WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST IS ALL KINDS OF WOE-IS-ME

Man, I hope you guys are ready for an angsty post.

99.9% of the time, I would say that I’m a pretty cheerful, upbeat person.  But that .1% of the time, all hell breaks loose.  Just ask my parents about ages 12 – 17, when the ratio was the other way around.  J  How they managed not to kill me, I SERIOUSLY don’t know.  Thanks though, Mom and Dad!

Anywho.

I’ve been really down on this whole thing lately.  I feel like I’m just not getting anywhere.  I can’t seem to push myself down to the next level.  Or, I feel like things are going really well and I’ve worked out and/or walked the dog every night, and I’m eating right, and I eat ALMOST NOTHING FOR EASTER DINNER, and the effing scale goes BACK UP.  I feel like a duck treading water right now.  You know, the old “on the surface everything thing looks calm, but under water, those legs are kicking a mile a minute” adage.  I’m DESPERATE to lose the weight faster and impatient, and I know these are not good thoughts to have swimming around in my head.  The desperation just makes me frantic and the impatience makes me careless.  I feel like I have to put on this positive face of it though, or everyone will see me as a total failure.  Like I really see myself right now.

**Warning – here comes the “poor me” section of the post**

I’m just so damn tired of being fat.  I hate it.  I hate the achy knees and doughy calves and fat feet and extra links in my necklaces.  I hate that I have to drum up the motivation to get up and get busy.  I hate feeling like people look at me ordering the Jimmy John’s Unwich (that’s a sandwich as a lettuce wrap, and it’s truly AMAZING) and think, “Oh, look at that huge chick, trying to show everyone that she’s trying to lose weight – well, it’s not working!”  I hate snoring and touching thighs and too-tight waistbands.  I hate everything about being heavy.

So, if I hate it so much, why can’t I seem to be successful at losing the weight?  Is it because I’m SO negative about it?  Maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.  I can see that.  Like I said, it’s really hard to convince myself to just get going on things like meal planning and working out.  It’s like I can’t make myself do better.  Maybe a good descriptor is the scene in “Aladdin” when he’s been tossed in the ocean with his hands tied – he’s struggling against it, and trying as hard as he can, but obviously unable to pull himself away from the heavy weight holding him to the ocean floor.  I feel like that’s how I’m struggling right now.  Having other people tell me that I can do it just isn’t enough for me.  NOT that I want them to stop; I just get so frustrated when people who didn’t have more than 20 lbs to lose, or have NEVER had any weight to lose tell me that I can do anything I put my mind too and all that other business.  It’s great that they believe in me, but their life experience tells them that it’s totally possible.  MY life experience tells me it’s totally possible to lose 30lbs and then gain it all back and then some.  Not exactly a promising experience, eh?

This has been my whole life.  My whole life.  Good luck finding a picture of me where I’m NOT round-faced and pudgy.  Because one doesn’t exist.  Sure, there have been some where I’m thinnER, but there aren’t any when I’m skinny.  I think what brought all this self-loathing on is that I saw a girl today at work who was probably 50bs or so overweight, and she’s lost ALL of it.  She looks amazing.  She’s also 23 or so.  It just makes me so angry that I’ve lost all these years to being fat.  I should have been young and hot on spring break.  I should be wearing cute skirts and figure-hugging dresses and shirts.  I blew it, totally and completely.  And now, when I’m at least attempting to get there, it all kind of feels like a waste – since a big part of the reason I’m trying to lose weight is so we can get a family started.

Sorry for the angst, but I’m just feeling so down on myself and this whole process.  I’m just so bummed and frustrated.  I don’t know where to go from here, except to whine about it and spend the evening surfing weight loss surgery websites.  I can’t even enjoy my angst with ice cream because I know it’s not going to help anything.  J

Weekly Gratitude

Here it is again this week, kids!  The Grateful List.

• I’m grateful for this weekly gratitude posting.  I sort of feel like, without it, my blog would be a *smidge* neglected.  Time to get better at posting, I guess.  It’s hard when you don’t have a whole lot to post about though!

• #2 this week is Easter Eggs from the Easter Bunny!!!!!!!!!

• Next up, I’m grateful for being gainfully employed.  Not everyone out there can say that.  I’m learning to acclimate myself a little bit better to the current situation at hand in the US, and realize that no one is immune to the economy, despite all our thoughts and hopes to the opposite.  I’m very grateful to not only have the opportunity to be taking on new items and tasks at work, but to just simply have my job still.

• I’m grateful that, despite a lot of dumb little issues, my pup is really pretty healthy.  This is not the case with my parents’ dog.  Cleo is not doing so great right now.  Knowing that makes me want to spend more time snuggling Cosmo, and less time doing a lot of other things.

• Vacation time!!!!  It means that I get to spend a whole week hanging on the pontoon with two of my favorite girls in the world.  I’m so very excited to be doing that, as I love (and severely miss!) both the girls and the pontoon time.  I’d better be amazingly bronzed, come July.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should get started on my base tan NOW.  I’m pretty damn pasty.

• Books.  I’ve been romanced by the Kindle, and I sort of feel like the pious-but-spunky lead female character in 99.9% of Harlequin Romances.  The ease and flashiness of E-readers is seductive like the flowing mane of hair and rules-be-damned attitude of the Harlequin tempter.  But then, I picked up a book from home that I had read a million times when I was younger, and I realized that paper books, like the pious-but-spunky lead’s close-but-distant admirer, really is the one for me.  They’re the Darcy to my Elizabeth.  The Darcy to my Bridget.  The Ben to my Jemima (name that [REALLY crappy] book for 1500 points!).  I won’t say that I absolutely won’t buy books on the app I have on my phone, but paper copies are my true love, and there won’t be an E-reader in our house for a while.

So, there you have it.  Just a couple of items on this one!

G-g-g-grateful!

(to the tune of  "Ch-ch-ch-changes" natch)

Here are some things I'm grateful for this week!

• Lynda from my gettin' skinny class.  I'm willing to admit that things were slipping.  I wasn't paying too close attention to making sure everything was tracked and logged.  But, now that I'm back on the wagon of having her check all my logs, I'm back on the wagon.  Oh, and I'm down 5 or 6 pounds already.  WHAT UP?!!!?
• Ice cream makers.  Yeah, I know.  Not exactly on the 'ol "diet" plan, yeah?  True, but seriously.  I'd rather eat my homemade ice cream, full of all the things that I know are in it, than some random chemical/ingredient list.  PLUS, we can make low-fat frozen yogurt and get our fruit on.  Pretty dang excited about it, if I can be honest.  :)
• My cat PePe.  LAME.  I get it.  But he's so stinkin' cute!  He's sleeping up against my leg right now, keeping me warm.  It's nice.  Plus, he makes life more interesting most days.  He's got an obsession with being outside.  He's even all about going outside when there's snow on the ground.  But not when he's been tossed in the bank (we call that "cat tossing").  He's a huge Tom, but he has the voice of a kitten.  Very expressive and vocal fella.  Gotta love him!
• Amazon MP3.  I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I LOVE the App on my 'ol Droid.  They have a Free Song of the day, and it's totally expanding my musical pallet.  I like it.
• Making plans!  I've made summer vacay plans already, and I'm so excited!!!  It involves two of my favorite girls, some sun, and PLENTY of beer.  :)  Lite, of course...ha.
• Chobani yogurt.  I love that stuff.  I wasn't sure how I would feel about Greek yogurt, but it turns out that I LOVE it.  SO much more filling than your average, run-of-the-mill yogurt cup.  That baby and some great grains (see, Lynda!  I listen!!), and I'm in business all morning.  My favorite?  That would be the lemon.  YUM.  Makes me pucker and smile all at once!
• Myfitnesspal.com!!!  I love that site.  Actually, I guess I should say I love the site and the app on my phone.  Since I eat a lot of the same foods, it's really convenient to just click the little button and add it to my little food diary.  It's so perfectly easy to take care of my tracking there.  Remember when I mentioned my new fave website?  Yeah, this is it.  Prepare yourself for a full on post about it later...

I think that I'll cut it off there...after all, I'm old and it's bed time!  :D
Heart you all!!



Psst - I feel as though I should mention that, for all the items that are on here there are no sponsors or perks or whatnot.  It's all just how I feel about the things I mention!

Butt still hurts.

BECAUSE I FOUGHT THE JILLIAN, AND WON.  Again.  For the second day in a row.  What uuuuuuup?!!?!  It was harder today.  As predicted.  But it was more worth it in the end, if that makes ANY sense, on any level.  I was dying.  Shaking and sweating.  It was lovely.

My arms are still remotely shaky, wrists aching.  Toes angry.  You need them to grip, and after a full day of tall heels, my big toes are sore and mad.  My glutes are screaming.  With joy.  Okay, not with joy so much as the tearing and rebuilding of the muscle tissue.  Semantics.

This whole working out thing is just really great.  I can feel my muscles getting bigger and stronger.  My quads are gynormous.  I kinda want to wear a lot of leggings and/or Spandex to show them off.  Because they look GOOD.  I think this is something that I can get used to, you know?  :)  I'm totally going to have to do more than just the Jillian DVD, though.  Because, seriously.  I'm not going to be able to keep this up much longer!  ha.  Plus, the muscles get tired or used to it, or whatever.  Yadda, yadda.

Point is, feel free to encourage me.

Seriously.  Now would be good.

While I'm still proud here!!!!

Also, in other non-traditional-exercise-related news, it's juuuust about time for the gardening to start up again.  I CAN'T WAIT!  I'm so very excited.  I almost have the entire thing mapped out.  I foresee some serious digging, planting, and harvesting in my future.  WOO!!!!!  (PS - Mom, if you read this, we need to chat about lawn and garden things.  Call me!)

Whoops.  One more.  Stay tuned to a plug (one that isn't paid for or provided by the company, BTW) for a new fave website.  And some stuff about tracking food and things.  Yay, previews!

My butt hurts.

Clearly the couple of pounds that made their way back onto my gut have had a baaaaad effect on me.  I did the Jillian DVD again tonight, and it was like the first time.  I was panting, sweaty, and all my muscles were shaking.  And that was just putting the damn thing in the slot!  ha!

Seriously though.  It was rough.  But it felt unbelievable.  Except for now.  My butt hurts.  I totally pulled that puppy.  To be honest, I actually think it happened when I was stretching.  I think I over-stretched.  I mean, who does that?!  THIS GUY, I guess.

I've hit a new feeling of desperation over this whole weight loss thing.  Summer's coming up.  I realize that I'm not going to magically become Gweneth Paltrow-fit before June, but I can TOTALLY be 15-20 pounds lighter through the end of June.  Absolutely easily.  I just feel kind of pressured to do better.  The time for beers and BBQ on the deck is coming up, and I want to be able to enjoy it carefully enough to still keep my goals going strong.  I need to learn how to keep those two things able to go hand-in-hand.  And feeling kind of frazzled.

Because I'm feeling a little stressed (add in that shift at work that I think I talked about before, and there's just another layer to deal with.  PS - I don't know if I posted anything about it.  I just spent five minutes looking for it; no dice...), that just kind of adds another somethin' somethin' to the whole equation.  I know that stress is a switch that can cause more weight gain/loss of loss.  Theories regarding how the body reacts to stress abound.  Here's an online article from Women's Health.  Here's one from WebMD.  And one from the Mayo Clinic.  So, I need to figure out what I can do to combat that.  I'm going to try a technique from a book I partially read once (The Gabriel Method, in case you were interested...) and talk myself into believing that I'm not a chunk.  Talk my body out of holding onto the excess weight that it thinks it needs to.  Talk myself into believing that I can do it at all.  I'm also going to maybe look into non-crazy-workout yoga as a bit of a mind relaxer to do the same as the talking-to-myself method.  :)

Um, I'm also going to stop eating crap.  Por exemplo, I'm going to pretend that Easter is NOT happening any time soon.  No Reese's PB eggs, no more Little Debbie snack cakes, no damn jelly beans.  No more junky pizza, no more burgers.  The Peavs have had salad with dinner every night since last Thursday or Friday.  I want to point out that it takes only about 2 weeks to make something a habit.  Let's say we started on Friday last week.  Only about 9 more days of keeping it up!

Anywho.  Back to the title.  It's a good hurt, so it's cool.  (Hey!  Only 13 more days to go to make daily working out a habit.  Ay yi yi...)

Starting back up again.

Hola!

I'm kind of stoked.  The class I took this past winter at work has started up again!  Well, I should say that the first part of it has started up again.  It's a two-part class where the first focuses on learning how to eat better for the 12 weeks and the second part pretty much furthers those lessons for the 12 weeks.  They offered the first part last spring.  I rolled my eyes and opted not to take it.  Saw how coworkers S and A both got pretty healthy, was jealous.  I joined up during Part 2.  You could pretty much say that I did it backwards.  :)  Which is cool - I'm a fan of doing things backwards.  ha.

That it's started back up is a really good thing.  I really need a new kick in the pants.  Hello, plateau.  There's just something about having to send my weekly food lists and all that to Lynda that appeals to me.  It's like a double dose of accountability.  Not only am I writing it all down, but I'm also sending it to a nutritionist.  Talk about pressure, right?

I'm sort of wondering if I need some medical intervention too.  I mean, I'm wondering if there's something that I'm missing, in regards to why this weight isn't just coming off of me.  I've cut the calories, I'm doing some form of exercising pretty much every day of the week.  Yet, the weight isn't falling off.  It's just sort of taking its time come off.  I'm sure there's something I can do to kick it up another notch like Emeril (but without the garlic) without the whole medical angle.  But, I just can't seem to figure out what that something is.  Hence the medical question...

Anyway.  Stay tuned for more info on what's happening in the class, and stay tuned to see how it all works out!!

PS - dear sister gets married in almost exactly a year.  That puts me at a year to lose all the weight I want to lose to look decent in a bridesmaid dress.  Yikes.  Pressure x3.  Neat.

Gratitude time again!

In the words of Pseudo Boricua - ack!

 

It's been a strange week or two since I last wrote.  Knee = hurt.  Working out = postponed till I'm better.  Eating well = out the door, 'cause I'm bummed about the stupid knee.  Then, on top of it all, the weather headed south and our fridge busted.

 

So, it's been a bummer 'round here lately.

 

BUT!  A person should still be grateful for the things she has, yeah?  So, I am.

I'm grateful that our fridge broke.  :)  I mean it!  We got to clean out the fridge and the freezer and get rid of all the stuff that's old or gross.  PLUS, I'll even get to physically clean out both sides while the unit is room-temp.  It'll be glorious.  Get ready for the bleach, F&F!  We pulled out the unit on Sunday night, and were able to clean the sides and top and behind and under...NASTY.  We hadn't cleaned it out once since we moved in (two-plus years ago...).  There were 16 fuzzy ball cat toys and 2 fuzzy toy mice under there.  PePe is the happiest cat EVER right now.

For owning an "adult" couch that came with pillows.  I've been using three of the MASSIVE pillows off of our couch to elevate my knee while I ice it.  It's been swell, thanks to how huge and puffy they are.  In that same vein, I'm grateful for my giant chairs.  The fit me, two cats, AND all the pillows for my knee.  They're beyond swell.

 

Again, along those same lines, I'm grateful for the ceramic cold pack we have.  I forget who makes it, but I can tell you that we're going to be getting another one soon.  I've got weak and creaky knees, and the doc I saw last week said it would be beneficial to ice them for a little while after particularly difficult workouts (Jillian Michaels DVD, I'm looking at you...).

 

For my Father-in-Law.  (or, "Other Father.")  He came over today (and will be back tomorrow) to help Hubs with some house stuff.  He's just dang knowledgeable, and I like that about him.  We are willing to try to do things on our own, but we don't always know how.  He's a good Miyagi.

 

My little sister.  I like that she'll have a drink with me at mid-day.  Virtual high-five, hommie.

Dyson.  Our carpet is gross (ah, the joys of owning a pre-owned home completed in a range of "builder's special" everything), but that Dyson works its little motorized butt off to pick up all the pet hair, dirt, and general ish from the carpet of nastiness.  Thanks, Dyson.

Emma's Express car wash.  I like that it's not touch-free!  Feels like my little Rogue is actually getting a good clean.  Good Lord, but the little things in life excite me.  Yikes.

Um, I think that's it for now.  A day late, and a couple of points short...