Happy Domino Day! July 30, 2014

I picked these as representative of this post because they’re pretty and they have yellow dots.

Hello all.  So I have something to share and talk about that I haven’t mentioned too much lately in light of other obsessions, but I really need all the motivation I can get on this, so I’m going to talk openly and honestly about it, and just throw it all out there.  Regular readers know I started this blog right about the time I started attending Weight Watchers meetings, right? Well, I did.  My first post here was January 21, 2010, which was two days after my first WW meeting.  Since that time, I have attended meetings consistently until the last year, when I started missing almost as many meetings as I attended.

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The weight swing was as follows:  from January 19, 2010 to June 10, 2012 I lost 129 lbs.  Yep, you read that right.  June 2012 was the once in a lifetime cruise I took my children on all by myself, and it was also my baby sister’s wedding, in which I was a bridesmaid, and it was ALSO the graduation of my one and only class of English students, whom I (only marginally successfully) taught when I was 129 pounds heavier and they were freshmen, and most of them hadn’t seen me since the end of that year.  So AFTER that…. I apparently just sort of mentally gave up.  Maybe not all at once.  Clearly not all at once.  I kept going to meetings, kept occasionally exercising, kept half-heartedly tracking my points.  But not at all with any kind of consistency, efficiency, or determination…

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…which has brought me to where I am today.  I have gradually at first, and then more rapidly, gained weight back until I am now at a net loss since January 19, 2010, of only 56 lbs.  My gain of two pounds this week put me at my heaviest weight in four years.  Up until now I have just sort of smiled and nodded at this progression, just shrugged and let it slide and figured I’d get it together at some point.  Well, that point has arrived.  I am blogging about this because I want people to know I am serious.  I have probably posted a half-dozen “I’m starting over” posts in the last two years, but this one is officially IT.

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I could probably go into a whole series of posts and thoughts about why we eat the way we do, why we eat for emotions’ sake, why we don’t exercise, why we make excuses when it comes to grocery shopping (that last is a real sore point with me.  It feels like an unavoidable fact that healthier food = a higher total at the cash register, which is so aggravating!) BUT for now I don’t think that falls within the scope of my purpose.  My point is at some moment you just have to choose to confront the issues and start fighting to fix them.

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I posted a meme on Fb today that said “You cannot fix what you choose not to confront.”  Or something like that, but it really stepped on my toes.  When it comes to the topic of health and weight loss and fitness, I always just sigh and talk about Oh, yes, it’s such a battle, it’s so hard, it’s such a struggle, I’m so tired of fighting it, who cares, what does it really matter, I have people who love me as I am, etc.  But you know what??  Seriously.  Do you know what? Those are all truths.  It is true that it’s hard, that it’s a struggle and a battle and that I’m tired of fighting it and that I have people who love me exactly as I am no matter what.  BUT… it is a battle and a struggle that is worth continuing to fight, tired or not.  The only victories in life, and I mean the ONLY big victories that have ever been won in the world, have come when the person or persons fighting refused to give up.  Think about it.  Wars, battles, political issues, sports contests, personal victories over demons of all kinds…have only been won when the persons fighting them FLATLY REFUSED TO GIVE UP!  Yes, I know that’s a lot of caps.  Sorry.  Don’t mean to yell and rant and rave, but the thing is, nothing is ever gained by sitting down and refusing to keep trying.  That’s why the poem “Footprints in the sand” is famous, but nobody has ever shared a poem about “Butt prints in the sand,” right??

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So today is the day.  I’m getting back on track, I’m going to start making healthy choices every day.  Domino effect.  Our WW leader used to do this “object lesson” in which she gave us all a domino and reminded us that all it takes to stop a falling train of dominoes is a little pressure in the opposite direction.  Just a little support behind one domino anywhere in the chain, to stop it from falling, and the cycle ends.  So that’s it.  It’s Domino Day.  I’m starting over for the last time.  And I’m never, ever, EVER giving up.

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Until next time,

D.

Shake It Off, Rock! January 31, 2013

Grinch (Photo credit: Mad Manchegan)

Hello all.  I hate to follow up a rant-y, cranky post with another one just like it.  Really, I do.  I generally try to avoid extensive periods of rant-yness, at least in this forum, if not in life.  At least I think I do.  But here’s where I am today:  1.  Facebook has outlived its usefulness.  Instead of the majority of friends posting actual updates to their actual lives, everyone posts politcal articles, fitness-nazi rants that actively belittle 98% of the populace, the “Verse of the Day,” and posters with cheesy, “Duh”-inducing quotes on them.  2.  When I was preparing to leave the house this morning, my entire attitude could be summed up as follows:  It would be a totally ideal day if I could only be allowed to wear my fluffy green Grinch slippers, ((love)) everywhere, all day long.  3.  I am currently in the throes of a surge of negativity concerning my job.  It’s cushy, no doubt.  (See: freedom of schedule, autonomy, decent pay.) The negativity lies in the expectation to believe certain things that are currently beginning to make me want to simultaneously sigh, growl, and roll my eyes every time I hear or read them.  (For those not in the know, I work for a ministry, of the type of church I was raised in, certain tenets of which are now beginning to chafe, some because I question and sometimes do not want to believe them, and others because I do believe them but am currently failing miserably at sharing said beliefs.)

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((deep breath))

Ok, on the plus side, I am doing very well on my Weight Watchers this week.  The meeting was just on Tuesday, and I had another obscene, unmentionable gain, but since then I have measured and tracked everything most carefully.  If I can (I shouldn’t say ‘if’ but oh well) continue to stick with that through the weekend that usually kills me, I will manage to have a good loss next week, and that will help me to continue doing the same for a second whole week in a row, and then perhaps it will snowball into a sustained period of success.

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So I will look ahead to that success with hopeful anticipation.  I will forget all the things that have been making me have a particularly cactus-like personality today.  I will be thankful for my silly Daughter S. who stopped by my work to kill time between college classes and succeeded in making me laugh, even when I didn’t think I felt like it, and also thankful for the fact that she is especially skillful at recognizing when I need to laugh and making that happen with her wonderful goofiness.   I will finish this post and do my job, and we will be one day closer to the weekend.  And I will think of others instead of myself, like for example my poor baby sister, bloggy code name: SparkleAndGrowl, who is suffering from back issues and is in extraordinary pain.  My Mom is taking her to the ER today, and hopefully Little Sis will feel better very soon.

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Thanks to all of you who read and stick with me through my rants, my raves, and my emotional bungee jumping.  You rock!

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Until next time,

D.

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PS- The title of today’s post comes from something that my former husband used to say (that I’m quite sure he stole from somewhere else) whenever I started being all rant-y and whiny.  I didn’t think of the title until I finished the post.  Sometimes it happens the other way around.  Later, peeps!

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The Domino Effect: A Little Pressure in the Opposite Direction January 4, 2013

English: Paris Exposition: moving sidewalk, Paris, France, 1900. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hello all.  You know what I’ve noticed about my life lately?  It bears a strong resemblance to one of those moving sidewalks, you know, like they have in large airports, or someplace like that?  I’m not exerting any force or effort to go in any particular direction.  I’m just standing there, going wherever it happens to take me.  I. Don’t. Like. That!!  I feel like I’ve kind of always been that way, though.  When there are things I know I need to be making a choice about, taking an action, moving a direction, I just stand there kind of frozen in an attitude of indecision, until finally something else happens that takes the choice out of my hands and points me in its own direction, which was probably not the direction I would have gone if I’d just made myself move my feet.

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I don’t like that either!  I’ve decided it’s time to hop off the moving sidewalk and take my own walk in life.  Even if I end up exploring the boiler room or the janitor’s closet, or the No Access Control Room, at least I’m not just riding straight through the main thoroughfare like a zombie.  Here’s what I’m really talking about:  food.  Eating.  Weight loss.  Weight gain.  As much as I try to listen to people who tell me I am not defined by my size, my weight, my fitness level, whatever… my inner voice is just not buying it.  What else defines me?  My societal roles, i.e. mother, daughter, sister, friend, employee, etc.?  Partly, I guess.  My beliefs?  They’re supposed to, but it’s hard to be defined by something you sometimes find yourself questioning.

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Anyway.  I don’t think my purpose is to get incredibly deep in this post.  My main point is to express to the world that I have been gaining weight like crazy through the holidays, and I am not happy about it.  My first thought when I look in the mirror in the morning is “Holy hell, I look like that Judy Blume character!!” (You know the one.  On the cover of Blubber.  Potato-shaped head.  Lank, stringy hair.  Dorky clothes.  Dumpy body.  Yeah.  That one.)  My underwear is getting tight.  Do you know what a mistake it is to have a garage sale in October and get rid of all your ‘fat underwear’ right before the holidays?  Well, I can tell you.  It’s Huge.  There was this one darling older lady at my Weight Watchers meetings.  She would literally say anything.  One day she shared one of her motivational strategies. It was to buy her underwear a size too small, because there is very little in this world more uncomfortable than too-tight underwear!!   Let me assure you.  She was not kidding.

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So basically, I have an immediate goal.  Rather than continue to eat as I have been the last few weeks, resisting nothing, refusing nothing, inhaling everything, I am starting today to exert a little pressure in the opposite direction.  (Another WW object lesson involving dominoes.  The game pieces, not the pizza franchise.)  I’ve tracked my food intake.  I bought healthy foods to keep at work for lunches.  I am going to start using that C25K app that I downloaded almost the minute I got my new phone a month ago, but haven’t used yet!  I’m going to try.  Just try.  That’s all.  If I don’t try, I am guaranteed to fail, and THAT… is unacceptable.

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Until next time,

D.

PS. I’ve also removed the life sucking electronics from my home because our constant web-surfing, Netflix-watching, slacker-ness was causing me serious stress.  The wireless router, the laptop, and the PS3- gone.  At least for now.  When we get control of the house and ourselves, perhaps they will return.  Here’s hoping I can survive the Daughters’ displeasure when they discover the changes I’ve made! (Lord, give me strength!)

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Up From Here. Except for the Scale! August 28, 2012

This cat kinda looks like I feel!

Hello all.

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Allow me to re-introduce myself.  I am a struggling-with-weight loss, struggling-with-loneliness-and-non-dating, struggling-with-parenting, full-time-working, home-educating, brilliant-but-confused, hot mess.

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Let’s take it from the top, shall we?  I’ve been on a weight loss journey for two years, seven months, and nine days.  My current total loss stands at 116.8, down from an all-time high net loss of 130.6 in June.  I have basically been hovering and bobbing like a cork in the water, weight-wise speaking, for almost this entire calendar year.   Somewhere, I have lost my way.  I have lost my motivation and my drive.  In theory I should congratulate myself on basically maintaining my weight for this long, rather than going into a full-scale retreat and gaining scores of pounds.  But I went to my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, and registered an obscene gain.  Obscene.  I was expecting a gain, but not one that made me want to scream and cuss.  So as of tonight, I am back on track.  I am once again following the WW plan to the letter, even if it kills me.  And it won’t.  I have set new goals and I am going to move forward no matter what.

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Secondly, the struggling with the loneliness and non-dating thing.  This is something that is SUCH a source of confusion and just…being torn.  On one hand, I would really love to find a boyfriend-type person, someone to go out to dinner and a movie with, someone to talk to, someone to hug and kiss on, a little.  I feel like in the dictionary under ‘Needs a Life’ it says ‘See Her.’  BUT.  The kicker is that I usually feel too overwhelmed with all the other stuff I have going on, too busy, too mentally scattered to be in a relationship at this point in my life.  I’ve had one or two minor relationship opportunities/possibilities that have fallen through in the last couple of months, and I have been quite alone in dealing with the disappointment.  But there is also a slight feeling of relief that they never really developed, because I’m not sure I was really ready for them anyway.  And then there’s the question of who am I really looking for and what do I really want in a significant other?  I know you’re thinking, ‘Wait, didn’t we cover this a month ago?’  Well, yeah.  But it’s still on my mind, especially with regard to all the other personality traits, opinions, likes, dislikes, and REALLY dislikes that my 13 Things didn’t cover.  All I know is, I’ve read a LOT of profiles on a major dating site recently.  This could be a whoooole other post, but there are some apparently decent guys out there, and some real wackos, to put it nicely.  So much so that I’m thinking, “Eh.  Dating can wait.  The kids come first.”

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Which leads me directly into the next two points:  1) home-educating is a huge chore, especially when you’re trying to work full time literally at the same time! and 2) getting your High School graduates launched is much more difficult when, despite your half-hearted attempts at trying to do otherwise, they’ve been kept sheltered, coddled, indulged, and allowed to get away with immense amounts of slacker-ness.  I’ve got one daughter I’m trying to get set up with Vocational Rehabilitation services to help her identify and acquire a job that she can do and wants to do, and one daughter who finally at the 11th hour got signed up to take some college classes but still doesn’t have a job and doesn’t drive very much.  All the paperwork, applications, meetings, assessments, etc. is what you might call seriously overwhelming when you’re just one Momma!  (And yes, I could and should delegate some of that responsibility to the slackers-in-question, but haven’t managed to do that yet.)

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So yeah.  Just needed to get all that off my chest.  I was planning to start a new blog about our home-schooling adventures, but haven’t really got the kinks worked out yet.  Stay tuned for that.  Alternate titles I considered for tonight’s post were “If You’re Not in the Mood for Debbie Downer, Skip This One” and “In the Dictionary Under ‘Overwhelmed’…”  but I decided it was best to go with the positive.  Stay with me- it can only go up from here!

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Until next time,

D.

Regarding A Weight Loss Journey- Almost Epiphanies March 20, 2012

Hello all!  So today I realized something about the whole ‘struggling with Weight Watchers‘ thing.  Maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake and I should have realized this a while back.  But here it is.  I’ve been doing this for more than two years.  I have been going to meetings.  Every Tuesday.  For two years.  I haven’t skipped a weigh-in unless I was out of town.  In two years.  The first year, I had wild success.  Crazy wild.  Lost like 80 lbs.  Second year, mild success- lost about half that.  But for the last few months, I have basically just been maintaining my weight, gaining and losing within the same 5 lb. range.  And for much of the time I’ve been on this journey, but especially in the last several months, I notice that every time I weigh in, my day (and perhaps even the rest of my week) is shaped by what happens at the scale.  If I have a loss, everything is good and I am in control and life is fabulous.  If I have a gain, everything is horrible, I am out of control, can’t handle any part of my life, and my entire existence is just plain awful.  HELLO?!  What is wrong with this picture?

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Because I have been doing this for so long, (and because the success I have had at WW has been the main thing I have felt successful at in the last two years) I seem to have let my entire self-worth as a human being, my entire perception of what makes me good or bad, become wrapped up in what number pops up on the scale on Tuesday mornings!  Sure, I have enjoyed seeing the clothing sizes drop, enjoyed being given hand-me-downs from people I always think of as much smaller than me and being able to fit into them, enjoyed shopping for clothes, finding things off the rack, and looking darn good in them, enjoyed being able to accomplish certain physical feats like my 2 (count them – two!) 5k mud runs.  But for some reason I cannot fathom, I keep going back to judging myself by  weight loss or gain alone and using those numbers as medieval weapons like spikes and cudgels to beat myself to a pulp with!  Why?!

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I don’t really have an answer to that last question, but maybe

Human (Photo credit: Gramicidin)

the discovery of that fact is a step toward ending the pattern.  I need to keep in mind all the different aspects of the things I have accomplished and resist the urge to reduce them to cold numbers that don’t really show the whole picture.  Just this moment, I realized also that I use my food choices as weapons to beat myself down with, too.  As in when I eat healthy foods, (or eat any food in an appropriate amount!) I’m acceptable as a human being, but when I eat unhealthy foods or over-partake of any food, I am a spineless slacker who has no control or self-discipline.  Is that true of me?  Of course not.  I have clearly demonstrated some amount of control during the last two years to have lost over one hundred and twenty pounds.  I have clearly demonstrated some measure of strength to get up at 5:00 a.m. for months on end and go to exercise classes, and to compete in two strenuous athletic competitions like the Dirty 30 and the Fitness Freak Race .  So what is it about food that presents such a big stinkin’ challenge?

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Unfortunately, I have no answer for that one either.  All I know is, I have to figure out how on God’s green earth, to LOVE myself, to appreciate and value and embrace myself, in all my flawed glory, no matter what I weigh.  And this too is true:  “We ain’t what we should be.  We ain’t what we gonna be.  But at least, we ain’t what we WAS!”

 

Until next time,

D.