Be kind to everyone you meet. We're all fighting something.

 I'm rocking, I'm rocking...down FOUR pounds since I started! I'm not into the whole "weigh yourself every day" thing, but it's how loseit.com tracks weight loss, so I do it. I'm enjoying it NOW because I know there will be days the numbers don't move, or they move UP, not down.

As long as I LOG my food every day and start exercising, I'm good. The numbers will go down. But remember, my GOALS are ONE POUND at a time. So, if I only lose .25 of a pound or something, it's not as big a deal as if I were looking at the whole 100, which is really now the whole 94.

The thing that got me motivated this time around was how calm and confident all the people on the weight loss shows seemed to be. Once you get it together INSIDE, the outside changes to reflect that, so that was appealing.

I picked the photo above because it's how I feel some days—hanging on the edge, facing an onslaught of freezing rain (notice the snow on the rail?) all alone. We're all facing and fighting different things, and that's how many of us end up overweight. We self-medicate or self-soothe, with food.  Weight is emotional. It's not that hard to lose weight - you consume fewer calories than your body burns every day, and/or you burn more calories than you take in. The hard part is learning to deal with the emotional calories - the calories we consume because we're tired, angry, scared, stressed, anxious or insecure. Like an alcoholic will drink? We'll eat. People say you can "remove all alcohol from your life, but you still have to eat." And I call bull-pucky on that. It's not about removing the substance we abuse. It's about removing the emotional pain the substance soothes.

Anyway, I'm about to fall asleep, and am going back to bed now. I got up four hours earlier than usual and can't stay awake...so I'm taking a nap, then back to work!

Down ONE pound!

I've lost ONE pound of fat. I'm sure it's a combination of body waste, water weight and some fat, maybe not totally 100% fat, but the scale says, "237" so I'm taking it. That is NOT my hand, nor my fat, but the photo I found at efficientfitnessllc.com . Thank you!

What's different about my weight loss this time around is I'm going to lose it ONE POUND at a time. That way I have 100 SUCCESSES over the next year or so. And it's a lot easier to say, "I'm going to lose a pound," instead of "I've gotta lose 100 pounds." It's a mental thing.

So, that's what ONE pound looks like. I remember the day Oprah Winfrey pulled a wagon of fat onstage on her television show. It showed off ALL the weight she'd lost and wow. It was impressive! She looked GREAT!! So, visuals can help. I have a visual, er....photo of me in shorts. It scares and depresses me more than it motivates me, so I try not to look at it. When I'm skinny and gorgeous - except for the 9 square feet of excess skin I'll have hanging off of me, I'll post it here with a plea for donations for the skin removal surgery.

Anyway, I really can't afford to buy these little plastic replicas...they're $36 per pound on Amazon.com. Or, you can buy them at Anatomy Warehouse for $21.14. I'm spending all my money on fresh fruit and produce. It's expensive to be thin and eat healthy, so my skin surgery will have to wait. Here's what the Amazon and Anatomy fat looks like. If I had one of these I'd be thinking more about the waste of $21.14 plus shipping than I would what it looks like. Gross though isn't it?:

I'm proud of myself for not breaking down and running to the store to buy Mr. Pibb and chocolate doughnuts after the toilet clogged up yesterday and I spent $47 (my grocery money) to buy an assortment of toilet snakes, plungers and chemicals to unclog the darn thing. Sigh. Today was another day from hell and I did get out to the car and sat in it thinking about the doughnuts, and the soda. Then I thought, "No, deal with it. You're stressed, but food is not the answer." So I got out of the car, came back in and ate a peach and drank a glass of water. And that's how it works, whether you're on a diet or not. Life is stressful, but self-medicating with food, soda, alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping or gambling or whatever your choice of addiction is, isn't helpful. Feel the pain. Deal with it.

Okay, so ONE POUND DOWN. 99 pounds to go. Feeling good. I can do this.

Day One of My 100 Pound Count Down. Here's what this is. It's my journey to lose myself. Well, half of myself - the fat half. The half that says, "You can't wear that. People will think you're fat!" or the "No one will ever love you, let alone send you a valentine card," half. I want to save the, "Hey! It's the weekend! Let's hit the beach in a polka dot bikini and damn the excess skin flapping around looking like a squid crawled in my binki bottom" me.

So, I'm not going to wallow in negativity about it because who wants to read that crap? Not me! Hopefully I will maintain my sense of humor throughout this whole process. But I'm not making any promises. I get mean without soda. So, here's the deal. I have two cats — well, kittens actually. One is named "Baby," and the other is named "Sugar." They're three months old, maybe four. They're sisters. And, they're going on this journey with me.  

P.S. I didn't name them those things because I'm southern, but because those are their personalities. I only had Barbie dolls for one year of my life and they lost their heads to an armed invasion of green plastic Army dolls (remember those?). My brother and I melted them on a bare light bulb in his bedroom just because we could, and I was never entrusted with another doll for the rest of my life. It's probably better that way.

Anyway, "Sugar" loves to eat, just like me. She was the runt and I worried about her at first since Baby outweighed her for the first two months. Now Sugar is the "chunky monkey" and together, we're going to have to learn "portion control." Baby eats until she's full and then walks away, leaving perfectly good salmon pate in her bowl. Sugar, trying to be helpful I'm sure, will eat it just because it's there. I'm sensing a theme here.

I too hate to leave food on a plate. The alternative is to scrape it into cheap, crappy looking plastic storage bins and put it in the fridge until it grows legs and is big enough to take over the vegetable drawer. Who wants to kill a living thing? Even if it is a fungus, it's heartbreaking. So, portion control it is. Okay. I'm bored and tired already. So this is short.

More tomorrow. Then I'll bore you with goals and all that. I'm actually considering naming every one of my 100 pounds after some skanky, nasty, moronic jerk in my life that I'm trying to get rid of. Then I can accomplish two things at once - lose the weight and lose, metaphorically speaking, the person. I'll need to sleep on that. So, till tomorrow!