Trouble with the Curvy

Losing weight is 100% a mind game. Every game you play is better with data. The more data you have the better you can play thus increasing the odds you'll win. My new points system has provided me with data that tells me if I am actually doing the things that will shed pounds. My fitbit also provides more data and all of this information (now that I'm actually paying attention to it) is making an actual difference on the scale. Now I know why I'm not losing weight when I really "feel" like I've been working hard to do it. Feelings are the opposite of data but are so much more potent in influencing the mind games I play with myself but data can come back and be my little weight loss ninja. Yesterday I only earned 7 points but it was really a kick ass day because I made really good decisions in the face of feeling like having McDonalds for breakfast and eating an apple and a yogurt instead and today is going well too because this is the first morning I've

In brainstorming a topic for this entry I found that I only have things to complain about today and that's never a good way to start a Pep Talk to yourself. Fresh off a long weekend that I should have used more wisely, I have a ton of stuff to do. Usually having a lunch break helps me catch up on stuff but today there was a luncheon at work so I didn't get to have my usual grocery shopping break. This, unfortunately, means I am probably not going to find time to walk tonight. What is most unfortunate is that walks tend to help me when I experience irritability and today I feel like everything is grating on my nerves. Happiness depends on how you handle the day though so I refuse to give in to a self fulfilling prophecy AND its a short week so I'm not sure what the hell my problem is.. Other than the 99 things that keep annoying me at every turn. Days like today are bound to happen regardless of how well things are going and you just have to power through them. I could jus

I couldn't wait to go for a walk last night. I had a stressful day and it was beautiful out so I thought we'd do a pretty long one. Maybe 5.5 miles and I set my fitbit to update me with my progress every .5 miles instead of at every mile so I could get a better idea of the distances we are going. The first half of the walk was awesome. We went down one side of the river, did some interval running, and kept a pace of 15 minutes per mile... We usually are about 17-18 minutes per mile so I was feeling pretty awesome. I'm in a really great part of my book too so I wanted some time to indulge in that too so we headed toward Coburn Park to run up some of the hills and take a little water break in the park. We made it about halfway through the park when we were approached by a stray dog. He had a choke collar on and the way he was standing made me a little nervous. He came over and then wouldn't leave us alone. We walked the rest of the way through the park and down into t

I've learned something extremely valuable over the last week. Today is the 7th day that I've been using my new points system and at the end of today I will have earned 38 of a possible 70 points. The only thing I changed over the last 7 days is keeping track of the points because I wanted to see how often I was doing most of the things I've determined will help me get to my goal. Turns out, I only do about half of them regularly. I earn one point for each of these things I do: Walk Do Alternate Muscle Exercise Eat Salad/Veggies No Fried Food Had Active Lunch Drank Water No Sugar Wore Fitbit Achieved Calorie Deficit Submitted Blog Entry Getting 5 points per day seems to be pretty easy and I am doing about 5 things on the list every day without even thinking about it. I've only had one day in the last week where I got all 10 points and you know what I remember about that day? It was the best one I've had in a while. I didn't feel like I was "di

I just finished reading "Duma Key" by Stephen King in which one of the character's mantra is "Do the day and let the day do you." Yesterday I did not do the day or let the day do me and thus I ended up sabotaging a perfect day for an awesome walk. I don't know what gets into me sometimes but it really feels like there is a second person inside my head that is bound and determined to make me fail. This is the same voice that talks me into eating fried food, sitting on the couch instead of walking, getting mad at the dog for being too excited to see me, and sucking the life out of any good mood that exists in my house before I arrive. I am all about the self love but I do not love this side of me. I actually hate this side of me. It is the worse version of myself and I'd like to eradicate it for good but how does one go about doing that? I think we all have a demon like this that lives within our personalities and thrives on negativity. Some people that

I have never been a proponent of dieting because my feeling is that the progress you make by reducing your diet to things you would not generally eat isn't sustainable because it is only temporary. When I started to change my life I knew that if I wanted it to work this time I had to make permanent changes not temporary ones that would result in faster gratification. Sustainable life changes take time and any diet plan that doesn't take that into serious consideration is simply a gimmick. There is one I saw recently called the 21 Day Fix that made me laugh pretty hard because it employs good techniques to help you make permanent life choices but is too scared to tell people that so they market it as a 21 Fad Diet that you should really just repeat every 21 days and because it focuses on portion control it doesn't deprive you of things you don't want to give up permanently. It uses color coded containers that help you manage your portions and has workout dvds that keep

I saw a blog post recently entitled "The 'After' Myth" that discussed how even after you've met your goal you don't see your body as a new enlightened thing that you've always dreamed of, instead you can still feel self conscious and unattractive. I completely understood the author's struggles and heard echos of things that friends on weight loss journeys had said to me before and I think it is safe to say that we have all had these feelings at some point. How many times on your journey did you have a great week and was feeling really great about your progress then caught a glimpse of some roll or something from under your t-shirt that made you feel like your "fat" self all over again? I think everyone that starts down a path to lose weight imagines that one day, after a lot of hard work and discipline that we will look a certain way that we have concocted in our heads and suddenly the battle will be over and we will love our bodies and be

Do you ever have those days when all you can do is worry? I get like this sometimes but not as often as I used to. I used to worry about stupid stuff like if the house was clean all the time. When we got Brutus I had to let go of some of these things because certain lifestyles don't follow the rules that turn out not to really be rules if you just resign yourself to not caring about certain things anymore. Now when I get like this, it seems to actually be things that warrant some worry. Because I'm an overthinker, I analyze every possible outcome to death and decide how I would handle myself in each scenario and then I'm ok again... for the most part anyway. The last few weeks have been kind of like this but on my walk last night I had an epiphany. The more I worry about things the less I am acting on swaying my own destiny. I'm only planning for what is going to happen to me, not what I can do to change the way things work out. I'm powerful though and I forget th

It will be two years in June since I began to use this blog as a tool to getting to my weight loss goal. The first year I kicked ass and lost 40lbs. In the second year I haven't lost any weight cumulatively but I did keep that first 40lbs off which I think I should be just as proud of as the loss itself. This, to me, is proof that I've made some big changes in my life that lead me to be healthier and happier. That being said, I'm simply not done yet. I have about 25 more pounds to go and something I've learned over the past year is that this blog really is the best aid that I have in actually losing weight. I think the changes I've made have allowed me to keep the weight off without having to be hyper vigilant.  In order to lose the rest of the weight I need to be accountable and pay pretty close attention to what goes in and what I burn off. This blog is the best way I have to do that. I've added a few more tools to my arsenal including a Fitbit, a dog, and