Trouble with the Curvy

Today is an amazing historic day. If you're thinking that I'm referring to making it into the 60's, well, you'd be wrong. I did not make it into the 60s last night. I weighed in at 170.8lbs. I was a little disappointed but when I thought back to where I started how can I really be disappointed with that? Its coming soon and when it does it will be its own historic day. I'm referring to the Supreme Court making it legal for any American couple to get married. I don't intend for this blog to spiral into a political blog but this is something that really means something to me and I felt compelled to mark the day because this blog is somewhat of a journal as well as a weight loss tool. I can't help but be elated when love wins. I'm a hopeless romantic and it brings tears to my eyes that love prevailed in the face of fierce opposition. So many people have fought for so long for the right to marry the person they love and today they can celebrate. This is

It is going to happen today! Tonight when I get home and I get back from my walk and I step on that scale I will see a 6 in the middle!! This is not to say that when I wake up tomorrow morning that it will still be there because that's unlikely. I weigh myself twice per day; once in the morning and once after my walk. There is usually a 3-4lb difference in the readings and helps me to determine what things I do in a day really work. Yesterday morning I weighed in at 174lbs. Last night after my walk the reading was 171.8. It was so close I could taste it... no pun intended... This morning I was at 173.8 and I am certain I can see a 6 tonight if I walk on my lunch break and walk tonight after work. I need this a lot because it will make progress feel real. Yesterday was a nearly perfect day and would have been perfect if I had remembered my FitBit yesterday morning and I feel so great. This power week thing is kind of awesome. I even put on a tshirt this morning I haven't worn

Yesterday was pretty much a bust. I got rained out on both walks and when I got home Ben had washed and dried an entire mountain of clothes that needed folding. Excuse? Probably, but there is something about a rainy day that zaps me. My food choices were great yesterday though and today the sun is shining and its another chance for a do-over! I've also added a bonus point to my 10 things to achieve each day (I had to crank it to 11...). Brutus loves training now that he can't walk. He loved it before but now he has all kinds of energy that is most constructively applied to training. I felt so helpless that day but training is something I can actively do and if I'm being honest its my own laziness that we don't do it more often. While I don't think the extra point helps my fitness in any way, it does help me not be lazy which is also a goal that does matter to my fitness. Laziness is a big part of losing weight both as a hindrance and as an aid. I know that sound

The first day of Power Week went great! I only earned 9 points though because I should have drank more water but that is an easy fix. Today is not going as swimmingly because the rain is washing out my walks. I clearly didn't consider weather in planning my two weeks of "gettin' skinny." Instead I'm going to be forced to check out one of those YouTube routines I found but exercising for an hour at home is nearly impossible for me because there is a handsome boy and adorable dog that compete for my attention. I would always rather hang out with them than do anything else and it distracts me and sucks all my ambition out of me. I suppose I could say to Ben "Honey would you mind leaving your home and bringing our dog (you know, the crippled one that needs to have a boot he hates applied every time he goes out in the rain) for about an hour so I can exercise at the house in peace." That, to me, seems pretty selfish and a bit ridiculous. If I asked I think

Last Monday I talked a big game about how "this is going to be the week I hit the 60's" all woohooing and delirious with unrealistic ambition. I, in fact, did not hit the 60's. I did enjoy a milkshake, some fried food, and a whole lot of auction fun that kept my focus elsewhere from Wednesday through yesterday. I completely checked out and as a result the scale gave me a hearty fist shaking with a ripe 178lbs this morning. I've also talked a big game about "making life changes" and "doing things that will make a long term difference" and about not giving up everything I love just to be skinny. I still think these are all principles that have gotten me to where I am today but its time that I sock myself with some realism. To lose weight you have to eat less than you burn. In order to do that I need to not eat milkshakes and fries and I need to exercise more. I think the biggest thing I've learned how to do is to maintain the weight I keep

Over the 8 years Ben and I have been together we have accumulated a lot of crap. When we moved into our house we kept a storage unit because our entire house contains one single closet that is not very big at all. We have been saying for two years that we would clean it out and get rid of the stuff that we didn't need anymore. After two years of talking about it and a month and a half of actually doing it, we are finally done! Among the ton of junk I found bags of clothes that I remember putting away thinking that I would wear them "someday" when I lost weight. I'm pretty sure that when I packed them away I never really had an intention to lose weight. Perhaps subconsciously I did but those clothes were not a motivation at all. When I found them it was like going shopping again with stuff I already knew I would love. The best find was two pairs of capri dress pants that were size 12. When I started this blog two years ago I was a size 18. For most of the past year I

To be clear I don't mean that Zumba is like turning tricks, contrary to popular belief. Last night a thought struck me as I was trying to keep up with the new instructor in my Zumba class. As she was salsa-ing and shaking her booty like she had the Alabama Shakes, she did this thing with her hips and when I tried to mimic it and failed an image of Brutus popped into my head. He's learned several "tricks" - sit, shake, high 5, "hug", and "focus" where he touches his nose to the back of my hand. He LOVES to train and is a little workaholic. When the treats come out he knows he has to perform and if you sit there and ignore him for a bit... say 5 to 10 seconds he just starts going through his entire repertoire of tricks at the same time making him look like an adorable furry fool. As I was trying to move like my instructor, I felt like I looked as adorably foolish and I busted out laughing much to the dismay (or confusion) of the rest of my class. L

I woke up this morning and wished with all my might that this was a 3 day weekend... Flag Day right? Sadly, no day off to celebrate Flag Day. Friday night we had a nice chill evening at home. Saturday morning we were up early to set up the yard sale and it was a great success! We had some stuff left over and some things we forgot to gather and it went so well we are going to do it again this weekend at Nancy's house to capture a whole other market we may have missed. The boys went fishin' and Brutus got to hang out with us in the sunshine. The Pup Doctor told us to try to keep the splint as clean as possible and try not to get it wet so we have had to resort to putting a plastic bag on it to accomplish those goals because "staying off it" is an impossibility at this point. That dog has no fear and apparently no adverse feelings towards pain because he's running around on it like he was made that way. Yesterday Ben and Brutus spent the day installing a new ligh

The one thing that I have heard over and over from people that like this blog is that it is real. They like how I sock you with honesty and talk about things that most women are too timid to put in writing. I'm sensitive to the reasons why most women don't like to talk about their weight and body image but talking about these things helps me stay on my path to being healthy and I knew from day one that I wanted to write an honest account of my experience without sugar coating it to create an image I want people to recognize instead of the image that is true. Sometimes it isn't pretty and sometimes it really, really is... Writing has always been therapeutic for me. I've kept a journal for many years of my life and when Myspace introduced an online option for this thing they called a blog I moved that journal online. There were a few occasions when I wrote about something that offended people I cared about and ruined relationships that have yet to be repaired and I d

Two whole years! I'll never forget the day that I started this blog. It was the day that Bangor Metro came to do a cooking segment at my house. I made pancakes that day and to celebrate this morning I made peanut butter, banana, sausage pancakes for Ben and I. I remember sitting down to write the first entry and wondering if I would give up on this after I got bored but two years later this blog is still my best tool (other than my laid up Brutus<3) for losing and keeping off weight. When I started back then I sort of had this hope that I would find recipes and other fun things to share but I never really expected anyone else to read it. This was something I did to help me, not necessarily to entertain but I am pretty funny so...... there's that.... :) What the blog has turned into is more of an account of what it is like to lose weight in the real world. Demands of work, family, friends, and life in general make it hard to plan out the things that you need to stay health

Tomorrow is the 2 YEAR anniversary of Trouble with the Curvy! I'm pretty excited. In last year's anniversary blog I was disappointed to realize that celebrating a weight loss anniversary with cake is like celebrating sobriety with a beer so I didn't eat cake but I'm wondering if maybe I should have.... Instead it seems like I spent the following year just maintain weight instead of continuing to lose the rest. This year I'm wondering if I should just have the damn cake and then spend the rest of the year making more progress. I don't know if anyone else experiences this but anytime I indulge in something super sinful I now feel something like guilt that makes me want to work harder when I'm done. I think this is a good mindset to have but it is also a slippery slope isn't is? Eat one cookie and you end up feeling like Cookie Monster getting busted in Family Guy... It is no secret that I have an addictive personality. I find something I like and I te

Friday night I drove home from work with sunshine on my face and a heart full of hope and determination. Little did I know my world was about to change... again. Nancy and I had planned a yard sale for Saturday and I invited her and Donnie over for dinner and to prep for the next morning. After we unloaded her car onto the porch I went to get a few things from my car and Brutus slipped out the door and started running in circles around the house. He almost NEVER does this. He is usually so good about staying in when doors get open but he was in a playful mood and just bolted. After a few spins around the house I was able to get him back on the porch and grab his collar but it literally slipped through my fingers and he was off again. This time he went and took a big poop on the neighbor's lawn that we share. I stepped off the porch to go toward him calling his name and instead of coming toward me he went toward the road instead, still looking at me like we were playing a game.

I'm pretty sure that a one hour lunch breaks is a little gift I get to unwrap each day. It's like one of those 'gifts' on Let's Make a Deal though and can contain a Zonk some days. Today was not one of those days. I ate my salad at 10am and had a whole lunch hour to walk so I set out on a brisk walk around a nice neighborhood near work. It has a few hills, got me 2.25 miles already for the day and only took me about 35minutes to complete. Once I got back to work and still had 25 minutes I was able to go out and run the errand I thought I was going to have to run tonight after work. Frackin' score! I also got up this morning and did an ab workout and followed it up with a breakfast made of a banana and peanut butter (hence eating my lunch at 10am...). By all accounts I am KILLING it today! I feel pretty redeemed for the first couple of days of the week when I was being killed by the proverbial it. I'm on my way. I didn't weigh myself on my hard rainy

I genuinely feel like the last two days have been some of the longest in my life. Monday the rain was bad enough but yesterday I had some sort of stomach bug that made me feel dreadful all day. After much sleep I woke up this morning and there was this big glowing yellow ball of awesome in the sky shining down on me and breathed new life back into me. This morning I had the fire back and was able to get up, make Ben some breakfast, do my arm workout and hang out with the dog all with enough time to spare to get to work a little early. I remember several years ago when I felt like I was sick every other week. One of my greatest weaknesses is that I can't really concentrate on anything if I'm not feeling well and when I can't concentrate I start to bug out. The only thing that helps is curling up in a ball and sleeping until I can't sleep anymore. Feeling gross yesterday reminded me of when my life was filled with so much more of that instead of the happiness I feel tod

Last week I had a thought that kind of floored me. On Wednesday it had rained and thunderstormed for a good part of the day but I didn't want it to keep me from walking but also didn't want to get stranded like we did last summer so we went to walk around Coburn park. I couldn't do 5 miles of circles and figure 8s because I get bored pretty easily with my surroundings so we went for 2.5 and left. When I got home I felt like I had been lazy and should have gone the full five because "I only went two and a half miles today."  2 years ago if I could have heard myself say that I would have laughed out loud because going 2.5 miles per day then would have been a significant improvement over doing nothing. I'm going to put that in the win column. The weekends are still kind of a problem because when I get done work for the week I tend to fill my weekends with plans that inevitably revolve around what I'm going to eat. I love food and that's the hardest thin