Friday  - Food Journal

Thismorning when I got dressed I was surprised to find that a shirt I’ve had for 6 years is suddenly baggy on me. I’ve had it be loose at the stomach before, but it’s even quite loose around the bust and arms and everything. It almost feels a size too big! =) However, my skirt doesn’t feel big at all. Just an interesting note to add to my journal today =)

I had an 860 calorie breakfast around 10 am consisting of packaged cookies and a starbucks mocha frappuccino. I don’t think I ate anything until I drake a Dr Pepper on break at class, around 3. Around 5 I had some veggies with dip. I resisted candy bars at least 3 times today. Sometimes I look at my journals and think I didn’t do so great that day. I realize that I need to include all the things I avoided eating, that’s where my progress is.  I’ve avoided eating so many things that I have not even mentioned in my journals. The days that it looks like I did really really poorly are acctually what used to be typical days for me. 

where oh where has thursday gone?

I woke up late, was late to work. I don’t specifically remember anything I ate or even whether or not I ate. I went home and I ate something … a little bit of something but I really don’t remember what. Then I had a kit-kat candy bar when I went to the store. Then I went to class. After class I ate a big salad … probably 2 cups of greens with some grated cheese and shredded chicken breast and Italian dressing. I also had some chisp & salsa… probably 1.5-2 servings of tostitos white corn chips and … 1/2 - 3/4 cup salsa.

 Note: entry is backdated

Breakfast - Nothing
Lunch - leftover fried rice & stirfry and cantaloupe and a slice of bread … and… it was kindof a munchy lunch lol

then throughout the afternoon i munched on a bunch of potato chips & onion dip .. x.o diet sabatoge … and i’ll probably be skipping dinner cause i’m probably going to King Leer (shakespearean play) in lieu of english literature tonight and we have to leave early to get there!

Well.. I did skip dinner, but at the play our instructor bought cinnamon sugar roasted nuts and Horehound candy. He had no idea what it was… so I looked it up. It turns out it used to be a common cough remedy and it still is used for that today. It’s used as a tea, a cough syrup, and cough drops! If you’re into natural healing and natural remedies you may want to check it out!

 Well, after the play I got home at about 12:25 (past midnight) and I was starving so I ate two slices of whole grain bread with chunky peanut butter. Yuhm. And I had like 5 glasses of water with it.

I dont remember eating Breakfast or Lunch… I ate a bunch of mini heath bars (chocolate covered toffee) with my older sister while we both did our laundry (her machine isn’t working so she comes over to our house :P) and well.. that was pretty scary. I had a yummy beef & potatoes & carrots & corn stew and a thick slice of home made bread with butter =P *licks lips* yummy… home made food =)

oh look.. it’s me =) I took this earlier this summer as a “before” picture for my hairdying … it’s about back to that color now

Friday, August 24th, Food Journal

Honey Nut Cheerios
Plain Soymilk
Gatorade - 130 calories
Starbucks Iced Coffee - 100 calories
Hot Pockets Pizza Pocket
Veggie Plate with ranch dip

• Carrots
• Green Peppers
• Cucumbers
• Tomatoes
• Olives

Water

Reading Roni’s blog, her younger years remind me of myself.

When I was in 7th grade I weighed in at 150 at a doctors appointment. It didn’t bother me until weight became a subject of discussion one day, most likely in feb or march. The heaviest boy in my class was boasting, he weighed 83 lbs. Most of them were about 75. I weighed TWICE AS MUCH as them. Nearly all of the girls weighed more than the boys, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I weighed twice as much as this one boy with whom I had been competing with for the position of tallest person in the class for YEARS (later he shot up several inches and now I laugh remembering the fights).

I used to get teased that I was fat in elementary school but my mother always told me it was because I was “barrel chested” I accepted that up until this point, I could see it. I didn’t take much to dieting until 8th grade. I don’t recall what my starting weight was, but I’m guessing 150s. When I hit a plateau of 120lbs (I was 5′8″ tall), I was furious; All the girls I knew the weights of were below 110, some below 100. Looking back I know I should have been satisfied, I was taller than them all and bigger built than most of them. Height and build didn’t matter, that little (or big) number on the scale did.

I did all kinds of crazy things for dieting. For a few months I drank a breakfast shake in the morning (because I read that people who eat breakfast have higher metabolisms), ate a salad at lunch, and when my family acctually all sat down together for dinner, I’d eat dinner, otherwise I’d skip. I gave up all snacking and sweets (If only I had half that motivation now) but I could not lose any more weight. It got to the point my dad was worried I was anorexic and my mother quit letting me use the scale, but I knew where she put it so that didn’t change much.

Finally, after school got out, I got frustrated and gave up dieting all together. Not having the daily visual reminder of all those ultra thin girls is probably what stopped me from starting right up again. I gained back 30 lbs almost instantly because I was acctually eating again. I stopped weighing myself, I honestly didn’t care anymore. Then I gained and gained all summer and all through 9th grade. When someone noted that I had gained weight over the summer (early in 9th grade) I weighed myself. I was 100 lbs above what I had been while nearly starving myself.

For a while I started trying to lose again. When I noticed that I hardly lost anything, and I gained more back after I stopped each diet, I gave up dieting. I Decided I was “destined to be fat like mom” and just left it alone, pretty much eating whatever I wanted throughout the rest of my school. Yeah I was fat, but I was too frustrated to care.

Sometime during 9th grade a boy called me a “massive beast.” Simply to irritate him, I made it my new nickname, It didn’t stick for long, thankfully. It stuck long enough to tell him I didn’t care that I was huge.

Looking back I now realize I didn’t give any of my new diets long enough to work. I now understand how my mother gained all the weight she carries and that it isn’t destiny or genes making me be fat. She was thin until  her 30s she gained the weight after being extremely sick and having surgeries after having my younger sister. I didnt fully understand the portions of everything that I knew at the time.

Being the only fat one of my sisters didn’t help. My oldest sister always had a nice shape in my memory, my older sister was always a “bean pole” and my younger sister was not fat but not scrawny  like our older sister either. I felt like I was the only fat child on the planet. Living in a small town where petite-ness is prominent, even if I had never gotten fat, I would have felt large.

Throughout 10th, 11th & 12th grade I didn’t try to diet much. I had gotten used to being large, and the comments about it had pretty much stopped. I got upset about it sometimes but I never found anything that didnt sound like it was just too much work.

In the second semester of my senior year, the Junior and Senior classes (minus the few students who chose not to participate) put on an edited (for length) version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirate’s of Penzance. This kept me very busy, and somewhat active. Someone commented that I looked as though I’d lost weight. I couldn’t imagine that I had, I hadn’t been doing anything differently in my mind. However I did, I was down to 230 lbs and may have gone below that. I was around 235 at graduation. I gained a bit of weight over the next year, I didnt really pay much attention to anything. I would go for short sprees of trying to exercise or watch what I ate but I wasn’t determined.

Then over the past year I have been a little more determined but I still haven’t found anything to stick to. I’ve gone on and off treadmill sprees. In June I saw that I weighed 295 lbs and made a promise to myself that I would NEVER touch 300. Never ever ever ever ever ever. … never in 40-hundred-million years. So far i’ve lost about 15 lbs LOL. And that is where this blog’s journey begins.

So, it’s been a week since I last posted. Did anyone notice I was missing?

Friday afternoon I left town to go to my sister’s wedding. While I didn’t totally pig out, I didn’t stress about what I eat while I was gone. I know the day of the wedding was my worst day. But I don’t care. It was fun, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I just wasn’t going to stress about food during that. However, I was home tuesday night. I did in fact weigh and measure last week, weight was 282, scale is only accurate to the half pound I will backdate a post for all the measurements. While I was gone I weighed myself daily, it was always right by 280, the scale I used was the kind that a number disk spins around, it  was difficult to tell the exact weight. When I started working on everything I was at 295 which will be my starting point on my graph. My goal weight I’ll put at 200 for now even though my long term goal is really around 160.  School started up again yesterday. Scheduleing is being a nightmare right now. I have been completely off track for a week now. I’ll weigh myself later and edit it in. Hopefully I can come up with some goals that are more well-defined.

 So, because I had such short notice for my sister’s wedding I was not able to fit into my silver suit another 60 lbs should do it. So, while I was away I went shopping. I bought a nice brown skirt and a light dusty blue blouse, kindof twilight colored. Then i realized I had No brown shoes with me. I usually have a terrible time finding shoes so I bit my lip and told myself you’ll just have to wear black shoes with a brown skirt if you can’t find anything. Well, the first shoe store we went into, payless, had a pair of brown heels with a thin bow on the front in my size. They were adorable. I just thought “this is too good to be true” so I held my breath and tried them on. They fit PERFECTLY. I was so elated I could hardly think straight. I looked around and found a pair of black ones that were quite similar, no bow but a little strap across the front, they fit too, but in a size smaller. I also found a pair of black shoes that are identical to ones I wore out a couple years ago and have been wanting to replace ever since. Then I found these casual brown shoes that I’ve been looking for for three years. Needless to say, I bought them all. Everyone was shocked that I bought 5 pairs of shoes but they don’t understand how hard it is for me to find shoes (size 11:(). I LOVE that payless… I must return one day :). The other shoe store we went to after payless was much more pricey and nothing caught our eye.  So we decided we were done shopping. Anyway, I MUST post those shoes on here … :). They’re so cute :). I also now have a recent picture that I can post… I’ll have to crop myself out of a group shot but then you can all see me.

Back to real life … Work, school, excercise, cleaning, laundry, blogging, homework, [EDIT: and sleep] all crammed into so few hours. I must make sure to get all those things in.

 Nancy

Wednesday, Aug 15 Food Journal

I’ve gotten myself into this stay-up-past-midnight-sleep-in-till-noon mode and it’s really bad. Today I had Coffee and a Cinnamon roll for breakfast, just after noon. While trying to find a replacement for myself for work on Monday, which is drawing ever nearer, I found myself running out of options. At one point I found myself just sitting and waiting. I needed to talk to someone to get someone else’s phone number, who was my last chance at getting a replacement. Under the situation I started munching on a handful of  Peanut M&M’s. Well, a better verb might be inhaling, except for the fact they went into my stomach. Fortunately I recognized that I was just reacting to the stress and dumped my energy into something far more constructive =). I’ve known for a few years that under times of stress I tend to skip meals and munch on lots of junk, but I always attributed it to the fact that I was busy and that junkfood was easier to eat on the go than acctual stress induced junk eating. This is something I can look to prevent in the future =).

I need to attack my major downfalls. Snacking at work is definately my biggest problem right now. If I eat breakfast and lunch (or bring one on days I’m at work through lunch) I snack a lot less. I can also bring better snacks instead of buying that ever-present candy.

So… My first Goal is to eat breakfastbefore I go to work.

To acheive this goal i must:

• Get up no later than 8
• Go to bed no later than midnight

I’m going to find a way to create a line chart. Whether I have to keep track of my weight & measurements in a spreadsheet program or draw it myself pixel by pixel in MS Paint I am going to keep a line chart of my weight & measurements which I have not taken since I joined this site….

Goal : Weigh-in and measure weekly

To accheive this I must:

• Pick a day and make sure I measure each week =)
• I pick… Tuesday, laundry day …