Weigh In Day #1

Today is the first weigh in day for a Biggest Loser competition among myself and 8 other ladies...friends and friends of friends who want to lose weight for the last 8 weeks of the year.  I am happy to report that I lost 4.3 pounds in the last week.  I am so excited!  I decided to post a picture at this weight so that I can compare it as I shrink over the course of the next few months.

Actually, I am happy to be wearing the jeans that are in the picture...I am down about 10 pounds over the last three weeks or so and a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have left the house in these jeans...today, I am ready to rock them with the cute 4" heels I bought to wear them with!!  This is a good thing!!

Confessions of a Snackaholic

My name is Kelly and I am a snackaholic.  There.  I said it.  I have always known this and I have just accepted it as part of who I am.  Back in 2001 and in 2003 when I lost 35 pounds TWICE doing Weight Watchers, I learned how to construct meals to compensate for the fact that I was a snacker.  For example, I would eat a 2 point breakfast, a 4 point lunch and a 6 point dinner leaving me with approximately 12 points left for snacking...like a bag of popcorn, a skinny cow, a Fiber One bar and cookie (or four).  Done...a 24 point day and a loss of weight (usually) for the week.  The problem is that when I would inevitably fall off the wagon, the low-point meals would turn into high-point-out-of-control meals, the low-point snacks would be replaced by I-know-I-shouldn't-be-eating-this snacks and voila...a 40+ point day and weight gain of a pound or two each week.  So that's how it has happened...three times now in the last 8 years!

So let's discuss snacking for a minute.  I think that once you start to snack, it opens up Pandora's box and gets your body ready for more.  So, even if you start out with the intention of eating a sensible 100-calorie snack like 15 almonds, 4 Hershey Kisses or a small pack of Swedish Fish, you can never stop there.  I mean really, anyone who has food issues knows that 15 almonds turns into 2 cups and 4 Hershey Kisses turns into a love affair with chocolate!  Even though we know that sensible snacking by me and my peeps with food issues is a pipe dream at best, lets assume that you eat two sensible 100-calorie snacks a day.  That is 1400 calories in a week.  It takes 3500 calories to gain a pound, so you will roughly put on about a pound every three weeks.  Eye opening, isn't it??  Yes, that is what I said.  Now, I now there are many "sensible" people that can actually control themselves and snack within certain parameters and maintain or lose weight.  Good good for them.  I am just not one of them and have to look for another solution to my snacking issue.

I am now committed to attacking the problem of snacking.  And as with other addictions, I think that a cold-turkey approach is the only possibility for me.  I am a woman of extremes and once I make the rule of no snacks, that is the way it is...NO MORE SNACKS!  I am on day four of this new approach and doing good so far.  I will post more specifics about the plan soon...I just want to wait to complete a full week before start shouting from the hilltops.  I am very much looking forward to my weigh-in tomorrow...the number will DOWN and that is such a great feeling...the journey is starting out well.

Thanks for reading...let me know what you think and subscribe to my blog...maybe I can be on Oprah, someday!!

The Vegetable Bin is Too Small...

Anyone else have this problem?  I think it is funny that whenever I am eating well and buying lots of vegetables and fruit, the refrigerator is chock full because everything doesn't fit in the vegetable bins.  I end up with wilted lettuce or soggy carrots or frozen asparagus.  I need another one or I need one of the fancy schmancy refrigerator drawers made by sub-zero...like this Sub Zero Refigeration Drawer.  Isn't that the coolest thing ever?  Since I don't see a major kitchen remodel in my future anytime soon, I guess I will have to deal.  That said, the veggies are actually being consumed instead of being thrown away with a guilty conscience despite the best of intentions when they were purchased at the market.  Hurray for small steps! 

Still no bubbles and it has been over a week.  Actually, it hasn't been so difficult.  I have been discovering all different varieties of hot tea and they have been enjoyable.  Who knew?

So, I am excited to weigh in on Friday.  I will make a report of the decrease and what I did this week to get there.  It has been a good food week and I actually feel like I am shrinking instead of growing for the first time in a long time...what a welcome feeling!

No More Bubbles

So, I call Diet Coke, bubbles.  The bubbles bring me to a happy place.  The bubbles are safe from calories and let you enjoy happy without the guilt that they will add to the size of your butt.  I know all the other bad things that come with the bubbles, but have chosen to ignore all the warnings about such things.  I detox from Diet Coke every so often, but always seem to find my way back.  When I am not trying to cut back, I sometimes can drink over 100 ounces of bubbles in one day.  Lots of happy.

The other day, my husband sends me an article that popped up on Yahoo! What Soft Drinks Are Doing To Your Body.  I read it...nothing new...aspartame is bad, makes you crave more carbs, depletes calcium blah blah.  I was angry at him so I grabbed another Diet Coke on the way out the door to pick up the kids from school...I'll show him who can tell me what I can or can't drink.  A little later when I was almost finished with that can of happy, I reminded myself that he just wants me alive for as long as possible, right?  Then I thought of myself as a fat old woman with scoliosis and I don't really want to be that woman.  I dumped the rest of that can and decided to figure out a way to replace the bubbles with something else.

So, for now, I am trying to be more aware of the times when I want to reach for the bubbles and find that other thing to which I can turn.  It used to be that when I would detox from Diet Coke, other diet sodas were okay...as long as they didn't have caffeine.  This time, it is not so much the caffeine that I am worried about so much as the aspartame.  I googled for some ideas on what I could drink to replace diet soda.  I started by drinking hot tea in the morning.  I got my caffeine and I sort of understood the comfort of warm liquid in the morning.  I have never liked coffee or tea, so I never really cared about having the hot stuff in the a.m., but it was nice.  I even jumped on the green tea bandwagon and I have to say, it is pretty good stuff...especially with a splash of skim milk.  Later in the day, I got my bubbles in the form of LaCroix sparkling water with a splash of Acai/Blueberry juice.  It was cold.  It was bubbly.  It supplied not much in the way of flavor, but I got a little bit of the happy.

So, I am Diet Coke free for the last 4 days.  I do miss it, but I am proud of myself for deciding to make this change...

The journey of a thousand miles....

...begins with one step.

Welcome to my blog. I have decided to document this journey as it is a journey that I plan to make DOWN the scale ONCE. I am tired of talking about the weight that I want to lose....it's time to just lose it already!! I did the math that I will be turning 40 in less than 130 days...yikes! Like many others, I have a vision of what I want to look like at 40 (remember, 40 is the new 30), and this is NOT it. So, I had to start this soon if I was going to lose about 40 lbs by March 9th.

No more dwelling on the past...this is me focusing on the task at hand. A walk down the scale to a healthier me...one step at a time. I will write about these steps as I make them...no matter how small.

Thanks for reading! Please make comments and let me know about your down scale journey!