Win a backpack full of New Year’s Resolution Tools–Box of Shakeology, arm bands, ear buds, with a $10 iTunes gift card.

Okay, my friends. We’re only three weeks until the new year. Those resolutions might be sitting heavy in your mind or inching their way forward while you’re drooling over a plate of cookies, pie, fudge, roast beast, and/or any starch covered in cheese. No fear.
All of us who are trying to be more mindful fight with ourselves during the holidays. It’s a special time of year when your mom, or grandma, or that sweet lady in accounting makes that special dish for her favorite people despite her age or failing health.

My fantastic Great-Grandmother who made the most incredible divinity and fudge–even after arthritis made it far more difficult. Do you think I ate my fill?
You bet I did.

Shrimp Cesar Salad–usually contains anywhere from 550-750 calories, but couldn’t measure the guilt involved.

I call it eating guilt salad –eating something to celebrate or acknowledge someone’s hard work to make it for you because they care. Even if what they made for you is horribly bad for your health.

So what is your guilt salad over the holidays? What dish can you never turn down?
Will you eat your fill or will you actually enjoy the time with the person instead?

Post by your answer by Saturday and you’re entered to win.

Good luck and pick up a copy of Weighting for Mr. Right while you’re at it. It’s a great read while working out.

Julie Andrews Sings "The Lusty Month of May" from Camelot

The first of May is one of my favorite times because the hot summer hasn’t quite arrived, but the chill of the spring has faded. The days are perfect and sunny.
Plus, I’m counting the days until the kids are out of school and we can go cut loose or kick back for three months. I also know if I want to be my goal weight by my birthday, I have to get moving–literally–but that doesn’t faze me this year.
For the first time in a very long time, I’m looking forward to putting on a bathing suit and actually being outside without pause. Now, I’m not close to my ideal weight, but I’ve shown myself that I can do this. That I can lose the weight, improve my health, reach my exercise goals, and not fall in a pit of depression because I can’t eat chocolate cookies everyday. Yeah me!
It’s important to go through these phases, realize you are more capable of achieving the impossible goals of health and weight and actually allowing yourself to be successful.
One of the best ways to help yourself accomplish greatness is to know the food observances. Yep, I said food observances. Now this is two fold.
One, each month has National food observances and May is ripe with choices.
Second, you observe what you eat. When taking better care of yourself it’s important to develop an awareness of what you’re not only eating, but what’s available in abundance.
So, let’s see what May’s Food Observances are:
—National Egg Month
—Medieterranean Diet Month
—Grapefruit and Kiwi Month
—Carrots and Cauliflower Month
—Hamburger
—BBQ
—Salsa (yes the food, not the dance)
—Vinegar
—Potato and Lime Month
—Salad month
—Sweet Vidalia Onions Month

Now it’s it ironic that so many things you find in the Mediterranean Diet are featured this month in the food observances as well?

Of course, not all of it is healthy, but it gives you an idea of what to look for and maybe, just maybe a new way to create a meal that’s amazingly good and new.
Good luck!

Wow! I didn’t realize I’d been gone for almost three months.
In the back of my mind, I thought I’d only been away for two, not that’s really any better.
Life gets away from us all. It’s already August and less than a month away from school starting. So far, I’ve gotten almost none of my crafts goal list completed, pretty much haven’t accomplished much on my health goals, and I’ve yet to figure out a good routine for my daily life.
Yet, time continues to move forward. We’ve arrived into the third quarter of the year and I’m still struggling.
Losing weight sucks.

Despite my comments about goals not met, we had a fun start to the summer. We went to Disneyworld with our children and nephews. They are truly extraordinary young men and I could not have asked for better family time.
Plus, thanks to the Disney Dining Plan, I managed to gain weight during our trip. Each sit down meal gives you an appetizer, meal and dessert–basically enough calories for an entire day in one meal. Have at least two of those a day and I felt grossly full more times than I can count. Add the two snacks a day and you’re almost feeling disgusted with the idea of eating. Yet, it’s still cheaper than if you purchased food off the plan.

About to meet Alice, Mary Poppins, The Mad Hatter, Tigger and Pooh Bear

Coming home from that, the last thing I had any intention of doing was stepping on a scale. My fat pants were snug. No way to the scale. Despite walking miles and miles each day, that food simply tasted too good not to eat. Then I convinced myself that vacation time was for calorie splurges and I’d lose the weight when I got back.
Then we started six weeks of someone in my house being sick. Each Sunday would start off great, only to have someone spike a fever by dinnertime. After two weeks, I felt nuts and felt myself start to eat to abandon, which led me farther away from my goals.

After all that, I’ll finally say it. I have to confess something. I haven’t posted in so long because I rebounded.
The embarassment of having to write about how I’d gone right back to where I’d started overwhelmed me. I felt as though I’d let everyone down, so I crawled inside of shell of denial and ignored any sign of confrontation.
Remarkably, I didn’t gain much weight, maybe 5 pounds from my rebound weight, but that did put me in the range of 225. It’s quite sobering to think I weigh as much as a professional football player.
What pushed me back to write again, to face my embarassment and crack the shell of denial?
Two men.
First, my father, who’s struggled with his weight for as long as I can remember. About two weeks ago, he and my mom were over, visiting our children, when he looked at me and said, “I’m worried about you. About your weight.”
I could have easily said “Oh yeah, well worry about your own before talking to me about mine,” but I knew his was geniune concern. He said it kindly and told me he worried about my health. Right now, he’s having multiple health concerns, some of which are from him being a former smoker and others are exacerbated by his weight. As a parent, he wanted me to avoid problems later. Thankfully, I never smoked, so I didn’t have that to kick. I can thank asthma for me never wanting to smoke.
Second, my husband. On Sunday morning about two weeks ago, he asked me how I decided what ring I wear on my left ring finger. He’d noticed I’d changed them around. Because of my weight gain over the past several years, I haven’t been able to wear my wedding ring with any consistency. During my pregnancy with Katelyn, he bought me a (fat) ring so I could at least look married and as a token of his love and devotion to a woman who temporarily looked like she’d swallowed an inflated beach ball. (I called it a fat ring, he didn’t.) After a moment, he asked if the (fat) ring fitted and I said no. At that point, he asked me what he can do to help me because he “was worried about me.” Of course, I’d love to go to the Gema & Co website and pick myself a gorgeous ring that would fit perfectly, but the reality is that it probably wouldn’t fit me after a few weeks, so there is no point even asking him for that. Instead, I have to go without one.
I have to give him props to even approaching the subject. Consider the position he’s in. He’s with a woman who’s obviously overweight and appears to be climbing up the scale. He watches, hoping she’ll make the changes on her own. She doesn’t. What does he do? Sit quietly in fear of asking about her weight at all or say something and risk a potential meltdown and/or adult tantrum?
He takes the risk and I do melt down. Cry for about an hour. Tell him how helpless I feel against the journey, how frustrated I am with myself that I can’t get it together, and how I’ve let him down.
As if it’s something straight out of a chick flick, he looks at me and says “The only person you’re letting down, is yourself. I want you around for another fifty years. I don’t want to be old by myself. I want you there.”
Sniff, sniff.
I felt a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Was it his kind words or simply being able to decompress through a good cry? Easily, it could have been both, but I know since that day, the frantic feeling of wanting to eat subsided.
My husband and I talked most fo the morning and I told him what things I struggled against. “I can hold it together until about 2 in the afternoon, then I just want to eat everything in the house.” We calculated how many calories I usually consumed by two and found I would restrict myself too much, then get to the mid-afternoon and go nuts, literally pacing in the kitchen to find something to eat.
His suggestion? “Drink a cup of coffee around then to help, then have a cup of yogurt or small snack.” So far, it’s worked. In two weeks, I’ve worked off eight pounds and I reset my goals’ deadline.

2 down, 62 to go

One of the most frustrating things for me when losing weight is the slow pace at which I do it. Now, rationally, I get that’s a good thing, but that other part of my brain, the impatient one, tells me it’s not fast enough. So when I come up with a 2 pound weight loss, part of me starts to wonder why I even bother. I mean, this much work for only two stinking pounds?
What I also know is the scale could easily swing the other direction and I could have a two-pound gain. Without what I’ve done this week, that is a for sure that I would continue to gain weight. I’m well into the obese range and heading into morbidly obese territory (or I might already be there, I just want to live in denial if I am). 

Again, I understand it, but I do find the journey difficult. Each inch, each pound, each body mass index number I drop, I feel it’s a tremendous amount of time, energy, and constant awareness of what I eat and I can’t lie when I say that it can make me exhausted. Just the thinking of what I’m doing can exhaust me…and that’s when that sneaky side, the one who tells me it’s not worth it, starts to talk louder than the rationale side.
The sneaky side is an opportunist. She doesn’t come around when I’m focused, when I’m having a good day or making great strides. She is patient, waits, and watches for an opportunity to start whispering. Don’t worry, I’m not hearing voices, it’s just a process I go through, so bear with me on this one.
The sneaky side waits until I’ve not gotten enough sleep, I’m overwhelmed with errands and housework, or my kids have me extra stressed before she says something like “Why don’t you have a plate of nachos. Nachos always makes you feel better.” She knows she can’t fight me when I’m focused and on track, but she does know when I’m tired and finding a reason not to go workout. These are the moments I find start to want to crater, give in, and pig out and she’s more than willing to help me find something to eat and somewhere to sit.

Bluebirds=Fit Friends

Until in last few months when something changed.

Maybe it was me finding out why I’d been sick for so long and I was on the way to recovery. Maybe it was the group of my new blue birds or my fit friends, that have kept me motivated.
Maybe it simply was the fact that I’d had enough of my sneaky side sabotaging my health and wellness.
It’s probably all these things, but I think most of all, I didn’t want to be that mom who wouldn’t be there for her children when they needed me. Be it me running to catch them when they fall into the pool or be there for their children’s birth, I saw my body, my mind, and myself fading away into a shapeless, unhappy blob of a woman. I knew I deserved more than that. I didn’t work this hard to correct my life years ago, earn my nursing degree while working three jobs, and later my journalism degree to fall into a Costco sized bag of sadness.
My husband, my children, my friends and family deserved to have me around as long as possible and I want to be around. Plus, I saw that I’d stopped realizing how much I had accomplished, what I had done in this world and that I was more than capable of accomplishing my weight loss/health goals. I’d sidelined myself from all those things I wished I’d done when I was younger and given up on ever achieving them. Why? I am still more than capable of meeting those goals and adding more. Where did it say I had to give up my dreams if I hadn’t done them by the time I’d turned 30?
So I keep moving forward, inching my way to a better self and for now, I’ll probably have to fight my sneaky self everyday. Then one day, when I least expect it, I’ll be going through my day and I’ll realize I hadn’t heard from that sneaky side for quite awhile. Now I know she’ll never be completely gone, but my hope is she’ll take a back seat and let the rationale side be in charge for awhile.