...like a fat kid loves cake

Sweetness, I like your style

2011-11-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

You guys...I am boring. Didn't I write really interesting blog posts at one point? Where is my inspiration and enthusiasm for weight loss.

I was trying to write today and tell you all about how much I love my new dessert goodness that I've been eating but it turned into an obscene love letter to candy.

Here goes the abridged version:

I love candy and having it around the week after Halloween is so difficult!!! So lately I've come up with this awesome solution...baking chips. If I'm craving a candy bar I'll eat a chocolate chip, and instead of an 80 calorie bite size Butterfinger I've only had a 2.3 calorie little bit of sweetness.

I know it doesn't sound nearly as appealing, but five minutes afterward I feel really fantastic about me and I still got that mini chocolate fix I was looking for. And when I'm not craving chocolate? Well...they have them in all flavors. Vanilla, cappuccino, butterscotch, peanut butter, mint, everything. That's my little tip. They're almost all between 2 and 3 calories, though I believe the peanut butter ones are a bit more. And really I end up going through maybe 8 or so a day, which is only 20 calories.

Yeah, I am still counting calories. It's what works for me.

I need to find my voice again. I'm a little lost with what to say. I hope you all have gorgeous and wonderful days <3

Sandwiches On My Mind

2011-10-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'm eating a sandwich right now and it's not particularly healthy.

And yes, that was the first sentence of my return to blogging.

I mostly menu planned for this entire week but purposefully let myself have a carb filled tomato and cheese sandwich today so I could get that particular craving out of my head. I've been off track for awhile and it's time to get back on. There's been a lot going on in my life. Not ready to share. It's all too serious and too upsetting at the moment. My future feels uncertain like for the first time I don't have a clear focus about where I'm going next. It's really unnerving.

You guys know how it is, we have all been there, weight loss has its ups and downs and really none of us are immune. So I'm gonna head back on an up now, I've got a weight goal to reach by January 17 and I'll get there! It's 78 days away, and when I get closer maybe I'll share with you all my weight and weight goal but for now I've turned randomly shy about it, sorry :P

So I've been out of control. Not denying myself much lately, which has led to fried rice and massive amounts of candy, especially with Halloween goodies everywhere you turn. I've also had perhaps more than my share of a box of British sweets sent to me by a good friend. Silly Kyoko...must stop acting like you can eat anything and not gain weight. I've got that um...icky issue where I haven't really put on much weight at all (two pounds max) but it seems like it's all visible in my face. I've got the chipmunk cheek look going on and it is just not something I want to see when I look in the mirror!

I feel really excited about starting to lose weight again. I've been walking a bit more, gonna start running again soon too. Food wise, I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I need to eat well. No more vegetarian dinners of cheesy melty carby goodness, because that just makes me feel lazy and sleepy. There are a lot of delicious and low calorie vegetarian options out there, and now I'm going to find the best of them :)

Anyway that's all I've got to say for now, thanks for all of you amazing and gorgeous people who have been checking in on me. Feel free to fb or tweet me telling me to post more, and hopefully I can get back into the swing of things!!

I Am Complete Is What I'm Saying

2011-05-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

This blog post has been months in the making. I have written and unwritten it several times, and I just find that I am trying to describe something that is indescribable. I know it's cryptic, and I'm sorry! I'll do my best to put my thoughts out there coherently for you.

I mentioned to you lovely readers forever ago that I was going to go through a program that I thought would help with my OCD. What I did in March was go to a 10 day vipassana meditation course. To read up on what it is all about you can go to http://www.dhamma.org/ - but the basic premise is that it helps you to simplify things to the most basic level there is.

I may at some point if there are enough people who want to know, go into greater detail about the course. If you have questions - I would be more than happy to answer any and all of them - just ask in comments or email/tweet at me! For now I'll just say it's spent in noble silence, you don't talk to any of the other people there (exceptions were made for emergencies and the like). You're really stuck in your head, meditating about 12 hours a day and the rest of the time stuck in very confined spaces. For someone who is mentally ill - especially someone who is obsessive - this was so, so difficult.

All that paired with a lack of physical contact and I was beyond miserable. I probably hadn't gone two days without a hug from someone or other since I was 16. On day 4 or 5 I dreamt about a hug. From a person I only kinda knew at that point (though we are closer now, and I've found him to be the type of person who really would have been that nice). A really simple and sweet dream, but I swear it mentally saved me. I woke up and cried with relief, from this subconscious gesture of caring that I gave myself. My point is that this course was at times the hardest, worst thing I've ever done and I was a total wreck for a lot of it.

As the days went by though, everything we did was evolving. You learn the technique in such baby steps and you don't even realize how much progress you're making. It's an amazing feeling on the last day, this sense of accomplishment when you realize you've achieved the level of meditation that the teacher has been talking about. It's unbelievable, that so much suffering just vanishes as you reach the destination you were working towards. Incredibly it's like you're able to physically brush off the cravings and aversions that are plaguing you.

I've now made it past the two month mark, and I can happily say that this meditation is a part of my life. I meditate for an hour every morning and one every evening. All right, sometimes I skip, if I've been out drinking I don't really think it's very helpful to be meditating ;) but for the most part I've really kept with it. I understand now that it's not as magically healing as it was when it was my entire world for 10 days. Some days I walk away from my meditation spot still confused, still unsure. But most days I feel peaceful and all right with the way things are for me. (More on that another day)

Other random updates, at the course we were given vegetarian meals. They were beyond delicious, and I'm happy to say that since the course I have not eaten meat. I've had fish, I'm trying not to eat fish but I've made the decision not to beat myself up if I have. It's in my blood to love fish so I'm ok with it. And I'm happy with my choice to give up meat, it feels like the most right thing I've done in a long time.

I'll end with a quick weight loss update. I've been up and down. I'm going down now. I don't want to post the number because I'm unhappy about it. I'll get over it - and I'll get back to posting about it. But lately I just...I see the weight in my face and it makes me so unhappy. I know that 2 or 3 pounds from now I'll be happy again and I'll see my face become more slim again, we'll see. I've been running off and on but I need some momentum to get my butt going again.

What a sucky note to end on. Ok here's some happy news - next week I'm going to Atlantic City to see the best band ever (Weezer...you've probably picked up on that). And going with two wonderful gorgeous ladies who I adore, and I can't help but be so very very excited. Can. Not. Wait.

I hope you guys have all been doing awesomely. And haven't abandoned me like I did you!! I'm SORRY!!! I'll catch up with you wonderful people before you know it :) have wonderful days my loves.

Jump out, jump out, get your groove on

2011-02-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

Lovely people who I adore: I have been doing really well in the past week. I know, right? After my last post...you'd think I'd be all jumping up and down to let you know that I'm happy. And I AM, I just haven't had much time.

Yesterday was an odd Saturday. I had to go in to the office this morning. I just had a lot of stuff to get done and a giant wave of responsibility that came over me, forcing me to act like a grownup. Afterwards, I came home to take care of HusbandCake who is sick. He's been achey since Friday with a sore throat. Don't get me wrong, I really do love taking care of my husband. It's one of those things that just makes me feel happy...or...girly? Wifely? Whatever it is, I do enjoy caretaking. At the same time, I am terrified of getting sick. So he's been getting a lot of tea and soup and blankets and...space.

Haha.

Seriously though, taking care of a sick person has been making my mind wander, and I got to thinking about this blog, about my weight loss, about everything I set out to do when I started this blog. I have been thinking about taking care of MYSELF. Longtime readers have probably picked up on the fact that I go through serious phases and lax phases. Some weeks the only thing I have to be proud of is that I haven't done too much gaining of weight.

I think that taking care of myself is going to have to change going forward. I am so excited about all of the mental and emotional taking care of myself that I've done lately and that I'll continue to work on intensely over the next couple of weeks. Now I need to go forward and take better care of myself physically. No more starts and stops, I need a sustainable lifestyle.

I know I'm not giving up meat for health reasons (although without a doubt my most unhealthy temptations tend to be meat dishes) but I've been doing really well without red meat. I've had a couple of slip ups, but they were one-bite slip ups and I am not really beating myself up over them. I'm ready now, to move on to other meat. I'm hoping this goes easily for me - over the next couple of weeks I won't be around the temptation of meat sitting there mocking me deliciously.

Really though, I've been going through phases of running every day for a week and then not exercising for a week. It's bad - I need a regular schedule. I have started using my weekly calendar to plan out not just food but exercise as well. I am going to force myself to take days off and not burn out. Forcing myself to have treats, so that I am not tempted to go overboard. Sustainable!

I so set out to blog about weight loss. I guess I am writing about my process. And I'm excited about it - now off for some healthy breakfast!!

Ooh-la-la, She's Trippin'...La-dee-dah, Mental Slippin'

2011-02-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

My theme song for the day:

I once saw an interview with this singer, where he said something about how he tries to be straightforward and honest but everyone just ends up thinking he's being ironic and confusing. It's a weird thing to not have people understand you when you're saying things the best way you know how. I feel like I had this moment yesterday where I was doing everything I could to be, I guess vulnerable and open...but all anyone else heard was demanding. It is kind of a lonely feeling to feel misunderstood, no that's not the right sentiment. I think it's lonely to feel like you're not on the same page as other people, especially if it's probably your fault.

I have been up all night, which isn't helpful the night before a big party. I finally decided to get up and put some words down, really try to work things out. And who knows if I'll end up posting this and in what form but I've always been really open with you guys.

I know you guys see this little part of me, and most of the time it's a really great part - when I'm happy I want to write and share it with you guys, share it with the world. When I'm not doing well it's not so simple. I think it's a pretty normal reaction to not want to share or spread the awful, negative feelings we all feel from time to time. Maybe that skewed view is what makes people not understand me, or maybe it makes you all think I'm a different person than I really am.

I've been forced to really consider a lot about the things I do and how they affect people. Specifically, how my most recent episode with OCD has affected people around me. Something like that is difficult because in the moment, when I have zero perspective, when my head is all consumed with the obsessive thoughts - I can't snap out of it. It sounds so easy to say that I should see things how they are but that's not how the disease works. And while I am glad that I am out of it now after a couple weeks of slowly climbing out, it's really depressing to reflect on the effect my checking out had. It would be so nice to just snap back into life but that's not how LIFE works. All we can hope for when it comes to other people is that if we try our hardest to be good to them, that they will do the same for us.

I had a very emotional and really...serious talk with a couple of friends last night. One of them said something last night that really stuck out in my mind - actually it was the thing that kept me up last night. She was talking about...not having seen her in her darkest hour (yet). It spoke a lot to me. These past few weeks have not been my darkest hour, that "honor" will hopefully forever be stuck far, far in the past. But they surely have been the worst times of my adult life, at least when it comes to the unhappiness lurking in my head. And now they have seen me like that. And it has been hurtful to them. I have had these pockets of escape, my weight victory, my vacation in Tahoe and my new online friends - and those things have been validly AMAZING, but I just have taken and taken from my "normal" life to give to them. It has to stop - this is a balance that needs to be restored. Because those things shouldn't be an escape. They should be a part of my regular life, things that don't detract from regular life (work, friends, everything) but that ADD to it.

It's strange too because in the midst of all this one of my new friends went through something similar...feeling like new friendships or new fun things to bond over are threatening in some way to old friends. At least I think that's what it was about. It turns out that's what it was about for me anyway - that I didn't even see how much I was neglecting the things that made my life so wonderful before this stress attack.

And that's where I am now. Figuring out how to recover from this whole episode. Trying to take these awesome new things in my life out of the "escape" category and merging them with the awesome things that were already there. Acknowledging that some things in life take work - and those things are so, so often the most rewarding and the most amazing. Anyway, I love you guys. Readers and friends alike.

I feel better. I'm glad I got all that out. I am hopeful. I am really, really excited about my party tonight. My friends Amanda and Erin have outdone themselves, it is going to be amazing and something I could not be more grateful for. I hope you are going to be there too :)

as a little post script I want to acknowledge that today is the Day of Remembrance. It is the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which led to Japanese Americans being taken from their homes and put in camps during World War 2 (http://dayofremembrance.org/). In addition to all of the other crazy emotional stuff going on today, I am really missing my Jichan. He and my Bachan (my grandparents) were in the camps, and it wasn't something that was really talked about but I hope they know that I am thinking of them today and missing them, wishing they were both still here.

Keep On, Keep On, Keep On, Yeah

2011-02-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

I realized today how awesome I am. I know you all already know, because I remind you on a very regular basis lest you forget that I am the awesomest, but today it came to me epiphany-style and it was great.

I had a pretty bad panic attack this morning. I was just feeling so overwhelmed with things that were awesome, awful, stressful, and scary (in the sense that the unknown is scary). I don't even want to get into it though because those thoughts are gone and I don't miss them.

I was thinking this morning, as I have been for several days now, that I have really changed as a person since I started this blog, since I lost the weight, since I wanted to be healthier. I am so proud of myself, and so grateful for all of your support.

So now that I've kicked my most recent goal's ass, am not obese, and am a runner, what is my next goal? Well friends I'll tell you. I want to be not overweight. Yep, another 30 pounds need to go out the freaking door. And I figure even though not being overweight would be 149 for me, I'm going for 147.5. Why? Long time readers might know that that will be a HUGE MILESTONE of 100 pounds lost since my heaviest weight. And I'm gonna get there.

I set a tentative goal date of July 23. My 6th wedding anniversary. We'll see how I'm doing a month or two in and if I need to change anything up, but I think I can accomplish this NO PROBLEM. Especially with my half marathon training, which is on hold during this gross weather. I am so excited.

I feel like the end is in sight. I know it's not really, I know I have a lifetime of watching what I eat, of maintaining and staying fit. But when I'm on, I am ON and I know I can eat well, exercise and get my weight down even more.

I also feel this insane hope about my OCD. I know I've talked about it so much lately, and I know if you don't suffer from it it's really difficult to understand, but know that I'm sick of talking about it/thinking about it/living with it/being obsessed with...being obsessed. However, I have been...accepted to a program that I think is REALLY going to help me out. I don't want to talk about it much until I've gone through it (it will be over mid-March)...no sense in painting a picture of something I haven't seen yet. But I am hopeful, and happy, and I can't wait to move past this most recent obsessive crazy-time.

The feeling of the day is awesome hope for the future. What's making you excited about your own future today?? Let's keep all this happiness going...

You Make The Rainclouds Disappear

2011-02-16T15:01:00.000-08:00

Hi lovelies. I haven't posted in awhile have I? Over a week, I believe. As usual, I was just too too too busy!! I had a woooooonnnnnnnnderful weekend in Tahoe with some really fabulous people, and then of course spent the past two days really spending some quality time with Husbandcake and getting my relaxing on.

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 30!! I'm not one of those people opposed to aging. My life has gotten better every single year I've lived it (ok let's say, since I turned 18 at least). It's continuing to get better.

I entered my 30s not obese. My scale told me yesterday that I was at 178.1 (that's after a weekend of some serious drinking and eating of delicious foods). I cried a little bit...not being obese still means a lot to me, gets me very emotional. Last February I never realized how serious I could be about losing weight and being healthy. The dress I wore to my 29th birthday party was a 3x. The shirt I wore yesterday was a size large. I feel different. I had a little mini cake roll from the Asian market instead of a full on cake. Don't get me wrong, I loved it like a fat kid loves cake, but I never envisioned a day I wouldn't have a good sized cake that me and Husbandcake would pick our way through for a whole week.

Look at these BEAUTIFUL LADIES!! (and look at my lack of chipmunk cheeks, that's pretty awesome too!)

I entered my 30s a runner. A runner! I was on vacation in Tahoe over the weekend...and I ran. In the snow, all bundled up. It felt so good. My whole life I thought I hated nothing more than running. I played soccer for 12 years growing up, and I mean...if they made a sport like soccer where you could kick the ball around without moving I think I would have liked it a lot more. Now I crave it. It took what, a month?? And I crave running? Love, love, love it.

See that Erin and Amanda? Yeah I rocked the monster hat. Monster hat, giant scarf, too stylish for words.

I entered my 30s wearing pants. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy but after years of not wearing them I feel great. That extra 70 pounds looks great now that it's gone from my body. I lost my chipmunk face. I would say I look great in my jeans but to be honest with you...they're feeling a little big on me ;) Husbandcake and I were at a friend's house briefly yesterday and he said when he came and stood next to me, putting his arm around me he couldn't believe how different it was. To go in a year and a half from barely being able to give me a big hug, to being able to hold me like that meant so much to him. And it means SO MUCH to me.

I entered my 30s in control. Well, almost in control. I'm still having some trouble with the OCD stuff. Still a little obsessive, but it's nowhere near where it was a couple of weeks ago. No depression, everything has been happy. There's been pockets of stress here and there but nothing I can't handle! I feel so much more in control of my own thoughts and it makes me happy.
I entered my 30s feeling beloved. I know quite a few of you are my facebook friends and my new Twitter friends and I was so overwhelmed by the number of people wishing me a happy birthday (although sorry all of you, because my favorite birthday wish came today, courtesy of the singer of my theme song - speaking of which, I've been listening to it every morning to remind me that I can kick ass every. single. day.) I actually was brought to tears twice yesterday just from feeling surrounded by the most wonderful people anyone has ever had in their lives, online and in person.

I swear, Twitter makes me feel like it's ok to be a crazed superfan.

I love each and every one of you reading this. I'm feeling sappy today. I wish you all lived close to me and we could just hang out in one big fabulous group of amazing people.

I doubt I'll be back posting until after the masquerade ball on Saturday (do you live near me?? Are you coming to the ball??), I think I'm about to become the busiest person ever. But I will be back, I do miss blogging, I do love all of you and I think about you and wonder how you're doing and want to read your blogs again, but it's just so tough. I'm gonna have to...cut down my list of like 400 blogs I read or something!

All right loves. I hope you are all having beautiful wonderful healthy times!! If you really, really love me...post a comment telling me how you've been, because I really, truly want to know. I miss you guys when I am only posting sporadically and not reading blogs. I miss you a tonnnnnnn :) have a fabulous day!!

If you wanna start something, know one thing: I'm king.

2011-02-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

I have had this theme song this week - it's this mildly obscure song by Weezer called King (by obscure I mean, I am not 100% on this but I think it was a bonus b-side to one of their deluxe albums and is sung by the bass player). Anyway the feel of the song is this really mellow confidence, the song itself feels laid back but the guy is pretty much talking about how he is no doubt in charge and don't mess with him. It's definitely not your typical get pumped up song, not at all.

But it's been my theme song because I feel like I am on top of the world. I heard it Monday morning and it just nailed how I need to be feeling right now and I made this conscious choice to let it set the tone for my day. I felt like I was singing it straight to my stress, straight to all the things that have been getting me down. And since then I've been riding a high from my weight loss, my running, everything. There is no feeling so wonderful as climbing back out of that pit of OCD despair. Don't get me wrong, I'm still feeling very obsessive, but I've also been really happy. I feel like I am turning things around, I can do anything...Isn't it amazing the difference only two days can make??

Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in a long time. I went running at lunch, Week 3 Day 2 of c25k is, I believe, run a minute and a half, walk a minute and a half, run three minutes, walk three minutes - and then repeat. My last run, I must not have heard the beep telling me to stop and I ran for over four minutes. That...is HUGE. I was complaining to a friend last week that I hated the jump from one minute to one and a half. And now I'm running around for four minutes without collapsing? What a freaking feeling!

I feel like it was some kind of crazy sign that I was right to really make the effort to attack my stress. It didn't hurt that the thing that made me look down at my phone and see that I had run too long was the very guy that sings that song tweeting at me that I made his day (from telling him that the song made my day). Which made MY day. AGAIN.

Anyway, I guess I just want to really appreciate and enjoy this inspiration, motivation, happiness. My life is great. I've accomplished every single thing I really, truly wanted to do by the time I was 30. Married Husbandcake, which I wanted to do from the day I met him. Bought a house and made it into a home, have wonderful pets and an amazing group of friends, life does not get better. And the best part is that there IS still room for improvement. I am going to phase meat out of my life, I am going to take better measures to manage my stress, these are all goals that I can accomplish, that I will accomplish. Because I can do anything...I'm king.

So I'm looking to you all for just a little more inspiration. Tell me what your theme songs are. What gets you pumped up, excited, just plain happy? What makes you run a little faster or put that extra effort in?

Oh hi

2011-02-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

You don't know it but my little oh hi, yeah that little greeting up there, comes to you from a different KyokoCake. A KyokoCake that is...not obese. A KyokoCake that will enter her thirties being not obese, being in the best shape of her life (ok since high school anyway).

That's right. With a freaking week to spare, I am calling it!! It's been four days that I've been under 180 both in the morning and at night. That includes a martini party, fried rice, you name it, I had an awesome weekend and kept it around 178. This morning? 177.7 - OH MY does that feel good. It just occurred to me I should have taken a picture. But I have been too excited, every morning I get off the scale and dance around a bit.

In fact, if I could do it, I would hack all of your computers so that when you open the blog post, your screen shoots out confetti and you can hear me all giggly with delight.

*now for a quick disclaimer. I know there are a lot of people out there who think BMI is a horrible indication of fitness and health. I kind of agree, it takes into account zero variables, and really fit people are often miscategorized because muscle weighs a lot. But in this case, just knowing that there's a number out there and now I'm on the side of it I want to be on...it makes me feel great.

Time to set a new goal!! What should it be, what should it be? I can't even think of it right now. I can't even think about my OCD right now, I can't think about anything but how far I have come. About forty pounds since I started this blog, and I think a little over SEVENTY POUNDS from my heaviest. What a freaking day.

I can hardly concentrate on anything this morning. I've been waiting, kinda expecting the scale to go up and down all weekend, and it didn't. I could honestly go on and on.

But instead, I'm going to go get my work done, revel and be happy, think about my new goals and wish all of you so much luck on the way to yours. Because damn it feels SO GOOD to achieve one :)

It's Time I Got Back to the Good Life

2011-02-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

All right. It's been awhile again and again all I can really explain is that I've been in the pit of OCD...and there's no internet there. Haha...no, the past few days I've kinda been into Twitter (@KyokoCake) because my attention span for things outside the realm of my obsession is closer to 30 seconds than 30 minutes, and believe me when I say I can't write a blog post in 30 seconds!!

I'm climbing out of the pit. I'm still in it. Just slowly trying to...I guess logic my way up to the top. I have nothing in my life that should make me less than ecstatic. I really mean that. I know you long time readers know that I think I am AWESOME, and I do...I really do. Being obsessive can be a sad and ungrateful feeling, and it's tough on the people around me. I have these friends...and my husband, and my family. They remind me of all the wonderful things I have and it's hard to be aware of how great things are and to still not just snap out of it.

So I've gotten quite a few emails, texts and everything else after my last post. And by quite a few I mean, I have not had the time to even reply to everyone. I've cried more than once. I...can't express how much it means to me to know how much people who read this blog care about me. The right words don't even exist.

I had the weirdest thought this morning. I have been thinking about all of my anxiety lately and I gave myself a bit of a break. Honestly people, there is a LOT going on with me. Not necessarily bad. Mostly good.

I have been talking for so, so long about a career change. Husbandcake wants me to be home, my work hours are stressful and so is the commute. But there is a type of stability in having a real job, there is a comfort in working for a fitness company while losing weight and being in shape is still such a huge focus in my life. My job is not all rainbows and sunshine but I can honestly say I work for a great company in an AWESOME group, we all get along and hearing other people talk I know I have it good. So it's not an easy decision, and I feel like there are people just waiting on me while I'm in limbo and not committed fully to anything - which isn't fair to anybody.

Limbo itself seems to be hardest on me. Husbandcake, for now, will support me in whatever I decide to do. But it's tough for him to hide his preference to have me home, because he works from home most of the time and it's...tough for us to be apart every day.

A couple of you asked about what was making me want to do some grand gesture. Maybe it's because I am only nine days from leaving my twenties behind me. Maybe it's because the job limbo is one of a million things I feel like I am on the edge with. I feel like it's time for me to have more substance.

I'm not saying that I'm shallow. I'm not, I am actually surprisingly intellectual. I say surprisingly because I don't really let that geeky philosophy loving girl out very often. I am really self conscious about the way my brain works, and I feel like I don't make sense to a lot of people. And even if I did, well...I don't think many people would find it fun to over analyze the things that intrigue me. I can spend hours listening to a song and just reveling in the fact that the pieces fit together like a puzzle, and not a lot of my real life friends follow Disgrasian enough to go on and on about it like I can.

That's not really the point though. The point is that I have all these thoughts, these serious thoughts about life, where I'm going, the state of the world, you name it, and at the end of the day I've been really happy to let them go at a moment's notice when I see a pretty handbag or the potential for a theme party. And maybe I feel like it's time to find a different balance between being serious and being...frivilous. It's tough though, because I really am comfortable being that distinctly frivilous person. The mildly sarcastic, probably slightly drunk and easily distracted girly girl who is texting you RIGHT NOW because she saw a bunny with a mustache in a store window.

See, I got distracted from the serious thoughts again. Not that I really knew where I was going with this in the first place.

I know serious me wants to do things like...make the world a better place, stop eating meat (I don't like feeling guilty about delicious things), be more in control of her OCD. She thinks she wants to keep getting more into running. She wants to finish losing this damn weight so she can get pregnant. She wants to be calm and centered in her life. And I want to help her. Maybe I should just pick one thing and stick with it.

Maybe I just need more confidence.

I've been writing this post for about an hour now and I'm so frustrated - I wanted to delete the whole thing but I thought in the end I'll just share my frustration. I wrote all that, I mean all of it and I have no conclusion. No place to go, no real resolutions reached. Rawr...what is this, a mid-life crisis at 29?!!! I hate ending on such...dissonance.

Thanks for bearing with me so long though. I've actually been working on a post for tomorrow that makes me almost feel like myself again - some really good news that I have been holding on to for a couple of days. You'll be happy to read it.

For now...Husbandcake has some pretty bad allergies and we're having to miss a wonderful Superbowl party so I can take care of him. So I should probably...do that :) hope you are all having a lovely Sunday!

Why am I so obviously insane...

2011-01-31T15:30:00.000-08:00

I’m not dead…I swear it. I feel kiiiinda like a zombie though. Please know that I haven’t forgotten you and I haven’t left the blogging world again, I just find it hard to find a spare few minutes to write thoughts down at all. Which is sad.

Quick blog related update: um, I’m at 181.3 as of this morning Yep, lowest weight since…who even knows when (like I really had a scale those 5-6 years I was steadily gaining a hundred pounds). The scale numbers are steadily if not quickly going down and the running is improving ever so slightly. I’ve been insisting to everyone in my life that I have NOT been losing weight lately and now I have to stop doing that because it's not true anymore!! I’m totally confident about my birthday weight goal too which is great! To be honest the weight loss is the only part of my life that I really feel like is going well right now. I know that’s not really true…but I think maybe I’m just lacking perspective.

I have been having a really rough time. I kind of have two jobs, most of you know one of my jobs is working in property management for a fitness company…well in a past life I was an editor of sorts and that job is complicated at best. I still do work from time to time for this publishing company. Maybe 90% of the time the whole company is just my dad, by himself, taking orders and all that, he doesn’t put out new material anymore really and it’s just kind of plugging along. But when things get complicated, like this giant project we’ve had lately, I have to help out.

So between work-work being really complicated, editing-work being extremely time consuming, birthday party planning being crazy and about ten other things I’m lost. I’ve retreated into my OCD in a really bad way. I’ve found a new obsession, and I spend all of my time thinking about it, reading about it, and just…in general being obsessed.

There’s something so unnerving about knowing that you’re crazy. In some ways it’s terrifying and in some ways it’s calming. I know what needs to be done – I need to stop fixating on something so frivolous. But in the moment…when I feel panicked it’s so comforting to retreat into my own little world. It’s just a weird dynamic I guess. The whole thing is making me have all these disjointed and grandiose thoughts. I’ve contemplated this ten day meditation course, just up and leaving my life for ten days to be a part of it, and I’ve contemplated becoming a pescetarian. Is that how you spell it? What I mean to say is that I would be giving up all meat, except fish.

My brain is all over the place. I was pretty convinced I could sit here and write something to you all that didn’t sound crazy. I’m not 100% sure I succeeded. But I adore all of you, I haven’t been keeping up on your blogs, and I’m sorry. I’ll get back from this obsession and be a part of the real world. I hope it’s soon.

And I ran, I ran so far awaaaaaay...

2011-01-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Lovely and wonderful readers, I'm sorry I haven't been around all week. I have been doing...not well, not bad. Running every day (even if some days it's less than half a mile), but it's hard to keep my calorie deficit where I want it. It's like, I burn a few hundred more calories and I feel like I want to eat about eight hundred extra. It's awful!!

The running, however, is going all right. I am slow, not in the way that everyone says "oh I'm so slow" but in the way that I am actually slower running than walking. I'm not opposed to being slow in general, but I'm annoyed at not seeing an improvement. I finished week 1 of couch to 5k, meaning I've REALLY gone out to run three times. And it may sound dumb but I'm sitting here annoyed that I haven't improved at all. I know I know, running three times isn't exactly a huge amount of training (or even a habit, really). Still, it would have been cool if after the last time I had made it even a tenth of a mile farther in the same amount of time.

Beyond running I haven't been up to anything but party planning. I got my mask ordered, got together a bunch of other things and in true OCD fashion I made a wonderful and extremely detailed to do list for myself. On the weight loss front, a big nothing has changed since the last time I posted - so disappointing!!

I wish I had a better update for you. Something interesting to say, perhaps. I'm swamped at work and the stress follows me home. Nothing very serious, just a lot of little things. But enough that I'm struggling to keep up with life right now much less blogging. I'll try! I miss you all when I'm gone :) hope you are all having wonderful weeks!!

ps, I gave up on giving up coffee - however I am keeping it down to 2 cups per week! And...trying to save them for the weekend too, it's going pretty well!

Running. shudder

2011-01-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

186.9. Another pound lost and another reward (this one was a white board). I reeeeeally need to take these in to my office and enjoy them!

Hi!

Hello my lovely lovely friends. I've been off in the world of masquerade masks for a few days. I literally can't think of anything else. It's been awful and wonderful at the same time.

I have a lot of new subscribers, and I am so very very pleased. Hi new followers!! Introduce yourselves! If you are brand new you should know I'm planning a masquerade ball, and if you're in the bay area (or not) I would love you to come. Because I am THAT excited. You should probably also know that I have OCD and that is why I obsessively talk about it. I'm trying to keep it to a minimum so that today I can talk about...

Running.

I was going to link back to a blog where I know I very strongly stated I was not a runner but I can't seem to find it. I don't like to run, I don't get running, I quit c25k on week 1 day 2, and not even after I completed day 2! However, upon further thought I've decided I'm going to run. To be a runner. I said in an earlier blog that I was going to run the Disneyland half marathon, and I'm pretty excited about that goal. I actually am procrastinating signing myself up, although I know that is going to happen by the end of this weekend.

I have a plan. A running plan that goes from today until race day. A plan that will make sure that I can run it in the time allotted or hopefully faster. I'm scared of this plan. And embarrassed by it a little bit. The thing is, I am starting off by trying to run a tenth of a mile away from my house and then back. When I looked on Google Maps I felt humiliated to myself that I had to PLAN to run that tiny distance. But when I really truly admit it to myself, I haven't been working out or walking lately. I am out of shape. This is the realistic way to go about things.

There are a lot of emotions I have associated with this plan. The first is like I said, embarrassment. I may or may not have mentioned that Husbandcake is a runner. A distance runner in fact. He considers himself out of shape when he gets out of breath...after a mile. I consider it a huge accomplishment when I make it up one flight of stairs without wanting to sit down. He'd never judge me or make me feel bad or slow but I'd just know that he didn't understand where I was coming from. Another emotion is anger, anger at myself for letting myself get to the point that I don't have the confidence to run less than a quarter mile. Then there's hope, that I can actually be a runner and imagine all the glorious calories that I'll be burning when I am out there running 5-6 miles at a time. But I'd be kidding myself if I didn't tell you that the bad feelings took up about 90% of my feelings.

That's not like me. Sometimes it's like me. But I haven't snapped out of it, and THAT is not like me. I try to be very upbeat and happy. After all, I am about to start a wonderful fitness journey that will end in tutus! What else could a girly girl want?

For it to be easy...

Yikes. Really yikes. That is NOT freaking likely. The goal for me is to get my time under 2.5 hours. That is not likely either. Or maybe it is, maybe I'll be a natural and end up being faster than I think. I imagine myself barely making it in under the 3.5 hour time limit and it's scary.

I'm scared that I'll fail. I'm scared that I'll stick with this plan for a week and then forget it. That I won't actually run the half marathon, that I will be on the sidelines cheering my friends on. That while I'm cheering them on I'll be eating a corndog or something. It's weird not to have faith in myself. After all, I am awesome. I really am, I have my moments of doubt but I don't fake how much I like me. That's what makes those moments of doubt so hard.

I've got to snap out of it. I can't kill myself with doubt before I've even started. I have to go look at my plan again and get excited. Yes it's embarrassing to run a block and back because that's as far as I can go, but it's just the first step. And soon enough I'm sure I'll be posting that I ran those 5 miles without stopping, and we'll all be laughing at how silly I was that first day being worried about failure.

Right?

Coffee and Other Musings

2011-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

I gave up coffee. It's awful. That's an awful way to start a blog post too, but I don't even care. I'd probably have a better beginning if I'd had my coffee. Coffee, as far as I know (I don't know, I'm making this sentence up) is not that bad for you. What is bad about my drinking coffee is that I take it with two splendas and 3 tablespoons of creamer.

In case that doesn't mean anything to you, look at this picture...

See that coffee on the right? NEEDS MORE CREAM.

Some people drink coffee black, I drink it white. And that my friends is a good 100 calories for every small mug of coffee. Some days half the calories I consume at work are in coffee creamer and that cannot be good.

In better news, I'm at 187.3 this morning. What does that mean? It means I'm over 1/4 of the way to my birthday goal! So that's a small victory right?? I bought a couple of cute frames for my desk - pictures will follow as soon as I get some photos in them!

In even BETTER news, the manipulation of my friends to help me in my diet is working! I am looking forward to a fabulous night of dress trying-on and dinner at the home of one of my most wonderful friends, Amanda. A combination of the two things most on my mind, being healthy and my masquerade ball - how can I help but be happy.

Oh my gosh, and in EVEN BETTER news, Husbandcake is home tonight. Home from a few days in Washington DC, where he was having some kind of training.

It's the little things in life that make you feel good. What's making everyone else feel good today?

Mini Weigh In

2011-01-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot to let you guys know the fabulous news, that this morning I was down to 188.1, meaning 2 new things for my cubicle...hmmmm....whatever shall I get?? Any ideas?

Fat Tax and the End of Settling

2011-01-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

Who spent this weekend looking at the prettiest dresses ever??

Oh...it was me!!!

Most people are going to think I'm crazy - and maybe you're right, a little bit. My wonderful friends and husband are planning a 30th birthday party for me. I could not be more excited - it's a masquerade ball!! I just want to invite everyone I've ever met and have a fabulous time (uh - ps, you're ALL invited, provided you want to make the trip out to California). But in reality what I want most is a beautiful ball gown, so I have been looking all over for ball gowns all weekend.

As I was going through one website in particular, I started finding myself annoyed when I came across this:

(no, I am not crazy enough to be spending nearly that much anyway in case you were wondering)

Please don't misunderstand me - I understand that bigger clothes take more fabric and therefore cost. Of course I also know that the difference in fabric amounts between a 16 and an 18 is not that much. On the other hand, a 10 in that huge dress is going to use a LOT more fabric than a size 2. So how is it fair that only size 18 and up have to pay the amount? Why don't my skinny friends get a discount?

You'll notice from my title that I have a name for this charge. I call it a fat tax. And yes, I think it's unfair. If you are going to charge based on fabric, charge a different amount for every single size. Will that kind of suck for everyone? Maybe. Would I happily pay a higher price based exactly on what I'm getting? Definitely.

The random injustice of being told we have to pay more to look nice is so frustrating. There are even some plus size sites that charge you more over a certain size. Not to mention that's just when we're able to get something similar to non-plus size clothes. Most of the time the plus size versions of clothes are crazy - giant weird prints, unflattering cuts, tents! Even at my store of choice (Old Navy) you get your regular size dresses and then the plus size dresses are lumped in basically with maternity. Wider straps, less detail. A lot of fabric to try to hide your shape. But very, very obviously just a "fat" version of the cute smaller clothes.

For those of us that are on the journey to losing weight, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And that light is that eventually we'll all find our wonderful normal-size find, that perfect dress or shirt or whatever that makes you feel like jumping up and down and screaming that you lost weight. For me this came in the form of a dress I wore to a friend's wedding in LA last month.

To get it though, check out this progression of dresses I've worn to various weddings....

This dress...I can't tell you how much I hate it. There are no words, I just hate it. and that is the look after hours of alterations, not to mention this dress came in regular sizes with thin straps, a better length and altogether way more wonderful. (and of course cheaper)

I'm pretty sure I posted pictures of this dress when i wore it. It is an ok dress. It had in addition to the bow under the bust that you can't see in this picture, bows at the shoulder. It suffered from way-over-detailed syndrome, but I was pretty happy at the time to find a big girls dress that was not black..

This dress...oh my goodness, this dress. Let me explain...

The thing about the dress I bought in December...is that I bought it at a juniors store. I bought that dress for $22.50 at Charlotte Russe, and didn't have to alter it. I'm going to let that statement re-sink in to my own mind.

To be able to shop at a normal size store is wonderful. To be able to shop at a juniors size store is amazing. I remember when the standard for a great dress was "minimal alteration, not black" - who wants to live like that? Shouldn't the standard for a great dress be "feel fabulous, wear exactly what you want" instead? It was eye opening for me to realize that. To realize I could feel that great, to realize that I could be that happy with an outfit.

It couldn't have happened for a better wedding either. Surrounded by Indian women in the. most. beautiful. saris you've ever seen, anything less than the perfect dress would have made sucked all the confidence out of me. Wait - I am so distracted by how much I love that dress that I forgot my point.

OH! Here is my point, let's bring it all back around. I am annoyed that people want plus size girls to pay more for clothes that are less wonderful. I want to FIX it. The epiphany that we don't have to look at clothes the way we are used to is a powerful one. Now I get it. And I want it to be that way for everyone. *end rant.

I just wanted to end on this. I wish i could wear this every day. Ok maybe minus the sleeves...

Running Just As Fast As We Can

2011-01-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a complete success. My calorie deficit was just over 1000. I forgot to weigh myself this morning but that's ok. I think I did fabulously.

I meant to take pictures of the fabulous salmon salad and the cheesy muffin things I made last night, but forgot. It's ok though because they were not at all pretty, but fairly delicious. Especially the cheesy muffin things. I wish I had brought one to work to eat right now...

Today I am going to ramble about my fitness goals. I have one vague goal for this year, and that is this: the Disneyland half marathon in September. The thing is...it's not my goal per se. It's Erin's goal (and will be her second half marathon because she's aMAzing) and I'm just tagging along. I mean my training so far, has been to decide that we should dress up and wear tutus and mouse ears. I've even looked for tutus online.

This is how in shape I imagine Erin and I will be by September. Hahaha...

Training-wise I know I need a plan. I've walked a few 5ks now, one of which I jogged for...I dunno maybe 15-20 feet of it. Haha :) seriously though I think I will set up a training schedule for how far I can run and how fast. It will be much like the system I had for riding my bike to the store so long ago. Or maybe I will re-try the couch to 5k program. Either way, a little more every day and I'm sure I'll be able to do it in no time! Well...er...a long time. But it will be gradual and I think I will be able to do it.

So my own personal fitness goals are important too. But rather than a goal to work towards I think what I want from myself most of all is a commitment. I want to work out two of every three days. AND I want to move all day. Even if it's just bouncing on my exercise ball I want to keep moving. I need to get back in the habit of using the stairs during the day, using the restroom on the first floor and walking back up...whatever it takes. I think we all know that every calorie we put into our mouths counts - well in the same way, every calorie we burn counts too!

In other, I meant to post this with my weight loss goals! It's the first piece of my cubicle remodel....and I didn't even have to do any work for it :)

Don't I know the awesomest people??

As you could have already guessed the theme of my cube will be pink and sparkly. Can't wait, gotta get that first pound off!

Noms

2011-01-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my calorie deficit was 812. To get to my goal weight it was supposed to be at least 870. Oops. Which led to a not fun weight this morning of 190.4.

While I could easily blame that on the fact that I didn't exercise, that wasn't the problem. It was my eating. And it's exactly that, that is inspiring me to write to you about my eating goals today!

I have two eating goals, and the first one is so simple. Cook. A little background is that my work schedule changed. Again. And I am not getting home until about 6:00. It is really rough. I think back to a couple of months ago when I was home at 3:45 and I'm just...sad. I feel like I don't have the right amount of time to get things done. But guess what - it's time to suck it up. Boo hoo, other people don't get home until 6:00 and THEY don't go out to dinner every single night or have their husbands cook for them. So I will not do that either. It makes me feel like a slacker when all I do is work and relax, and I can't fall into that trap so I have to stop now.

To help me with cooking though, I'm tricking a couple of friends into being healthy with me. I guess it's not a trick as they'll probably see this when I post it.

A little preview of what my lucky guests might get tonight...

I'm experimenting on them with new recipes and I am going to trick them and possibly others into making this a weekly or bi-weekly thing, where we eat healthy food and cook instead of going out. I really need this in my life.

My other eating goal is to PLAN. I've already started the plan today. I set alarms on my phone, to remind me to eat at good intervals. Yesterday I didn't plan, had consumed only 300 calories (over 1/3 of that was coffee creamer!!) and got home starving and unable to think straight. So I did what any complete idiot would do - I ordered fried rice and ate WAY too much of it!

To help with planning on a larger scale I bought a weekly calendar that will get stuck to my refrigerator where I can plan out my menus for the week. If I have ideas and know what I'm cooking, I can get things out of the freezer or whatnot and never be stuck wondering what to eat. Let's hope they have fast shipping and I can get started right away!

Hmmm, plan and cook. Those goals are so simple they just might work...at least I hope they do! What a boring post :) but super important.

What are your eating healthy tricks? I have only a few that have REALLY helped me. Weighing and logging my food are the biggest ones - my kitchen scale is almost as awesome as my Bodybugg, and it keeps me from overeating every time I use it. The other thing I do is go small. Small bowls (think rice bowl size), I even have small utensils. I eat ice cream with a demitasse spoon - and all I take now is a teensy scoop! It makes everything seem grander than it really is and makes small amounts of food last longer so I get that full feeling before I'm able to eat too much!

What a delicious eating trick! Makes me want tiny amounts of ice cream right now!

Oh, hello scale - f*** you too.

2011-01-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

So...not feeling as emotional as I was yesterday. Or maybe it's just a very different emotion. I'm angry!!! Rawr!

I had to peruse my old posts to find that on October 25 I weighed 184.4 pounds. I don't weigh that now. I hadn't stepped on the scale since I think Christmas morning, and then I was at 185.9. This morning? 190.1..

(that is me. I did not draw it, but I saw the mirror and I looked like angry domo-girl after weighing myself)

I went back up into the 190s :( the sad face is the only thing I can think to let you know that it made my morning feel unhappy-like,. I know, I know. I will get over it. All of it - the sad, the weight, the disappointment. I will get past it. I will be 184.4 pounds again. And then I'll weigh less than that, I have faith. This morning though...well, as I said, rawr. It's a mental hurdle to see that 9 on the scale.

Let's try to move on (I'm not good at moving on so be prepared for me to come right back to this topic). I meant to talk about goals today. While my resolutions are vague at best, I really want to have something tangible to work towards. And as this is first and foremost a weight loss blog I'm going to start with my weight goals and maybe over the next couple of days talk about fitness and eating and all the stuff that goes along with it.

When I started this blogging journey I was at 216 pounds. Having already lost 31 pounds in the year and I half before blogging, I wasn't working towards anything in particular but had decided on a weight goal of 120. Immediately I was chastised!! I guess 120 was too low...at least since it's so far away. I settled on 150 but I don't like that goal anymore. At 150 pounds I will still be overweight (I'm 5'5") - only by about a tenth of a pound but overweight nonetheless. And as weights go up and down on a daily basis...I'm settling on a magic goal of 148. Safely normal-weight, and once I've been there for a month or two I can re-evaluate where I want to be. For now though - 148 is IT.

Meanwhile I do have a separate short term goal of 179.9 lbs as I am VERY EAGER to get out of the obese category. I'm so close, although...twice as far as I was in October apparently. I know I can do it though, and I'm going to try to knock it out fast. I am banking on a lot of that weight going away quickly...hoping that it will jump down once I start drinking water, eating better food and flushing some of the ick out of my system.

I actually am setting a goal date, something I haven't had a lot of success with but it's so important to me. I'd like to be 179.9 by my 30th birthday. I want to enter my 30s not being obese. There I said it. Now that is no short order - my birthday is in February and this would mean losing almost 2 pounds per week. But I am confident that I can do it if I really, really try.

I do have a plan to get there...but I'll share that with you along with my eating and exercise goals. First we will talk about the fun part of weight loss goals: rewards. This being my birthday time of year, and less than 6 weeks away from my favorite and the most sparkly of all holidays I am going to go into reward OVERDRIVE. Yeah you heard me. And I'm getting a reward for every. single. pound. until I am no longer obese.

Now they're not huge rewards, some of them are very very small in fact. My coworker just "remodeled" her cubicle at work and everything just looks so cute!! So me being the copycat that I so obviously am, I am taking some time to remodel my own and for every pound I lose I'm going to allow myself to get one thing for my cubicle up to 10. Anything from a frame to a lamp to a pen. And just think with all the wonderful Valentine's Day things out there I am going to go into girly heaven.

Well, THAT certainly made me feel a bit more happy about having gained this weight - it's going to be fun getting rid of it!!

Unrelated to the rest of my post but I'm curious and being a lover of all things celebratory...what is your favorite holiday?? I can't help but love Valentine's Day. It feels like the whole world is celebrating my birthday with me, decorating for me, it couldn't be more perfect!!

Love, Loss and Root Beer Barrels

2011-01-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

Hello again my friends. I wanted to get back into blogging about my everyday life again right away. But every time I tried to write about how I've been health wise I find that I can't avoid this. And what is the point of talking about my everyday life if I'm leaving out the most important things?

Last Monday, my jichan (grandfather) passed away. The particulars aren't...particularly important. He lived a long and very full life. He was a wonderful person. There isn't enough time in the world for me to say all I want to say about him. I said in my last post that we weren't an overly emotional as a family and I meant it, but he still managed to make me feel like I was loved in a way I understood. I have this really random memory from when I was a little kid (maybe 5 or 6?) and he was babysitting me and my sister. We were across the street playing when I suddenly got sick in the neighbors' driveway. In a second he was there...he must have been watching from the window. He carried me home and asked if I was okay. He took care of me. When my dad got home, the first thing he asked me was if I'd gone back over to clean up after myself at the neighbors' house. That's not to be down on my dad, because I know (now) that he cared and his brain just works differently. But I mean...when you're growing up and something so small as a request to clean your room can make you think your parents hate you - my jichan was someone who always loved me. For an overly emotional kid he was a safe haven.

There were no regrets with him either. Not a one. While a big speech about how much I love him would have just been weird for both of us, I hope I showed him. I tried my hardest on birthdays, fathers days and Christmases to make him presents from the heart. Whenever I could I would hand make his gift. For his 90th birthday I gave him an afghan that was...oh my gosh by far the most labor intensive (but nicest) thing I've ever made. It was little fish that all fit together to make a larger blanket, and I hope he loved it as much as I loved making it, and I hope he understood every silly and important emotion that I put into it. I really do think he knew, and I knew he loved me, and what else matters. I was so lucky to have been able to spend a bit of time with him the day before he passed. There was nothing I ever would have done differently.

But it's been really difficult. I spent a few days putting on a smile, because life went on - at least that's what it seemed like for everyone else. I didn't really get how life was going on, but it did. I found myself wanting to buy things. Mostly candy-related things...I can't tell you how much chocolate I had, cookies and candy. My love of candy came from him. As long as I could remember he kept hard candies in the ashtray of his car, and I remember always happily unwrapping one when I was lucky enough to be going someplace with him. The thing about life going on though is that it really doesn't make unpleasant things go away. You have to stop and deal with things and for me it was rough. Whenever it was just me and Husbandcake I was beyond a wreck. I never stopped eating. Not once. There was always more candy. There was always another box of Christmas cookies to be opened. I would eat while I was crying. I knew I was trying to eat away my sadness and even that didn't stop it.

Let's be clear - I wasn't the picture of healthy living before he passed. I had already been eating VERY poorly and not exercising at all. After his memorial service I took a deep breath and realized that it had to end. I couldn't eat my problems away, and I knew that I was going to have to get back to a sustainable life. And that's what I've spent the past couple of days doing. Coming to terms with not having any more grandparents. Coming to terms with someone so important to me being gone. Realizing that he was more important to me than I ever knew. Moving forward wanting to learn from all of his positive traits.

I know he wouldn't want me to wallow in a sugar filled pit of despair. There's no doubt of that. I went with a wonderful friend of mine last night and focused all of my unhappy feelings into this:

If you know me in real life you will know how out of character it was. I hate pain. I am not a tattoo type person. But even the day that he passed, I had this feeling that I wanted him to be with me always in some grand gesture type way. I am sure my parents will think I'm crazy (I don't think they quite believed I was actually going to do it), and quite a few of you will too. But it felt right to me and if anything was ever worthy of being immortalized even symbolically it was this. The fish is because he was a fisherman, he loved fishing and I hope he would have liked it.

I miss him. And after writing all that...sorry, I'm too drained to come up with anything more poignant :)

New Year, New Resolutions...

2011-01-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

Hi. Every time I come back here I feel a bit...shamefaced. I had this whole plan to start really blogging again once the new year started, once the craziness of the holidays and family time had died down. I was a bit thrown this week, and it hasn't worked out how I wanted it to. Nothing this past week has gone the way I wanted it to.

Still, it's the new year. I made it! There is so much I wanted to tell all of you, but instead of dwelling on the serious and sad things that have been happening I wanted to tell you about my resolutions. To understand how important they are you should understand how important the new year is to me. I get out an entire year's worth of superstitious nonsense all in two days - December 31 and January 1. I am very much helped along by some wonderful Japanese traditions of cooking and feasting and family.

The new year is a time for new beginnings, and it's so important. I know a lot of people out there will say that if something is important you can start at any time, but I think that a lot of us do a LOT better with that extra nudge. I needed that nudge. I need to come back to you all...it is harming me to be away from this world and my healthy lifestyle.

The new year is a time to be with people you care about and to set the standard for your year ahead. I rang in 2011 for the first time in many many years with just myself and Husbandcake. It was nice, relaxed...I missed hosting our annual Pajama New Year party, but I loved every moment of the two of us. I also really love spending New Years Day with my family, and although our normal routine was interrupted (a whole other post) I was happy to have the day with the awesome people in my family.

The new year is an excuse to dream about who you want to be and what you want your life to be. I've looked ahead and had huge dreams. My resolutions are always so important to me. They're well thought out, even when they're silly and I've never broken one. But this year one wasn't enough for me. So here goes...my new year's resolutions:

1. Care more - I lost someone last week who made me feel cared for. I have realized throughout the week that I have family who cares more than they show (we are not big emotional gesture people), and friends that care more than I could imagine. I want to live up to the amazing standard these people have set for me. Mushy, yes...but true.

2. Be healthy - I've never resolved to lose weight. And I won't now. But I want to commit myself to being healthy, eating healthy foods, having a healthy lifestyle. I want to run the Disneyland half marathon in September, for which I will begin training as soon as my foot stops feeling tender (got a tattoo today!)...so maybe in a couple of days.

3. Be me - I lost me. I didn't hand-make any of my Christmas presents. I haven't been cooking. My house is a disaster. And all these things made my loss feel so much worse...I felt like I lost my way, wasn't even looking for it and someone punched me in the face. I want to feel like myself again. Maybe I'm not the same person I was last January. I'm smaller (yay!), I'm a little older, so who knows. But I don't want to wallow back into nobodyness again.

4. Blog - Maybe not every day. Maybe I can't keep that up anymore. But I'd like to give myself the chance every day, and not desert my blog just because I keep forgetting and get lazy. It makes me happier, it makes me healthier, so I want to do it.

There we go. I know it's a lot. I know that this is a random and weird post. I have a ton more to say, but today I am drained and can't say much more than that. Just know that I will be back tomorrow :) and I missed you!!

Work-iversary

2010-11-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

When I started my current job at the end of July 2009 I was hired on a temporary contract. I was desperately applying to any job that paid more than unemployment and not getting calls back about jobs I was way overqualified for and feeling all depressed. So when a recruiter called me about the opportunity I jumped at it. Being shy, new jobs suck (especially with everyone in my department being SO outgoing!!) and it was tough at first but as time went on I was so happy there and grateful when they decided to hire me permanently.

Today was our health plan fair thing and it left me thinking about last year's. At that time, I had just been permanently hired, and the fair was a few days before my official start date. I don't know how it goes at a normal office but here at our enrollment fair there's a raffle you can enter if you get some info filled out: body fat %, weight, waist, cholesterol that kind of thing. And I was so embarrassed about it that day. I just wanted my free Met Life Snoopy (Husbandcake has a thing for Snoopy!) and to go back upstairs. This year was totally different and it's made me reflect on how far I've come.

In the past year, I have:

lost 41 pounds. Forty-one.
realized that I can function as well as anyone else at a "real" job
learned how to change lanes on the freeway
had more encouragement and support than I've known what to do with.
shrunk my waist by 12 inches
worn "heels" 3 times - and yes anything over a half inch counts
grown a thicker skin...and I know that's relative as I'm the most over sensitive person alive but I'm a teensy bit better anyway!
gotten an average of 48 mpg in my Prius (better than advertised, I'm AWESOME!)
started eating healthier food
bought and worn pants for the first time in years
won a weight loss competition in my office
EXERCISED
skipped cake on other peoples' birthdays 400 times...maybe not that many but it feels like I've overcome a lot cake-wise!
become a tiny bit more outgoing...
been inspired to find all of you beautiful people to help me along the way

You know most of those things have been a direct result of my job. No - all of them. Even the driving ones. If it weren't for taking a job farther from my home that I was comfortable with I never would have learned that I could drive without being terrified.

I'm so happy that I'm here. Everyone even coworkers know that I'm already ready to retire, I wouldn't lie about that. I've been saving up and I know I'll never be the type to work my whole life - but as jobs come and go this one has been great, I wouldn't be as happy anywhere else and I was reminded of that today. I also happened to have a moment to recall any of the things I dislike about my job today, it has its down sides and its negative aspects. It was nice at the end of that though to realize it was my work-iversary and overall my life is better today than it was November 9, 2009. SO much better.

And as cheesy as it sounds I hope that all of you are happier and better today than you were a year ago :) I'd love to hear about your progress too!

Anyway I wanted to share that and also even though yesterday was so busy I didn't post I did weigh in at 184.3 - a tenth of a pound down. So I'm not losing a lot but STILL LOSING and still working hard!!

Tis the Season...

2010-11-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hello lovely, lovely readers. I hope that the morning was brighter and shinier for you than it has been for me. I had one of those days where I sleepily instructed Husbandcake that I don't REALLY have to get in to work and he can let me sleep as late as I feel. Usually those mornings morph into me angrily spending over an hour in traffic but luckily I got my act together and got into work on time.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2148 calories
Consumed 1897 calories
Deficit of 251 calories

Yuck! But you know what, I got better as the day went on. I really did. And I'll be even better today. No creamy soup!

The morning has been rough, I won't sugar coat it. I went into the break room today to find Belgian waffles, eggs, potatoes, breakfast burritos. I was so very, very tempted and had it not been for my two coworkers I don't know if I could have avoided it all! In the end I took some strawberries to mix in with my grapefruit and it was delicious. But then I thought about it all morning. I'm about 15 minutes away from going to lunch and still thinking about it. I don't even love breakfast burritos...I mean sure if they'd had really fabulous flaky looking quiche there, I'm not even going to lie, I'd take it. But it's annoying to so desire something just because it's "forbidden." Also it's annoying to keep looking back on something that was not even a big deal and happened hours ago.

Anyway I need your help looking forward today! I need tips...tips tips tips.

Long time readers remember that I run a married girls group to meet other ladies as fabulous as me. It's not specifically for married girls so much as it is for girls who are not into man hunting! I am trying my hardest to host one event every month and for sanity's sake I love to host it in my own home. Things like afternoon tea or cookie exchanges, that is the type of event that works out really well. But we all know how much butter and sugar is involved in a cookie exchange. What can I do that will take the place of a glorious celebration of girl time without breaking the calorie bank? Or rather, where can I find recipes SO good that I'll only want to eat my own low calorie cookies and everyone else's fatty sugary creations can go to those ladies who are so lucky they don't need to be as strict as me!!

I have been tossing several ideas around in my head, it's tough that so many things revolve around food this time of year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years (which for my family involves vast quantities of all my favorite foods)...I need to find a way to combat it and stay social. Any and all suggestions welcome...including specific recipes...anything to help me out!

I know from reading other blogs that social situations can be so difficult. There are restaurants out there where literally nothing is low calorie. There are restaurants where every single salad has fried chicken and/or bacon on it. I know you can get picky, ask for it without this or with that, but at the end of the day being social and trying to lose weight can be really, really tricky! Anyway as difficult as it is to eat out or have party food, it's kind of worse for me when it comes to not being social. Husbandcake doesn't mind if I cheat on my eating plan. He is notorious for not complaining when I want to cook pork ribs for him or go out to a steakhouse. He also has not once complained about me baking too many cupcakes. Other people (you included) hold me accountable. I just need to balance that with a lack of...temptation.

Well go on then! Think think think and help out your friend Kyoko!!

Oh Heeeeeeyyyyyyy

2010-11-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

Hi friends. My friends who are so sweet every time I post even though I never get around to it.

The big time-sucker that was our FABULOUS Candyland Halloween party is over. I would love to say there are a billion pictures to post but I seem to have lost my camera. I'm sure it will turn up and once it does you will all be able to see just how amazing everything was.

Of course my time there was a little dampened by my OCD which seems to be rearing its ugly side lately. I just can't take anything frantic or any change in plans at all. It sends me into an awful tailspin of...despair. It's so difficult to go outside of my routines and for the past few months any deviation has meant hours of being angry or unhappy. It doesn't work out well for my eating either. I've been off plan in both food and exercise and have made several attempts (most of which you've seen here) to get back on track but they all just kind of fall away. Also Husbandcake has been indulging my desire for eating out lately, I don't even want to tell you guys all of the awful things I've had. Ok they weren't awful, they were delicious but just so high calorie.

But I'm saying goodbye to all that high calorie food because here goes another attempt!! I am hoping I'll make it. There's another Biggest Loser-type competition at work. Not a big one, just a few people trying to use each other for motivation. I hope it kicks in again for me! They've already started walking again, but I haven't joined in as I have been sick all week. Super sick. It started out with a bit of a sore throat, went through the sniffles and runny nose, back around to coughing, and today I'm all scratchy dry throat. I did go to work today, and I have been trucking through it. I'm coughing a lot and all morning I attempted to space out my cough drops but it didn't keep. I have an hour and a half more to go and only one drop left!

Anyway, with me and my sicky demeanor, I know the best thing to do is a lot of relaxing. But if I give myself the weekend to really get better, I am going to be good to go Monday for a walk and a healthy lunch. I've got to do it, got to find my motivation, got to take more of this weight off. I know this...I don't know how the motivation has just flitted away from me.

All right, I do. I'm having an issue with my shape. I don't understand how I can be wearing a size large in dresses, and yet when it comes to trying on pants I can't even squeeze into a 20. I have my one pair of jeans that I have grown to love and wear pretty regularly, but to be fair they're kind of...elastic-y at the waist band and at the end of the day, I still have to wear baggy tops because I feel really muffin-top-ish. Any regular (read: non elastic waisted) pants or skirts that fit me in the waist are just huge for me everywhere else. I don't know what to do about it and I feel so discouraged...the idea that even if I am wearing smaller dresses I am still wearing almost the same size pants really sucks. And I know we can't possibly compare ourselves to one another due to height and body type...it's hard some days to hear people who weigh the same as me wearing at least 4-5 sizes lower than I do.

I would love to say I respond to this feeling with a nice ab workout (because let's face it I absolutely KNOW that all my weight is in my waist and I need to seriously target that area) but I've always been honest with you so I'll just say that more often than not I respond with ice cream or a piece of cheese. All of my mental training has been undone and the idea of starting from scratch is daunting. I think back to how I felt right after my little "detox" of eating organic vegetarian foods. I felt so good and so happy. Since then I made a two day attempt to try that again but the second day involved 3 sour punch straws and it was just all over.

Maybe I should go back to it. Maybe I should let the abundance of Halloween candy in the office become a test to test how committed I am to this. Maybe I should close my eyes and remember how far I have come instead of dwelling on how far I have to go. Maybe I should go home and not let Husbandcake open another can of high sodium high calorie mega-noodle soup, because I know how easy it is to make my own low calorie chicken soup for making my sicky self feel better.

I've said before that every moment is a chance to do the right thing. Today I've had grapefruit and orange citrus salad for breakfast, creamy butternut squash soup and half a sandwich, for lunch...a bite size Milky Way and a mini sour punch straw (what?? they're SO GOOD!! lol). The day is not ruined, despite the fact that I'm guessing my soup by itself came in at over 500 calories...heavy cream being something around 450 per cup...and I have time to turn it around. I've already been drinking hot tea most of the day, and water too. I'm going to step up the water, have my low calorie soup for dinner and more citrus salad for dessert. Get my vitamin C up and my calories down. I know I'm not ready for exercise or exerting myself as I'm still coughy and gross but I will do what I can to get myself better.

I feel better now...maybe not quite as hopeful as I'd like but better. If I can make today a healthy day, tomorrow will be a little easier, Saturday a little easier and we'll work our way ahead just one choice at a time.

Friends, I hope my post finds you all well and wonderful!! I have been somewhat keeping up with most of you (it's been tough) and once again I really hope to be back and more active here!!

I have a really random question to end on - is anyone else having an issue with Google Reader? It's only showing 4 of the like ten billion blogs I subscribe to, and I can't get any of the others to show up...not sure what is going on there but if you have any insight I'd love to know!

Surprising Weigh In...

2010-10-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Um, hi. I feel like I start out every blog embarrassed that I haven’t blogged. I’m going to try something new…I’ll tell you now to not expect to hear from me, how’s that? Then you won’t be surprised when I haven’t posted in a week!

Here is how I’ve done the past week:
Burned an average of 2350 calories per day
Consumed an average of 1592 calories per day
Average of 758 calories per day

Do you remember when any deficit below a thousand was pretty much a failure? I do too. But barely. I have to have to have to start working out again. I know I can do it, I know I can go on a walk today at lunch even if it’s cold or rainy. Even if nobody else is, even if I want to eat something delicious for lunch instead of my salad (not that I don’t love salad, just that I’m using the last of a salad kit that just wasn’t so great).

So as long as we’re talking, let me tell you about my weigh in this morning.

Last time I weighed in: Who remembers, but I think it was around 187 and a couple of weeks ago.
This morning: 184.4 pounds

That number struck me as surprising. Yesterday’s meals involved diner breakfast (the coffee cake had butter melted on to it) to Chinese dinner (which ended in birthday cake that has crushed hard candy pressed into the frosting). Between the salt, butter and oil I was pretty convinced I’d gained about 20 pounds. But this amazing and unexpectedly awesome weigh in is a SIGN. A sign that all is not lost, that maybe it’s not realistic to expect me to reach my 179 goal by November 1 but I can still do my best to get as close as possible! My measurements are looking good too, although I’ve spent the past few days feeling extremely uncomfortable about my shape. I don’t like the shape of less-obese me. I’m hoping that soon enough I will get to find out what non-obese me looks like, and maybe SHE will be able to buy pants at a non-plus size store. Seriously people, I am like a size 22 on bottom and 12 on top. How is that even possible??

Anyway, overall I’m very excited this morning. I’m drinking a lot of water, which I haven’t done in weeks, I’m skipping out on the coffee – even though coffee isn’t bad, my idea of coffee is practically equal parts coffee cream and sugar, which I don’t need. I am enjoying a delicious grapefruit breakfast, and I’m feeling good.

I hope you are feeling good too my friends :) and having amazing days, all of you!!

36. 36!!!

2010-10-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Let’s try this again. TRY. I’ve spent literally every free moment lately planning for Halloween even when I’m thinking about blogging too. That sounds like a lot of Halloween but it’s not, I haven’t had many free moments. So I’ve had to dedicate them to the wonderful cause of Candyland.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2403 calories
Consumed 2367 calories
Deficit of 36 calories

Oh…my…goodness. Is that my Lego tower crumbling to the ground? I feel like I’ve been punched in the face…and I know that at least a good quarter of my beautiful tower is gone. Let me explain. Let me make a ton of excuses about special occasions and office birthdays and the French restaurant I’ve wanted to go to for years. Let me make more excuses about sparkling wine and cheese plates and a fabulous piano concert and feeling fancy. And let me end with my final excuses of a lack of time and being too tired to exercise at all.

That was a lot of excuses. None of them were good enough. I’m so embarrassed. I feel like half the time I’m SO focused on being healthy and the other half I’m off ordering tomato polenta soup with cheese and croutons (are you seeing a weird tomato soup obsession with me lately?). And it changes on a whim, every few minutes. I was so dedicated to having a salad yesterday for lunch – not a GREAT salad, because it had fried chicken, but significantly better than two sliders and a bunch of French fries. So I order the sliders but decide I will NOT eat the French fries. So I eat half the French fries but will NOT go out to fattening dinner. You see the trend. What had me SO very motivated before? I need to get it back. I absolutely no question have to get it back.

But wait – let me make one thing clear. Every time separately that I’ve been out to a bad-for-me dinner, had one extra glass of wine, took a bite of a cheeseburger slider…they were ALL worth it. Last night was incredible. We went and saw this pianist (Rob listens to the classical “and more” station, and discovered that he was in San Francisco giving a small concert)…well it was near Civic Center and anyone who goes to the city might recognize Jardiniere from its super cute exterior. We used to drive by it often when we lived in the city and I’ve wanted to go since before I knew I liked French food – so finally making it there was SUCH an experience and the food was just beyond delicious. Plus it was so late we almost had the restaurant to ourselves! I’m getting carried away. My point was that it was completely worth it last night, but my problem is that in the past month I’ve had about 20 “completely worth it” experiences, and I need to have more experiences that are just as amazing but much, much healthier.

Speaking of healthier, on the meal schedule for eating today is strawberries and salad…three small meals worth at work. Then go home and eat my laughing cow snack, my peas and onions mix, and a different salad with chicken and feel VERY good and healthy coming in at around 1500 calories. Ok and coffee because we didn’t finish dinner until about midnight last night and I am exhausted…1500 plus a bit. Throw a good double workout, one at work and one at home. All right I am feeling motivated! 36 calorie deficit. That is so embarrassing. But the motivation of embarrassment won’t last beyond the next couple of days. I need to remember why I wanted to lose weight…and KEEP LOSING IT.

I fully implore each and every one of you who knows me in real life to smack me upside the head the next time I talk about pasta and cheese, fried rice and candy corn. I can’t keep saying “ok just this once” – there is ONLY “this once” to make healthy choices and I have to make them more often. All right go make healthy choices today. And I will too!

A random tangent to end on, I have three or four friends in real life (um, plus me) who are stalled on their weight loss and need boosts and positive energy to get through this time of year – from Halloween candy to Thanksgiving feasts to Christmas cookies we are going through some tough times and need our strength in all forms! So if you are so inclined to think positive thoughts for them and pray for strength to give up sugar, get out of the 200s and stay away from the dinner rolls…that would be awesome. I know I am rooting for you guys!!

Questions and Refocusing

2010-10-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

My goodness, yesterday was bad, today is bad, but even fully aware of what I'm doing, I don't understand why in the moment I'm making awful food choices.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2089 calories
Consumed 1537 calories
Deficit of 552 calories

I had a cupcake for lunch today. Instead of my veggies. Actually between that and my coffee, of which I only drank half, that's all I've eaten. I had high hopes, grabbed a peach for breakfast and an orange for a snack, and just didn't eat either. I feel gross. I was even going to work out during lunch until I realized that I need to run a couple of errands before home. I'm so utterly disappointed in myself right now. I don't know how to pick back up...but I know I have to, because I need to go home, get in a REALLY good workout, and make a healthy dinner (one of my errands is to the grocery store, because I really don't have much going on at home in the way of good food!).

Meanwhile, I am uninspired to write my own stuff today, as it would all be super depressing and self pitying and self being-annoyed-with-ing. Going through my blogs I found this questionnaire by Christina at Never the Skinny Girl and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to hear YOUR answers too and this could really help me to refocus, so here goes…

1. What was your highest weight, what do you weigh right now and what is your goal weight?
Heh…my highest weight was, I believe 247 pounds. My weight right now is hovering right around 186, and my goal weight for now is 150. Not true, it’s actually 148 because at 149.something I become not overweight anymore!

2. What is your #1 motivation for losing weight?
I don’t know that I have a #1. My most intense reason is that I fear that I’m going to die or become very sick from something made worse or caused by obesity. But my everyday reason as I go through life is that I want to feel healthy and happy about the way I look, I want my activity level to be high and I want to have a healthy (and cute) pregnancy when the time comes!

3. Have you always been overweight?
My whole…adult life I have. And I’ve been obese for about half of that.

4. When you want to give up what inspires you to keep going?
Everyone who reads this. People who say to me that I haven’t blogged in awhile, people who let me know that they follow my journey or see me as inspiring. My friends who hit roadblocks in their lives but keep moving forward keep me going, and all the blogs I read too where people go through things really similar to what I’m going through.

5. What is the #1 thing you look forward to when you hit your goal weight?
Cheaper clothes, more selection. Nah, I mean that will be a fabulous plus but in reality I’m looking forward to being in shape. Both in a fitness sense and then actually being shaped like a normal-weight person instead of a pot bellied one!

6. Do you have support on your weight loss journey?
I have the most support of anyone I’ve ever met. I’m surrounded not only by family and friends who are unbelieveably encouraging, but my workplace has been especially great, the company is awesome but even more so are my fabulous coworkers who (normally, not today lol) walk with me at lunch and keep me on track!

7. What is your favorite exercise?
Well…I do love walking. But I love dancing, I mean like flailing dancing while I’m cleaning or doing stuff around the house. You can’t possibly be in a good mood or feel like you’re working at burning calories when you’re being that silly.

8. What is the most important thing you have learned on your weight loss journey?
I’ve learned that it’s not simple. It’s just not. There is no one-diet-fits-all, no plan that works for everyone and we are all on the journey together but on slightly different paths as we find what actually makes us lose weight.

9. What is one thing you have given up that you miss the most?
Indulging the little voice that says I want this I want that. I used to buy and eat everything I ever wanted. Now, I think things through and try to make healthier choices. But I do miss looking at the highest calorie item on a menu and just thinking “ehhh why not?” Although I certainly did indulge that little voice when it wanted a cupcake.

10. What is your strategy for losing weight?
Hahaha, I’m about 30 pounds down since I started this blog, and…I don’t have a good strategy yet! It’s still being formulated.

All right your turn. I would love to hear your answers to some/all of the questions!! If you post it in your own blog make sure to put the link in a comment and link back to Never the Skinny Girl.

I hope everyone is having a more on track day than me! I'll get there, I WILL get there, I'm just going in a bit of a roundabout way lately!

Have fun!

2010-10-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Two days in a row! It’s like I’m on a roll! The amazing blogging Kyoko!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2241 calories
Consumed 1519 calories
Deficit of 722 calories

Ok, self-congratulation time over, for now. I had a really great day yesterday. As treats come and go it was a fabulous one. My very favorite soup is Campbells condensed tomato bisque (not true, my favorite is the tomato carrot soup they used to have at the Crepe Place in the mall before it closed, and if ever I run into that guy on the street I’m going to get that recipe even if it earns me a restraining order). Yeah it’s not the fanciest thing in the world, but it’s so good. And I had it with half nonfat milk and half….cream. Yeeks! Do you know that heavy cream is like 800 calories for one cup? I didn’t. I do now though. Luckily, happily I didn’t have much and it didn’t completely wreck all of my calorie counts up. But it was SO WORTH IT. Yum.

I can’t believe I’m sitting here 12 hours later still thinking about that soup…man do I have food issues!!

I had a fantastic conversation with a good friend yesterday about having fun. More specifically how I am not having fun. In my defense, it’s tough sometimes. Being the type of person who doesn’t deal with stress well can be overwhelming. Bad OR good stress. Between vacation, work events, being sick (which was probably because of the first two stresses), had a bit of a health scare over the weekend (it’s over and I’m ok…kinda) and on Monday I got some bad news that doesn’t directly involve me but is sad and has been weighing heavily on my mind for a couple of days.

So let’s brush that aside, because those are all things that I have no control over. Let’s start with what I CAN work with – being happy. Being happy and having fun. Can you think of anything better? I can’t either.

It’s time for me to take at least 40 minutes a day to be happy and have fun. No stress, no thinking about obligations, put the dogs outside, no cooking or cleaning just sitting and talking to Husbandcake, just reading my book, just doing my Wii fit, whatever I need to. Maybe I’ve been doing this all along but I haven’t been properly appreciating it. Well that stops here!

Isn’t it weird that on the one hand, you’d think that “planning” fun negates the actual fun…but for me if I don’t plan it, it goes unappreciated completely!

Can I give you guys homework? Good. Go do something fun today. Then come back and tell me what it was so I can be happy for you. And everybody have a fabulous day!

Weigh In and October Goals. Outstanding October Goals, that is...

2010-10-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

Let’s start over. Hi…I’m Kyoko. I’m trying to lose weight and blog about it but I keep hitting roadblocks. I’m the one putting them up, I think, but that doesn’t make them any easier to pass.

I had to delete all the old blogs of yours that I hadn’t read yet. My google reader was over 1000. I’m sorry, actually really sorry if I missed anything important that went on with you. The good news though is now I can start over, actually comment and not get overwhelmed. I miss this weird and wonderful blogging world and I have to find my way back. However this is a good time if I don't subscribe to your blog to let me know so I can start!

For the past month or so, I have been feeling like self awareness should go a long way towards solving my problems. Maybe that’s silly but I feel like I should be able to say “I am aware that X will sabotage me” and then it won’t happen. However I’ve been saying “I am aware that X will sabotage me, so I’m gonna go ahead and X anyway but expect different results.”

We all know how well that works. Just one chocolate, one quick drink, it’s a special occasion, I’m on vacation, everyone TOLD me I just had to have a turkey leg at Disneyland…and the tiramisu comes in a Mickey mug…

But it is out of control. I still can’t find my happy medium. I need to find ways to treat myself and not starve, but still not go overboard. It didn’t work to have small treats here and there, I thought it worked to have my indulgence filled week but it didn’t. There are too many opportunities for delicious dinners, for fancy chocolates. Friends, I bought not one but two salted caramels from a chocolate place on Saturday, put them in my bag, went to eat lunch but didn’t finish and instead of eating those caramels I split a cupcake with my mom. A salted caramel cupcake (I’m obsessed, it’s the best flavor combo since…ever).

I have a new mantra. Don’t even remember what my last one was. But the new one is this – I have all the tools. I have all of the tools. I have the Legos, I have the freaking lego table. I have the knowledge of how to build my tower…and there are days that I feel like I have a Lego construction set that will auto-build my tower for me. So what I thought is this – if my tower isn’t getting taller there are zero excuses. None. Look at you guys, at your support, at your stories, look at HusbandCake and his amazing dedication to my weight loss. I have everything. If anyone out there can lose weight – then I can too.

I have all the tools. I’m going to start building right now.

And now…my sad little weigh in!
Previous weight (2 weeks ago): 186.8
Yesterday’s weight: 186.8
Pounds lost: 0.0

Well there you have it. I consider it a half-win though because I was up…and came back down over the weekend. Now, time to change it up so that next week you see a much happier number coming from me!!

Finally, I’m not going to touch on my September goals. I didn’t meet most of them and we’ll leave it at that. It was an overwhelming month, and I’m a bit ready to move past it and have an amazing October.

With that I present…my October goals!
1. Work out four days every week – even if it’s just 20 minutes.

2. Finish cleaning out my garage – we had gotten so far…but haven’t worked on it in about a month! I really want it to be an organized usable space instead of a big pile of mess.

3. Make good and conscious food choices – I’ve seen that it’s not realistic for me to skip meals out completely, but that doesn’t mean I need to be getting anything fried or covered in sugary sauce. I can’t let a few meals ruin a completely healthy month!

4. Go Candyland crazy – Halloween is a Candyland theme this year and I need to make the best Princess Lolly costume of all time, not to mention helping Erin deck out her yard as a Candyland board. It’s not actually going to be super easy but it will be totally worth it!

5. Do nice things. Really nice things – above and beyond nice things – at least…8 of them.

6. Post my Bodybugg calorie counts – the less I post, the less I post those, and the sadder those numbers make me. Of course I didn't post today, well...that's because I am having trouble with my computer at the moment but I'll be in touch with IT today and get it for you tomorrow :)

7. Get below 180 pounds – I am not about to beat myself up if it doesn’t happen but I would really, really like it to be this month!

8. Blog – blog blog blog. Every day. ok not every day. Most days!

sniffle

2010-09-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

I know I've been gone again. A business trip snuck up on me, and as I went to Disneyland (for the first time since like 1993!) for two days beforehand I have been super busy. Of course I didn't intend to spend ten days away from you all, I never do...and I'm paying for it now!

So as to not bore you, let me try to briefly explain what I've been doing the past few days...oh who am I kidding we all know brevity is not a strong point of mine!
Saturday: get up at 3am, leave for the airport at 4:00...fly to Anaheim and drop off bags, then head to Disneyland to gimp around on my bum knee all day (I was pretty doped up on Extra Strength Tylenol and feeling ok) but have a great time!
Sunday: spend all day at California Adventure, sadly missing the Toy Story ride which was closed. I mean open to close we were there, followed by a trip back into Disneyland for a couple last rides and souvenirs.
Monday: Work conference...which was an all new experience as to be completely honest I've always thought of those as career type things, and myself as a non-career type person. It was cool though and I did learn quite a bit, but instead of resting afterwards I found myself having an early dinner and heading to Angels stadium to watch the A's game - Husbandcake has the uncanny ability to find himself in the same city as the A's even when we're not in the Bay Area and as he's a superfan he is quite happy about that.
Tuesday: Work conference in the morning, then a flight back home where we all went straight from the airport to our CEO's house for an executive meet and greet. Yeah all that is still as exhausting as it sounds.
Wednesday: All day meeting. Our department is spread out over a few different offices in different cities so every year there is a big caucus. Last night was also the big dinner event but we'll get to that in a second. But I think you get the idea that it has been a SUPER CRAZY few days.

Anyway, about Tuesday morning I started getting the sniffles and sneezes. I reluctantly bought some Sudafed in the hotel gift shop as I wasn't keen on being extremely gross or snotty in my conference classes. The last time I was on Sudafed was last...November I think, and there were disastrous results. I mixed it with some medication I was on for some bad stomach aches without reading anything about drug interactions, ended up passing out and getting sick while out with friends, and spent a few horrible hours in the emergency room. Oh and when I passed out I was on a barstool and wound up with an ankle injury and a super attractive huge boot thing. Which as it was healing I dropped a small stack of shelves on myself (yeah I'm an idiot) and ended up having a gross purpley bruised foot bone. Overall, it was about a month starting with me having super gross stomach aches all the time and ending with me on crutches for a couple of weeks - although I did decorate them with big pink bows...

I'm babbling. Anyway the point was I was on Sudafed and was taking my iron pills and all that (I have quite the history with anemia...I'm realizing right now that I sound like a total sicky). But still, last night at the dinner I was feeling really lightheaded. We were at a hotel and I went up for a second into one of my coworkers' rooms to lie down and Husbandcake insisted on coming to get me...I'm sure he like me was not interested in a repeat of that last incident. So I waited for him outside, and very sadly listened to my amazing enthusiastic department cheer each other on be their fabulous selves. Unfortunately out of all the work related things I've done this week that dinner was the one thing I wouldn't have chosen to miss. You all know that I am pretty shy and I am really just feeling like I'm finding my place and my stride at work, so to miss it was just super sad.

HOWEVER, Husbandcake informs me that when he picked me up I was stumbly and he thought I'd had about 8 drinks (not even close, I had about a sip of wine and then another sip of another drink...so...definitely not drunk). So I'm really happy that I didn't stay and potentially embarrass myself sitting with the three biggest bosses in the group! Silver lining!!

This morning my throat is sore and I'm feeling nauseous. I'm taking the day to sleep, but wanted to take advantage of my forced down time to give you lovely lovely friends an update.

And after all that babble, I have not much to report on the weight loss front. Both Saturday and Sunday I was at over 3000 calories burned! Fabulous! Today though it will be much lower I'm sure, as I'm not planning on moving much from the sofa. I wasn't with my trusty scale on Monday so no official weigh in but let's just say I'm wanting to refocus. Monday I'm going to weigh in and then go back on my four day fabulous organic mostly vegan diet to get back on track! And speaking of diet, I'm off to go eat some chicken soup! Sadly Husbandcake had to go in to his office today but this morning he left full boxes of lotion Kleenex everywhere for me. It's the little things, I just adore him so so much!! And....I adore you too. Thanks for reading my wonderful friends, you are the best!

Sleepy Post...and Weigh In

2010-09-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

Good evening lovelies. First let me say, holy crap what a weekend - I am truly, truly exhausted! Between my stressful Friday and my fabulous tea party on Sunday I just felt go-go-go all on a bum knee and it caught up with me this morning when I could hardly get up for work.

I didn’t post on Friday. I was having what you might call an absurdly frustrating day. I posted about my knee bothering me, so I had an appointment in the afternoon which meant stress all day, thinking about how much I don’t want to go see doctors of any sort and I just woke up feeling defeated. Hmmm…I’m going to have to start a better list of things to change and create these plans of attack – first I’ll work on not having any more mood swing nonsense, and second I’ll have to realize that doctors didn’t become doctors to intimidate and scare me personally. That would be a good thing to believe. Anyway one knee brace and a few large-ish doses of ibuprofen later, I am doing a lot better. I did a really slow version of the lunchtime walk today, and the more I walked on it the better it felt, to the point that I was barely gimpy by the time I got back to the office and spent a bit of time sitting with my knee bent, which I haven’t done pain free in about a week!

I haven’t really posted about what is going on with my puppy Chips but here is the very condensed version. His face was swollen so we went to the vet, who found a little bite mark that my food aggressive little spoiled princess dog Potato made, and the vet figured it had gotten infected. Got some medicine, went home and the next day it was worse. We ended up having to go to the emergency vet, who cut open his skin to let it drain out. It...was truly disgusting.

Fast forward to a week later, he seemed to be healing up ok. But then suddenly Friday morning his face started swelling again, and bad (yay, more stress!). Husbandcake took him back to the vet, who decided to knock him out and look to see if she could find what was causing the problem. If you are easily grossed out (and by that I mean, I almost threw up in the car with him on the way home and I’m about to describe why) skip to the next paragraph. She thinks what happened is that a foxtail got into his eye and burrowed its way down past his eye socket and into his forehead. Seriously the thing was almost at his ear. And it was huge. And to aid in the drainage of all the nasty stuff it caused him to make he has two little tubes sutured into his face. And they drip.

The end result though is that he will be ok now. He has his follow up appointment today and he will be well on his way to healing by tonight. And even though Potato is off the hook for making him all puffy and infected, we are still working on her food aggression (she lets me take it away no problem but not even Husbandcake can go near her when she eats. Stress! But less stress now that I know he will be ok.

What? Is there something I’m forgetting? Oh…yeah…my weigh in…
Last week’s weight: 186.9
This week’s weight: 186.8
Pounds lost: 0.1

Uh, yeah. I mean I was down to 186.7 on Sunday morning – and that was my lowest. Really I felt like I was off track this week. Too many treats, not to mention that while my tea party was fabulous and I was surrounded by wonderful people…I was also surrounded by some delicious food that made my calorie count at mumble mumble yesterday. Ok it was at 1800. Which would be fine on a really active day but on a totally inactive day (when my Bodybugg was apparently dead without me realizing) it was just way too much.

I haven’t posted weekly goals in awhile but I have one for this week. I felt happiest and healthiest when my daily calories were at about 70% fruits and vegetables (well…and I guess salad dressing), 15% meat and cheese type things and 15% delicious indulgences and carbs. Which are often one and the same. That is my plan for this week. I have one more day of Dr. Tabor’s diet, which I think I may stick with, and before you all start wondering, know me enough to know that while I’m totally excited about eating more candy like things…I’m not a salesperson and I am not going to dedicate my blog to yammering on about you all trying it too. Anyway, all that to say that I’m going to take some time after tomorrow to REALLY get back on track food wise.

I feel like I say that a lot. I hope that this time I mean it more than before. I was doing SO WELL for a few weeks and I really need that momentum back. Really, really need it. Without all the mental anguish that I went through losing that weight. So once again it’s time to buck up, forget about what I’ve been doing and start fresh. I am so close to my next milestone I can just almost see it and I want so badly to get there!

The Happy, The Painful and the Tasty...

2010-09-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s begin with various updates…those of you who are lucky enough to be Facebook friends know that I got my free food yesterday! And I’m so excited. I’ll spend the next 4 weekdays probably telling you guys about what I’m eating and letting you know how it is. Yes, some of you will find it boring, but you know – with all the diet food out there, and there is a lot…hopefully it will be informative and dare I say, helpful?!!

In non-food related news, my knee hurts like a motherf@*^er. Yeah, bad. Anyway I have a doctors appointment for tomorrow. YAY for starting off my weekend with Kaiser (sarcasm).

In GOOD non food related news, a huge huge HUGE non-scale victory. I came across one of my favorite dresses ever. I haven’t fit into it for about 5 years, and even before that I never wore it without a body shaper. Friends, it is too big for me. Now in case you didn’t see that exactly how I did – I have lost at least FIVE YEARS worth of weight. I used to weigh myself maybe once a year as my own scale gathered dust in the garage, but I know that I put this weight on slowly and steadily, whereas I seem to be taking it off much more quickly than expected. It’s just a huge thing to know that I have undone all of the extra strain on my body that I piled on since 2005. What an amazing feeling…

On that fabulous note, let’s go on to my food for today. And can I just mention that the food all has really cute names? Or maybe I’m just really cheesy…I think anyone who has seen my new beloved headband can tell that with me the cutesier the better.

This morning I had a Vanilla In Vogue shake. They say to mix with 12-16 ounces of milk or water – I wanted a real shake feel so I did 10 ounces of milk and then about 4 ounces of ice in the blender. I thought it was good. It doesn’t taste like a regular ice cream shake, definitely. It’s more like chocolate milk except with a vanilla flavor. But if you’re like me and have for convenience ever had Slim-Fast or Carnation Instant Breakfast let me assure you, this doesn’t have the same chemically gritty attributes that those have. It was yummy, and I would definitely choose it again if after this week I stick with this plan.

I also had a Double Chocolate Catwalk bar. I knew from the size of the package that I wouldn’t be able to eat it all at once. I cut it up into 12 bite size chunks both for my own benefit and since I am so, so picky about food I wanted to hear what other people had to say. It’s like a Tootsie Roll to me both in texture and flavor. Take that how you will – personally I love Tootsie Rolls so I’m very happy with it. My coworkers had mixed reviews on it, everything from "just like candy" to "chewy" to "edible" which I considered to be the most critical review, but even she said she'd definitely eat it again.

What a delicious first day! Not knowing the rest of your eating habits, be warned that these may be big meals. Not calorie wise – the shake was 200 calories (307 with the milk), the bar is 270. I've eaten about half the bar and I haven’t been hungry enough to eat ANY of my fruits or vegetables yet. Of course, if these are meal replacements based on 3 meals a day then it makes sense. I'm at 6-8 meals a day, so each of them would make up at least two of my smaller meals. Everyone who tasted the bar agreed that it was extremely filling, not like most bars that feel more like snacks.
I should add that we are SPOILED at work. We get protein or diet bars, shakes and supplements in a ton of flavors all the time for free, so we can afford to be extremely discerning. I am extremely flattered that I was chosen to review food (I know, a lot of bloggers get sent things to review but this is my first time and I am enjoying feeling important!) and I’m hoping if the rest of it is this good, to be able to get you guys some kind of giveaway so a couple of you can try it too!!

Goal Check In and Knee Woes

2010-09-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

RAWR!!! That is my angry-yell. My knee hurts. It’s been hurting a little since Saturday, but got worse last night and is really bad this morning. One of the (many) things I want to work on is better dealing with pain. I’m a total baby when I’m sick or injured, and I am awful at dealing with the frustration of not being able to do what I want.

I have no idea what is wrong, it hurts to bend the knee mostly, although it is uncomfortable even to straighten it out. I’m great at home on the recliner, but at work it’s been challenging. I mentioned previously that I wanted to stand up at work and I have been, since Thursday. However I’ve been sitting today, because I’m worried that's what caused the pain - I really, truly hope it isn’t. I have so enjoyed standing all day, I move more and I feel better and I want to continue.
My plan is to take today and tomorrow morning to sit at work instead of stand, take some ibuprofen and hope it gets better. I hate doctors, especially after a time last fall when I felt like I was at Kaiser at least twice a week – but if it’s not better by lunch tomorrow I know I’ll have to go in to see what’s wrong.

I know from reading blogs that we all get injured or have existing physical problems. I wish none of us did. It’s tough to have your body in the way while you’re actually trying to do something that will help it.

That being said, I guess it’s time to take my lunch break and do a mid month goal check-in since I can’t walk!
1. Be a better friend – I’m not even working on it. I just have not had the real effort to spend on it. I think there is just too much me stuff going on for me to actually be a good friend to anyone else.

2. Have or at least schedule my reward spa day for getting under 200 pounds! – Nope, not done!

3. Have at least 6 work appropriate outfits that fit me NOW – I have maybe 2. I’d like to up it to 8. Ideally 10 just so I can go 2 weeks without repeating my clothes. But for now I’d be happy with not being an hour late because things don’t fit. YES it’s a better problem than too small but still frustrating and I can barely find stuff I like enough to buy much less cheap transition weight type stuff!

4. Wear pants twice – Haven’t worn pants since that one day. I thought about it today but it’s tough with no shirts that fit! Yikes, these clothing goals are gonna get me!

5. Teach my puppy how to walk with me – I’ve only gone out with him once, and then my poor little guy was injured and we haven’t been since. We are actually watching the dogs of our close friends…so as of today there are 6 dogs in my house, 3 of whom have medical issues, one who is immobile and one who has a cone on. There is quite enough dog craziness.

6. Go walking with fabulous people – WHAT? I am about to completely scrap this mid month goal check in!! Do you see a pattern?! I haven’t done ANY of these things!!!! Rawr again!

Deep breath…deep breath…all right. This one I do have to put off and may have to give up completely. But keep your fingers crossed that this knee thing is really nothing and I’ll be walking again in no time.

7. Get my rings sized down – Actually I think they’re ready to be picked up today!! Yay, at least I can mark one goal done!

8. Track my food all month – all right, I’m ending on a good note. I’ve definitely done this every day, for better or worse.

Overall I'm super disappointed with this goal check in. Seriously. I am so sad that I haven't accomplished much so far. The rest of the month is not going to be the easiest either, as I have a work conference and then a big department week long to-do. It's kind of exhausting just thinking about it.

ALL RIGHT. I need a plan. I'm going to go home tonight, get my ground turkey cranberry onion type casserole on and ice my knee. I'm going to pick out and try on my clothes for tomorrow (seriously, I left 40 minutes late because I had not one thing that was clean, not wrinkled, and fit me. Not good!) and make sure I have enough healthy stuff to take food wise. And then, I will go to bed early and wake up tomorrow REFRESHED and feeling great. Right??

Sugar Doll Award...version 2!

2010-09-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

I can't stop giggling. My mood is swinging up. I was sitting here reading through Erika's fabulous post and thinking about what my ten things are when I realized that I had received this award previously and...guess who was one of the people I gave it to! Yup, that's right Ms. Ice Queen herself!!

Love it!!

And now, just like then I think she is a fabulous blogger who you should all read!! Thank you my dear :)

What's wrong with emotional eating?

2010-09-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

I want to change something about me but I don’t know how. I have really severe mood swings…and I don’t want to anymore. They dictate my life and mood and sometimes relationships. I don’t like feeling crazy and I don’t like feeling out of control. I just need a plan.

Anyway, here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2628 calories
Consumed 1070 calories
Deficit of 1558 calories

I ate poorly. I ate poorly and not enough good stuff. The most I ate yesterday was a bowl of spaghetti (a too-big bowl) with cheese all over it. I was just feeling lazy, and afterwards I felt SO gross!! Today I am back on track though.

Beyond needing a new plan for self improvement, I have a question to pose to all of you. A lot of us struggle with emotional eating. The question I have is, what is it about emotional eating that is bad?

Let me clarify. I’m having an off day. I was an hour late to work this morning and I’m just feeling the general blahs after my severe downward mood swing this morning. I was craving, craving something sweet this morning. To my delight, there were white nectarines for us today. Now, food wise I was not hungry, in fact I had already eaten breakfast. But I scarfed that nectarine so fast it was like an alcoholic taking a shot. It was definitely emotional eating. It was healthy though, and it was 67 calories.

I feel guilty. Is the problem with emotional eating just that it so often leads us to finish the bag of Cheetos or that second slice of cheesecake? Is it ok to emotionally eat good-for-you things? Or is it a problem that needs to be resolved and shouldn’t happen no matter what the repercussions are?

Quite a few of you know about me that I majored in philosophy in college. I love to think and overthink and analyze everything. This is going to be something that bugs me all day and I am wondering what you all think about emotional eating. Should I be feeling guilty? Trying to change? Or should I just shut up and be happy that I didn’t reach for a candy bar??

Weigh In and Foodstuffs

2010-09-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

I feel good today. Healthy. Despite my Saturday and Sunday where I was a bit off track (let’s just say when you’re not feeling your best you’re potentially not eating your best). Every minute though is another minute to start over, another minute to take a drink of water and another minute to not grab that piece of Trader Joe’s liquorice that is so delicious and only 26 calories but you DO. NOT. NEED. IT. Especially 10 pieces of it. And you just had frozen yogurt. So go work out or something.
Here is how I did yesterday:
Poorly. Let’s move past it. At least I tracked, right?

I do have a quick rant. Over the weekend I had various health problems…that cleared up just in time for me to go to work. Does that bug anyone else?? It’s like in school when you are sick over spring break! What a waste of time off. I spent most of yesterday sleeping, only getting up to eat a couple of times and whatnot. All in all I guess I’ve had worse Sundays but I mean, what a sad, sad waste!

Moving on, I received an email asking me if I would review a line of healthy foods and let you lovelies know what I think. I was and am so flattered. If you guys know me in real life you’d know that I sometimes lose track of myself in all of the good things that happen. I can’t believe that I am over 50 pounds down from my heaviest weight. I can’t believe how supportive you all are towards me. I can’t believe that life is going so easily. So in the same vein I couldn’t believe someone wanted to send ME samples for free that I could test out.

Now you all know me, I am TRYING to do this in as healthy a way as possible (well, healthy plus delicious pork ribs). I don’t want to mess up my body, don’t want flappy skin, none of that stuff. So I asked them for the nutritional information and checked it out and friends I am excited to report it all looks fabulous to me and for me. All that’s left is to get some and test them out. If you want to see what it is I’m trying you can look here: http://www.drtabordiet.com/ to check it out. We’ll see – I have high hopes that I’ll like it, but I am fairly picky!

And now the highlight of my week (what, I have OCD!) - my weigh in!!
Last week’s weight: 193.0
Today’s weight: 186.9
Pounds lost: 6.1

Yay!
Ok just kidding. You and I both know I didn’t REALLY lose 6 pounds this week. Last weigh in day I was all full of salty gross foods and not enough water and all that junk. So let’s go back 2 weeks to 190.2, and say I’ve lost 3.3 pounds over 2 weeks. That sounds better, sounds more realistic, much nicer.

My goal for this week is to blog every day. Also to catch up on blogs. I am not joking when I say my Google Reader is at over 600 blog entries I haven’t read. Le sigh! As always I miss knowing what is going on with you guys! Oh and my other goal is that every day until I’m done I share the lovely lovely bloggers who have given me awards!! You guys are so sweet and I’m so awful for not even acknowledging them but I WILL!!!

I'm Naked! An Ode to My Bodybugg

2010-09-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well, let me start off by saying I will not be posting for a few days about my calories burned...I am without Bodybugg.

I mentioned yesterday that it was Erin's birthday. Well when I asked her what she wanted...she wanted to use my Bodybugg to see how many calories she burned in a day. Sigh. It's not that I didn't want to, other than the momentary panic that set in when she asked. It's more that I didn't know what to do without it. My arm feels wrong. I'm not loving the super obvious tan line either. But I feel completely naked without it!

So while she is enjoying her time with the little device that means so much to me, I found myself so lost this morning that I have decided to let you all in on why it has changed my life so drastically. I know I've said how it works and why it works for me, and you all know that I struggle to not live and die by my calorie deficit, but I feel like you can't really understand how much it helps me mentally and emotionally without me sharing something I haven't written about before.

All right...I'll just come out with it. I worry sometimes (often) that I am going to die and it's going to be something I could have prevented. Without going into much detail, I've had a fear for years that my father is going to die of something weight related. It's an intense, extreme worry that at more than one point has seen me literally petrified and unable to function. As he's lost a ton of weight, my worry for him has lessened to something that I would call normal, but I could so easily see myself following in his footsteps, so the fear became not about him but about myself.

So far in life I've been lucky. I'm obese but have never been advised by a doctor or even any professional in the health industry to lose weight. I have stomach issues, sure, but they're not so bad and they aren't weight related at all. But I look at how much I weighed in 2000, 2004, 2008 and I never want to see my weight have a mindless, steady climb up and up again. But I also know that there are multiple health problems in my family that are caused by or made significantly worse by being overweight and out of shape.

You know, I keep reading those two paragraphs and it all seems simple and straightforward. It's not. There are years of turmoil and severe emotional problems wrapped up in all of that. I want to respect my dad's privacy by not going into a lot of detail about his situation, and I don't want to imply that my worry over him and his health is at all his fault. Just know that the most intense fear that I've felt in my life, and the most intense relief is all wrapped up in health which in turn is wrapped up in weight for me.

Not every weight loss tool works for everyone. Diets, Weight Watchers, gym memberships, or even Bodybuggs, everyone has something that will just CLICK for them. And mine was my Bodybugg. And I miss it. But I also adore it enough to know that for such a simple thing it is so powerful. I am so happy that I have the ability to share something that means so much to me with someone else. I wish I could share it with ALL of you that want one, every single one of you that entered the contest. By the way, if any of you want to buy them...please let me know. I just ordered a new blue armband for Crystal and I may be able to get you a pretty significant discount. And anything I can do to help my lovelies, I will!

I credit my Bodybugg with saving my quality of life. And my sanity. When I feel like I'm improving my life, as I feel myself sliding away from obesity, I know that this was the one thing that really worked. It continues to help me, hold me accountable, teach me, even hold my hand. My goodness, I feel like I should give it a name or something. Believe it or not, this post took me about two hours to write. There are just too many feelings I had, too many starts and stops, too many tangents. And all over an armband with a little rechargeable sensor.

The Good, The Bad, The Scary, and The Weigh In

2010-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Let’s start off with The Bad. Get it out of the way. I told you in my September goals that I was going to track my food all month no matter what. Well friends, that I did. I tracked this whole week and we’ll get to what exactly I ate this week later, but instead of typing it all out I have decided to just give you an average of the first six days of this month.

On average, I burned 2363.5 calories per day.
On average, I consumed 1864 calories per day.
On average, I had a deficit of 499.5 calories per day.

Heh heh, quite the change from normal, right? We’ll talk about that later. Anyway it’s not the numbers that are bad. It’s the fact that I logged them almost all into my Bodybugg last night. I just had been writing on scraps of paper everything I ate, not paying attention to or adding up the numbers and calories or any of that. Not good! The point of tracking is to know how you’re DOING not how you DID. At least it is for me. I’ll get better. I’ve already logged everything I ate today!

On to The Scary, there’s actually a reason I haven’t been around to post or comment on all of your wonderful blogs. When I’ve been at home, I’ve been with my puppy Chips. The poor guy is hurt. And we all know how I can get when my dogs are hurt. Ok, something odd just happened to me. Thought I was ready to write about him and what is going on but as I’ve suddenly gone crazy emotional over it, I guess not. I’ll get there and let you guys know what happened when I do. He’s doing well now, and he’s perfectly happy so it’s nothing too bad, just a bit frightening to a worrier like me!

Let’s do the Weigh In next…so that we can end on good. I weighed in yesterday even though I didn’t post, so here goes.
Last week’s weight: 190.2
Yesterday’s weight: 193.0
(Just for kicks, this morning the scale surprised me with a lovely 194.4)
Pounds gained this week: 2.8

You’d think I’d be sad. However the surprise for you is that my weigh in? Is also The Good I spoke of. I read a lot of blogs that talk about binges and regret. What I did, I don’t know if I can call it a binge. I gave the unhealthy food a limited amount of time in my life. I ate glorious food in small amounts, and the best part was that I lost that feeling I was getting for so long. The feeling of “you better enjoy it and eat as much as you can, because THIS is all you’re getting this week” – it’s gone. I knew that all week I was going to have glorious food leading up to my return to CAKE yesterday.

I want to share with you all that just like my other gain since I started this blog – it was worth. Every. Ounce. Every GRAM, every bite, everything was worth it. From the Chinese food to the fancy dinner, to the bread and butter, to the PASTA! And when I went to bed last night I was ready to go back to my healthy life. Actually the interesting thing is that last night I ate too quickly, and it really upset me. We were out to dinner with two of our best friends and everything was good from the conversation to the tomato sauce, and I just ate without thinking and had too much too fast. I was so annoyed with myself, feeling like my desire to eat was preventing me from enjoying such a nice meal, and it made me realize that too much of a good thing, especially food, is actually a really bad thing. Someday I know I will have a better balance. I am working on a relationship with food that doesn’t make me feel like a crazy hoarder, but until then my treats are going to have to be severely structured in weeks off and the like. All in all though, no real complaints. It was a delicious week!

Events and outing-wise it was a great week for me to be off of my healthy habits! Saturday I went to my fabulous knitting group and had a great time before meeting friends for wine tasting and cheese-laden tapas. My sister’s best friend and his boyfriend were in town and they are just really, really fun people! We only were able to hang out for a little while but I wish we had had longer, we had never been wine tasting in Livermore before (it’s so tough to NOT go to Napa when it’s so close!) but we will definitely be going back.

Also if you guys read this, come BACK Greg and Patrick and bring my sister and Brigitte along!

Then Sunday we were at the Scottish games, due to my dad wanting to hang a bit with other Clan MacAlister folk and I just cannot stay away from those games. Throwing logs, rocks, tin cans, whatever else they can think of – I mean it’s an awesome time. I absolutely love going and rooting for my boy Harrison Bailey III.

So why do I root for this guy year after year? Well besides the fact that he’s AWESOME and wins a lot, and holds a couple of world records in “throwing stuff over a bar” – he’s a vice principal, and I just feel like that is the awesomest thing a teacher/principal/authority figure can do on the weekends – toss logs and carry heavy suitcases between two cones. Love it!

Yesterday was a fiasco. We figured out the night before, that the cupcake place I was so excited about is closed on Mondays. Why we had not looked at their hours of operation is beyond me. After a long and boring story we ended up eating lunch locally and trying to go to a different cupcake place, which turned out to be closed for Labor Day, and then finally drove into Walnut Creek to go to a place we had been to before and is good.

Ok so it's not a cupcake so much as a cupcake parfait, but it was the pinkest thing they had!

The always-fabulous Erin put together a second prize pack for my winning the Biggest Winner, including the girliest headband ever, which I have to admit I have been eyeing since like April. It was PERFECT for the occasion!

it's like a big flower on my head...what could possibly be more girly?

And finally, the oddest part of the day. Have I outgrown cake? I couldn’t finish it!!!

Wow, looking at the picture it looks like I probably ate less than half!!

What is going on with me?! However I did get two cupcakes for Husbandcake and I to each have one for dessert…but I did not come close to finishing that one either! I figure all together I had one cupcake lol.

But soooo much credit has to go to the wonderful Erin for trying SO hard to get me the cupcake I desperately wanted! You should all also know that today is Erin’s birthday, so I think you should all leave comments wishing her an amazing day because she is a really special person. Happy birthday friend!!!!! I can’t even express in words how happy I am, even after the crazy cupcake day fiasco, that we are friends.

What a long blog post. You see what happens when I don’t post regularly? I have too much to report to you all!

Gas Card Winner!

2010-09-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

Good morning my lovelies!!!

Well it has been a fabulous morning so far as I have done very little but what I have done makes me feel great!! I've gone to random.org and used it to find this number:

Came back to my blog to find that the winner was.....

CONGRATULATIONS STACY!!! Send me an email to kyokocake@gmail.com with your address and I'll get you your gas card!!

After that I was scrolling through the entries reading about your dream cars (you folks are WAY too practical, I suppose that's a good thing though right??) and checking out the blog posts to see if there were any new blogs to be following, and I come across this one comment that just spoke to me. It was so sweet, so very thoughtful and I loved the dream car sentiment...I just had to choose a second place winner!

Congratulations Husbandcake...you win...a fabulous weekend with an amazing wife driving around in her Prius!! Yay!!! And a home cooked delicious meal...except we're grilling tonight so you're the one that is technically cooking it! PS, I know you did that while I was driving to work...but the contest ended yesterday...maybe that's why your prize isn't as good as Stacy's ;)

No time!!!

2010-09-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

I was all set to put up a blog award that I got, and then write about a few other things, but today is flying by and to be honest I lost myself catching up on all YOUR blogs!

So let me say two things...

First, go enter to win my GAS CARD - it's the last day!! I really love and want to continue sharing prizes and anything I can with you guys. And who can't use $100??

Second, it's Thursday, which means blog hop:

I've clicked through more of those links than usual today and followed I think 4 new blogs...so I'll warn you it's addictive!! But show them some love because there are some awesome writers in there!

Oh Happy Day and September Goals

2010-09-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

Hello lovelies! When I post every day, it makes me so happy. Do any of you other bloggers feel the same way? I’ve been in a good mood and I just really love sharing it! I’m just going to warn you that I pretty much have rainbows and sunshine emanating from me today so get ready for a big dose of CHEERINESS!

There are some things on my mind today, and they’re unrelated, so here goes:
I realized last week that I can cross my legs. We used to have these little lessons, once a week (or maybe a bit more sporadically) in my sorority house where we would learn little etiquette things and one of them was that ladies crossed their ankles. Of the few things that stuck with me – I still tear my bread into bite size pieces and then butter it instead of taking a bite out of it – that one always felt just fine because my stomach was literally so large it was hard to put one leg on top of the other. However, now it’s my favorite thing to do. Why? Because I CAN. And the thing I’ve always looked forward to the most is not being hindered by my own body, so it feels just amazing to be able to do that.

Yesterday, Sherae and I were downstairs (our company is on the 5th and 3rd floors of the same building) and I saw the setup of one of the girls down there – she has her computer monitor and keyboard up on this arm thing, so she has the option to stand up and work. Friends, I have been OBSESSED with this since I saw it. I can’t get it done without proof that I need it for ergonomic reasons, but I wonder if I can find stuff to buy on my own and put it in! Honestly, all day I love sitting on my exercise ball, but I hate those days when I wear certain dresses and they get all scrunched up and wrinkly! And even though it can be awkward I love standing more than sitting. I look better, my stomach doesn’t get all gross and sticky-outy, and I hope you will all keep your fingers crossed that I am able to find what I want and get it!!

I am 1.7 pounds away from losing 60 pounds since January 1, 2009. How do you like them apples?? I’ve come so far from that morning in my auntie’s house looking at the scale, feeling like my year was just beginning and was already out of control and just thinking “How did I get here?”

Speaking of statistics, I started this blog at 216 pounds…headed towards 150 (with mini goals along the way)…I’m 40% done. 40%!!!! Although I’m just as excited about the next mini goal as I am about my 150. And as I will be when I figure out where I want to be permanently weight-wise. I’m giddy about weight loss today….she types thinking about the Chinese food she’ll soon be eating for lunch. But hey, one order of Chinese food, this is my fourth meal of it, not bad considering less than 4 months ago I would have eaten it ALL in one sitting.

I cried yesterday after the texts and Facebook and blog comments I got about the Biggest Winner. Knowing that people are proud of me, happy for me and even inspired by me means so, so so much more than winning. And that kind of surprised me. But I always have done what I put my mind to, so I knew if I tried really hard I could excel and do MY best. What always felt like it was missing (I say felt like because I don’t think I really knew how amazingly supportive the people in my life are) was this support structure, so thank YOU, thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!

Some days I feel so happy to be full of amazing things to share with you. Like today.

And here are my August goals…
1. Finish out the Biggest Winner competition STRONG. No slip ups, temptations, indulgences, nothing. One month of being really, really good. – Um, yes. YES I did finish out the competition strong, I just didn’t finish out the month strong. But that’s ok because I finished out the month HAPPY!

2. Learn how to meal plan even better. Look up recipes ahead of time and really be extra organized. – holy wow, I did AWESOME on this one. I love my meal plan so much!! It allows me to really look forward to my treats and therefore indulge less and even though I give myself wiggle room I like knowing what I’m going to be eating for lunch tomorrow (Asian salad that I bought from a bag!)

3. Have two days where my calories burned are at 3000 or higher. – I only had one. But that’s ok, there’s always next month and hopefully it will be a little less dreadfully hot out!

4. Get back to wearing eye makeup every day. I have so completely stopped this and I always feel like I look tired and bleh and that’s not good! - …ummm *looks at self in mirror…notices how tired looking she is…not even foundation on today…* it’s a mostly-win.

5. Embrace my new work schedule by fixing my hair. I always love how my hair looks on the weekends but for work it’s usually the messy bun look. My new work schedule puts me starting 45 minutes later and I’d love to take a few of those minutes to look a little less like a slob! – Again, I totally have my hair pulled back today but I have totally embraced this for the most part. I’m loving my highlights, loving having my hair down and now all I need is to get out of bed ONE snooze earlier to squeeze in ten minutes with my hot rollers.

6. Let those fabulous friends whose friendships I cannot live without know how important they are. It’s a goal worth repeating until I get it just right. – I’m SO on my way. A few notes have gone out. Why is this goal so hard even though it’s so important? Maybe I just put it off because I feel cheesy. But it looks like this is going to be a September goal too.

7. Take at least two awesome things from this four day happy fun time that I can keep up permanently. I’ve got one – the water consumption, so I need to find one more thing! – All right, so I did take the water consumption, still drinking a ton! I’ve also realized that I am happy being about a 60% vegetarian. I feel better without meat, for the most part and even though I don’t feel worse when I eat it per se, I just appreciate it a lot more. Chicken is a treat. Fish is a great treat (especially this week as every single dinner is fish, I’m fish CRAZED right now). So I’m going to drink a lot, and eat meat sparingly, and red meat…let’s just say I can probably get by eating it once a month and be super satisfied.

8. Get to 100 blog followers…a lofty goal to gain 33 in a month but I’ve got some awesomeness coming your way momentarily – well that goal is so far behind me I can’t see it in my rearview mirror. Hello new followers and I am so happy you are along for my journey!!!

And now on to my September goals, my fabulous incredible September goals that will help me on my way!
1. Be a better friend - as in, not someone who can set a goal to be extra nice to her friends and not do it after two months!

2. Have or at least schedule my reward spa day for getting under 200 pounds! - I just have to call and make the appointment. Why am I slacking?

3. Have at least 6 work appropriate outfits that fit me NOW - because I’m sick of feeling frumpy. Yes it’s happy that my clothes are loose but it’s not fun to scramble every morning because nothing fits. At least one of those is going to have to be another top to go with my PANTS!

4. Wear pants twice - I’m working my way up slowly! Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t just wear pants September 29 and 30!!

5. Teach my puppy how to walk with me - He is awful on a leash and I haven’t had the patience to walk super slowly with him! I have to be more patient and work with him because eventually he’ll be a nice happy energy ball to go on my fast walks with!

6. Go walking with fabulous people - get ready for THIS lofty goal, this month I want to go to the reservoir with Erin and hopefully Amanda too at least twice, go walk with Candis because Lord knows I am an awful friend who never sees her or the baby and I don’t know why she puts up with me and is so nice, go with Emilie because we live so close that it’s a travesty we hadn’t seen each other in so absurdly long, and meet up with Hannah who I haven’t seen since HIGH SCHOOL but I can’t wait to catch up. Not to mention keeping up with my walks at work, because I am more excited for them now than before. Oh this is my favorite goal so far because I know I’m going to have a great time! And if we live close and you want to go walking or other exercising or out for healthy fabulous time with me TELL ME because I bet I would love love love to hang out and see you!!

7. Get my rings sized down - they are about to fall off, and I never want to miss out on a trip to my favorite jeweler.

8. Track my food all month - even the weekend of cupcake and wine-filled gluttony. Track, track track!! I want to stop feeling like eating bad stuff means I don’t have to track, because that would just give me a license to eat poorly without consequence. We ALL know there are consequences!!

9. Bonus goal! Take an updated profile picture!!!!

I love my goals! Maybe I just love everything! Maybe I’m just happy from the walk and not falling behind walking up the stairs! Maybe I am just a happy person after all! Doesn’t matter – it’s a fabulous day, now go drink a bunch of water, be active and be happy that you are all awesome people who make me happy!

I'm the Biggest Winner!! (ish)

2010-08-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Well in complete honesty I came in second place. But I am calling it a win that I came in first for my office...as I don't know any of the people down there in southern CA!

Today was really great beginning to end - er, now. For our healthy breakfast potluck, I brought fruishi - fruit sushi that was like little nigiri. It turned out awesomely!!! I loved it. Sushi rice covered in a bit of light coconut milk and splenda - and I topped it with various fruits. I used pineapple, mandarin orange, strawberry and raspberry, I think raspberry was my favorite. They were only about 40 calories each and so yummy (I can't wait to have some of the leftovers for dessert!).

I also HATED talking in front of people which was hilarious because out of all the people in that room there was only one I haven't had quite a few conversations with. Anyway I babbled and I think I repeated myself and completely forgot what it is I meant to talk about...but it's ok because it was short and then it was over!

When it came time to announce the winners I was so nervous...I know I had done well but honestly I kept thinking about how embarrassed I would be if after all my coworkers built me up I didn't even place! But I shouldn't have worried because I know that the real win was getting healthier and not winning wouldn't have been the end of the world. And then I saw that the first place winner had lost less than 1% more than me and I just KNEW!

During the Biggest Winner competition at work I lost 24 pounds, or 11.2% of my body weight. I set out to lose at least 10% and thought it was a lofty goal, but August was such a great month for me that I just couldn't believe I had done so well. I lost the highest percentage of weight on the final 2 weigh ins!! And I lost the highest percentage of weight in my entire office...but let's be honest, I couldn't have done it without the support and encouragement of everyone that participated and I hope I properly let them know in my mini-speech. I am so incredibly shy that getting to know people was the biggest blessing and the best part of it. Ok the weight loss was great but let's be fair, I was on that track anyway. It was every walk that I met a new person or had a good conversation.

I won a few fabulous things...another gas card, personal training, some supplements and a rolly-up blanket...haven't decided what if anything I'm going to give away but I'll be sure to keep you updated!! And that's not the best part. The best part was Monday when Michele asked me if I wanted to go on a walk - and I couldn't, but Elizabeth and I did today, and it was just as intense as any of the ones we've done before. Such a little thing, but it makes me feel like it's NOT over...I still have a long way to go and I am really happy to know that those girls are still going to be walking with me until I get there...or...until it rains, but we'll worry about that later!

For all that I haven't found my groove yet like I was talking about yesterday, I am doing something right. Today for some reason I am feeling better about not having a routine, like maybe my routine is just to constantly try new things? I don't really know what I'm saying other than...I feel like my non-routine worked, so I'm going to stop whining about it. For a little while anyway!

Not to mention that after my complete Chinese food pig out I was still down on the scale from yesterday so woo hoo to that :) what an awesome day!!

Weekend Fail, Routine Cravings and Weigh In

2010-08-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

First of all, don't you want a $100 gas card? Because I would really love it to go to one of my fabulous regular readers, because the whole reason I am giving it away is to show YOU how much I adore and appreciate you!! If you have already entered good luck, if not go do it now!!

I meant to be vegan and organic this weekend. I did well on Saturday, except that I got chicken in my salad without thinking. But for the most part I was super healthy. But I realized Sunday that I needed to do a test run on these healthy muffins I wanted to make for the Biggest Winner potluck. It was my first foray into gluten free baking, as one of the girls in my department has a gluten free diet. But, it didn't work out. I made six batches with about 6-8 mini muffins per batch and EVERY SINGLE ONE came out gross (that's not true, one was kind of ok but looked like purple rocks....).

Those of you who know me in real life know I'm a baker. I love to bake and I'm good at it, whether I'm making boxed cupcakes or super fancy bread or whatever. So this has brought down my entire weekend. I've never spent a day in the kitchen and come out frustrated before so this is a big hurdle. At the end of the day I scrapped the whole thing and I'm making something non baked. Found a recipe for fruit bruschetta that looks so pretty, I may just do that.

It just doesn't erase the frustration, you know? And the frustration that I can't just make some really delicious buttery sugary high fat muffins was there too. Ok, rant over.

Anyway, my frustration carried into this morning, and was not overcome by my awesome weigh ins. First my weigh in at home:
Last week’s weight: 192.5
Current weight: 190.2
Pounds lost this week: 2.3

Woo hoo!

And then my awesome work weigh in:
Last weigh in: 194.0
Today's weigh in: 189.8
% loss: 2.16% - that's for 2 weeks. I will tell you all my final % during the Biggest Winner tomorrow!

So after that I don't understand how I can still feel frustrated but I do. I want to go home and try MORE muffin recipes which I know is not going to do me any good. I guess I'm just feeling a bit obsessive.

I am REALLY happy with my loss this week. I am continuing to feel like I'm right on track with my weight loss and I'm loving it. I love where I'm headed and having OCD I have a fabulous spreadsheet that tells me things like, how many pounds a week I have to lose to be X weight by X date and some other fun things to play around with.

There is something that has been bugging me though and it's my lack of routine. Testing out different things throughout this month and trying to find sustainable healthy habits has been taking a toll on me. I am a creature of habit, and the part of weight loss and especially fitness where you have to change up your routine is really difficult for me. I'm enjoying eating all kinds of healthy food, but I think I may take a mini vacation from it this week. I'm allowing myself to have a little break where I eat some foods I've been trying to cut out of my life. I don't know what it is about me, but I feel like I don't have the right balance and I'm trying to figure out what to eat and how often and how much and all of those things - but I'm not finding the right combination with the results I want. I feel like food wise I'm right on the tip of having a routine and a good balance but I'm just not there yet.

And the limbo of trying new things is making me crave sweet and sour fish. People in my life are probably really tired of hearing me talk about it, but I've been craving it for awhile, even though I really didn't feel great the last time I had it. Why is it that eating is so emotional? Knowing how great my body feels eating these fresh veggies and fruits all the time, I just don't understand why nothing makes me feel as good in my head as rice with sweet and sour fish. I don't get ME!

But I'll continue to try to embrace it and work forward. And maybe scheduled indulgences will be what works for me, to eat really healthy stuff and give myself a time limit, like every X days I can have food that will make me feel awful but happy at the same time. Or once a month I'll have a certain week where...um...let's just say craving bad food seems more urgent than other weeks and I'll allow myself a few indulgences and some chocolate or something. Whatever it is, I just want to figure it out, start it and get into a routine with it. Then I'll feel so settled! That's the hope anyway.

Ohhhhh I've gotten to the point in my blog where I hate how whiny I have been! All right let's end on a fabulous note. Husbandcake, who has been gone since Saturday morning, comes home today! He was in Vegas with his cousin and their friends/fantasy football league having a super fun time (and today he happened to see that there's a Valentino boutique in Caesar's, soooo...I'll be going to Vegas sometime soon) and I missed him like crazy. So I could not be any happier that he's headed home tonight!!

See? Don't you love happy endings? It puts everything in perspective. No muffins? No routine? Who cares, my husband is on his way to the airport to come home to me RIGHT NOW!!

Very Happy Friday!!

2010-08-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of things that are making me especially happy today.

1. I’m wearing pants – or at least I was when I got to work (changed into my walking skirt for the walk!).

Those of you who have been with me from the beginning will remember that I don’t wear pants. These are those pants that I bought in March, except they’re looser now and I was not wearing either of those suuuuuuper gross body shapers that are so awful and uncomfortable. I got so many comments already from coworkers and I felt really good about the way I look, to the point that maybe just maybe I will wear the pants a little more often. Of course…I did still wish I was wearing a dress, old habits are hard to break!

2. Surprise goat cheese

Yeah…we had a meeting this morning and I kept trying to repeat to myself that I’d only eat healthy stuff today. And then I saw the quiche. Oh, my friends, if I could explain to you how much I love quiche. So I took a little slice, and on my first bite there was goat cheese. Which is one of my very favorite things. I had to have a second slice. I’m giving myself lego blocks for not having the one with bacon though!
3. Good friends
Especially today it’s making me happy to have good friends to vent to. Friends who know that whatever is driving you insane that second might not matter tomorrow and they see the whole picture and keep things in perspective. Also friends who vent to you and YOU are the one that knows that they don’t really mean things and you can keep it in perspective too.

4. My rings are loose
My guess is that within the next 5-10 pounds I’ll have to get them sized down! I may have to do that more than once but I can’t handle not wearing them for however many months it takes me to reach my goal. Plus I have the best jeweler in the world, so any excuse to visit him makes me happy.

5. Last lunchtime walk
Last OFFICIAL lunchtime walk that is. It was a great one. I hadn’t walked up the big hill in I think a week or so, so it felt really good. I kept up with Elizabeth (or maybe it was just that we were the only two!) and I was out of breath a lot but felt really good.

6. My Bodybugg!
I recently redid my whole Bodybugg program. For awhile I had my goal weight in there as 120, changed it to 150, but there is a smaller, more happy goal that I will share with you guys when I get there (should only be a month or so away) and I get SO much more excited seeing that I’m so close to it. I feel like I should set a new goal for every 4 pounds just so I can really see all that progress.
7. CUPCAKES
’ve been “off” of cake so long, I am not about to end my cakeless streak with just any old grocery store bad icing confection. Oh no. I have had an inkling for a few days (I guess that birthday cake that was in the office really DID get to me!) that I want cake and I am planning to do it the right way, with amazing cake, with fabulous people. At American Cupcake where I will replace a lunch with a flight of cupcakes paired with wine. Cannot imagine. Also their mixed drinks look delightful and amazing. Champagne with sprinkles? Yes please, sign me up! I deserve a treat…so keep your fingers crossed that it works out for me!!

8. It’s making me happy to see people entering to win the $100 gas card. Come on you guys, who wouldn’t appreciate the extra $100…so enter!

Beloved Me! and Blog Hop

2010-08-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon lovelies! I hope you all saw the giveaway I posted earlier!! I love being able to give back to you guys who give me everything, the support to keep going and the inspiration I need every day! I just really appreciate everything.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2573 calories
Consumed 1618 calories
Deficit of 955 calories

Yesterday my afternoon was so stressful. I had the worst bit of insecurity that was just weighing me down. It was one of those things where there was confusion about whether or not people wanted me around…and it’s hard to ask people outright if they want you there, especially a group of people, because there’s no answer other than “of course!” even if they really don’t. It’s just. so. awkward. And of course instead of letting it go, my gloriously miswired brain obsessed about it and came to the conclusion that Husbandcake is the only one who likes having me around, and anyway that’s just because he promised in his vows and he’s an upstanding guy. Oh, what must it be like to not go from tiny doubt to super crazy in about 4 seconds! Will I ever know for myself?

Meanwhile the power was out at my house…so…I kinda had something not healthy. Not super UNhealthy but…I had frozen yogurt. It was actually exactly what I need on an absurdly hot day, to have something very cold and refreshing. I only ended up at 196 calories for the whole thing. Not a bad indulgence if I do say so myself, but surprisingly I’m feeling extremely guilty. Yeah I know that I can’t go without treats – I get that. But I didn’t go because it was hot out. I didn’t go because I was REALLY craving fro yo. I went because I was upset and I felt like nobody liked me. I don’t consider myself an emotional eater but…I probably am. I do crave sweets when Husbandcake is gone. I crave sweets when I feel lonely for any reason I guess. I hate overcoming these struggles. It’s not the number of calories, it’s not the frozen yogurt itself. It’s feeling like I have this problem with eating and no matter how far I come I still feel like I’m pulled back into it.

Anyway, as usual, I have a ton of friends waiting by to let me know that they do want me around, and…as usual…they make me feel silly for even doubting that I had them all along. It doesn’t matter that the original people may or may not want me around in this one instance. I’ve made so many changes in my life and the one that’s hardest to make is in my head. Losing this weight is not at all the biggest change I’ve made, and it’s nowhere near the hardest to let go of. It’s much more of a struggle to let go of the misunderstood or unliked girl that I was at one point. It’s hard to accept that my support system, you included…is REAL. And that you actually like me.

I do wish that for all the amazing people in my life, who I work hard to never take for granted, I could let go of this insecurity and just feel confident that they and you are always there for me without having to constantly be reassured.

Heh heh…sounds like a September goal…

Even after that, Super Healthy August is still in effect, in fact the last four days I’m going back to my short term vegan organic food that I ate at the beginning to remind myself of how good it felt and get back to all healthy deliciousness.

But can I just say one last thing about frozen yogurt? I have a love hate relationship with those places where you serve your own. Love the ability to choose my toppings and amounts and the popularity of fabulous Asian-y flavors. It’s just that I got a GOOD amount of yogurt yesterday and my cup wasn’t even half full. They make you feel cheated! It’s so easy to just fill the cup and then suddenly you have over a half pound of frozen yogurt and toppings!! At home I choose what I eat out of VERY carefully. Small plates, small bowls, eat soup out of a mug. It makes me feel like I am having a full container of whatever I’m eating and I don’t feel like I’m cutting back. For some reason eating two rice bowls of salad is SO much more satisfying than having the same amount taking up half of a huge plate. So please, frozen yogurt places…put out some smaller cups too so we can feel like we’re having a big dessert treat and not like we’re on a dreaded (ugh) DIET!

Rant over, gratefulness for my loved ones setting in, and fabulous plans tonight with a really good friend. My day of rest from exercise, unless I get an inkling to Wii Fit which I haven’t done in awhile. I’m content and it’s nice.

Well I've already felt the love today - now go show some to these fine bloggers!

$100 GAS CARD GIVEAWAY!

2010-08-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that I won the prize for losing the highest percentage of weight in the Biggest Winner last week. I am still so excited for it and it's keeping me focused this week but I also got a fabulous prize for it...a $100 gas card!! Everyone including me can really use this prize, but as I have a Prius I'm already pretty lucky on gas savings so it's all for YOU GUYS again!!!!

The giveaway is going to work a lot like last time with one difference - if you have more than one entry you MUST post more than one comment. On the Bodybugg giveaway I entered comments for a lot of people who had multiple entries in one comment but it was exhausting, so this time enter 10 comments if you have 10 entries to be sure you have ALL those chances to win!!

I want to give you as many opportunities to win as possible, so if you really want it you can have a ton of entries and if you are only kinda interested you can have one. Doesn’t that sound great?! Every entry needs to have your email address on it or if I know you in person your name so I can reach you easily if you win!

****This giveaway will end at midnight on Thursday September 2 with the winner announced on Friday so you have a TON of time to win - 8 days worth of entries!!****

The first entry, the required entry, is to follow my blog publicly (click follow over on the right hand side of my blog and follow the directions!) – so leave a comment with your username!

Then there are a ton of additional entries!!

The easiest is to leave a second comment telling me what your absolute favorite dream car is.

Drool...mine is a Bentley Continental. Don't worry, in my dream world it's a hybrid and very earth friendly!

Facebook:
Become a fan of like a fat kid loves cake (1 entry) - post if you already are a fan too and I will try to remember to keep up that page!!

Post a status update linking to this giveaway and tagging like a fat kid loves cake (1 entry per day – up to 8 total!) If you don’t know how to tag in a Facebook update click here. Make sure you actually explain what the link is for - you have to mention that it's a $100 gas card giveaway!

Friend me on Facebook – or post if you are already my friend (1 entry)

Twitter:
Follow @KyokoCake on twitter (1 entry)

Tweet about the giveaway (1 entry per day – up to 8 total!) – and don’t forget to link back to it in your comment so that everyone knows how awesome you are and they can follow you too! Make sure you tag me, and add and other subjects that will help get more people to this opportunity, like: RT @KyokoCake #giveaway Win a $100 gas card! http://bit.ly/aooqUD

Blog:
Mention this giveaway on your blog and link back here (1 entry per day – up to 8 total!) – and don’t forget to include a link to your blog post!

Dedicate an entire blog post just to this giveaway (2 extra entries – one time only, and be sure to leave two comments)

Oh my goodness that is 31 chances to win. 31 chances for you to get $100 gas card! So get to it!!

Various Biggest Winner things!

2010-08-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

What a liar, I said I was back and then I did not post yesterday. My lovely friends I just did not have time. I was so busy…ok I tried to lie again but honestly the truth is that I got home and Husbandcake had bought me the super amazing world ending huge blu ray set of Lost. I LOVE Lost. I spent an entire day driving all over the island of Oahu JUST to look at Lost filming sites (oh and to find Dave’s favorite bbq place). And then I almost cried in a restaurant when I met Daniel Dae Kim, who played my favorite character, and Michael Emerson who is also on the show and had a fabulous conversation with them. So you can see I was just not able at all to post!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2396 calories
Consumed 1372 calories
Deficit of 1024 calories

And here is how I did Tuesday:
Burned 2476 calories
Consumed 1428 calories
Deficit of 1048 calories

It is HOT. It’s almost too hot to exercise. My lunchtime walk yesterday was lonely as nobody else wanted to brave the awful heat outside. And I almost didn’t – but it’s the last week of the Biggest Winner competition and I am fully committed to finishing STRONG. Today there were three of us but…man, it was so absurdly tiring and I couldn’t bring myself to walk over and get my lunch out of the fridge until an hour or so after we got back!

Oh! I said I had another giveaway as I won the Biggest Winner prize last week. I am hoping to put it up tomorrow, so watch out for that! It’s a really awesome prize that EVERYONE can use (ok almost everyone) so I hope you all will enter. Tee hee…I’m so excited!!

But speaking of the Biggest Winner competition that has unexpectedly become the theme of this blog…I was asked by the fabulous girl who is running it to say a few words at the finale event. What? Just about how the competition has gone for me and things like that, and it will only be a few minutes (there are other people that will be speaking too!). I’m not um, great with public speaking. I’m really shy in person and I don’t speak as well as I write. So what do I talk about? What do I say? Besides of course that I owe it all to other people! It is all you guys and your support and your words of wisdom and tales of caution! It’s all the people at work for all their encouragement and their company on walks.

Any ideas? What should I talk about? What is inspiring? I have a ton of unformed ideas rattling in my head but having a bit of trouble focusing them!

Now I'm REALLY Back (with a weigh in!)

2010-08-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning feeling like MYSELF. Maybe all I needed was a really great weekend to get me back in the right frame of mind. I’m in a great mood, looking forward to a super healthy week to finish out Super Healthy August, and I’m going to transition into Mostly Healthy September.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2354 calories
Consumed 1389 calories
Deficit of 965 calories

I have to get back to my land of 1000 calorie deficits every day. I miss them and I feel lazy when I burn so few calories. However it was worth it yesterday to feel a bit lazy, because it was a great day. Food wise my last week has been pretty bad. High calorie bad foods, and even though I didn’t eat a lot of them, they ate up my allotted calories like crazy. Food wise, the low of the week was Friday’s dinner. We were out with friends to a delicious dinner, ate a tapas-size plate of chicken and went to a play. Had a fabulous time…and then got home and realized that I’d eaten too much. It’s not that there was too much food or anything like that – it’s that I KNEW I wasn’t hungry anymore and kept eating. That knocked a good section out of my lego tower, that I haven’t completely rebuilt yet. I know I absolutely have to learn when to stop eating if I ever want to maintain a lower weight.

And I think I will, it is just taking longer than expected. Some things are so much easier in my structured kitchen where I portion the food out and then put it away in the refrigerator out of sight.

Saturday was not so much better with the food, I was up in Sacramento having a wedding dress outing with Jen, and we went out to lunch at this place that had mostly fried food. And yes, they had salads. Not the healthiest salads with all the add ins but they had them, and I just couldn’t bring myself to eat them – even after the guilt and stomach ache of the night before. So I had a grilled cheese sandwich. And it was delicious but literally tasted like it had been deep fried in butter. Regretting that one too. and then there was last night – I made chicken soup, and it was SO good, and so low calorie so I sat down to a nice big bowl of it…and then took a giant bite of Husbandcake’s Pasta Roni. Creamy, cheesy Pasta Roni. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t taken another giant bite later, or that third bite. I woke up this morning just feeling determined – determined to not let this turn into a week of messing up. I really made a commitment to myself to be healthy this month, to see what changes in my life I can make to be healthier and eat better, and I want to get back to it and finish the month strong.

Let’s move on to something happier. Weigh in!
Last weigh in weight (2 weeks ago): 197.0
Last week’s weight (I didn’t post but still weighed!): 194.0
Current weight: 192.5
Pounds lost this week: 1.5

I know that’s not a huge loss compared to what I've been doing but earlier in the week I was down lower – this weekend did me in! So today I’m on top of my water consumption, have some extremely delicious and very healthy foods to be eating and I feel really happy. All that seems like it’s going to band together to help get the rest of the weight off. Yay!

More good news – I know I was so excited to win that Bodybugg for you guys and give it away but I got a more important win than a participation prize this past week. I lost the highest percentage of weight in the last weigh in. That’s what it is all about to me – not starving myself, but eating healthy and seeing the results I want to see. I am so happy, I can’t even tell you guys. Also…I did win a prize, and I am going to give it away on the blog so watch for it next week.

I’m going to end by saying that it’s really nice to be back. I’ve heard from quite a few of you who have struggled with depression and I just know that some of you will really understand what a great feeling it is to feel like yourself again, to not have the melancholy ruling your brain! It’s a great feeling and has given me awesome motivation for work today and the lunchtime walk. How’s that for a change of tone since last time??!

Mourning the Losses

2010-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

I know I said I’d be writing this a few days ago but I just didn’t have the time...not just the time it took to write it but the time to recover emotionally from writing it all, as I've been so all over the place. I want to thank all of you for your wonderful comments on my blog. You guys are sweet and supportive and believe me if there was a group of people I would share the needy, desperately unhappy side of me with, it would be you. Alas, the issues in my head are a bit too strong for that, and the similarity between the way I had been feeling and the person I used to be was too much for me to deal with.
I’ve realized something about the 55.6 pounds I’ve lost since January of 2009. It’s a LOSS. Not just a loss of weight but of a part of me. That’s not to say I was defined by my weight because I don’t believe I ever really was, but losing weight the way I am is bound to change more than my total pounds. I’ve changed my life, and the recent big losses have really opened my eyes to the fact that I need to mourn my old life, my old self. So here we go, I will work through all seven stages of grief and come out better on the other side.

Denial
How many times have I posted that my clothes don’t fit on this blog? And I still continued to be surprised. I was so surprised every time I looked on the scale and in the mirror. I forget that what I’m doing is working and tend to beat myself up over making these tiny mistakes. I also denied the change in my life. I denied to myself that a lot of our life was wrapped up in food and eating, because that would make me have to admit that more of our life was changing than I intended. Denial was easy, it was a place I blissfully spent a lot of time until I was unfortunately yanked out of it mostly due to last week’s fight with Husbandcake.

Guilt
I’ve had to come to a very harsh reality. Losing weight in this way has been going so well. I have worked hard to change my lifestyle, my thought processes, everything. I’ve tested out many things and tried to realize what was sustainable long term and what wasn’t. It sounds exactly right when I write it down but I was just SO focused on that, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. And the other things are the most important to me. I am a person who defines myself by my marriage. My lifestyle IS my marriage, I can’t honestly say that anything else comes close. Yet there I was, trying to cram my entire life into my weight loss plan. I stopped eating dinner with Husbandcake, because I eat two small meals in a night. You’re just not really sharing a meal with someone when you’re eating separate dinners and just happen to be on the same sofa. I just neglected my marriage, I neglected his feelings because he’s bound to have feelings on my changing life, my changing body, my changing everything.

Saying it brings the guilt rushing back. I claim to be someone who lives their life to make one person happy, and I have spent the past month not caring about whether he’s happy at all. It’s a horrible thing. We’re both at fault after our fight, I was not the only one to blame but neither was he. It always takes two people and we both accept our part in it, but it’s been tough for me to deal with.

Anger
Oh, swift-acting anger and how soon it came after guilt. Why should doing the right thing be hard? Why should changing my life, being healthier, getting better, walking faster is somehow leading to me being SAD. Why is it that the more I like myself in the mirror the less things are going right? We all know, deep down – every one of us that is trying to lose weight knows that taking our extra weight off is not going to solve all of our problems. Some of us even realize that it will cause new problems and we just have to hope they are more manageable than the old ones. But dealing with the reality of the new problems is something I just didn’t anticipate. It’s led to a lot of bitterness, and at times I’ve asked myself if the stress is worth it. And then my skirt falls off when I stand up and I think, oh…ok, yeah it is. See how quick the anger went by? Easy come easy go I guess.

Bargaining
Honestly for a few days I was exercising like crazy, really trying to have NO treats even my obligatory little pieces of cheese and my thought process was this – if I lose this weight NOW, as fast as I can, it will be better and it will be over. Silly Kyoko. All I did was start a cycle of being too tired to do anything at all, even the smallest amounts of exercise. I know I can’t do that, I know even if I did it wouldn’t make anything better. This is a lifestyle change that just HAS to be done. And changes have to be made on both my part and Husbandcake’s – and there is no short cut around it.

Depression
Now comes the worst of all of it. it’s the realization that no matter what I do it’s a struggle. And it is much more than the struggle of “do I or do I not have this extra cookie”, it’s just tough. I don’t want to write too much about it because I don’t want to get sucked back into that way of thinking. Depression for me is this serious all consuming horrible thing that leads to more horrible things. We’ll just leave it at the fact that it was difficult to see past my problems and on to not only the solutions but the fact that at the end of this process, no matter how rough, things will get to be better than they were when I started. I get it now. I really do.

Recovery
Recovery is where I’m at. I feel like the last two weeks of my life have been significantly over-dramatized even to myself. It’s weird to feel such a serious loss over something that isn’t that serious (I mean compared to losing a loved one or a pet, having an illness, that type of thing). It’s a loss of a lifestyle that I loved though, and I am and always will be a huge fan of letting yourself feel all your feelings, good and bad give them the weight they deserve and really work through them.

I’ve learned that a lot of what is physically sustainable with regards to eating habits hasn’t been emotionally sustainable. I didn’t ever consider it. I’m not physically craving certain things, I’m craving sharing a meal with someone, someone who is not so keen on eating the healthy food that I need to be giving myself now. And I know I’ll be able to find a solution…I just…haven’t, yet.

Acceptance
How about let’s make a deal – I’ll let you know when I get there, and in return you’ll hope for me that it’s soon!

I am doing better now. Noticeably better. I am ready to get back to blogging and sharing, and I'm ready to get back to a positive place where I can have this last week of my Biggest Winner competition and finish strong, have a sense of accomplishment and then really move forward. I truly hope that by sharing this I'm helping someone else - anyone else - deal with any lingering crazy feelings that go along with changing their life for the better. My plan is to take a long rest after getting all that out, and then go on to have a wonderful day. I hope the same for all of you!!

I'm Back!

2010-08-18T14:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a bad blogger. I’ve neglected my wonderful readers who I care about so much! It’s just that I’ve been really down and negative and I hate being that way – I hate everything about it. I hate people knowing how down I get, and I hate people seeing my inability to snap out of it. I hate the ups and downs of it, that I can feel so happy doing something and the second it’s over I’m super mopey again. I hate that I feel like I’m always whining to you guys and it’s no different than begging for sympathy or fishing for compliments.

I know that’s silly, I know you guys are all really sweet and understanding people. It's just tough for me to be that person who spreads her negativity. To put those thoughts out in the world…well I can’t imagine how it could do anything but infect other people, which is the last thing I would want. It’s because in the past, I’ve handled unhappiness so poorly and run the extremes between hiding it and dumping it on anyone who is unfortunate to be near me. In addition to my OCD related paranoia (I did manage to hide my OCD from friends, family and even my husband for 10+ years of my life) I have had problems with depression for years and years. I went through a time (middle school through college, so almost half my life) where I couldn’t deal with my problems or my depression properly, including a time in high school where it came to a point that I tried to harm myself. After that it was various medications with various side effects and throughout all of it I acted in a way that made everything worse for myself and those around me.

All I thought I wanted that whole time was sympathy and understanding. Now I realize that I wanted people to give, give, give to me emotionally even though I had nothing to spare for them. And I’d get annoyed or even angry at people who I thought weren’t taking my feelings into account even though they had no idea what I was going through, yet I didn’t ever bother to care about their feelings and problems. Of course, everyone’s problems are going to be more important to them than other people – maybe with the exception of a few very rare relationships or a marriage. I just didn’t realize that there was a world outside the pit of despair that was my own head. Now of course I understand that it’s not realistic for even the best of people to carry on a friendship with someone who takes and expects so much but can’t give you anything – so of course a bunch of teenage girls could never handle the stress of that and so many friendships ended in so many horrible ways and hurt feelings. It was so horrifyingly painful to learn this lesson that even just writing it out brings tears to my eyes. And that’s the reason that I don’t ever want to go down a road where I ask people for things again, because I don’t want to get any closer to that person I used to be.

I do have serious but non-mopey things to write about. How feeling successful in my weight loss threw me into such a dark and confusing place, how I’m dealing with it now and doing better, and how climbing out has even been hard as completely unrelated stress is weighing me down – but I AM getting out of it. It’s taken me days as it’s emotional to write but I think so relevant to all of us that are trying to lose a lot of weight, and I am hoping it’s ready for you to read tomorrow. I started writing this whole blog post about the things that have gone on in the past two weeks, from my fight with Husbandcake through last night, but I just don’t want to relive it. We will just say it’s been a rough time for awhile and I’m very, very grateful that Husbandcake gets home tonight!

But it’s also been a reminder of the love in my life and the great people I am surrounded with. I credit those people with so much of what makes me like myself. They inspire me to be better every day. They offer to come by and eat carrot sticks with me at my house when I’m not eating out and I’m tired. They think through my problems and give me this amazing feedback and the insight of someone who isn’t in the thick of things. They get out of bed way before they need to and come to my house to fix my plumbing when I can’t reach an emergency plumber, and some of them are nice enough to go out and buy parts, fix my shower while I’m at work, and then invite me for dinner so I don’t have to eat alone. They send me emails even though they don’t know me in person, even though we’ve never had a conversation before, they want me to know they will be there for me. My alienating so many people in past parts of my life has taught me that not everyone has that and it makes life so much better. That’s probably why I talk about it just so much, because just saying it once doesn’t really express how much joy the people in my life bring me.

I didn’t put my calories for yesterday, because for my dinner I mixed some of my low calorie soup with the significantly higher calorie version I made for Husbandcake and I have no clue how many calories it was! But rest assured I have done well. The one exception being the mini binge of strawberry liquorice from Trader Joe’s, of which I had about 150 calories’ worth by the end of the day. But it’s okay, I could have done oh so much worse!

Anyway if you made it through all of that I want to thank you so much. I really love sharing with you guys when I am at a place where I feel like I have things in perspective. Just like all of you have been so sweet and giving to me, I wish I was always able to send you nothing but positivity and happiness!

Good News Sandwich

2010-08-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

Good news and bad news my lovelies. Actually I’ll make it a good news sandwich – a good thing, a bad thing and another good one, how is that? In fact, you should probably go MAKE a sandwich to eat while you read this because I’m warning you it’s going to be LONG. I meant to sit for a minute this morning and catch up with blog comments when I did the blog hop but I ended up running really late and didn’t get a chance to. It’s just as well, none of you need me to spread any mopeyness that I might be feeling. My first good news is that I have officially canceled all of my weekend plans (except my hair appointment, because nobody needs to get a lesson in just how grey haired a 29 year old can be). I’m going to RELAX, no exercise, I will eat a ton of vegetables and watch movies or something fun. That is GREAT news.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2092 calories
Consumed 1455 calories
Deficit of 637 calories – ugh. But I guess it couldn’t be helped.

Here is how I did Tuesday:
Burned 2830 calories
Consumed 1507 calories
Deficit of 1323 calories

So the bad news, and this is more annoying than bad, is that I’m going crazy…let me explain why. I’m exhausted. I’ve over-used that word since Monday but let me tell you that my brain is TOO TIRED to come up with a synonym. Monday I was just tired, I’m always tired if I haven’t had what I deem to be a relaxing enough weekend. Tuesday I felt like I was too tired, like something might be wrong. Then Tuesday night things went downhill.

I wish I could convey to you my relationship with Husbandcake, of course I think it is the best marriage someone could dream of. We are needy, and miss each other after only a few minutes of being apart, and we are compassionate, because we both have faults like everyone and we have learned to be accepting of each others’. We don’t have Serious Fights. When I say don’t I mean since we moved in together in 2001, we’ve had three Serious Fights, and I guess I qualify serious by two things. First, the arguments lasted longer than 20 minutes which is rare enough and second, the fights were actually about us, as opposed to just being two people who needed to blow off steam because they were annoyed about something unrelated. We bicker back and forth, we annoy each other (and I vent to my friends, but still feel comfortable telling him exactly what I say to them), but at the end of the day I don’t live by “don’t go to bed mad” – I live by “don’t be mad for more than 10 minutes” and that is a blessing that not a lot of people can manage.

This picture of us all happy is to soften the blow ahead...

With that in mind we had a Serious Fight Tuesday night. The biggest fight we’ve had in almost three years. It lasted about an hour and involved both of us leaving the house for periods of time to calm down, something that has never happened before. It might have lasted longer…but as we were really getting to working stuff out I got so tired I couldn’t stand up anymore. I could hardly even sit up and I was thinking that I wonder if this is why people are hospitalized for exhaustion. Of course, I know I am completely overly dramatic and I mostly attributed my shaky legs to that, and we went to sleep pretty soon after that with the promise to talk more the next day (we did, and everything is good again, with plans to keep it from getting to that point again).

Of course, after that I woke up the next morning to a cat on my pillow and my eyes puffy and red. I am allergic to those darn cats and when they sleep near my face I am sneezy and feel awful in the morning. Between that, my stomach ache and the fact that I could barely stumble into the bathroom – I just had to take my stomach medication and stay home. But it felt (feels?) like the world was ganging up on me and I just don’t get why. I was doing SO WELL, feeling so happy and thinking of all the milestones I’ve had in the past two weeks. It could just be that all the changes are too overwhelming and my body, pets and subconscious were all trying to get me to stop and calm down. So I listened.

I slept almost all day yesterday off and on. I tried to watch March of the Penguins maybe four times, but kept sleeping through it. I didn’t feel groggy necessarily but still felt so drained. Emotionally, physically, mentally I had nothing to give even to myself. I barely burned 2000 calories all day long. I ate soup almost all day because despite the warm weather and beautiful day I felt cold. I spent the moments that I was awake talking to Husbandcake about serious things, having some really good conversations and enjoying being near him.

All that, while significant, is only the background for today’s bad stuff. So after my day yesterday I expected to wake up feeling at least a little rested. I felt so much better emotionally but still am feeling physically like I ran a marathon yesterday. I got ready this morning, and sat at my computer for a minute before seeing the time and rushing to leave the house. We crate our puppy Chips, he is potty trained for the most part but anytime we’re gone longer than a couple of hours, he’s just not too trustworthy. Usually he runs into the crate, he loves it and sleeps there a lot and knows that he’ll get treats. This morning he decided to play the can’t-catch-me game and just bounced around running away from me. For about five minutes straight I chased him and he ran away, pouncing back and forth and wagging his little stub of a tail in a way that any other time would have been so adorable.

You'd never know he's such a little terror, he's the cutest thing in the world!

I sat down on the floor, and cried. I cried until he came over to me and climbed in my lap to make me feel better. I am just so emotional. Even now I’m embarrassed that it got to me in that way, although I know that it wasn’t the dog, it was a huge pile of things and that one small annoyance was just the thing that made it all overwhelming. I don’t know how I went from so happy on Monday down to where I was Tuesday night, back to feeling happy and back down. And although now I feel calm and good but I am wondering, in the back of my head what will set me off next. Now you can see why I cleared my schedule for the weekend. I’m not up for anything that could be even remotely stressful, although I do believe I will have to have a therapy session with ~~my therapist~~ ~~my friend who is a therapist who I unabashedly take advantage of~~ Erin.

Oh wow…after ALL that my good news seems so superficial. It’s really not, so bear with me. I am one of those people who loves to dress to reflect my mood. I consider it a great thing that my closet is full of girly ruffles and bright colors. And when I’m feeling “bleh” I like to wear things like my jean skirt, which in my head is all frumpy and lazy-looking. This morning I could not find a single thing to wear that reflected my mood. Seriously. My beloved frumpy jean skirt fell off of me. My fitted shirts hang loosely, and all of my gray and dram dresses are limp and shapeless on me now.

You guys all know this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed my clothes fitting loosely – in addition to it I ordered a bunch of workout clothes from Old Navy and returned all but two tank tops because it was all huge. But it continues to hit me at odd moments, simultaneously befuddling and delighting me. I mean, I wore that skirt just last week and it was looser but not anywhere near falling off when I stand up.

Now that I’m over the whole episode with Chips this morning, that delight is seeping back. I know in my head that losing weight is not going to keep me from having bad days. I could have a great weigh in and a horrible day because I don’t want my weight to define me. But it makes me feel a little ungrateful to actually feel unhappy during a month that I’ve been doing SO well in. I also know that change isn’t just hard to make, it’s hard to deal with. Even though it’s a good change, it’s a strain on me and on my amazing Husbandcake to shake up our whole lifestyle. The faster the change (and I’ve lost ten pounds in only two weeks) the more strain it is. Who would have thought that emotionally I’d almost want to lose the weight slower so I have more time to adjust?!

Friends, I have rambled long enough. I’m so grateful if you’ve read this far. It’s difficult for me to not even go on and on, because I have always been one to over-share about the crazy that goes on in my head. I probably could have said something like “so I have been up and down lately” and that would have truly sufficiently gotten the point across. But I am happy to have all of you to share my crazy with, and to get it out there in hopes that it will be over SOON and I can go back to feeling (at least somewhat) carefree and happy to be headed where I am headed!

Fat to Fit Blog Hop!

2010-08-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Good morning! I will post a proper blog later today...sorry I didn't post yesterday but I spent most of the day sleeping on and off. I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm exhausted and have been that way since Monday. Then yesterday when I woke up my eyes were almost swollen shut and my stomach was upset and there was just no way I was going to make it into work. My allergies teamed up with my stomach to make it kind of a miserable today but no worries - today is MUCH better.

Didn't get rid of that exhaustion though. Mentally, physically and emotionally I feel so drained. I've gotta snap out of it, or something...I'm not sure how but I will get there!!

On to the blog hop...hope you all enter and click through to a few of those links!

Epiphanies and Other Journey-Related Things

2010-08-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am way, way behind on your comments on my blog. It’s awful. I am behind on everything, I still can’t remember to check/use Twitter even though I really like it. Today is one of those days that all those tiny little things feel like they’re piling up on me. That’s right friends, I’m having an off day and I don’t like it!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2601 calories
Consumed 1422 calories
Deficit of 1179 calories

Not bad. But my calories burned did remind me that when I’m losing weight, the time for coasting is extremely short lived. Right when you really feel comfortable relaxing into a groove, your workouts don’t burn as many calories and it’s time to change things up.

My burn on the lunchtime walks, which for weeks has hovered around 505-510, was down to 460 yesterday. Today it was at 484. I’ve been walking faster, getting better and I’m on my way to being fit. I’ve been repeating to myself all afternoon – this is GOOD. This is what I wanted! But there is a part of me (come on, there’s a part of you too) that just wishes I could relax in a routine, and easily lose the weight and be fit without putting in the effort. That part of me is whiny as all heck today.

I think it might be that I’m exhausted. I wonder if I’m getting sick, or if I’m having some kind of deficiency in my diet. I have a multivitamin but honestly I forget to take it more days than not. It could just be an off day, we all have them, we all get in bad moods but something about today is just making it hard to get through. All day I’ve been slow, thinking about sleep with a longing that is way too strong, and going through the motions without enough caring.

That’s enough whining for one post, don’t you think? Let’s move on to the things I SHOULD be focusing on today. I say it every day and I find new ways to say it but I am just changing so much! Changing too slowly (I am after all impatient) and at the same time too fast. I barely had time to adjust to almost-200 lbs me and now I’m under. And under for good – I mean even after a big meal I am still at 198 – time to make that spa appointment! But after the happy jumping around dance and then the excitement that my celebration probably burned a few more calories, I take a minute to look at myself and wonder what is happening to me.

You learn so much about yourself when you make a change. I’ve learned that I wasn’t ok with my weight. You might not find that to be an epiphany but it is for me. I always thought I was happy, I always had cute clothes and thought I looked just fine in them – and I just never really considered that I was one of those people who didn’t want to be fat. But you know, getting in the way of myself, always being the first to get tired or winded…being the slowest, seeing truly disgusting bulgey parts – I was not happy with my weight. It’s good to realize this now. Good because I can really FEEL myself feeling better about myself.

What else have I realized? I like appreciating things. I love it in fact. I love that going for a bike ride makes me appreciate lounging on the sofa. I like that I appreciate housework when I see how many calories it burns. I LOVE that eating only one cookie makes me savor every bite, every crumb and it really just tastes better.

I realized I don’t need sugary sweet everything. I don’t particularly like soda (although you’ll catch me drinking lemonade or limeade every chance I get) and the only ones I ever enjoyed were the sweetest. Cream soda, root beer, those old fashioned orange cream ones. But I don’t really enjoy them now when I do indulge. I will take a sip of Husbandcake’s soda, and then think about how I could not even finish an entire can.

The last thing…I didn’t realize it about myself. I realized it about everyone around me. As the people I know realized that I was trying to lose weight they have been overwhelmingly supportive and encouraging. People like Erin, or my coworker Elizabeth, who have TOTALLY inspired me along this journey are coming back and saying that I have inspired them too. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and happy. People mention when they can see I’ve lost weight, they mention when they see me walking faster or being more active, but best of all, is when they mention that I just look happier. It’s like the weight off my body is lifting the weight of stress around my head too. And it’s like I am finally understanding just how sweet and wonderful the people in my life are.

Oh! I really don’t feel whiny anymore!

I know that I have a lot of readers now and those of you who have made it this far in a long post I am wondering – what has been your favorite/most surprising epiphany along your journey so far?

Weigh In and Milestones

2010-08-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Back to normal in …like a fat kid loves cake-land! For now anyway, I am still holding out hope that I win more and more stuff, to pass it along to all of you who keep me accountable, keep me happy and going strong. I’d love to give away 20 Bodybuggs so you can all discover how awesome they are!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2555 calories
Consumed 1553 calories
Deficit of 1002 calories

Under normal circumstances I’d probably be a little embarrassed about such a low number of calories burned. However, as I set out to make yesterday one of my 3000 calories burned days…I’m a LOT embarrassed. Oh well, there are other weekends and other activities!

What I’m really excited about today is my weigh in!!
Last week’s weight: 202.1
Current Weight: 197.0
Pounds lost: 5.1

Weekly goal: I accomplished my goal of helping someone else on their weight loss journey and I feel fabulously about it! This next week my goal is simple. I want to work out every day and stay on my eating plan.

All right, what is going on with losing 5 pounds a week?? What is my secret? I don’t know but I’m just going to happily continue along doing what I’m doing. That’s not even all of the good news!

From last Monday, my waist is down 2 inches. 2 INCHES! My hips are down 3 inches. I feel myself getting closer and closer to another mini goal I’ve had in the back of my mind. I want my waist measurement to be smaller than my bust. I will feel SO GOOD then. My waist has been smaller than my hips as of July 6, so now it has to get down farther. In case that wasn't obvious, I carry ALL my weight around my middle, every last ounce of it, and I hate being shaped like a beach ball with legs, so I'm REALLY happy that's changing!!!

And my friends, we are still not at the best news. I started tracking my measurements at the end of June. There is a section on the Bodybugg website where you enter them in and it estimates your lean and fat mass to help show you that you ARE losing the fat pounds even if you’re gaining muscle. On June 24 I was at 108 pounds of lean mass and 104 pounds of fat mass. Today…I’m at 116 pounds of lean mass and 81 pounds of fat mass. That is 23 pounds of fat gone in a month and a half.

Oh yeah – the best news. On January 1, 2009 I weighed myself and I was at 247 pounds. That’s the highest I’ve ever seen on the scale. As of today, I have lost 50 pounds. Sure, half of it took me a year and a half to do and the other half took me a couple of months, but however I did it, I really did it and I don’t ever want to get back up there again.

There are so many things I can think of to be happy about today. Counting this one, I’ve had two posts in a week about multiple amazing milestones in my life. I feel so blessed, so happy and so truly on my way in this journey. I also feel like there is a chance of me meeting my mini goal by the time I turn 30 (next February)…I just have to keep an average up of 1.7 pounds a week!! Going through a phase of losing 5 pounds a week is really fun but definitely not sustainable for me…my metabolism is going to adjust to any changes I’ve made and then it will be time for me to change it up again!

My lovelies, that is all I have for you today. I hope you go out and have wonderful, beautiful afternoons, evenings and tomorrows! Can't wait to catch up on what all of you are up to :)

Bodybugg Winner!!

2010-08-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hello all!! I want to thank all my new readers and everyone who entered the Bodybugg contest. I really want to just ask around the office and see if I can get one for every single one of you, because you all have amazing reasons and each of you is so deserving. And if you’re one of the many who entered and didn’t win, I hope you will stay tuned because we’ve got 3 more weeks of this work competition and every single thing I win (as long as it is transferable) is going straight to you guys, so hopefully that will mean giveaways galore! Keep your fingers crossed for me and I’ll keep mine crossed for you!

The craziest thing happened when I was trying to pick who got the Bodybugg. A few of you that I know outside of blogging have asked how I’m choosing the winner. I’ve numbered all of the comments, and added extra comments for those of you who put multiple entries into only one comment (that way the number of comments equals the number of entries). Then I go to one of my favorite sites Random.org and put in the number of comments, it randomly generates an answer. Or in my case, THREE answers!

Here is who won first:

Karen of Muffin Fixation, who is so fabulous and who I am forever indebted to for getting my blog out there in the very beginning…but alas, she didn’t really enter!

But it wasn’t over yet, as this next number came up:

The lovely Brigitte of Poohpees World, who is such an awesome person and SO deserving…but alas, she didn’t enter either!

So by now Husbandcake and I are giggling like little kids, and looking to see if there are any other comments that aren’t really entries, because we’re sure they’ll come up next. Instead…

Good things really come to good people. I thought it was so sweet that Fat Girl Vs. World of I Go Through Life in Inches and Pounds entered not for herself (she already has one of these amazing devices) but for her friend.

Fat Girl Vs. World – I must say once again in my blog that you are such an inspiration, such a sweet person and you make me want to go hunt down giveaways and enter them for my awesome friends.

Crystal of How I learned to run faster than the zombies by avoiding corndogs also entered for herself multiple times, and here is her reason for wanting a Bodybugg:

Congratulations Crystal!! I know you will use it and love it, and I hope that when you’ve reached the point that you’re comfortable without it you will pass it along to someone else who needs it!

Last Chances

2010-08-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

The first last chance is the Bodybugg Giveaway...you all went crazy on the entries lately!!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2749 calories
Consumed 1542 calories
Deficit of 1207 calories

The other last chance is me. It's almost 3pm, I've only just now eaten lunch and I haven't done any exercise. NOT GOOD! So instead of writing all about fun stuff that I wanted to say today, I am just going to remind you about the giveaway...and let you know that the day is NOT over yet if you've been lazy like me...get out there, move around, finish out the day eating well and for those of you like me who are reporting their weigh ins tomorrow, drink a ton of water!!

Creative Cardio...and Temptation

2010-08-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Don't forget the Bodybugg giveaway! Two more days!!

And there's another giveaway for a CSN gift certificate at Fat Like Me - which is a blog you should be reading anyway because it's one of my favorites!!

I am trying something new this morning - black coffee. When we went to Hawaii in April, Husbandcake bought some fabulous Kona coffee that is all supposed to be coconut-y and creamy. Let me let you in on a little secret. If you don't like black coffee...you just don't like black coffee. And since I'm trying not to have any more 200 calorie cups of coffee I guess I am just going to have to make it a very rare treat.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2687 calories
Consumed 1477 calories
Deficit of 1210 calories

Why am I waking up EVERY MORNING feeling great?!! I love it love it love it!!!!

Today I am doing some more of my creative cardio that I love so much. Sadly, no cardio shopping but I am doing some crocheting with fabulous ladies and some cardio cleaning. The last time I spent a couple of hours cleaning out the garage I burned the same as walking a 5K. I don't want to do too much because I'm thinking tomorrow is likely to be one of my 3000 calories burned days and I definitely don't want to tire myself out.

I know I repeat myself a lot but I just love finding creative ways to burn calories. Exercising is not my thing. I feel great after a walk, of course but making my way through even a half hour workout video I get so bored. Plus I love giving myself credit for doing things like sitting and chatting with friends but still keeping my hands busy and moving.

However...related to chatting today I am having a problem that I'm going to need to get over soon. I'm becoming scared of going out to places where there is food or high calorie anything. Maybe I'm scared of temptation, that I don't have the drive that I feel I should. My knitting group is meeting at a coffee shop and I'm nervous that I won't be able to avoid the sweet coffees and fabulous pastries. My goal is to have unsweetened iced tea and no snacks (well maybe I will bring some carrot sticks to extra-avoid temptation). I love that so far I've really stuck to veggie-type snacks and I want to keep that going strong!!

A coffee shop is hopefully a good place to start, I can work my way up to greasy salty food establishments in time. Maybe even someday walk into a bakery...haha.

Besides, my fingers will be all busy like making a blanket so I hopefully won't have time to think about delicious things I'm not eating. I can do this!!

Health is Good but Thinking is Hard

2010-08-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Have you entered to win the Bodybugg Giveaway today? I hope so – I am hard at work trying to win you all another one because I think everyone should get one!

It seems like almost everyone in my life is in good spirits lately. It’s been really nice, very calming. I have some issues with taking on the moods and attitudes of people surrounding me, so I try really hard to find people who are for the most part very serene and happy, or enthusiastic, energetic, healthy, all those things and I have achieved this with incredible success. I completely advise all of you to do the same – positive attributes are so contagious and it makes you feel amazing when you realize that YOU are sending positivity back to all those people and making them happier too.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2835 calories
Consumed 1530 calories
Deficit of 1305 calories

I am completely settled into my eating calorie-wise. I think if I stick between 1450 and 1600 a day I feel fulfilled and healthy. There is something that is confusing me though. When I was stuck down eating 1100-1200 calories a day I had the same deficits I do now. So why is the weight MELTING off of me now that I’m eating more? Seriously – I am down almost an entire pound from yesterday. I know, I know, it’s water weight, it’s this and that, we all fluctuate, but I am seeing crazy returns on the scale since I started eating more. For a numbers person that is baffling! So for now anyway I’m just saying to myself, “KyokoCake – seriously, do not question this, just go on and enjoy your large quantities of veggies and relish in every bit of peanut butter and all that fun healthy stuff…and if you stop losing weight you can figure out how to change it up then.” BUT – take note, my friends that don’t eat a lot, that eating has turned out to be better and more fulfilling in every way.

Yesterday was so great. Just fabulous. But not just because of the four things I wrote about in my blog post. It was also a great first non organic non vegetarian non detox day. I had this fear in the back of my head that I didn’t want to voice even to Husbandcake but I thought I would make it halfway through and then rush home for pasta with cream sauce and alcohol and cupcakes. I didn’t even want anything – I didn’t even eat rice. Seriously! I did make soup with a bit of beef in it, and it was SO filling I could barely finish a cup of it. So I know now, and it’s hopefully permanent, it’s time to cut way back on meat and keep up with a ton of fruit and veggies.

Today…I don’t know. It’s a fabulous day, weighed in at 199.0 this morning (again, whaaa??? That’s awesome!) but I’ve been really out of it mentally. My brain is just working slowly, work tasks are taking almost twice as long as they should, and I forgot when Husbandcake is going out of town. I sent him a text apologizing for not getting to spend tonight with him because he’s leaving tomorrow and he responded wondering where it was he might be going…because his business trip is definitely not this coming week.

Well even though I’m ditzy today I still am sticking to my meal plan. I probably don’t have the mental capacity to stray from it anyway so I’m glad it’s all written out for me! I’m feeling good, had more soup for lunch and I have to say I cannot believe how great it was to make healthy soup. My normal go to for the comfort of soup is Campbell’s Tomato Bisque and of course I can’t make it with water, no, I make it with half and half or real cream. So it is FAR from healthy. But I made an onion soup with tomatoes, cabbage and carrots. And then I snuck in extra onions and lean beef. I know, that sounds so weird to most people but I found it on a low calorie website and had plans to eat enormous amounts of it – because I had zero idea that I would get full on so little.

All right, I’ve rambled for long enough. Writing this has actually been difficult because I can’t seem to form a coherent thought. Please tell me the rest of you have these days too!! I am just completely useless! Thank goodness I don’t need to think clearly to go get my pedicure!

Four Times the Awesomeness in One Post

2010-08-05T17:47:00.000-07:00

Have you entered my Bodybugg Giveaway yet or passed the information on to someone who would like it? I would love your help in getting it to someone who it will help get healthier!

Something happened this morning that made me stand in my bathroom and cry for a minute. In a good way! I have not one but four fabulous things to talk about that have all banded together to make today beyond fabulous so let’s get to it!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 3024 calories – barely made it but I made it!!
Consumed 1475 calories
Deficit of 1549 calories

Awesome thing 1 – 3000 calories burned!!!!!
I know from reading a lot of your blogs…some of you are there multiple times a week. However, my metabolism is just trucking along right where it is, and is definitely not helping as much as I’d like! Those calories included a lunchtime hike, a walk with Husbandcake and a half hour of Wii Fit. That’s a lot of being active for one day, especially a weekday, and I do believe that when I go for this again…I will do it on a weekend!

Even better than the fact that I burned 3000 calories is the fact that I still feel good today. In general I think the thing holding me back from doing it is the time constraints. I have so much I want to do in my day, and a lot of time getting quality exercising in means cutting out one or two of those things I am excited about. But like I said, I’ll get to it on a weekend day and it will be like nothing! I know I can do it again and hopefully make it a regular thing to burn this many calories in a day and feel this great about it often.

Awesome thing 2 – Detox success!!!!
I feel great after four days of doing really well. I had one slip up, I don’t even want to talk about it. Here I am all excited about getting chemicals out of me and one of the days I just popped a piece of gum in my mouth. Sugar free gum, all chemicals, all everything. But hey it’s a small price to pay for feeling so great now, so I’m not even going to worry about it.

I love my month long eating plan. It is going to ease me back into something closer to my “normal” eating habits, but I’ve made it all complicated so that if I get to a point and think – you know what, I’m just not sure I need red meat more than once a month – then I just won’t have it. Oh my goodness, I can’t even tell you all how much I’m hoping that happens.

Awesome thing 3 – On the edge!!!!!
So if you’re wondering what made me cry, it was this

There really aren’t words to describe how it makes me feel to see that so I’m just going to hope that you all understand, even if that’s not the number that will make you feel that way, even if you haven’t gotten there yet. But in my head I’m separating my feelings into two parts…the first being that I am happy and I am allowing myself to revel in my happiness and my weight loss. I’ve lost about 47 pounds since January of 2009 – about 20 since I started blogging and being serious about it…through all of the changing scales, big losses, small losses, and the week I gained and it hit home today that I’m actually doing something. I’m getting somewhere. It’s easy to say “oh I’m 0.4 pounds up/down from yesterday” but this is a huge milestone number for me.

My other thought is, I am all prepared today to call around, find a wonderful spa and go have a pampering myself day (my reward for getting under 200 lbs). But I’m not 100% ready to admit I’m there. I'm going to wait to celebrate until I can be under 200 at the end of the day, after dinner, all of that. When I'm under 200 pounds all the time - I will be all over that reward!!

Awesome thing 4 – I feel like a different person!
The combination of the first three awesome things have led to me looking at myself today. My arms, my fingers, my face, just looking. I’m really different. People keep telling me to post a new picture of me in that long dress that is my profile picture and I do think it’s time to bust it out and look at the differences in myself, so expect that soon.

I can't get enough of noticing the differences. I can't believe what I've done in two months...why didn't I ever try this hard before? What a fabulous day. I hope you are all out there as happy as I am!!

Fat to Fit Blog Hop

2010-08-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

I know I've started posting this every week but I hope that those of you reading actually click through to some of these other blogs. I've found more than a couple of blogs I really love by reading through these! Lucy at Diminishing Lucy sets it up every week and it's worth it to read what is going on over on other blogs - so check it out!!

Versatile Blogger Award! (and more!)

2010-08-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again friends! I got a blog award, from a few different people and I just kept putting it off because I am so bad at thinking of things about myself!

However I don't want to pass up the opportunity to highlight the three amazing bloggers who nominated me!

So every award has rules and here they are :

Thank the person who gave you the award.
Share seven things about yourself.
Nominate fifteen newly discovered blogs.
Let your nominees know about the award.

Thank Yous

The first person to give me this award was Vegan Ana - a runner who has adopted the idea to have a vegan diet for all meals except dinner!
The second person was Midori, Mighty Warrior - who is not only kick ass at losing weight but is hilarious the whole way :)
And then Kristina at Off The Couch - who like me looks at everything she does to see if it burns calories...and is now cardio waitressing!

Seven Things About Myself

A lot of my OCD manifests itself in obsessing over insignificant decisions. My stylist told me to find a picture of someone online with hair color that I liked - that's all. But there are SO MANY colors and I hate decision SO MUCH that I've been trying to convince a couple of my friends to find pictures for me.
I trained myself to smile one summer because I had this friend who just smiled all the time and I really admired that about him. More than just smiling though, I trained myself to be happy almost the same way that I'm training myself to be healthy...it worked once and it's definitely working again!
I really want to retire. I don't know if I've posted that on this blog. I'm 29 and desperate to retire...hoping that when we're ready to have kids that I will be able to!
I like to collect things. But I'm unfocused. I have a mini collection of those lucky cats, the ones that look like they're waving. I have a collection of glass paperweights - we get a new one every year on our anniversary. No big, impressive collections yet though!
I like being wrapped up. In the summer when it's too hot for blankets I keep a sheet out on the sofa so I can still have that feeling of being nestled into bed or whatnot.
I love octopi. Why don't I have an octopus collection? Well...I kinda do but they're all dog toys!
Another OCD one, and octopus related. I love the numbers 4, 8 and 16. I fixate on the number 4 constantly!

The 15 Blogs
I don't know!! There are so many out there...I know this is a total cop out but....I'm nominating you. All of you...I subscribe to all of my readers' blogs (if I don't follow yours, leave a link in the comments section!) and I love them all!!

I have a small favor to ask of you all...if you have an extra minute can you vote for my friend Jasmine in this contest?? http://1013.com/pages/wedding-in-a-week.html they are Richard and Jasmine and they are fabulous!!

On My Way to 3000 Calories...

2010-08-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

Have you entered my Bodybugg Giveaway yet or passed the information on to someone who would like it? I would love your help in getting it to someone who it will help get healthier!

Good afternoon!! Or good other time of day for a few of you. I am still riding on kind of a high from all of my good feelings yesterday. I also ate NON STOP all day yesterday. It was weird to do that…at one point in my life that would sound like the makings of a glorious day but I realized that’s really not who I am now. I got so tired of eating, but I was really trying to go all fruits and veggies and keep up my calories. I did it though! I feel like I’ve used some kind of reverse psychology on myself though, like I ate so much that I can’t help but be convinced that I don’t ever want to eat all the time again.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2974 calories
Consumed 1291 calories
Deficit of 1683 calories – geez!

Today will be easier. It’s Day 4! Having some delicious and refreshing milk today along with all of my other stuff and then it’s time to really evaluate what it is that I want to keep in my life and what it is that I want to cut out…or at least scale back on. I wonder if financially I will be able to budget to eat all or mostly organic and fresh stuff all the time. I think I can, at least I can until the next time I run into a buttery fuschia leather Valentino work of art (what can I say, I LOVE handbags) at 30% off…and then it might all just go down the drain!

I’m also starting to think about how I’m going to slowly reintroduce things into my diet. I don’t want to go overboard all meat and rice explosion tomorrow, but I also don’t want to keep my calories this low after I worked so hard to get them up! So I started this morning working on a VERY detailed meal plan for the rest of the month – that doesn’t provide for eating out (ok maybe one celebratory meal while I am wedding dress shopping with bff-Jen...yay!!!!!), which is something I should cut back on anyway. It’s one of those days that I love my OCD and I love Microsoft Excel. And this really fits in with my August goals of finishing the Biggest Winner strong and being better at meal planning!

My other goal for the day is to make this one of my 3000 calories burned days. After my lunchtime hike with my wonderful coworker, the same amazing person that gave me my Bodybugg – I am well on my way. And I feel great! So...I'm cutting this blog entry short to go do some fabulous exercising!

Change - REAL Change

2010-08-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

Have you entered my Bodybugg Giveaway yet or passed the information on to someone who would like it? I would love your help in getting it to someone who it will help get healthier!

I am feeling pretty sleepy this morning. I am also mildly craving coffee – not actual coffee but sugar, cream and caffeine which is about how I usually take it. And at almost 200 calories a cup (still over half that when I use Splenda instead of sugar), I am trying to give it up. But today, I am a bit tempted to go make myself a bit of that candy sweet yummy warm drink to wake me up. I’ll get through it!!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2596 calories
Consumed 1073 calories
Deficit of 1523 calories

I went slightly off track yesterday. It was an accident though. I went shopping at Ikea and then out to an early dinner with a friend (for you locals, we went to the Marketplace in Emeryville because I know they had a salad bar, what I didn’t expect is how painful it was to walk by all of the various kinds of Asian foods that I know are oh so delicious). I had a teensy salad because that is what happened to be there, and then went home and had some mashed cauliflower that was beyond delicious. I made some mixed vegetables for dessert, or as the Bodybugg system calls it “late snack” – but then I just fell asleep and missed that whole mini meal.

Oh well, I’m back on track today with my delicious fruity breakfast and a ton of water. And no coffee!

I keep waiting for this moment to come…the moment where I realize I absolutely need a 100 calorie chocolate bar from Trader Joe’s, or crackers, or something. But it’s not coming. Sure, I am tempted by things but it’s not that NEED to eat certain foods that I expected. I am not irritable despite the fact that I haven’t had rice since Saturday (and believe me, my addiction to white rice has actually caused huge fights with HusbandCake in the past). I also realized yesterday that despite my blog theme I haven’t had REAL cake since I started this journey. I mean, angel food cake is great and I have had it twice…but we all know it can’t take the place of red velvet. Or could ever compare to an unfrosted yellow cake cupcake still hot from the oven. All right I’ll stop before we all go out and rob bakeries – but my point is that I’ve never set out to deny myself the most delicious of all desserts. If I really truly felt I needed it I would allow myself that luxury, but I haven’t. I’ve passed it up during birthday celebrations at work, and I’m still here, still alive, still me.

I got all contemplative about my diet and healthy lifestyle after I posted a comment over at I Go Through Life in Inches and Pounds, because I wrote that I didn’t eat a balanced diet and I didn’t know what to do to change that. I am realizing now that I DO know and I am actually well on my way...perhaps with a little help from Fat Girl Vs. World...who seemed to catch on faster than I did that maybe I was just looking for validation. Maybe I don’t eat perfectly (who does?) but looking at my diet now compared to what I was eating in May, it’s a great change. And by the time September rolls around I expect to be saying to myself that my diet is much more balanced that it was even in July!

What I need to do now is take my own advice. Give myself credit for learning and doing, and realize I am not the same girl who put off starting her healthy lifestyle so she could pig out and drink sangria one last time.

I think with everything I’m putting into words this morning I’ve built a whole floor on that lego tower. Or maybe just built up around the foundation, which is just as important. I feel happy with myself. Physically I’m feeling great too…well, a little tired but that’s just due to watching tv too late (had to watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey, although it made me think I should do a tv-detox too…).

Anyway we all read and write so many posts about how we haven’t gotten anywhere or changed anything – and I want all of you to take today to realize you HAVE changed, just like me, just in such a good way that it iddn’t even occur to you. You’re amazing and getting or staying healthy – now go give your own Lego tower some new blocks!!

BODYBUGG GIVEAWAY!

2010-08-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

That’s right fabulous readers who I just adore so much – your favorite cake-themed blog is having a giveaway. Last week doing those lunchtime walks by myself TOTALLY paid off and I won the participation raffle. And it’s a Bodybugg!

I have a quick history about me and my Bodybugg. I really wanted one for awhile, and my very sweet and generous coworker gave me hers that she hadn’t been using regularly. It has helped me so much that I know when I am done with it (which I assume will be when I have reached my goal weight and feel comfortable maintaining on my own) I will give it away to someone else that can benefit just as much. The opportunity to give one of you a brand new Bodybugg makes me so happy – I just remember every time I lose weight how grateful I am to my coworker because this is that one thing that REALLY clicked, and I want to help someone else that much.

If you want to learn more about the Bodybugg go here - it is a great site, for a great product, and I can't say enough about how much I love it.

Here is how the entries will work – I want to give you as many opportunities to win as possible, so if you really want it you can have a ton of entries and if you are only kinda interested you can have one. Doesn’t that sound great?! Every entry needs to have your email address on it or if I know you in person your name so I can reach you easily if you win!

The first entry, the required entry, is to follow my blog publicly (click follow over on the right hand side of my blog and follow the directions!) – so leave a comment with your username!

Then there are a ton of additional entries!!

The easiest is to leave a second comment telling me WHY you think a Bodybugg will help you out – I would really love for it to go to someone who it will help as much as it is helping me!

Facebook:

Become a fan of like a fat kid loves cake (1 entry)
Post a status update linking to this giveaway and tagging like a fat kid loves cake (1 entry per day – up to 7 total!) If you don’t know how to tag in a Facebook update click here.
Friend me on Facebook – or post if you are already my friend (1 entry)

Twitter:

Follow @KyokoCake on twitter (1 entry)
Tweet about the giveaway (1 entry per day – up to 7 total!) – and don’t forget to link back to it in your comment so that everyone knows how awesome you are and they can follow you too! Make sure you tag me, and add and other subjects that will help get more people to this opportunity, like: RT @KyokoCake #giveaway #weightloss Win a Bodybugg! http://bit.ly/aj29nB

Blog:

Mention this giveaway on your blog and link back here (1 entry per day – up to 7 total!) – and don’t forget to include a link to your blog post!
Dedicate an entire blog post just to this giveaway (2 extra entries – one time only, and be sure to leave two comments)

Oh my goodness that is 28 chances to win. 28 chances for you to get an amazing Bodybugg that usually sells for $250!!! So get to it!!

Weigh in and August Goals

2010-08-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

After Day 1 of what I’m no longer calling a diet, detox or not (I’m calling it happy fun time) I feel GREAT. I am going to credit above all else the amount of water I had – 85 ounces and normally I call it a win if I get in above 40. This morning I am down THREE POUNDS from yesterday. Note to self – you like water. I will keep drinking it to help you out!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2269 calories
Consumed 1307 calories
Deficit of 962 calories

Not my finest deficit but hey – I was sore and had a fabulous day of watching movies and having a good time. And it’s pretty important to have a great day of rest every once in awhile!!

I can’t believe I forgot to do a goal check in yesterday and think of my August goals! Let’s see how I did for July’s goals:
1. I want an average deficit of OVER 1200 calories a day for the whole month. Yep – still loving that I changed that one. I’m calling it a win even though I most likely don’t deserve it according to my gain last week! I’ll just say that every day I tracked food, I had a deficit.
2. I want to continue New Recipe Tuesday and try for Meatless Monday at least twice. New Recipe Tuesday successes all around. Today is the first meatless day that is actually a Monday so that’s not bad either!
3. I want to clean out my closet, get rid of too-big clothes, sort any too-small clothes that I’ve kept for way too long and get organized with everything I want to keep. Yay! Another success. I’m even wearing an old-new dress today, which is my term for things I buy online but don’t fit me and then I forget to return them. Well…it fits now so it’s new now and I’m feeling great in it!
4. I want to ride my bike all the way to the grocery store and back! I kicked this goal’s butt, that’s all.
5. I want to make it from this moment until it’s available and in my hands to STOP COMPLAINING about not having my iPhone 4 yet. I’m doing awesomely on this one too…in fact I have a picture of the white phone on my current phone’s background and I’m more excited than frustrated even though I have to wait!
6. I want to take time to let all of my most treasured friends know that they are special. Massive fail. I actually bought note cards but got distracted and didn’t do anything about it. You ARE all special though, and I really mean that.
7. I want to get fun and cheap jewelry instead of wearing the same few pendants over and over. Still no luck, but it hardly matters as I’ve barely taken off my gorgeous anniversary necklace to exercise, sleep and shower. It’s too pretty!
8. I want to spend a whole day (our 5 year anniversary) happily drinking wine and eating great food with NO GUILT – yikes, that’s a tough one…but important! This one is a win…times three as I spent all three vacation days doing exactly that!

All right, so here are fabulous brand new August goals!:
1. Finish out the Biggest Winner competition STRONG. No slip ups, temptations, indulgences, nothing. One month of being really, really good.
2. Learn how to meal plan even better. Look up recipes ahead of time and really be extra organized.
3. Have two days where my calories burned are at 3000 or higher.
4. Get back to wearing eye makeup every day. I have so completely stopped this and I always feel like I look tired and bleh and that’s not good!
5. Embrace my new work schedule by fixing my hair. I always love how my hair looks on the weekends but for work it’s usually the messy bun look. My new work schedule puts me starting 45 minutes later and I’d love to take a few of those minutes to look a little less like a slob!
6. Let those fabulous friends whose friendships I cannot live without know how important they are. It’s a goal worth repeating until I get it just right.
7. Take at least two awesome things from this four day happy fun time that I can keep up permanently. I’ve got one – the water consumption, so I need to find one more thing!
8. Get to 100 blog followers…a lofty goal to gain 33 in a month but I’ve got some awesomeness coming your way momentarily and hopefully you will become a follower and encourage your friends too!!

Now on to what has so far been the highlight of my day – my weigh in!!
Last week’s weight: 207.6
Current weight: 202.7
Pounds lost: 4.9 WHAAAAAAAAA?? I knew I was doing well but that feels beyond awesome.
Weekly goal: I totally failed/forgot about last week’s goal of a day with 3000 calories burned! But I did reach my other weekly goal of totally getting back on track this week. My goal for the coming week is to help someone else on their weight loss journey!

My fabulous readers…stay tuned, for what I’m about to post next!!

Doing Something

2010-08-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

So I think a lot of us on the weight loss journey can appreciate that negative outlooks or moods can affect our journey negatively. I knocked a few blocks off of my Lego tower yesterday that I'm going to have to rebuild. In my frustration I decided that the best course of action would be to have lunch at Costco. A hot dog later, I was feeling so gross and disappointed in myself. So of course for the rest of the day I found myself craving and eating small quantities of not very healthy food.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2640 calories
Consumed 1444 calories
Deficit of 1196 calories

I woke up this morning knowing one thing. I have to do something. When I get in these moods, I need a change. So I'm doing that detox diet I talked about yesterday. It will be good. It is a little fewer calories than I've been eating lately...if I stay on plan I will be eating an average of 1350 calories a day for the next four days, and then back up to my target of 1500-1600 for the week after. I even made a really comprehensive meal plan, to keep me on track because I do feel like it's a lot of low calorie food and I want to make sure I eat it all and keep my energy up.

The point of this is to eat all healthy organic things, and the majority of food is fruits and vegetables (and to drink even more water than I normally do, which is a stretch). I know there are a lot of you out there who do this every day all the time. I don't. It's not realistic for me to make that into a complete lifestyle change right now without expecting a huge backlash involving cupcakes and brie and lots and lots of bread, so I don't want to put that kind of change on myself. I'm not even putting any pressure on myself to keep this up for the four days, much less the week after. What I really want is that feeling, even if it's just in my head, that my body is ridding itself of the chemicals and sodium that it doesn't need. But just from talking to friends and other people, a few days away from delicious and awful processed foods can really make you feel happy and much healthier. Who knows, maybe I really will love it so much I swear off bad food and go all organic healthy forever!! Or at least make some fabulous smaller changes.

I feel purposeful and happy after deciding that. I think it's just a part of my personality, that I have to really feel like I'm making a big gesture to make something better. I hate indecision and I like having a plan - and my enthusiasm really helps me once I do make that plan. It does not always last, that's for sure, but it is really making me feel good today.

All right enough about all that. I'm more sore this morning than yesterday - ugh! I didn't want to exercise yesterday so I planned to not bike or walk or anything. But Husbandcake and I got distracted in the garage. See - we have a two car garage and we only have one car in it. Because the other side is covered in mass amounts of crap. Piles of bags and boxes that stack in some parts taller than me.
So while I didn't exactly exercise yesterday but I did work pretty hard at cleaning out the garage - we got through maybe a third of it. Today I will try to really, really take it easy so that I am all rested for the week ahead and feeling less physically drained. I am however pretty excited that there's a nice walkway through the garage now.

Time to start my day with some delicious strawberries. I have an awesome surprise for you tomorrow. You won't even believe it - I barely believe it! But it will be beyond fabulous, so get excited already!!!

2010-07-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hello my inspiring and amazing readers! I am feeling surprisingly contemplative for such a beautiful Saturday. I am hoping that while my brain is up and working overtime, Husbandcake will get up and we can go out so I can get the rest of me working hard too!

Here is how I did Thursday:
Burned 2629 calories
Consumed 1582 calories
Deficit of 1047 calories

And here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2604 calories
Consumed 1576 calories
Deficit of 1028 calories

Weird how normal a schedule I feel like I have now. At times I have had numbers all over the place. I'd eat 1500 calories one day, 1100 the next, and there was no rhyme or reason. I don't know if that's good or bad, or what it means but it does seem like I've got more of a routine going.

So here is my contemplation of this morning that made me get out of bed and head over to the computer. I've been doing well this week according to my trusty scale. Not super amazing fantastic, but I'm on track for a solid 2 pound loss, which is great. But...I'm tired. I woke up this morning sore and cranky. Not sore like I won't exercise all day, but physically getting up was a bit obnoxious. I think I'm coming back around to that feeling that I'm working too hard to get these less than super amazing fantastic results. I'm feeling pretty tired of missing out on hours of lounging and snuggling time with Husbandcake and Potato because I'm always exercising.

She's so lonely! ...She needs me...

I don't know what my next step is. Some days I feel like I could keep plugging away like this for as long as it takes, and some days I feel like it's so tedious maybe I will just stay fat! Honesly, I had decided to do this four day detox diet followed by a week of all organic happy healthy food. I'm having some pretty strong second thoughts on that...I mean four days isn't all that much to try to shake things up and feel less full of chemically things like Splenda and cheddar Goldfish...but it's one of those things where I can't put my finger completely on my motivation. Am I expecting to lose 12 pounds in four days? If so, no way should I be doing this. But am I only expecting to feel refreshed? Then it's a great idea.

And then there's my metabolism, which I find to be the real problem. I need to trick myself into burning more calories while I'm just sitting around. I'm not sure how though. At work I sit on an exercise ball all day. My Outlook reminders pop up every five minutes reminding me to move and drink water. I try not to sit still but it really seems like I'm not getting rid of any calories unless I'm actually exercising.

I skipped the lunchtime walk yesterday to go out to eat with some of the other girls in my department. It was worth it - both because lunch was delicious and I had fun chatting and sitting out in the sun - but the moment we got back I started wondering what other exercise I could squeeze in in addition to my fabulous walk with the always awesome Erin.

Maybe it's just a matter of motivation. Maybe I have a case of the weekend lazies after a week of being totally and enthusiastically on track. Maybe I'm feeling like I need more more more coming back to me as I lose this weight.

Those of you who are bloggers will probably understand...that I just reread this post and almost deleted the whole thing. My problem isn't that I'm lazy, or that I'm unhappy with my weight loss. I'm just WHINING. And there's no reason. I had two people tell me this past week that I'm really looking different, not to mention all of you and your extremely sweet comments on my vacation post. My wonderful and always supportive coworker said it was like I was just vanishing. And that's not even including Husbandcake who gave me a hug and then stepped back and said that it was really, really different to hug me now. I'm getting so much back, I'm just whining because I'm sure and I don't want to do what needs to be done today - which is another day of exercise, healthy food and a healthy lifestyle.

Still contemplating the detox diet tomorrow...we'll see how I feel when I go to the grocery store later. It's not much, it's just a few days of fruits and vegetables, everything all organic and fabulous, and no chemically nonsense! I'm sure I will make a very last second decision as usual.

All right, it's time to gain my positive outlook for the day and to get me there I will share with you five things that I'm so grateful for...

Husbandcake (ok and Bruce Willis too, he's cool and I'm grateful for that)...but Husbandcake is always at the top of my list and I'm always feeling happy and lucky to have his support. I know if I told him today that I really, truly wanted to stay fat he'd drive me to KFC or whatnot in a heartbeat. But he'd also know if I wasn't serious...and he'd probably drive me to get...a salad or something healthy that would make me feel better!

My awesome friend Erin, who I can take a long walk with and laugh almost the entire time...who is one of those people that is always full of compliments, notices everything and makes you feel good about yourself whenever you're around. I love that, and being around her definitely makes me want to be a better/nicer person.

Corgis...this, my friends, is why I am building up my collection. So far I've amassed this many:

But soon I'll have enough corgis to take over the world.

60 calories whaaaaaa? These are my new favorite things. What a fabulous treat!!!

Awwww I'm grateful for where I live. It really is a beautiful day here, too beautiful to be inside and not out exercising, being happily active and enjoying the amazing sunshine. It's a good life, mine is not so hard, and I'm doing JUST FINE. So my list of thankful things has done me well and reminded me there is so much to be thankful for and so little to be whiny about. Hope you are all having wonderful days!!

Quick Check in and Blog Hop

2010-07-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

Good morning my lovelies! I don't have much time but I wanted to check in and share another fabulous morning with you!!!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2588 calories
Consumed 1605 calories - are you seeing this fat girl vs. world??!! All healthy food again :) you finally got through to me I guess!
Deficit of 983 calories

Can someone please just beat me over the head with this information? I feel well when I eat well. I am happy, feeling very upbeat this morning and I know it's because I forced myself to eat good food and not just pick out the very lowest calorie food. Including more peanut butter - which was actually in my office in these little 200 calorie packs that I cannot resist. Yum!!

I know, a lame short blog! It's ok though because there are all these other blogs to check out (and that I will have to check out too!!)

Ah Vacation...is it too soon to go back?

2010-07-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday and lateness today! I've had certain computer issues...that are extremely annoying. However health wise I have been doing fabulously and getting back on track. I went on the lunchtime walk solo yesterday as well and once I got home went on two more! One with a friend and one just into downtown Clayton to meet Husbandcake after his dinner out with a friend. Check out super-active KyokoCake!!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2945 calories
Consumed 1793 calories - what??!!! With no alcohol? I assure you though it was ALL healthy food, including some absurdly delicious peanut butter that was perhaps too delicious to be eaten in moderation.
Deficit of 1152 calories

I'm really getting into the hang of this food as fuel thing. I still enjoy food (so much!) and I am happy to be eating well...I am realizing it's just like putting gas in the car. You have to have a certain amount to keep it going, but it doesn't make sense to put in ten gallons a day when you're only driving four miles every day - it will overflow and be gross!! So on the days when I am burning a ton of calories I have to remember to refuel and on the days that I'm being lazy I have to remember that sitting on my butt does not require much fuel at all.

It feels good. My lego tower is huge. I didn't even take away blocks for this week's gain. Big deal! All that yummy food was totally worth it.

It was a struggle over the weekend especially - eating healthy stuff, that is. I miss the bread and cheese of Napa, I miss the wine and the carefree-ness so it's a little bit of a shock to come back to normal life where I have to cook and make sure there isn't a lot of butter in everything!

I know I said I would share pictures of my wonderful totally worth it trip...it was really amazing!

First of all, our room - if you can even call it that. Here is HusbandCake sitting out on the front porch.

Very quaint! The cottages are super cute, I almost wished we could have had one more day to just hang out around the resort and in our room!

Our deck/outdoor area. We had breakfast out at the table one day. The chair you see in the background has a heat lamp over it too!! We sat out there at night and stargazed all cozy like!

Wednesday when we first got up to the area we headed to Black Stallion Winery which was a really pretty winery...

It's like everywhere you go in Napa is an opportunity to have a delightful photo shoot!

and on to Darioush, where I realized that I need a tiara stand to keep my bottles of wine in!

Thursday we went to Castello Di Amarosa, which is this as-authentic-as-possible castle that some rich winemaker built. Wines were not fabulous but it's worth it to go for the grounds and the tour!! Gorgeous!

A view of the castle from the guard tower

In front of the drawbridge

Me daydreaming about being a princess (you can probably tell by now that Husbandcake had the camera almost the whole time)

My gosh it's like he's a real dragon.

That delightful barrel is full of port, which I happen to love. Yum!

After that we went to a couple other places but let's be honest, you can't quite top that castle - it was amazing!

Friday was our actual anniversary, and we have a few traditions that we do every year on July 23...we went to lunch at our usual place in Sonoma and walked around the square for awhile shopping. We got a couple of things at the jeweler who made our wedding rings - every year we get a glass paperweight and a little something for yours truly! I wish I could even describe the necklace (I'm wearing it in the picture below but it does it absolutely no justice, at some point I will get a real camera and share its glory with all of you...in case you can't tell I love love love jewelry!)...

On to our most important tradition of exchanging presents on the stage we were married on at B.R. Cohn Winery. It was as always a fabulous time to be at the winery, and be at the place where it all started five years earlier!

Our kinda annual hold the camera out with your hand anniversary picture!

Aww...that was nice to re-look over all those pictures. I am so blessed and since this is after all a weight loss blog I am going to share that I am extra happy that upon weighing myself this morning I'm already lower than last week's weigh in. Can you believe it? What a bounce back after being up this week! Woo hoo me!

Weigh In

2010-07-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

I couldn't decide between writing out a longer post or taking more time to read all of your blog posts that I am, as always, so far behind on. I think I read too many blogs, but how do you cut any out when you have such a good time keeping up with people??

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2940 calories
Consumed 1462 calories
Deficit ofo 1478 calories

Alas it was not quite enough. I knew while I was partaking in my three day wine and cheese and bread fest that the scale was not going to welcome me back with wonderful numbers and I totally got what I deserved. Saturday morning I was at 210 and despite my active and fairly healthy weekend I still ended up with a disappointing weigh in!

Last week's weight: 206.7
Current weight: 207.6
Pounds gained: 0.9
Weekly goal: Two weekly goals this week, the first being to get back on track and eat well all week to make up for the anniversary trip. The second goal is to burn 3000 calories in one day, sometime this week.

3000 calories is a lofty goal, I've never gotten that far before. Even 2940 includes a 40 minute Wii workout, a bike ride to the store and back, and almost 2 hours of swimming (okay the swimming wasn't REAL swimming, it was hanging out in the water and I had to estimate my calories anyway because Bodybuggs aren't waterproof).

Still, that is a lot of activity in one day, I'm totally feeling it today, very sore!! But it felt good and feels good now. And going down two and a half pounds since Saturday felt good too - I know it was mostly water weight that I got rid of but if you guys even knew how much delicious food and bread I had in Napa...to only escape with less than a pound gained is nothing short of a miracle.

In the interest of complete honesty, I am sad to see a gain for the first time since I started my weight loss journey. It is really, really sad. On the other hand, I knew what I was doing the whole time, and every bite was worth it, every sip was worth it. And it still feels worth it now, I loved letting go and having fancy food that does not come with calorie counts. I didn't even attempt to track what I ate, but I know I stopped when I was full, and that's more than I've ever done in the past. Husbandcake promised to get all of the pictures off of the camera and his phone today, so I will have an awesome vacation related post tomorrow!

Oh!! Can you believe I almost forgot - let's end this on a high note. I went to get my swimsuit yesterday and...it's huge!! I tried on an old one and it was better but...it was still big. LOVE IT!!! It made me feel so fabulous to know that they were not only looser but that the one I've had for a year is so loose I couldn't even wear it! Yay!!!

I Missed You!!!

2010-07-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hello my wonderful amazing inspiring beautiful readers!! I have been away too long and I miss the blogs and I miss you all. It's only been a few days but a few glorious days, and I can't wait to share it all with you (tomorrow)...

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2322 calories - and that was with an hour of working out doing Wii Fit - sigh, I am going to have to change my routine and get that metabolism back up!!
Consumed 1210 calories
Deficit of 1112 calories

I had really high hopes of working out yesterday, and I did in the morning, but then went to see the Twilight movie with my friend (omg, it was so awful it made the first two movies look better), and when Husbandcake came to pick me up I fell asleep in the car and barely stumbled to bed. Got up to eat dinner and was in and out of sleep on the sofa until about 2am when I finally gave in and went to bed for good. Awful!!

Today is shaping up to be better. I am meeting one of my very best and most wonderful friends and her family for breakfast to celebrate the fact that she got engaged last night!! I knew it was coming but it didn't make it any less wonderful to see two people I really love make that commitment to each other. I can't believe it's happening and nobody who knows me will be surprised that I have 4 or 5 bridal shower themes floating around in my head already!!

All right my friends...hopefully I will get in a better post later, although my day is certainly full of breakfast (where I will make healthy choices!!), a bike ride and hopefully swimming too! Otherwise I will talk to you all tomorrow and hope that your weekends are going so wonderfully!!

Another Bike Ride, and Vacation! (and blog hop!)

2010-07-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot describe to all of you how amazing yesterday was. Start to finish it was such a great day!! I'm not tracking my eating while I'm on vacation (way too hard eating out all the time and it just stresses me out when I don't have nutrition facts in front of me - but I am doing better and eating less than I usually do with all of the temptation and delicious food in Napa!!!)

Oh except get this - yesterday, I burned 2899 calories! How great is that??

So yesterday morning we went on a bike ride. We headed back over to Safeway and sat outside and had a little bit of breakfast. It was nice to sit outside, nice to feel active!!

On the way home, my handlebars came loose. Seriously. How does that even happen? But as they were moving up and down easily, I was really not able to ride home.

You know you're in bad shape when your bike is giving the thumbs down along with you!

Husbandcake rode on ahead while I walked my bike towards the house - he intended to get the car and come pick me up. And for a minute or so I was actually really disappointed about not getting the exercise in (remember that I live on a mountain, so my calories burned are ALL in the ride home!) but then I realized I still had the opportunity to get a bit in. So I walked as fast as I could to get as far as I could in the time it took him to get the car. And I made it about 1.3 miles while he rode 2.2 - NOT BAD!!!

Actually after he met me in downtown Clayton, he realized that in his haste he had forgotten the giant cooler in the back of our car. So instead of loading my bike up, he tightened the handlebars and I rode most of the way home. I still can't make it up that last hill but I got a little farther than last time before I had to get off and walk.

After all that, we got our stuff together and headed out to a couple of wineries before checking in - both of which were beautiful and I'll have to share pictures with all of you at some point when Husbandcake is awake because they're all on his phone.

And our room. I cannot even tell you guys. It is this little cottage that has everything you could want, from heated floors in the bathroom to a lounge area outside under a heat lamp. Words can't describe how lucky I feel to have this glimpse into...what it must be like to be rich. I will save up for 5 years just to be able to come here again...or maybe just hope and pray that somewhere, someone else will raffle off another couple of nights so I can come back. Seriously. Look at this place. And we are, of course, in the cheapest room. I can't even fathom there being anything nicer!

All right my lovelies, I am off to another fabulous day...or maybe take a note from Husbandcake's book and go back for more sleep. I cannot wait to see what else my amazing Husbandcake has planned for me, I can only say I don't deserve all this amazing stuff and I am so, so grateful for every moment!!

Last but most very definitely not least...it's blog hop time!

Busy Busy Short Post

2010-07-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

No time today...too much to get done on my last day of work for the week! I'm not sure how well I'll be able to post while we're on our trip. I'm sure there will be down time though, and in that down time I will be sure to let you all know just how off track I'm getting ;)

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2603 calories
Consumed 1314 calories
Deficit of 1289 calories

That's pretty good for a weekday, considering how I've been doing lately at work - barely meeting 1200 if that. It was still hard to get my calories in while eating all of my servings of fruit and veggies. But I had the most delicious slow cooked ribs ever last night, I can't even tell you. Husbandcake started them at like 1:30 in the afternoon and they were all melty and...okay I know that's gross if you don't like ribs but they are among my very favorite things.

I'm still riding that wave of awesomeness from yesterday. I am completely happy with both of my weigh ins...and I hope you all keep your fingers crossed that I win the work weigh in this week because it will lead to a FABULOUS surprise for this blog. I'll know for sure on Friday! The lunchtime was yesterday was crazy - I burned 517 calories and I'm definitely still getting faster.

That's about all there is. I am so, so so excited for my anniversary trip. Husbandcake has planned the whole thing out and all I have to do is show up! A fantastic arrangement if I ever heard one. I hope you all are having amazing weeks!!

Bikes, Chinese Food and Weigh Ins

2010-07-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Another week, and I am gloriously happy. But you have to read my WHOLE post before we get to the weigh in, so...ha.

Here is how I did Saturday:
Burned 2564 calories
Consumed 1502 calories
Deficit of 1062 calories

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2640 calories
Consumed 1522 calories
Deficit of 1118 calories

Well, Saturday was SUCH a success. That is 1502 calories of AWESOME HEALTHY FOOD, and I feel really great about it. I can't say the same for yesterday's eating. The day started out really well...

Husbandcake and I got up early and decided to get a little farther on the bike ride. I was surprised - we've been slowly working our way farther and farther but I notice yesterday that the entire second half of the ride to the store...is fairly flat. So once we reached that point I was more than fine and we made it all the way!

We rode a little around Clayton, with me wishing that it was a bit flatter. But it was not too warm yet, and it was really a great ride.

I did really well, fabulously well...until we were back on my street going up to my house and I had to get off and walk.

Sad! But once the steepest part was over I went ahead to end on a high note.

All in all I can't complain, it was an awesome ride. After we lazed around for awhile longer we got up and went to see Inception, which was fantastic. Husbandcake got popcorn and I did pretty well not having any. Instead I had a small pack of those sour punch straws, which I love, and the whole pack was 210 calories. The movie was great, I felt beyond fantastic about the candy too. But then...we went for Chinese food. I knew the whole time what a bad idea it was. It's all sodium and oil...but it was also delicious and then there I was 725 calories later and not even feeling completely full.

I spent a lot of time the rest of the day worrying about my two weigh ins today. My scale has absolutely loved me this week, and I just felt in my head that I was going to retain about 8 pounds of water. Haha...well the worry was good, it made me drink almost 50 ounces of water the rest of the day, so that I could kind of flush out my system (yeah I was just making it all up, I figured that water would be best though!). Had a healthy dinner of mostly veggies and I felt pretty good afterwards.

I guess there's only one place to go from there...
Last week's weight: 210.1

Current weight: 206.7
Pounds lost: 3.4
Weekly goal: Ummm, to keep doing what I'm DOING! I've found a good stride and I really am wanting to keep it up!! Oh - and my other goal is to not gain 12 pounds while I'm up in Napa...haha.

This sounds strange but I really wish I'd started out with the scale I have now. I feel like, I know I've lost more than ten pounds but numbers wise I'm still really, really happy to be only 0.7 away from seeing that. I'll get there, and soon!!

I am really happy to be finally where I want to be. I feel like at one point I was overdoing the exercise, and I don't want to do that again. I will find a good balance between burning calories and eating right - what I was doing was so much work and so much frustration. And this week I was a lot more relaxed and a lot happier. It's like stress is high in calories so I'm doing much better now!

I'm holding on to this feeling. I feel stupid about last week and feeling down. Sure, it will happen again - I won't be silly and say my next 56.7 pounds are going to melt away with a smile on my face, and I certainly don't expect to lose 3.4 pounds every week! But for now, I am going to just revel in happiness that I am doing well, I'm happy and I am losing weight.

I hope you are all happy too :) good luck to anyone else who has Monday weigh ins!! Hopefully my work weigh in goes just as happily!

Boring Day, Boring Post

2010-07-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

It's going to be another good day. I can feel it. It's going to be a completely boring day, involving a bit of cleaning, and hopefully a bike ride. Just thinking about it makes me happy all over again.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2256 calories
Consumed 1237 calories
Deficit of 1019 calories

I took a little block off of my lego tower last night. I was all weird about eating all day and then had over half of my calories (about 700) for dinner. My stomach was upset, I ate way too much at once. It's weird, my attitude about eating. If I think too much about it, I get annoyed that it should be so important to me. If I don't think about it, suddenly it's after 6pm and I've only had 500 calories. So today if I'm more aware, I'll add it back!

Oh! I am going to do something really fun today!! I am going to work on taking in a few of my dresses and tops. I know eventually I'll have to buy all new stuff but I'm hoping to put it off as long as possible. I know it doesn't sound fun but believe me, every stitch, everything just will make me so happy about how far I've come...so I am feeling great today. And while I'm doing all that, I will be starting on cleaning out my closet and getting a little farther on my monthly goals.

Sorry I don't have anything more interesting for you all this morning. As usual I am reveling in the boring-ness that I get to enjoy today! And now off to read what the rest of you have been up to the past couple of days :)

Building, Building, Building

2010-07-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

I was so happy yesterday - getting back to exercising, eating well, I mean everything just came together to be great. Then this morning, I am feeling happy, energetic, fabulous. I know when I am feeling sick, lazy, all of those bad things it's just a circle and I hope this one is too, that one good day will just propel me into the next! In fact, I updated my letter to let myself know how happy I am so that I remember for next time that this works and I feel great!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2480 calories
Consumed 1422 calories
Deficit of 1058 calories

So there's that :) I feel like eating more than a thousand or so calories gives me a LOT of energy for the next day. I woke up not feeling tired, ready for my day and really just like a whole other person.

I was thinking about all of the happy things I wanted to talk about in today's blog. My scale for the past few days has been so good to me. My dress is too big. I am carrying over from my yesterday, which included only nice conversations with awesome people. The whole day!

It occurs to me that every day I am finding new ways to think about the weight loss journey I'm on. Sometimes it's rough seas, sometimes it's a marathon, today...it's a lego tower. Bear with me, as the more I think of it the more this makes sense (and makes me want to buy legos).

Every time I put on a dress that needs to be taken in I add a lego block. Every time I see even a tenth of a pound lost or a quarter inch lost it's more blocks. Get farther walking up the stairs before I stop for a break? Another block. Big victories call for big blocks but even the little victories call for a little something to add to the tower. And some days I'm looking at my lego tower thinking of how far I have to go - after all by the time I'm done I am going to be looking down at my old self from so far away!

And then some days I'm staring at my pitiful tower beginnings wondering how far I have left to go.

Some days I feel like I don't know what I'm doing...

And some days I feel like I haven't done anything at all yet.

You can apply almost any metaphor to losing weight but this one seems right to me. I have all of the building blocks (literally) that I need to go ahead and complete my journey and the days that I'm feeling bad...all I'm doing is demolishing the thing that I worked so hard to put together. So here we go, hopefully ahead to another stretch of feeling great, adding to my tower quickly and carefully so that I don't knock it over, creating a good foundation so that I don't ever end up back at ground level.

Now I want to go out and buy a lego set. I'm so happy and grateful for all of you. I say it often but you mean so much to me. I hope you all have your fabulous towers building up and up today :)

Goal Check In

2010-07-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

All right my fine readers, I am finally truly prepared for the day. I have an entire outfit for going on the lunchtime walk (amazing, top AND bottoms AND shoes!), I am mentally awake for the first time in a few days, which is great, and I'm happy. I also need to jump start my exercise again, so I'm happy to be walking and hopefully biking later...just getting active again.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2205 calories
Consumed 1153 calories
Deficit of 1052 calories

So today I wanted to check in with you (okay and with myself) about my July goals to make sure that I am on track!

My goals for July are:
1. I want an average deficit of OVER 1200 calories a day for the whole month. I changed this one to having a deficit every day and good thing I did ;) feeling much better about that decision. I've definitely been keeping up with it!
2. I want to continue New Recipe Tuesday and try for Meatless Monday at least twice. I didn't do it on Monday...but I have had more than two days of no meat. It's good, but a little harder to meet my calories on those days. I guess because I normally have it with rice so I'm missing out on all those calories too.
3. I want to clean out my closet, get rid of too-big clothes, sort any too-small clothes that I've kept for way too long and get organized with everything I want to keep. Hahaha...yeah I have not started this at all.
4. I want to ride my bike all the way to the grocery store and back! I'm still working on it. Definitely getting better though, which is nice, and getting more comfortable on my bike :)
5. I want to make it from this moment until it's available and in my hands to STOP COMPLAINING about not having my iPhone 4 yet. Oops...failed :) but I'm doing better, since the white one is not available until the end of August so at least now I have somewhat of a date.
6. I want to take time to let all of my most treasured friends know that they are special. Awww, I forgot about this one too. I'm working on it!
7. I want to get fun and cheap jewelry instead of wearing the same few pendants over and over. I've tried...no luck. Erin are you reading this? We need to shop more (as if that were possible)...
8. I want to spend a whole day (our 5 year anniversary) happily drinking wine and eating great food with NO GUILT - yikes, that's a tough one...but important! All right...this one is coming in about a week - July 23. I am not really foreseeing any problems with it though!!

Well, I guess I am doing all right. Not great. I can do better the second half of the month! I need to get back on track. I was talking to my coworker this morning and saying that I am finally seeing the results I want on the scale - the problem is that I haven't been exercising lately. And I really, really am not up for hearing that I'm losing all muscle - I'm not (unless my measurements are lying that is...). So in my head what I am doing today is just repeating over and over that I need to be healthy, and not all flappy-skinned, and I have to exercise, even if it means I lose it a little slower!

It is hard when I'm feeling this happy about my weight today...to remember to BE HEALTHY! I hope that all of you are out there being healthy and not giving in, starving yourselves or any of that bad stuff - if we all do this the right way we'll succeed once and for all :)

I hope I have more to report tomorrow...my days have felt so uneventful this week!! I hope that the rest of you are doing well on your monthly/weekly goals.

Blog Award and Other Things

2010-07-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

First, I have to admit I didn't go on the walk. I went to go change for it and opened up my gym bag to discover no shirt. And I wasn't so keen on getting my dress all sweaty nasty so, oh well!! That was my little update for the afternoon :)

I got an award from Jen recently, and I am honestly just now caught up enough on blogs (you all have too many interesting things to say, and I have the most trouble keeping up!) so I wanted to say thanks Jen!!

There are three things with this award:

1). Thanks the recipient: Thanks Jen!! I love reading your blog :) we started all this at just about the same time and it always makes me happy to see your progress!

2). Link back the giver: Here is Jen's blog. You should go read it...just open it in a new tab, finish here and click over. Do it!

3). Reveal 10 things:
So I feel like if I get any more awards I don't know what else to say about myself. But here goes...

1. I'm terrified of up-escalators. The other day Husbandcake and I were on one and he reached out to get a piece of lint or something out of my hair and I yelled at him. Total gut reaction. I am oddly okay going down on escalators but up...is bad.

2. I like Twilight. Now I resisted for years and just started listening to the audiobooks on my commute and while working out. The writing is horrible, that is for sure - but I am really enjoying the story. Wow, that was even more embarrassing than I thought.

3. I wear flip flops every day. Yes in the winter, yes in the rain. Part of the reason I didn't exercise much until recently? I didn't want to wear shoes...my feet are claustrophobic.

4. A lot of people have those celebrity lists of people they want to/would sleep with. I do not, and I have trouble looking at other people that way. I am definitely more prone to finding famous men either:

pretty like a girl

adorable like a stuffed animal

or funny like a bobblehead

5. If I could live anywhere, it would probably be my parents' house. They have the perfect house and yard, and I hope someday they'll sell it to me so I can live there again.

6. I am not artistic. People often think I am because I love crafts and I love to theme, but give me a pencil and a piece of paper and I can barely draw you a stick figure.

7. Jewelry is my weakness. I am actually friends with my jeweler. We will sit for hours designing jewelry - whether or not I buy it is a whole other thing but we have a ton of fun every time (and sometimes espresso vodka).

8. I don't have a group of friends. It annoys me sometimes. I love my friends but I feel like almost everything I do is one on one or double dates, and rarely have I had a girls day that didn't involve introductions at the beginning

9. I really want to learn calligraphy. Not this kind:

but this kind:

The only problem is I don't even know where to look to learn that kind of stuff. Sure would be nice though.

10. This last one is not about me but is outrageous nonetheless - the city I live in (Clayton, CA) was recently knocked of CNN's Best Places to Live list because they wanted to cut out anywhere that had a population of less than 50,000. Which I find odd because the population of less than 50,000....is a big part of what makes it the very best place to live :)

Well I guess I have to do four things!! Now to hand out the award:

1). Brigitte at Poohpees World - for as much as I adore Brigitte you would never guess that in real life we have never spent a ton of time together. She lives sadly far away from me in Missouri (where my sister lives), just started blogging again, and is JUST AWESOME.

2). Jess @ That's Just How I Roll - who recently wrote a post that really hit home with me and I was so glad to read it. And glad that even though it was about feeling down she got right back up and made changes for the better starting the very next day!

3). Ice Queen @ Fat Like Me - I always love reading her blogs, whether she is talking about her walks or really getting a little deeper...they are awesome, and one of the ones that even when I'm way behind in my blog reading I try to catch up right away :)

I hope you will go ahead and check them out. They are all fabulous writers and even more fabulous ladies!!

Once you've starved....

2010-07-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

Let's just get this disaster out of the way...here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2116 calories
Consumed 1070 calories
Deficit of 1046 calories

It was such a mess yesterday. I missed a snack due to being at the nail salon forever (also, I hate unfamiliarity and the random new guy that was there did such an awful job that by today every single nail is messed up and the gel is actually peeling off, which I did not know it could even do!)...so I fell almost 200 calories under where my meal plan had put me. Today I learned my lesson and brought my extra snack along so that I can eat it at the normal time whether I'm home or not, and I think it will keep me on track.

Today I am going to get back on track...I will go on the lunchtime walk, get my nails fixed and then come home and eat more of my awesome New Recipe Tuesday meal for dinner - Lyn's Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese. Delicious, another success, and using multigrain pasta, low fat cheese and other awesomeness it came in totally low calorie and just plain perfect!!

I had this whole blog almost all written out about this awesome vacation dilemma I am having (whether or not to go on another vacation to Spokane this year, despite the fact that thanks to Husbandcake's job we've already been to Hawaii and Chicago, and won free nights at an inn in Napa later this month - thereby making up for the 3-4 years we went vacationless)...but the more I wrote the more I realized something. Something about weight loss which is so much more relevant than how I used to be poor.

I read something once about how once you've starved you never feel full again. In context it meant that you always have this little tiny fear that you won't have enough food again so you don't stop eating in the moment. It's actually also a lot like hoarding, where you are so afraid of losing things and people that you fill your house with garbage to prevent it. I actually likened it to my situation a few years back where (and this is making a very long, complicated story into an oversimplified one) Husbandcake and I found ourselves in debt and not able to pay our bills. Through an absurd about of work, determination and going without things we thought we needed, we paid off our debt. We now live credit-card free but I still have this fear inside me that is keeping me from saying yes to going to Spokane - the fear that I'll get used to going on vacations and drive us back into debt. It's one thing to tag along (as this would be) on one of Husbandcake's business trips, where his flight and our hotel are paid for - but we certainly cannot just up and go on trips whenever we feel like it. And there are times when I just freeze, too scared to spend even a penny on something, out of fear that we'll be in that situation again.

But talking out that dilemma made me think about losing weight. Specifically about the fear of going back to where I was. I still remember the day that I saw "247.0" stare back at me from the scale. There it was. Twice as heavy as Husbandcake, and I could lose a hundred pounds and still technically be overweight. I remember feeling so disgusted, and then looking in the mirror and for the first time in as long as I can remember not liking what I saw.

There is a part of me that is terrified of going back to being 247 pounds. There are times when I know, without a doubt that if I fail on this weight loss journey the only thing that will happen, is that I stay how I am now. Maybe gain weight. So why is it that every once in awhile I feel like it will mean my entire life will be in shambles? Why is it that sometimes the fear is not even for my health but for everything else? Honestly, there are times when I feel like it would mean that I will become poor again, my bills will pile up again. I will somehow become unhappy again. Back in time to when most of my friendships were toxic and unhealthy. I have completely let go of those people in my life and my fear is that I will find more just like them, and lose the fabulous friendships I have now.

It's weird to say that, it feels like I have been thinking it for awhile but I've never put it into words before. Even weirder that now that I've written it out I feel like I have this power over it, and that I won't feel that way again. It sounds so silly, that weight would have anything to do with those other things. Just like knowing that it's not a magic fix to make you happy and give you the things you want - it's also not a magic hindrance that will take away all of the things you've worked so hard for. Oh! I actually feel empowered!!

I'm curious if any of you want to share...if you all have fears about what will happen if you don't reach your weight goal, or if you give up or gain weight or any of those things? I sometimes wonder if my brain works overtime and nobody else thinks of the same things I do. But even if you don't want to share, I hope you can say it out loud and overcome it, because I feel this awesome weight lifted off just by sharing with you guys and it is fabulous!! Have a great Wednesday!!

Further Reflections on my Weigh In...

2010-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

My mind is preoccupied with thoughts of the lunchtime walk today. I didn't go yesterday, because I had way too much work to catch up on. Today I have to go after work to get my nails done. That sounds absurd but I mean I really have to, or my nail lady will charge me more (I have gels). And I don't want to be all gross to go there. But I am tired of not going on the walks - they're fun and oddly challenging, which my normal workout routine is not. I am just going to have to assure myself that I'm going to go tomorrow. It's little things like manicures that remind me to relax during the day and not stress out about stuff like this.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2477 calories
Consumed 1210 calories
Deficit of 1267 calories

I read this article yesterday on the Bodybugg website about underestimating the amount of calories you eat. Based on my measurement changes I'm underestimating my calories by an average of 65 every day. That's not bad, as the article went on about how most people underestimate by 20-40%. On the days that I have a deficit of 1267 calories, it means that it could really easily only be a thousand. I know I've heard from several people that a thousand calorie deficit is a lot but really it isn't. I'm trying to keep the deficit between 1000 and 1200, because I'm really going for losing 2 pounds a week. I don't mind going a little over, going a little under but I do think I'm on track eating wise. I'm happy and full, trying to eat more often this week but keep it to the same number of calories. The article made me feel a ton better for some reason, I think it's because I rely so much on numbers that I forget it's not fool proof!

I had a talk with a friend about my blog about my talking about pills and frustration and all that. It left me last night with almost more questions and doubts than I was already having yesterday. I want to do this, and I want to do it right...the healthy way, the way that when you talk to a nutritionist or a doctor they would be like, oh wow that's by the book - no shortcuts, no quick fixes, a complete lifestyle change that I keep up forever. But it's not necessarily that simple either. I want to prove that it works to lose weight that way but I'm not entirely convinced.

In fact that's what really started making me think about programs, pills, all of those things. I want so desperately to believe that this will work and that I’ll be "rewarded" for doing things a certain way and when I’m not seeing those rewards on the scale it’s so easy to convince myself that I have already failed at it. Which is kind of what I felt like I was doing in my disappointment over the past couple of weeks.

So where do I go from here? Still on the same path? Do I just have to remind myself on a day to day basis that I AM doing fine and I AM working towards the right thing? How do I suddenly get rid of my lack of patience at wanting to see five, ten pounds gone every week?

All this is going through my mind last night as I was trying to sleep and it actually took my morning commute for it to hit me. I don’t need to change. I already AM a positive person. I already know that I can do this, I can handle it and I want to make a change forever - not for now. Anything else I rely on, any program, diet, pill that I use as a crutch, is only going to hinder me later. To clarify I know that this is not true for everyone. I sincerely believe that it has helped and will continue to help a ton of people to be a part of specific food programs or take medication or have surgery even. It's just that for me, I'd use it as basically an excuse to get fat again, an excuse that I cannot do it on my own.

I have lost barely over 8 pounds in 6 weeks - on my own with no help from anything except the support of all of you amazing people. If I keep up that level of loss or even a little slower I will be at my mini goal next summer. Not bad, not bad at all. Whether it goes faster or slower than that I can always, always remind myself - just because I have off weeks does not mean it will take me 6 years to lose this weight.

Here is my plan: it's so simple, it's genius. I wrote myself a letter. Yup. Not sure yet if I am going to print it here but I wrote it. It's now in my wallet. If I am having an off day I will need to read this letter - in fact feel free to remind me if I'm being mopey, to read the letter. If I don't want to exercise, if I want to buy cake, it's time to read the letter. If I need inspiration - that's right, letter.

There is another thing that my friend said to me yesterday that is really making me smile today. She told me that she has started seeing me as somewhat of an inspiration on the weight loss journey. She had a history of dieting in a slightly unhealthy way...or maybe extreme is a better word, and wants to see someone do this in a healthy way and not give up at the first sign of trouble. Someone who knows about weight loss and puts it into practice instead of preaching at fatter people to do it instead (okay those aren't her words but were randomly relevant to our conversation).

It's odd that sometimes the people that are inspirations to us look back at us the same way. It's one of the unique things about blogging, and it's one of the unique things about my friendship with this person. In most relationships, the things I admire about people or that make me look up to them are things that I don't have myself. But it makes me happy to know that the person who inspired me to care about losing weight and to choose THIS time to do it...is also seeing me as an inspiration to keep it going for herself. It's humbling and flattering and has made me happy and has made me want to tell everyone reading this that I really appreciate the inspiration you all have given me too.

Back to Life...Back to Weigh Ins

2010-07-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

How sad is it that my mini vacation is over? I've been so lazy I'm almost embarrassed to post how many calories I burned yesterday! I was too lazy to even go get a manicure and a pedicure (desperately needed, my nails are gross). But I feel so refreshed and I feel so ready to get back to my normal exercise and eating routine.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 1958 calories
Consumed 1302 calories
Deficit of 656 calories

Here is how I did Saturday:
Burned 2040 calories
Consumed 1230 calories
Deficit of 810 calories

I really didn't like those low deficits (my lowest yet, I believe) but I also know from the way I'm feeling, that I am going to jump back in today. I am also prepared to find a way to realize that a break from work and from chores doesn't need to mean a break from exercising and eating well. Once I get that down, I think I will be even better.

But let's get to where I want to be today - my weigh in:
Last week's weight: 212.0

Current weight: 210.1
Weekly goal: I think my weekly goal is going to be...to figure out what my reward will be once I am finally less than 200 pounds...

Now I will not lie - I am really happy about my loss this week! But I'm also all about being honest so I kind of wanted to work through everything I've been thinking since I stepped on the scale this morning. I've been thinking a lot and it's a good loss for one week but I'm just not 100% satisfied.

At first I was just happy to see a loss but the more I think about it the more I just don't understand. 1.9 lbs should be the minimum I'm losing every week. Very simply put, weight loss is about burning more calories than you take in. We can all count fat grams, carbs, all that but the science of it is, if you eat fewer calories than you use up you should lose weight. Muscle, fat, whatever it is, you should lose it. And I am not really losing the weight I should be losing, according to the calories I burn and the calories I eat. Muscle building can account for some of it but there is a limit and I'm past it. I'm not bodybuilding, only doing minor strength training, there is no reason for me to be losing only 6 pounds in a month and a half.

I'm putting a lot of effort into this and I am still not over the past two weeks that I only had 0.2 lb losses. Why is that, on a day like today? I feel like I should really be dropping the weight like nothing, but I am not seeing the results. Yes, I am seeing a few results in measurements, but I can lose 20 inches off of my waist and to be honest, it will never mean the same thing as 20 pounds. What an awful thing to think, but like I said I am trying to be honest here.

Last week after my loss I told Husbandcake and my sister that I wanted to make a doctors appointment and get some kind of help. No, not a nutritionist, not advice - drugs. Prescription drugs. I am not going to act like I've made a final decision on this, although for now I've decided to hold off. I know I'd be doing it out of laziness...because I don't want to work so hard for the results I've been getting.

So there you have it, even with a good weigh in I am still really questioning what it is that I've been doing, what it is that I am going to do next, and why I am just plain not losing weight in a way that corresponds to my big calorie deficits. Maybe it is just a matter of lowering my expectations...but I know how hard I've been working and to not see my weight going down this much every week is in a way making it seem like I'm working at nothing.

Let's for a second get back to happy though. Even with ALL THAT going through my head I am still so excited about the loss. I mean come on!! It's my biggest weekly loss since I started this whole thing - by almost a half pound! It sounds like I am gloom and doom today but I'm really not. I feel like I'm back on track and I want to keep up on this. Honestly the difference I've seen this week is that I've exercised less and relaxed more so I'm wondering if that's something I might want to keep up. I don't want to get back into another situation where I'm so exhausted from over-exercising that I make myself sick again!!

All right my wonderful, beautiful, supportive and amazing friends - I am ready to go attack my day, eat some healthy stuff and burn some calories and get started on another week that will turn out as awesomely as the one I just finished!

I know I'm lame, but now I'm back!

2010-07-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

I know I've been gone for...a couple of days!! I was up in Sacramento on Thursday, out in San Francisco yesterday and just having a little break from everything including my computer. It was really, really nice, and exactly the break that Husbandcake and I needed for our own mental health. Sometimes I get really overwhelmed, up and down, emotions crazy and all over the place...and it takes a really calming time to get me back to where I need to be.

Since first and foremost this is a weight loss blog so I want to say that I have been ON TRACK with my eating! :) I have been slacking a little on recording it all but still, I'm watching my portions, getting all my exercise in and it is really nice. Today...let's see, it's almost 4pm, I am still in my pajamas and loving every second of it. I know I will have to get up and get some kind of physical activity in but I am just too busy reveling in my own laziness.

I just wanted to share, especially after my mopey beginning to the week, that I am so happy right now, so very content. I have spent the past few days with some of my very best friends (and my very newest friends!) and having some very wonderful times. I'm so thankful to have things in perspective!!

All right, this is a lame post :) not much to say on such a laid back day! I am going to go do some reading and find out how all of you have been doing...I'm hoping you all are having fabulous Saturdays.

Destined to Lose Weight?

2010-07-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday isn't it? Crap. I had leftovers last night. I'll definitely be trying new things tonight, whether or not they'll be healthy is another story. I'm disappointed though because last week I came across Lyn's cauliflower mac and cheese and I have been dying to try it. I love cauliflower and cheese so I don't see that any harm can come from putting them together! But alas, there is always next New Recipe Tuesday to give it a good try!

Here is how I did yesterday:
Horribly. I failed at being positive, I failed at going on the lunchtime walk...failed at making something new for dinner. I was unhappy about my weigh in all day - not to mention that even though my scale put me at losing 0.2 lbs this week and 0.2 lbs last week the scale at work put me at losing ZERO pounds over the two weeks. Which I am still annoyed about but I'm blaming it on the scale because I know I lost that almost-half-pound, so :-P

Here is how I did yesterday, calorie-wise:
Burned 2740 calories
Consumed 1346 calories
Deficit of 1394 calories

So, the good thing about yesterday being such a total failure is that today has the potential to be a ton better. A million times better. A half day at work, a super fun time tonight up in Sacramento with AWESOME friends, I am really excited about the day. And I am also pretty excited that despite my desire halfway through yesterday to go down to the little cafe shop near my office and get several cookies, I stayed on track, ate pretty healthy food and I got my exercise in. I guess it wasn't a total failure...just an attitude failure!

I'm so grateful for all of the support you all gave me and always give me. I think a lot of us know just how valuable it is to have that support and to have that amazing feeling that you are not going through this alone. I know I wasn't the only one who had a bad weigh in this week and in a lot of ways it helped. I look at other people, who didn't lose much or anything and I know they aren't failures...so I have to admit grudgingly that maybe I'm not either.

I have had this conversation with a good friend a few times, about how we know what is right for losing weight, but we just don't do it. I thought about that a lot last night, about how if it was just a matter of knowing what to eat or how to exercise it would be so easy. The truth is, a lot of us know a ton about fitness and nutrition. My dad runs a publishing company, and they make health, safety and productivity handbooks. I've been writing articles about fitness and nutrition since my college days and for a long time it made me feel like a fraud. At one point we were sitting there, two fat people telling people how to lose weight and live healthy lives, and I just thought we are cheating these people out of their money.

But we weren't - the information was valid. The food chart that I made was awesome and helpful, I just didn't use it. The tips on how to start a running program or to make sure you stretch were right on, I just never ran...or exercised at all. It's crazy the amount of knowledge we have and the amount we've put it to use. Now that I've started practicing what I preached for years I feel great. I can't even tell you all why it took me so long.

My career, if you can call it that, has really centered around the health and fitness industries. After working full time as a writer and editor for my dad, I went on to work in a bookstore that specialized in nutrition resources for children. From there I spent a year working for a cellular company, which was not at all fitness related and we ate cookies and cupcakes regularly...but after that job I was called by a recruiter to fill in a temporary spot...at 24 Hour Fitness corporate. Can you imagine a clearer sign that I am supposed to be healthy? If you believe in God, which I do, it is so obvious that He wants to surround me with every resource to lose weight, eat right and be healthy.

I think a big part of the reason I was just SO down yesterday is that a failure to lose weight is like a waste. A waste of all of my knowledge, the support around me, the free healthy food I get at work, the free gym membership, it's all wasted if I don't lose the weight. I know though, that all I can do, is do everything I can and try my hardest and if I've done that - if I've eaten well, exercised and done what I can - I didn't waste it. It's not the numbers, it's not the numbers, it's not the numbers. I just have to keep telling myself that until I believe it 100% of the time.

The other reason...well I guess it also had to do with numbers. I love numbers, and figuring things out. That's why I figured out yesterday that losing 0.2 lbs a week I'd hit my 150 mini goal in the spring of 2016. Six years of working THIS hard just to be mostly to my goal? No thank you, I'd rather stay fat. But you all, my voices of reason, know as you told me, that it will kick in soon, that the numbers will go down, that my work will pay off, it just didn't pay off on the scale these past two weeks.

But again, in my head just like last night I keep going back to the fact that I am meant to lose weight. I can't get away from the fitness industry if I wanted to (which I don't), and I have so much support, so many amazing people in my life, so much knowledge about health and nutrition. I am not meant to feel unhealthy, I am not meant to have stomach aches after dinner and I am not meant to be winded from chasing my dog down the hallway. I am meant to be healthy, happy, fit, and thin. That's just how it is :) and to be honest now that I've put it in words and put it out there, I feel a lot better about my "fate"!

Horrible Weigh In

2010-07-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog yesterday! First day I've missed since starting this whole thing, I believe. After cleaning my house for what seemed like 48 hours straight I just needed a break from everything. I slept in late (late for me anyway, which is 9-10) and had a lazy day. Husbandcake's coworker came over and we had lunch and played Wii. It was pretty fun. I didn't weigh in yesterday, I did it this morning and we'll get to it in a second.

Here is how I did Sunday and yesterday
Burned 2851 calories Sunday and 2321 calories yesterday.

I extended my non-tracking to yesterday because I really felt like I was doing so well but I'm back to tracking today because I know I overate for dinner last night.

I want to preface this by saying that so far my weigh in has ruined my day. It's only 7am which means there is plenty of time to bounce back but as of right now, I am having one of those moments where I hate everything and I feel like the world is against me.

Last week's weight: 212.2
Current weight: 212.0
Weekly goal: I feel like my weekly goal should be to not starve myself after seeing that number on the scale. Or to not cry at work today. But right now that seems like a tall order so I'm just going to try to keep up with my monthly goals this week.

I know I'm losing fat. I don't have one of those super scale things but in the past two weeks when I've only lost less than a half pound my clothes are still getting more loose. But even though it matters it doesn't matter enough. I am big enough that even gaining muscle I should be losing more than ONE FIFTH OF A POUND every week. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I'm eating healthy food, I'm keeping up with my vegetables, I'm feeling great, but something is just plain not working. According to my food deficits I should have lost almost 2 pounds just Monday through Friday. So what is the issue here?

I'm trying to turn this around and snap out of it but I just can't. It's too much. I feel like simultaneously giving up and starving myself. Like crawling back into bed but also buying a treadmill and running all day. I don't feel like me...it is not like me to feel this deeply and disturbingly defeated. And it's not just the weigh in. All these things seem so silly but are piling up on me and it feels like they are literally what is weighing me down. My hair is doing this awful thing, my email inbox is full of things I don't want to deal with. My handbag is a mess and I usually keep it so nicely organized. I know I have days where I just need to snap out of whatever funk I'm in, which I know I need to do now...but it just seems worse than that.

And there goes my goal for not crying.

Like I said...there is plenty of time to turn my day around. There really, truly is hope for today and I hope I'm able to find it. I'm sorry for being such a downer!! I can't even think of 5 things I really, truly feel grateful for right now.

*edited to add that something weird is going on with comments - I'm getting them in my email and I'm not sure why they aren't showing up here...hopefully it will be fixed soon!

New Dress!

2010-07-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July to all of you who are here in the states (and to all of you that aren't, I hope you are having a fabulous Sunday)!! I have so much to get done today, I just feel like I'm running around like crazy.

Here is how I did yesterday:
Burned 2602 calories

I'm taking a break. Yesterday I didn't track my food, although I was pretty aware of what I ate and I did eat good stuff. Today I'm doing the same thing for the most part. I am going to make sure I know the calories in the things I'm eating but I'm not going to write it down, add it up, obsess throughout the day.

You guys and your comments...they make me so happy. I know I'm doing well and sometimes I just need something to focus on and obsess about, lately it's been making sure I get enough calories. I talk about OCD a lot but that's how it is, just this ever present thing in my life that affects me every day and I need to back away from this obsession and just be happy with how I'm doing.

Which I am...because I went to wear a dress I bought a month or so ago that I never got around to wearing and the results made me so happy that I photo-documented it.

Hmm it did NOT look like this in the store...

I know it's hard to tell from that picture so here we are again:

It's so huge!! Even pulling it out like that it's still loose in front. When I bought it, it wasn't exactly tight but it sure wasn't too big. I wore it anyway but caught a glimpse of myself once and realized the dress almost looks misshapen from being too big.

So to recap...I feel great, my clothes are looser. I need a break from the obsession about my calories. I burned a good amount of calories yesterday, I will burn a good amount today and I will really, really be happy.

Because I'm awesome!!! How could I not be happy!!! Hope you guys are all feeling awesome today too because I definitely think you're the best :)