I Work Out

So I joined a gym. I don't have a physical bone in my body and I never have even before I got fat (which was pretty much when I hit puberty). I was that kid that was banned from roller blades and monkey bars because I ALWAYS got hurt or broke something. I am a class A freaking clutz. I always have been afraid of a ball and I still catch myself flinch to this day.
I didn't really know where to begin when I got to the gym and I hopped on this machine the first day that looked easy enough but wasn't a treadmill (I also failed at using one of those safely in high school). It was a glide type stepper machine and I did pretty good on it but only lasted about 8 minutes. When I got off my legs were like jello and I thought I was going to fall flat on my face.
This gym is huge and like a freaking maze so by the time I dropped off the girls at the sitter service and found my way around I already got more exercise in than I ever would on a normal day so the 8 minutes were all I did.
Today I decided to try a water class where you work out with weights. I freaking loved it. I felt awesome afterwards and not like I wanted to die. I was tired, but it was a good tired. I suspect that is what a fit in-shape person feels like after they exercise because after doing anything  strenuous my body hates me. I think partially because of my weight and I have always had knee/joint pain. I really really enjoyed the water exercise class though and I am going to attend it twice a week. I highly recommended it to people wanting to exercise and have a real hard time with it. I felt like I was getting a work out without putting all of the strain on my body. It was really refreshing.
AND I took the girls in the pool for another hour to play.
I am really getting into this healthy lifestyle.

Fuck You Carbs!

Man do I love food. And I love everything that I should never eat. I also hate vegetables. I will eat them, but most of the time I am really forcing myself to choke them down. This is why I have decided to do the low carb diet. Now I know that eating nothing but fat and meat is not ideal, but this is actually so much easier for me to stick to. I make salads of all low carb veggies and different lettuces/greens. Add a lean protein, and a salad dressing I make myself with healthy fats and I have a delicious meal. This usually gets me by or I really love sautéed chicken breast with steamed green beans or other raw veggies.
Just last week I ordered broiled fish and instead my usual side of potato I got broccoli. I hated it! But i cut it up small and ate the bites of it with my fish. I think this is so important for my girls to see me eating veggies and encouraging them to try them so they don't turn into she-man veggie haters like I am.
When I have a hankering for something  awful I will get a juicy burger and eat it without the bun. This totally satisfied my cravings for something like a slice of pizza or a big bag of chips.
Tonight we ordered pizza and wings for dinner. I ate my wings which usually totally satisfies me, but they just weren't cooked the way I like them and I REALLY wanted to scarf a piece of pizza down. I didn't give in though -or not totally. I did take a small slice of pizza with a ton of cheese and pepperoni on top, just ate the toppings, and tossed the crust. It was so good and just the taste in my mouth that I needed without totally blowing my carb goal for the day.
I typically try to keep it under 20 grams of carbs a day and around 1300-1400 calories. I use the my fitness pal app to keep track of what I eat. I can say that this app really does help. Just to be able to see how many carbs or calories a type of food has been keeping me accountable. There are some foods I put in there and just think holy cap no wonder I have gained so much weight over the years.
When I don't use the app I do go off track a lot easier than if I do use it. It is interesting  to really see what I am putting  into my body, especially when we go out and the nutrition  facts are just not available.
I am still down to minimal exercising, but I did work on my flower bed, weed eated, filled the girls sandbox, and mulched. Needless  to say, I hurt all over today. Like it got hit by a fucking car. Oddly I feel good about it though and I can't wait to get a body work out like that again.
Here is to 18 lbs down and double chin free selfies!

Surviving Sunday Suppers

We have our Sunday suppers at my mom's house, every Sunday. And every Sunday I am vegging out, eating crap and more crap all day. To top it off we usually eat a huge meal and I go home and lay on my ass because I am too full and tired to do anything else. Such a bad thing to do, but after a long week and this is usually my only day to relax I just fell into it.

Now I have tried to diet before over and over and over and Sundays were the hardest because my whole family is just manging all day and who wants to sit there and watch all of that delicious food be eaten? Not me!

Food is my love. I love to cook it, learn about it, watch shows about it, perfect it, taste it, read about it, research the best ways to prepare it. I love every thing about it. I love the way it makes me feel. I love when people tell me my cooking is the best thing they ever tasted. I love to feel full because there were times in my life where I wasn't able to get full. Sometimes money was tight and there just wasn't enough food or there wasn't food that was good. Nothing makes me feel better than a huge plate of comfort food. I am a huge emotional eater and when shit gets hard you can bet I am stuffing my face. 

I have been to counseling and basically came to this conclusion that I already knew existed. My problem is I never learned how to cope with it. If I am hungry I eat and it doesn't matter how many calories or arteries I am clogging. If it makes me feel good, I am going to eat it. I am not stupid, I know I should have stopped this cycle a long time ago I just didn't know how. I still don't know how exactly I am going to get over this and I am sure I am going to have bad days, but I have never been more determined to beat it. 

So I am keeping myself accountable. On Sundays and every other day of the week. I am writing about it, I am telling people about it, I am keeping track of every single calorie and carb I put into my mouth. I rarely tell people when I am on a diet because I know when I fail I am going to hear shit about it, but this time I am telling everyone whether they want to hear it or not. And when they see me trying to sneak a hand full of chips I hope they say hey fatty put that down. Because I do need the help and I do need the reminders. I sometimes just eat out of habit and don't even realize what I am doing until after the fact. 

This Sunday I announced to everyone what my diet was, that I needed to stick to it, I am not going to be a fatty anymore,  and I even got a few "you need a cheat day" remarks. But I didn't cheat. I put everything I ate into the my fitness pal app on my phone and I made sure I stayed under my goal for the day. I even brought a huge salad that everyone loved and ate what everyone else ate for dinner, I just cut out the bread and left the potato wedges off of my plate. I stayed away from the snacks and I drank a HUGE cup of lemon water instead of my usual 3 glasses of soda. Go me. 

Making The Most

So I have decided that I am going to lose weight, get healthy for myself and my family. I have also decided to start a blog to help write out my thoughts, track my progress, use it to vent because I know not eating whatever shit I want is going to make me grumpy, and also to keep me accountable. I don't know how many times I have started this journey determined to be successful and have failed miserably only putting on more weight as time has gone by. This past year I turned 30 and lets face it I am not getting any younger. I have had some health problems (thankfully not anything major or life threatening), but they could have been preventable had I made better choices of what I put into my mouth and was more active. I don't want these health problems to turn into something more and I would like to be here for my girls for as long as I can so the way to do that is to get the weight off and live a healthier life.

I can blame so many factors on why I have let myself get so big, but at the same time I am intelligent enough to know that I need to make a lifestyle change to reverse it. It is time to stop living in the past and move on from this fat chapter in my life. Writing things out has always been a huge help to me and I can express myself better with writing than talking things out with someone. I am hoping this will help me get though this journey and if I can help or inspire someone else along the way, then that would be good too.