Don't slash your own tires

I was reminded of a lesson I learned this morning and I wanted to get it down here so I cloud maybe look back and not have to learn that lesson again.
People have a tendency to call making poor food choices, or having a binge episode as falling off the wagon.   Once you have fallen off that wagon it may be very difficult to get on it again. 
I don't know about you but I have never actually fallen off a wagon but I can imagine the difficulty getting back up.  First you are hurt by the fall,  you thought you were riding this thing so well. Then, the wagon keeps on moving workout you and it is up to you and your wounded little butt to catch up and get back where you belong.  Wouldn't it be easier to stay off that wagon and maybe catch the next one when it comes along.  If you do choose to wait for that wagon,  how do you explain why you aren't on the one you started off on any more.  If course there is no guarantee that there will be another wagon for you to get on, or how long you have to sit with your wounded pride until it comes along.
I don't like to think of it like that.  Jillian Michaels had a quote I love.  (Like her or hate her she had some real lessons you can learn of you listen close enough)  When you get a flat tire do you give up and slash the other three tires?  That is what you are doing if you have a moment of weakness, or whatever you want to call it, and decide that the day is ruined already so you might as well eat whatever you want.  I can't tell you the number of times I have thought,  "I have blown it already so the day is wasted and I might as well eat the cake,  or chocolate,  or candy."
Of course if you get a flat tire on your car,  you get out, assess the damage,  put the spare on and go about your day as close to your original plan as possible.  If there is damage you deal with it.  If there is a nail in the tire you get it fixed.  What was the nail in the tire that threw you off your eating wagon?  Was it stress,  sadness,  loneliness,  an intense emotion?  Deal with that problem.  Don't just put the tire back on without finding the cause or you will get another flat.   If you drove across a pile of nails that punctured the tire,  how can you avoid that area the next time?  You don't get a flat tire because you did something wrong or because you are a bad person.  You don't choose to destroy you eating plan because you are flawed.  Fond out what went wrong and learn what to do about it for the next time.

Starting a new adventure - in Healing

Life throws adventures at us that we do not choose for ourselves.  I wish I could choose my own adventure, and while that is possible I do not get to choose them all.  Now I am starting the adventure of recovering from my second blood clot before the age of 40.  

I now have to change from the woman who was planning to walk a half marathon, to the woman that is planning to walk around the block again some day.  I can't do that yet, I can walk to the mailbox though.  I can go a little farther even.  I am learning my limits, and I hate it.  Tell me what not to do and I ask why, if I don't like your reasons I push back.  I don't like the reason I can't walk like I used to and I really want to push back.  I know that would be bad though so I am trying not to.
I am working with my doctors and my nutritionist and I will get better.  I want to try to log my progress here with this forum.  I have heard many stories of people starting a blog and changing their lives.  I want to change my life.  I have gained and lost so much weight and if you ask me how I did it, or what I ate, I couldn't tell you.  I hope that by logging it here I will be able to look through my past and remember the lessons I learned so that I will not have to keep re-learning them.
My lessons I remember for now.
1. Nobody is going to steal your food, so you can take your time eating it. - I tend to buy myself healthy snacks and then polish off the whole box like I am afraid if I don't get them all down they will be gone.  I think this is due to the fact that I have "purged" the kitchen of snacks out of my kitchen before.  I am not going to do that to myself again, so I can chill.
2.  Only eat when you are hungry.  - Ever since I was a small child I thought there would be severe consequences when you skipped a meal.  I don't know what I thought those consequences were but they would be bad.  I have learned that I can, and at times should, skip a meal and that nothing bad will happen to me.
3. Take it a step at a time.  - Just move!  You don't have to walk around the world for it to be worth taking a walk.  Sometimes just walking to the mailbox is enough.

New Toys

I just got a new keyboard for my tablet computer.  Maybe now I will post more often since it no longer such a pain in the butt to type anything on my tablet!  Yeah!

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

New Phone

I got a new Samsung Galaxy S 3 yesterday.  I love it.  I have spent most of the day yesterday and today.  It has a ton of features I have yet to figure out, and right about now I am really missing my keyboard.
Fun fun.  Something to play with while waiting on doctors with Dad.

I'm better now. Thanks.

I just wanted to drop a quick post saying,  I'm doing a lot better now emotionally than I was in my last few entries.  Yay!

Nutella is evil.

Nutella is truly evil.

It is basically chocolate frosting.  There is no great redeeming nutritional value to it.   It only has 3 gm of protein in 2 tbsp.  You can eat many foods that are much better for you than that.

I am proud that through all of my obesity I never ate frosting with a spoon.  I ate peanut butter to no end, tortilla chips way too often and way too many of them.  But, there was that one typical fat girl thing I never did. 

I have not allowed myself to buy the Costco/Sam's Club size jar of peanut butter anymore.  I have not had the overwhelming desire to dig into a jar with a spoon.  There have been times at work that I ate too many individual serving containers.  All in all I feel like I have conquered the peanut butter demon in my life.  But, I have let in the Nutella monster. 

Now there is one more damn demon in my life I am going to have to exorcise.  Crap!

Let the exorcism begin.  Pray for me ya'll.  The spinning head and pea soup spitting will begin in three, two, one...

Becoming someone else

I am becoming someone else. 

I am changing myself from a couch potato into a runner.  Not as deep and  philosophical of a change as it might be, but still it seems like a pretty darn big change to me.

For my whole life I have been:
The chubby one.
The younger sister.
The silly/goofy one.
The blonde one.

I now want to be:
The fit one.
The one who runs races.
The nice one.
The friendly one.

I know life is not a competition,  and it about more than just the way you are perceived by other people.  But, that is how we judge ourselves most of the time.  I am this person because that is who people think I am.  If that is flattering than that is all the better, if it is not it can guide us to where we need to change.   I have never been very athletic.  My parents did a good job of involving me in sports and trying to keep me active while I was growing up.  They did well and my whole adolescence I don't think I ever surpassed pleasantly plump.  When I went out on my own however, I found myself without the external encouragement to keep myself active that I had grown up with and soon found myself with a BMI of obese.

While I have been able to successfully lose weight, and have been able to maintain most of the weight loss I achieved, I am in a position that is all to familiar to far too man women who have lost significant weight before.  I have gained some of it back.  It was a shock and a horror to realize that as of August of this year I was 50 pounds heavier than I was two years ago.  There are some excuses I could use to explain where that weight came from, life has not been a bed of roses these last two years.  But that is an excuse.  I don't want to keep making excuses for why I am not as good as I could be.  I just want to be good.

I am grateful that I have not had to walk the path that so many women have, and say I gained it all back plus some more.  But really, that is a small comfort to me right now.  Any significant gain after losing 90 pounds.  Well hell, it more than half the weight back on my body.  I did not go through the torture of losing that weight once just to keep putting myself right back there every few years.

So to that end I have lost 17 pounds so far, but I have hit a wall.  I haven't lost any significant amount of weight in the last month or greater (I can't bring myself to look at the numbers and see just how long it has been, but it has been long enough) and I am at a crossroads.

I could give up.  Be happy with myself just the way I am and try to maintain my weight right where it is (knowing that it will just creep slowly back up).  Or, I can press on.  I have not been very good at this in the past, went life gets tough, I get ice cream. 

But this is how change happens.  It is not pretty, or comfortable, or even enjoyable in the moment.  But,  if I can make it through this change and push through to the other side I get to see what happens next. 
Do I loose more weight?
Do I get in shape? 
Do I run for enjoyment and finally see what this runners high people talk about is really all about? 

Or do I go back to my good old reliable size 12 jeans, sit on the couch and bask in the familiar, the comfortable and the safe?

Change doesn't happen without discomfort, so here I am, basking in the sheer discomfort of it all.  I am trying to be someone else.