Going Strong!

That's right!  It's day 10.  I am still going strong. I have had no sugar and hardly any carbs.  I also have not weighed myself.  Sept. 1 will be my weigh in day.  Oh, I have been tempted to get on that scale, but I am trying to not let that be my motivation, only the result of a better lifestyle.

So how do I feel.  Not sure yet.  I know that every day that I succeed is a serious celebration.  When I get ready for bed at night, I try to evaluate myself and see how I measure up.  It seems that I have been measuring up with much to celebrate about.  For the most part, I don't feel hungry.  Every so often I do.  That is when I grab some water.  Maybe a few almonds and make myself busy.  Do I crave things that I shouldn't have?  All the time.  Man, I just love yummy things to eat.  Especially sugary, fatty, yummy things.  But I am trying to ignore those cravings and press forward.

All I can say, it is still hard, but I am trying because I am ready for a change.

Day 4

OK, so it is time to get serious.  I know, old story, right?  Well, Earlier this year, I started a program called, Take Shape for Life.  It is a healthy lifestyle change to not only losing weight, but trying to get on a better nutritional lifestyle in general.  It is in correspondence with Medifast food.  Well, I did good for about 5 weeks and then I just stopped.  I can give you all sorts of excuses.  (I am good at that.)  But what it really comes down to, it is hard to change really bad habits.  So, I started to only do the program about half way, saying, that is better then nothing, right?  Well, it doesn't work that way.  On facebook, there is a group that goes with the program and day after day I see people post pics of the success they are having and I thought, "What makes it so successful for them?" Somehow, they don't let their cravings control their lives.  That has always been my problem.  Sometimes I know exactly what I am doing when I am doing it and decide, "I will just make the next day better." The next day never gets better.  So, I decided to start with the program all over again.  With one change, I am so going to try to not weigh myself or think about it.  Hard, I know.  Necessary....Maybe.  I just know, if I try to focus on health instead of weight, maybe it will help.  So, Once a month, I will weigh myself.  The first day of the month.  Maybe that will help.  So, the next day I weigh myself is Sept 1.  So today is day 4.  How do I feel?  Well, the first couple of days, I felt OK.  Yesterday, I wanted a hamburger.  Today, I seem fine.  I think this will always be a battle, but I have to keep trying because if I stop, then I accept myself the way I am, and I don't want to accept myself.  I don't feel good and so how can I accept myself, right?  So, here it goes....day 4 and hopefully on Sept 1 when I weigh myself, it will continue to be a good streak.                                                        

A very slow slow start

OK, so I am not off to a very good start.  This is already hard.  I succeed, I fail, I succeed, I fail.  It is likes one step forward and three steps back.  Man that sugary fatty food is so good.  To be honest, I don't even eat that much, but what I eat is not the best.  Just convenient.   So, once again I am re-evaluating.  Health, health, health.  That is the key.  I know it, I just have to practice it.  One day I will try hard to take my own advice.  So, here it goes again.  I am starting over, once again.

Woo-Hoo for me!

Woo-Hoo for me!  Three days in a row that I have ran now.  Yesterday was the hardest.  I had over slept because I have had major lack of sleep due to this intense 5 week Internet class I have to take.  It was 9 am and I usually don't like to exercise that late.  Especially in the South.  It is hot and very humid.  I did it anyway and it was great.  I think I have been doing pretty good the last few days.  I have tried to be cautious about what I eat, I have drank plenty of water (not as much as I am suppose to, but way way then I did.) and I have be out there exercising.  I haven't weighed myself.  I am trying to put that off until Saturday.  I really am trying not to make that the focus.  That being said, even though it is not the focus, it is a measure of self-evaluation and so it has to done sometimes.  Things definitely aren't perfect, but I am trying. 

Water, Water, Water and more Water....

  OK, so considering that I set all these new goals, things have not been going well.  Why you say.  Well, just life, stress, too many things going on.  Guess what, I snack when that happens.  The more I contemplate about that, the more I know that is a very bad habit.  Guess what?  I started over once again.  I am re-evaluating and one of the things I would like to focus on right now is my water consumption.  Now my husband will tell you I drink water like a fish, but I really don't.  It is just I don't drink very much soda at all so what he sees is that I drink a lot of water.  I read somewhere once that the idea of only drinking 8 - 8 oz. water a day is wrong. That might be right for person who weighs what they are suppose to  and is fit and eating right, but most of us do not fit in that category.  I read that we should be drinking half our weight in oz. of water a day.  For example, if you weigh 160 lbs then you should drink 80 oz. of water a day and if you weigh 145 lbs. then you should drink 72.5 oz. of water a day and if you weigh 220 lbs then you should drink 110 oz. of water a day.  So, I don't know how true this is and I am not preaching it for fact only saying that most of us probably don't get nearly as much water as we should.  

So then that brings me to thirst.  I think of the saying...."You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"  I would suppose then that if the horse isn't thirsty then he won't drink.   Most of the time when I think I don't need that much water, it is because I am not thirsty and then I just forget to drink a good amount of water a day.  That would mean then that we have to determine the difference between hunger and thirst.  That is what I am going to focus on right now.  Am I hungry or am I just thirsty.  Instead of reaching for that unhealthy snack, perhaps I should reach for that glass of water.  


So here is what I am going to try to do this week.  I have this water bottle that holds about 36 oz. of water in it.  I plan on only drinking out of it and filling it up 3-4 times a day.  Hopefully I will try and be more conscience in drinking it.  Let's hope that helps.  

That being said, I went running this morning.  I ran about 2 miles.  It was a slow 2 mile run, but I didn't stop running once and when I got home, you know what I did...... I drank a big glass of cold refreshing water.

There has to be room for cheating

Seriously.  I mean it when I say I want to be healthy.  I do.  I want to try my hardest to eat good live food (live food meaning having lots of vitamins in it).  I strongly believe that if you focus on that, your body will get where it needs to be.  It has no other choice.  Along with eating good live food, water...this is also an important factor.  Even though I know all this, there has to be room for some cheating.  I have been on some strict diets in the past.  I mean super strict and though I have lost weight and it seems like things are going well, I get to a point of melt down.  I binge and when I mean binge that is being kind.  So I have learned that there has to be room for cheating.  With that, you have to know yourself.  You have to be responsible for cheating.  Responsible cheating, moderation, portion control. So that being said, as you can see according to my ticker above, that I am 8 lbs down.  Yay me! Also, I know that this is going to go slow and so I need to be patient.  So here is what I made the other day.

This is what it looks like.  Pizza that is made from a cauliflower crust.  It really is good.  I mean don't get me wrong.  I love the yummy greasy fatty pizza just like the next person, but as substitutes go, this isn't bad and full of lots of vitamins.  I usually grate up a couple of heads of cauliflower and make a ton of crusts to freeze and then when I want one, I pull it out, put sauce, mozzarella cheese and a few slices of pepperoni and cook for about 12 min. in the oven and walla!  The sauce is diced tomatoes blended up with a few of my favorite spices. I will put the recipe for the cauliflower pizza crust under my recipe page if anyone is interested.

Changing old habits

Changing habits is hard.  Especially when the habit you are trying to change is something you really like.  Day 2.  How's it going?  Well, for the most part, not bad.  Of course I always do well the first couple of weeks.  Ask me that in a couple of weeks and the answer might be a different.  That being said, how do we change habits?  To put change in your life, I suppose you add new routines through out the day and stick with them.  Replace one routine with another.  I suppose our brain needs to be persuaded.  So then how do you persuade your brain.  Rewards.  Your brain reacts to rewards.  My habit I am trying to change right now is unhealthy snacking.  I have learned that I like to snack.  It isn't always the big meal (though I am a sucker to eat out and be social with friends), but the many different little snacks.  I love gummie bears, red vines, chips, nuts (the honey roasted kind), fruit snacks, candy corn, Swedish fish, crackers and most anything I can put in my hands and snack out of.  So now how to change this habit and make the change a reward.  The trick is to be able to see what the consequence of the habit is.  Is it a good consequence or a bad consequence?  My brain might say "yes, I can already taste it."  Then my brain begins to reason and says...what about the consequence?  So the trick is how to make my brain realize that the bad consequence is really not what I want.  I need to look for the good consequences.  So how do I make the good consequence out weigh the reward I think I want to the reward I need?  This is what I am working on right now.  Motivation.  That is my reward.  Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going.  My motivation needs to be that I want more energy, I want to feel good every day, I want the headaches to disappear, I want my back to stop hurting after how many years, I want to feel like I am in my twenties, I don't want to have limitations, I want to be happy with myself.  These are all good rewards.  So, I am telling my brain, by staying away from the unhealthy snacks, that all these motivations are possible and obtainable.  Now to just believe it.

Lettuce Wraps

Mmmm.  Lettuce wraps.  They were excellent.

Ground Turkey ( or lean ground beef)
3 cups of shredded cabbage
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons packaged szechwan seasoning mix
(though I just used a stir fry seasoning mix which called for the soy sauce in it)
Add any additional water
Lettuce leaves ( I like Romaine, but you can use iceberg)

Get a wok ( or non stick pan) very hot, cook the meat and break it up into very small pieces ( I sauteed onions in olive oil in wok before I added the turkey) When it is no longer pink, add the cabbage and pour the sauce over mix.  Continue cooking on high heat just until the cabbage starts to wilt.  You can sprinkle red crushed pepper on it.

Here we go again......

  This is me and this is my new start.  My name is Julee and a few years ago, I documented everything and made it into a blog for everyone to see.  Something about making it public helped me to work hard.  Well, I lost about 60 lbs and I started to really like myself again.  Well, guess what?  Like many others, I took a step backwards.  OK, I took a lot of steps backwards.  Does that mean I didn't learn anything?  No, I don't think so.  I learned a lot, especially what not to do.  Well, I am back up there in weight once more and I have tried and failed more then once.  Thinking this morning of when I succeeded, I remembered I had this little blog.  I decided to wipe the posts clean and start again once more.  This time, I will focus on health.

Health vs. looks.  Are they one in the same?  Some say that they don't care much about how they look and that they just wanna be healthy, but if you wanna be healthy then don't you wanna look good.  Looking good only shows that you are indeed healthy.  So, yes, I wanna be healthy and yes, I wanna look good.  They really are one in the same. Many years ago, Dr Phil (which, btw, I really have no interest in) said many times,  "You are fat because you wanna be"  I have thought about that statement many times.  Though I see what he is trying to say, believe me, I don't want to be fat.  I have never liked the statement one bit.  Just because we are, does not mean that we wanna be fat.  I mean really, let's be honest, who really wants to be fat?  Some might say, they like food too much to care.  Others might say it is just too hard.  Some might really just be happy with themselves on the surface.  Some have lost the will.  I know I feel like all this sometimes.  But believe me, if you are overweight, it really is a symptom of being unhealthy and it won't be the last symptom.   I do though, want to be healthy. So, instead of focusing on wanting to be fat or not, lets focus on wanting to be healthy.  When we are healthy, then we look good.

Now, this is not as easy as it sounds.  Just like one who is trying to stop smoking,  you need lots of support, will power, advice, knowledge, reflection and most important....DESIRE.  I hope as I once again go on this journey that you will all join me and celebrate the successes that I have.  It won't be easy but it will be worth it.  Now these posts will be my thoughts.  I am not trying to preach to anyone.  I am just putting my thoughts into writing and sharing.  If you have advice, recipes, quotes ( funny or inspirational), Internet sites or any other helpful knowledge, please share.  I would love to hear it.  I will also share my knowledge as well.   I am so excited you will be with me once again on my journey to not just watching my butt shrink, but to a better healthy lifestyle.