4 Weeks In A Row

BBB W6: 420/300

I actually came to work 4 full weeks in row. No wellness days. No vacation days. No holidays.

Amazing really!!!

I was marveling at this when a co-worker saw me talking to myself and asked what was up. I told her and she said, "Well, you're losing weight and you're healthier now."

You know what, she's right!!!

I feel healthy. I look smaller. I am losing weight. I feel more energized, less lethargic. I've eat intermittently, so I don't get unreasonably angry from low blood sugar. My immune system is pumped up. My hair, nails, and skin are more radiant and healthy. I can walk faster and farther. I feel alive, invigorated.

I feel healthy.

Less Than 500 Minutes To Go

B2B W11: 235/250, *****, 12 stairs

And more than 2 weeks to do it in!!! That means that I'll definitely surpass my goal.

My food is very good. I started eating just fruit in the morning and that's worked out really well. During the day at work, my food choices are very healthy and wholesome. I bring my breakfast (fruit) and snacks (fruit, veggies, cheese). I go out to lunch everyday. I eat well there. Then I go home in the evening. I want to start eating cleaner in the evening.

By the time I'm done with work, I've surpassed my veggie goal for the day. In the evening, I don't go on a spree, but I don't eat the healthiest, wholesomist (should be a word) food either. At the end of the work day I feel mentally exhausted. I often just want to take a nap or at the very least sit in a chair and sip a cup of tea. Duh!!! Why don't I just do that? I just want to have 30 minutes of silence.

DBF, who's an extrovert, works at home all day. He picks me up. From the moment he picks me up, bless his heart, he starts talking. Just at the moment I don't want to talk. TO ANYBODY.

The reason this is important is that while I don't eat when I'm not hungry. The mood I'm in when I'm hungry sometimes dictates the food that I choose to eat. I am working myself out of that habit. However, on the other end, I really would like some Calgon time when I get home. It will help me to make more nourishing food choices. I LOVE making nourishing food choices.

I am finding that as I choose healthy, wholesome food, my points automatically come into alignment. This is what I want. At some point, I'm going to take off the points training wheels and just eat the foods I choose to eat. I want to choose those nourishing foods. The other reason I want to develop the healthy eating habit is that I don't want to obsess about what I'm putting into my mouth for the rest of my life. I'm re-wiring my subconscious. I want nourishing eating, healthy habits, and activity to be infused into who I am.

A Pivotal Week

B2B W11: 60/250, *, 3 stairs
B2B W10 WI: -3.2 lbs
Total Weight Loss: -13.2lbs
Current Weight: 258.6lbs

I had a mental shift this week. I've been talking all along about choosing to be healthy, choosing to move, choosing to eat wholesome food. This week I shifted into choosing. I shifted from hemming and hawing over how much I HAVE to do this and how much I SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be eating something into doing it because I want to feel healthy. I shifted into really feeling healthy this week. I shifted into being inspired by feeling energized and invigorated. I had the mental battles over what to eat, but once I reminded myself that I'm making the choice to be healthy, the enemy (whatever it was in my head) surrendered. I felt at peace with my choices. I felt that I was moving in stride with what I said I wanted.

It happened through a series of conversations I had with friends. On Monday I was reminded that my life is not an obligation. I do have the power to create it. The activities that I engage in are activities in which I choose to engage. Exercising and eating healthy are things I chose to do at the beginning of the year. I made a commitment to change the way I see food and movement for life, not just a spurt while I'm loosing weight. No one is punishing me. The moment I let go of the battering ram, all of my choices became MUCH easier.

I also watched a Law of Attraction video that let me know that I was struggling against the natural flow of Life. My natural state is health. My being wants to be healthy, that's why it's such a strong desire. All this time I'm MAKING myself do stuff, I'm going against the natural current. I simply reframed my thinking from "have to" to "get to". I get to go to the gym. I started being appreciative of the ability to work on the treadmill. Rather than think about how sleepy I am in the morning, I thought about how exhilarated and invigorated I feel when I exercise. Instead of swallowing my veggies and suffering them until I could have the good stuff, I started to imagine clean, vital blood flowing through my muscles and organs. Healthy blood carrying the nutrients and fuel that I need to live and thrive.

Best of all, I shifted from being my best critic, to being my best coach.

Healthy Me

B2B W10: 280/250, ****, 9 stairs

Wow!!! I have about 25% to go. I remember in the beginning it seemed as though she was running along so slowly. Now the time is just zipping by. It's adding up really fast.

I am doing well with my food. I'm trying something different this week. For breakfast, instead of a breakfast bar, I'm having fruit. My body is just craving more nutrients. The more I exercise, the better I want to eat. The better I eat (meaning more whole, healthy food), the more whole, healthy food I want to eat. It's an upward spiral.

This morning I walked around the track and they were doing a sports conditioning class in the gym below. My goodness! I was so impressed. I now aspire to finish that class in its entirety by the time I get to onederland. They did everything. They ran, did stairs, weight bands, tricep dips, jump rope, abs, lunges, jump squats. It was truly inspiring. I found myself walking around the track faster.

Also, this morning, as I was inspired by that class, I got the inclination to walk with weights. I picked up 2 2.5lb dumbells thinking I could walk with them. HA!!! I ended up standing there doing bicep curls and stopped after 10. I soooooo need to add strength training. Can't weight to start the next challenge in 3 weeks.

I felt so healthy walking the track: healthy skin, healthy blood, healthy heart, healthy bones, healthy organs, healthy muscles:-)

Mindful Living

B2B W4: 280/250, ******, 18 stairs/-2 left

Oops! I guess I have to add 2 flights of stairs today and I can't have anymore white stuff. I'm determined to have a 7 star week.

I tell you what. Losing weight takes a lot of concentration, vigilance, and dedication. Last night I went to Starbuck's for a pick me up, mellow, comforting latte. I just wanted to chill. I got the tall (small) sugar free vanilla latte with 2% milk. I usually get the grande cinammon dolce latte with a slice of the pumpkin loaf. YUM!!! I recalled the no whites deal and got a packet of cashews instead. Good choice you say.

Cashews are a weakness of mine, like coffee ice cream. Such foods are no longer allowed in my house, but I can have them when I'm out because I eat it and it's gone. The cashew packet read 150 calories per one ounce serving which I quickly calculated as 3 points. For those who don't know, 1 point is approximately 50 calories. EXCEPT I didn't calculate the fat part of the points.

Prepared to take the 9 point hit, I enjoyed every scrumpcious cashew while sipping on my latte and chatting with DBF on the plush purple chaise. It was indulging. Imagine my sense of outrage when I plugged in the cashews to find that it was 12.5 points for that 3 ounce bag! AHHHHH!!!!

You know why I'm so outraged. I guess it's the sticker shock.

At any rate, I still had a glut of Flex points and all of my activity points, so it was fine.

You've got to pay attention if you want to lose weight. This isn't really a bad thing. So much of ourselves is on autopilot. We eat mindlessly. We watch television mindlessly. We sit in church mindlessly. Even when we are exerting ourselves with exercise, we want it to be numbing and mindless. We want the time to just pass by.

Losing weight is teaching me to be more mindful and present. Interesting side effect, isn't it?

Back to the Cattle Line

I went back to Weight Watchers yesterday. Now I know why I didn't want to keep going. It's the cattle line. Ironically, this is also the most useful part of the WW experience to me. It's having to step up to that scale every week. For that privilege, I'm paying a little less than $40 a month. I get other benefits like the nifty e-Tools. I love their site. I'm a site whore though, so it's not saying much.

I got back from my 10-day holiday vacation in Miami and Trinidad. I had every delicacy that I missed over the nine years. I hate being so cliche about kicking off a health program at the beginning of the new year, but I wasn't going to kid myself.

Since I started on Saturday I'll have to move the challenge dates. The name of the first 13-week challenge is Back 2 Basics, or B2B. To recap, the challenge is to complete 3300 minutes of exercise, stay on plan every day, and take the stairs if it's 1 flight. So far so good. I've done 45 minutes and I was on plan yesterday.

2009 Word of the Year: Health

Christine Kane, one of my favorite bloggers, advocates selecting a word for the year instead of a New Year's resolution. I used foundation one year and it worked like a charm. My word for 2009 is health.

2009 is the year of the body.

I've tried this several times. To be brutally honest I don't know if this time is going to be different. However, I am going to give it my full attention. The body is number one on the list this year. Ironically, I came to the decision that I wanted to dedicate 2009 to the body after reading Disappearance of the Universe, a book dedicated to showing us that the body is not real.

While I get the idea that the body is not real in an esoteric sense. (Only God is real, but that's another blog.) I am on planet earth, of my own doing, with this body. I want my body to work for me. I want to be healthy, vital, strong, flexible, and full of energy. Right now my body is overweight (260+ lbs) with high cholesterol. I feel lethargic most of the day. My body is stiff and weak.

I spent the last month of 2008 researching and reflecting on what I would need to do to lose weight, lower my cholesterol, and rebuild my body into the vital, strong, healthy, flexible being.

One year I lost over 40lbs on Weight Watchers. The things that really helped me was having to track my food, being a participant in 12 week group challenges, and exercising. I need to eat healthier to improve my cholesterol and blood chemistry (I'm close to the edge for diabetes also). While I ate within the points for Weight Watchers when I lost the 40 lbs, I didn't eat optimally. I would like to establish strong healthy eating habits this year. That means lots of vegetables, whole grains, no white flour, sugar or potatoes, lean protein (bye, bye, ribeye and chicken thighs), in a nutshell, South Beach. I want to eat more whole food. I also want to learn about food and pay attention to how my body feels with the food I give it.

In 2007 and 2008, I concentrated on becoming naturally active. Until the middle of 2008, I walked to work, 60 minutes round trip. That was great. I want to be an active person. My job is extremely sedentary. However, I need to make regular exercise part of the routine. By the end of the year, I want to do cardio, strength training, and flexibility exercises on a routine basis. I also want to be able to run a 5K. I want to re-incorporate movement throughout my day: taking the stairs to my office (it's only one flight), walking to lunch, walking to church after work, walking to and from work on occasion, walking to the coffee shop or library. As you can see, walking is a big part of things. I rearranged my world so that most of my life is within a mile radius. I love walking and I want to do more of it. I want to move for entertainment, like take dance classes or go salsa dancing.

I like hefty meals. I'm not a sweet or salt lover. I spent a year training myself to only eat when hungry and until full. The problem now is that I wait until I am famished. Then I feel like I have to ravish a cow. I'm able to stop when I'm full. I don't eat when I'm bored or sad anymore. However, my mood dictates the type of food I eat. If I am in a neutral, happy, or joy-filled place, I have no problem eating the recommended healthy stuff. However, when I feel sad, I want to be comforted. If I happen to be hungry, it's very difficult for me to make healthy choices. This year I want to add the dimension of eating for nutrition rather than mood enhancement. I want to chose healthy foods, I don't do that today even as I only eat when hungry and until full. I want to eat to fuel my body optimally.

I'm a perfectionist. When I falter I tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. One day off plan and I feel like what the heck. Being a part of a group helps, but the other side of that is I'm not a rah-rah person. I just want to step back on the path without pomp and circumstance. I don't want to recognize that I failed. That, I think, is the pitfall. If it were okay for me to fail, I could recover no problem.

I don't like exercise buddies or people knowing I'm on a diet. I don't even like saying that I'm losing weight because if I announce it and I don't follow through then I'm a failure (see point above). I almost have an internal indicator that says when people notice you should stop. I also have the tendency to unravel by April. I'm not sure what the cause of it is. Resolution fatigue, goal looking too likely, fear of success. I'm not sure how I'm going to push through it. One of the things that I'm doing is setting up 13-week challenges so things don't get boring. That's no guarantee though.

Another thing that would help would be accountability. I'm thinking of telling my hairdresser that every week I'm on plan and follow my exercise regimen, I'll come in to get my hair done. I would love that reward and she can hold me accountable in a cool way. I'm blogging for the same reasons: accountability and support.

Breaks in the routine, such as colds, blah days, and vacation, jeopardize success. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this either. It is easier for me to eat right and exercise within a routine and framework. When it's shaken up, I get befuddled. For long term health, eating right and exercising must be a part of my life, breaks or not. So, this will be an opportunity to work with it. In the future, my life will be very flexible, I want it that way. I will have to figure out a way to eat healthy and be active as a natural course to things.

My exercise goal for the year is 15,000 minutes. I love having minute exercise goals. They are measurable and achievable. If I miss a few days I can make it up.