Look at me now!!!

Today is a GREAT day!!! A few days after I had my baby I went shopping. I was desperate for pants and sick and tired of wearing my maternity gear. While I was there I found a rack of pants for $6 and so I immediately tore through them. I found a pair of pants and a pair of shorts that fit me then so that was great but I also picked up a pair of pants that were WAY too small. No matter what I tried I couldn’t even get them past my thighs. Determined to lose weight and loving the $6 price tag I bought them. I told myself that I would be wearing them before Christmas. Well guess what!!! These are them!!! This morning while getting ready for church I realize that all of my pants are dirty. So I thought what the heck and put these on. To my great delight they went on easily. These pictures don’t really do them justice because they have cute little pin stripes that I don’t think show up in here. They are fantastic!

I love this competition and the support and motivation you all provide. Since I was taking pictures I took some in my jeans… these are the ones I was jumping for joy about getting into not too long ago. Well now they to big!!! They just look sloppy when I wear them so I’m going to have to dig through my closet to find some that are smaller. Go me!!! :0)

One Pound at a Time!

Well, I’m not feeling quite like the big "BLAH, BLAH LOSER" that I was last week. Work is still stressing me out but mentally I’m pretty sure I’ve made it over that lump of frustration that was pushing me down. I want to say thank you to all of you that sent me encouraging comments after my last post. I swear it was all of you that helped me make it through without gaining 10 lbs. :0) I did lose a couple pounds even and that was good because I wasn’t sure that I would be going anywhere. I weighed in today at 319.6!!! GOOD BYE 320’s!!! WOO HOO!!! I’m NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER going to see them again!

By the way… has everyone seen Karilynn’s AMAZING & BEAUTIFUL family pictures? If you haven’t then you must look at them. I don’t know about all of you but that is some serious motivation! Look at how far she’s come in a year. I wanted to publicly say thanks to Kari for not only getting me into the competition but for being a constant inspiration and encourager through out! I love you girl!!!

BLAH BLAH BLAH

THIS WEEK FREAKING SUCKS!!! OK LAST WEEK KINDA SUCKED TOO!!! MY SCALE IS NOT MOVING! I'M TIRED, FRUSTRATED AND I WORK TOO DAMN MUCH! I MISS MY DAUGHTER AND MY HUSBAND AND ALL I WANT AT THE END OF MY 10 HOUR DAY IS A COLD BEER AND A TUB OF BEN AND JERRY'S!

Little Black Dress

This is my little black dress. I know this picture does it NO justice but it has a Marilynn Monroe quality to it. It's SUPER cute on... when it fits that is. I bought this, to go to a wedding, years ago and wore it only a couple of times. My goal is to go to a New Years Eve party wearing this dress! I can't wait!

What the hell! Right?

Ok ladies I’ve decided it’s time to get down and dirty!

Up until this point I’ve been very careful about what I’ve put on my blog as far as weight and stuff goes. I haven’t linked the biggest loser blog page to mine in an effort to keep those not in this contest from seeing it. I have this insane fear that people that don’t “really need to know” will see my weight on there and look at me differently. I have friends and family that read this blog and I guarantee none of them realize how much I really weigh. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to keep it that way. Well that is until today anyway. Today something changed! I’m not really sure what but here is what happened.

Every other Friday when I work there is only myself and one other guy in the whole building. I love these days because it give me TONS of time to get stuff done that I’ve been putting off or that requires some quite research time. It also gives me lots of time to think and reflect. I didn’t plan on thinking about this contest but since it’s the beginning of the month I found myself doing just that. I was thinking about where I have been and where I’m at… more importantly where I want to be and I realized something. I’m exactly where I want to be. At a starting point.

October 1st was yet another starting point for me. I was thinking about the past month and being really hard on myself because I didn’t show a higher weight loss. I was thinking and overanalyzing the choices I made and nit-picking even the slightest error in judgment. But holy crap… look at the inches I’ve lost this month! I’m beating myself up because the scale didn’t move enough and ignoring the 2 pant size drop. What the heck? Sometimes I think about 3 years ago when I lost “this weight” or “that weight” or weighed “this much” or “that much”. I get caught up in the “used to be’s” and the “might have beens”. I can spend hours second guessing myself and the choices I’ve made over the past couple years. But it doesn’t really get me anywhere. Today I realized that thinking about the past, especially when it’s a negative thought process, only does one thing: Takes my eyes off of my future! What is the point if looking back makes you feel crappy when looking to the future is SO full of promise?

So here I am… at a starting point. This is me in ALL my glory. My current weight: 326.6 lbs.

My height: 5’ 10.5” and these are my “before” and “current” pictures. I must admit that it would have been much harder to post these pictures without having some current pictures to go with but, this is still VERY difficult for me!
However, I’m finished! I’m finished worrying who might see my true weight and gasp in surprise or cringe in disgust. I’m finished because, I’m finished being over 300 lbs.
Hell I’m even finished with being over 250!!!
SO HERE I AM!!!

My goal for this month is to look to the future.
Each day I get a new starting point and each day:
I’m going to make better choices than the one before it.
I’m going to walk faster and run farther.
I’m going to smile more and bitch less.
I’m going to set at least one goal for that day and accomplish it!
I’m going to read one chapter in my bible.
I’m going to pray.
I’m sure I’ll think of more to add to this list but I think this is a good start. Don’t you?

For Karilynn

I'd like to formally thank Karilynn for the brief and yet scintillating mention of my name in her recent blog “For Melissa”. I’d like to go on record by saying that although it is true I made out with her “now gay” HS boyfriend I’m pretty sure he was gay the whole time she was making out with him as well. :0)
LIFE: it comes at ya!

Oh and about this month I’m ending it with only about a 5.8 pound loss (it was 6.4 in my first pic but i forgot my spoon and when i re-did the pic it seems i gained. EEK!). I know that’s not going to get me in the top three but I also know this… I ROCK! I’ve managed to steadily if though slowly lower my weight and I’m keeping it off! But even more than that the inches seem to be just falling off me! I’ve found EVEN MORE pants that are fitting me now that I had no hope of buttoning merely weeks before. WHOOT WHOOT! I’m still fired up and VERY excited to start October. I’m back to work full-time and I now get paid to go to the gym for 3 hours a week. I love working for the government! :0) In addition to that my sister, who is an avid marathon runner, has asked me to run a 10K with her early next year. Although the prospect of that is, at present, scary as hell it also gives me something to work toward. Wish me luck!

I scream! You scream! We all scream for Ice Cream!

So, I’m not the type of person that can deny myself completely of all things yummy. If I try to do that, I end up eating twice as much as I would if I had no restriction at all. My solution to this is to allow myself 1 dessert per week with no regrets and no negative self talk. I find that in doing so I am MUCH choosier about the dessert that I ultimately end up eating. Every sweet thing that crosses my path becomes a 20 minute internal debate before I sink my teeth into it. This is excellent because usually during that debate I can talk myself right out of the desire to “cheat”. Thoughts like, “is this ___(fill in the blank with the item)___ worth losing my free dessert over?” Usually the answer is no so I move on.

Well the other day I chose to eat Ben & Jerry’s Key Lime Pie ice cream. It’s a lovely ice cream. I discovered it shortly before starting this competition and I’m sure I must have eaten 3 or 4 whole pints in that week alone. I LOVE ICE CREAM!!! Always have and probably always will. Ben & Jerry… they are some of my best friends. Just ask my hips and butt because they’ve been gaining ground thanks to those two guys for years! :0)

MY BREAK THROUGH: I opened up that pint of creamy ice cream and started to eat it. Usually if I am having a dessert I’m having it all. But this time I didn’t. I got about 1/3 or the way through that pint of ice cream and realized that I was finished! Done! I had, had enough ice cream to satisfy my craving and I didn’t need to eat any more. Now in the past I would have set this thought aside and pushed through to the bottom of the container. I would have been determined not to waist my dessert with a mere fraction of the total contents. But this time I STOPPED! I put the lid on and put it away! Then guess what else happened. To my utter surprise I was not haunted by the ice cream looming in my freezer. In fact it didn’t bother me at all that it was there. One week later when it was time for my free dessert again I simply opened it up and ate some more. It was awesome!