WHERE ARE THE PHOTOS?!!

I know. I know. I SAY I'm losing the weight, but no photos. I hear this a LOT. The thing is, I've failed so much in the past and gained the weight back that I'm afraid to post the photos online. That, and there are SOOOOO many trolls out there who like to really take before photos and use them to trash a person that I decided NOT to post full body photos until I have my after photos to go with them.  That said, you CAN see some weight loss in my face:

Here's a "before" photo of me (in red shirt) at 243 pounds in 2009, pretty much the same weight over the past 3-4 years. I lose then gain:

The "After" photo, me today, March 15, 2013:

207

I'm holding at 209 pounds! Yeah! Another 10 pounds to go to break the 200 mark—my nemesis. Every time I get close to 200 I freak and eat. Like, I just finished having a Subway sandwich, with chips, a soda and a Hershey bar. I had less than 600 calories yesterday and that's all I've had today. Why? I'm on a new medication for fibromyalgia that kills any appetite. I have to force myself to eat, and am not at all interested in cooking because the smell makes me nauseaous. So I went to the grocery store to get cat food for the cats, and Subway is next door....so...

Still not working out. The medication helps with energy, but I'm also very euphoric (nice word for "smashed" when I take it. I worry. But mostly I'm being cautious and lazy.

I need to stop overthinking and focus on baby steps.

Down to 207

207!! Wow! The pounds are falling off!

Okay. I admit I'm getting a little nervous. I didn't think losing weight would be this easy. 

My secret to fast weight loss? I GAVE UP SODAS. I noticed a drop in my temper IMMEDIATELY when I stopped the soda. Apparently there are mean drunks, and mean sugar addicts too. Alcohol and sugar affect the body in the same way metabolically and chemically so it makes sense. I feel less tense and wound up when I am not drinking 3-6 sodas a day...about 1,000 to 3,000 calories A DAY. No wonder I'm losing!

Yes. It's that easy. I also quit eating bread, dairy (cheese, milk), and potatoes. I ate a LOT of potatoes. They were cheap and there were a thousand ways to fix them...and I did. I didn't realize how many calories there are in ketchup, and then when I slathered them with butter...well, not good. I had crackers and toast with EVERYTHING...but have given that up too.

My diet now consists of portion controlled sizes, a gallon or more of water a day (HUGE HELP), tea instead of coffee with SIX spoons of sugar and a 1/3 cup of cream. Yeah...I know. Insane. I eat a ton of protein, mostly fish (talipia, shrimp, clams, tuna) and 5 servings of fruit and veggies a day. I juice too—both greens and fruit! And I have a BIG bowl of popcorn every night too. LOTS of fiber in my diet!

I'm STARTING to exercise more, but it's hard. When I do exercise I pay for it the next three days with my fibromyalgia flareups.  

I've tried Splenda, blended Splenda and all the alternative sweetners, but they don't do it for me. So I'm back to sugar. I use a tablespoon of organic brown sugar in my morning oatmeal, and when I have grapefruit chunks that are too bitter. But I'm weaning off of that. The goal is NOT to deny yourself everything good, but to limit what you take in. If having 2-5 teaspoons of sugar a day helps me eat healthy, then I'll have them.

Slow and steady!!

 

Wow! 209?! UNBELIEVABLE! And all I've done is cut out soda, bread, potatoes and reduce my portion sizes. I admit. I'm scared. This has been SO easy (I've had my binge days), that I wonder if it's cancer (Strike that!). But, it's a steady 1-2 pound loss a week. NOT unusual. I'm not exercising much. Walking about 10-15 minutes a day, and not every day at that.

I've moved through a LOT of emotional stuff, and I've prayed a lot. I really think trusting God with my eating this time has made a difference. So I'm going to trust Him MORE. Like, when I get these cravings for sugar. I am SO ADDICTED to sugar. Very hard to resist. I'm like an alcoholic...I get it now. I don't drink because of alcoholism in my family, but my body/genetics respond to sugar like it was alcohol. I get "high" from ingesting sugar. It makes me feel GOOD! But, I'm cutting it out...or trying to. I'm using a splenda/sugar blend. Eventually I want to give up ALL sugar except that I get from fruit.

Not much to say today except "Hurray!!!"

I haven't been posting regularly, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working out, or losing weight! I'm down a WHOLE SIX POUNDS IN ONE DAY! Yay! I haven't lost all week and thought I was on a plateau. But then I went to see my tax gal [stress, stress, stress] and today I dropped six pounds.

I've also started taking my thyroid pills again, as well as J.Crow's Lugol's Solution. (see the links from Amazon below if you want more info.) I have always had "low normal" thyroid issues. I've been to more doctors than  I can remember, even holistic ones (who charged more and did less). I have all the signs of a poorly functioning thyroid on top of having an official medical diagnosis of "low normal":

• Depression
• Muscle and Joint aches 
• Weakness in the arms
• Plantars fasciitis in your feet
• Anxiety
• Hair loss, thinning hair or hair that is brittle and coarse
• Bowel problems, either constipated or diarrhea
• Dry skin, or skin that is coarse, rough and scaly

Because Synthroid, the prescription thyroid solution, must be prescribed by a doctor, and most doctors blindly follow TEST results rather than actually EXAMINING THE PATIENT and OBSERVING THE SIGNS IN THE BODY and using test results in an intelligent way....I had to self-diagnose and medicate. After noticing that all these low thyroid symptoms go away or reduce after taking Lugol's (also OTC -Over the Counter) and Raw Adrenal, I had that "aha" moment and said, "I'm onto something here."


I also have cut out sodas, (3-5 a DAY (2,300 calories or so) ) and am only drinking 3-4 a WEEK (and still weaning from them). My goal is to be soda free this month. To maintain a 243 pound weight loss I'd have to be taking in about 2,400 calories. But I'm eating between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day. I'm sustaining a two-pound a week loss, which is healthy and good, but it feels crazy!



I'm also eating oatmeal for breakfast every day...usually with chopped dates and almond milk on it. I eat 2-3 HUGE salads a day and have made beans a staple in my diet. I'm walking 15 minutes a day and slowly building lifting weights into my schedule.

I'm NOT doing anything radical. When I make a mistake, or give into temptation, I say, "Well, that wasn't good. But get back on track." No guilt or beating myself up. Forgive yourself and focus on the goal again. Don't hate yourself! Be PROUD that you're making progress!

Bulgarian Sand Bag

The exercise in the photo to the left, the one with the hot guy in awesome shape swinging what looks like a purse the size a friend of mine carries, is a great way to shed pounds. If you have a purse like this, and many women do! Use it. Otherwise, get yourself a "Bulgarian Sand Bag."

Also called a "Bulgarian Training Bag,"  these torture, er, training tools were created by Ivan Ivanov, a former Bulgarian Greco-Roman Olympic athlete to train Olympic wrestlers. The originals are made of goat skin, filled with sand and padded with wool. Oh...and the US Navy SEALS use them too, so you know it's a workout.

I know. Plain old dumb bells and weights aren't enough...so I found this while surfing UFO videos on YouTube. Don't ask me how I went from aliens to Bulgarian Sand Bags, but I did.

Okay, new, and looking suspiciously like an awesome shoulder bag, the commercial versions of the Bulgarian Sand Bag cost about $150 to $250. But you can make your own for MUCH MUCH less. No, they won't look as sexy, and you'll get duct tape adhesive all over your hands, but think of all the money you'll save!


I have a video of the the "how-to" make your own below. I'll post a video of me making my own as soon as I can scrounge some inner tubes and dried beans. You can also use wood pellets, or mulch or whatever you can lift. Words cannot describe this thing, although here's a GREAT article by Joe Hashey on what the Bulgarian sand bag is and how to use it. Or scroll down a bit. I embedded Joe's video with Joe demonstrating the homemade bag in use. Seamstress types (male or female), feel free to whip out the sewing machine and encase the rubber in some durable vinyl or canvas if you don't want black marks on everything. Rubber inner tubes tend to leave skid marks. They're not hard to get up, but who needs the hassle?

So why all this weird equipment? Because I'm going to lose weight cheaply and with stuff that most people can either afford, or find or make themselves. A lot of people say you have to have expensive weight sets, or gym memberships...and while those are nice, what if you can't afford them? Joe has, by the way, some great tips on cheap weight equipment...including the sand bag.

And here's the workout. That's Joe in the video. No, I don't know him, but I'm impressed at how he can sling that bag around! If you can keep up with ALL 7 minutes of this, you'll be a limp rag on the floor I'm sure! Okay. Now go to Walmart, buy a truck innertube, some duct tape and zip ties and have a fun afternoon making various weight sand bags!!

My Sink

My real sink. Not a stock photo!

Good News, Bad News
The bad news is, I live in a VERY tiny studio apartment. It has ONE sink, and it's in the bathroom. That means whenever I cook I first wipe everything down with vinegar (kills more germs and bacteria than bleach). The good news is, according to all official reports, bathrooms have fewer germs than kitchens. Whew!

This is what my sink looks like 75% of the day. Honest. The other 25% it is filled with dishes, well, a plastic tub set in the sink that is filled with dishes, pots and pans. To wash my dishes I must either set up a small table to put the clean dishes on, or I have to walk out to the living area and put them on the counter there to dry. I used to set up the table, but steps are steps and with 10 steps (5 to and 5 fro), I can rack up a LOT of steps in a day washing my cereal, salad and snack bowls as well as a variety of plates.

When space is at a premium, it's good to stay on top of things so they don't pile up. The thing was, a year ago I wasn't so good at that.


What A Difference A Coach Makes
I can't remember what month, year I met Lorraine Esposito, but I remember it was online and I stepped in to defend her against a loudmouth, obnoxious, hateful, spiteful bully in a forum we were in. We hit it off online and progressed to phone calls and emails. Then we swapped services, my writing for her coaching. Best deal I ever made.

Lorraine helped me identify what mattered to me. Then she helped me learn self-discipline, not by doing all sorts of things with my business or my life, but with my sink.
"Think of one small, very small thing you'd like to see change in your life," she prompted.
"My sink. I'd like to get up to a clean sink every morning," I said.
And so it began. For a month the only thing I HAD to do at the end of every day was to clean the sink. Even with dishes stacked 2 feet high, it still only took 10-20 minutes. I could commit to that. Or thought I could. There were days I didn't clean the sink. I was, I told myself, just too tired. Most days I FORCED myself to do it, grumbling all the while. But then I got the hang of it and 4 out of 7, then 5 out of 7, then 7 out of 7 days the sink got cleaned. I felt better when I went to bed. I felt better when I got up. I liked how I felt about myself when I accomplished this task.

It took a month or more to get to that point, but as each month goes by it's a habit I continue to enforce. Sure, there are times now and then when I deliberately leave dishes in the sink. But it's a choice and it doesn't usually feel good. It's usually because I've been sick. But recently I've started "cleaning as I go" and that makes it REALLY easy to clean at night. Most nights now I just have a glass, or maybe a bowl if I've had a fruit snack (grapes usually). It's nice!

I tried this sink cleaning exercise years ago with "the Fly Lady." She too encourages people to "just clean the sink" as a way to begin tackling household messes. That didn't work for me because a clean sink wasn't motivation enough for me. What Lorraine did was help me figure out why self-discipline was important to me and link it to why I cleaned the sink.  And that made all the difference. I've done the same thing with my weight loss this time—found a motivation and linked it to logging my meals. When that habit is rolling, then I'll exercise for 5, then 10, then 15 minutes a day.

The Miracle of Minutes
So many people fail at things they try to do, like quitting smoking, losing weight, or exercise, because they try to do it all at once. Then they get overwhelmed and give up. The last time I lost weight I started out with a two-hour a day commitment at the gym. Yeah. That lasted six weeks and then I was just too tired, sick and sore to keep it up. I could have kept it up if I'd known the principle of "baby steps." If it had occurred to me that while I was sick and sore I could just work out 10 minutes a day, but keep up the habit of GOING to the gym. But no, it was ALL or NOTHING. And it ended up being NOTHING. If I couldn't go for two hours, I just stopped going. You know how that ended.

The miracle of minutes is that they're baby steps. You build on them. You do what you can and then push yourself a little more than what you think you can each time. Over time what you're doing GROWS. I could clean my sink, the push was to clean it every day, one day at a time. Exercise, eating right, logging my food...they're all habits I'm developing one step at a time. The only one pushing me is me, but as long as I'm taking BABY STEPS, I can do it. Like this blog. My goal is to write something EVERY DAY.  My goal is to LOG my food every day at Lose It! But I can't do it all at once. I start with ONE thing and focus on creating THAT habit, like logging my food. Then I tie exercising to that, then something else to that. Pretty soon it's all coming together and the weight is coming off!!

Habits to Form
What habits am I working on forming now? Here's my list. But remember, I'm ONLY tackling ONE of these at a time! Those in yellow are the two things I'm consistently doing NOW. The others I do when I think about it, or remember them, (a way to prime the pump!!), but they're next on the list!

• Blogging every day
• Logging my food  every day
• Keeping a "Choices" journal (writing down why I made the choices I did and my justification for each choice so I can identify my process)
• Exercise every day, even if it's just 5 minutes a day some day
• Clean off my desk and write out a "to-do" list each evening of the next day's activities
• Eat ONE frog a day (Not a real frog, a distasteful or difficult task as outlined in Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time)
  

And to think, it all started with cleaning the sink.