Sorry for not posting on Weigh In Day

I was really busy and kind of down. I only lost.2lbs this week which really makes me wonder if I'm not measuring my portions correctly or if I'm not eating enough with all the extra walking I have been doing to get ready for tomorrow. I know I have been putting in the effort, so I'm thinking it is the extra exercise. So this week I am tracking very carefully and using up my bonus points. I was going to try the Wendy method, but I blew it already. The Wendy method is as follows:

Day 1 Eat daily points plus 5 bonus
Day 2 Eat daily points plus 1 bonus
Day 3 Eat daily points plus 15 bonus
Day 4 Eat daily points plus 0 bonus
Day 5 Eat daily points plus 4 bonus
Day 6 Eat daily points plus 2 bonus
Day 7 Eat daily points plus 0 bonus

Today is supposed to be my 15 bonus point day, but I ate 14 bonus points on Wednesday at El Rey in Slidell. Yum! I was starving after walking three miles and knew I was going out to dinner that I didn't get a snack. Big mistake! I know better! When the waiter brought the basket of chips and salsa, I dug in. I did order the fajita salad which is one of their lightest choices on the menu, but I know I ate more than my fair share of chips. Alan even said so.

I ate 4 bonus points yesterday. So, I think I'm going to behave myself today and enjoy a small Blizzard tomorrow after the 5k.

Eat your Veggies!

Walking in the Rain

Well, I'm getting geared up for the 5K on Saturday and honestly I am a little scared. Up until today, all of my walking was done on my treadmill. So today, I was determined to hit the road until the rain came down. We live in a pretty technological world though, so I checked weather.com. It said that the rain was on the way out and would clear up in plenty of time for me to still get my walk on. I slipped the headphones over my ears and the plug into my Blackberry. I was going to listen to a walking workout program on my Blackberry.

Ha! It was clear when I left the house, but I could still hear a faint rumble of thunder in the distance. I walked on! I had mapped out 3.2 miles on the USATF website. I knew where I was going or so I thought. I took a wrong turn down a dead end street and ended up having to backtrack. I decided that I would cut my walk a little short to make up for the mistake. As I got to where I was supposed to turn around down came the rain! By the time I arrived back home, I was soaked. Fortunately, my Blackberry fared quite well in my pocket. It was a learning experience though. I learned:

• Never trust the forecast radar to pinpoint where the rain is going.
• My cheap Wal-Mart walking shoes are not waterproof.
  
• Black clothing is better to wear if there is any possibility of getting wet.
• Those loose-fitting clothes that us fat princesses wear to camouflage our figures become form-fitting when wet. I apologize to all the folks passing by in their vehicles.
  

I also must admit that I had thought for just a moment about calling my husband to come pick me up, but then I decided against it. I didn't want to get my car seats wet, so I walked on. I'm sure that the folks on their way home from work were probably wondering what I was doing. If I saw a thin woman walking in the rain, I would think, "Boy, is she dedicated to exercise!" But I'm pretty sure that people were just wondering what that fat chick was doing walking in the rain. At least I wasn't sweating!

Tomorrow, I plan on hitting the St. Tammany Trace for a whole 3 mile walk after my Weight Watcher's meeting! Tomorrow is weigh in day, I'll post my results!

My Weight Loss Journey, part 2

Butterbean's third birthday and yes, I'm eating a cupcake.

Morbid Obesity. When I was pregnant with my only child, the OB sent me to have special ultrasounds done in Baton Rouge. He told me it was because there was a slight possibility due to my age and some blood work that he had run that my baby may have a congenital defect. After determining that she didn't, the doctor kept sending me to have these ultrasounds every month or so. As a soon to by mom, I love seeing my baby all the time, but wondered why we needed to do this so often. On my final trip to Baton Rouge, I found out. Morbid Obesity was the reason they listed for the insurance company. Morbid? I never considered myself morbid. Sure, I was fat. I was 315 lbs, but still in my mind I wasn't MORBID. Isn’t it funny how the mind allows us to go on believing the little white lies that we tell ourselves?

Anyway, I joined Weight Watchers on March 26, 2009 weighing in at 310.8 lbs, five pounds less than when I was 9 months pregnant and 29 pounds less than my highest weight. I lost 5.2 lbs. my first week. WooHoo for Weight Watchers! I got my first gold star! Then I went home and plugged my weight into the weight tracker on their website. It scolded me. It said that I was losing weight too quickly and needed to slow down. Weight Watchers wants its members to lose no more than two pounds a week. It said that if I needed to know how to slow my weight loss I could talk to my leader. At 300+ pounds, I was pretty sure I knew how to slow down my weight loss. I was a master at not losing weight, so I didn't need some woman who lost 30 pounds several years ago to tell me to eat more and do less.

My next week, I lost 2.2 pounds. Woo Hoo again! Once again, the weight tracker scolded me and said I should not lose more than two pounds a week. The next week, I gained .8 pounds. Mr. Weight Tracker was like a kind mentor rather than a drill sergeant. "You gained a bit this week," it said. "Talk to your leader about how you can get back on track."

As frustrating as that first gain was, it is comforting to know that if it was a setback not failure in the eyes of the Weight Watcher's tracker. I was learning to take the numbers for what they were, just numbers. They wouldn't change who I was inside. They were just a measure of where I was right at that moment. No more, no less.

Weight Loss, my journey thus far, Part one

I have been obese for as long as I can remember. I have tried diets, starvation, working out and all the crazy drugs. Nothing has worked. I came to the point where I just decided that at the age of 35, I had a husband who loved me and a daughter that adored me, so what did it matter how big I was?

Well, at my check-up in January of 2008, I weighed in at 339lbs. At 5 foot 6, my BMI was 54.7 almost double the maximum for an average weight person. My doctor did some routine blood work to check my hormone levels. It came back that I had a severely elevated insulin levels. We always knew that my insulin was out of whack with my PCOS, but this was above and beyond what she expected. Dr. Cherry, my gynecologist, (I swear that is her real name) sat me down and explained what this meant in a way that no other doctor cared to take the time to do. She explained that the increased insulin levels were not only a precursor to type 2 diabetes, but they were a huge part of my recent weight gain. The more insulin in the body the more the body wanted to eat. The more I ate the more insulin I produced. I had to get serious about taking my metformin and eating better. She also prescribed Byetta, lizard spit injections that would help control my appetite and my insulin.

Fast forward to October 2008, I was sick of the shots, but willing to up the metformin. My insurance company refused to pay for me to go to Dr. Cherry, because she wasn't on their list. So, I started seeing a new OB/Gyn, who agreed to let me go off the Byetta and up the metformin. I also resolved to start eating better. I was still 339lbs, thus began my weight loss journey.

In March, I knew I had lost some weight, but did not have a scale to weigh myself at home. My sister had mentioned that she was going to do Weight Watchers. I had tried Weight Watchers in 2000 when I lived in Florida. Honestly, I had only done it for about 2 weeks, before falling back into my old habits of drive thru quickies and chocolate. At $12/week, Weight Watchers was "too expensive" for a single gal living in Orlando, I had reasoned. Truth be told, I spend five times that much on fast food.

I decided that if my sister, who had lost 120 lbs by changing her eating habits alone, admitted that she was willing to give WW's a go at it to help her lose her next 120 lbs, then maybe I should give it a go too. I pulled out my old books and decided that I would try to do it on my own. My husband told me that I would need a scale at home if I were serious, so I bought one the next day. My first time on the scale, I weighed in at 320lbs. For two weeks, I studied everything I could find on Weight Watchers and healthy eating. I counted my points and asked my sister a ton of questions. I lost 13lbs in 2 weeks. When my sister brought her WW's booklets to show me, I saw that she got little gold 5lb stars for each 5lbs that she lost. I wanted those stars. Sure, I could go out and buy a pack of gold stars, but it wouldn't be the same as earning them. I joined WW's the next week!