Do I Look Fat In This?

That’s two more pounds I hope to never see again.

For those of you who are keeping track, I think that is 26 since January.  That doesn’t count the 2-3 pounds I’ve lost and regained several times.  I am optimistic for this week because I know I am holding some fluid weight that should be gone the next time I weigh.

Delena and I have been walking, but prior to yesterday, by the time she got awake and ready to move, it was just too hot out for a big ol’ thang like me to be hauling up and down these mountains.  On Wednesday, we did the Biggest Loser Yoga work out with Bob Harper.  It’s a good work out, don’t get me wrong, but at some point – and I’m not even sure when – I threw my back out big time.  I think it was likely in the moves that go from plank into upward facing dog.  I didn’t feel anything make damaging sounds at the time, but by 5pm or so, my back was really singing.  It’s the same area that went out on me when I was pregnant with Nathan.  He was a really big baby and also my 6th and around month #8, something just gave out and I ended up spending most of my last month in bed because of it.  It’s right in the small of my back where my uterosacral ligament would connect into my pelvis, that lower back indentation just before your butt crack begins.  Here it is 3 days later and I still am really, really stiff and sore in my back in the mornings and can’t sit or lie down comfortably for any length of time without it really hurting.  Aleve helps a little.  I’m walking like a woman twice my age right now.

Despite that, I was able to work out Thursday and Friday using the EA Sports Active on the Wii.  For those folks who were looking for a less expensive alternative to the Wii Fit, this is it.  It has literally hundreds of exercises and is a great work out.  The balance board is not required.  You just need the Wii and a TV.  I was able to find plenty of exercises that would protect my back and still let me work up a great sweat.  I like that Delena and I can work out together.  It has a function for working out with a buddy and provides a split screen.  We’ve had a great time with it.

I put on my swimsuit the other night to go out into the jacuzzi with Eric and I showed him the leg of the swimsuit.  ”See where the elastic in the leg is stretched out?  My leg stretched that out!”  There was easily a 3-4″ gap between my leg and the elastic of the suit.  It feels really good to see real results, especially when the scale isn’t moving as I’d like for it to.

I am grateful to have lost 26 pounds, don’t get me wrong.  That’s more than I’ve lost in a year in a long, long time.  I’d hoped for more by now; almost double, in fact.  Still, I’ll take the slow, steady progress that I know is going to make a permanent change over the faster progress that may or may not stick around.

Last week for the first time I can remember I went to the movie theater and did not order popcorn.  The smell was absolutely intoxicating, but I remembered well that the last two times I ate movie popcorn, I got really sick afterwards.  By the time I was a third of the way through the movie, I wasn’t missing it any more.

Delena and I have been dividing our food into 5 small meals of 300 calories each.  Since I’m taking the Mila, I have to push myself to eat all of those times, but I know that when I’ve eaten less frequently, my weight loss has slowed down.   I’m drinking lots more water, which I have found is absolutely essential to helping the Mila curb your appetite.  

I went back on the PremPro hormone replacement therapy and after a week at even the lower dose, I’m back to myself again.  I’m grateful to feel grounded, healthy and centered once again.  Being all fragmented and flighty was fun, don’t get me wrong.  I was able to go off in my head and get lost with no problem at all.  Unfortunately, I was more irritable and had trouble focusing to get anything done and that doesn’t fit in with my life right now.  I’m grateful that I can have good results on a low dosage and feel so much better.  Any time I forget to take my Mila, which is rare now, by the end of the night, I have a sour stomach and then I end up not sleeping well.  The day I start taking it again, I begin sleeping soundly through the night and wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start the day.

Because of the good sleep I am getting, I am not sleeping in as late as I expected I would.  I normally wake up around 7:30 – 8:00 (I was figuring more like 9:00 – 10:00) and since my kids all sleep late, I get an hour or two of quiet time before the day begins.  That’s a real blessing.  

I won’t make my goal of being under 200 pounds by mid-July unless something really phenomenal happens (which it did in March, so I don’t discount the idea) and I’m at peace with that.  As long as progress continues and I feel good, that’s all that matters.

I apologize for the delay in updating.  Eric and I have just gone through a tremendously stressful financial time that climaxed (which makes it sound like a pleasant experience, it was not) in the past couple of weeks.  I hate that feeling where despite your best plans, dreams and what you think are very appropriate actions, the world seems to conspire to keep you locked in a perpetual cycle of failures and frustrations.  

In light of all of that, I did not make good food choices and I barely exercised at all.   When I did exercise, there was no real enthusiasm or determination put into it.  I felt defeated and sad and it showed.  

I still took the Mila every day, sometimes twice a day, and that is likely all that saved me.  I did not gain any weight, luckily, but I did not lose any either, which is a shame since that is something that has been easy for me lately.

What happened is I got overly confident because of my progress and did not make the good choices I’d been making.  I’d think that because I was eating so little, I could have a “real” soda instead of a diet one.  I’d have movie popcorn instead of a healthy lunch.  I’d eat fried chicken instead of baked.  So I wasn’t really eating more in terms of volume, but I was in terms of calories.  

That means I pay for that with a couple of weeks of no progress until I got my head out of my sizable butt and figured out what was going on and how (again) I was fooling myself.   I am just grateful that so little damage was done.

Eric said something the other day about my lack of current progress and I said, “Look.  Go to Wal*Mart and pick up a 20 pound bag of dog food and lug it around the store for a while.  That’s slightly less than what I’ve lost so far this year.  From that perspective, I don’t feel too bad that I had no progress for 2 weeks.

Despite our financial woes, I was a selfish mom and wife and bought the EA Sports Active.  It arrived a couple of days ago and boy, it is a heavy duty work out.  I pour sweat when I do this thing.  It has none of the game feel that the Wii Fit has, but is still fun and is very challenging.  I’ve been quite stiff and sore every day I’ve done it.  The only complaint I have is that it doesn’t weigh you (so I have to weigh in using the Wii Fit still) and the response time with the Wii-mote and nunchuck is not nearly as targeted and quick as with the Wii Fit.  That can be fairly frustrating, but the work out is worth it.  I’ve done 45 minutes to an hour each day.

Starting Saturday, Delena and I will be doing the Sports Active and also walking the hills.  Those two things should definitely do the job.  The Mila still dampens my appetite considerably and provides all of the other positive results.  My failure is my own and I am grateful to be back on track.

I haven’t weighed yet this week because that is a Wednesday thing.  I’ve taken the weigh ins down to once a week.  I still work out with the Wii Fit as part of my exercise plan, I just don’t do the body test part.

Today is NOT one of those work out days, however.  I’m giving in to an urge to coddle and nurture myself today.  (It does feel odd not to be doing that with food because previously, that would have included lots of nurture foods)  I went to sleep around 10pm, which is about typical for me.  Elvis woke me up at 1am, just absolutely dying to pee.  Normally, I don’t have any trouble getting back to sleep since I’ve been taking the Mila, but for the past several days, it has been absolutely pouring rain.  Right now is one of the few clear moments we’ve had and I can see one tiny patch of clear blue sky over the trees.  Everything else is clouds.  I have what is possibly the only dog on earth who is afraid of the dark, so if Elvis goes out at night, he has to have the back porch light on and I have to step out onto the porch with him or he flips out.  What can I say?  The boy has issues.  After getting a good dose of sheeting rain on me while he searched around for an hour and a half looking for the very best place to pee, I was pretty well awake.  I did manage to get back to sleep within about 15 minutes of getting back into the bed, which was nice.  At 4am, the other 3 dogs woke me up whining and fussing and complaining.  It’s not like them at all, so I knew something was up.  Sure enough, one of them had gotten sick and pooped all over the work room floor.  Agh.  I got them outside and started mopping and using paper towels and Simple Green to clean.  Two dog beds had to be washed and by then, you can figure I was up for the day.  Dylan is away at Science Camp and so after Delena went to school at 6:30am, I crawled into bed until it was time to get Nathan moving at 8:15am.  At some point, Nathan came in and got in bed with me and we napped right up until the last moment.

I might do that again if it comes down to it.

Tomorrow I will do mad exercises, likely walking the mountains if the weather clears as it is supposed to.  Eric got the weight bench set assembled and I look forward to using it.  It’s on the back deck, so I will have to wait for it to dry out a bit.  

This weekend, I grabbed a sweater I wore a good bit at the beginning of Winter and put it on and wow!  The arms came way down onto my hands and the sweater itself was almost to my knees!  I called Eric in to look at it and he was really amazed.  Even more cool is the fact that honestly, other than making time for the exercise, I’ve barely felt the weight loss in terms of any kind of sacrifice or deprivation.  It’s just happening, which is nice.  I almost feel like I can’t take credit for it.  I’m eating when I’m hungry and I don’t miss anything.

A few days ago, Delena and I were out and I knew I’d not eaten up to my usual 1200 or so calories that day, so I decided to treat myself to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  I ate it, but just barely.  I could totally taste the grease and sugar in it and it made me about half sick.  I don’t even want the candy any more, which is a lifetime first.  Before, if I would drive through McDonalds, I would get a Filet o’Fish plain with no cheese, a Big and Tasty burger completely plain and an order of fries.  Now, I get a regular plain hamburger or the Big and Tasty if I’m really hungry and a diet coke and I’m done.  I haven’t had fries in forever and don’t miss them.  Same with potato chips, which were a downfall for me.  What’s great is that my McDonald’s bill went down to around $3-4 from $8-9.  

When we would go out for Chinese food, I would have 2 bowls of Mongolian BBQ and an order of plain fried won tons to get full.  Now, I have about 3/4 of a bowl of BBQ and maybe 1/3 of an order of won tons.  It’s strange to eat so little and be completely full, but hey, I’m grateful and it works with no inconvenience to me, so I’ll take it!

Despite working my under arm muscles, whatever you call them, with over and behind my head weight lifting, I am getting the loose skin there that keeps waving after you stop.  I’d so hoped to avoid that, but I guess I’ve just been too big for too long.  I’ll keep working them!

This weekend, I skipped Mila for both days because I was critically low and wasn’t due to get another bag until Tuesday (today).  By Sunday night, I was so uncomfortable.  My heartburn was back and I felt scattered and irritable.  I was eating much more often than I had been and felt – for lack of a better word – contaminated inside.  My systems just didn’t feel like they were working well together.  I took my Mila first thing yesterday and within an hour, I felt better.  It hurt me to realize that the crappy way I felt Sunday night is how I used to feel all of the time.  I’ve gotten so accustomed to feeling well and healthy and rested and grounded and not hungry all the time that I’d forgotten what the norm had been for so long.

So in short, so far, so good.  I’m still on track and excited for the weight loss that each week brings!

Oh and at the last check, I was down 22 pounds since January, 12 of which are since I started the Mila the second week of April.