Not gonna lie, its been a struggle…..

Welcome to weeks 47 & 48!

As I get closer to week 52, I find myself not wanting to blog as much, and truthfully I have been very busy!  I have also been struggling something fierce!

Week 47 found me at the University of Idaho’s McCall Outdoor Science Camp (MOSS) with my daughters 6th grade class.  This is a week, where I got to play cabin mom to 6 girls and just on the other side of the cabin wall with a door between the two rooms was another cabin mom with 6 more girls.  12 tween girls in total!  Not enough wine and chocolate in the world!   The first two days were torture, and I found myself calling my husband (almost in tears) telling him I wanted to go home.  It was HARD.  We eventually got the girls to calm down and the rest of the week was very enjoyable.  The biggest challenge was eating.  I kept telling myself I didn’t have options.  I had to eat what they gave me.  And since I didn’t have the full reign of the kitchen and only got food WHEN they served us, I totally felt like I need to eat LOTS when given the opportunity to eat at all.  I also found myself saying, “You are going to be outside snowshoeing all day, you need all the calories you can get!”  These two stories were just that!

In reality, I had options.  I could have just had a bowl of yogurt and some fruit with nuts. I could have had a bowl of cereal with fat-free milk.  I could have had a bowl of oat meal.  I did NOT have to have the huge breakfast burrito that the teachers served up. I could have told the teachers to go light on the eggs and sausage.  I didn’t have to go back for seconds of spaghetti!  However, with all of that said, it was the snack times that killed me. I SHOULD have taken more fresh fruit at lunch to tide me over during the day instead of eating the trail mix that was worth 20pts at a pop!  YIKES!  That week, I came home from camp sitting at a beautiful -21 in points!  I came home and tried to get control.  That week I also earned over 120 exercise points!

What did I LOVE about MOSS?  I got to snow shoe for the first time!!!!!  I had so much fun!  I got to be in an epic snow ball fight with about 20 6th graders and 6 adults!  I got to help shovel tons of snow to make a snow fort!  I got to slide down an ice slide with the kids when none of the other adults would play with them.  ALL of this,  would not have been able to do before losing 50#!

     

Week 48 found me going into my Weight Watcher’s meeting seriously thinking I was going to lose some weight, but what I lost was the .4# that I had gained 2 weeks before.  2 weeks of not weighing in, and that is ALL I lost?  I was disappointed!  But it was a loss, so I held my head high and went into my meeting. I am proud of myself for tracking that whole week I was at camp. I tracked everything.

But truth of the matter is, I feel like (well felt like….just wait until I blog tomorrow to tell you how I feel NOW) I was never going to break through this plateau.  But is this plateau that I seem to be in a real plateau or a self-generated hovering place?  My food choices haven’t been the best.  I feel like I am *this* close to a goal (reaching 52 weeks) and I’m fizzling out. I feel like I’m *this* close to 52 weeks and I am only half way to where I wanted to be in 52 weeks (weight wise).  Sometimes I feel like a failure because I am not going to lose 100# in the year I have been on this journey.

I have to keep telling myself that this is a life long journey and that even though I am reaching my 52 weeks, I have to keep this up.

While I was at MOSS, my husband called me with very upsetting  news.  The wife of a man we work with had a massive heart attack and is in a coma.  She is our age with 4 or 5 children!  My husband was soooooo scared.  He called me and thanked me for taking care of myself and making these changes.  THIS is what this journey is about….not the weight.  I am healthier than I have ever been!    The way I was going, that heart attack could have been mine.

When I struggle, I need to remember these things.  I need to remember how far I have come.  I need to remember how much fun I am having being me NOW.

For those of you are struggling with your weight, who may be on this weight  loss journey and wondering if its worth it, IT IS!  Let’s remember WHY we are doing this.  We HAVE to be healthy for our family!  We HAVE to be healthy for OURSELVES!!!  Let’s remember to take stock of ALL of the wins we have accumulated: the times we reached for fruit instead of candy, the times exercised when we really wanted to sleep, the times we were honest with our food journals/tracking when we really wanted to hide that donut we ate, the times we stood on the scale and took accountability, the feeling of going to the doctor to  hear him/her say that we are doing a great job and to keep it up!  Keep a list of all of our WINS and NSV’s and read them when you struggle. They will keep you going!

Week 45…”Free your mind, and the rest will follow” ~ En Vogue

“Free your mind, and the rest will follow.” ~ En Vogue. Not only is that one of my favorite songs that happens to be on my running list and on my iPod ever since I started training for my first marathon in 2006, but it was the quote written on the board of my Weight Watcher’s meeting today!

Free your mind!!!  Today we talked about Power Spaces.  What does your environment look like?  How does it help you on your journey?  And how does your environment play a part in your mind…or well being?

This is one of the subjects that Bill Phillips addresses in his book Transformation.  It’s one of the steps you gotta follow. Clean out and organize the spaces in your life.  It could be your kitchen or the specific spaces in your kitchen (like the fridge). When you open up the fridge, do you see all the junk food first, or is it a safe place to go to for healthy food choices?  Are the cabinets in your kitchen organized so that cooking is more efficient and fun?  What about the bedroom? Is it clean, warm and peaceful ready for a good nights sleep or is it cluttered preventing your mind from shutting off?

I know I always think better when my spaces are peaceful and clutter free.  I love cooking in a kitchen that is clean and organized.  I love sleeping in a bedroom that has everything all put away.  I love that feeling of zen.

The same can be said of relationships in your life.  Do you have relationships that are drama laden?  Do you have relationships that keep taking a toll on you emotionally or constantly have you stressed. This is keeping your mind occupied and worried.  So what exactly are you getting from these relationships that make them so valuable and worth keeping around? Seriously?   Maybe it’s time to let go of some relationships and free up your mind to think of other things.

What I have found in the last 45 weeks is that when I free up mind, the rest will follow.  That means when I take care of life and remove the obstacles and free up my emotions to flow and release myself from the stresses that I had,then my weight started to fall off too!  It made it easier to shed the extra pounds. By releasing my worries, I released my excess weight.  Perfect!

So this week I will ask you the same question that was asked of us in the meeting today.  When you are faced with a choice, whether it is about food to eat, actions to take, purchases to make, friends to hang out with ask yourself this question:  “Does it contribute to or inhibit my well being?”   I love that term “well being“!  This isn’t about weight loss; it’s about a healthy life style. It’s about my being well in all areas of my life!

I wrote that question on my Weight Watchers weight record chart.  I am also writing this on my goals board and will keep this question in my car as well.  It’s something to keep in mind every where I go and with every decision I make.  It will help me keep my mind free and clear!

With that said, today was  a big day on the scale!  I released 4.2# for a total of 51.2#!!!!!  I received my 50# charm today!

   

A new MUST EAT in downtown Palo Alto, California! LYFE Kitchen!!!

As soon as my husband and I start planning a trip to San Francisco, the first thing we start doing is planning where we are going to eat!  San Francisco has AMAZING restaurants from all different cultures and you really need to spend some time in these places. Our usual favorites are The Stinking Rose, House of Nan King, Tony’s Napoletana, and our guilty pleasure:  The Ghiradelli Factory for hot fudge sundaes.  Those are all in downtown San Fran; I didn’t even mention some of our favorites in the surrounding cities in the Bay Area.  Let’s face it, the place is packed with MUST EATs, and I’m sure if you talk to some of your friends, they will all have some of their own restaurants to add to this list.

Back in March I joined the Transformation Community on line and started attending weekly webinars on making a healthy lifestyle change.  At the beginning of every webinar, there was a commerical for LYFE Kitchen. (LYFE stands for Love Your Food Everyday.) The way I understood it,  it was to be a restaurant that focused on bringing delicious, healthy foods to the everyday American.  It was going to be fast, convenient, reasonably priced, family friendly, and in a relaxing setting.  The CEO was a former McDonald’s CEO.  Famous Chef’s were creating the menus.  And eventually they were going to be selling these wonderful meals in the super markets!  I was sold!  The only problem was, I lived in Boise and LYFE Kitchen was being built-in downtown Palo Alto, California!  Okay, it really wasn’t that much of a problem, as my husband travels to the Bay Area once a month and I get to go there occasional, especially since I started working for the same company as my husband!  So every week, I watched this commercial and every week I got more and more excited! It was supposed to be done by the summer of 2011, and I had my first trip back to the area in September 2011.  We drove to downtown Palo Alto and it wasn’t open…yet!  As a matter of fact, it was supposed to open the next week!  I missed it by a week!!!  My heart about broke, but I told my friends about it, and they went for me!    They told me it was amazing!!!

Finally, my turn came!  We planned another trip for me.  The very first restaurant that made the agenda was LYFE, everything else got planned around it!  I was so excited I could hardly stand myself. Finally when the day arrived, my friend Christina and I kept saying, “Tonight’s the night!  LYFE!!!”  I couldn’t wait for the work day to end!  I had been Facebooking LYFE for a while now. I had been looking through the menus and browsing the pictures, and I couldn’t even begin to decide what to eat!

Finally, we walked up to the restaurant, and Christina and I posed for a picture!  This was my Mecca!  As we took the picture, one of the managers kinda joked around, “That had better find its way to Facebook.”  Boy, he had no idea who he was dealing with!  I couldn’t contain my excitement and I just started telling him how excited I was to finally be there and how long I had waited for this place to open and then how long I had to wait to finally make it there!  He treated us like royalty!  The whole restaurant did!  And my friend (who had been then a couple of times now) told me that they ALWAYS treat people like this there.  Everyone is always made to feel welcome, appreciated and special.  Not just their first time, but every time!  (Have I mentioned lately that my passion is customer service??  Ya.  So this royal treatment was going a very long way in my book!)

When we walked into LYFE, the energy in the restaurant was beautiful and peaceful.  There was a nice size crowd, it was decorated with comfortable couches and or love seats and chairs.  The space was open.  Everyone was smiling and laughing.  There is a beautiful herb garden growing there by the register/ordering area.  The kitchen is open and you can see them cooking.  There are inspiring quotes printed on the walls.  The whole place just makes you want to take a deep breath and really in-joy “LYFE”.   It completely resonated with everything I have focused on for the last 44 weeks!  I was home!

   

How do you go to a restaurant you  have been so excited to visit when you know you are only going to eat there once (at least for this trip)? How do you choose what to eat?  Everything looks so good!  Even the fresh squeezed orange juice looked amazing, but for dinner?  How do you choose?  Well at some point, you just have to.  Since I am extremely picky about my fish tacos, I figured I would jump in and try those. My husband picked a good ol’ stand by, Cheeseburger. Christina ordered the Salmon and a bowl of Corn Chowder.  Then there was the issue of dessert!  OH MY! We ordered Banana Rum Dairy-free Cheesecake and the Chocolate Volcano Cake.  Tracy and I had beers. (Don’t ask me which flavor, but when I told the nice man who helped us asked what kind of beer I normally drank, he suggested this one.  It was very yummy!)  We were handed a pager type thing and went to find a comfy couch and table to sit and visit and wait.   Our little pager thing had the number 4 on it, but more importantly it said, “LYFE is Calling.”  Yes, indeed it is!  Are you going to pick up and answer when LYFE calls or are you just gonna let it pass you by?

See what I mean? This place is amazing!!!

    

  

The food was truly delicious!  My fish tacos were to die for!  The salmon was very tasty!  My husband thoroughly enjoyed his burger.  But more importantly, my husband ate his Kale salad!!!!  Okay, so usually when my husband hears “health food” he kinda of shrinks and hides.  He crosses his fingers that there is something he will be able to eat and usually has a back up plan for the ride home (which burger, taco, or sandwich joint can he hit on the way home to fill his belly?)  I’m sure that was probably on  his mind when we made plans for LYFE.  Instead, what I heard was, “That was really good!  I really enjoyed myself and I would go back there any time!”  That is high praise from my non-healthy eating husband!  There truly is something for everyone on the menu!

One of the other things I was excited about was getting to visit with the CEO, Mike Roberts.  He was there working and visiting with the guests and when I asked if I could get a picture with him, he was very sweet and willing. I HAD to ask him, “How does a previous McDonald’s CEO from McDonald’s to LYFE?”  He was more than willing to share the story with me!   He has a passion for bringing  healthy food to the American Public. He wants it accessible to everyone.  He wants the children to love it as much as the parents. He wants the plates to be filled and our tummies to be happy.   When I asked him what it would take to open a LYFE in Boise, he said, “Give me a minute.”  I thought he literally meant a minute to think it over, but what he really meant was to give him time to make  LYFE perfect at its current location.  (Yes, it takes me a while to “get” things.)  We continued to talk.  He was gracious enough to listen to my healthy lifestyle changes and accomplishments, but he was genuinely happy for me because this is what LYFE is about!

So I think I will give Mike about a “minute”, but I am not letting this one go!  LYFE needs to be opened here in Boise!  We have the best market for it.  Boise has that same downtown Palo Alto feel (with less money maybe), but it is certainly getting there.  Downtown Boise has that outdoor living, be alive, live life to the fullest vibe!  It’s perfect for LYFE and LYFE is perfect for Boise!   And since Mike has made many trips to Boise to purchase fries for McDonald’s and he has some contacts here, I have hope!

Anyway, dinner at LYFE was so amazing, that before we left that night, we decided we would visit for breakfast the next morning!  Fresh squeezed orange juice that tasted like Florida!  As soon as I took my first sip, I had visions of Florida sunrises and I could smell the sweet winter orange blossoms!  It was heaven! (It really did taste like it was fresh from the Groves; the kind we had when we used to live in Florida.)  Tracy had the whole wheat pancakes topped with greek yogurt and fresh berries and served with real maple syrup. I had a delicious egg white breakfast burrito with a side of fresh fruit that was so sweet!  Tracy said it was the best whole wheat pancakes he has ever had! Again, high praise from someone who shrinks from healthy food.  It was perfect!

  

It was a bitter-sweet moment when we walked out of the restaurant that morning.  I resolved to make it back to Palo Alto soon so I could eat there again.

But on Sunday as we finished our hike in Muir Woods, we were hungry and Tracy asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner before we got on the plane to fly back home.  “If I told you I wanted to stop at LYFE for the 3rd time in 3 days would you think it was over kill?”   His reply, “No, I was going to suggest the same thing!”

And that is exactly what we did!  We rushed back to our car, drove as fast as we could over the windy mountain roads, rushed through the traffic to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, darted through the cars on the high way to Palo Alto and made a bee line for our new favorite restaurant!!!!   There are no pictures from dinner that night because I was just too hungry to take them, but I guarantee you my taste buds sang with every bite! Oh ya..and you MUST have the strawberry lemonade when you visit!!!

So there you have it. The new MUST EAT in the bay area!!!!  Put it on your list, and don’t forget it.  Get there an in-joy LYFE!

I think I’m in love and it’s not with the stomping elephant!

 I have been going to the same gym off and on for the last 8 years.  Last week I hopped on an elliptical machine that faces the big windows (instead of my usual ones that face the rest of the gym) and I noticed that there seemed to be more machines in this particular area.  I looked over at the other machines that faced the rest of the gym and there seemed to be the same amount over there.  I just shrugged it off and got to my work out.

Then this week, I went back to the gym with my hubby.  We went to our usual spot..the ellipticals facing the gym and I noticed that these machines were new!  I took a look at them and decided to play with them.  Sure enough; they have some really cool new features!  You can control time and level with thumb controls on the handles.  That’s pretty cool.  But more importantly, this machine offered interval training with resistance for the arms/upper body!  SWEET!  It also had interval training for the glutes, prompting you to do the workout in a squat position or leaning back or in reverse or whatever!  I LOVE THIS MACHINE!

My biggest complaint with cardio machines in the gym is my boredom factor.  No matter what I have to listen to on my iPod, no matter what I try to read while I work out (And who the heck can read ANYTHING during an intense cardio workout?  I try and the words keep bouncing!) I just get BORED!  I have even tried doing 10 minutes each on 3 different types of machines to keep the boredom at bay.  But still, I find myself willing the clock to go faster!

This machine and all its cool new gadgets make cardio at the gym so much more fun!  LOVE IT!

So you might be asking yourself, “Self, what is up with the elephant stomping mentioned in the title?”  Well, please let me explain.  It is the sound of my feet running on a treadmill!

I have always been afraid to run in public on a treadmill.  I apparently am a heavy runner.  Okay, let’s face it, I weight 235#..I AM HEAVY.  When I run on the treadmill, I imagine I sound like an elephant stomping.  I am always afraid to get on the machine and have people hear my elephant stomping, turn to see who is making such a racket, then laugh their heads off pointing at me and saying, “Look at that fat girl trying to run!”.

But today, out of necessity, I decided to do my Couch to 5K training at the gym on the treadmill.  I had a really bad dizzy spell last night, and I was afraid to go distance running away from home and get hit with another dizzy spell and fall over or hurt myself or not be able to get home.  So I thought running on the treadmill would provide me with something to hold on to in case I get hit with a dizzy spell, and if I did, then I could just get in my car and drive home relatively safely.  So the treadmill it was today!

I cranked up my tunes, turned on my C25K and started running.  I don’t think anyone looked at me.  The lady 2 machines down MIGHT have, but I really wasn’t paying attention to her.  All I could think about was my huffing and puffing and willing the 3 minute interval to come to an end so I could walk and catch my breath!  I’m sure I still sound like an elephant stomping, but the important thing is, I faced my fear and got out there and didn’t let a little thing like the sound of my feet stop me from reaching my goals!

What fear keeps you from reaching your goals and what can you do to over come it?  We can’t let fear dictate our lives.  Today is YOUR day. Get out there and LIVE LIFE TO ITS FULLEST!

Too Obese to Know If You Have Cancer…..

Last night, I was watching Brothers & Sisters. It was a 2 hour special, and the 2nd hour was dealing with the sudden death of Nora’s (the patriarch of the show) Mother. I only got a few minutes into it, when I realized I just couldn’t watch it. It reminded me of my dad who died in 2007.

Most of us have attributes of our parents that we don’t want to be like. In my dad’s case, there was ALOT that I didn’t want to be like. A big part of that was his weight. All of my life he was hugely morbidly obese. He was nearing 500 pounds by the time I was in my 30’s (1999 or so). He, too, did the yo-yo diet thing. His big wall was the 100 pound mark. For him, losing 100 pounds, was like me losing 4 pounds at the beginning of a diet. It’s like “water weight” and it comes off easily! But past the 100 pound mark, he had to work for it. It was his “wall” and every time he hit it, he would get discouraged and quit.

My dad never joined Weight Watchers and he never joined any official weight loss program. He did it on his own with the help of his doctors. So when he hit that wall, he didn’t have the best support. Truthfully, my mom (and I) had lost faith in him (for various reasons..not because of his weight). So we were not the best support for him. And like most people who are morbidly obese, there were deep underlying issues that kept him at his comfort zone of morbidly obese. He would deal with these little by little, but again, when it got hard he would quit or when he got better “enough” he would quit saying he was healed. He wasn’t, and he would revert back to his old ways. (He didn’t save the yo-yoing for just dieting. It was his way of dealing with EVERYTHING.)

Due to childhood abuse issues, I stopped having any real relationship with my father in 1999. We talked here and there, but for the last 4 years of his life, I didn’t talk to him at all…until October of 2007 when he was put into the hospital again for pneumonia complicated by asthma. I was **** He just laid in bed and didn’t follow dr’s orders. So of course, he was gonna get pneumonia! When I got to the hospital; he looked HORRIBLE! His face was sunken in (especially for a fat guy). Looking back, he looked like he was gonna die any minute now!

3 weeks later, after my mom and I had made plans for him to go to a nursing home and Dad had agreed to “be good”, and I had returned home, I got a phone call from my parents. He had a secondary lung cancer that comes with a life expectancy of 2 months. I did the math. Just about 2 months before this phone call he had been diagnosed with a lung infection. I figured the “infection” was really the cancer, and I told my mom, he only had 2 weeks MAX!

More importantly, we had NO IDEA he had the original lung cancer. We had no idea he was really sick! Why? Because he was so morbidly obese, we just thought it was his usual asthma. He couldn’t fit in CT Scan machines. They could only do mobile xrays and biopsies, and he had no symptoms to require those.

He was too fat to know he had cancer! Then he died.

When I run and train for my 5K and I think it’s too hard, I think about this. When I feel a challenge….whether its centered around that food wall or something physical, I remember this. I want to live my life to the fullest! And I want to be healthy into my old age so if something EVER pops up, I will be able to KNOW something is wrong and be able to take care of it before it gets out of hand. In my dad’s death, I have found inspiration.

What inspires you to keep going in the tough struggles you face?