234

I saw a scary number on the scale this morning. I'm not saying "This is it! I'm going on plan now!" out loud, but I am in my head, and after I've been on plan for a week, I'll tell you all about it. I changed my weigh-in day to Mondays. I re-took my points quiz, because yesterday I turned *gasp* 28! One more year closer to 30. I spent a lovely birthday with my mom and stepdad and dad and (half) baby sister, as well as the usual suspects (husband and the kidlets).

My daughter had her first basketball game. Have you ever seen a gaggle of 5-year-olds playing basketball? Let me tell you, it is absolutely gust-busting hilarious. My daughter was completely flattened by the biggest girl on her team and got whacked in the face twice with the ball. After some tears and cuddles from me, though, she actually rejoined her team and went back in the game. I was very, very proud. She's a petite little sensitive thing. I don't know if basketball is going to be her "thing" - but at least she's having fun.

Oh hey, we have a new cleaning lady! Allow me to introduce you to my new best friend, Rosie the Roomba! Rosie is a bit high maintenance, what with all the pet hair she has been cleaning up for us, but I am totally digging this whole "Look, Mom! No hands!" sweeping thing.



My husband also gave me a pair of fabulous green boots (I can't believe I've gone so long living in this godforsaken snow belt without snow boots). Taking the kids out in the mornings to drop the little girl off at school will be a little more tolerable this winter, thanks to my new boots. Yesterday, while enjoying the unseasonably warm weather (70 degrees! on my birthday!) I kept wanting to say that I can't wait to use my boots, but then I revised that to "I'm looking forward to wearing my boots when I need them." Because honestly, I hate winter. Snow is pretty for about a day or two, and then it's just cold, wet, and a dirty nuisance.

This morning I ate a banana and treated myself to a little Starbucks therapy. Really? Peppermint mocha = heaven in a cup. I think they added an extra shot or two this time, because I've had to make way too many trips to the bathroom. There is leftover cake and ice cream and pizza and all sorts of terrible things in my kitchen, but I feel different today. I feel like I can do it, and that little voice of doubt is quiet for now.

SkinnyMinnie, mind if I steal this little habit from you?

Something positive: I AM READY!
Something negative: I have to pee, yet again. And I'm already hungry.
Something for tomorrow: If I stay on plan today and tomorrow, maybe I won't feel too guilty to watch The Biggest Loser (like the last couple of weeks...)

Happy Halloween!

I'm not going to talk about the scale today, other than to say it was 229.8. Yes, that's a gain. I have no excuses, I just still haven't gotten my shit together.

So last night we carved our pumpkins, and I thought I'd share some photos. It's raining right now but is supposed to clear up by this afternoon. I'm crossing my fingers for a nice trick-or-treat night!

First of all, this is what our backyard looked like two days after I raked. Leaf collection begins Monday and I have no idea how we're going to get all these leaves (which are now soaking wet) blown to the front by then.

My pumpkin! Jack Skellington.

And, the kidlets.

now I need a place to hide away

Yesterday was a big fat fail. I discovered that frozen chocolate is not such a bad thing (especially in the form of Fun Size Snickers). Moving on.

Today is going to be hard. I'm baking cookies for my daughter's harvest party tomorrow. The plan is/was to make pumpkin cookies with caramel icing. They're absolutely to die for. The fatty part of me wants to make a double batch, send one batch in with her, and eat the other batch myself. But ugh, I will hate myself for that. But they're so delicious! But I can't.

I love baking from scratch, so this is going to hurt, but when I go to the grocery this morning I'm going to pick up some of those ready-to-bake refrigerated cookies. Hopefully they'll have oatmeal raisin, because I don't like those as much. I'm only going to get as many as I need to send with her. It's Thursday. I need to hold this together.

morning check-in

Yesterday was the first completely on plan day I've had in a very, very long while. In addition to having my eating under control, I also spent a half hour on the treadmill and an hour raking leaves. My hands are blistered to hell and the rain last night completely covered the backyard in leaves again (insert expletive here), but I feel great about the choices I made.

This morning was rough. The wee one was cranky (he's got the mother of all stuffy noses, though, so I'm sympathetic) and I found a note from the kindergartner's librarian telling us her book is way overdue (2 weeks, at this point). I have searched the house from top to bottom no less than 5 times and can't find the damned thing. Whose idea was it to send library books home with 5 year olds, anyway? Seriously. I'm handing the search over to the husband when he gets home, because I can't take it anymore.

So I was stressed this morning, and after I dropped my daughter off at school, I had every intention of driving through BK for a 7 point egg-and-cheese croissant. I'd already had coffee and a banana, so that would bring my breakfast up to 12.5 points. I was rationalizing it in my head, and then I stopped. I acknowledged that I was stressed and aggravated, and that's why I was turning to comfort food. I chose to come home and search the house one more time. I still can't find the book, but I'm glad I didn't have a 12.5 point breakfast.

have some fun, everyone, play the drum.

This morning I shoved the whole bowl of candy into the freezer. I don't particularly enjoy frozen chocolate, so I hope it takes some of the impulse away and stops me from shoving 5 pieces into my mouth in a mindless rush.

For breakfast, I've had a banana and coffee. After I take the kindergarten princess to school, I'm going to come home and put chili in the crock pot (nevermind, I'm missing some ingredients for the chili, so I'll make mac and cheese (ww version) and steamed broccoli for dinner tonight), then get the littlest wee one down for a nap, and go down to the treadmill for the second day in a row. That's the plan, anyway. I'm pretty sure I'm going to take a second stab at C25K.

I'm so glad I found a coffee formula that keeps me from going to Starbucks every day: 1 cup hot coffee, 1 packet Land O' Lakes hot chocolate mix (various flavors like french vanilla or cinnamon or dark) and 3/4 cup hot skim milk. It's delicious.

reminded

I just read Dani's entry this morning, and she said:

I'm celebrating Day 6 of a food/fitness streak. It feels great to be on plan!

I remember how it felt to be on plan. To drop 3 pounds a week. To see the surprise in my family's faces when I would see them after a month, and to know that they could see a difference. I remember joyfully telling my husband each Saturday morning how much weight I'd lost the previous week. I remember refusing to go out to dinner, even though I wanted to. I remember feeling so good about myself, so proud, so accomplished. And I know that those feelings are so much more important than chocolate and cookies and crap food.

I want to feel like that again.

fail.

Oh boy. Epic fail. The candy bag is open (and dumped into a cute halloween bowl).

I'm pushing the reset button.

the candy makes me sad.

We went to Sam's today to pick up a few bulky necessities - toilet paper, tissues, bagels for the husband to take to work in the mornings, a pizza (not a necessity of course, but we ate it for dinner) and a big ol' bag of Halloween candy. Not just any Halloween candy, we had to get the good stuff. This stupid bag has over 100 pieces of every delicious chocolate candy bar imaginable, and it's sitting in my kitchen cupboard screaming at me.

It's making me sad. Sad to know the bag will be opened before the week ends. Sad to know I won't be able to keep myself from eating too much. Sad because I should logically be able to eat some and stop before I eat half the bag, but I know that's not the case. Sad to know how guilty I'm going to feel, sad to know that despite knowing all of this, it will probably change nothing.

I always have excuses for eating terribly. This time it will be - Hey, it's Halloween! Only once a year, right? Then after that, it will be Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. Then New Year's. Then Easter. And on, and on, and on.

But for tonight, I'm hanging on. What if I just take it one day at a time? What if I say, ok - tomorrow I'll have a piece of candy, instead of tomorrow I'll start eating well. Could I really switch it around? Is that like some kind of reverse-diet-psychology?

Ok, totally rambling. Tonight I'm going to go to bed and that bag of candy will remain unopened. I'll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.

On your mark.

Starting weight: 225.6lbs.

Of course this is much better than my original starting weight of 300+ when my son was born. I wasted so much time this summer. Anyway. Moving on.

We didn't make it to Olive Garden last night. Our sitter (my mom, also known as MiMi) was sick and our littlest wee one started getting a croupy-sounding cough. He's 13 months old now and toddling all over the place. Last night was no fun at all. I made apple cinnamon pecan waffles with loads of syrup and butter. Anyway. Moving on.

I had eggs and coffee for breakfast this morning, and a sugar cookie from the farmer's market and half a tofurky sandwich with low fat swiss and low fat mayo for lunch. I think I need to start budgeting my points differently through the day - allowing for a larger number in the late afternoon/evening when I tend to throw caution to the wind and stuff my face with wild abandon. I have 19.5 points left to get me through my afternoon munchies and dinner of homemade black bean burgers and lentil rice pilaf. Wish me luck!

grocery day!

The impossible seems possible on grocery day. I have a plan! A menu plan, that is. This week for dinner, we'll be having: "Perfect Hominy" white bean chili, homemade black bean veggie burgers and lentil rice pilaf, a big salad with veggie chik'n strips and baked potatoes, and homemade mac + cheese with broccoli or asparagus and applesauce. I might try to find some dishes to make with the mass amounts of squash we've been getting from our CSA, too.

Lunches will mainly consist of tofurky sandwiches on arnold sandwich thins, fiber one bars, and yoplait light yogurt. Breakfasts will be... oatmeal. I need to get back into the oatmeal habit, and out of the stopping-at-burger-king-for-egg-and-cheese-croissants habit.

Of course, tonight the husband and I are going to Olive Garden (without the wee ones!) Is it even possible to eat healthy (and vegetarian) there? We haven't been to Olive Garden in a very, very long time. Visions of breadsticks and oily salad dressing are dancing in my head... fried mozzarella... cheesy cheesy pasta... wine... mmmm....

so it begins

So this morning for breakfast I had 2 strawberry poptarts with margarine on top and a mug of coffee with a packet of hot chocolate and some skim milk mixed in. Healthy? No. Filling? No. Bad? Yes.

It's 10AM and I'm hungry. I need to load up WW online and plan out the rest of my day. I don't even want to know how many points I ate this morning.

I deleted all my previous blog entries, and I'm starting with a clean slate. I'm not going to blog to be entertaining, I'm just going to blog to help myself through this journey. I will confess, I will complain, I will babble, I will ramble, I will be pointless and dull. But hopefully, I will lose weight. And that's what it's all about, right?

starting over

Starting over? Yeah, I think so. I haven't been on the scale in weeks. This summer has completely sucked, as far as my weight loss efforts are concerned. The beginning of fall has been just as bad. I need to refocus, and I'm not sure I can do it.