Friday night ramblings...

I'm so confused, my head is a mess and all over the place. Amazing thing is that through it all, I'm still eating on plan and working out hard. But my weight loss is still stalled, which has me frustrated beyond words.

I sent an e-mail Tony asking him for explicit help. And by help, I don't mean, "Follow the plan, you should be eating like your prepping for a comp [as if I know what that means], you have to stop tweaking and adding things here and there..." I want to know what I can add and what I can't add. I want to know what breakfast needs to look like, lunch needs to look like, dinner needs to look like, what workouts need to look like (extra cardio? how often?) so that I will lose at a steady average of 1-2 pounds a week. Period. I'm not asking for much. I'd just like to be 145 by the end of this year.

That being said, I've agreed with my OA sponsor to start weighing myself twice a month on the 1st and 15th. I'm hoping that will give me some sanity as far as seeing the downward trend I'm looking for, because I am sure that now that I'm getting within spitting distance of my goal, I'm likely to see a much slower trend downward.

I don't know. All I do know is I want a life...hell, I have a life, and it's full to the max with things like trying to make sure my business is thriving, pursuing an original music career (first showcase tomorrow night - yikes), completing my first triathlon (Sunday - double yikes!), tending to my daughter who is finally having her feet surgically corrected, not to mention all the regular things that go into being me - sponsoring women in AA and OA, being sponsored in those programs (intensive writing and step work, etc), preparing meals for the household, buying groceries, doing laundry, reading stories, teaching voice and reading to the girls, and on and on and on...

It's interesting because back when I was really screwing around with Tony's program and eating off my kids' plates here and there, there was a certain comfort in thinking that if I would just stop doing that, I would start to lose weight. Now that I'm not doing that and I'm still not losing any weight, I have to admit that it is truly screwing with my head. On a brighter note, my skin is almost entirely clear. I'm happy to be off dairy and happy to stay off dairy if it means that I'll finally have the beautiful, clear skin I've been struggling for so long to achieve.

OK, I guess that's enough rambling for now. It will be interesting to read what kind of comments this post solicits. Please be gentle.

PS Funny thing is, I just went back and looked at my weight from a month ago, and I'm down 6 pounds. So, I guess I'm doing okay, after all. :0)

Clean enough?

So, it's hard to know if I'm ever really eating clean enough. I wish sometimes I had the patience to just weigh myself once a month or something, because sometimes I get really impatient with the way my hormones screw with what's happening on the scale.

And here's the deal, really: I'm eating SO 100% on target and my workouts have really been off the chain, not even talking about the extra cardio I've been doing in preparation for this weekend's triathlon. It's frustrating because as you guys may recall, I was down to 161.5 right before my daughter got sick, and then I gained THIRTEEN pounds in just three weeks. I've been trying to get back down ever since.

So, am I back on track and just need to be patient? Am I not eating enough and my body is now eating muscle like some experts would suggest? Am I eating too much? Should I refrain from having the occasional apple, berries, sweet potato, soy cheese?

Time will tell, and I will definitely tell you when I know what is going on with my body. Because I am GOING to get under 160, one way or another. THAT I guarantee.

Yep, I'm in on the 100-Day Challenge

I have really been pushing hard - food has been spot on, workouts have been spot on, I've been journaling every day. I figure to have someone - a group of someone(s) - holding me accountable can only help me achieve my goals.

Now I have to admit that right now I'm feeling bloated, disgusting and disheartened. All the more reason to push to the next level by accepting this challenge. As of this morning, I was 166.5. My goal is to get under 150 by the end of the 100 days.

I'm buckling my seatbelt. Ready to ride on toward achieving my dreams and goals!!!

TOM finally hit...

Seems like every month the same routine. A week or so before my TOM hits, my food gets all slippery, I'm craving everything in sight, I'm tired and cranky, and I start to think, "When will it get here? Wasn't it due already? Maybe I'm pregnant!" And then every month, I'm not. (And crazy loons that we are, hubby and I are both slightly disapponted that my anxiety has yet again proven to be unfounded.) I have to say that I am really glad it came this weekend, which means that for next week's showcase and triathlon, I will be in tip-top shape.

The good news is that for the first time in OVER six months, I got through it without gaining any weight. I kept my abstinence fairly well in place, which means I have hope to break through into the 150s. For REAL this time!

No big plans for this weekend - just hiking, working out and lounging by the pool. Should be a really nice weekend.

Quick check in...

Just checking in to let you guys know that I'm here and alive and kicking! The rain didn't get me down here in Philly town, quite the contrary. It rained out my run and my recording session, creating the space I needed to get some good work done and get a good workout in. Food was 100% clean and spot on, and I feel happy and content and CLEAN as I lay my head on the pillow.

I have been working hard on my business and on my music, so don't be alarmed if I don't post as often as usual. Ah, and poor Tony asked me for pictures a week ago and I still haven't sent them. Secretly, I want to wait till I get back down closer to the 150s. Before Amelia got sick, I was at 161.4. When I hit 161 or 162, I will post pics again.

Hope everyone else is enjoying their week!

HOLY COW!

I am a MANIAC! Not sure whether or not I've mentioned here that I'm in training for my first triathlon. Well, I am. And in preparation for it, I signed up for weekly swimming lessons at the local high school. What I didn't know was that these lessons were designed for people who are already decent swimmers, because they consist of 90 minutes straight of HARD swimming. The good news is, I'm ready for the half-mile swim that is the first event of the triathlon. The bad news is...well, there's not really any bad news, except that I AM SORE!!!

It's a good sore, though, and I have to admit I am really proud of myself. I am an athlete, for REAL! I've still been really tired lately for some reason - I'm assuming Aunt Flow is going to show up on my doorstep any day now. I did muscle my way through Tony's leg workout today, so I'm proud of myself for that. I even did the cardio part of the CRIT and given how tired I have been, that's no small feat.

Tony approved a new snack for me at night - an apple with peanut butter - so I am hopeful that I'm going to really start to see some movement now on the scale. I'm SO ready to be in the 150s, I cannot even begin to explain. I haven't seen 150-something since before I GOT MARRIED! Unreal. And I should see it within the month, if all continues to go well and I keep my mouth away from things it don't belong near.

Anyway, friends. Thanks for being on this journey with me. I cannot wait to post the pictures of the triathlon in just a week and a half!!!

Tomorrow is Amelia's appointment to get her cast changed. We should get an idea of how her legs are responding to the surgery, get the results of her biopsy and hopefully get a date for when she gets the cast OFF! YAY!

Wow - I have suddenly hit the wall. Time for bed, all. Good night!

Rock the bloat...

I have to believe that my time of the month must be upon me. I have really been careful with my eating. Even went so far as to try to make my own stuffed tilapia, only to find out that the tilapia had gone uncooked for too long and so I just ate the stuffing...yuckie. But I stayed clean. I drank nothing but ACV water - over a gallon today - so that's not the problem. Oh, and did I mention the 16.5 mile bike ride this morning, followed by a 3 mile run that I completed in just under 30 minutes?

I'm confident that I'm well on my way to the 150s, but if this bloat is any indicator, it's not gonna happen until August. Ploo.

Ahem...MEMEMEMEME!!!! (that's me singing ...)

I don't know what this whole Meme award thing is all about, but I have officially been tagged, which as I understand it means I have to list 7 traits about myself that make me unusual or stand out or quirky or something. So, here goes:

1. I have sung live on national network television in front of 10 million people. Seriously. You don't believe me? Do a search on my name and YouTube and see what you get.
2. I got sober when I was only 24 years old (and stayed sober).
3. I have eaten cow tongue, deer heart and chipmunk (what can I say - my dad would cook anything).
4. I learned to read when I was 2.5 years old. My father wrote a reading program and had me on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and in front of several live audiences of more than 100 people reading Alex Haley's Roots when I was just 5 years old to prove its efficacy.
5. I ran a marathon when I was 35 and had two children, then 3 and 1.
6. I went to 6 different schools between kindergarten and 12th grade.
7. I am an obsessive compulsive editor. I cannot read a book, watch a movie, read a blog, or browse a website without editing. When I was just 9 or 10, my dad offered me 25 cents a mistake to edit his reading program, and when I got to $25, he had to rescind the offer. My husband and I used to entertain ourselves when we were dating by trying to find as many errors as we could on the placemats at the local diners.

OK, there you go. Here now - I tag:

SaraBeth

Stacy

Carolyn

Yvette

Kelly

Angela

Paula

Like Melissa said, if you've already been tagged, my sincere apologies! It's hard to find 7 people who haven't!!!

Give me liberties...or give me a DREAMBODY.

This morning I had an epiphany. I've been taking some liberties and keeping it from Tony and Sarabeth, thinking that I was getting away with something. Let's be real. Tony's no dunce. He knows that if his program isn't working it's because I. Ain't. Workin'. It.

So, today I got honest. I told him exactly what I had been doing that was standing in the way of my dreams. And I have to tell you that something Tina said to me last night in a chat really helped put me over the edge with coming clean about all this. She said something like, "If you could see the person you are going to become, you would be willing to do anything to get there as soon as possible." Wow.

And today when I was talking to SaraBeth, she reminded me that I don't need to think that my food plan is going to be this strict forever. There is going to come a time when I get introduced to a whole new food plan the likes of which I have never seen before...it's called a MAINTENANCE plan. And I'm less than 20 pounds away from it, people.

So, buckle your seatbelts. Tony wants me to start sending him my menu for each day (I already send this to my OA sponsor, so that's really no big deal) and he wants me to start taking daily pics. Not for anyone else but me. So, this ride is about to get really interesting! Sit back and enjoy the ride!!!

How am I doing? Well, I'll tell you...

I can see the 150s. I'm so close I can taste it. After years and years of gaining weight with pregnancies, or even just stress, I'm finally within spitting distance of what I weighed on my wedding day. Now, don't go getting all excited and overjoyed and all. I still have a ways to go before I consider myself "there." And from what I have heard, it is almost more difficult staying "there" than it is getting "there" in the first place. So, I no longer see my goals as a destination - more of a marker. Then the goal is to continue to navigate life and all it's trials, keeping my health and fitness as a top priority, even in the face of adversity.

Speaking of adversity, Tony asked for progress pics today. Sorry, folks, but I will not be posting these pics for you. I have decided that I will post progress pics online when I am down below 160. Then, and only then, will I unveil my progress for all to see (and comment on).

In the meantime, I am still working on making progress toward my other secret Dreambodies goal. I'm not yet ready to share it with you guys. Soon, my friends. Soon and very soon. Trust me when I say it is keeping me focused and on point.

Last but not least, can we talk for a second about the FATIGUE that goes along with serious exercise? I wake up all perky and happy, then I go hit the gym to do my DB workout and I feel like I've been hit over the head with a 2 x 4. Or, maybe more like I just got a Demerol shot. Either way, it ain't fun and it makes me feel like such a pansy. Like, I can't even go to the gym without being completely knocked on my behind with deep fatigue. I actually worried I was pregnant, people, before I read Tea's post about being so tired she has to take a nap every day now that she's working it hard again.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm not alone in this, but man - if anyone has any advice on how to combat this I'd really appreciate it!!

Lots of love,

Liimu

No one ever said this would be easy...

If I didn't know better, I'd think I was pregnant. But I'm not, so the best I can come up with is that my body is fighting off some sort of infection. Not all together surprising, given the fact that my youngest daughter was in the ER with the croup last week. She still has a nasty cough and is to young to really know better than to cough right in my face.

So, today I'm home with my five-year old. How I wish she would lay down with me and sleep for a couple hours. Maybe after we do some reading lessons she'll have lunch and lay down with me. If not, she'll have to just watch me lay down.

I did, however, make it to the gym, despite the fact that I feel like an extra from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video...total zombie. I hit it pretty hard with the shoulders, but I have to admit that I couldn't do much more than walk for my cardio. Better than nothing, I suppose. I will make sure my food is squeaky clean and I get at least 4 liters of water in. Best I can do.

Hope you guys are having a super clean, super fun day.

The NEW Zone Diet (or NON-Diet, if I'm lucky...)

I wish I could take this feeling - this feeling of being in the Zone - and bottle it, and sell it. I would be a friggin' millionaire, I tell ya.

After my daughter had her surgery (yes, the same daughter who has hospitalized with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever), I found myself slipping and sliding around with my eating...again. I talked to SaraBeth and Tony and they helped me to see that my negative thinking was leading me to fail again and again.

They encouraged me to create a photo - my dreambody - with my head on top and to print it out and put it everywhere. Seemed silly, but silly was definitely better than self-destructive, which was the best word I could think of to describe what I had been doing on and off for the past six months or so. So, I printed out my dreambody pictures and put them everywhere, I wrote down my goals and have started re-reading (and re-writing them) daily, at least once a day. I've also started beginning my day with positive intentions.

In addition, I've added a new support to my life, an OA sponsor, with whom I chat for about 15 minutes every morning. She has helped me to see that a lot more food falls in the category of refined sugar than I realized, which has helped me to keep from taking that first bite of crap off my kids' plates.

This may seem like a lot of work to some of you. Why should I have to be so vigilant? Why should I have to do so much each day to achieve my goals? Well, I don't have to. But I know that doing these things will get me to my goals, so why wouldn't I do them? Lord knows, I spend more time than that in my stinkin' thinkin' when I'm not doing these things and eating whatever nasty junk food pops into my head. So, yeah, if doing these things takes some time (and it's really not much time - maybe an extra half an hour or so during the course of the day), I'm willing to put the time in to increase my chances of reaching my dreams.

How about you? What are you willing to do? Are you willing to spend a few extra minutes a day? Are you willing to do a couple things that may seem silly, if there's a chance they may work? I can tell you that when my sister-in-law came to town last weekend and saw the "silly" photos posted up all around, she thought they were just photos of me! How powerful to have her thinking that this amazing body I had taped under my head actually is my body!

And are your thoughts serving you? Are you telling yourself that you're willing to do this, but not that? That you can't possibly give up this food? That yeah, you're a compulsive overeater, but isn't everyone? No, everyone isn't. And if the way we eat is something like 80% of what determines our success in achieving our dreambody, what can it hurt to get a handle on learning how to eat without eating compulsively. My new favorite thought is this:

"There is no such thing as a slip or a cheat, only a decision to self-destruct."

I'm not living on grilled chicken breast and lettuce leaves. I made a decision at the beginning of this whole process that I would only swallow food that tastes delicious. If it tastes nasty, I just do not eat it. I spit it out and start over, preparing something else until I've made something that I like to eat. Don't worry, I don't end up wasting a lot of food. I know what I like, so mostly I just stick with that. I will have weekends where I loosen up the reins a bit - maybe eat carbs with dinner or opt to go out to a restaurant and have a dinner roll with butter or something decadent like that. But I'm learning what foods wake up my inner monster and make it really hard for me to get back in the Zone. So, just for today, I'm steering as far clear of them as I possibly can, and I'm going to continue to do as many things as I can to ensure my success. Hell, if I could do things all day long that would support my achieving all my dreams, I would.

Oh, wait a second. That's exactly what I do try to do! Hope you do, too.

Celebrating FREEDOM!

Freedom from compulsive overeating! This morning, I was reading one of my daily meditation books, called "Food for Thought," and it talked about how Independence Day should not be a cause to gorge ourselves on high-carb and sugar-laden foods, but instead should be a day to celebrate our independence from needing those foods, our freedom from the insanity of the binge-starvation cycle we were stuck in for so long.

Today was great. GREAT! I didn't get to the gym (boo...hiss...) because I had to take my daughter back to CHOP to see if we had to get her cast changed since it got wet on Friday night (I know, I know...it never ends). Fortunately, we didn't have to get it changed, but we did end up in the ER at CHOP all morning. But I ate CLEAN!!!! All day long, and that includes a stint in the ER and a barbecue at my next door neighbor's house! I wasn't entirely low carb, but I chose good, healthy options, and I ended with fruit. I am SO proud of myself.

So, tomorrow, everyone else is getting back on track, which makes it easier. And then it's Monday. For me, weekdays are always easier because I don't have my little ones in my face all day eating whatever they want, and I have more structure of the workday to keep me busy and keep my mind off food. Oh, and tomorrow I'm running 6 miles with my sister-in-law, who's in town, and then heading over to the gym.

Hope everyone else is having a wonderful Independence Day. How are you celebrating YOUR freedom?

One small step...

So, as most of you know who have been following the blog or are just my friends, for whatever reason the Universe has decided to pile all kinds of medical drama on my little family over the past few months. When cold and flu season was happily melting away with the last patches of snow in early May, my 5 year old was being admitted to Children's Hospital with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (which provided to some the answer to the age old question, "who gets that, anyway?") I came here and posted about how in just three weeks, I managed to gain back 13 of the 35 pounds I had struggled so hard to lose.

Since then, I went on vacation to Martha's Vineyard and then took my same daughter into the same hospital to have surgery to have her heel cords lengthened. (For some reason, she has always walked on her toes, and as a result her muscles haven't fully developed and she is no longer able to walk flat on her feet. This is causing problems for her regarding posture, regular mobility and is apparently setting her up to develop degenerative arthritis.) She is now in a wheelchair.

As I mentioned, I have a propensity for eating under stress. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't have ever started this blog and started on the whole Dreambodies program. But I do, and I did. So, last night when my youngest daughter (she's 2) started barking like a seal and struggling to breathe, I knew we were in for a long night. Turns out she has croup, which we found out after I took her to the ER at 2:30 this morning. We were there until 6.

I don't do well when my kids are sick even when I've had a full night's sleep. I definitely was at risk all day today for bingeing and throwing my food plan to the wind. But I didn't. I don't know, maybe something's changed, finally. Maybe I've crossed over and am finally embracing the change and the healthy lifestyle. I do know that I had some moments of compulsive eating today, but I reached for cantaloupe, homemade protein bar, not cheddar goldfish or the peanut butter jar. For that I am grateful.

It's July 4th weekend. I thought it wasn't a holiday to worry about, but the truth is that if it falls on a weekend, I need to get my guard up. I emailed Tony and SaraBeth to tell them I was starting to worry about it, and got a call from T and an e-mail from SB. I plan to talk to her tomorrow. I will not go gently into this dark night, people.

I am taking the advice, visualizing my success and I will not stop until I get there. Every 24 hours offers an opportunity to get one step closer to my goals. And sometimes that means not doing things rather than doing things. Like not letting stress and life's challenges push me toward a binge. I made it through today and now I can rest my head on the pillow and know that since my body's free from junk, my head can be free from guilt.

Good night, all.