As usual, I get by with inspiration from my friends

The previous post was part of a series of text messages I had with my friend Anina... And that was in part inspired by my BFAW Stephanie... And there's also... Hmmm, let's just jump in shall we?

My boss says to me that I put myself down too much. Actually most people with ears say this. I know it's true. I try to exude confidence and security but it is a big struggle for me. I recently celebrated the milestone of officially hitting 40 lbs on the WW scale. As I shared this with a friend, she astutely asked if this milestone in some ways would make it harder for me? Well, yes. It does. Because I have about that same amount to go to get to goal. I am literally halfway there. It's hard not to get scared that I'm going to fall back into being me and just gain it all back.
Which lead to the text portion from last night. My BFAW and I have had lots of extra time to walk during the day since we had been blessed to be on a project that gave us a scosh more freedom. We probably got in 2 miles a day for at least two if not three days. Twice what we can normally do. Gave us a lot of time to catch up - including food confession. And that's when I decided - no matter how ugly it is, no matter what I do I am going to track every single thing I eat and drink from now on. Because at least that way I am being accountable. Even if I'm accounting for gaining, I know what I'd did. Here's the quote from me that didn't get uploaded "I did the right things even when I was doing the wrong things."
And being accountable for tracking is making me appreciate activity more. 40 minutes of stepping while watching The Avengers is better than nothing. Any activity is better than none.

I'm going to try working on the outside in. Get my outside close to that Scarlett Johansson aspiration and work on building the confidence to match that.

And I'll keep trying to keep you in the loop here!!

Hugs,

Heather

Susan Komen!!!!

My shirt came today!! So excited! Can't decide if I should sleep in it or go run tomorrow morning in it. What do you think??

Life is good!

A little bummed not to have time to go to my regular WW meeting this week because I am finally officially at the 40lbs down mark!!

This deserved a bathroom photo to document! Especially since I ca finally wear knee high boots!

Catch up with photos

Not a WHOLE going on in Heather's Fat News...  I've recently been taking some bathroom shots at work, so I'm adding them here for posterity.  Thanks everyone for all of the positive feedback on the red dress.  I DO love that dress and just felt AWESOME in it.  The polka dot was actually a blast from the past.  I wore this to BFF Tina's wedding in 2007 and I can finally fit in it again.  I was feeling super sassy in that too, until someone said I looked like Minnie Mouse.  What?!  

Still trying to get ready for the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure.  Finally actually did the correct 5k I mapped out in my neighborhood.  I really need to run more often than twice a week, but I also need to do a lot of things.  One thing at a time.  I recently started writing a blog post about ways to make work outs fun.  The thing that exercise enthusiasts are always preaching about.  I had this crazy idea -- girls' night out bootcamp.  You get together with your girls and work out to earn activity points (or pre-burn calories, whatever your thing is) to go out and party like a rock star.  An added bonus is a little extra tightness to wear your favorite party dress!  A skew tangent version of this would be to plan activity dates with the girls.  One of my best friends at work (BFAW) and I have been going to Mount Trashmore after work and doing a loop.  And of course, my original BFAW inspires me to go for walks at work all the time.  The bottom photo is just a random shot from the USAA walk.

And the middle torn jeans photo?  Well, that was an old pair of jeans that got torn at the thighs from my fat pushing out...  And now they're too big!  I bought a replacement pair one size down at Old Navy this weekend.  They only had one pair my new size in the style I like in the store.  Which turns out to be a blessing, because they're the slip down style that the young people seem so fond of these days.  My old favorite style is no longer being made.  Boo!  Still, SO nice to finally be down a pants size.  Losing 40 pounds and only down two pants sizes since the journey started?!  I mean, that's crazy right?  I think because this time I'm incorporating so much more exercise than I ever did the last time that perhaps there's more muscle there.  But, things are trending in the right direction -- I was finally able to buy 2 pairs of almost knee high boots.  Something that my luscious calves would never have let me do before!

I don't want to over-sell the things are going great position.  I've definitely been sabotaging myself a lot lately.  I mean, just because you can mix vodka with water by using drink mix packs in doesn't mean you should....  To excess, anyway.  There have been a few slip ups with bags of food and tying them on like a feedbag.  Some remembered, some, uh, not.  I have definitely learned that even healthy crunchy food is still a trigger that I CANNOT have around.  I'm just glad that it was healthy so I could minimized some of the shock and horror I felt when it was over.  It will be a while before apple or veggie straws are here again.  

This week I'm going to work on getting back to basics.  Making sure I get at least 2 activity points in a day, minimizing the weeknight drinking and getting back to religiously tracking.  I'm pretty good with tracking, but I've slipped a bit this weekend and I don't want this to become a habit.  

Huh, I guess more to report than I thought.  I'm off to watch the Emmys -- have a great week!

hugs,

Heather

APA

Had a visit with my friend and old rival the dreadmill tonight. I think I made it my bitch...

Whew!

5k training coming along - link at the top if you'd like to donate to the cause!!

A nod to Norman Rockwell with a Saturday Evening Post

OMG!  I totally want to train for The Great American Mud Fest!!

It's just short of a 5k, so getting to my wheelhouse but it's got a whole bunch of Crossfit like obstacles.  Where would you train?  Who would train you?  SO excited about the idea!

Even though I did too much partying last night, I made up for a bunch of that today.  I got up and once again tried to complete my neighborhood 5k.  This was now my 3rd attempt.  The first time, I posted about because it started to rain and I didn't finish.  The last time I missed the turn and when I figured it out, I tried to circle back but didn't want to circle the whole way back.  Still, I made up almost the whole thing and it was 3.07 when I was done.  I was pretty happy with my time too, all in all -- I did it 43:47, average pace 14:14 per mile.  Well, today I was very cognizant of the turn, but then I was in a really new part of my neighborhood and lost a lot of time looking at the map to make sure I was at the right parts and all that.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize that there was ANOTHER turn later, ironically in the most familiar part of my neighborhood -- and that had me completing 3.34 miles instead of 3.10.  My time 48:33 and my pace was 14:30.

Bit of a downscore on the pace, but given that I didn't go to bed until 3 and got up at 8:30 and again, did too much partying the night before -- I think pretty good.  Both times put me well under my first 5k at a finish time of 52:02.

Annnnyways, after I did the run, I decided to mow the lawn for Scott since he had to work this morning.  More activity points, woo hoo!  Then when he got home from work, he swapped out some deck boards and I helped pull a couple of those.  THEN, I got the "bright" idea to take a bunch of the wood debris at the side of the house to the dump.  Which means I loaded a whole bunch of old, wet, rotted deck boards and twigs and so forth back and forth to his truck.  Even MORE activity points!

So, when Scott wanted to have a pizza from one of the better places around for dinner, I felt like despite my partying last night (which I tried to track a fair amount of), I "deserved" the carby treat. I also tracked the pizza (which didn't live up to the reputation entirely) so it's not like I was going off book.  It's just that I really try not to eat this kind of empty points plus thing.  It's just not worth it most of the time.  It cost more points than I really want to spend, for one thing.  And because I frequently eat better than this most of the time, I don't always physically feel good after eating crap.  I can just feel it sitting on my gut.  I think about all of the additional activity I'm going to need to do again to get it off and then it feels even less worth it.

That's all trending in the right direction, huh?  ;-)

hugs,

Heather

by the numbers

Numbers play a big part inside Heather's fat... I hadn't thought about just how much until recently. I have been using my tablet to read my latest book. While playing around with some of its features, I found  all of the pictures stored in the tablet. Turns out they are mostly from this blog. Lots of scale shots, pictures of times from the dreadmill and some random shots I've taken of myself.
If I wasn't sure about my progress, staring at myself at 229 certainly did the trick.
229.
It hardly seems real now. I go through lots of phases of being hard on myself (fully documented here) for the rate of my progress and keeping track of my highs and lows.  It's been a really interesting journey.  I'm pretty focused on it, because I'm getting close to the official 40 pound mark and these "landmarks" always make me stop and reflect.
And now, I'm focusing on the numbers in general. Here are some of my numbers stream of consciousnesses:
 I'm 6 months away from my 40th birthday, so it seems significant that this is when I'm hitting the 40lb mark.  
The last 20 pounds have been much faster coming off than the first 20, but that's also because I didn't start taking things seriously for a while.
I just hit the 16 week milestone with Weight Watchers.  I was feeling some kind of way about this, until I realized that for the most part I have averaged about a pound a week since I started. Well not quite a pound a week, but close enough and really trending in the right direction.

Speaking of numbers, I've been pecking out this lackluster entry for over an hour.  It's time to call it.  ;)

hugs,

Heather

Fat knees means I have a self-esteem problem

It's time for one of my somewhat regular bitching sessions about "being hard on myself."  Usually these sessions are prompted when more than one person makes the comment to me that I am, surprise, being too hard on myself.  And, then I, being who I am, think, "well that sounds like a blog topic."

Because I know that Susan really wants to read about this.  ;-)  (Should I give you a nickname and pretend that I'm talking about someone else?)

So, had a couple of instances of this relatively close together.  One of them was at the crazy party last weekend and then another was with a co-worker.  The co-worker one stemmed from a Facebook photo shoot in which I posted a picture of a dress I tried on with the comment that I liked it but my knees looked bad.  She said I was being too hard on myself.  I really didn't view it this way, I don't like my knees.  Even when I weighed 125 pounds (stupid skinny girl who made bad choices), I didn't like my knees.  I just don't have cute knees.  Is that being hard on myself?  I guess so.  As for the previous one, I don't remember all of it because it was a crazy party but basically she said that I was being too hard on myself and that I was looking good and I should cut it out.

Well.  Here's the more on THAT one. Yes.  I AM looking good.  There I said it.  It's not like I don't walk past reflective surfaces, I know that I look good.  But, I also know that I'm not where I want to be yet.  So therefore I'm only going to keep looking better.  And I don't want to be THAT girl. 

Here's the weird analogy:  my good friend Kiosk is pregnant (yay!) but it took her forever to "pop" and get her baby bump since it's her first baby.  People kept telling her that she didn't look pregnant, she just looked fat.  She's like is this supposed to be some kind of compliment?  This is a baby and I worked my freaking ass off before to NOT be fat before I got pregnant.  To circumvent this, she makes sure that everyone knows that she's pregnant. 

I'm kind of the same way in reverse.  I don't want people to think that I think I don't have weight to lose.  (Yeah, yeah - I shouldn't care what people think.  Go read some other blog, this isn't that kind.) I go to work and out and about and for the most, I try to look my best.  But I do find ways of letting folks know that I'm working on it or whatever.  Does this manifest itself by being "too hard" on myself?  Probably.  I'm working on that.  But it's not going to get but so much better. 

So, here's the thing....  Again.  I DO know that I am looking good.  I also know that I'm going to be looking even better.  I'm excited about the progress and still trying to get there.  I'm reluctant to be over-the-top with my confidence (in person, obviously I don't have as much of a problem here) but I know that my version of that can border on too much self-flagellation.  I'll work on that. 

Oh goody, something else to work on....

hugs,

Heather

Laboring to get back on track

And so now begins the work of reining back in and getting back on track.

Overindulgence weekend is drawing to a close and it was definitely devolving into sabotage. I'm not going to get into all the gory details. But there were definitely a lot of beverages and that means that I'm not sure what all I ate. There were many un-point friendly choices. I hydrated a lot and I definitely think that was important.  But, not enough.  That scale photo from 9/1?  I've got a lot of work to get back there, even if it is new weight.

Yes, the "new weight" I alluded to in my earlier post.  It's weight you've put on in a short period of time.  While losing weight is never easy, this is the easiest weight to take off.  For me, this weekend's weight is new weight.  Last glance at the scale had me at 194.  Now, 190 was something that hasn't been seen as regularly as I'd like -- but 194 was also behind me.  I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  But part of what's going to get me back to "the truth" is knuckling down. 

Step one started today, but as usual with me it was a bit of a clumsy start.  As you know, I'm doing the Susan G Komen 5k on October 13.  I am still working on getting over my outdoor running anxiety.  Today, I woke up and decided that I was going to work on that NOW.  I used Map My Walk and created a 5k loop in my 'hood.  Got dressed and prepared to hit the road.  I decided I was just going to walk the whole thing.  Just so I could remember what a 5k felt like and get acclimated to being outside, blah blah blah.  Less than the half mile mark, it started to drizzle ever so slightly.  Barely enough to be alarmed about.  I was at a part of my 'hood that I have walked dozens of times because it's the path to talk our dog Charlie to the park.  I was going to venture past my comfort zone into heretofore unchartered neighborhood territory...  It was exciting.  Unfortunately, just after I hit the one mile mark (I know this because the nice lady from Map My Walk told me), it started to rain a bit more.  The one mile mark happened to coincide with being near the point of no return.  I had passed the last recognizable spot to make a quick escape back home.  I was going to try to force myself through it, but then I realized -- who am I kidding?  I circled back and jogged/walked the rest of the way home. 

I was only gone 22 minutes and made it 1.41 miles.

Still, it's a start.  I know the course now.  It will still be there in the weeks ahead.  And I will try again.  And I WILL succeed!

I'm tracking again after falling off of that.  I'm thinking about restarting my weekly points today so I can have an easier start.  I'm on the fence about that. 

Anyways, now I'm being summoned to start the rest of my day -- and we're off!

hugs,
Heather

Monthly weight log

While this isn't as much progress as my August 1, that's in part because August 1 was a fluke. I bounced up from that a bit and then got going back down. But, as you also know, I've been struggling with motivation quite a bit. Amway. I'm happy.