Week 24 255.2

This week hasn't gone very well as far as diet goes. It started off good. Found out that I had to eat a few extra calories at night in order to be able to sleep without having hunger pains keep me up all night :(

Then on Wednesday night, I pretty much blew it. But I still exercised. I have been on a de-cluttering streak. I have been so sick and tired of all the junk I've been hoarding that I just started throwing crap away. It felt really good. So good in fact that I want to do more of it when I have the energy. The exercise has been giving me more energy. Except for today because I didn't sleep all night for some reason.

I think that this diet is too strict for me. When I exercise I get hungry! Which is normal, but not if you are on a 1,200 calorie diet. So, I'm going to tweak it next week. I'm going to eat the same for breakfast and lunch and then at dinner eat a healthy-ish but not necessarily low carb meal. I think this will give me the fuel not to be hungry all night and have energy to exercise like I want to. I can try it and see...

This week I finally feel better!  Still have a little cotton feeling in one of my ears and a little cough but nothing like it was.

The last couple of days have been really hard for me. A lot of feelings are coming up. I partly know why, and the other part I don't. I've been going through old journals and putting them all together, I have been battling my weight solidly for 8 years. I've been doing the same things over and over and over. The same failures over and over, save for the time I lost 60 lbs and I don't even know how that really happened anymore. My weight has been pretty much the same for 8 years. It's crazy. And scary. And sad. And I don't want to do it anymore but sometimes I feel like I don't know how to not be fat. It's become so much of who I am while I've been trying to act as though it doesn't exist. As if this is just a passing phase of my life, and not my actual life. That's why I never buy new clothes. Because I feel like this is not really me. Cuz I'm always thinking I'm going to lose weight and the clothes will just be wasted.

I think I need a drink. How many carbs does vodka have?

Waist 50", Bust 49", Hips 53", Thigh 22 1/4"

Week 25 252.8

This is my week 25 check in. 

This week hasn't been easy for so many reasons. First of all, I'm still sick. The holiday was this week, then there is Black Friday, which starts the day before now, and today we have a wedding to go to. Strange week to start my 25 week challenge off on.

I don't know why I lose so much at first. I don't think this is the way to go. I have been ravenously hungry to the point that it keeps me up at night. But I'm not hungry in my head, I'm hungry in my stomach which is somewhat easier to ignore. But sometimes I think I have hunger psychosis. I start dreaming about food which is just ridiculous! I hate how my body fights against me even though I'm trying to heal it and do something good for it :(

I think I'm going to include a few more carbs in at least dinner. I've been eating just lean meat and veggies for dinner and it feels like my body is lacking something. What I'm saying is that I'm afraid if I eat too strict that I'm going to go crazy and go on a binge. That's what I'm trying to avoid.

What has really been hard this week for me besides food is exercise. I want to exercise so bad! I'm exhausted from being sick, woozy from the meds, and coughing like crazy which gets worse with movement. I did a little exercising this week before things got crazy busy. I just feel so weak. I want to get to feeling better so bad. I can't hear out of one of my ears which makes everything a blur.

Hopefully, in the next week or two my health will improve to the point where I can go a lot harder at exercise. It gives me energy to do other things in my life and I like that feeling. My range of motion improves as well, and my immune system strengthens. So, there are all kinds of benefits I will get if I can just get well enough to do it.

I've had so many challenges this week, but I know every week won't be like this. I think next week will be easier when I have a normal schedule. You can't beat 7lbs in 5 days, but I know that most weeks will just be a few pounds and that's okay with me.

Measurements: Waist 50", Hips 53", Thigh 22"

259 That says it all

I'm not going to go on and on lamenting on how I failed again. I'm just going to get back up from my fall and keep going.

I've always had this weight ceiling that I will never go over. My old weight ceiling was 250. When I got somewhere around 245, a yellow light on my brain would go on. 248, and I would start a diet. Well, somehow along the way, my weight ceiling was raised to 260. I don't even realize how that happened. I'm not going to question it, but I'm sure as hell never gonna raise it again. All I know is that some time last week when I was deathly sick, I somehow weighed in twice at 260.8 and I said, hell no, something has to change!

Speaking of being sick, I've been sicker in the last few months than I've been in a really long time. Sometime in August, I got the flu or maybe just a bad cold that lasted a long time. Then, in the beginning of October, I got a stomach virus. And just recently, I have an upper respiratory infection, and maybe even bronchitis. This is ridiculous. When I was losing weight and eating right, I never got sick. All the exercise strengthened my immune system. I never thought I'd say it, but I look forward to exercising. I want my health and strength back! I want to sweat!

Being at the weight I am now, I know that I can't start out exercising at the level I was before. This week is kind of a soft opening for my diet. Plus, I'm still sick, so I've got to take it easy. That's not an excuse. There are other reasons too. Recently, I have tried going back on my 1,200 calorie low carb diet. I start out really strong, and then I start feeling really sick and eventually lose willpower. I think I need to ease into it. I will probably still be eating at most, 1,500 calories, but I got some fruit to eat as well. I feel like maybe I was shocking my system and it was rebelling against me and causing me to fall off the wagon. I need to at least try this.

I have a 25 week goal. I'm going to lose 59 lbs in 25 weeks, ending May 19, 2013. Hopefully more ;-) My ultimate goal is to reach 170 by the end of December 2013. I have a special and private goal to reach 233. If I lose 2 lbs a week like FitDay say I should to reach my May 19 goal, I should reach my 233 goal in 13 weeks which would bring us to February 18, 2013. This is going to take a lot of willpower. A lot of bad things happened to me in early 2011, but I need to be strong and not let those things control my life. I need to turn something bad into something positive. Create new memories. For me, it makes sense that I would post once a week on Fridays to see where I am.

Things I need to work on:
1. Don't get so hung up on what the scale says. Don't give up because of one or a few bad number days. 
2. Stop being jealous of the past and the success I used to have. Stop comparing my new self with my old self.
3. Don't turn to food or self hatred when things go wrong (and they will!)
4. Don't freak out if something doesn't work. Use it as a learning lesson, and tweak what you have to to stay on track. 
5. Accept what is, move on, and do better.
6. Slow down, weight loss doesn't happen overnight!

Measurements: Wrist 7 3/8", Upper Arm 16", Forearm 11 3/8", Thigh 23 1/8", Calf 18.5", Neck 16.5", Waist 50.5", Hips 54", Bust 46.5"

249.6 Disappointed

How many freaking times am I going to post that I'm starting over and way motivated and stuff?!? I hate myself for that. I let myself and this blog down, ugh! So, ya here I am again. I feel like I just slipped up from the last time, but that was a looong slip up. It's now a month later and I'm at it again. Well, not long after I fell off the wagon, I injured myself.

I was bending over a drawer organizing my nail polishes. I had been at it for a while when all of a sudden I felt a hot burning feeling in my lower back and then it was like a lightning bolt struck it. I tried to stand up but couldn't. I could only manage a hunched over position and made it to my office chair. My back was racked with spasms. I could barely walk. I stayed on the couch or in a sitting position for 24 hrs until I finally decided that the severe pain I was in was intolerable. I had to go to the doctor. She diagnosed muscle spasms probably from a pulled muscle and loaded me up with pain medication and muscle relaxers. I was in a haze for about 2 weeks. I had to have help getting up and even taking a bath. Brushing my teeth was excruciating because bending over the sink was almost impossible.

Little by little it got better. My brother who's a massage therapist also massaged my back and it felt better. I'm pretty much completely better now, but it scared the crap out of me. Carrying all this weight is really bad for my muscles, among other things. I just can't live like that in a haze of medication. I need to get the weight off and strengthen my back muscles so that this crap doesn't happen again!

This week, I tried to say on 1,200 calories and under 100 carbs. I also got the 'great' idea to incorporate fruit into my low carb diet. Not sure if that was the greatest thing. I've only lost 5 lbs this week and I feel terrible physically. Eating lots of fat always left me wanting something, but this time I've been having severe stomach growling at night which keeps me up and really bad diarrhea. So, I think I'm going to stop the fruit and eat more fat. I've just got to tweak it along the way, and probably check out my old food journals.

I feel like part of the reason I lost weight the last time was because the Metformin made me lose my appetite, but now my body has adjusted to it. I sure wish I could find something for my appetite. I swing from nauseous to ravenously hungry and it really messes with my moods and energy. I've really  had to exercise my willpower today. I just keep thinking of all the pain I was in and how I don't want to go back to that. I'm not going to post my measurements until I feel like I lost some weight.

249.2 Starting way over

Well, looking at my last post, it's easy to see that the HCG diet didn't work for me. I lost 12 lbs that week, but I was so weak I could barely walk. I'm glad it works for others, but it's not for me.

Yesterday, I started up my low-carb diet. Sad to say, I have gained all my weight back minus 6 lbs or so. I'm not making excuses, but there is a reason all of this happened. I'm not going to go into detail, but I had two heartbreaking tragedies happen to me this year. Needless to say, I plunged into depression and ate my way through these last few months.

Am I better? No. But I have decided to stop hurting myself. I feel exactly the way I did right before being diagnosed with diabetes. Sluggish, body aches, can't walk up stairs, out of breath all the time, TIRED, etc. I HATE the way I feel now. I feel like I'm dying a slow death physically. The difference in how I feel when I was 198 lbs to 249 is like night and day. I want to lose all this weight and lose even more than before!

It's so hard to accept that I had lost 60lbs and gained it all back in a few months. It made me want to give up. It's like even now, every lb I lose won't be a victory because I will be thinking, "Well, I used to weigh 198, so why celebrate 230?" But I know that I can't think that way anymore because if I do, I will never lose the weight. I'm so afraid that even if I lose it for the second time, I will gain it all back again. I keep going over in my mind what happened, and besides the tragedies, I know why. It's because I was looking at this all as a diet and not a lifestyle change. I kept thinking unconsciously that eventually I would lose the weight and be able to go back to eating like 'normal.' What kept me going sometimes was thinking of all the crap I could eventually eat one I lost it all. I just wanted to eat like a normal person. What I have to accept is that a healthy low-carb diet is what is going to have to be normal for me. I can't go back. If I want to keep it off, it's what I have to do for the rest of my life. Does it suck? Yeah, but I'm sure I will get used to it again. It's not that it's hard to eat this way, it just takes so much time. The calorie counting takes time, and the preparation does too. It's not convenient but it works.

Even though no one has made a peep about my weight gain, I know what they are thinking. The diet doesn't work. But that's not true. I made the choice to stop. It works if you stick with it. I was the one who failed, not my diet.

One good that came out of all this is that my husband has kept off the 100lbs that he lost. I'm so proud of him! No one can recognize him. His clothes are tents on him now, lol! He's my inspiration :)

One thing I've been concerned with is that maybe I lost the weight too quickly the first time. I lost 60lbs in 6 months. Was that too quick? I don't know, but maybe. So instead of 1,200 calories, I'm eating 1,500. I need to do some more research on how many calories I'm supposed to be eating exactly.

I have an old treadmill now, so I'm doing 20 min a day like before and will increase according to my ability just like before. When it gets cooler, maybe I can start walking outside again. That will be more of a challenge now because we don't live near the college anymore, but maybe I can walk around our new apt complex. 

One think about the Russian Doll is that you can decrease the size to reveal a smaller figure. But you can also increase the size as well. That happens sometimes. However, you can always decrease again. The choice is yours.

Measurements, Waist 49.5', Bust 46.5', Thigh 22.5', Calf 18.75', Neck 16', Wrist 7.5', Forearm 11.5', Upper Arm 16.5', Hips 53'