  The cheese pieces weren't huge, they were about half the size of the cracker, but neither was low-fat.  Around 4:30 I was hungry again, and craving something sweet, so I grabbed a 100-Calorie Snack pack of Golden Oreo Mini-Cakesters and OMG were they ever FABOULOUS!!!!!  They tasted like tiny, dry, frosted vanilla cupcakes.  Mmmm.  Totally worth the money and the calories if you have a craving.

I fed the kids a ghetto supper while Tony plowed, so I didn't eat until later.  It was around 8:30 when I finally realised I didn't have dinner.  At least the cakesters kept me full, LOL!  I made a delicious Healthy Choice steam lunch meal, Garlic Herb Shrimp.  Since it was only 260 calories and I was craving spinach, I ate an entire package of frozen chopped spinach with it.  I added 2 tablespoons of butter, which I didn't think was too bad for an entire package, and salt, pepper and garlic powder.  The whole meal was totally filling and satisfying and I was pleasantly surprised by the Healthy Choice meal.  It smelled awesome, and was really yummy.  Very light and colorful and flavorful.  Like most frozen meals with shrimp, I felt the shrimp was overcooked and rubbery but it wasn't too too bad.

Beacause I ate late, and because it kept me nice and full, I didn't have a single snack all night.  It helped that I was watching Heavy, and just like Hoarders, I had no desire to eat while watching it.  The show was outstanding, and I found it as inspiring as I'd hoped.  I didn't like the whiney fat girl on the show, but I liked the trainers, the pace, and the information.  I didn't like the end, because I guess I was expecting more of an update like you get at the end of Intervention or Hoarders, and that wasn't really there.  But the show overall was good enough for me to want to save it on DVR so I could watch it again.  The more motivation I can find, the better, and I'll take every little drop I can!  I CAN do this!

Much love,

MLK Monday - And That Mother Fucking Scale

AGAIN.  271.5.  Are you fucking kidding???  One day, okay; it's a fluke.  Two days???  Has to be that I gained 3 pounds overnight.  DAMN IT!  The weekend was OBVIOUSLY a bust, so I had to commit to doing my very best on the weekdays to insure that a couple of minimal slip ups on the weekends wouldn't derail my progress as much as it had.  Taking two steps forward and one step back every week would take me AGES to get to my goal.  With that in mind I set my sights on eating like a rabbit so I could re-lose what I gained sooner than later.

I woke up sick.  Not totally deathly ill, but really run down and so congested that I went through a box of tissues in just the morning.  I blew my nose so many times it was raw and scratchy by lunch.  Not a great way to start the week.  Thank goodness Tony was home to kid wrangle because I wanted to do nothing more than to sleep the day away.  Breakfast was Kashi Go Lean, which tasted remarkably like cardboard, and resembled rabbit food and bird seed combined in one box.  It wasn't delish, but it did satisfy, and it kept me full all morning.  I goofed off for a couple of hours and then decided to shower and do some more laundry, and we decided we'd take the kids to McDonald's for dinner and to play in the Play Place.  I put away some stuff that was already on hangers, folded the little girls' jammies, and decided I couldn't handle it.  I took a quick shower and crashed into bed, sleeping for as long as I could.  I have no idea how long it actually was, but I woke up with the low-blood-sugar-shakes at 3:30, and three kids screaming, "McDonald's!!!" in my ear.  I gathered some clothes for the kids, got some pants on, made myself a PB&J to take the edge off of not having eaten since breakfast.  I didn't gob on either, and I made it on rye, so it was as healthy as I could toss together for something to take in the car.

We let the kids play for about an hour, maybe more, before making them eat.  They had Happy Meals, Tony had a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (which I realised is really just a Half Pounder with Cheese, and why didn't they just call it that?), and I had a salad.  It was the Bacon Ranch one, but again I went easy on the dressing.  I also got a hot cocoa, not a vanilla shake, made with skim milk and no chocolate.  Those fuckers were out of cocoa mix so they had to give me chocolate drizzle and mix it up, and it ended up not being very chocolaty at all.  Of course I snarfed a couple of fries from the kids' meals, but it was less than 10.  Not bad.

I managed to not snack at all because I schlepped around until just before 9 when I decided to go back to bed.  I was exhausted, and had no interest in ANYTHING at all, so I called it quits.  Being sick sucks.


Since I don't have any fun pictures, let's start talking goals.  I have several goals, several things driving me to finally lose the weight.  One of my main goals is to be able to put my wedding band and engagement ring on again.  I haven't been able to squeeze my fat fingers into either since I was about 2 months pregnant with the triplets.  Everyone asks why I haven't I just had them re-sized, and the answer is always the same: "I'm going to lose the weight."  I don't want them to stretch the gold and ruin the thickness, let alone the inscription.  But how long can I use the, "I'm going to lose the weight" excuse?  This year will mark Tony's and my 10th wedding anniversary.  Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to get them back on for that?  I think so.  Plus, I've been wearing these fake rings from Macy's for over 3 years now, and they're not nearly as beautiful as my real set.  So that's why I made Fitting Back Into my Rings one of my goals.  Here's the hysterical part... I think they're a size 6.5 and 6.75, and I was around 180 pounds, give or take, when I got them.  So I figure if I can get down to around 200 I should be able to get them on (and back off) without too much trouble.  We'll see.  But a goal is a goal and if it takes me getting to 180 to get them on, then God damn it I will.

Another really, really good reason I have for wanting to lose weight is my knees.  My knees have been FUCKED UP since I had the trio, so almost 3 years now, and I'm sick of it.  I can't kneel without pain and swelling for days afterwards, and forget crouching.  I crouched once in CVS to look at the make-up on the bottom of the wall and FELL OVER.  It was one of my most embarrassing moments.  I don't know if anyone saw, but I hope they didn't.  I literally got down half way, yelped - loudly, and fell onto my ass, my legs tangled up because my knees wouldn't bend.  And not only was it embarrassing, it hurt like HELL.  Oy.  I've gotten a few cortisone shots, which really help, but not long term.  And what I need is long term health for my knees.  I already have arthritis in the infancy stages on at least my left knee, and I don't want it progressing.  Since I'm already evolutionarily inferior with flat feet, my knees are meant to turn in.  Now that I'm so fat they aren't able to, and I think that a lot of the miniscus bruising I have is just from walking with too much weight on my legs.  My natural stride is no longer natural, and so it's forcing my knees to sit differently, and cause the pain.  (If you're interested at all, this program is wonderful, and taught me a lot: NGC's The Science of Obesity.)  Plus, I've read that for every 1 pound of weight you lose, you take 4 pounds of pressure off your knees.  That would mean if I can lose the full 75 pounds of weight, that would relieve 300 - THREE HUNDRED! - pounds of pressure of my knees with EVERY step.  No wonder my knees are so fucked up.  So that's why I made My Knee Health one of my goals.

I'll go over more goals another day.  Right now I have the Heavy premiere on DVR that I am dying to see.  I have a feeling it will be a super motivator, and I am really, really excited to watch it.

Much love,

The Dreaded Weekend: Sunday #1

Sunday was a good day, or so I thought.  I woke up and weighed myself, and to my shock and surprise, the scale sneered a nasty 271.5 at me.  Fuck.  There goes my milestone.  Oh well, it's only one day, and who knows what happened.  Maybe it was all that salad that had yet to leave, maybe it was eating a 1/3 of a pan of brownies, no matter how low-fat they were.  Maybe I was retaining water, and my rag was looming.  Who the fuck knew.  It was one day, so I decided to be better, and chalk it up to it'll wash out next time.

Breakfast was more Blueberry Special K, as I'm trying to eat up the box.  (Hahaha, I said I eat box.)  Nothing new to report there.  It was the same as it ever is, though Tony took this picture for me, so I didn't forget.  Or something.

I was hungry by mid-morning so I ate a delicious, juicy, ripe-but-not-over-ripe pear.  The kids had Nilla Wafers for snack, and I surprised myself by not instinctively throwing the crumbs and leftover pieces into my mouth as I handed them out.  I tossed them right back into the box like it was something I always did.  Holy shit, my habits ARE changing!  And it's only been a week.  Niiiice.

For lunch, I gave the kids each their own delicious, juicy, ripe-but-not-over-ripe pear, two pretzel rods each, plus a Stoneyfield Farm yogurt.  While they were eating I ate two pretzel rods of my own, and then I made myself lunch, a feast of eggs (my standard two whites + one whole) sans cheese, so I could kinda justify the sausage links I found in the freezer, and two pieces of rye toast.  It was obviously Tony approved; or maybe he just likes to photobomb.  Here's a secret: hot buttered bread is a weakness of mine.  I once ate so much toast in a period of time that I gave myself a yeast infection.  Gross, but true.  I could eat rye toast every day.  The good news is that I used to have 4 slices, with 3 whole eggs.  So I'm making progress.  I had some OJ because Holden had a sniffle and I felt kind of run down, so I thought the OJ would not only compliment my breakfast-for-lunch treat, but also help boost my vitamin C.  It was awesome, but I did regret eating the sausage so I learned that sausage, as delicious as it is, is not worth the guilt.  Bacon may be.  But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I skipped snack since a) I was totally full from my huge awesome lunch, and b) since I was really busy diving into countless piles and baskets of laundry.  Next thing I know, Tony is calling me down for supper!  I managed to get the laundry sorted, and about half of the laundry hung and put away, plus all the towels and sheets.  I also vacuumed our bedroom and cleaned the bathroom floors, vanity, and toilet.  Your mess is all gone now, Katy.  Then I went down and ate with the family, shake-n-bake chicken, which I took the smallest breast of, green beans, and noodles.  I took a little more than I think I should have, but managed to not eat it all, so that's kinda good.  And it was yummers.

That night I watched two episodes of Hoarders on DVR while Tony set up his PC in the living room on the new desk.  And I ate a Hershey bar.  Another guilty decision.  I could have eaten half of it and called it good, a naughty snack, but noooooo.  I had to destroy the entire thing.  Fucking chocolate.  Why is it so good???  I managed to eat it slowly, and enjoy it.  I broke the bar into the little bars, and would bite half the little bar, put the other half DOWN, and suck on what was in my mouth until it was gone.  I repeated the process about 10 too many times though.  Damn it.  So instead of succumbing to the desire to eat more, I went to bed.  Good strategy.

Much love,

The Dreaded Weekend: Saturday #1

I kind of got behind in blogging on a daily basis, which threw off my entire thought process. With Tony home from work and a day planned with my BFF HungryGirl, I skipped posting Friday's events on Saturday morning. Then Sunday came around and we had ridiculous amounts of chores to do, and I skipped posting Saturday, but managed to squeeze out Friday. Then Monday Tony was home but I fell ill - again - to a cold, and was too sick and lazy to put any effort forth and skipped posting. Again. So now here it is Tuesday morning, and I have THREE days to blog. Ugh. I will try not to make this mistake again. It sucks. I've also forgotten the finer details of the day-to-day rigamoro of dieting, so I'll do my best to fill you in but can't make any promises of deep thoughts or affirmations.

I dread the weekends when I'm dieting. I think everyone does. I have 4 kids and a husband who eat whatever they want. I have snacks and poor choices all around me. I have to struggle to stay on track. I have to struggle to not eat Cap'n Crunch with the kids. And Nilla Wafers. And chicken nuggets. And my oh my, the snacks! On weekend nights we tend to take more liberties with our eating, and stay up later, so we get hugrier, and get more munchies. ;) This Saturday was no different. I managed to not eat too horribly, but my choices certainly didn't pay off on the scale.

I woke up and weighed myself, excited to have hit a teeny tiny milestone: I was UNDER 270 pounds!!!  I weighed in at 269, and was super stoked, and proud.  So it was my intention to stay on track so I could get even more off.  Saturday's breakfast consisted of Blueberry Special K scarfed down at the last minute when I realised I hadn't eaten but should.  It was right as I was getting ready to shower and take off, because I had a play date with Yellie at her house all day.  Hooray!!!

I got to Danielle's sometime after noon, and we decided we were hungry so like any BFFs spending the day together, we made brownies.  We decided to skip an actual lunch though, and just eat the brownies to help our caloric intake stay down.  Heh.  In our defense, they were No Pudge brownies, and they were WAAAAYYYY more delicious than I remembered them being 6 years ago, or the last time I tried them.  I will definitely make them again.  Mmmmm.... fudgey.  Though I had to laugh that the serving size was 1/12th of an 8x8 pan.  Pft.  An 8x8 pan is basically 4 servings, duh.  Or at least, that's what I USED to think.  Now in my new reality I'm forced to face the fact that a 1x2 serving is normal.  Even for fat-free brownies.  Boo!  And like any fat girls (even though Yellie is FAR from fat, she's actually completely normal, if not perfectly proportioned, but she loves food as much as any fat girl loves cake), we put whipped cream on our 1/4 of a pan of brownies.  Because it was lunch, duh.  I also had a beer, which was YUMMY, and another smaller serving of brownie, ya know, for snack, before I left to go home.

On the way home I stopped to pick up a Santa Fe chicken salad from Applebee's (which, I found, has only 672 calories, but 47!!!! grams of fat - oy!).  I opted for grilled chicken over fried, and only used about half the dressing, then completely ate the whole salad.  I was craving salad, and it was SO good.  Then, like any good dieter who spent the day playing Kinect with her BFF, I passed out on the couch virtually as soon as Tony took Gwen off it for bed.  That was about 8:30.  I went up to bed at 11:30 and slept straight through.  Ahhhhh!  What a good Saturday it was!

Much love,

Days 5 - Friday

Friday was a good day where I felt like I was getting back on track. I weighed in that morning at 270, the exact same as yesterday. Hey, at least I didn't gain. Heh. It was a standard day at home, in which I did simple chores like scream at my kids, laundry, tidying up, and chasing kids. So all in all, it wasn't a bad day at all.

I started out with a bowl of Special K Blueberry cereal. I love this stuff. It's not as good as Blueberry Morning, but Blueberry Morning's blueberries get stuck in my teeth as they reconstitute, so that's kind of annoying. Plus, the Special K has little chunks of granola, and we all know how I feel about granola at this point. 

 
My mom stopped by after a job interview and we had a nice little chat for about an hour before she took off to go grocery shopping, and before all the kids saw her and she had no chance for escape. It was super convenient that I had some of her gluten-free food in the freezer that she left here on Thanksgiving, because I was able to offer her lunch and a cup of hot tea. I had a WW Smart Ones, the tuna casserole, which was fairly great. Besides missing the toasted crumb topping (Well, it wasn't missing, it was stirred in at the half-way-stir-the-entree directive; which leads me to ask, "Why put it on there, only to have to stir it in???" Why not set a tiny cup of breadcrumbs into the dish, that can be removed before cooking and applied to the top afterwards? I don't know how some of these marketing people keep their jobs.), it was just like on the package, and a lot yummier than I anticipated. So lunch was good all around!



MM Stock Photo - Steak & Cheese Pizza



Friday night Tony copped an attitude out of nowhere, which caused us to fight. We fight fairly infrequently, maybe every few months. But when we do it's usually pretty bad. So that had me in a lousy mood, and when I sat down to dinner I did what any pissed off woman would do... I had 2 slices of leftover pizza. I regretted it shortly after eating it, but ah well. I can't beat myself up over it; old habits die hard, and as I find myself in situations where I used to reach for food for comfort or company, it is going to be particularly hard to NOT do what I would have done the last 30 years. SO I cut my losses and went to bed to play Angry Birds in the dark, which left me passed out after about 15 minutes. Not exactly healthy, but it is what happened. ::sigh::

That's it.  Like I said, Friday was pretty boring, but I guess that's a good thing in the diet world.  Heh.

Much love,

Day 4

Thursday was such a clusterfuck that I am glad I didn't gain weight.  Jesus Christ!  What a circus!  The day started off early, with my having to get my ass out of bed and showered.  I hate showering.  It's a lot of work.  Am I gross?  Yes.  Am I lazy?  Yes.  These are well established facts.  So I hate showering.  It's a pain in the ass.  But I got up, showered, dressed, and got the kids clean clothes to wear out of the house instead of pajamas so we could all pile in and go to Holden and Nora's preschool evaluation.

For breakfast I had 3 eggs, 2 white + 1 whole, fried with cheddar cheese on 'em, 2 pieces of rye toast, and a cup of applesauce.  I was hungry, plus I remembered how full the eggs kept me at the beginning of the week so I wanted to be satisfied and not starving during our meeting.  I should have had a snack before leaving the house but everything was so crazy I forgot.

It was my plan to leave the meeting and take the kids to the McDonald's Play Place for the afternoon.  We were already skipping nap, so we might as well make the most of it and let them burn off some energy.  I was intending to have lunch at Mickey-D's, though I planned on a salad and a couple of waters instead of the #10 with a vanilla shake I would normally get.  What did I do?  I forgot my motherfucking wallet.  So none of us ate.  The kids were starving and so was I, but they didn't want to leave so we stayed until 4 o'clock.  Thankfully I had a bag of Cheerio's Cheddar Snack Mix in the diaper bag because it sustained all 5 of us all afternoon, well, as best it could.

Dinner was pizza.  Of course, the Digiorno's I put in the oven I forgot to time, so it came out black.  UGH!  I quick jumped into action and called in an order to a local pizza joint and had Tony pick it up on his way home.  By the time we ate at 6 o'clock the kids were STARVING and so was I.  I had a single slice of steak & cheese pizza, but it wasn't as yummy as I'd hoped.  Which I guess helped me not want to have 3 slices, LOL!

I did snack around 9:30, my difficult time, but it was minimal.  I had 3 packaged chocolate chip cookies and like 5 Triscuts.  Not the best, but not bad compared to the Mandie from two weeks ago.  I hit the hay around 10:30, and slept like a ROCK.

When I woke up this morning it was like I hadn't woken up all night.  I looked at the clock - 7:34.  I JUMPED out of bed and ran downstairs, only to realize that no, Tony didn't forget to wake me up, he'd just woken up himself.  LOL!  Again, I got off to a wacky start and forgot to weigh myself before breakfast and coffee.  Once I did, I got a 270 reading.  Which is FINE.  Yes, it's the same as yesterday's weight, which is NOT discouraging.  On the contrary.  If anything, it will make me rethink my choices from yesterday, which weren't the best, and what probably happened is that my metabolism was all fucked from missing lunch and two snacks.  So BECAUSE I weigh myself every day, I am able to see that what I ate (or didn't eat) yesterday, was not conducive to a healthier me.  Duh, right?  LOL!  But it just reitterates what I posted about yesterday with daily weigh-ins helping ME to stay on track and follow what I do from day-to-day.  So today I'm already intending to be better, eat smaller meals more often, and to make sure I don't load up on fatty pizza and cookies at night.  I'm just sayin'.

Much love,

Keep On Keepin' On

Yes, I weigh myself every day.  EVERY DAY.  There are many reasons I do this... first off, I find that it helps me see what did and didn't work with what I ate the day or two before.  For instance, after the Great Brownie Disappointment of Tuesday, I weighed in yesterday morning only having lost 1 pound.  Makes sense, right?  Of course it does.  I ate two fucking brownies.  This morning, I weighed in having lost 2 pounds, at 270.  So obviously the brownies really slowed my weight loss.  Also, I find that if I start to notice myself in a slump, the scale shows it.  Before it gets too late to easily fix any gain with just a small diet change, I can see it immediately.  So if over the holidays I was weighing myself every day, I would have been able to say to myself, "Lay off the cordial cherries, fatty." before I gained 10+ pounds and would have had to have undergone a full-on diet, complete with self discouragement and disappointment for not having caught it sooner, and for letting myself eat like a pig.  My dad is a diabetic, and every single day he records his weight, blood sugar, and any other pertinent variable.  For 20 years I saw him maintain his weight and have complete control over his diabetes from this simple chart.  It makes sense, to me, to track your weight daily.  I always have.  In fact, the times when I gained the most weight in my adulthood, are the times I didn't have a scale at home.  A few years ago I saw a study done that said that people who weigh themselves daily are less likely to gain excessive weight, and are more likely to maintain a healthy weight, for the EXACT REASONS I had always thought was just common sense.  (After a quick Google search ((I love Google)) I found these two articles: Pub-Med and MSNBC.)  So it's what I do.  In my honest opinion, I don't think there is a wrong or a right way to track your weight loss, so long as you're tracking it.  What works for some may not work for others.  Kinda like just about everything else in life.  Do I appreciate other people's insight and advice?  You bet your ass.  It's how we learn.  As a mom I love to run around yelling at every other mom that they're doing whatever they're doing wrong, "Trust me!  There's an easier way!  I have triplets!  I know."  So if I can offer my advice to another mom, I will, but I don't push because really, if they wanted my advice or learned a lesson from the sage advice I offered them, they'd be doing it already.  No harm, no foul; I do not take it personally.  Every one is different.  So I DO appreciate advice, and knowledge, but PLEASE don't be upset if I don't take it.  As an opinionated bitch I'm not likely to anyway, LOL!!

All that said, yesterday was a fair day.  Just eh.  I was bored, and the kids were on my last nerve ALL. DAY. LONG.  So when Tony came home to plow, and the plow broke, and he ended up having to snow blow for hours, and I ended up spending my whole day yelling at the kids to leave me alone for two seconds because they were driving me to drown us all in a car in a lake.  At 8 pm I finally had the triplets to bed, put on some Dino Dan for Gwen and got to cleaning.  Which I needed a boost from a soda to do.  But an hour and a half later and I had everything at least sorted, and mostly put away, and I quit for the night when Tony came in.  I was bored and stressed all day, and it was snowing like a motherfucker, so the day was kind of wacky.

For breakfast I had more delicious Bear Naked Triple Berry granola, 3/4 of a cup, and three cups of coffee.  Yum.  Too bad the coffee should have been TWICE as strong.  I still would have needed three cups of it.  Ha!

Lunch was late, around 3 o'clock thanks to the kids' non-napping malarkey, and consisted of a WW Smart Ones Ricotta and Spinach pasta, which was really yummy.  I wish there was more veggies.  I understand that veggies are kind of expensive, and if they loaded all these frozen meals with veggies all the veggie haters wouldn't eat them, plus they'd be $3 a pop.  But the veggies would really help keep me fuller, longer.

I had 3 celery sticks with peanut butter with the meal, because honestly it was a little small for my head-sized stomach.  One of these days it will shrink and I'll be able to eat just the meal and be satisfied.  =)

I made the kids chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner as everything was hectic with the snow clean-up and me being all alone with them, and I managed to eat about 10 leftover fries.  Of course.  After they ate, and I didn't, I cleaned up, got them ready for bed, and took them up.  I came down and started to clean the family room and kitchen of toys, which took quite a bit more effort and time than I would have liked.  At 9 or so Tony came in and took Gwen to bed (she passed out on the couch at quarter past 8), then asked if I had eaten supper.  Shit.  I had totally forgotten.  I could have had another frozen meal, left over pasta, some eggs, anything.  But I totally forgot.  Man, old habits die HARD.  So instead of making a dinner and eating a full meal at 9:30, I did what any sensible person would do and had a Weight Watchers Ice Cream Candy Bar.  Which was gross, but of course I ate it.  By the end I had forgotten what a real Snickers Ice Cream bar tastes like and was actually enjoying the WW one.  I also had a banana, since I know an ice cream bar is not dinner.  Mom didn't teach me nothing!  I did decide to skip the photograph, since you all probably know what a fucking banana looks like, am I right?

It all worked out alright though when I got on the scale this morning and saw that 270.  That was fucking awesome to see.  That's 6 pounds since Monday, 2 pounds a day on average.

Today is going to be kind of crazy; we actually have to leave the house for an appointment, and I plan on bringing the kids to McDonald's to work off some energy in the Play Place while I blast those smug-ass pigs in Angry Birds.  We'll be eating lunch there but it's my intention to eat a salad, and hopefully I can will myself away from a vanilla milkshake, which is just fucking sad.  All those poor, sad, undrunk milkshakes.

Much love,

272

No, that's not the price tag of my Not Your Daughter's Jeans.  It's not the amount of times we've seen Toy Story 3 (though it's probably close).  It's how much I weighed this morning.  272!!  That's 4 pounds in 2 days!  Now if that's not motivating, I don't know what is.  Go me!

Yesterday was good, but I was bored.  Which is disastrous.  I didn't have the motivation to do anything since my knee is all fucked up after painting the girls' room this weekend.  I had the job of cutting in on the baseboards, so there was a lot of kneeling involved, which is surprisingly something I don't do that often.  Anymore.  Heh.  I've heard that for every pound you lose, you take 4 pounds of pressure off your knees.  It makes sense, since the bulk of people's weight is going to be above the knee.  Like, there's only what?, two feet of body after the knees?  And it's typically not the size of a gut.  So it makes sense.  My knees have been fucked since the triplets were born, something I attribute to not only being way fat but also to 5 weeks of bedrest.  I lost a lot of muscle just lying around the house for 7 months while I cooked triplets, so it's no surprise that my muscles aren't strong enough to do regualr everyday tasks like keeping my miniscus in place.  I mean, I was never Joanna Thomas, so my muscle mass decreased fairly rapidly.  I was in physical therapy for a bit for my knee, and the therapist told me I was weaker than some of the old ladies he worked with.  Talk about a stab to the heart.  Working on gaining my muscle back is one of my goals, but I think it would be easier to exercise and work out once I lose a little weight, to save my knees.  Kinda like how WW will tell you not to exercise until you lose 10% of your original weight.  I think 10% is overly cautious; I can see 10 pounds, 15 pounds even.  But waiting until I lose 28 pounds seems silly.  I don't know... what do you think?

Onward...  I ate fairly well again yesterday, which is good since it's only day 2, LOL, but despite my boredom I stayed on track nicely.  I started the day with my cereal, which gave me loads of energy I did nothing with.  Pft.

Around 10, when I gave the kids their snack, I had one too.  It was yummy and filling though I wish Tess would have stopped asking me for some.  Celery sticks with regular Jif, which I tried to go light on.  I didn't measure, I don't want to measure everything, just get into the habit of THINKING about how much I'm using.  I think if most people were to LOOK at thier food before shoveling it in, they would know that there was too much/too little/the right amount without measuring.  When it comes to things like cereal where I have no idea what a cup looks like in a bowl, or how much a cup of mashed potatoes looks like on a giant plate, then I'll measure.  Peanut butter?  No fucking way I have time for that shit.  Half the pain in the ass of dieting is counting, watching, measuring, points-ing.  So I'm giving it up and instead using what I know in my heart to be a reasonable amount of anything.

For lunch I had a Healthy Choice Chicken Pesto meal, follwed by 14 (the suggested serving size on the box) Triscut Parmeasen Garlic Thin Crisps to snack on while I watched Intervention.  See?  Now that I know what a serving of Thin Crisps looks like, next time I won't have to measure.  Yeah!  Another great bonus to this blog is that I will be able to rate and review frozen diet meals.  For isntance, look at the picture on the Healthy Choice box, then at the actual product.  ::snort:::  Not exactly even close to resembling the delicious gourmet meal they show on the cover.  The fruit compote was pretty good, as was the pesto sauce.  The veggies were dynamite, though I wished they'd have included about a cup more.  Like, there was 3 carrot sticks and 3 broccoli chunks.  LAME.  The chicken was dry and kinda gross, though edible.  All in all, I wouldn't reccomend this meal, and I probably won't eat it again myself.  The Triscuts were AMAZING!  I've never had these Thin Crisps because I thought they'd be more crispy than regualr Triscuts, and too crunchy for my weak ass teeth.  But they weren't.  They were awesome and flavorful and 14 was a nice snack.

In the afternoon I managed to skip snack, but did have a few of the kids' Cheez-Its while I was giving them snack.  It was like I didn't even know I was eating them.  How gross is that?  I ate a handful of Cheez-Its while doling them out just because.  When I figured out what I was doing I immediately jumped up and put the box away.  Yikes!

I made spaghetti for dinner, since I had hamburg turning brown in the fridge and spaghetti is pretty much a bath night staple.  I kicked it up a notch, browning the beef with about 6 cloves of fresh garlic, Italian herbs, onion powder (can you believe I didn't have a single onion anywhere in the house?!  WTF???), and pepper.  NO ADDED SALT!  I added a jar of Prego to the meat, plus a can each of tomato sauce and tomato paste to stretch the sauce a little.  I'm not a huge fan of chunky, meaty sauces so the extra tomato shit made it more suacey.  I baked a loaf of Pillsbury tube bread and Voilà!  Delicious dinner!  What you see here is a salad plate.  I am a pasta destroyer.  Tony is always amazed at how much pasta I can put away (I can also do this with popcorn).  It's a weakness.  I love it.  So I had a lot, but it was still HALF what I usually would have eaten.

What really surprised me though, was how hungry I was shortly after dinner.  I expected that plate of pasta to hold me over until bedtime, but it didn't.  What the fuck, man?!?!  I ended up splurging on brownies, I ate two, but I made them with half the eggs (only used 1) and half the oil (less than 1/4 cup).  To make up for the lack of oil in the brownies, I added applesauce.  They were totally yummy and I would have eaten 3 more but I stopped myself.  Heh.  And I already went for one this morning and managed to stop myself then too.  Nice.  So while I splurged on a shitty snack, I didn't feel so guilty about it because I knew I tried to make it a little better.  So it's not like I said, "Fuck it!  I'm eatin' brownies!"  Which is good.  And so were those super chewey brownies!

Much love,

Day 2

I have good news!  I am down 3 pounds today already, to 273.  Now, keeping in mind that I weighed myself yesterday at like, 2 PM, and today right after I woke up and took a shit, it's not as impressive.  But it's a start.

I feel really good about this.  I feel like it's not a diet, but more of a change.  And not even one I'm whining about.  Just a change that needs to happen.  Like how we had to move out of our tiny house into a bigger house.  Yeah, it was sad, it was a fucking hassle, but it was AWESOME, and SOOO worth it.  I don't mind making choices that aren't chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter & jellies.  It's like my brain knows that my body needs to eat healthy to be healthy, and the conscious decision to be healthy was all I needed to do it.  Sounds kinda cheesy, sounds kinda stupid, but I don't know how else to describe it.  Ready.  I am ready.  And still optimistic.  For now.  LOL!  I have a very bad habit of seeing new things through for a couple of months until I bore of it, and then look for something else to occupy my ADD.  Even diets.  Even though I can see the scale registering the new number, even though I can wear jeans after a meal without unbuttoning them, I still somehow lose interest.  So I'm really hoping to stay focused, and positive, and get there.

Affirmations aside, I had a great day eating well yesterday.  I started the morning with 3 fried eggs, but only one yolk, a piece of rye toast, and coffee.  Granted, I had 2 really sugary, creamy cups of coffee, but you gotta start somewhere, right?  And I'm not ready to give up my coffee.  Maybe not ever.  LOL  Breakfast wasn't as early as I wanted it to be.  Danielle told me you're supposed to eat within two hours of waking up, which I technically did, but 10 o'clock is still kinda late for your metabolism to jump start.  I do realize that I'm in not in the habit of eating breakfast, or if I do it's not until later, like when I get the low-blood-sugar-shakes and need to stuff a pop tart in my pie hole to stop shaking long enough to make the kids lunch.  SO yeah... I'm working on that too.

Around 11 I had a banana for snack.  I also had a soda while the kids were napping, to get me over the 2 o'clock slump.  With the exception of the HFCS, the caffeine and points are the same no matter if it's coffee or soda, and I wanted something sweet and fizzy.  So a creme soda it was.  I got busy working on the blog while the kids napped and I drank my soda, and I forgot lunch.  So typical of me.  At almost 4 o'clock I had a Smart Ones Artisan Creations flatbread sandwich, of the steak and ranch variety.  Holy shit, it was DELICIOUS.  It tasted like a real steak and cheese, which surprised the shit out of me.  I don't like cooked bell peppers and even the peppers were tasty.  Hm... maybe I was just really hungry.  Ha!  Anyway, 300 calories and 8g of fat, 6 WW points.  Totally worth it for lunch if you're craving steak and cheese.  Or even if you're not.

Not surprisingly, that tided me over until dinner, which - don't fall on the floor - I made.  Oven roasted pork tenderloin marinated in lemon pepper from The Meat House, about a cup of Betty Crocker boxed mashed potatoes, and about a cup of sugar snap peas.  OMG, it was so good.  And it was really weird seeing normal portions on my plate.  Like, there was a HUGE amount of dead space.  I blame the obesity epidemic on the stoneware industry.

The best part about dinner was that I was FULL, full full, not grossly stuffed, just really full until at least 9 o'clock.  It was around then I started having the hankering for a snack.  Damn it.  Or course, if you know me, and you know how I roll, you know I get the munchies on occasion for reasons I can not name.  Dummy.  I held off as long as I could, but my belly started grumbling around 9:40 and I caved.  BUT, I chose wisely.  Two apple-cinnamon rice cakes with a thin coating of peanut butter.  YUMMY!!!!  And I snacked s-l-o-w-l-y while I watched The Wonder Years.  It was just enough to make me feel cozy, good about my choice, end the tummy grumbles, and to give my hands an occupation while watching TV.  Of course, like a true pig, I picked all the crumbs out of the afghan and ate those too.  Hey, I'm dieting.  Every morsel counts.

So it appears that my choices yesterday really paid off!!  That's a good boost to the ol' morale.

This morning after pooping, weighing myself, and taking my probiotics (which you have to take on an empty stomach), I had a half cup of Bear Naked Triple Berry Crunch granola, with milk and coffee.  The recommended serving size is 1/4 cup, but I don't want to starve myself either.  If anything is going to make me pissy, it's being hungry.  So because last week I would have had a whole cup, I decided a half was better than what I'm used to, plus would be enough to not freak my body out, and be a whole lot better than a full cup.  Maybe when I'm 200 pounds I'll eat a 1/4 cup, but not now, that's for damn sure.  Plus, if I haven't told you before, I am a granola WHORE.  I LOVE it.  Love.  Like, pink puffy hearts and fireworks.  So yeah, I splurged.

I ate about a half hour ago and I can ALREADY feel a difference in my body.  My legs are jumpy like I have excess energy, which is good since I have a lot to do today with the storm coming tomorrow and all.  I'm full, and while a little nauseous (eating breakfast does, and always has, made me feel like yakking), I think I can forget about that and focus on all this energy!  Huzzah!  Pair that with a cup of coffee and I'm ready to do great things!  Like laundry.  And dishes.  Yee haw.

I'm off now for another cup of coffee, but may be back later, maybe not until tomorrow.  We shall see.  I have a lot to do!!

Much love,

Not Exactly a New Year's Resolution

If you don't already know, I'm fat.  Way fat.  Like, Gilbert Grape fat.  Okay, not exactly, but I'm in the morbidly obese range and I am more than uncomfortable in my own skin.  So I want to change.  I want to be thinner.  I want to be more active.  I want to be healthy.  I don't want to call it a New Year's Resolution, since I don't believe in them.  (I mean really, why the hell would you wait to do something you've been thinking about doing for 6 months??)  It's more of a change in who I am.  It's more of a change I've been wanting to make for a while now, since the triplets were about a year old.  I just wasn't ready.  I knew it had to be done; I knew it will be really hard.  Since I wasn't mentally there, not completely able to plunge myself into a world without Oreos and mac & cheese, I knew there was no use in trying.  So I let myself go.  Really go.  To the point where I gross myself out.  To the point where I look at myself in pictures and say to myself, "I'm as fat as people I'd make fun of for being fat."  How horrible is that???  It's rhetorical; I know it's horrible.  So shut it.

That brings me to another point...  You always hear people say, "How could you let yourself GET like that?", all judgemental and disgusted, about fat people.  You don't REALIZE it's happening.  I mean, for fuck's sake, I didn't sit down one day and say, "Shit ya know, I'm not nearly fat enough.  I should eat a grocery store from the inside out."  It just... happens.  Like I said, I knew damn well that I was eating poorly, making bad decisions, laying on the couch all night instead of doing some chores.  But I couldn't bring myself to do any different.  So 300 pints of Hagen Daaz, 100 bags of Doritos's, 100 McDonald's milkshakes, and 500 Marie Calendar frozen dinners later, here I am, battling the bulge.

A little background:
I've always been really heavy, and sedentary.  I think being being lazy is a genetic personality trait, from what I've seen through my parents, myself, my siblings, and my children.  Though there's no reason we can't work on ourselves, genetic predisposition or not.  For instance, I LOVE to sleep.  Always have.  When I was a toddler I would pass out everywhere - floors, couches, parties, according to my mom I used to ask to go to bed.  When I was a teenager, I would sleep for HOURS.  Now I know you're thinking, "Duh... what teenager doesn't sleep for hours?"  Which is true, I know.  Though I would sleep from 9 or 10 PM until 1 PM the next day.  No lie.  And I did that until I was like, 21 and going to the bars.  At which point I realized I didn't have enough energy to go out at night, go to work the next day, and then go out again the next night since I wasn't sleeping anymore, so I started doing speed.  Not cocaine or anything, just ephedrine.  I would take one to get out of bed in the morning, after I got out of work, get ready to go out, take another to last until last call, dance the night away drunk as hell, and then pass out and do it all again the next day.  I got so thin.  But I wasn't healthy.  In fact, I was super UNhealhty.  Though I was fit from dancing, I was a drunk, and a druggie.  I met Tony shortly thereafter and became settled, and happy.  And began gaining weight.  Again.

I was 153 when I met Tony, and 190 when we got married.  When I got pregnant with Gwen I was probably around 210, 220.  After having Gwen I was 215.  By the time I got pregnant with the triplets a year later, I was 223, after having done Weight Watchers for 4 months.  I managed to carry triplets to 34 weeks, measuring something like 60 weeks pregnant, and got back down to 225 after having them.  Holy shit, that's awesome, right???  If I had nipped it in the bud there it would have been SO much easier to carry on, lose the 25 pounds and be happy at 200, a size 18 regular, and just be rotund.  But no.  I was home alone with 4 kids, 3 newborns, and I was miserable.  When the triplets were 8 months old I was diagnosed with Post-Partum Depression and weighed 265.  Holy shit.  I gained 40 pounds in 4 months.  How did that happen?!?!??  I'll tell you how.  Doing anything with 3 newborns is NOT easy.  Just feeding them bottles took an hour and a half, then I had an hour to myself before I had to feed them again.  So while I fed them I took to eating with my free hand, in between kids.  I'd polish off a WHOLE PACKAGE of Chips Ahoy in one feeding.  I went through like, 2 packages a DAY.  It was so gross.  I was self medicating my depression with food.  Thank God I broke down and ended up in therapy, and on medication, otherwise I really would be Gilbert Grape fat.

Today I am a 274 pound HEIFER.  That's a smooth 26 pounds from a milestone 300.  Really, what's especially amazing, is that I managed to only gain 9 pounds in the last 2 years.  Not too shabby, actually.  LOL!

Now that the kids are older, and easier, and more active, and now that we're in the new house and getting settled, I am ready.  I am ready to feel pretty again.  I am ready to run again.  I am ready to divorce food and find something worthwhile to occupy my time.  Like my family.  And myself.

So here I start a new journey, and a new blog.  I should really thank my BFF Danielle over at HungryGirl, because she is such an inspiration.  She has so much determination and heart.  Last year she completed a half marathon with her sister, after months of preparation.  This year she started a blog, eating healthier, being healthier, and losing weight the right way.  She gave me a boost of morale and the idea to blog my weight loss journey, which will hopefully keep me on track.  I mean, now that the whole world knows my weight (kinda like finding Spider Man's true identity is really the lame Peter Parker), I feel like everything from here on out is an achievement, right?  LOL  And if I can stick to it, this blog will serve as my reward, showing the world that I CAN do it.  That I WILL do it.  And most importantly, it will hold me accountable.

Here's hoping...