Finally Getting Fit

When it comes to losing weight, rewards can be an important factor in keeping you working towards your goals. However, if you’re like me, you have a hard time coming up with rewards for yourself.

To help you out, today’s Thursday Thirteen is a list of weight loss reward ideas. Enjoy!

1. Books! I have regular book rewards on my list.
2. Road trip. I love road trips and have a few of these for rewards on my list.
3. Jewelry. Maybe in the form of a new piercing(s), a necklace, a bracelet, a charm for a charm bracelet…
4. A massage. Need I explain this?
5. Manicure. Even a bit of a buff and polish can leave you feeling like a million.
6. Burn your fat clothes! Someone suggested I work some sort of ritual like this into my rewards.
7. Declare a ‘me’ day where you get to relax and do whatever else you want for the whole day.
8. Buy tickets. Concert, play, whatever event catches your fancy.
9. Spa day. Yes, this is different from the ‘me’ day. This is a day with the intention of pampering. Yum.
10. A new toy. How long has it been since you bought yourself a cool new gizmo or gadget?
11. A weekend (or day) away with a friend/spouse.
12. Clothes shopping. If you have a good amount of weight to lose, you’ll have to do it eventually…
13. Start planning for baby! This is part of my final goal reward and is something that has gotten me through many of my morning gym workouts.

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens at Fiction Scribe, Write Anyway, and The Book Stacks

This is a success story from earlier this month, but I don’t think a few weeks of dust on the story will make it lose anything.

Many people who go on the journey to lose weight blog about their stories not only to have somewhere to talk about things but also to find people who are going through the same experiences. Support has always been an important part of weight loss and blogging has made it easier than ever to get in touch with other weight loss bloggers.

In addition to featuring people who are on their weight loss journeys, I would also like to feature success stories I come across.

Yes, I know; success stories sometimes only serve to make you feel grumpy about what is going on in your life. However, they can also serve as a big motivation. Other people are doing it and so can you.

Thus it is my pleasure to feature the first success story here at Finally Getting Fit.

From the headlines of CNN.com comes a story of a woman who was nearing the 300 pound mark in 2004 and stepped back from that line to lose 168 pounds and thirteen dress sizes.

Writer Lynn Bering was like many of us before we started losing weight – no self-esteem and increasingly avoiding situations where we would get attention.

But Lynn is living a lovely life now and is happy to be able to pick up her granddaughter. She even has a blog where she has been keeping track of her journey. You can visit that site by clicking here.

This is dedicated to everyone who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine.

Dear Diary,

For my birthday this year, my daughter (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 43 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.

I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer named Belinda, who identified herself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear.

My daughter seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.

MONDAY:
Started my day at 6:00 a.m. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Belinda waiting for me.

She is something of a Greek goddess - with blond hair, dancing eyes and a dazzling white smile. Woo Hoo!! Belinda gave me a tour and showed me the machines. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which she conducted her aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring! Belinda was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time she was around. This is going to be a FANTASTIC week-!!

TUESDAY:
I drank a whole pot of coffee, but I finally made it out the door.

Belinda made me lie on my back and push a heavy iron bar into the air then she put weights on it! My legs were a little wobbly on the treadmill, but I made the full mile. Belinda’s rewarding smile made it all worthwhile. I feel GREAT-!!

It’s a whole new life for me.

WEDNESDAY:
The only way I can brush my teeth is by laying the toothbrush on the counter and moving my mouth back and forth over it. I believe I have a hernia in both pectorals. Driving was OK as long as I didn’t try to steer or stop. I parked on top of a GEO in the club parking lot. Belinda was impatient with me, insisting that my screams bothered other club members.

Her voice is a little too perky for early in the morning and when she scolds, she gets this nasally whine that is VERY annoying. My chest hurt when I got on the treadmill, so Belinda put me on the stair monster. Why the hell would anyone invent a machine to simulate an activity rendered obsolete by elevators? Belinda told me it would help me get in shape and enjoy life.

She said some other crap too.

THURSDAY :
Belinda was waiting for me with her vampire-like teeth exposed as her thin, cruel lips were pulled back in a full snarl. I couldn’t help being a half an hour late, it took me that long to tie my shoes.

Belinda took me to work out with dumbbells. When she was not looking, I ran and hid in the restroom. She sent another skinny bitch to find me.

Then, as punishment, she put me on the rowing machine — which I sank.

FRIDAY :
I hate that bitch Belinda more than any human being has ever hated any other human being in the history of the world. Stupid, skinny,little cheerleader.

If there was a part of my body I could move without unbearable pain, I would beat her with it. Belinda wanted me to work on my triceps. I don’t have any triceps! And if you don’t want dents in the floor, don’t hand me the barbells or anything that weighs more than a sandwich. The treadmill flung me off and I landed on a health and nutrition teacher. Why couldn’t it have been someone softer, like the drama coach or the choir director?

SATURDAY :
Belinda left a message on my answering machine in her grating, shrilly voice wondering why I did not show up today. Just hearing her made me want to smash the machine with my planner. However, I lacked the strength to even use the TV remote and ended up catching eleven straight hours of the Weather Channel.

SUNDAY :
I’m having the Church van pick me up for services today so I can go and thank GOD that this week is over. I will also pray that next year my daughter (the little slut) will choose a gift for me that is fun — like a root canal or a hysterectomy. I still say if God had wanted me to bend over, he would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds!!!

Monday weigh in time!

There comes a time in a woman’s life… Well, the time comes every month and is often annoying, presenting weight gain, moodiness, and other fun things men have come to realize can be soothed with chocolate and getting-out-of-her-way.

Can you guess what I’m talking about?

Usually at this time, I choose not to get on the scale. I know there will be a gain because there always has been in the past. I used to consistently have a gain of five pounds, but since taking on a healthier lifestyle and eating better foods, that gain is usually less.

Even with that fluctuation, that doesn’t mean we can’t check in!

How are you doing? What’s going on in your life? How are you doing with your goals and what is your plan of action this week?

I am doing okay. I still seem to be having trouble with whatever it is that’s making me fatigued most of the time. That’s why I did myself (and my husband) a favour by skipping the gym this morning, sleeping in a few hours, and getting as rested as I can so I can get some housework done.

I am planning on the housework giving me my usual daily moving around, but I’m still going to go for a walk later. (Hopefully I can drag the husband along.)

This week I am going to the gym every morning except Thursday when I have volunteering. I really need to buckle down on the water, but if I kick my arse on it, I know I can get back to where I need to be.

How is it going for you?

Of all the areas on the body people want to tone up, you hear about people wanting to shape up their stomach area the most. It never fails. And why not when we’re in The Age of the Beer Gut?

I am the same, by the way. I would happily not eat for a month if it meant I could lose my belly bulge.

As you will probably begin to realize as time passes on this site, I’m someone who likes to try new (and old) things. I’m not someone who obeys the dietitian at all costs and shudders at considering herbal remedies and alternative therapies.

Thus when I found Chinese Holistic Health Exercises, I was quite interested.

This site not only gives you ab exercises, but it lists deep breathing exercises and massages to help your abdomen. (Massages. Drool.)

They also have a discussion forum where you can relax and have a bit of a chat while learning about other people’s experiences with these exercises.

Do I know if it works? No.

What I do know is that they emphasize checking with your health professional before trying any of it. While it may just cover legalities, it’s also a sign to me that they don’t believe they are gods among dieters and they don’t think their exercises are a cure all.

If you explore this site and find you’re interested in giving it a go, let me know. I’m happy to be any of my readers’ exercise partner.

Have a happy and healthy Friday and weekend, all. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t do sober and remember the scale beckons on Monday.

I love the Thursday Thirteen memes (no comments about me being a list addict…) so I have decided to bring my addiction to this blog as well.

Lists are fun and easy as well as being a facet of this ‘tell me in five seconds’ attention span world.

This week I have decided to start with a bit of motivation, and I encourage you to do this meme either on your own blog or in the comments section if you don’t have one. (If you want help setting up a weight loss blog, feel free to let me know.)

So without further ado…

1. I want to have a healthy body to carry a child with.
2. I’m younger than my husband. I want my fitness to show that.
3. More energy! I could always use more energy.
4. A better sex life. (Yeah, someone had to say it.)
5. To not look silly dancing. I love dancing, but fat dancing doesn’t always look the greatest.
6. To not have to hunt around in the plus size section of stores. Gah.
7. Because I’ve been overweight for as long as I can remember.
8. To feel beautiful and happy about how I look.
9. So my husband has a hot wife.
10. To stick it to everyone I know back in the States.
11. So I don’t have to deal with evil looks from people.
12. To avoid diabetes.
13. To prove to myself that yes, I can do it.

Check out my other Thursday Thirteens at Fiction Scribe, Write Anyway, and The Book Stacks

I was reading the diary of a friend who had weight loss surgery (please do not let that fact colour your view of the rest of this post) and she mentioned something I hadn’t heard of before – water loading.

We all know that water is very important whether or not you are talking about weight loss.

I have read in a few places that you shouldn’t drink too much water while you’re eating because it washes food out of your stomach too fast, dilutes stomach acid, and keeps you from getting all the nutritional goodness you could be getting out of your food.

However, water loading proposes you don’t drink anything with your meal. For up to fifteen minutes before a meal, you can drink as much as you want. Then, after the meal, you don’t drink anything for ninety minutes.

Of course I decided to try it out.

I usually drink so much water before, during, and after a meal that my husband has made comments in the past. I always equated drinking a lot of water with meals with feeling full, so I always did it. However, I found something quite interesting when I tried water loading.
One day may perhaps be a fluke or have other reasoning, but I find the potential from the results rather interesting.

I tried out the stopping drinking fifteen minutes before my lunch today. I found that when I was eating, I definitely wanted to drink just as much as I usually do, but I resisted. I also found that I felt full faster with noticeably less.

Very interesting.

I’m going to continue on with the experiment and see if it helps with things.

Around November or December of last year, I began losing motivation with my dieting and exercise and needed to get my head back on track. I took the holidays off with the vow that the new year would bring a new me. I started off the year not with exercise but with a week of drinking more water.

I lost four pounds by drinking more water.

Anyone who has dieted, is dieting, or has anything to do with weight loss will tell you water is very important.

Did you know that a good amount of the time you think you are hungry, you are really thirsty? Talk about making a difference in how much you eat if you drank when you were truly thirsty.

The question is how much you are supposed to drink. Drinking too little or too much water can have bad consequences, so how do you know what’s safe?

The longstanding advice of eight to twelve ten ounce glasses OF WATER day won’t steer you wrong. If you’re like most of the world, you’re probably not getting this much, so the increase will be an improvement. You might have to urinate a bit more often, but that doesn’t last forever, I promise.

You might hear, however, that to calculate how much water you need, you have to divide your weight in pounds. The number you get is the number of ounces you should drink a day.

That sounds great in theory, but I for one cannot drink five 750ml bottles of water a day. It makes me feel ill.

So I take the middle of the road stance. Three 750ml bottles, which is more than the eight to twelve bottles and less than the weight in half calculation.

A good way to keep track of whether or not you’re drinking enough water is to keep an eye on the colour of your urine. Yep, check the potty. Lighter is better. The darker your urine, the more likely you are dehydrated.

Hello everyone! It’s that time again – Monday.

Bleh.

Current Weight: 250

Ah, the lovely world of the plateau. But, as they say, no loss and no gain is still a good thing!
This past week has been very hard for me. Something is making it so I’m tired all the time and, if I let myself sleep (which I did this weekend) my days just disappear. I can’t really afford to get that behind with work, so I’m trudging through and trying a few things (red meat every night this week to see if it has to do with iron) before trudging to the doctor.

This week I’m hitting it hard at the gym. I completed my first thirty minutes on the elliptical ever. (I usually have a shorter period time mixed with another machine.) That thing is definitely not as easy as you think it would be, but you can really feel it working all your leg muscles.

My plan this week is to keep on with the elliptical as well as switch up how much time I spend at the gym by throwing in some extra treadmill time on top of my usual routine.

I also need to get going on drinking water again. I would not be at all surprised that my lack of the minimum water over the past week has contributed to my plateau continuing. (Are you drinking enough water? I’ll be talking about how to find out how much you should be drinking later this week.)

So how are you doing? What were your successes/little naughty things from last week? What is your plan of action for this week?

Okay, I tried this and it definitely takes more than ten minutes, but it’s still a great workout. In about twenty minutes, I can feel my muscles all over my body. This workout gets you to work on multiple areas in short spurts so you have more of a rounded out experience.

I can already tell I’ll be able to do this for few weeks before I have to increase the amount/reps/time to get the same benefits. I think I’ve just used muscles that haven’t been used like that in a long time.

This is a great workout if you’re like me and get bored easily. You tend to do each one for just a minute or two, so you’re moving and switching to the next exercise pretty quickly.

The awesome thing about this is if you truly only have ten minutes, you can pick and choose, or you can do fewer reps to save on time. (Or just go faster, but you could end up injuring yourself that way.

So, courtesy of Team Sugar, my chosen workout today (the stuff in parentheses are my comments):

(more…)

I was getting dressed to go out yesterday - something I actually do with a bit of pleasure now - and I stood in front of the mirror for a bit to look at myself. My pants are a little loose - just enough for me to notice. The shirt I was wearing was no longer a little too tight.

I thought for a while that I don’t look horribly overweight. I wondered what I would have looked like had I kept on gaining weight, which was easy for me to imagine because I know where my weight goes when I gain.

I didn’t like that track of thinking, so I tried to imagine what I’ll look like when I lose weight by pulling my shirt tight, running my hands down my sides to try to accentuate my curves, and even poking and prodding at my face a bit to see what changes might happen there as the weight goes.

It was a good experience for me, and I found myself smiling. I then realized what one of my problems in the past was.

I had always avoided mirrors for the most part because I didn’t like myself or the way I looked. Since coming to live with my husband and him showing me he loves me no matter what, I began liking myself a bit more. If someone could love me as much as he does, then there must be something worth loving.

It’s been a long road to learn to like myself, a road I’m still on, but I know that’s an element in getting healthy that I had been missing.

If you love someone, you’re more than willing to help them and get the best for them. If you don’t like someone, you’re far less inclined to do anything to better his/her live.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

One of the reasons I was never motivated to lose weight before is because I never liked myself all that much so I never really had a vested interest in my own good. Diet and exercise was torture because it was like bringing flowers and nice things to someone I really didn’t like every day.

So if you’re having a hard time getting motivated to start losing weight, try to consider it might be because you’re not particularly interested in you as a person or you might not like yourself all that much to keep going with a weight loss plan.

AKA: Children in China are Starving

I think it’s Africa these days, but I’m old enough to at least been on the end of the starving children in China statement.

Sometimes weight is just weight. Someone gets a desk job and puts a few pounds on. But for the people who are overweight or obese and have been for years, if not most of their life, there is usually a lot more to it than just weight.

That’s why in this blog, I want to address some of the other things besides your desk job which can lead to being overweight. I have a lot of personal causes, but I want to move beyond the scope of my personal weight loss and issues to issues many people might have.

Getting back to the above, I’m willing to be you heard something like the above when you were young. Either that or you were mature enough and in a family situation where you knew you should eat as much as you can right now because you don’t know when the next meal is coming.

There is yet another alternative in this group, and that is you heard a lot of:

Finish your dinner or no dessert!

You have to finish your plate before you can go out and play.

Or,

You finished your entire plate! What a good boy/girl!

Now picture me sighing and shaking my head.

I didn’t realize this was such a big issue until I came here to Australia. My husband and I would eat either out or in, it didn’t matter and I’d reach a point in the meal when it would just be uncomfortable to finish the rest of the meal. Eventually my husband kept telling me again and again that it was okay to not finish the meal.

It may seem the simplest thing in the world to simply stop eating when you’re full, but it’s not. At home, I would feel guilty if my husband cooked and I didn’t finish. I felt not only like I was letting good food go to waste but that I was somehow insulting him and his hard work by not finishing. When we were out, I wasn’t worried about insulting anyone, but I still felt guilt when I pushed a plate or bowl with food still in it away and said, “I’m finished.”

This is a case of easier said than done if you have hang-ups about food. It took me months to be able to be reasonably comfortable saying I’m finished when I truly was finished. It’s truly a habit you have to teach yourself. Learning it, however, is one of the factors that kept me around the 260 mark (my highest weight) instead of going any higher.

If you have troubles with this (when you’re at home, at least), take your leftovers and go through the act of making them leftovers. Even if you’d never really eat the leftover amount later, you’re still putting it away in the fridge and not into the wastebasket.

You won’t get the guilt from wasting it or insulting anyone, and you’re still teaching yourself to say your finished when you are really finished, not when your mind/society/your parents say you’re finished eating.

Remember: You should not be deriving a sense of accomplishment from finishing your plate.

A while ago, I heard the word ‘liposuction’ and was surprised when I had an ‘oh, hell no’ reaction. Why was I surprised? Because I had no information whatsoever. I didn’t know how it worked, what the doctors did, or anything about the process, really…

And so I went on a quest for knowledge. I asked around at all my weight loss support groups, on my blogs, and even on my work forum

The number of responses has been fantastic. Thank you to everyone who voted and/or commented.

I was expecting the results somewhat, but I was quite surprised at the strength of the responses.

More people than not are saying that they would have weight loss surgery and 65% percent of the people who voted said a straight yes.

I grew up with the mentality that anything that wasn’t worked for with blood, sweat and tears isn’t something anyone deserves to have. Thus, for a long time, weight loss surgery seemed wrong to me.

Then I started meeting people who couldn’t lose weight. They faced their addictions, their psychological ties to food, ate right, exercised, and yet they couldn’t lose the weight. Were they to be condemned because their bodies didn’t work quite right?

I feel much better having a wider vision of what weight loss surgery is, how it works, and what life is like for people afterwards. I hope you feel the same.

If you haven’t voted, please do so and feel free to comment. The conversation is still going and you are definitely welcome to let me know your opinion at any time.

Hello everyone! It’s everyone’s favourite day of the week (insert collective groan here): Monday!

Yes, it’s Monday, otherwiese known as weigh in day. So why don’t we get it all over with?

Starting Weight: 256
Current Weight: 250

Nope, no loss from last week. However, I’m counting it as a positive, given the weekend I had.

I honestly considered calling today a no go as far as weighing in went. We all deserve and need to take time off occasionally, and that’s what I did this weekend. I declared a mental health weekend for myself and stayed as far away from stress as I could.

Avoiding stress meant staying away from the computer, no weekend work, a lot of time spent with my husband, good television…and not worrying about what I ate. I didn’t go out and make silly decisions like death by chocolate cake and a bunch of coctails, but I could have done better.

My portion control wasn’t so great. I ate more than I needed to. However, it was an excellent weekend that was just what I needed to calm down and focus, so I don’t regret it one bit.

This week I am going to focus on getting to the gym every day (except Wednesday, but I have volunteer work that will keep me moving all day) and keeping up with drinking water. I’m also going to make a conscious effort to keep track of my portions, just so I don’t get myself into a habit from this weekend.

So how are you doing? Have you lost, gained, or stayed the same this week? What is your game plan for this week?

You hear about it all the time. From women getting boob jobs on their lunch breaks to the ‘extreme makeover‘ generation completely changing their looks through various procedures and surgeries.

Given how hard it is to lose weight, it’s no wonder a lot of people look to weight loss surgery as a quick and ‘easy’ solution to the whole weight loss thing.

I’ve been asking around on my other sites, and now I’d like to ask you – would you ever have weight loss surgery of any type?

I used to think my answer was a simple one: No.

However, as I keep working at losing weight and talk to other people, I find that I can’t say a simple ‘no’ anymore.

What if you find, due to some twist of fate or a medical condition, you simply can’t lose the weight? You eat right, exercise every day, all the things that should help you with a slow and steady weight loss…and one or two years later you’ve lost nothing.

Would that change you from the against side to the for side? Would you ‘keep on truckin’ with tradition or try weight loss surgery?

On the other side, there are, of course, who don’t try traditional diet and exercise and go straight for the knife.

What do you think? Where do you draw your line in the sand? What do you think about people who don’t have the same line as you?

Vote in the survey and leave your comments! I’m very interested to see what people have to say.