I’m Back

It has been just over a year since my last blog, and things have changed SO much! I had a baby girl named Elee Faye…finally a girl to go along with my three boys! She’s now 5 months old, beautiful and spoiled rotten.

I have decided to go back to school for my bachelors degree in marketing and hope to start classes in June.

My oldest son, who is 14, and far too old for his own good, had spent a year in Canada with his father and has decided to stay longer. While this is an outrageously difficult thing to go through, he will be attending an amazing school and has discovered a love of Skype, which makes things easier.

My little sister (who isn’t so little now that she’s 23 and married) has joined the Navy and now lives in another state. Another reason to love Skype.

I am still at the same job and outrageously in love with my husband, who is also an incredible father.

So now the bad news. In the year since my last post, I have gained back 30 of the 50 pounds I had lost. Yes, I was pregnant, but it’s gone beyond that. Most of this was gained after I had her. I fell off the wagon and just kept tumbling. I’m very glad I caught myself when I did, but I’m still reeling from how far I let myself go. After weighing myself for the first time since giving birth, I spent a few days sunk in a funk of self-loathing.

However, I am now on day four of back on track! Old, GOOD habits are coming back to me, which is wonderful. This weekend has been hard, though. I feel like I’m going through fat withdrawal and am glad I don’t have to go out into the real world again until tomorrow. My biggest problem so far is getting used to the new Points Plus Weight Watchers program. I’m so nervous about eating the right things and calculating it that I find I’m not using up all of my points. It will even out eventually, and soon my body will stop falsely telling me that it’s starving. My stomach seems to be like a small child throwing a tantrum, so I’ve put it in time out.

I’m looking forward to blogging again! I’ve started a project of taking a picture of my face each weigh-in day so I can see when changes happen. I’m also planning to take measurements and full-body pictures.

Welcome back, Healthy Lindsy! I’ve missed you.

Day 3 and 4 Lumped Together

I am pretty damn proud of myself, even if I do break my arm patting myself on the back.  After my workout today, it will be 4 days down of the 58 day LB Lenten Challenge completed.  And that’s not all I’m proud of!  I went to Buffalo Wild Wings yesterday with my co-workers and stuck to my points!  I even ate some stuff I shouldn’t have, but not enough of it to ruin my day.  I was still able to come home and eat chicken, zucchini, green beans with almonds and a few reduced fat Pringles and not go over!

Speaking of Pringles…the Reduced Fat are amazingly good.  And they’re only 3 points for 16 chips.

Anyway, tonight is my birthday party.  I turned 35 on February 10th and didn’t want to interfere with the Super Bowl or Valentine’s Day, so we’re celebrating tonight.  I’ll try and get some photos posted because it’s 80′s & 90′s themed and will be lots of karaoke.  I even planned ahead on what I’m eating at Red Lobster and how many points my two favorite drinks are: Jagermeister shots & Captain Morgan with Diet Coke.  They’re both 2 points apiece and I have plenty of points saved up!  But I’m not a drinker, so I’m sure I’ll only use up a few points and still act like a loon.

Tonight I will also be tackling one of my fears: singing karaoke.  I know it’s not a big deal to people…my dad likes to say that karaoke is Japanese for “can’t sing worth a damn”, but it scared the bejeezus out of me.  I performed at renaissance faires for over 10 years, 3 of which I was in a comedy troupe making an ass of myself three times a day.  I can stand up without prior warning and talk to a room full of people and not even blink an eye.  But give me a microphone that’s not hooked up to Rock Band and I freeze.

I’ll report tomorrow and let you know how it goes.  I need to go work out before lunchtime so I have plenty of time to 80′s up my hair and make-up!

Day 2 of 58

Not because I wanted to…but day 2 of the LB Lenten Challenge is complete. 25 minutes on the treadmill & 5 minutes of an upper arm weight-lifting thingy.

I’m a bit discombobulated from the treadmill. Let’s hope I do better closer to day 58, no?

Day 1 of 58

I am not Catholic. I’m not even a religious person, but I am very spiritual and I have a deep respect for people who are true to their beliefs. So remember that as I explain what I’m doing, okay?

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has paticipated in Lent, where we each give up something dear to us from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. We did it because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could, and also because we are SUCH a competitive family! But as I grew up, it became more to me. It became a battle of willpower. The toughest year was when I gave up red meat and potatoes at the same time. It was AMAZING!

This year, when trying to decide what to give up, I realized just how much my life had changed from years past. I don’t really eat a lot of chocolate, and I don’t drink a lot of soda. I’ve given up regular butter, for the most part, and I don’t eat fast food anymore. So instead of giving up something, I decided to challenge myself.

I am going to exercise for 30 minutes every day from today until Easter. 58 days straight. It’s the one aspect of my ever-healthier lifestyle that I cannot get a grip on. So I have decided that this year, it will be my Lenten Challenge.

When my kids give up something for Lent, that’s what they get in their Easter basket. Give up video games? They get a new game. Give up soda? They get 2-liter bottles. This year, my 13 year old is giving up Doritos & chocolate milk. My 12 year old has given up chocolate. My husband is giving up soda. So they know what will be in their baskets on Easter.

Now I need to figure out what’s going to be in mine.

Also, I hope to take some pictures & measurements tomorrow to compare at the end of the challenge.

Tonight I did 30 minutes on the treadmill at 3 m.p.h. while listening to my early-90s Pandora station.

I can’t wait to see what changes await!

Work Out or Pass Out!

A bit of backstory, part one:  Right now is the most emotionally unstable I’ve been in quite a while.  Oddly, this is the longest I’ve ever been this happy with the man in my life.  I’ve been with my husband for almost 7 years now and I am still deliriously in love with him.  He is the one thing I’m sure of in life.  Also, I am gloriously happy with my children.  They are all at points in their lives wherein I am having a blast with them all.  Yes, I know this doesn’t lend a lot of validity to my statement of being emotionally unstable.  But it’s true.  Without getting into it much, my relationship with my parents has never been this off-the-norm and it’s causing me all kinds of strife.  I am someone who has always been very close to her family, so this is literally eating at me all day every day.  And I don’t really see how to fix anything, so I just continue with the inner turmoil.  Also, work is not a very stable place.  I’m used to my job being somewhat stressful from time to time.  I revel in that chaos, to be honest.  But right now I feel under attack more often than not at work.  Every time things settle down and I feel my feet under me again, another left hook gets the side of my head.  And there is no time wherein I don’t feel like I’m walking on egg shells, as though anything I say or do could be used against me at a later date.  I’m probably blowing that out of proportion, but when I’m already off-kilter, this other stuff doesn’t help.  Add in the fact that I already have relationship issues (which tends to happen to those who have been through the things I have in my life), and I have now reached the point where I can see myself pulling back into my shell and putting on the mask I like to wear when I feel insecure.

In the past, this is when you’d find me hiding – wearing lots of hats and baggy clothes and stuffing my face with anything that didn’t run away.  That’s not happening this time, but it has gotten to the point where I find myself unable to look people in the eye when I talk to them.  It makes me feel dishonest even though I’m not lying.  I also find myself really wanting just to be at home where people can’t look at me.  I have been trying to take a new picture of myself but all I see is a really fat face.  And every time I brush my hair, all I see is how much my arm fat waves.  I am outrageously unhappy with myself, even though I have lost 50 pounds and am down 3 pant sizes.  In my brain, and in my eyes, I am still 317 pounds of ick.

I told you I have issues.

Anyway, I know that if I want to keep this weight off this time, I need to deal with my issues and figure out different ways to deal with them.  Everything I’ve done in the past has been what Obese Lindsy (OL) would do.  Now I need to figure out what Healthy Lindsy (HL) is going to do.

Do you know what she did tonight?

She worked out.

My husband’s co-worker used to be a wrestler (the real kind, not the ones who use folding chairs and have grr faces).  He heard about what I’ve been doing with my change in lifestyle and offered some advice.  He said that when wrestlers wanted to drop weight for a meet, they’d work out wearing head-to-toe sweats.  So tonight I put on my thick sweatpants, hoodie with the hood up and a beanie on my head.  I looked like I was trying out for the next “Rocky” movie.  And because our back room is a rather chilly place, I turned on the space heater that we keep back there.  And I got on the treadmill for 30 minutes.

After 5 minutes, I started to perspire.  After 10 minutes, my nose started running.  After 15 minutes, I was out-and-out sweating.  Then “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit came on my iPod (don’t judge) and something happened.  I pushed myself even more and let the anger rise up inside me (I used to listen to Limp Bizkit during my divorce from my first husband, so it was somewhat Pavlovian).  I pushed the lever up on the treadmill and started to run.  I couldn’t have been running more than 2 minutes, but it was the fastest I’ve ever gone and the sweat was pouring down.  My heart was THUDding in my chest and my feet were buzzing.  And about 1 1/2 minutes into my run, I felt this jolt through my body that scared the shit out of me, which is why I slowed down again.  It was akin to the first time I had an orgasm, to be honest, and I felt like crying.  But it wasn’t a bad cry.  It was cleansing.

So that’s what endorphins are like, eh?

Can’t wait to feel THOSE again.

So now I’ve written long enough that I should be able to stand up again and go take a shower.  I’m sure the family would appreciate it.  I apologize for being so generic with my post tonight.  I wish I could get into more detail, but it’s hard to type in this shell.

Goodbye, Christmas Break

My name is Lindsy, and I fell off the wagon for about a month.

I spent some time being ashamed of that, which is probably why the wagon-falling-off-bit lasted a month.  But I’m not ashamed anymore.  I think back on my month of not writing down everything I ate and not doing a lick of working out and I find I’ve learned some valuable lessons.

First and foremost is this:  I LIKE being on Weight Watchers!  And I LIKE working out and feeling better about myself!

This past month has been a study in how a formerly fat person is like a recovering drug addict (yes, I’ve used this analogy before, but I hold true to the idea that we ARE more similar than most would like to admit).  While I was on plan and in the mode, life was incredible.  I felt better about myself than I had probably ever before.  I was coherent and sure and in control.  I gave myself Christmas off.  I told myself I’d just take that one day off (take that one hit, if you will).  Then we got snowed in by a blizzard and we decided to bake cookies and make chocolates and it all spiraled out of control.  I took that one hit and suddenly found myself in a gutter with track marks all over my body (but the track marks were really chocolate smudges).  After about a week of that, I got bored with rebelling, and I honestly didn’t go that overboard the rest of my time off the wagon.

I did keep one thing constant, which I think really helped me come back around:  I kept up with my weekly weigh-ins.  After that first week of bingeing and seeing the 2.5 pound gain, I was sort of brought back to my senses.  I still didn’t log my food intake and I still didn’t exercise, but I did lose those 2.5 pounds by the next week.  However, my body was really pretty pissed off at me and I gained 2 pounds the next week.  This past Thursday, I weighed myself and lost 1.5 pounds.  So after my month off the plan and spiraling into Crazy Fat Town, I weigh .5 pounds more than when I started.

I’d say that’s not so bad, but then I think about how, if I had stayed on track, I could be 8-10 pounds lighter right now.  That thought is what got me back on the treadmill tonight, and that thought is what’s going to keep me logging my food again.  Plus, I turn 35 next month, and I promised myself that if I’m 10 pounds lighter by my birthday party, I’d go get my tongue pierced in true midlife crisis mode

It’s so nice to be back.  I really didn’t like it down there in the gutter.  And just when I was about to scream, “Why did I work so hard to lose 50 pounds when no one even NOTICES!?!” my grandpa told me I look like a totally different person.  And the 19 year old girl at work looked at my driver’s license picture and shrieked, “Lindsy!  You used to be FAT!!”

She said “used to be”.

And I knew that my brain had changed because the old me would have heard the “FAT!!” and the new me heard “used to be”.

If I used to be fat at 268 pounds, I’m excited to see what she’ll say when I’m 180.

Formerly fat person logging out now.  Goodnight!

Yes, I’m Alive!

Wow it’s been a crazy week.  I’ve been working extra hours at work and dealing with a funk brought about by not enough time around my husband.  Which is not work’s fault, really.  I was working long hours starting early and he has been working long hours starting later, so he’d be asleep when I left and I’d be asleep when he got home.  And I’m one of those very strange people who are madly in love with their spouse, and if I don’t get to see him very much, I get into a funk.

Yes, I’m fully aware of the fact that I’m odd.

Weigh-in was last Thursday and I stayed at the same weight.  Which I find to be amazing, what with all the food days and odd hours and icky food choices surrounding me.  On the days I can’t really eat perfectly, I try to eat sensibly.  I try to be aware of my protein intake (it cuts the cravings) and my fiber intake.  But I’ve noticed that it’s been getting easier and easier to say, “Oh, I’ll log that food later.”  And then “forget” to do it.  But never worry – that’s been nipped in the bud.  If I notice a trend that’s not going my way, I try to fling it in the other direction.  I think just being aware of what’s going on in my head makes me a better eater.

The theme for this week’s blog seems to be noticing things, right?  So I’m going to run with it.  These are the things I notice that are changing with me:

1)  When I sit in the bathtub, my hips don’t touch both sides of the tub.  The water can freely drain around me!
2)  When I walk down the hall at work, and try to feel the fat jiggle on my face (yes, I used to be SUPER aware of this going on), it only jiggles a little now.
3)  When I brush my hair and my arm-fat (referred to as my “liquid muscles” by my oldest son) is noticeably lessened.
4)  My rings are falling off my fingers.
5)  I jogged through the store the other day.  Yeah, me.  And I didn’t get winded.
6)  Sex is…improved, and it was incredible before.  I’ll leave it at that.
7)  I went to a certain buffet restaurant and was SO unhappy with the taste of things.  The shrimp had TONS of breading on it, and the chicken was salty, and some things just tasted like paste.  It’s so odd to me that my taste buds seem to have morphed into snooty food snobs.

However, I did splurge and have a regular soda on Friday.  And it tasted soooooooooooooo good.  I stopped myself after one glass.  I still fantasize about it.  I did notice, though, that drinking that one regular soda made me immediately think about potato chips and Chinese food (things I normally would eat with my soda before.)  Oooh!  Another noticing item!

And now I’m noticing that my baby boy wants me to read to him, so I’m going to end this.