One Blonde's Adventures in Weight Loss

A Shift in the Weather

2011-10-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning... and it was cold! :(

The wind has been blowing all night and has apparently brought with it the first breath of winter. I seriously had a moment earlier where I thought, maybe I'll just pick walking back up in the spring. However, I got my mile in today, wind and cold not withstanding, and have decided not to worry about however cold it gets or how much snow we have this winter. On days I can walk, I'll walk. On days I can't, I won't beat myself up over it. This is my life, it's not a race, there's no finish line on my health. It just is and I just will.

Awareness is Key

2011-10-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

I believe being comfortable in your own skin is about more than weight. In fact, I believe it has very little to do with weight. I'm extremely comfortable in my skin, but not in my current body, so I thought we could talk a little about that because I don't want this daily conversation to be solely weight focused. I know weight is such a big issue, but I see it more as a symptom than a problem in and of itself most of the time. If you find a way to navigate your life that brings you peace and joy, if you find that place that is authentic for you, you will be far more able to handle your weight.

Here's the thing, life holds unlimited possibilities. It's like Disneyland. Anything you could ever want for joy and happiness is there, but you can't possibly do it all in one visit. A successful visit is achievable only when you research, plan, discuss and then accept the unpredictable like a ride breakdown.

What makes you passionate? What sends a surge of joy through your soul so potent you can't control it?

Do you have it in your mind?

How often do you partake that passion?

Do you live it?
Do you squeeze it in where you can?
Do you deny it completely?

Now I want to know, whatever your answer was... why?

If you're one of those people who lives their passion, share with us! Tell us why, tell us how you found the strength to grab it! If you rarely or never indulge, I want to know why to that also. Not because I think you're wrong, I make no judgements on your life, its yours, you have to navigate it, but you need to understand my family, they are the type of people who do things without thinking. Most of my family is now dead, but I remember as a child, a teen and an adult watching these people run from things, hide from emotions, just jump in without ever checking the water level in the pool. I have never understood that and from this, my passion for making people think has grown to a point where I can no longer hide it.

I've learned from my suffering and my trials and I strive to live authentically and intentionally no matter what, but I honestly do not want anyone to follow me and my life choices like a little mindless drone. That's not what I'm about. I have nothing invested in your life choices, but what drives me, and what grieves me, is to see you running your life with no real foundation or direction other than to do what everyone around you is doing. If I could give you one gift, it would be the gift of vision and clarity. Whatever choices you are making in your life, please just know why you are making them. Even the unhealthy ones, if you are at least aware of them, when you have the strength, you'll change.

Being self aware is key to authentic living and authentic living is key to abundant living and I know you want that and I want it for you more than anything!

I realize no life is perfect,we always have things to trim and change and as we learn and grow, new things become important, our focus shifts, old things fade away. Life is fluid, accept that. I spent decades of my life thinking if I just got it to "this" place, it would somehow miraculously stay like a painting and all would be perfect in my world. It doesn't work like that. Life is more like a garden. You may have just been out there weeding, pruning and watering this morning, and you got that thing looking spectacular... this afternoon, the summer heat wilted it, weeds came back and you suddenly have an aphid infestation! It's okay, be calm, one trial at a time we lay the path that is our life.

As my life is transcending, so are my blogs, there may be a few bumps in the road ahead as I go through some construction, but please hang in with me. Life is an incredible journey and I only want to walk it with you if you'll let me. <3

A Little Change that Made a Big Difference

2011-10-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

I'm so glad you came back. I'm excited about doing this blog because I feel like I'm finally at a place in my life where I no longer care about everyone else's opinion on my weight, how or if I should lose it. I want to share the things I've learned over years and years of living as an over weight woman and growing up in an over weight family. Some days the posts may not be long and eloquent, some days they may just be a celebration or a tip or, knowing myself the way I do, a rant about something that's annoyed me. ;-) I'm not going to tell you what to eat, or how your body should look. I'm not going to make the assumption that what is working for me will work for you. However, every day I blog, and my intention in this moment is to blog here Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I want to inspire you, teach you, encourage you and let you know that someone else feels what you feel, has been through what you've been through and has all the faith in the world in you to succeed at living a healthy life that is abundantly satisfying.

I believe life is an exciting adventure full of color and passions and beauty, but I think we get sucked down into the mundane, the disappointments, the things that don't work out, to the point that we forget about the good things all around us. Dieting can be this way especially.

Though I'm a writer and I work at home, I do spend long hours at my laptop creating love stories that will take my readers to a place of exquisite decadence where they can indulge in the all the wonderfulness of love and romance. As fantastic as my job is, it is rather consuming and I often forget to eat on writing days and for me NOT eating is my biggest problem with food.

I swear I find it so annoying to have to stop and eat something. lol

That being said, I've dedicated myself to being the most beautiful me I can be, inside and out, so that means I have to eat. I need to balance out my body's need for nutrition with my lack of willingness to stop what I'm doing and provide those nutrients. In my quest to find the answer to this dilemma for myself, I bought lean cuisine meals. I hated doing it because I don't think those meals are all that nutrient dense and a frozen meal in a black carton is not all thatsatisfying.

Now I'm very fortunate to still have my grown son in the house much of the time and he's been put in charge of making sure mom eats on writing days, because it is okay to ask for help when you need it! So I asked him to microwave my boxed meal of chicken and pasta, but I also asked him to steam broccoli, cook a few fries (my personal luxury food) then serve with mushrooms & spring onions and a sliced tomato...

I wish I had photographed the plate for you, it was stunning! Colors from white mushrooms and chicken to green spring onions and broccoli, purple grapes, orange bell pepper, red tomato, it was a beautiful looking dish.

Even though I didn't think to photograph it, I want to show you this picture to your left which I simply pulled off the web. Remember part of being healthy is about being happy and satisfied and I find it difficult to believe anyone really feels those things over food in a black box, at the very least put it on a plate.

I know! You're thinking about the dishes, so what? Aren't you worth having a nice lunch? Aren't you worth a few dishes? Aren't you worth the time it takes to steam some broccoli? Just try it and see how it feels. My guess is you'll be surprised how much of a difference it will make.

I understand how hard life can be, how busy you can be, how much rests on your shoulders, but we have every right to take a moment for ourselves too and treat ourselves well. Add a glass of wine to that lean cuisine meal, sit at the table and I'll bet you, you forget that dinner came out of a box. You won't be hungry when you finish and you may even feel good about the choice you made, which is one of my personal favorite feelings on the planet.

So do me a favor, next time its just you for a meal, and you're thinking of skipping it, or your thinking of just microwaving or eating over the sink... don't. Try this. It wasn't difficult, the teen made it for me the first day I did this, but it did make a huge difference to how I felt and in the end I got my nutrients, my brain continued to work and so could I.

Be good to yourself, because really, you're the only one that ever really will. ♥

An Argument with No One Inparticular

2011-10-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

I always find it interesting how many people want to jump into your life with advice. I'm never certain whether its meant in a genuinely helpful way, or more of "I know better, you're stupid" way. I certainly hope nothing I post here, or on any of my other blogs comes across in the latter way, it is certainly not my intention to sound pious, bitchy, or like I know it all. I am a 45 year old women with a hell of a lot of life experience under my belt, I'm just in a place where I want to turn around and share it. Take anything I say that resonates and ignore anything that doesn't. In my soul, I'm a teacher. I home schooled both my kids, I've led bible studies, taught classes at conferences, it's what I most love to do, help someone get a hold on something in their life they've struggled with and as I usually have a unique point of view on just about anything, I think I have a worthy voice to throw into the mix. That being said, please never think that I think I know it all, because dear god, I don't. I share what I believe, what I've experienced, what works for me... take what you can and know any advice or opinion is given with love and the deepest desire to help.

I've started speaking publicly about my issues with weight for 3 reasons...

I need the accountability. I will be more successful in my journey by putting my successes and failures up here for the world to see. It keeps me honest, and it keeps motivated.
I believe I've finally unlocked the right door for me to effective and permanent weight loss and to improving my health, my energy and my life. Once i have a handle on something, I need to start talking about it, it crystallizes everything for me.
It's simply my time to be successful at this and there will be no turning back this time, so why not share?

I'm not assuming I know it all, but I am pretty closed off for input at this point. I have spent years reading every book and article on weight. I've watched the weight loss shows. I've done the fad diet, mostly in my teens, but I did them. I've also done successful weight loss programs.Where I'm at now, is that to be successful at losing weight and maintaining that loss, you need to see it as a lifestyle change. You didn't wake up one morning after having been visited by the fat fairy and you're now 150 pounds overweight. Your life supported that weight gain and your life will continue to support weight gain, unless you figure out what the exact cause is and change it... hence lifestyle change.

For me, a perspective change is necessary before a life change and in this particular thing, the paradigm shift happened when I started digging around my youth. I remembered being eight years old and wanting to become a vegetarian. My family all laughed at me and made bets as to how long that desire would last. Of course it didn't because I had no real idea how to be a vegetarian and it wasn't as if my mother was providing vegetarian choices for me, so I failed.

However, I am an adult now and in trying to live intuitively I'm reclaiming me. So giving vegetarianism a real shot seemed only natural.

The other component for me was when I realized I'd been using food and my weight as medication, protection and a place to hide. It wasn't real. I am not naturally a size 18 or 22 or 26 and I shouldn't accept that I am. Authenticity is vitally important to me so staying this size was absolutely unacceptable. That's my motivation. I don't have to be fat. I don't enjoy being over weight and I'm not going to be any longer.

I have no idea why I felt so strongly about having this argument, perhaps its because I'm feeling nibbled at by a number of people right now and whereas no one has done anything so irritating as to deserve a tongue lashing, I am feeling a bit irritated, so I gathered all my irritation into this one post. I just know I'm not alone in having spent much of my life letting other people dictate what was acceptable behavior for me and what wasn't. I get to decide now and I decide to be healthy and at a lower weight. Anyone else out there who can identify with any of this, today is the day to take a stand!

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Confucius

Its time... take that first step, I'll do anything I can to support you, because I know you can do this.

Carnival Games... I Want to WIN! How About You?

2011-10-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

As anyone who's ever struggle with any amount of significant weight loss can tell you... the biggest key, and hardest is really to simply keep going.

I started back at serious walking yesterday and I've done a mile each day. I was particularly pleased with myself yesterday because it was going to be my first day back and when it was time to walk, it was raining. How easy would it have been to say, oh well, what's one more day? The fact that I went out there and walked the entire mile, I'm so proud of. I did good and I'm learning that its okay to feel pride in yourself when you've done a good job and furthermore, I'm learning how truly wonderful that feels.

Today, my youngest wanted to walk with me, he's 17 to be clear, but still my youngest, and not far down the road I said to him, my legs hurt, we may not do the whole mile today. The second I said it, I knew I was looking for him to give me permission not to walk, and internally I slapped myself. Yes, my legs did hurt, and I wanted to say, if I make it up the hill, that will at least be something. Which was true, it would have been and still something to be proud of, but if I only did that much because it was all I could do, then that's one thing, but it wasn't. I was copping out.

Anytime you make a good choice for yourself, life, satan, fate, something, will slap you back and tempt you to stop. There is some force at work within this world, and you can call it whatever makes you comfortable, but it doesn't want to see you succeed at anything. It wants to hold you at mediocre, or worse, when you are capable of so much more! When we resist the path of 'good enough'. When we push through the temptation and make the good choice, despite how we feel about it, that's amazing...in that moment, you're amazing.

So I put the decision about the full mile out of my mind and focused on getting up that hill and once I was on the top and turned around to come back down, I told myself I'd just done the hardest part, you're doing the rest of the mile... and I did :) And now I can really feel proud of my choices and of the exercise I gave my body and of my ability to dig deep and do it anyway. I could have come home and my family would have said "good job." I post on FB and twitter when I walk and I got a few woo hoos yesterday, would have done the same today, but I would have known I didn't deserve them. When you do your best and people say job well done, it touches something deep inside that rarely gets activated within us and when that is active, its like a power boost and we can do remarkable things. It's worth doing your best, don't cop out, don't take the path of the least you can do. Be amazing. Be remarkable.

Walking is good for me. It improves my health, my stamina, builds muscle and aids in my weight loss efforts. Plus its an easy bottle of water if I just sip as I walk. It's a good choice for me and my life and it pushes me to make more good choices because I worked hard for that one, I don't want it to be for nothing!

I believe that anytime you can make a good choice for yourself and recognize it for that, you've just raised the stakes. It's like playing one of those silly carnival games where you've won the teeny prize, but now they want you to keep playing to win the bigger one and the one you really want is that ginormous polar bear with the big eyes. It's hard to walk away once you have twenty bucks invested in that bear. Weight loss is much the same if you can shift your perspective a bit. Make a good choice, just one. After you've done that and you feel how good it is to make that choice, do you really want to walk away now, or do you want to make another good choice and go for the bigger stuffed animal... or in this case... the smaller body? Who knows, in the end, you just might win. ;-)

Cheat Day! :D

2011-10-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the "cheat day". Every time I've successfully lost weight, I've always used a cheat day. Knowing there is a day coming that I can eat at my favorite restaurant have a mixed drink if I so desire and devour my beloved potatoes, in whichever form I choose to do so, helps me get through the rest of the week were I deny myself all those little luxuries.

Today was my cheat day and I went on a date to TGIF... love that place. I ordered the $16.99 three course meal, but I noticed that even though it was "cheat day" I genuinely wanted to be careful with my choices. I didn't have any desire to simply blow it out and eat every decadent thing on the menu, I wanted to be kind to my body as well as my taste buds.

I had a salad for my appetizer rather than skins or pot stickers, first big difference. It was the classic wedge salad, and if you are unfamiliar, it is a quarter head of iceberg lettuce served to you intact with fresh bacon, blue cheese crumbles, tomatoes and a large helping of blue cheese dressing drooling right down the front. I decided for me, I'd keep the blue cheese crumbles AND the bacon, but I'd put the dressing on the side because I learn this fabulous trick when it comes to dressing... keep in mind I was a mad dressing hoarder. I used to have double the dressing easily on a salad and some days that still didn't feel like enough. This time when I decided to lose weight, I seriously considered putting salad on my no list just because I couldn't control myself with the dressing. Then someone told me about this simple little thing, and as I found it to be life altering for me, I'm going to share. :)

Get your dressing on the side. Dip your fork into the dressing, BEFORE you dip into the salad.

That's it!

Seriously, that simple trick has me going from two helpings of dressing, to about a forth of whatever they bring me on the side. I get as much flavor in every bite as I did when I used to drown my salad, and I take in hundreds of fat calories less, as we know dressing is all fat.

So that was the appetizer course. For the main course I had a sirloin, with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Deciding to do my two sides half healthy and half decadent, but I have to say, my friend got the vegetable medley and it turned out to be a variety of squashes and omg it was delicious! If I went back today, I may take those squashes in place of my mashed potatoes!

Then dessert was up and they have the best cheesecake I think I've ever tasted. Vanilla bean cheesecake served with a chocolate drizzle and a fresh strawberry and you have to blend the flavors, its orgasm worthy. :) But today I asked for a small box with my dessert and I boxed up half before I even took the first bite. I often do that with my main course when I eat in a restaurant as well, because whatever you order, you can almost bet on it being double portion of calories to anything you'd make at home.

You also have to be careful in restaurants, because they'll sneak the fat in on you where you least expect it. One of my favorite steak houses bathes nearly everything in bacon grease. You order something like a plain baked potato because you think you're being smart and if you eat the skin, which I tend to do, bang... bacon grease calories and fat you are completely unaware of. Vegetables are often sprayed with, if not cooked in, butter, and even something as basic as a chicken breast can still be more than you bargained for. Olive garden for instance serves you two breasts in most of their dishes, and you seriously just don't need that much protein in one meal.

The thing about dieting, losing weight, getting healthy, however you want to phrase it, is really to just be aware of what you're putting in your mouth. What you eat, the choices you make do matter. Have fun with life and with food, don't be so rigid in your attempt to lose weight so that you frustrate the process. Your losing weight should honestly be a natural occurrence based on life changes you make to simply be healthier. In other words, your focus should not be on the calories and the number on the scale, but just about the choices you make. What choices support a healthier life for you? Because those are the things that need to change permanently. If you are thinking, well I'll just change what I eat until I lose that seventy five pounds... well, how fast do you think that weight is going to go back on when you finish?

It seriously is a life change, and more, its a perspective change.

Weight takes a long time to put on, it takes a long time to take off... enjoy the process or else you won't see it through to the end. I'm not naive enough to think the few changes I made to my "cheat day" didn't still leave me with a boatload of fat and calories on my plate, but I say any little way you can cut back and still enjoy your dining experience, which was the point to going out in the first place... then brava!

Have your cheat day, make whatever choices you want to make with food, but do it with some knowledge of what you're eating, then give yourself grace and enjoy the choice you made!

Unlimited

2011-10-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of living by the limits others have set on me. I'm tired of playing down to a level that makes others comfortable. I have gifts I haven't even begun to tap into yet and a life so perfectly me waiting, all I need to do is get through the next 24 weeks and hit as many of my goals as possible. I realize I sound like a broken record, but that's simply because I can't afford to forget it. The 24 weeks are going to pass whether I do anything with them or not. Just because I don't feel like walking, or drinking my water on a day, it doesn't set that day aside in some magical pause, its a day lost and I've lost too many already.

Yes I'm a perfectionist and yes I like to push myself hard. I'm finding a routine of work hard play hard to work well for me, although I have struggles with the concept of rest and play still, but I'm pushing through those as best I can. I'm still struggling with motivation today. I of course had hoped it would be a matter of setting my mind to it and my emotions would fall along happily. Sadly, tis not the case. Won't stop me though, I'm laboring through the most important 24 weeks of my life, at the end of it, everything in my world will be changed, not simply my weight, but the reason I'm so focused on the weight is because I've discovered first hand how the size, shape and fitness level of my body will limit the life I want and as I said at the beginning of this post, I'm tired of living in a limited exitstence, aren't you?

Aren't you sick to death of people telling you what you can't do?

It seems to me NO is society's favorite word these days and I find living by the boundaries other people have set on my life excruciatingly boring, draining, and restrictive. My weight is something entirely mine. Though people are trying to tell me no, I don't have to listen when it comes to my own body and this is one limit I will live with no longer! There's much that is changing in my life, I'm taking more risks, saying yes to more things, to more people, and I'm carving out a life for myself that suits me. It may not be a life that would make anyone else in the world happy, but what difference does it make whether anyone else is happy with my life or not?

Someone who's been exceptionally close to me for more than half my life said to a mutual friend the other day that they disliked talking with me. Of course that got back to me and I'm hurt deeper than I would have thought over it, but I realized something in that moment with crystal clarity, you really can't ever make someone else happy. There have been four people in my life that I have bent over backwards for, changed who I was for, gave up on my dreams for, that person was one of those four and the only one still in my life at all and it got me thinking of how many years I've wasted trying to take care of people and support people and be whatever they wanted so their lives would be happy... it doesn't work. It can never work.

I've gotten some flack the last couple of years for being "different" and its true, I am changing and one of the biggest ways that's true is that I'm not running around constantly spending hours of my day being available to people and checking in with people so they won't think me rude because I didn't check in with them. I'm spending my time building my own life. I'm learning to trust myself so I don't have to live in fear all the time of people hurting me. I'm learning to take down the walls I've put up to protect myself and I'm learning to just do the job myself by making appropriate choices. No more hiding behind walls, I am who I am and you can take me or leave me, but I like me and I like the life I'm headed for. Its just a matter of standing strong and standing for myself and when things do hurt me, like that person earlier this week, its about learning how to analyze it and discard it, not hold onto it and nurse it until it has completely crippled you. I used to do this ALL the time, but I'm learning to not worry so much about my not being everyone's cup of tea.

I think as you get older, people's opinions of you seem to matter less and less, but I would encourage anyone who happens by this post, its SO not worth spending your life chasing the approval of others. There is no sweet spot in life where everything aligns and everyone loves you. Find out who you are and be that person, people will love you for that. People will be attracted to you because you will shine in that life. Other people will hate you because they haven't found the courage to be true to themselves, but the thing is, if you can't please everyone... and make no mistake, you can't, then why bother spending so much time and energy trying to please the very people who would see you miserable and failing and be happy for it?

Believe me, I do know how difficult a thing it is to live authentically and true to yourself, and I'm far from perfect at it, but with each day, that is always my intention, and with each day I do a little better, grow a little stronger and find myself a lot happier. Its a path worth walking and, for me, my weight was an outward sign of how far askew from authenticity I really was. It was a hell of a lot easier to find a moment's joy in a big mac then it was to tell my mother no for instance. Yet until I started telling her no, until I started telling people in general no, I hadn't any internal joy that could withstand the displeasure of the people around me so I reached for external joy and my joy of choice was food.

No, its not really that simple, but that's a big part of it and I believe that any attempt at weight loss or life change, unless you understand what's put you in the thing you are trying to change, it will be like swimming against the tide. You make make it, but damn you'll be too exhausted to even notice if you do and those types of changes spurred on by the will alone, aren't usually lasting.

We are each put on this planet with a purpose, I have no doubt of that. You were created a beautiful expression of the one who created you. You have gifts to bring this sad dreary world and you have the ability for unlimited joy to well up in your soul. I wish that for you. I wish for you to feel that, because the feeling of true joy that comes from aligning yourself with truth is better than any pizza, cheeseburger, or dessert on the planet and I want you to live an unlimited life and I know for fact that weight limits us, but weight is a symptom, not a disease. Don't spend all your time trying fad diets and surgeries, dig deep, find your truth and start excavating a more authentic life. The symptom of weight will begin to take care of itself. You will want it gone in a way you've never felt before because your authentic you most likely isn't overweight and you will find yourself willing to do the work and having the energy to see it through.

Anyone ready to start this journey, I'm here for you, reach out and lets support one another because though this is a wonderful place to be, its not an easy place to be and any journey is easier when you have company. ;-)

As for me, I'm limping right now, but with each good decision I make, I get a little stronger. I'm, still struggling a lot with my water intake, so I've decided to stop trying for six bottles, and go for 3. I can do three fairly easily and I'm hoping the success and the change in how I feel when I start moving away from dehydration, will give me what I need to reach for that fourth bottle, and then the fifth.

Life is constantly in motion, be truthful with yourself, are you moving farther away from, or closer to the things you really want? I have so much faith in you, I know you can have the deepest dreams of your soul, you just have to start with one step, then take another. You'll find it easier than you thought and soon you'll be miles from where you are right now. Be proud of yourself and your successes and give yourself grace for your failures because we need failure to learn from, the secret is... just never give up and never settle for a life of limits when you truly can be unlimited.

Starting Off Strong

2011-10-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

We start again. Only this time, I have information I didn't have before, so I'm ahead of the game. I think listening to our bodies and paying attention so we can learn what works for us and what does not when it comes to wellness, is imperative in our busy world. I mentioned in my other post that I think a large part of our overwhelming weight problem here in America is how busy we are and that we don't think about what we are fueling our bodies with.

I find, especially as I age, that my body is less forgiving the longer I treat it shabbily. Empty calories, fad diets, going for long times without fueling up at all, and constant dehydration, these things all take their toll and at least for me, leave me feeling lethargic, strip me of all motivation, and feed false cravings that are damn near impossible to resist.

In my personal experience of earlier this year, when I've gotten the right amount of sleep, and when I start my day with a long walk and a bottle of water, when my first meal of the day is oatmeal with walnuts and bananas, it puts my mind in the place it needs to be in to make good choices for my body. It shows me, I can totally do this, and furthermore, it reminds me how good it feels to be healthy. The choices that follow in the day are so much easier because I don't want to get derailed from my good start. So if I had one bit of advice to offer, it would be weight loss is a long, annoying, sometimes hard thing to do, don't look at the big picture, just set yourself a morning routine that will get you moving and push your brain into the right frame and don't let yourself get away with not following it. Apply your best stubborn streak to this alone and I think you'll see an enormous change to your overall attitude and success throughout the day.

The other bit of advice I would give, is fix your sleep pattern. I know, terribly presumptuous of me to assume you don't sleep well, but as I see all the time in articles on health and weight, the vast majority of us aren't. Again, from personal experience of this year, I learned that a proper sleep schedule gives you more energy throughout the day, allows my brain cells to fire on all cylinders and quite frankly... just feels good!

All my life I thought I was a ten hour girl. If I got less than 10 hours of sleep a night, I'd feel edgy, worried, tired... then I accidentally started sleeping 7 hours a night and discovered, I wasn't tired and in fact had more energy throughout the day and wasn't taken down by arsenic hour! You know, that time in the afternoon when you crash and apparently mothers of olde used to put a tiny bit of arsenic in their children's tea to calm them down over that afternoon crash so they themselves wouldn't want to jump of the London bridge? ...I'm serious, I read about it in a parenting book once LOL

My point however, is this, if you aren't sleeping well, it is affecting everything from your mood to your ability to lose weight. Do some experimenting and find a sleep pattern that works best for you and don't be afraid to think outside the box. I have a friend who uses two sleep cycles a day about ten hours apart. I personally find 5am to noon works best for me. There is no formula for this, its about your body and what it needs and I assure you, when you start giving your body what it needs, it will start giving you what you need!

Here's my commitment for the next seven days...

To re-establish my sleep schedule.
To start my day off strong
To drink 6 bottles of water every day (I'll be holding myself accountable to this on the twitter and FB page)
To eat healthy, vegetarian meals and to avoid - soda, cheese, and bread
To walk at least three times every day

Those were the core basics of my healthy living plan of the summer, the things I've faded on doing over the past six weeks, so today I'm back on it and I'm starting out strong, because this is too important to wade into. My health matters, your health matters. Lets make it a priority.

Embracing My Outer Self

2011-10-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

I grew up in and around the entertainment industry so to say I've been appearance conscious all my life is an understatement... for all the good it did. An effect of this awareness was to be familiar with all the beauty treatments and diets that have come and gone for thirty years and then some. The current trend of plastic and bone thin people disturbs me more than anything else I've ever seen. What happened to pure natural beauty? Why don't we appreciate that anymore? It makes me very sad to see so many people and som many young people running to their plastic surgeon's office to fix a perfectly lovely face and body.

Same stand true for diets. The things we do to our bodies to achieve some ideal of what is beautiful is so disgraceful. We dishonor ourselves when we mutilate and starve our physical bodies. While I personally believe your physical body is merely the outermost shell of who you are, and the thing that will indeed someday die away, I do think it should be appreciated and cared for in the manner of which it was given you. That is however a rather new thing for me as I've felt truly uncomfortable most of my life with...
my looks and my natural weight.

I've never been a yo-yo dieter, something inside me knew that was a bad choice and after my second child was born, I made a conscious decision to forget about weight unless, or until, I could give it the focus and attention it required to take it off and keep it off. In other words, until I had the bandwidth to deal with an entire life change. That time is now for me.

I had one other successful attempt at weight loss about five years ago and in that time I learned how to eat, even unhealthily, and still lose weight. This time around however, its about more than simply a number on a scale, I'm looking for something very specific from my body. I want it to look a certain way and feel a certain way and I have come to realize that the only way to get what I want from my body, is to give it what it needs, at least 90% of the time.

I'm a smart woman and the needs of my body are simple, but as I was coming up with this list, I took it a step further than simply weight loss, lets just call this my vanity list. Earlier today on my life blog I posted an update to the big Florida move and there are 24 weeks until my first trip down there to apartment hunt. After that I have this gut feeling that things are going to move rather quickly so I'll be moving into a different phase of life than I'm in now so this feels like my opportunity to fine tune the things I've over looked the last few decades....and lets face it, I have a definite vane streak. When you grow up a pretty blonde girl with blue eyes in southern California, the attention you get for your looks does become a part of who you are.

The strange thing for me is that, along with things like my ability to write, sing, dance, garden and cook that I feel somehow guilty over because those around me don't have those abilities, I've also felt guilty for being what the typical American culture during the years of my growing up called pretty. As I'm trying to move into my own spotlight in the next act of my life, becoming comfortable with my appearance is a must.

Here's where I go freaky Samantha on you... I am completely comfortable with my current appearance, because I've dulled it down so it doesn't stand out. I'm very overweight, I dress down oftentimes to match my surroundings. I often let my hair just grow long and straight and I rarely wear make-up. What I'm not as comfortable with, is the idea of being thin again, dressing the way I prefer which is sexy and flirty and extremely feminine. Having my hair and nails done and letting myself wear lipstick again. I've sold myself short for a whole lot of years out of some level of discomfort with being "pretty" and I'm not going to do it any longer.

Lets face it, the idea of beauty changes within our culture all the time.

Those are the women I grew up with as the ideal of beauty.

Today there's been a lovely shift and there is a wider range of beauty being appreciated...

And I guess with age, as they say, comes wisdom and I'm merely at a place in my life where I want to embrace my beauty, inside and out and make the most of it. A definitely plus in our time is how many amazingly gorgeous older women there are in the media who still make quite an impression and give women like myself something to aspire to.

The fact is, beauty comes in as many packages as there are women.

We are a culture obsessed with beauty and the fact is there will always be someone younger and hotter around the next bend. At the end of the day, physical beauty is never going to bring you any real happiness, but as a woman who's run from her physical appearance all her life, its time to stop and embrace who I am on the outside. My life is on a path to find the answer to who I really am? What can I really be? How bright can I truly shine? If I don't embrace it all, I'll never truly know.

Body image, and physical appearance is such a stumbling block for us as women especially, though I know many men who struggle with it as well, but no one should dictate to you what beauty is but you. I think if you could take one thing away from this ramble of mine, is that its most important to be beautiful on the outside, but if you have a handle on that part, take a self check, how do you honestly feel about your outside? You don't have to share it with anyone, but if the answer is anything less than "stellar" maybe its something to think about. ;-)

Food, Sex and My Personal Truth

2011-10-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

The following is a repost from my other blog, but it fits here so well, I wanted to place it. More posts, new ones, will be here soon. :)

I come from a family of over weight women. Growing up all the core women in my life were quite heavy, so I'm comfortable with overweight people. I barely even notice weight to be entirely honest. In that picture of me as a teen, I remember like it was earlier today, I felt so fat. I mean I was certain people were staring because I had the nerve to wear shorts. Fast forward the clock about 25 years and I truly am over weight, but I don't feel any differently on the inside than I did back then at sixteen.

I think that skewed view of weight and body image contributed to my ability to wind up 150 lbs over weight at my heaviest. I honestly didn't see it and it didn't feel like a big deal to me as that's what I grew up around. It seemed natural.

Here I am now, just turned 45 and for probably the first time in my life, I'm honestly dealing with food and weight in my life. I'm not fat because I love food. Now don't get me wrong because I'm quite passionate about food, good food. Fresh produce and well prepared meals do excite me from an artist standpoint and having a great meal with friends is still one of my all time favorite activities, but these are not the reasons I'm overweight.

Part of my personal issue with weight is the plain truth that in our culture we are so busy and broke and good groceries are expensive and cooking, time consuming. We eat more meals out than we do at home anymore, so often our weight it truly just situational and the only way that will ever change is with a priority shift. Its so strange to me that we live in a time were food is just as much of a health issue as the famines of old, only we have the problem in reverse. We're dying from eating too much, and from eating bad quality nutrients rather than from starvation, but make no mistake about it, we are dying.

What those fast food places are doing to our health should truly be criminal, but I completely understand being
tired and how much easier it is to run through a drive through than it is to go home and cook. I also know that most people will never look close enough at what they are truly eating from those places and won't genuinely make the connection between fast food, or restaurant food, and their health. I have. In fact I rarely eat fast food anymore and when I do, I pick the healthiest option I can find yet still sort of cringe as I'm putting the food into my body.

However, as much of a problem as I see our fast paced, stressed out culture is to our weight and health, there is something else that I believe is far more important and far more incideous. I realize I'm going to get hate mail, and I'm not trying to be cruel, but I believe being over weight most commonly is a tell that something else in your life is off kilter. While I agree that not everyone is naturally a size two, I also don't believe anyone is naturally a size 28. In my experience, being overweight, morbidly obese, is a real good sign that something else is going on. I think many, many people medicate with the food, I know I certainly have. We also tend to exchange the pleasure food gives us for other things we may deeply crave but feel getting is out of our control. In my case I was very specifically exchanging the enjoyment of food for something else I wanted, but couldn't have, sex and intimacy.

My road to embracing my rather potent sexuality is still very much a work in progress, but if you will indulge me for just a second, try and empathize with a young woman who'd been raised to believe what she craved sexually was wrong, good girls and the missionary position and all that, and now she's married. In her dreamy naive mind she assumed her husband would teach her everything she needed to know about sex and she found out rather quickly that was never going to happen. I had never in my life been presented with the concept of sexual compatibility and my husband and I had many intimacy issues. Add to that his undiagnosed asperger's syndrome, I honestly came to believe he hated me, so I was one extremely lonely woman who still had the desires of my youth burning inside me. It scared me to think I could be the kind of woman who would cheat on my husband. I had made a commitment and I take my commitments seriously so I felt trapped and I simply found satisfaction and pleasure through food. Simple as that.

This actually had a side effect that served me, as an overweight woman, men stopped looking at me and I felt safer in my unsatisfying marriage that way. No temptation to stray and all that, but the facts of my life now are that I'm single, I'm a whole lot more confident in myself and I'm trying to build a life for me for the first time ever. In that life, I'm not fat. I want to once again be the sexy woman men look at, only this time, I want to enjoy that sensation. I was to know what it feels like to be thin, healthy and sexy. I want to know what it feels like to not be fat and recognize that.

Here's my truth, I was a size 6 the day I got engaged, a size 12 on our first anniversary, right now, I'm an 18, I was a 26 at my heaviest and my goal is to get back down to a 9 before Florida. I am working my ass off to make certain that happens, but I don't believe I would have stood a chance at success on this if not for dealing with my underlying emotional issues. I think its a case of pruning all the dead leaves off the plant, but it has root rot, and if you don't treat that, all your going to get is more dead leaves until you have a dead plant.

Weight is a complicated issue for me, there are lots of ties attached to it. One landmine I discovered recently was a memory of being ridiculed by my family at ten because I decided to become a vegetarian. I've always had an enormous soft spot for animals and I simply didn't want to eat them anymore. Rather than a supportive family who would help a young girl figure this out, they all laughed at me and said I could never do it because I liked cheeseburgers too much. Going about 90% vegetarian this year has felt like a coming home of sorts, something I was always meant to do and finally I'm living it.

Honestly, my weight has been a source of embarrassment for me for many years, but today, I'm giving myself some grace and forgiveness. This was simply my journey and as I'm taking responsibility for my body, I'm so incredibly proud of myself. As I see my body start to change, and I need to buy new clothes which I did today because the old ones simply don't fit anymore, I feel more and more of myself aligning with my own personal truth and there is a reawakening happening. I'm remembering who I am inside and who I want to be and I'm gaining the confidence to know I'll achieve everything I dream. The weight coming off is solidifying my journey. I'm learning how to navigate food, social activities, and restaurants in such a way that I honestly don't think I will ever again have trouble with the mechanics of weight and all this makes me stronger. As one week leads into the next, its somewhat easier to do the things necessary to keep my new found momentum going and I love that.

While body image continues to give me a hard time, I'm very glad to say I'm in an exceptionally healthy place with food these days. My blood pressure is now down to the PRE hypertension stage, I have amazing amounts of energy, and I have completely kicked my fast food addiction that has plagued me my entire adult life!And might I add, have you experienced the amazing summer ripe produce available right now? omg its like heaven!

Anyway, this is the first post in another series I'll be running here on the blog. I feel like I'm finally at a place where I can talk about it and start figuring it out better by sharing. If anything in this post rang a bell for you, examine it. Find your truth and live it, I can't tell you how amazing a thing that is. :)