I am not feeling too great today. I’ve got a tummy ache. So, since lunch, which was eggs, I’ve had two fruit smoothies, to satisfy my fruit requirement for the day, and a lemon protein pudding, for my other supplement.

I didn’t eat a protein and two veggies. I just felt awful. Actually, writing that first sentence in this paragraph made me nauseous. That’s ridiculous.

I have to get well, too, because my dad is coming to pick up the boys and the dog tomorrow and letting me borrow his truck to go get the furniture in. (The bookcase/curio cabinet I bought two weeks ago outside Dallas.) My mom’s going to the airport, so she’s bringing the truck and Dad’s bringing the car. We’ll meet her for lunch and then I can leave.

I kind of want to go straight up there and come straight back, in the hopes of getting this over. I kind of want to go up there and spend the night with my friend and then come back on Friday afternoon sometime.

I can’t go get the kids till R and I can both go because I can’t take Dad his truck back and not have a vehicle to pick them up in. Since my car is in the shop…

Also, after Dad and the boys drop Mom off at the airport, they’re going to have to come back here to get the dog. She can still get out of the fence, so they can’t just leave her with the dog house and the fan till R gets home.

I am very tired, but I feel more energetic since I took a shower and washed my hair tonight. Wish my stomach felt better.

169.8

I’ve now lost 16 pounds. I like that.

Yesterday I had finished all my food by 7. I was a bit hungry when I woke up this morning.

It is supposed to help you lose weight if you eat all your food earlier in the day. But I know that sometimes at night I get hungry. I guess, if I eat early, I could have an Ice Botanical/Diet Sprite drink. That would help break down the hunger pains.

I need to take up sit-ups. That’s not weight lifting and it would make my tummy go down faster.

My girlfriend called and said she can do real push ups now. I don’t think I can do fake push ups.

I need to get working on that.

–I went reading back through my old Health and Looks entries. In August of last year I only weighed 163. So I gained the 22 extra pounds during teaching. Okay, maybe high school teaching was extremely stressful. According to my profile from QWLC, I gain weight when I am stressed. I have a habit of stress eating.

That’s not a surprise.

I weighed 145 six weeks after my youngest was born. Four months later my husband went in the hospital. I gained 15 pounds. It took me a long time to get it off.

I finally got it off, my dad had three or four retinal detachments in a row. I gained weight again.

So, maybe I need to find a new thing to do during stressful times. Maybe I could be like my friends and develop the habit of not eating when I am stressed. Of being much more active when I am stressed.

You know, I am only 9.8 pounds from my lowest weight in several years. That’s another month.

Then I’ll be going lower. Then is when it will get more exciting. I hope.

I may walk up to the grocery store to get some meat for lunch. Or maybe I’ll ride my bike up there. That sounds like a good thing to do. I might buy some lunchables for the boys, too. I am sure they would enjoy that.

I don’t think on H-town blogs asked about overweight bloggers. Why, she asked, are so many bloggers overweight? I actually thought she answered her own question.

If two-thirds of Americans are overweight, then most bloggers are going to be overweight.

I personally am thrilled that bloggers are trying to lose weight. That seems like a plan to me.

I don’t want to be overweight for two reasons. One, I want to look good. Two, I want to be healthy. (Read old blog entries for health stuff.)

I’ve gotten a LOT better because I have changed my diet. When I was a vegetarian it was taking all my energy for an entire day to do a load of laundry. I do literally mean putting it in the washer, moving it to the dryer, folding it, and putting it away. That was it.

And changing my diet lets me be more active. It doesn’t make me be more active, but it lets me be.

Today I went out and mowed the lawn, in the middle of the morning, because it needed mowing. I didn’t get it all done (we’ve had rain every day for a month and the ground is waterlogged), but I mowed. I remember the last time I went out and tried to mow, 15 pounds ago, when I had to come in and ask my son for water, food, and a towel because I was collapsing. I didn’t even make a quarter of the lawn that day.

So, yes, I’m on a “diet.” But it’s not a stupid diet. Have you read it? Two hefty proteins, two small starches, four reasonable veggies, three reasonable fruits, two protein supplements, and the vitamins and minerals I need. Add in some caffeine to boost my metabolism.

I obsess about it, perhaps, because it is not easy for me to make good food choices. It helps me to keep my focus and remember what my goals are to write about it. And the progress is sometimes so small ONLY writing about it makes it visible.

And really, to stay on it, this diet minimizes food choices for me. I like to eat cheese. I like to eat Italian. I adore pasta. I adore bread. But I don’t eat pasta and I don’t eat much bread either. Not because I hate myself, but because I like myself. I want to be healthy. I want to look good.

Not just because looking good is exciting, but because looking good is one of the symptoms of healthy. I don’t want to be super skinny. That’s not necessarily healthy. (See anorexia relapse in the news, if you don’t know that.) I do want to be able to buy clothes in the regular stores. Why? Because it means I’m getting healthier. I’m the “right” size if I can buy my clothes in the regular stores.

Right now, I can. I wear sizes 8-12 right now. (Although I am sure there are some stores I would wear a size 14 in.) But I know I’m not healthy. I’m not at a weight where I can walk for hours without pain.

Over my lifetime, I’ve gained weight. I lost most of my weight after both my boys were born, though I gained HUGE amounts when I was pregnant. But I remember fighting to get down from 150. That was 12 years ago. Three years ago I was fighting to get down from 195. I’m never going back there again. But I want to be HEALTHY. And one measure of health is weight.

So I blog about it. It helps me keep focused.

And, yes, if you saw me you would think I was overweight. But I’m going in the right direction and that’s the important thing right now.

170.4

That’s not bad. It’s certainly better than yesterday. But it’s not as good as I would have liked it. I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s moving down. It’s down from two days ago and significantly down from yesterday, which must have been water weight.

If I lost .4 pounds a day, I’d be thrilled. But this is .2 a day. Which means it will take me five days to lose a single pound.

That’s better than gaining or being stable.

I guess I need to remind myself of the goal. The goal is to lose weight and get healthy.

Yes, it would be wonderful if I could take the weight off quickly, dropping twelve pounds or more a month. But even if it doesn’t come off quickly, as long as it is coming off I am meeting my goal.

In 37 days I lost 15 pounds. If that continues, I will lose the weight I set out to lose in 128 days. Which is more than the 16 weeks QWLC said it would take. Their estimate was 112 days. But I didn’t really believe their estimate. I just hoped it would be right.

Even if the weight loss slows down, I’ll be okay. A pound a week means it will take many more weeks to lose the weight, but I can lose it. That’s the goal. Losing the weight.

If it plateaus for a week, I will take up exercising again. I need to anyway and the drop in weight from adding exercise will hopefully get me moving and keep me moving.

I’d like to add weight lifting, because I enjoy it, but then you add muscle while you’re losing fat and it looks like you’re plateauing. I guess if I’m plateauing for a long time I’ll add it anyway. I mean, then I’ll feel like there is some point to the plateau.

The important thing is to keep the goal in mind: Lose weight and get healthier. Then stay that way.

Today my scale said I was back to the 171.2 pounds I’ve mostly been at all week.

This makes me mad because I am supposed to be losing weight, not gaining it. I have been very careful with my food choices. It’s frustrating.

However, I will tell you, I am not sticking with their herbs and their caffeine. For $20, rather than $135, I can get “the caffeine in a cup of coffee.” Which is really strange, because that doesn’t seem like much caffeine to me, even though I am not a coffee drinker. Also, for $4 rather than $39 I can get EFAs. They aren’t exactly the same, but they are basically. QWLC doesn’t have proprietary research that they’re doing. This is the same stuff in their bottles for a lot more. It’s how they make their money.

I am also frustrated because my girlfriend, following a modified BFL has lost 50 pounds in the last six months. Why couldn’t I lose that much? Why didn’t I keep losing it? If it’s hormones, I can’t afford to buy those. But I’m struggling here and I am very frustrated with that.

We’ll see what the scale says tomorrow.

Today my scale officially said I have lost 15 pounds! Whoohoo!

I ran out of EFA’s and they were out at the center. I went to WalMart and got something similar, though not exactly the same, for $3.50 instead of $39.00.

I also looked around at the herbs. The price for those at the center are $135. And they are mostly just bottled caffeine. At WalMart I can get something very similar for $9.87. It’s still just bottled caffeine, but some of the caffeine is a bit different.

I told the lady at QWLC about the EFAs. She said not to get them because they aren’t quite as good and “you get what you pay for.” But you know, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get the same cheap stuff, but for a much more expensive price.

To celebrate losing 15 pounds, I had thought I would go to Galveston for the weekend, when that happened, but that is going to have to wait. Maybe R and I can go when I’ve lost 30 pounds. (Only 5 more weeks at present rate.)

What I did do to celebrate was go buy some clothes. Sometimes it is difficult to buy clothes when you are losing weight because you think “I’m going to lose more.” However, my clothes were limited to one dress, one bleach stained pair of black jeans, a pair of black pants, and a pair of brown pants. The brown pants are still a little tight. But… I have gotten tired of wearing black.

Today I bought two burgundy tops, one pink one, and one royal blue one. I bought two pairs of jeans (size 10), one pair of skorts (size 8), one skirt (size 10), and two pairs of shorts (size 12). And the clothes feel good on. I feel like I look good and they feel good. Plus, only one piece-a pair of shorts- was black. So I have a bit more color in my wardrobe.

I don’t doubt I will eventually move back to black, but right now the colors are a lot more fun.

This morning the scale read 171.2 again. In some ways that is good, because I lost the water weight. In some ways it is bad because it didn’t drop more.

36 days and I’ve only lost 14.5 pounds. That’s definitely not good.

One thing that is good is that I had baked apple today. I peeled it, sliced it, laid it out in a pie pan, added nutmeg, cinnamon, and Splenda, and then cooked it at 375 for 15 minutes. It was very good. I put a bit too much cinnamon on it, but that wasn’t hard to take off after it was cooked. I enjoyed it.

Maybe I need to work at finding recipes I can have which are different. Eating the same things continually can get old.

I hope my weight starts dropping again.

Day 33, as reported, I weighed in at 171.2.

Day 34 I weighed in at 171.2. That’s not good, so I dropped a starch and a fruit. But we went out to dinner and, after assuring me there was nothing on the plate but turkey, I was given a turkey plate with barbeque sauce on it. I thought about it and I ate it anyway. I had already had my lite salt, but surely that 4 Tablespoons (at the most) of sauce couldn’t hurt.

Then I was so exhausted I went to bed an hour early. I slept longer than usual. It was hard to wake up. And, when I weighed in today, I weighed in at 172.2.

172.2

That’s not good. I know that it’s not “real” weight. I didn’t eat an extra 3500 calories yesterday, but it is solid water weight and it shows up on the scales. I’m hoping it will go away by tomorrow if I’m a good girl and eat all my food and drink all my water.

I still don’t have my car back (This time the place has had it for four days.), so I can’t go check back in with the center, which is great by me because I wouldn’t want to check in today. Yesterday, yes. Today, no.

Hopefully the sugar/salt will flush through by tomorrow. And also hopefully I’ll have my car back and working.

Today my weight was 171.2.

I’m glad.