dreamwalker

The end of my first year on this “new” diet of mine is coming to an end in a week. During this first year there have been both gains and losses which I’m sure everyone here could agree is just a natural part of a diet… no matter what diet plan you choose to follow. Its a fact of life right? Well I have lost close to 50 pounds since last August. Its not so much finding things that taste good as it is finding a way to keep the shake healthy. I was a total skeptic when I started Herbalife. Sure the shake tasted good, but would it work. Those first two months were absolutely wonderful because I was committed to it. Sure a liquid diet was an adjustment and cutting back on the snacks and that all important end of the day meal was hard to limit what went into it. Mostly because of the fact that I love to cook so its hard not to want to eat the product of all that hard work. I have found it especially hard to stick to it when I have more time on my hands like weekends and holiday times because I had time to cook the foods I love to eat. That led me to make changes in my old favorites to lighten the calorie load so that they didn’t do so much damage to the work I had done with everything else. This year has been something like a slow progressive makeover of every aspect of my life. I cleaned house both literally and figuratively. After all problems with weight are not always simple strait forward physical problem that can be fixed with one simple change. There is nothing simple about it. It took a lot of things to get to the point where I was at that was so unhealthy for me so it makes since that it will take the same if not more to change it. I still have a long way to go, but I’m starting to get to a point where I’m comfortable being me and ready for more. I can do this. Hard work and all it will be worth it in the end to change and keep on changing for the better. I will solve this problem and learn more about myself along the way. August third is not an end to something, but rather a beginning to another chance to improve and get healthy.

I have only 8 more pounds to go till I reach my short term goal of 250 after that I am going to move my short term goal back another 20 pounds to 230 and keep going with the progress.  Its been reall hard to lose weight, and I have lost and gained several times since I started.  The thing that keeps me going is knowing that there have been times when I have lost weight.  I know I can do it if I just keep trying.  Once I hit 250 I will only have 80 more to lose.  This is the closest I have been to the right track in a long time and to be honest I have no idea how I got here.  I have been watching what I eat and trying to be more active, but I have done nothing special.  Maybe the true secret to weight loss really is just a healthy diet and regular exercise.

Well this weekend went by way to fast.  I went on a trip and I didn’t keep track of anything I ate.  I didn’t go over board and pig out, but I didn’t exactly place limits on myself either.  I have to make myself get back into a routine of watching what I eat and when I eat it so that I can lose weight rather then gain it.  Its an uphill battle, but we all have those in our lifes.  It makes for an intresting ride.  When I got back from my weekend walk on the “wild side”  I weighed myslef, and I was suprised to find that I didn’t gain anything back.  I got lucky, but that is not always the case.  I guess now that I’ve had my fun its back to the grinding stone. 

I know I haven’t been on in a while (hey that sounds so familar…like maybe I used the same excuse last time around)…I have been having trouble using my time wisely lately so I have let a lot of things slide.  My weight loss hasn’t been one of them.  Sure its been a two steps forward and three steps back process, but as long as I keep trying something has to happen some time right….Well I have homework to get to so I had better end this post here for now.

I know its been for ever since the last time I logged in and to tell you the truth it has been just as long since I thought about weight loss.  I have tried to eat right and excerize (believe me with all the moving and going I have been doing lately I had no problem with that part).  It has just been so hard to sit down and spend the time to get on here between working, packing, helping my sister move , and cleaning house.  I have so much to do this summer that when I forgot about the computer and blogging for a few days it was just easier to forget about it for the whole summer.  I slept during my free time rather then get on the computer much less my blogs.  I don’t think that I would have made much sense if I would have got on to post.  I will hopefully be better during the school year.  That reminds me I need to add a scale to my shoping list so I will have one at school for my weekly weigh ins.  I will post later…the question is how much later. 

I love summer time.  Not the heat, or the storms (which are a nice break from the heat and don’t get me wrong I love rainy days) but my favorite part of the summer is the fact that my mom and I go swimming in the mornings.  Its the only reason I drag myself out of bed at 4:30 am and pull on the nearest set of clothing.  Before I hit the water I am the normal nonearly bird, but once I am in the water you’d never know how much I hate early mornings.  The pool we go to is public and normally full of people (especialy in the summer time) so we go as soon as it opens and swim for an hour to an hour and a half.  I could go longer, but there is so much to get done in the day.  I have yet to find a summer job (not for lack of trying) but there is always house work or errands to run for someone else who doesn’t have time like I do.  I know I like not having a set deadline on my time, but I also know that I can’t go another year without putting some cash in the bank.  If my waist could match the balance in my check book I would be mighty fine, but it doesn’t (at least not yet).  I am hoping that as the waist srinks I have a chance to make the balance grow.  That should be a fair exchange right.  Make money and lose weight.  Of course the sooner I reach my goal the sooner I have to find some new clothes that will fit the new me.  I hate shopping for clothes, but that is another blog for another day.

I am home for the summer so that I can live with my parents free of rent while I work.  I have a feeling that the only job I am going to end up with is going to make it hard to stick to any diet plan.  Almost all the job openings where I live are in the resruant bussinesses.  I love cooking and I have worked this type of job before so I know what it will be like to go back into that line of work.  You tend to end up eating the same food your serving to people, and there is easy acess to so much of what you’ve promised over and over you would stay away from.  Ice cream, sodas, fried foods, and much much more.  Its hard not to give into temptation when you are around it every day.  I am going to do my best not to, but I am not makeing any more promises to myslef.  I know that the more I tell myself that I won’t ever eat any of that stuff no matter how good it looks the more likely it is that I will eat more then I should of it.  So I have come up with the plan to limit what I eat and that is all that I can do.  There will be times that I have no other options of what to eat while I am working.  When I am not working however I fully intend to keep a tighter set of restrictions on.  No sodas or sweets for me on my days off.  A balance between the good and the bad that is all we really can do.  Going to either of the extreams could be unrealistic or unhealthy.  I am just trying to find a place that is some where in the middle.  Healthy, but not cutting out all the yummy foods that have been deemed bad for one reason or another. 

I am so hungry right now, but I am trying not to think about it.  I have been cleaning house all day so I have been burning calories today.  I ate lunch and told my self that was all I was going to eat till supper tonight, but it is so hard not to sneak a little snack when your all on your own.  Everyone else is at work right now and it would be so easy to snack on anything I wanted.  No one would know about it.  Fact is that I would know about it and I would feel guilty about it for the rest of the day.  I always do that when I am at school by myself.  I tell myslef that I need a little something to make me feel better.  Treating myself to a snack is always the easiest way to make me feel better, but then I feel bad about getting off track.  I hope that I can get into a habit of doing other things to get the same result of making myself feel better, but with a longer lasting result.  I have always enjoied reading and writting so I have tried subbing those fun hobbies for my snacks whenever I start to feel like I need a little pick me up I reach for a good book or my computer instead of going over to the pantry or fridge.  So far so good I have lost 10 lbs that I had at the start of the year, but it is so hard to keep reminding myself why I am doing what I am doing.  I think that I like to hide behind my weight as an excuse not to have to go out and meet new people because I am just plain shy in situations like that.  I tell myself that I don’t do those things because of my weight.  I use the same reason to explain why people seem not to want to spend time with me when the truth is that I don’t want to spend time with them.  I hate opening up and telling people things about myself so I find any thing that I can to hide from things I don’t like.  Well not anymore I am going to start changing that part of myself.  I want friends, I want love, and I can only have those things if I am willing to go after them.  That is what I am trying to do and for me self improvement starts with the change in how I veiw myself.  I can reach my goal weight by changing mylifestyle which means changing how I view people around me as well.  I hope that my blogs will give me more then a place to ramble and say things that I don’t want to say out loud.  It is always easier to write (or type) things then it is to say them.  At least it always has been for me.  I welcome anyones comments and help, but I don’t just want a one way relationship out of it.  I want to give as much if not more then I take.  I love encouraging others because it encourages me when I do.  You help me and I will help you.  That is why we are here right?  To find people who know how hard it is to stick to the diet and exersize routines we are trying to build.  Change is hard, but with a little help everything is possible.

I have been trying over the years to lose the extra wieght, but it has always seemed that there was something missing from the process.  I counted calories, fat, and amount till I drove myself into a rut where it was easier to tell myself that it didn’t matter then it was to try again.  I am hoping that with a little help I can get out of that rut and keep the 10 lbs. I have already lost this year off.  I am also hoping that once I get back on track I can start lossing enough to get to my goal weight by this time next year.  A year to lose 100 lbs.  I don’t think that I will do that, but I should be able to make a dent on the path to that goal.  I learned in motivation (psychology major, thats why I had the class) that the best way to reach a big goal is to set minor ones that lead to the bigger one.  Proximal or short term goals are always easier to reach, and they come in groups.  Such as the goal to lose 10 lbs ever 4 months or something like that.  All these little goals that I met will lead to that big end goal or what my motivation teacher would call the Distal Goal.  Sorry about all the motivation stuff I just recently took my final for the class so the material is still on my mind.  You wouldn’t want to hear much about the other classes I took this semester.  I passed all my classes and now it is summer for me.  Work and life is all I have to worry about now.  I am hoping that I can establish better eating habits this summer so that when I get back to school I won’t have to be forming the behavior at period that will be stressful because we all know that stress and good eating habits are hard to get together.  At school it is just me so I have no real support system that I see every day.  Here at home I have my family, and we are all trying to lose weight so there will be a good support system with checks and balances built in.  No one eats alone execpt when we are at work.   I have bored you all enough for now I will end here and post again some time later.