March Maddness

So much has happened since Valentines Day.  That's the last time I wrote in this.  My kids who are pictured here decided to go ahead and sign the papers and be legally married so they could get health insurance through my daughter in law's work.  Their wedding will be this September but they are officially married.  I couldn't be happier and I love them both so much.  We celebrated last night at The Melting Pot and had so much fun.

This is a journey for me.  One step at a time and I know there is a time limit on my membership with Metabolic Research but I have so much to figure out.  I run my business and literally am on my toes from 6:30am to 10pm at night sometimes driving all over taking puppies to vets, picking them up in Green Valley Ranch at Joes's house and taking them to him at times.  There's Petsmart almost every other day and all this is going on around the remodel of my home.  It's been all torn up for the past few months since I decided to go ahead and do some of the repairs on the basement and paint the upstairs finally.  It's such a huge improvement I can't understand why I waited so long to do it all.  I'm in love with my home and I even got two couches last week to put in my sitting room and it's lovely to have guests here and sit and talk with them in my sitting room.  It's my "parlor" and I've always wanted one of those.  I ordered a set of canvas pictures of my children that are on their way to grace the wall behind the couches and I feel so blessed I'm on the verge of tears most of the time.

I know that I have a higher power that will help me with my weight loss goals.  I know it's in my best interest to care more about myself.  I need to join a gym and give myself the shot in the arm I need to really love myself enough to monitor what I eat and not just diet but LEARN how to feed myself foods that are good for me.  I have a lifetime of habits to break.  I need to be patient with myself and not do this for some GUY or to look good in a dress for my kids wedding.  All that is fine but what happens when the wedding is over and that GUY goes home?  It's just me.  I need to be the priority not some event or some other person.  That's been the underlying cause of failure for me.  I don't want to fail anymore.  I want to learn how to cook healthy foods and crave them and make a change in my life that is so gradual that I lose the weight naturally and slowly.  I don't care what anyone thinks of how I look.  I care how "I" think.  I like myself and I would even go so far as to say I love who I am right now.  Right this minute I think this is the best me I've ever been.  I try to do my best by my children and my friends.  I am honest and I give to the people who need help from me.  I love what I do and helping people find their fuzzy kids is kind of cool actually and I manage to make a decent living at it.

I don't know how many years I'll have left here on this earth.  I do know I want them to be happy productive ones.  I don't want to get sick or have my body give out on me.  I'm 55 and I'm on the slippery slope toward aging and in some people's opinions I'm already there.  I haven't cared about my health enough and I have to do that if I want to be there for my grand children and to help my kids through their lives.  I don't have a husband to care for.  I have this house and my kids.  I don't miss taking care of a man in my life, that part I don't really even think about anymore.  I've had a few really great experiences with love and I'm not someone who is depressed over not having a lifelong relationship with someone.  I see it work for others and I am happy for them.  I don't long for that for myself though.  I believe we get what we are meant to have in our lives and the trick of it is to be happy with what we have been given and I'm very happy with my life just the way it is.

I want to be more healthy and more healthy translates into the proper body weight and everything I eat matters.  So here's the deal.  I'm going over to 24 hour fitness and joining up.  I'm going to learn to take care of me and the food thing will fall into place.  I'm confident it will.  Stay tuned.

Adele

Valentines Day

There have been so many wonderful Valentines Days for me in my life.  I'm grateful sometimes for memories.  No matter what I have them to remember and look back on.  I'm down to 225 this morning. So I've lost a full 25 pounds since last August.  Slowly it's moving.  Today I got my supplements in and I'm working on drinking all the water. 

I got seven new puppies today.  Five of them are little boys that are five weeks old.  I will have them for two weeks while they get big enough to be adopted.  Two are black Tri babies that are just stunningly beautiful.  I've been so blessed with high quality puppies lately.  Made so many people happy with their new family members.  I hope next year I'll have someone special in my life.  I've decided I want that and it's part of why I'm working so hard to get back in shape to where I'm happy with myself and how I look.  I want to be healthy.  I want my last years on earth to be good ones and not full of problems and sickness and surgery.  I want to go out dancing if that's possible.  I think it is. 

Adele

How I see myself

Well it's been a few days and I'm supposed to do this every day.  I haven't been up to my computer since last Friday.  When I go pick up a litter of puppies it's all I can focus on.  Literally.  I have to figure out a way to take care of myself during that phase.  There has to be a way to plow through it.  It would be so much easier with someone who I lived with and a companion but I don't have that.  It's just me and when I get to the end of this goal it will be something so monumental because of that. 

Today is Tuesday and tomorrow I'm starting the 'beige" diet.  I haven't gone to weigh in because I was sick yesterday and haven't stayed on track.  This is going to be a bumpy ride.  I won't give up.  Not ever. 

Adele

A calm day

Today was calm.  I managed to get in four water bottles today and all my supplements.  I did all the supplements yesterday too.  Doesn't sound all that daunting but for me it's been a challenge.  I still haven't gone to the store for vegetables.  It's still below zero.  I feel good though and I'll make myself do it tomorrow.  I also weigh in with the center in the morning.  Can't wait to add my crystals to my jar.  Each pound is a crystal.  It's getting dark and it's been a quiet day. 

Routines

One of my biggest challenges is setting up a routine.  I got up today and the first thing I did was drive over to the Animal Hospital with my sick little puppy and of course the traffic was horrible so it took most of the morning to get my little man seen by the vet.  By the time I got home it was 11am and I'd left at 8:10.  Big sigh.  I didn't eat before I left and I had a handful of vitamins to swallow so I got started.  Oatmeal and fruit and my water.  Cheese for lunch with some baked green apples artificial sweetener and cinnamon.  Yum.  Started putting out fires and realized my day is a little hectic.  Ya think???

No WONDER I can't manage my food.  My day is managing ME.  I need to switch that around.  Make the routine and it's a little like finding an address when you're GPS isn't working and you're driving around the neighborhood lost.  I can find it.  I will find it.  Then I'll know how to get there and pretty soon I'll be driving it without even thinking about it.  It just takes time and setting those priorities.  I am a priority.  My body is a priority.  How I feel every day IS a priority.  Still haven't gone to the grocery store and gotten my fresh vegetables.  Bad.  I need to just do it.  I have some here at home but it's not enough.  It's so bitter cold outside and down right hard to open the front door. 

I'll go.  I have to.  Breakfast tomorrow has to be more than this little crab up there.  Although I like crab quite a bit.  LOL. 

The Last Time

Today is the last time I'll ever have a first day.  I'm weighed and measured and on my way to the life I want.  I've lived with being over weight for 30 years and there's no one to blame really.  I had bad eating habits.  Never learned to cook healthy food and I gained too much weight during my three pregnancies but it's been a long hard 30 years of poor self esteem and aching joints.  I blamed my appearance for so many lost opportunities.  I didn't measure up to the skinny girls and I envied the ones who could eat anything and stay thin.  I looked at the pretty clothes and longed to feel fabrics cling to me in ways that made me feel beautiful.  I remembered what the felt like as a young woman.  Before I didn't "fit" anymore.  Not my clothes or my life.  Oh I paid for it.  Every day I paid for it when I looked in the mirror but I don't think making that connection ever really stuck.  I lost weight over the years with so many programs you name it I tried it.  Any one of them would have worked if I'd been able to believe in myself.  If I'd been able to stay motivated or just put that next foot in front and keep going but I never could.

So what has changed?

Well, it's a couple of things actually.  I want love in my life again.  I've successfully buried the past and had my funeral for it and I'm okay.  That last part is HUGE.  I carried around this torch for my past relationship for too long and I finally let it go.  I finally realized that the person I loved no longer existed and smiled to myself after so long of thinking all I needed to do was change ME and everything would magically fall back into place.  Well it won't.  It never could.  I know that now and my reasons for doing this completely changed.  I don't think even my best friends get how gigantic that was for me.  It opened up all the space in my thoughts and all this room in my world for new and fun things.  I was living in the past and as much as I wanted to change I couldn't.  I was stuck.  I'm not anymore.

Ya that was me too.  Always the bad-ass, LOL.  There was a lot.  A daughter with cancerous tumors that almost took her life.  Four failed attempts at marriage, two annulments and two marriages.  Three amazing kids that made it through their teenage years after so much angst I was sure I would never survive it.  Many jobs that took little pieces of my self esteem and bosses that were cruel, sexually harassing and stereotyped women into a corner.  I'm working for myself now and it's a peaceful life mostly.  I sell little adorable bulldog puppies.  They just wrap up my world in cuteness and I love that.  I worry about taxes, try and manage my money as best I can and hold tight to my heart until I'm ready to open my arms to someone again.  I don't know when that will be but I'm wanting that again.

My son Christian is getting married to his sweetheart Kate in September.  I waned to look my best and this began the attempt last year to chisel away at the body I'm in.  I actually started at 250 pounds last summer and I'm down to 237.  I joined Metabolic Research and now I'm officially on my way.  I'm doing the three days of prep and taking all the supplements and getting rid of the toxins in my body.  Big deep sigh.  I'm doing this blog as a daily reminder for myself.  As a journal.  I'm doing this because I need it.  I need to talk myself through this and writing has always been a way for me to understand myself better.  I can write the way I think and it's always just come to me.  Over the years it's helped me remember why I felt the way I did.  Reading back over old journals has opened my eyes to things so many times.  Time will fog over experiences we have and sometimes the raw emotion needs to be remembered.  Writing it all down is the only way we can truly go back.  Perspective changes our memories.  It deletes the bad things and our minds lift up the dreams we weave all around the bad experiences we have.  The rationalizations and the justifications.  They fog it all until it's just not there anymore.  After all if we remembered the pain of a nasty divorce it would never heal.  But those glimpses of reality we write down can help us close the door on obsession.  That's what happened to me.  I kept a journal about my bad years with my children's father.  I kept them in a bookcase I never opened and one day out of boredom I took that journal out and read it cover to cover.  It was full of how ugly I felt.  How messed up my life was and how horrible I thought i was.  Unworthy, fat, ignored and unacceptable.  I was shocked that this sad little woman used to be me.  I was amazed at how far I'd come and how I fantasized over this relationship that made me so unhappy.  Why?  Why did I do that?  Because somewhere inside us we want to make it right?  No matter what the cost?  Suddenly I didn't want it right anymore.  Suddenly I was grateful it was no longer my life and I was far away from it.  I couldn't get far enough away. 

That's when I knew.  I wasn't doing this for the past I was losing weight for my future.  For me.  REALLY FOR ME.  I love who I am.  I love that I can help people and give to them.  I love that I have a forgiving heart and that even people who hurt me are given forgiveness so that it doesn't come back to hurt me, not ever.  It doesn't make me weak it makes me strong.  Strong enough to let them go and move on with the business of life.  They can't hurt me unless I let them and I CHOOSE not to let them anymore. 

So this is day one.  I might not always have time to really dive into my reasons for things or have the kind of experiences that inspire but it's me, in all my ups and downs it's just me doing this for myself.  Doing this for the hope and faith that one day I will feel so good about myself that it will shine like a lighthouse and someone else will see it and be drawn to me.  Maybe I'll help them too and they will help me.  I'm happy alone but I feel like I have so much to offer that it would be fun to hold hands again.  Fun to share popcorn and fun to laugh with someone else.  I like that thought a lot.