Haven't posted in a couple of days. I did the exercise tape on both Saturday and this morning. I did not do it on Sunday. Right now I am taking Sunday as my day of rest. If I find that I need a day of rest during the week because of getting up so early every day I will change it after school starts back but for now I am leaving it on Sunday. I started getting up at 7 this week to prepare myself for getting up early for school.
I have been extremely faithful to the exercise and I have not binged on any of my foods. I have not given in to any of my cravings and I haven't gone and gotten any major treats, but I am still over eating a bit. I ate almost half of a weight watcher pie yesterday. It is pretty low points but still that is too much pie!!
The lunch at church was good and I only got one plate but it was pizza and pasta which is pretty heavy. Last week the over eating I did wasn't enough to keep me from losing weight because of the increased exercise. I sure hope that is the case this week, but I still need to get more conscious of the foods I am eating and I still need to make better choices if I seriously want to get into shape and get healthy. I am not going to get that smoking hot body like this!

Alright exercise tape done for today!! I really didn't want to get up and get going with that today but I am glad that I did. It was a great workout and I feel so much better about myself now that I have done it. I plan to get the house cleaned up today!! I started my period this morning so yesterday the cravings became very bad. I did over eat some. I had the big meal at the special restaurant with my parents and then I came home and although I didn't eat supper I did a lot of nibbling which adds up faster than a meal. I had a Bible School meeting last night and it was all that I could do to talk myself out of going to the store and getting some of that pralines fudge. I didn't do it though so I am glad of that.
Why do some people crave food so much more than others? It is like I came out of the womb wanting food. My mother says that I was always a hungry child and I can remember day dreaming about having certain foods and having them in abundance from a very young age. I had a very happy childhood and I didn't go without things I needed at all, so where did these dreams about food come from? It is so bizarre!! I hate feeling that way. I wish that I only thought of food as fuel for my body and not something to be enjoyed and savored. Craved even.
I was not an overweight child. I did not become overweight until after my children were born. But from my mid teens on, I have been unhappy with my body. When I was in high school I fluctuated between 112 and 118 pounds depending on if it was marching season or concert season at school. I guess my eating habits didn't change when I wasn't getting the exercise from marching and I would put on about 5 pounds. Then in college I gained up to about 124 and at 21 years old when I got married I weighed 124 pounds. I maintained that weight until after my first child was born when I was 25 years old. When I weighed 124 I wanted to weigh 110 and there began a series of different diets. I tried the slim fast approach. I tried skipping meals. I tried all kinds of unhealthy things. I didn't gain that much weight when I was pregnant with my son, about 25 pounds but they were very stubborn pounds and I still had every one of them when I got pregnant with my daughter nine months later. I gained about 18 pounds with her and that put me up to about 168. My husband lost his job and we had to move in with my in laws. I think that is when the weight gain began in earnest! It was a slow fade with lots of time of gaining and losing only to gain even more back after I lost it. I could never find a healthy regimen that allowed for the cravings and some indulgences without going overboard and getting completely off the diet. I can down an entire bag of candy around that time of the month or if something really stressful is going on at work or my personal life. I can nibble my way through way to many calories from boredom and then grazing in the kitchen. These are the destructive habits that I have got to stop!!
I really hope that by exploring my feelings and recording my successes here on this blog that I can overcome these destructive habits. I do want to have a healthy body and I do want to feel good.

Up and at it early today. It is hard to believe that school starts back for teachers in two weeks. My goal right now is to get up at 7 next week. Get up by 6 the next week and get up at 5 when school starts back to continue this exercise plan that I am on. I know if I get up and go ahead and do it there won't be as many things that get in the way. It seems like if I try to wait until the afternoon, I just don't have the energy and appointments, meetings, etc get in the way. This way I will hopefully be more faithful to it. Getting up at 5 sounds impossible and I will have to guard bedtime. But I am going to try.
I feel really strong right now. I feel in control. I have had times in the past where if I got as far off track as I did this weekend and had things coming up where I felt like I couldn't control it, I would just keep putting off getting back on track. I am so proud of myself for coming home from girls weekend and getting right back on track. I am not even worried about the meal today, because I know that I can come home and get right back on track. That one meal is not going to make that much difference. Besides seafood is good for you.
I don't have to eat the whole plate, but I don't have to feel guilty if I do!
I don't want guilty feelings associated with food. They don't help! God is not setting me up for failure. He does not want me to feel guilty about what I eat. He wants me to be strong and healthy. He wants me to feel good. He will help me to stay on track!

Even though girls weekend was not good for the diet this morning when I weighed I had lost 2 pounds. I am down to 191. I am so excited. It really motivated me to do even better and to stick with it. Yesterday I read Jillian Micheal's book  Wining by Losing. It is very motivating as well. She listed several reasons why people eat when they aren't hungry and I really related to most of them. Then she gave some suggestions on what to do in those circumstances and they were really good. Information and options is power. I think I was guilty of eating because of almost every reason she named. I think I rarely even let my body get hungry. I am not going to eat if it hasn't been at least 3 hours since the last time I ate. If I still feel hungry at the 3 hour mark and it is not time for a meal yet then I will have a snack. That way I know that I am not just eating because I am bored or upset or just craving something. The commercials are the worst. I love her suggestion of recording the show so you can fast forward through those. We have a DVR so it is not hard for me to do that.
I ate well yesterday and I have already gotten up and done the walking video today! Yea! Go me!!!

Girls weekend was not good for the diet. But I had a wonderful time bonding with my precious daughter and it isn't the random weekends that get you. However it does seem that my social life revolves around food. This Thursday my parents and I are going to check out a restaurant that my husband took me to. They have amazing crab legs. That is not going to be a low point affair. That means that out of the last 8 days I have had 5 of them that make it difficult to stay on track. How do people do this? Also this Sunday we are having some kind of guest at church and food fellowship afterwards. The food is being provided and I have no idea what it is going to be. So no way to know if I will be able to stay on my diet or not!
It is times like this that make it seem like I should just give up and forget about it. I am not going to do that mind you. I am going to do the exercise tape everyday. I am going to the grocery store today to make sure that I have plenty of healthy snack options and plenty of fruits and vegetables in my diet. I am not going to worry about those two random meals. The rest of my meals are going to be healthy. Out of the next 21 meals only two of them are out of my control. If I control the other 19 and exercise I should still be able to lose the weight!!! I need perspective and focus!!

It is very early in the morning for a Saturday morning. I have already gotten up and done the exercise tape for today. My daughter and I are leaving to go and visit my niece and go to the beach for a couple of days. I am so excited to have this time with her. I am so proud of myself for staying focused on my exercise even with the trip. Our hotel has a workout room so I am hoping to use that tomorrow since I won't be home to use the tape, but even if I miss one day that is still good.
I did have a little trouble with my eating yesterday. We went to a friends house for dinner and a movie. Dinner was pizza and they had chocolate chip cookies for dessert. I ate 3 small slices of pizza and I ate 5 chocolate chip cookies. That means I went over on my points for the day, but it is the first of my 49 points that I ate, so I am hoping that I have still made enough changes this week that I will be able to lose at least 1 pound by Wednesday.
I want the weight off so bad that I have to keep reminding myself that this is about changing my habits for life and not about getting the weight off. It is about finding a healthy plan that is livable and still maintain a healthy weight. I can't give up going to friends houses and I can't starve myself when there are not healthy options.
I can skip 5 chocolate chip cookies, but that is the part of the addiction that I am trying to deal with through this blog. One of the things I hope the blog will do is help me to get that addiction under control and help me to figure out what kinds of things trigger the addiction. Having the food in front of me and easily available is a problem. It was the problem with both the fudge and the cookies.
By the way, I have not eaten anymore of the fudge and I did have the courage to ask my daughter to take it out of the house. There was a time when I wouldn't have been that strong.

Well, this is three days in a row for the exercise tape. I made it through the first two days without any major food mess ups. Yesterday I discovered that my daughter had bought some fudge and brought it home and put it in the refrigerator. Apparently it isn't as enticing to her as it is to me. It is still there after almost a week with very little of any of it gone. I did find myself sneaking a few slivers, but not enough to mess me up. I wasn't really tempted to eat all of it because it is hers and I know she paid for it. I am not a thief. However my son works at the store where she got the fudge and even gets a discount on the stuff. He had to work yesterday. I was major tempted to either go buy some or get him to bring me some home. My husband is a sweetheart and he loves me thin or fat. He really doesn't look at me any differently when I gain the weight. He would have gotten in the car and gone and bought the stuff if I had asked him too. He doesn't want to sabotage me but he can't say no to me either. All those choices were some powerful temptations to overcome. I have a huge sweet tooth and it is really really good fudge.
I am proud of myself though, because I did it!! I just kept saying over and over " I want a smoking hot body!" It did seem to work.
Here's the problem though. I am not going to go the rest of my life without that fudge. I have got to break the addiction and find a way to live within reason where sweets are concerned. I didn't give in yesterday but what about today, tomorrow, next week, or next month. What is reasonable to expect from myself?
I feel strong about it right now. I don't think the fudge will be a problem today. I guess I just keep praying and keep repeating that phrase. "I want a smoking hot body!"