What a year it has been

 

This year has been a real roller coaster ride for me. A failed relationship, my profession slipping away and all the while trying to keep my weight loss mission on track.

I have learned a great deal about myself and what makes me tick. When you put yourself out there like I have done with this blog, it makes you take stock in your thoughts and actions.

The most revealing thing that I have learned is that I was reluctant to lose the last 25 pounds because it would put me firmly in the land of normal weight people. I have never lived there before and therefore uncomfortable with the attention it would bring me. I hid behind my fat my whole life but it is time to embrace what I have done for myself and live life to it’s fullest.

The one thing that I am sure of is that I want to help others do what I have done. We all know that losing weight is hard and losing more than half of myself has been the hardest thing I have ever done. But I am now living the life I always dreamed of and I am so glad that I put down my fork and started moving my butt.

 

 

It was the small actions that when followed daily turned out to have the greatest results.

Weighing myself daily.

Eating balanced, well-portioned meals

Getting regular exercise

And most importantly, making myself and my health, a daily priority.

Join me in the New Year for a great year of healthy living. I deserve it and so do you!

 

Accountability tools

 

Every year I go the local discount store and get the cheapest calendar that I can find. I bring it home and put it right by my scale. You know the scale that is screaming at me for eating all those holiday cookies. I even put a pen on top of it so that I don’t have an excuse to write down what my morning number is.

Many days it is the same as the day before but at least I am holding myself accountable for my actions. Since I started my weight loss mission five years ago I have gone through two scales. I now have a digital one that is a few pounds off from the one at my doctor’s office, which is the one that I use as my base camp since I started at 340 pounds. It is hard to fool the doctor’s scale especially when the nurse is standing there writing down the numbers in you chart.

My scale at home is three pounds off but I take that into account on my calendar.

Once a month I take a handful of measurements with a tape measure that I keep close at hand. Some months I have only lost a few pounds but I have lost several inches. In the end it has kept me on track with all the documentation. I strongly recommend that if you don’t do this now that documenting our actions be part of your New Year’s resolution agenda. It worked for me.

For give me scales for I have sinned

OK, not really sinned but overate during the holidays. Shock! Time to get back on the dieting horse as it were. Time to focus my New Year’s resolutions of losing those pesky pounds that seem to jump on to my body when I am not looking. I know how it happens; I just choose the chocolate over the carrot sticks. Welcome to my reality.

But it is time to get back to my mission at hand. After all, I am going to see Joy Bauer in a month and I don’t want her to think that I fell off my wagon. She is coming to Lakewood to help kick off a Live Well Lakewood campaign that several of my friends are launching here in our town.

It is going to be a day-long event that we cooked up to provide people with the tools to live a healthier life. Joy is coming to talk about nutrition and all of its benefits. Plus she is doing a book signing for her LIFE Diet book that hit the bookstores just before Christmas.

My copy arrived the day after Christmas, just in time for me to use it to beat myself upside of my head for over eating all those buttery holiday cookies.

Lisa’s New Year’s resolution: Reach my goal of 140 pounds by eating healthy meals and working out every day. I know that I can do it. I have to make myself a priority and then stick with my plan. This is the hard part for me but it has to start with the simple steps. Making my health my number 1 priority is the best way to start off any year.

 

A visual reminder to stay away from the cookies

 

Eating healthy during the holiday season

 

I am working on revising the website for the New Year as well as joining my family the holidays. Take care and remember that calories in means you have to work them off one way or the other. I have spent way too many holidays not remembering that and then wishing on New Year’s Day that I didn’t have so much weight to take off in the new year.

This next year I will be learning to properly maintain my new weight. Not an easy task but it beats taking it off again.

Bring a salad for the holidays, dress it up and make it a focal point of your table. It’s the gift that will keep your friends and family healthy in the new year.

Give the gift of healthy living this season

For those of us who leave the holiday shopping to the end of the season here are a few suggestions for that someone special on your list. I know that some are reluctant to give a gift that someone might take the wrong way but I say risk it. In the end you are thinking about making them healthier and that is what most important.

Go to the workouts and book suggestions at on my menu bar. You can order them directly from Amazon and have them delivered to that their doorstep.

I am hoping that Santa brings me Joy’s new LIFE diet book. 

Words from my diet buddy

I’ve been the quintessential yo-yo dieter all my life. I was on the way-too-high end of my adult weight range when my colleague Lisa Griffis threw down the gauntlet — Let’s do a weight-loss challenge. 

I’ve done such challenges before with good results. But this challenge felt a little different. Lisa is my weight-loss heroine. How could I compete with the woman who lost more than half of her body weight by eating right and exercising sensibly?

Lisa asked me for a dollar bill. She framed my bill with one of her own — that’s the plaque to which she has referred on more than one occasion. It’s the talisman of success that we’ve passed between us since the middle of May, based on which one lost a greater percentage of weight.

Yes, I’ve lost more weight than Lisa has… until recent weeks. I had more weight to lose than she did. But my mother’s death of heart failure a year ago, partly caused by lifelong obesity, had stopped motivating me to get my weight under control.

Lisa went to New York this fall to be on the Joy Luck Club show. She accepted a new challenge from Joy — lose the 20 pounds that stood between her and her ultimate goal. Lisa’s narrowed that gap by more than half. Now, it’s Lisa who’s kicking MY butt. 

So long but not goodbye

My diet buddy and friend Mary left the paper this week. It was sad to see her walk out the door but I know that she is going out there to start another chapter in her life.

This spring we were talking and she was lamenting that her weight was higher than she would like. I was in the same boat. Last year was a bad year in my weight loss journey. I had major surgery, got hit by a car while riding my bike and later blew my ankle out. In my basement are the three braces that I wore last year while I healed from all the traumas. In short, I put on 20 pounds because I wasn’t able to workout. And not to mention the chocolate I ate to make everything seem a bit better.

So when I heard Mary talking about her weight problems it made me throw down a challenge for both of us to get back on track and make the scale start moving in the right direction.

In an earlier blog, I told you about our bet. I found a scale at work in the mailroom, we used it once a week and who ever won for the week got the two dollar bet to put on their desk. We passed it back and forth to each other since May 15^th. The bet was supposed to end October 1 but we decided to keep going so that we could reach our goals of 140 pounds.

The truth is that the plague was on her desk 17 weeks and on mine for 11 times. She lost 35.5 pounds and I lost 28.5. She kicked my butt as it were but we are both winners. We are planning to keep up the challenge and work toward our goals in the New Year.

The best part about our challenge is that it brought us closer as friends and we both had someone to lean on and confess our sins to. That’s what friends are for and our backsides are smaller because of our challenge.

Find a diet buddy and start your own friendly wager in the New Year. It will help keep you on track.

Dressing room dance!

 

Will I finally did it. I went into a nice store, Ann Taylor Loft, bought a pair of size 8 jeans and they fit. When I pulled up the zipper, there was no hesitation on it’s part and I knew that it was time to do a victory lap in the dressing room. You know the type that grown men do when they make a touch down.

Let me tell you it beats shopping for tent dress in a catalog. It took me 50 pounds to go down a size when I weighed 340 pounds. Now just 10 pounds puts me in a smaller size. I will be keeping that in mind during the holidays when all those cookies start to appear out of nowhere. Bring them on I say and I will let the others worry how to work off those extra calories. For me I will just put on my new jeans and sit there with a smile on my face knowing that I am within a few pounds of my goal. Nothing tastes better than being thin.

True confessions of a diet slacker: Part 5

Time to pay the piper. I told my coach, Johanna, that my goal for the week was to hit 145 by Friday. Sometimes I get so caught up in the challenge to lose the rest of my weight that I make promises that my body just can’t produce. And today the scale read: 147 pounds. Well at least I am still trying.

I was invited to a friend’s house for cookie baking on Sunday. You know gal pals, Cosmos and cookie dough.  I declined the invitation. I hate to be unsocial able but I just don’t trust myself with that amount of temptations. I am trying to ignore the sugary treats but when my skinny girlfriends get together it is just hard to follow my diet.

Why can’t more holiday traditions revolve around being active? I would love to meet friends in the park for a holiday hike or a spin around an ice rink. Mall walking is out this time of year; I have no patience for the all the traffic and people walking around with huge packages.

I am going to suggest that next year my friends get together for a healthy brunch and maybe a walk around the art museum next year. Let the other eat cookies.

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