Well I'm struggling right along as usual. I wish I could be on here more often, but work right now is very demanding, and I've been putting in 1-2 + hours of overtime every day for the last month (hope to afford that new Burberry purse soon, ha ha). The overtime is likely to continue through this entire year and into the beginning of 2011, as we go through a major computer system conversion. My stress levels are admittedly high, but I've been pounding it out on the treadmill almost every night now. I would love to be on the blog every night, but by the time I get home from the office I have time to do one "me" thing and these days it is exercising. (It helps counteract the ocean-like amounts of coffee/sugar/creamer I have at work every day.)
Although, I did have a loss at this week's Weight Watchers meeting, and as small as it was, I will take it! It was in the right direction! I was surprised, because we ate out a lot over the Memorial Weekend (above), since we were away from home for the holiday. I continue to eat too much of the wrong thing whenever we go out, but thankfully in the real world (work and home), I eat fairly healthy and have been exercising more regularly now. We have another huge vacation coming up in just two weeks, where we'll be gone out of town for over a week. I mentally plan out how I will eat right and walk in the mornings while we're gone, but it never seems to work out that way. Instead I relax, enjoy sleeping in, and try every yummy sounding appetizer on every menu.
I love my WW leader Marci, and her mantra lately has been for all of us to think like a thin person would. She said we don't have to wait until we've lost ALL the extra pounds before we start behaving like the person we want to be once we're at goal. The tidbit she passed on to us- Act the way you'd like to be, and soon you'll be the way you act! Not sure if that's her original quote, but I wrote it down anyhow. She also said that we have to concentrate on letting go of all the ways we've always done things (the things that got us overweight to begin with), and to instead create new habits. Her acronym for habit- Having A Bite Involves Thinking! Ain't it the truth. And sadly, sometimes I think about the bite, but I still do it anyhow. That's the part I have to change.
I do love going out to eat with my husband and our family and friends, but I know it's more about spending the time with special people, not chowing down on a huge plate of pasta. The food is secondary to the conversation and company. Knowing that mentally and putting it into practice, well, I'm still working on it.
I keep a photo in my WW book, of me at my absolute heaviest (even more than the photos I have on my sidebar). It was well before I met James. I was at a low low point in my life, in an unhappy place with both myself and my first marriage, and I had pretty much just given up and accepted that this was how my life was going to be forever, and I didn't care about anything, not even myself. I think I was in my early thirties at the time. I can't tell you what I weighed then, because I stopped getting on the scale. I will be 44 this year, and I just can't ever see me being in such a state of mind again. The weight and the self-hate were a vicious cycle that I thankfully broke about seven years ago. I may still be fighting with the sixty or so extra pounds, but I really DO care about myself, and I want to make sure that everyone else around me can just look at me and know that I love myself and feel joy about life and that I'm taking care of myself the best that I can!!
Sandy
