Finally Getting Fit

One of the big reasons I am trying to lose weight is because I want to have as healthy of a pregnancy as I can. While having a baby isn’t in my close financial future, that just means I have more time to work with when it comes to losing weight.

I haven’t gotten on the scale for a couple weeks now, and I’m a bit nervous about the possible ‘damage’ I may have done by not weighing in. Despite that, the worry I feel about that is nothing compared to the stress and depression I was dealing with before, so I’m still glad that I went off the scale for right now.

Towards the end of next month, I have an appointment to see a doctor. I’m both excited and nervous about this appointment because it could mean changes in a lot of ways. I’m hoping to find out why I have such a hard time losing weight. I’m hoping that she’ll make changes to my diet that will help me get even healthier. I’m also hoping that the appointment will be a turning point.

I want to be a mother so badly, but I am afraid that whatever is going on with my body is going to prevent that dream from coming true. I know a lot of women with PCOS (I’m not 100% sure I have PCOS, by the way) just have to lose a little weight and then they get pregnant, but therein lies the problem.

So I guess you can consider me on a bit of a hiatus (though I’ll still be posting) until I go to that appointment and find out what’s going on.

Wish me lots of luck and patience.

I received an email today that linked to a page (it was just a question, so no link) that asked:

“What does overeating and being overweight giving you?”

I was a bit puzzled about the question at first until I realized it was the basic question of why overeat. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it all morning.

When I first started my weight loss journey, it was easy to figure out why I overate. I was abused as a child and shut down a lot of myself and my personality. I used to eat as much food as I could get my hands on until I would ache with being full. It was my way of feeling something without the fear of having something bad happen because of my feelings. I could eat until I hurt and no one would know it but me.

I’m in a much better place now with much better circumstances. Those reasons no longer apply, so it was a bit harder to think of what I was getting from being fat.

These days, I think food being a comfort thing plays a big part in things. I was betrayed and hurt by people I trusted with my life from an early age, so it’s very hard for me to trust people. Food has never betrayed my trust and has never failed to be there.

So that’s the food side of it, but what about the being overweight?

For right now, you’re guess is pretty much as good as mine. I think part of me thinks that fat equals unattractive equals safe as far as men goes, but I feel like I’m still missing a key element that will answer the question better.

So, what does overeating and being overweight give you?

I don’t know about you, but I love music. I listen to music when I’m cleaning, I use music when I’m writing to help me creatively and, of course, I like to listen to music when I work out. There is something about the right rhythm that can really keep me going on the treadmill and/or elliptical.

This week I am listing thirteen songs that keep me going (be warned - it’s a mix of all kinds of songs, new and old). Be sure to put what music you like to work out (or clean, or…) to in the comment section!

Happy Thursday Thirteen!

1. Love Fool - Cardigans
2. To Be Free - The Calling (kind of slower, but a good rhythm to walk to)
3. Swing, Swing - The All-American Rejects
4. Wordplay - Jason Mraz
5. Dancing Queen - Abba (Hahahaha)
6. Do You Only Wanna Dance - Dirty Dancing 2
7. Copacabana - Barry Mannilow (Yeah, baby)
8. It’s All About You - Emerson Drive
9. Carpal Tunnel of Love - Fall Out Boy
10. Standing Outside the Fire - Garth Brooks
11. Nothing on But the Radio - Gary Allen
12. Jesus of Suburbia (and connected songs) - Green Day
13. Sunday Morning Rain - Maroon 5

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

Hello everyone!

As you have all probably well and truly noticed by now, 451press blogs have been having a few… problems lately. The sites take a long time to load sometimes and it’s not always easy to comment.

I want to apologize for all the problems and let you know that you aren’t the only ones having difficulties. It’s not just you, not just your computer. Even we bloggers are having difficulties just posting.

Why is it happening? Well, going by the amount of spam comments I have to clean off my sites every day, I think being attacked by one or more spam monsters is driving our servers down into the dumps a bit. Day in and day out of offers to increase the size of your man parts and show you free cartoon porn would do that do anyone, I think.

Hopefully we’ll have everything sorted out very soon and will be back up and running normally soon.

Always remember that you can feel free to contact me using the ‘contact me’ button under the site description. I’m not sure if anything would be so urgent that you would need to let me know, but hey, I’m always up for a casual chat as well.

Please bear with me as all this stuff is happening. It’s not fun for any of us and we certainly don’t like it when our readers are unhappy.

And, just to occupy your time, here is a link to one of my favourite web comics:

Questionable Content

Or is it round three? I can’t quite remember.

I was roaming the weight loss part of the blogsphere yesterday and read on Irish Mom’s blog that one of her goals for this week is to keep a food diary. “If I bite it, I’ll write it,” as she says. (I love that little saying.) It got me thinking that maybe it’s time I get back into keeping a food diary.

When I first started on the ‘I’m in Australia now’ leg of my weight loss journey, it was a big kick in the head. I couldn’t believe how much food I would shove in my mouth (or rather, would have shoved in my mouth without the food diary) on any random day. Keeping the food diary made me think about what I was eating.

But I sort of grew out of it. I was more aware, more careful and all the better for it. I could easily recall everything I had eaten in a given day and I thought before I ate.

Now, as I skip the scale, it will be all too easy for me to fall back in to bad habits. Having a food diary would help me out at least a little in that area because it would at least keep me aware and away from ‘mindless munching’. Mindless munching is a bad, bad habit for me that I definitely don’t want to get back into.

So I’m thinking about taking it up again.

Do you use a food diary? Do you find it useful?

…or rather, sleep to be fit.

It may sound like a bunch of silly nattering, but getting adequate amounts of sleep is an important part of losing weight. Cammy over at Tippy Toe Diet talked about sleep and weight loss on her blog recently – linking to this Web MD article – and talked a bit about toning down her late night activities.

What I’m wondering is can you have too much sleep? Does it hinder your weight loss if you sleep too much?

For the first year of our relationship, my husband and I lived thousands of miles apart. I was used to the university lifestyle, though, so staying up until three in the morning (when he got home from work) and talking to him until about seven (when I had to get ready for class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) wasn’t a big deal to me. After moving to Australia, I reignited my love for sleep.

I can go to bed about ten or ten thirty at night and wake up between eight and nine. I don’t because I’m at the gym by seven thirty each morning, but I most definitely could.

So, logically, combined with a good diet and exercise, I should have been shedding off the pounds. Even now with getting up early for the gym, I am clocking between eight and nine hours a night. (Don’t hate me because I sleep more than you do. Hehe.)

But, of course, I haven’t. I’m considering going into a coma for a fortnight to test things out a bit more. What do you think?

If you’re having trouble sleeping, Cammy has some excellent tips to help you get the sleep you need.

No, I’m not talking about the mystery dish Aunt Ethyl always brought to Christmas dinner that everyone was always too afraid to try.

When I was growing up, I hated the beans my mother bought for us. The beans were gross, whatever they were packed in was almost sweet (not a taste I think should be associated with beans, that’s for sure), and the beans were really small. I avoided beans at all costs unless it involved a burrito (that my mother didn’t make).

When I started on the South Beach diet, I saw that I could have beans. Kidney beans, butter beans, chickpeas, soy beans, etc. Seeing as I could obviously well and truly indulge in the bean side of things, I decided I would give them another go. After all, since coming to Australia I have tried a lot of things I ‘didn’t like’ only to find I like them a lot. (Broccoli, mushrooms, pumpkin…)

There are cans of ‘three bean mix’ that I get for less than a dollar a can at Aldi’s and they are fantastic! (Well, as fantastic as beans go, anyway.) A little bit of soy sauce or sesame oil can give me a bit more flavor if I want it. I can add in mushrooms to bulk it up a bit or even melt cheese on top.

I now absolutely love beans and it’s such a good thing!

Beans are great for a number of reasons:

*Low GI
*High protein (which makes them excellent for vegetarians)
*High iron
*High calcium

…and oodles of other things.

So even if you didn’t/don’t like beans, I urge you to try some different kinds. They’re great!

Yawning and probably flirting heavily with the thought, “Maybe I could just skip today…” Having successfully gotten yourself out of bed, now it’s time to get dressed even though the bed seems to be calling your name… You are finally outside or at the gym, and now it’s tempting to just do a short workout instead of a regular one… Time to get exercising…

It’s often quite hard in itself to get yourself exercising, let alone sticking to a routine. Because of this, an injury might be a relief to you mentally, but it can be devastating to you workout routine. Any injury sees you with the possibility of not getting back into exercising after you have healed.

The best way to keep yourself from giving in to giving up is to stay as active as you can even when you are injured. Doing that is easier said than done…

Here are a few ways you can exercise even if you have injured a part of your body:

*Do stretches. Stretching is a great form of exercise that often feels so, so good.

*Concentrate on what you can move. If you have injured your upper body, do exercises with your lower body, and vice versa.

*Try new small exercises. There are foot and hand exercises, neck exercises, ankle exercises… Start doing some investigating to see just how much you can do.

*Remember that everything counts. From tapping your toes to tightening and then loosening your muscles repeatedly, every little bit can help – even if you are keeping up the mental aspects of exercising regularly.

Weight Watchers taught me that muffins aren’t the way to go when you are trying to lose weight. My high school biology teacher taught me that white bread has no nutritional value and that I’m much better off eating grain breads. Life has taught me that a bowl of nutritious cereal isn’t something I always have time for. Life has also taught me I have a bit of a sweet tooth.

Solution? Banana bread, of course!

I love banana bread. Good banana bread is soft, moist, sweet and good for you. Right? After all, it’s made with bananas.

I had a rude awakening reading the food section of the newspaper the other day. Banana bread, my preferred sweet treat on special occasions, wasn’t the great, healthier sweet treat that I thought it was.

As it turns out, according to the article I read (no link; it was in an actual paper newspaper), a single slice of banana bread at a café can have twenty to thirty grams of fat in it!

I was disappointed, to say the least.

Even the low-fat banana bread is said to have about the same amount of carbohydrates as three or four slices of regular bread.

So today I say goodbye to my beloved banana bread and go on the search for something else that’s healthier…

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a treat or dish that you thought was healthy or ‘not so bad’ and it turned out that it was bad?

I would love to hear your story!

After a heart to heart with my husband yesterday, I feel the need to clarify a few things about my decision yesterday.

I have decided not to weigh in on the scale. That’s it. I’m not quitting exercising, not quitting eating right, and certainly am not heading out to have a big binge of my naughty little food addictions. All I’m doing is just not stepping on the scale for a month so I can clear out my head space.

I am currently trying to get myself in a better place mentally and emotionally. I believe that accepting and loving myself as I am will help inspire me to want to make myself healthier. While I am doing that a lot, I could still stand to improve. At this time, though, I feel like I’m being hindered by stepping on the scale – not helped.

I need to be doing this for me. I can keep going doing it for other people, and that’s okay, but if I’m not doing it for myself, I’m not in the right place mentally. Gains hurt too much and plateaus are too frustrating when I have this subconscious need to be making someone else happy.

So no scale for June! But keeping on with diet and exercise.

Having said that, I am already feeling better without the scale and numbers hanging over my head. (Not literally. I keep the scale on the floor in the bedroom.) Of course, now I’m curious to see how much I weigh, but I think that just comes with no longer being required to weigh in.

It feels great! I’m doing my healthy thang and feeling good.

And that’s all it should really be about in the end.

It’s a long holiday weekend here in Oz, so I slept in and had the pleasure of doing so next to my husband. Not having to deal with the alarm and having the husband home, it wasn’t until after I took a shower that I realized it is Monday. I dried myself with the towel and though, “Oh, Monday. That means weigh in.”

But as I got dressed and prepared to start work for the day (someday I’ll take a real holiday), I thought about how I have been feeling about losing weight lately. I thought about how I have been closer to just giving up completely, for good, than I have ever been. Yes, I’ve fallen off the wagon before, but never have I wanted to purposely just stop.

I also thought about an email I received over the weekend from my lovely friend Jenera. In the email, she said:

“I’ve taken breaks in weight loss (and life) before and it really helps. You might just need to take the next month to focus on YOU-not your body, just you. I know it helps me quite a bit. I think if you keep up with the exercise, still eat healthy, and have the hubby hide the scale, you might be able to refocus a bit and not be too hard on yourself. The fact that you’ve been sticking with the positive changes is a huge accomplishment!”

And she’s right. I have been so focused on numbers, pounds, losing weight, that I have lost focus on me, JM, the person inside. I have been slowly turning myself into someone who judges myself based on my looks instead of based on the beautiful person I know I am.

So for the entire month of June, I’m hiding the scale. Whether it turns out to be a bad or good thing in terms of pounds, I don’t care. I need to focus on me, take care of me, and remember why I started getting fit in the first place.

I’ll be honest with you all here because it feels like that’s all I have left to talk about here right now.

Lately I have been frustrated. More than a year (two years in October) of a dramatically better lifestyle including fresh foods, exercise, and diet restrictions have seen me with almost no weight lost. Yes, I have bounced around and lost up to twelve pounds, but it bounces right back. Up, down, up down.

Perhaps if my weight was in the 230s, I wouldn’t be here now mentally. Emotionally. But I’m not. I have been losing and gaining about the same ten pounds for many months now despite the vast improvements I have made to my health, diet and fitness.

I want to cry and complain about the state of it all, but that’s not what this post is about. It’s more just letting you know that I’m tired. And my being tired is probably starting to show through in my posts, if it hasn’t already. For that, I apologize.

I went into this with such high hopes and yet I find myself stuck in a place I never wanted to be: Tired of trying for a healthier lifestyle.

I can’t well and truly quit. Not yet. I still have one more step of having a bunch of blood tests done to see if they can reveal why it’s so hard for me to lose weight. So until that’s done, I’ll keep on.

It’ll just be hard. And I apologize to you now for my enthusiasm not being what it should.

Sometimes all I need is a little bonding with the other women who know what I’m going through to make my day better again…

1. They have been where I am.
2. They have tried the diets I have/am trying.
3. They know what it’s like to be judged.
4. They know how hard it is to lose weight.
5. We can compare tips, tricks, and ways of doing things.
6. I can be guaranteed to be able to find someone who is in my situation - trying to lose weight before pregnancy.
7. They know what definitely doesn’t work.
8. I have something in common with them from the start.
9. I love reading other getting fit bloggers. It’s nice to see how they balance getting healthy with the rest of life.
10. They know the value of talking and laughing about things non-weight related.
11. They know how hard it can be to find plus size clothes and other annoyances of overweight women.
12. Two-way friendships - we can support each other.
13. Healthy recipe sharing.

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

I have been thinking a lot lately about why I am losing weight and why I want to continue to try to do so. Back when I first started seriously getting into dieting, I had a while to go before my wedding. I already had the dress and it was too big, so I would need it to get fitted anyway. Of course I wanted to lose weight for the wedding.

Here are a few tips and tricks in case you’re looking to do the same thing from someone who did it.

*Start early. It is always better to work in the healthy habits as soon as possible. That also makes it easier if you have a ‘bad’ day to recover afterward.

*Get your whole wedding party in on it. You shouldn’t make it a requirement for everyone in the wedding to lose weight, but it can be great to have that support from anyone who wants to participate.

*Plan ahead. For your pre-wedding parties, plan ahead and request healthier food and snacks.

*Always remember the dress/tux. If you’re going to be losing a significant amount of weight, be sure to have an appointment not long before the wedding to get the dress fitted.

*Most importantly: Don’t let it spoil the day. If you haven’t lost as much as you would have liked, it’s okay! It’s your day and no one is going to be thinking about your weight.

I know this is a little different from my usual posting, but I hope some people find it useful.

There is nothing like a good reminder of why you’re on a quest to improve your health. I got one of those reminders last night.

I have completely taken rice out of my diet because of how it makes me tired. I’ve kicked pasta and now use bean curd noodles. I have had rye bread in the last couple of days, but I have otherwise kicked out bread. The same goes for potatoes.

All in all, I have made a lot of positive changes for my diet in response to the insulin resistance side effects I was having before.

But I dropped my guard last night.

My husband and I went out to eat last night and I ordered an extra bowl of veggies on the side. When it comes to craving things that are good for me, I obey my cravings. My meal already came with some veggies, but I had a desperate craving for broccoli and, well…

The veggies in my meal included two small potatoes. Now, I haven’t had potatoes for a few months now. Time obviously liberally dusted my mind with ‘forget potion’ because I figured I’d give the potatoes a go and see how it went. I wasn’t sure if I’d actually react to them or not.

Well, I did.

Potatoes don’t knock me out with quite the force rice does, but those two little spuds were certainly the next best thing. About five minutes after we finished eating, I was yawning and ready for bed.

Why do I always have to test things? Why can’t I just leave things alone when I’m told no? Bleh. Ah well. I have been well and truly reminded why I don’t eat potatoes. (Or rice, or pasta, or…)

How about you? Are you insulin resistant or battling other factors that make getting fit that much more difficult?