December 12th, 2009

Focus

photo credit: lul­ule­mon athletica

It’s funny how things snap into per­spec­tive so eas­ily when your child looks at you and says, “I love you.”

I have known for a long time that I need to lose weight. Two-hundred and ten pounds of weight. I won’t try to fig­ure out how I let this hap­pen because the fact is that it did hap­pen. What I am focus­ing on is los­ing it because that is what matters.

I was recently diag­nosed with an Over­ac­tive Thy­roid. A lot of peo­ple with this dis­or­der lose weight but that has not been the case for me. How­ever, my heart rate is ele­vated, my metab­o­lism is slowed, and I am a ner­vous wreck because now more than ever I real­ize that my health is at stake.

So, I rejoined Peer​Trainer​.com today after talk­ing about it with my friend Renee who is also on a jour­ney to lose weight.  We decided to moti­vate each other and I remem­bered hav­ing some suc­cess with Peer­Trainer. I also signed up for the Peer­Trainer “Point of no Return” Weight Loss Pro­gram. It is sort of a men­tal boot camp that pro­vides the tools needed to help lose and main­tain weight loss. I admit that I need all the help that I can get.

I am also using the EA Active/EA More Active for the Wii. I need a lot more phys­i­cal activ­ity in my every­day life. Work­ing from home in front of the com­puter is not help­ing me lose weight so, I have to change that. I am also going to be using Jil­lian Michaels, Leslie San­sone, and Exer­cise TV. My fam­ily has also decided to add a dog to out mix so that we can get more time in out­doors. Andrew and I had 2 dogs years ago before the lit­tle one was born and I had a pretty set walk­ing rou­tine. I know that hav­ing a dog will increase not only my phys­i­cal activ­ity but my daughter’s as well.

Unfor­tu­nately, my doc­tor has lim­ited my car­dio exer­tion until after a round of tests regard­ing my thy­roid. Until I get the OK I am going to focus on my diet and strength train­ing. I need to boost my metab­o­lism because I don’t eat enough. Since i truly enjoy cook­ing a am look­ing for a meal plan that I can use for my entire fam­ily. My hubby and I both need to lose weight and my daugh­ter needs to learn healthy eat­ing habits.

I have a lot to do but for the first time in a very long time I know that I can do it!

October 16th, 2009

Fun and Dairy Free

Went to the nutri­tion­ist. Another attempt to get my weight under con­trol. She believes that I am insulin resis­tant and sent me to the Endocri­nol­o­gist. I also have to have my thy­roid checked. Those appoint­ments are forth com­ing. After going over what I eat with her, she made me real­ize a few things:

1. I do not eat enough. I barely tak­ing in 1000 calo­ries a day and because of this my metab­o­lism is stalled.
2. I do not eat enough pro­tein. I really don’t like meat so I avoid it at all costs.
3. I need to work on build­ing mus­cle as opposed to car­dio only.

I was actu­ally relieved to hear these things as they seem fix­able. She put me on a diet– I have to eat tuna for break­fast and set an alarm clock to remind me to eat every 4 hours.  I am mak­ing a con­scious effort to fol­low her guide­lines in terms of eat­ing. As far as work­ing out goes, she wants me to build mus­cle. I am start­ing that tomor­row as I have not been feel­ing well all week.

My hus­band and I have decided to give up dairy too. My daugh­ter — 3 — suf­fers from bloat­ing and flat­u­lence every time she drinks milk of eats ice cream so rather than put her through this, we are giv­ing it up. I’m feel­ing really good about this deci­sions as the ben­e­fits of a diary-free diet extends far beyond just bloat­ing. We — both my daugh­ter and I — suf­fer from aller­gies and asthma and dairy is a known agi­ta­tor of both.

In other news, I also had my IUD removed and the GYN sug­gested that I wait until after I have Gas­tric Bypass (did I men­tion that I wanted to have that) to get preg­nant. I agree, but the IUD was mak­ing me freak out every month. I am going to focus on los­ing weight by mak­ing seri­ous lifestyle changes and if I get preg­nant, so be it. It will work out.

August 19th, 2009

Self-Defeating Behavior

Maybe I am actu­ally afraid to be suc­cess­ful at weight loss. It seems to me that if I truly wanted to lose weight, I would just jump on it, right? Yet, as heart­felt as my pre­vi­ous entries were, I have fallen back into some behav­iors that have helped to keep me fat. That’s part of the rea­son that I have not been blog­ging here. I find it much eas­ier to lie to myself when I am not writ­ing things out.

But yes­ter­day, I had a real­iza­tion after find­ing out that a friend’s hus­band ended up in the hos­pi­tal and in a 4 day coma– the result of a dia­betic attack which may have been avoided if he just took bet­ter care of him self.  To boot, I amvery active in Go Red, and am very fear­ful that the extra two peo­ple that I am car­ry­ing is way too much for my heart. Sim­ply put, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die because I have too much to live for. Sorry for the cliche.

One of the prob­lems that I have is eat­ing reg­u­larly and eat­ing well. I KNOW what I should be eat­ing, more or less, but I don’t know how to deter­mine por­tion size, and bet­ter yet, I don’t know go gro­cery shop­ping on a reg­u­lar basis which leads me to order out a lot. we only have one car so when my hubby is at work, I am stuck in the house because there are no stores in walk­ing dis­tance and tak­ing the bus with a tod­dler and gro­ceries is just not doable.

I have been look­ing into home-delivery meal plans. I am really lik­ing Fresh Din­ing. It seems like a great plan, but it is so expen­sive up front. Granted, I prob­a­bly spend more than that on gro­ceries and eat­ing out, but it is just so expen­sive up front. I do know it’s worth it in long run– espe­cially if I lose weight and start get­ting healthy.

So I have plan.  I will share more later.