Hello again everyone!
Hope things are well on your end. I just had to post today because I have definitely passed the 15 lbs lost mark.
Yay! 
So now on to losing the next 5lbs! Hehe
Also yay for Barack Obama, for winning the WI democratic vote. Yes We Can! :D
Yep, life is good, my clothes fit better, are loose all around, fitting the way they should be. And if….no cross that out, WHEN I keep losing more, I figure by the time spring comes around, I will be able to get some new sizes.
Yesterday I made a vegetarian chilli that turned out pretty good. When I get a chance this weekend, I will write the recipe up, that I came up with and share it with you all. Since it contains no meat and very little fat, only from a half stick of butter for a whole huge pot, the rest all vegetables of some form or the other, I would say it should be low in pts for those of you doing the WW plan.
In the interim, I have to get ready for work, so here are my daily totals:
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 46 Weight: 253.4 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 15.2 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Well hello everyone!
I hope life is treating you well. Things have been hectic busy on this end. Recently I started archiving all of my mom’s geneaology work, so the time it is taking just to do all that work and even try to expand on it, while labor filled, has been quite fun! So I do apologize for not having much time to blog lately, although that does not mean that I have not been watching my diet. 
Other than that, just keeping busy. I am still doing a vegetarian diet, which is going quite well for me. It is funny, one of the guys at work insists that he is going to get me to eat meat, but I doubt that will happen. If I had cravings for it, that would be one thing, but I just don’t. Even better, since I made this change, I never seem to go to any of my fast food places I used to frequent. Instead, the only ones I still attend every once in awhile would be Taco Bell, Subway or Qdoba.
By the way, the Veggie Delite sandwich at Subway rocks! You must try it! Yummy! Plus low in pts for those of you counting.
I myself have not been counting, more just trying to eat healthy alternatives, while still allowing a comfort snack every once in awhile. The biggest thing for me has been cutting down on portions,which were always my big issue, along with trying to keep the pasta intakes and bread intakes down, unless they the whole wheat variety, etc.
In other news, they have a chili cook off tomorrow at work, so I am going to try my hand at cooking for it, so I have something to eat. I am going to make a vegetarian chilli which in the long run, because it is that type, should be low in calories, etc. I will keep you posted on how it turns out, with also trying to figure out the points for you all, if you are interested.
Oh well, enough for now, I have to get ready and go vote. Today is presidential primary day in WI. Go Obama!
Yes We Can!
That should be a little saying that we should also say when it comes to our weight loss goals. We can do anything as long as we want to do so and succeed.
Here are my totals for today, and yep, I am down, only .2 scrawny pts away from 15 lbs! Yay! My weight loss is a slow progress, but I am totally fine with that since it has a better chance of staying off.
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 44 Weight: 253.8lbs
Total Weight Lost: 14.8 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Life is good. Got home safely after a harrowing day in the snow filled freeways yesterday and I am sure this morning will be just as unpleasant. Other than that, nothing else new except I am down again. Which is extremely good! The only thing I am unhappy about is that I have not gotten myself into my work out routine again. Part of it has been the weather but most of it has just been myself getting out of doing so.
I think part of it is a lack of organization on my part. I feel this hectic pressure all around me, which in turn causes me to feel like I am getting nothing done in my personal life. And I have so much I want to do.
I think this weekend, I am just going to have to sit down, contemplate it all and come up with some action plans. Decide what is important, what can wait and what my next steps are. First of course will be cleaning my house since it is getting nasty! lol Secondly, try to figure out my spiritual studies, where I can put these into my schedule, so I actually do them. Also look at my scrapbooking projects and where I want to start these. Figure out my work out plan, actually schedule the days and time frames during the week to do so. There is also a novel I have been writting, more off then on, have to figure out my goals in that regards. Plus my photography and how much I want to incorporate it. Part of it feels like it has taken over a part of me, not allowing me to reach my other goals. I am pretty positive I am not going to do anymore free shoots for people, it is just to labor intensive and I cannot keep spending hours of my personal time working on projects for people that don’t seem to appreciate the amount of time I put into it all for them. People only appreciate that which they pay for I fear. (Although my close friends and family will be out of this grouping as usual.) I also have to figure out my digital art side of my life. These creations take a long time to do and I get a lot of support from people on them. And I also have a huge project I have assigned myself of transposing all of my mom’s geneaology online. Her life’s work….daunting and time consuming to say the least.
Just looking at that list above, it is amazing to see how I just hop from one thing to the other, never getting anything done. I need to figure this out. I have to use my time wisely but at the same time also leave myself open to just enjoy life and relax.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” ~ LOTR
That quote is something that I tried to start living by when my mom passed away from cancer treatment complications. LOTR was her favorite novel and passion of all time. And when I was trying to figure out what to use on her gravestone, that quote was a given. It was a message to all of us, to use our time wisely. My mom died way to young at the age of 54, she still had her whole life ahead of her and until her death. I never used my time wisely….and if you look at that list up above, I never did any of the above. My life was just free, no projects or artwork, no photography, nothing. I definitely was not making any type of impact on anything. So I changed and fought to live by that quote. But as I sit here, I look at the quote again and I find that while I am filling my life with substance I in turn am not using the time wisely.
I guess I need to figure some things out, don’t I?
Well here are the totals today, happy with those results by far! I also as you will see below have created a weightloss tracker, which I will also be posting at the bottom of each blog from here on out.
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 32 Weight: 255.6 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 13 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Well hello again fellow bloggers. I hope you are having a wonderful day. We in turn in Milwauke, WI have snow again, in fact if the inch amount stays as predicted by the end of the day, we will have had close to 20 inches of snow over a 24 hr period.
Also, I went to see a pain doctor about my back yesterday and low and behold, when my weight loss plans came up, it turned out she was a vegetarian too, so she had a bunch of advice in that regards but more importantly she told me about her father’s weight loss plan, concerning how often you weigh in, etc. and how he has a 98% success rate for his patients losing weight. And crazy enough, when she explained it, it was the same as I was doing, weighing in every morning, at least 3 times in a row to verify the weight loss and the goal is not neccessarily to lose weight but to maintain the weight loss. Even when in tiny amounts. Simply because your body’s natural reaction is to stay and try to stay at the same weight you were running at. Which is why you see it fluctuate every day, sometimes increase 1 or 2 pds and then back off a day or two later to the actual loss. It was quite interesting to find out my self little plan has some merit and she stated that is why it is working so well. More importantly she advised against weighing in only once a week, because if you catch the minor change every day, say if you are increasing, you know you have to go back and adjust your intake.
Quite interesting indeed and on top of it, I think I finally have found a doctor who is going to help me figure out these migraine and pain issues I have because of my back surgery and more importantly doing so with out taking pain medicine, which I absolutely will not do unless an advil. Also as part of the pain mgmt, I will be getting acupuncture there and massage therapy. Fingers crossed, this does the trick.
Enough said, got to leave early for work due to the snowstorm outside, if I will even be able to make it on time, so here are my totals.
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 31 Weight: 257.2 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 11.4 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Well I will leave this brief and short. I am very happy and I love my scale! I have reached over 10lbs lost!
Yes that may not be a lot to many of you reading this, but it is still something profound to me and I am quite proud of myself. I will also add that I have not really been following the weight watchers plan anymore just trying to eat healthier and of course I went to a vegetarian diet, although I allow dairy products, which having some of these restrictions on my diet has helped curb any bad fast food eating I used to do.
While I do still get fast food, the kinds I allow myself to have are veggie oriented, this has been almost better for me then WW because it is preventing me from eating all the bad stuff I used to eat. PS, in case anyone did not know, I just found that Burger King carries veggie burgers now!
That is not to say that that there isn’t plenty of non-meat bad variety foods that could suck me in a downward spiral back to weight gain, but I guess to put it bluntly, I am just eating and choosing more healthier choices, stopping when I get full…and for some strange reason, I find myself craving veggie delite subway sandwhiches lately….OH yum! Hehe! I have also found that I have lost those spike and valleys you can get with eating bad foods through out the day.
I cannot tell you how much of a personal internal goal it was to just reach 10 pds lost. Anything less was considered a failure. But it was amazing how just changing my diet plan was what helped me do so and I feel great!
My real bench mark is to lose approximately 135 lbs total, but of course this is flexible, I just want to get to a healthy weight level for my height of 5′4″, which should be anywhere between 108lbs - 145lbs. You can figure out your approximate healthy weight for your height here:
http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/tl/cl/healthyweight/healthyweight.jsp
But I figure if I lose a total of 135lbs, that should get me to a goal weight of 134lbs approximately. Although this maybe lower then what will realistically occur. This is my goal, I mean if I can get to a healthy weight of 145pds, I will be totally fine with that, I just want to get into the acceptable weight level for my height. Regardless, if I do reach that goal, it will mean I have lost a half of a person. Can you imagine!? I can hardly imagine it myself, but may it happen for me regardless, please, oh pretty please!
So onward in this long personal battle to losing the next 10 pds and more! And my next goal is to start exercising again. Very important and I can’t keep talking myself out of it! Monday morning I am going in come hell or high water! I think I actually have to start scheduling my work outs in my planner. Maybe that will help…hmmm….
Anyways, I thought I would post some photos of myself, so those of you could see what in the hell I look like, eventually these can be the beginings of my before and after photos, lol!
This is probably one of the more recent photos of myself, taken on my birthday this past Sept, when I turned 30. Not a too terrible photo of myself but not my favorite, especially since it is an under the chin shot….sigh, when you are a photographer, sometimes knowing better angles to make yourself look better is not a good thing. It is bad enough when you are fooling yourself everyday when you look in the mirror, all I can think about is how that damn flash on grandma’s camera has shown every bit of my face, and if she would have been taller then me, how I would look skinnier if looking up at her when she took the photo, then down at her.
This below photo was taken last summer duing a couple night trip to northern Wisconsin, USA to go hiking. I have never posted it online, because I hate how realistic it is concerning my size. But after all, what is this blog about but making me face the ugly truths about who I am, my weight issues, self value ideals, etc. So here it is….argh….don’t ya just love that huge white glare on my fat arms! lol Damn sun, damn!
This next one was taken a little over a year ago. I wasn’t that much different in size then, but it is a nicer picture of me I guess.
And this is a full body shot, it was taken down in Chicago over 2 years ago, near the famous or not so famous Bean Sculpture. lol
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 27 Weight: 258.0 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 10.6 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Yep that says it all. And I am finally coming to the conclusion that I have to list out all the things that I want to do in my spare time….and determine what is neccessary and what is not. I feel like I hop from one thing to the other and never seem to get anything done.
With that said, how is my weight loss going? Well I was at a stand still for like a week now, plus of course it was that time of the month which adds a whole other spin on weight loss. Meaning you see no change. But finally did a weigh in on my scale and I am down a tiny bit.
Also I have made some dietary changes since a day or so after I last posted.
I am now a vegetarian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
I read a book called Skinny Bitch, which was funny in how they talked but it also faced some of my ideas on eating meat. Not that I am going to push you all to stop, but I have never been much of a meat eater and if I did eat it, it could not look like what it was.
The Skinny Bitch book is actually a go vegan book. But I am doing baby steps, maybe one day I will be vegan, but for now I enjoy my cheese and sour cream. lol
Anyways, the other benefit is that there is a lot of healthier options when limiting your diet to vegetarian but on the other hand, it is extremely hard at times to find food in restuarants that are not a garden burger. Not that I do not love those, its just variety can be hard. But regardless, I do feel better, and more importantly one of the things that I had to face was if something was vegetarian, it does not mean it is neccessarily healthy.
This weekend, I am going to do some major grocery shopping, getting some more vegetarian books, etc. and getting stocked up, I want to start cooking more for myself at home and coming up with some variety in my new veggie lifestyle! Hehe!
So with all that said, how am I doing so far? Well here goes, I am nearing almost 10 pds lost! It has been a battle, but it is going down. Now if I can only get back to working out normally, this will go quicker. hehe
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 26 Weight: 258.8 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 9.8 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Days 15-25 were never posted…..bad Abby! 
Well hello everyone, I’m back after a tiny bit of a blog sabbatical …and yes that title up above IS a pun on words, waiting was spelled weighting on purpose. lol
Where do I start…well let’s see, I was getting to that point we all face, I started feeling like a failure. Especially since I have not gone to the gym except once last week Wednesday. I also started cheating myself more than once….yep I am a failure was all I could think, and then of course those little demons inside, say why bother, you should just quit….you know those little buggers.
And what is funny, I was contradicting what others are telling me on here and elsewhere, that I am doing awesome in such a short time but I myself was feeling otherwise let me tell you.
So of course, as I said earlier, when that starts happening you start feeling like a failure.
Let’s see, I went to McDonald’s yesterday and bought a filet’o'fish sandwich value meal with a regular coke. I also did what has always been a weakness for me….I ordered an extra sandwich…and yep, I ate them all as quick as can be, along with the yummy fries!
And of course, I received that ultimate feeling you get when you do so, that rush of blissful satisfaction you get when you give into your cravings. It was not about if I was hungry or not, it was more about giving into that addiction, you know?
It was over, I did it.
I then came home after buying some new books, my other secret love, lol. I will digress here just for a second…There is a local book resale shop, ran by this very nice older lady. It is a shop where you can bring your old books in and then you get a credit towards books you want to purchase. So for example, if I do want to buy a book, instead of the normal non credit half price you would spend on a used book, you get to use 25% of your credit and 25% of your own cash towards the books. It really is a great deal and helps feed your book addictions at a much lower price. So of course I stocked up on all my highlander romance novels! Hehe!
And then, as I get to the point of this little blog, I looked around and saw another book, which I would classify as more a chick flick type of book, you know the kind which is bigger in size then a normal novel, usually of a Bridget Jones or working career girl in the city type of book. Not usually my cup of tea, since they tend to be written in 1st person, whereas I prefer 3rd person written stories.
But regardless, I thought what the heck and turned over the cover to read the back of it…..which it in turn was a description of the main character, a girl named Jemima Jones, who is a very overweight girl, over 217pds, etc. (I still top her weight by far, but reading about a character at that size was still something of a new perspective for me, since mostly they are always perfect and if overweight, maybe the more Bridge Jones variety…you know the still attractive ones. LOL)
The book then goes on in detail about how this is a story of how she deals with the skinnys of the world and her desire to find a man and blissful happiness…how she meets a guy online named Brad, after lying about her size in a chat forum she meets him within and how she quickly has to figure out a way to fight her food addiction, work out and lose the weight before gasp she meets him in person…because after all he owns a fancy gym in Los Angeles and she is just a over weight fat nobody reporter who lives in England and writes for a nobody newspaper…..but as usual there are always “twists” on the story, is he really the right one for her or is there someone else who is, maybe that handsome male reporter named Brad, who never sees the real Jemima as nothing more then a friend who is always there for him, but only when he happens to notice her?
I of course will not tell you more of the story specifics than that.
Except what did I do yesterday? Out of all the books I bought, I also bought that one and more interestingly enough, I came home and I read it immediately.
And never more was there a character who matched my personality, how she deals with food, how she lies when people ask about her personal life, (well except the whole lying about her weight and who she really is in chat rooms, that I do NOT, I repeat do NOT do!) How she has tried diet after diet…how she has moments as I did yesterday giving into the food temptation.
I think I have to say, all of us fighting a food addiction should read this book, you might find pieces of yourself in it and you may not….you may see how she deals with the weight loss she wants to accomplish, both the good and bad approaches….how she orders food and fools herself into thinking that others selling her the food, are thinking it is for more than just her and how she deals with the other men and women in her life, along with their impressions of her body and more importantly her own impression of her body.
So I read the book front to cover all yesterday afternoon, laying in bed while I did so, I enjoyed it! And more importantly it gave me hope. Yes I know that it is a novel and not real life, and yes the hopping from 1st person, to 3rd and back again was a bit hard at first to adjust to at first….but it gave me hope regardless. That I could fight my own food addiction and make the right choices.
And that yes, we addicts do sometimes lapse. But it is not the end of the world, we can keep moving forward and find that person we are desperately searching for…that girl within! That is who this weight loss is for, and maybe by finding that inner confidence, we in turn find happiness, where ever that may take us.
The book is of course a tiny bit outdated, since to some of the characters in there, the world wide web is something new to use… and for those of us already posting blogs, I think we have moved past that stage in our lives….but the character Jemima Jones is still applicable to other aspects in our lives….and our strive to become a new person.
Here is a link for those of you interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767905180/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
And feel free to read the comments of others who have read it, who say it is horrible or say it is awesome. I think this is the type of book that you get out of it what you relate to. And I know it is a fantasy, that it does not root in reality at times, when it comes to her personal and professional life….but I can definitely tell you, that for some of us out there, her internal battle is one that we do relate to and while many of us are not surrounded by a group of nasty skinnys as she is, those types of people do exist and the fear we have of their opinion of us, does shape who we are and how we deal with the world.
And more importantly it is a lesson to us on who or what we do not want to become on this weightloss journey. Enough said.
So last night, I did not order pizza as I thought I maybe would earlier on in the day after McDonalds cave in. I instead ate a lean cuisine sandwich. I also ate some 100 calorie popcorn, and added some spray butter to it. And I also ate some pieces of Christmas chocolates that have been hanging around my house…but overall, it was not the end of my diet, I just knew that tomorrow was another day and as always, it would be another day to fight.
More importantly I kept thinking about how I had been avoiding this blog and weigh in in over the last 2 days. You see I had also failed as I interpreted it on Friday, I gave in to eating multiple pieces of bread and food from a local Packer party at work, and I had multiple helpings. I also went to a friend’s house that night and had pizza, while thin crust and supposedly a more healthy version, I know the whole half I had was way over my limit, but it was good none the less.
So as you can see from up above, I was hiding from myself and this blog, fighting stepping on the scale because I was avoiding my own problems and what I knew I had done wrong. I had taken a lean cuisine to work and it was in the fridge, but instead I ate what was on that counter, instead of it. I knew the pizza was coming Friday night and knew I could have planned my diet earlier in the day to allow it. And I most definitely know that as yesterday came that I started giving into that feeling of being a failure which in turn leads me to giving into my overeating urges. That need to stuff myself full…because food makes me happy and fills a void. Well and the stuff tastes awesome! lol
So with that said, I woke up this morning, with the purpose of finally posting a blog and weighing in, COME WHAT MAY!
And in turn, I weighed in multiple times, I even turned my scale on the floor, thinking that maybe this is broken…why oh why is it saying my weight is that number….it doesn’t make sense, I mean I had failed…I had given in…..and then as I sit here writing, a slow smile forming on my face, I remember. That while I gave into my addictions a bit, I did not totally cave in.
See prior to starting to watch what I was eating, I was making multiple trips to Qdoba, McDonalds….you name it and those multiple trips were for breakfast at times and lunch and dinner…so while I maybe went to McDonalds, it was only once and then the other food I had eaten, was of a more healthier variety. So yes, I do know that if I keep up the same over eating as I have done over the last couple of days, it will only start adding the pounds back on again.
But at the same time, I was good at other moments, I have to remember that and that this was not the end of the world or more importantly the end of my mission for a Brand New Me.
So I guess that is why, even after weighing myself multiple times, to make positively sure, my weight IS down…and while I feel good about myself, I also recognize, that this is still a battle, a battle against myself and my addiction and that there will be times I may fail, but it is not the end of the world. And that I have to stop seeing myself as a failure in more ways than one.
I know as time goes on it will get easier, but a battle it will be forevermore.
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 14 Weight: 260.8 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 7.8 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Day 13 was never posted…..bad Abby!
So here it is:
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 12 Weight: 263.2 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 5.4 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
Day 11 was never posted…..bad Abby!
Well I made it to the gym tonight after getting off work, I am tired and hungry. See ya tomorrow. Just do not feel like writing more then that. Well at least I am down a few scrawny milli-points. lol
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 10 Weight: 263.6 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 5 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby
So basically I am irritated, for some unknown reason, I have started gaining weight over the last couple of days. I’m not sure why, since I have been good about my plan. But whatever, the one thing that I know that has not occured is working out. I have been so busy between work and other things, I have either not made the time or simply did not have that option.
So with that said, tonight I go to work out, no ifs ands or buts about it. Plus I start writing down my points again, since even though I know I have been within range, I have not consistently writtent them down and maybe I am messing up somewhere, even though I don’t think I am! lol
Anyways, sorry for the late post, since this should have been done last night but I was just too tired after getting home from work at almost 8pm.
Day 1 Weight: 268.6 lbs
Day 9 Weight: 264.0 lbs
Total Weight Lost: 4.6 lbs
Till Next Blog!
Abby