Tag: weightloss

So That’s The Secret…

by higgsbunch, posted in weight loss

I am not a believer in weighing myself constantly, I hate the scale. It is ridiculous to me that an object can dictate how I feel about myself, about my day, about my LIFE! I choose to only weigh when I am at the doctor. Sometimes I slip the nurse a few “free chick fil a” coupons to not actually tell me the number on the scale (you would be amazed at what people do for a chicky)! I am just not someone who is obsessed with the number. Or at least that’s what I thought…

I have always told people to not go by the number but to go by how your body feels. And I believe that, to a point. When I was at my lowest weight last year, I didn’t worry at all about the number. I would yell from the mountain tops to NOT WEIGH YOURSELF EVERY DAY! Then the exercise stopped and after a few weeks, my eating changed also. I began to let more of the unhealthy habits back into my life.

Haha!! Habits??? That seems like such a nice word for this!

As I was saying…the exercise and the food began to take a downward spiral. The journaling stopped and the affirmations were put aside also. I pretty much gave up on myself. Fortunately, a mental breakthrough stopped my freefall before I hit bottom.

I cannot get back to my starting point. 480 pounds is not where I want to be. 480 is the number I started at, not the number I want to end at. I sat down and did what I do best – made myself feel like crap and guilty as ever. Then when that was over, I started journaling. I wrote about my feelings and I wrote some more, then when I felt like I could come up for air, I wrote some more.

I have stopped forward movement in my journey. A cookie here, hot bread there, pasta leftovers and yes, even pizza. At the moment I ate them, I did not feel bad about it. I really didn’t. My therapist (my sister and yes she is a real therapist) asked me how I felt right before I ate too much food. WOW! That was a hard question for me to answer. It wasn’t that food game me a warm and happy feeling or that I was so in love with food I could not walk away from it. So what was it? I began to think about that question and really went back a looooong way, to when I was very young.

I believe that I overeat because it is something that I can control. My life right now now has A LOT of drama. Issues at home, issues with money, taking care of my mother and father…I feel like I have no control over anything. But I have control over my food intake and I do not want anyone to take that away from me. I don’t want to lose control and let others into my private world with food.

So I am back on the wagon (again, always again it seems). But I discovered a trick that will never let you down. I weighed myself to see how much I had gained and I saw a number that surprised me. It was BELOW my goal weight!! Right there, blinking in front of my eyes. For a moment, I cannot describe how crazily my heart flopped. Then my husband walked in and said “Oh, that is set on kilograms, you might want to change it to pounds”! NO I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE IT BACK TO POUNDS!

Anyway, that is a perfect reminder for me to remind you that the number does not matter. How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Does anything hurt? Ask your self that question if that scale number is not going down as fast as you want it. I have to say this because I have heard this from SO MANY diet institutions: “It won’t happen overnight”! No shit!

I think my next blog will be “Things Overweight People Do NOT Want to Hear”!

Stay strong!

I’ll Take Easter Candy for $100, Alex!

by higgsbunch, posted in weight loss

Hi, my name is Joanna and I am an overeater! I eat my feelings, I eat my pain, hell, I even eat my happiness! My motto for so long was “Everything is better with a bean burrito”. I would wake up in the morning and wonder what I should have for breakfast, unch and dinner. Sometimes I would plan on eating all of them at the same time! It’s not easy to sort through extra psychological baggage to figure out why you overeat. I want to stop yo-yoing with my food and understand WHY I overeat. For instance…

There I was, minding my own business, walking through the local grocery store to pick up items for dinner (a good dinner too…not mashed potaoes with gravy and mac and cheese with a side of buttered bread) when I walked into aisle 3 and BAM (yes, just like Batman and Robin) there was the Easter candy right in front of me. I’m not talking one or two packs of jelly beans. I am talking about chocolate covered peeps, Easter snicker eggs, Hershey chocolate mini eggs, Reeses peanut butter bunnies and Hot Tamale peeps. YES HOT TAMALE PEEPS!

I spent the next two hours looking at every package, reading the back and trying to find a keto Easter peanut butter egg or a low carb peep…I would even settle for a Starburst jellybean…JUST ONE!

Alas, Easter candy is not conducive to healthy eating. Oh I know what people will say “Just eat one, everything in moderation”. Well, that is the problem Apparently I stayed home the say moderate eating was taught in 8th Grade Health. I can’t eat things like that in moderation, unless moderation means one in your mouth while 2 more candies sit on standbye in each chocolate stained fist.

I cannot eat in moderation so I refrain from eating it at all. That may seem ridiculous to you, but it is what I have to do. I once thought I had control of myself. I once thought I could eat one piece of chocolate, I could eat one pancake…fast forward 6 months and I had gained 60 pounds. So, yea, I can’t do that.It’s like being on Jeopardy and the catagory is “FOODS THAT MAKE YOU GAIN WEIGHT” but your damn buzzer doesn’t work! It is frustrating!

So, on Easter, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving and even on St. Patrick’s Day…I try to not make the holiday centered around food. It sounds easy, but when you raised that good food makes good times, it is hard to do. So I plan events, I plan games, I buy candy for the kid’s baskets/stockings BUT I only buy enough for them. No extras. Not happening. Not in this house.

Do you feel traumatized by the holidays? Reach out to me! Let’s battle this together. No successful dieter ever did it alone, I guarantee.

Riding the Roller Coaster

by higgsbunch, posted in weight loss

OH MY GOD! My last entry was in August! What have I been doing, you ask? How have I been entertaining myself? Well…since I have not been updating my blog…I will give you three guesses how my weight loss journey is going:

A) Horrible

B) Crappy

C) Dear Lord, do not ask that question when I am standing this close to that

Kit Kat bar!

Ok, so I lost control during Covid Quarantine and have had a really hard time getting back into the healthy groove.

I went through the guilt: “How could you do this?” “Why would you do this to yourself?” “You are a failure!” This are the thoughts that consumed me. I fell off the keto wagon and I fell hard, right into a huge pile of bread and pasta.

No one is harder on me than I am on myself. Trust me!!

And I am getting the “looks”. You know, you go out and you can see someone you know looking you up and down with a look on their face. Is it disappointment? Is it happiness? I have learned the hard way, some people actually get happiness out of others failings. And I need to stop using the word failure. I looked up the definition of failure and it is “lack of success”. I don’t have that. I have been very successful with my weight loss journey. I have learned which foods are triggers for me, I have learned which people to keep in my close support circle, I have learned that food is a crutch for me and always has been. That is not a lack of success.

Did I have a temporary set back? Yes I did. Am I giving up and regaining all my weight until I hit that 480 mark again? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I am feeling the same excitement I originally felt when I started my journey. We will all ride the rollercoaster throughout our life. Maybe it’s relationships, maybe it’s food, maybe it’s family. We will all have ups and downs. Sometimes we will feel like we cannot recover from the lows. But we can. We can face our obstacles and we can eliminate them, one by one.

The power to bounce back from a low is not found online, it is not found on Etsy or Ebay. It is found (as corny as this sounds) within ourselves. We have to dig down and find our strength and use it to climb our way back to the top.

It’s not going to always be rainbows and unicorns. But how fun would a roller coaster be if it only went down? The lows are there so we can appreciate our highs and love ourselves for working to get there.

We can do this. We can do this together. If you are struggling – reach out to someone, hell reach out to me! WE CAN DO THIS!!

The Covid Hard 30!

by higgsbunch, posted in weight loss

Ok – I do not even know where to begin. Quarantine has been very difficult on me. When the Y closed, my mind closed. I tried to motivate myself to exercise at home, I tried to exercise in my room, I tried to go walking…but I couldn’t keep the mojo flowing.

I found myself just giving in to the blahs. I would tell myself “today you will jump out of bed and take a 3 mile walk” but my mind would quickly shift to “it’s really a bad time, covid-19 is rampant, no one else has to get up this morning…”. I talked myself into not exercising for one day…for one week…and then for a month…and then…

Yup, I stopped. I couldn’t stop my way of eating (I think it will forever be burned into my brain) but I stopped the movement.

My body has not responded well to being stationary and, you know the story, this led to depression which led to feeling like giving up. You been there? What am I saying, we have ALL been there. One afternoon, I just laid on my bed and broke down in tears and I mean sobbing. I was actually feeling sorry for myself. I was blaming COVID for my depression. Let me repeat that, I WAS FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF.

I pulled my old journals out and looked at my starting weight – 482. I looked at old picture and saw my face-a sad and unhappy face. I knew I could not go back to that starting line. I got angry at myself for giving in to my depression and I was harsh to myself. I began to doubt my abilities and doubt my success.

I called one of my sisters, as I usually do. I cried. I sobbed until I felt like I was going to throw up. Then we talked. She told me I needed to forgive myself before I went any further. I thought about that. By being angry, I was generating negativity towards myself. I have worked to hard to love myself and to get to where I am to despise the image in the mirror. We fall, we fail, sometimes we want to give up. But we can’t.

If you are facing these feelings, I get it. I do. But nothing is forever. Quarantines end. Covid clears. Where do we want to be standing when we get the green light? On our bed soaked in fear and apprehension? Or standing strong ready to grab hold and hold on tight?

Me? I am grabbing on and holding on with all my might.

So I started reading all the weight loss blogs and instagrams that I follow and I discovered something called the “Hard 75”. For 75 days you MAKE yourself keep to a regime hoping it will become a habit. The Hard 75 was a bit too intense for me so I created my own…the Hard 30! For 30 days, I am exercising at least 30 minutes a day, drinking a gallon of water, NO CHEAT DAYS, reading at least 10 pages of a self-help book and taking a picture every day.

It has only been one week…but guess what? I am starting to get that feeling again. I am feeling that pride creeping in and pushing out the anger. It is starting. If you are feeling this way? Let’s do it together! We can hard 30 support each other!!

WE ARE WORTH THIS!