How Much Do I Really Weigh?

I have a strict rule.  I weigh myself first thing in the morning naked.  So, by that scale, at that time, with nothing but my birthday suit on, I weighed 144 this morning.  However, if I wait and weigh at my office (I work in a surgery center) with clothes on, no shoes, of course, I would weigh much more.  Everyone who weighs on my scale here at home comes out and says they love my scale.  So, I know it’s off.  I know it’s not accurate.  Before going back on Take Shape For Life a month or so ago, I weighed 156 on my scale here at home, and I believe the last time I weighed at work it said 163.  So, I know I’ve lost around 11 or 12 pounds, and since a pound is a pound is a pound, even if it’s on an inaccurate scale, I’m going with 12 pounds lost to date.  I have 4 more to go.  On my scale at home.

Thanksgiving day didn’t go exactly as I planned.  And in fact, I have put off writing about it, because I really wanted to be able to write that I had stuck to my plan, and didn’t deviate, and I would have felt very proud of myself, and although I’d promised NOT to be smug, I know myself, and I would have been Queen of Smugville.   Since I’ve been de-Throned, before even being crowned, I will swallow my pride and give an honest report.

My plan, as you know was to just go Lean and Green.  Turkey and whatever green veggies were served.  Big mistake.  This is a traditional meal, and traditional food is served.  I’d forgotten that hundreds of years ago, at the First Thanksgiving Dinner it was cold and coming on winter, and there were no salad greens growing conveniently in the backyard garden.  Apparently, judging by the 46 Thanksgivings I’ve attended, the only greens available were green beans.  And the green beans on Thursday were smothered in Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup and Dirkee Onions.  No offense to the cook.  Smelled delicous  and everyone loved it.  Since I have issues with low blood sugar and there were no green veggies to choose from, I didn’t stick to plan.  Truthfully, I may not have anyway, even if there were green veggies in abundance.  But, here is what I did have:  Turkey, white and dark, NO gravy; exactly 2 bites of stuffing (my fave), sweet potato casserole, sweetened with maple syrup instead of brown sugar, thank you Debi; corn.  I didn’t over-eat, wasn’t full, never felt uncomfortable.  I didn’t feel smug, but I did feel sorry for everyone else complaining about how uncomfortable they were having over-eaten.  After dinner and dishes, we all went for a long leisurely walk and came back to pie.  Yes, I had a piece of pumpkin pie.  My daughter-in-law made it and it was quite possibly the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever had.

One Last Confession:  When we got home I took a fork and had one more bite of pumpkin pie, poured myself a glass of wine (what the heck?  I was already out of fat-burning) and sat down to watch a movie with Rick.  We both promptly fell asleep.

Yesterday was a breeze.  Getting back on program was easy and a relief for me.  I happily had my 5 medifast meals and my one lean and green.

I learned 2 things from Thursday:

1.  Always offer to bring the salad or steamed green vegetable so you know it’s there.

1.  Be careful what you post on a public blog.

Christmas is coming.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving.  I’m not worried about it anymore.  Yesterday a friend of mine, Melissa, read my blog, and then emailed me this:

“Loved your blog….no don’t eat what you want for Thanksgiving.  Going to friends just be sure that you know that there are lean n green items to choose and pumpkin pie will be around for the next holiday and wine will ALWAYS be there!  DON’T blow it just because!  You will be much prouder of yourself!  Besides, get some torani syrup with the pumpkin spice and make it with your vanilla pudding and you will be laughing at all the others groaning because they are stuffed and feeling yucky!”

Well, I won’t laugh at the misery of others, and I won’t sit smuggley by patting myself on the back, but I think I will take Melissa’s advice and stay on my plan.  I feel so great right now and I only have a few pounds to go to my goal.  Actually, I could already be there, but I can’t weigh myself this morning.  Abbie’s asleep in the guest room where my scale is.

I’m so thankful that I’m not cooking today, and so looking forward to spending the day with our friends and our kids and really, THAT’s what it is about for me, spending the day with people we love and enjoy.

Happy thanksgiving everyone.

What To Do?

Thanksgiving is 3 days away.  I text messaged K’Lynn, my health coach yesterday and asked how she’s planning on dealing with the Thanksgiving Meal.  She said she will eat what she wants, just watch her portions.  That’s what I would normally do too.  K’Lynn is in maintenance mode right now, so she has more room to play with the foods she is eating.  But I’m in this great fat-burning state right now and I just don’t know if I want to change it up at the moment.   That’s the great thing about Take Shape.   If you follow the program, after the first 3 days or so, your body goes into this state of burning fat because you aren’t feeding it all the extra carbs to go after first.  Don’t get me wrong, there are carbs in the program.  All the products have carbs in them, and of course the greens you get to eat with your lean meat or meatless option, but the number of carbs are balanced with protein and fat grams so that you are burning the fat stored in your body instead of carbs you are feeding yourself.

A couple nights ago I was really wishing I could have a glass of wine.  Rick opened a bottle of red and I was envious and a little miffed that he would drink it in front of me.   But, being the loving and supportive husband that he is, he let me know right away it wasn’t nearly as good as the wine we’d had at our friend’s Bill and Tracey’s house 3 weeks ago, and wouldn’t be worth pulling myself out of the fat burning mode.  What a dear.  Really.  So supportive.  I’m not being sarcastic!  It actually did help me put that glass of wine right out of my mind and I felt great the next morning knowing I’d stuck to my plan.

I’m still not sure what I’ll do about Thursday.  We are going to the home of our friends, John and Debi, and we will have a very traditional dinner.  I know I can just do lean and green if I decide to, but no pumpkin pie and red wine?  I’m really going to have to think about this and decide ahead of time.  It won’t kill me to have the whole meal, and if I’m really careful, it might not have any effect on my weight at all.  I know everyone who reads this will be waiting with bated breath (baited?) to see what I end up doing, but no fear.  I will post about the day.

In the meantime check out this great tool K’Lynn sent me today:

Stories

Everyone has a story.  Actually everyone has many stories.  Some of us have our coming to Christ story, we all have childhood stories, whether good or bad, idealistic or painful. Rick and I have a marriage story.  We have our parenting stories, and a collection of humorous anecdotes from raising small children.  Many of our friends are just now in this phase and I love hearing the funny and poignant conversations they have with their little ones.  We have stories about vacation, stories about holidays, and we have job stories.

Some people have very dramatic weight loss stories.  I heard a man tell his story last month.  He lost 112 pounds in a matter of months.  He once had type II diabetes, and now he doesn’t have diabetes.  He once had no future in a sick body, and now he has a lifetime ahead of him to live out all his other stories.

I am not one of those people with a dramatic weight loss story.  I’ve never been more than 20 or 25 pounds overweight unless you count being 9 months pregnant.  Nevertheless, this is my weight loss story.

The genetic makeup I inherited pretty much includes obesity on both sides of my family, diabetes, and heart disease.  Somewhere in my family must be a big dose of vanity, as well, for that is what I’ve used to keep my body at a reasonable, although not perfect by any means, weight.  I was inching up around 160 a few years ago (again) when Rick became interested in running a marathon.   In training together through 2 marathons and 2 half marathons, I had my ticket to normal weight.  Running became addictive, as most runners will say.  I could eat what I wanted, drink beer or wine, and still look great.   And then we spent 6 months building a house, and I started working full-time instead of part-time, and we only ran sporadically, on weekends and maybe once during the week.  It didn’t take long for those same 20 pounds to start creeping back up. I wasn’t running consistantly anymore, but I was eating as if I were.  I’d cut back on portions, go back to eating vegetarian, go to weight watchers, but nothing was working.

A couple years ago when our son Caleb proposed to Hannah, in all our joy over the coming wedding plans, there was also the dread of knowing, weddings mean pictures, and when you are the Mother of Someone in a wedding, YOU will be in the pictures.  I signed up for boot camp at my health club.  For 8 weeks I felt like I was on the Biggest Loser.  We did pushups, lunges, sprints, squats, weights…it was awesome.  I loved it!  At the end of 8 weeks, we had the big weigh-in and measuring.  I’d lost several inches, which was great, but I did not lose a SINGLE POUND!!  I was so upset, even though my instructor and classmates rallied and pointed out all the things I know are true:  I still lost inches, muscle weighs more than fat, the numbers on the scale don’t mean anything…blah blah blah.  The thing is, I’m a woman, and women know that the scale doesn’t lie.  And now, looking back at the pictures from the wedding…well, you be the judge:

The scale doesn’t lie.

I had Rick take pictures of me this afternoon to use right about HERE in this post, but decided to run upstairs and put that dress on again.  Here I am today in the same dress.  The difference may not look drastic until you realize that at the wedding I was wearing a girdle-like under garment and a slip.  In this picture—just the dress.

So, the rest of my  story.   I had come to a point that I had given up on fighting the weight.  With Boot Camp behind me, and not even being able to lose weight with THAT, I just knew it was time to face the inevitable. For my entire adult life I’d managed to yo-yo between 140 and 160, but now, I knew the gig was up.  It was in my destiny to be heavy.  I had actually started buying larger sized clothing, something I’d always refused to do.

Then, a year ago in September my oldest friend K’Lynn and I reconnected after not having seen each other in 3 years.  (That’s yet a different story).  K’Lynn looked amazing.  I think I can quote myself as saying “How did you lose weight?  You look better than ME, and you’ve never looked better than me in our adult lives!”  K’lynn told me about Take Shape For Life and shortly after, when she helped me place my first order, she became my health coach.  I felt at the time, like someone had handed me a lifeline.  The plan was easy for me, as I’ve always loved meal replacement type foods, energy bars, protein drinks…I loved not having to think about food during the day.  I had my 5 meal replacements, all of which tasted great to me, my one lean and green meal in the evening with Rick, and 3 months later, I had lost 20 pounds!  My story is typical of a lot of nearing middle aged women, and typically, once I lost that 20 pounds, I stopped.  I stopped using the 5 and 1 plan, stopped ordering my medifast food, and went right back to eating the way I always have.  Which, un-typically, really was never a very bad way to eat.  Rick and I lead a pretty health-conscious life, lean meats, lots of fruit and veggies, whole grains.  Oh, and wine.  And beer.  And chocolate.  And not running.  So, of course, over the last 10 months or so, I gained back, not all the weight, but 10 pounds.  And those 10 pounds would not budge.  Jeans I was happily wearing  a year ago were neatly folded and put in the extra dresser in the extra bedroom.  The dress I wore to Caleb and Hannah’s wedding wouldn’t even zip up.

A month ago I called K’Lynn.  It’s time.  I have to go back on the program.  I’ve lost 8 pounds.  This time will be different.  This time, I am studying the transition phase and the maintainance phase and will follow it to the letter.  This time I call my health coach, or text or email her with questions and I have become much more needy.  Needy of her coaching, her applause, and her knowledge to help me to my goal.  I’ve realized how valuable she is to such an extent that I’ve decided to become a health coach myself.

So, this blog is to document my journey.  Although not a journey of 100 pounds or anything even close, but a journey that is very personal and at times very painful for me.  I will write here about my successes and failures, my temptations, and triumphs.  I wish I ‘d started this last year, or at least last month, but for now, I can be glad to share the journey through transition and then maintenance and hopefully I can help others out there who’ve come to a point in their weight and health story when they fill like they just have to give up and buy bigger clothes, or who have just never been able to take off what’s been there for years.  I know this program works.  It works for me and I’ve met dozens of people who can say the same thing.