The last time I kept a journal was on another board...and i'm going to do things a little differently this time.

i won't say i did everything wrong; i didn't. since hindsight is 20/20, i'll just say i would have done things differently the first time around than i will now.

first off, i would have stopped smoking before tackling weight, since no one can fight a battle on two fronts.

i'm not sure which is harder -- not smoking or changing eating habits and restricting food.

with cigs, once they are gone, they're gone. it's not as if they are a necessity of life, unlike food...since without food, one dies.

be that as it may, looking back only serves a purpose of not making the same mistake twice, so 'nuff said on that.

when we did this, honey and i, we knew we were going to gain weight. i would say we went out of our way to eat the worst possible foods we could eat or buy.

one thing i did discover on my ten week eating binge was it is more expensive to eat crap than it is to eat healthy. so score one for healthy food.

pepperidge farm makes lovely double chocolate chunk cookies -- eight of them costs 5 dollars. but two pounds of strawberries cost the same amount and last longer.

saturday marked ten weeks of not smoking and two weeks off the drug we were taking to help out. by the way, for anyone contemplating the no smoke life, chantix is truly the miracle drug they say it is.

at the same time, i was on another drug called lexapro. for the first time in my life, i took an anti depressant. in looking back, i will never do it again.

i believe it will take probably another month or so to cleanse my body and brain from the effects of the two drugs, since they are both drugs that target neuro receptors in the brain...
and, most likely, it will take a year for my body to adapt to not smoking on a molecular level. good thing i like water. alot.

today marked the day that we threw away the junk food and replaced it with healthy foods again.

in looking back, i felt better when i ate healthier.

today marks the day when i put away the scale. for those who know me, this is a huge step. i haven't been on it in months and i am not starting the obsessive merry go round again, so there will be no weigh ins...

i will be measuring and recording my foods because if there is one thing i do know how to do --- it's measure and combine certain foods to get the optimum macro breakdown.

i have not worked out in so long that i'm in pain most days.....that's also about to change. it will start out with walking short distances a few times a day....and then i will graduate to weights again....i already have my weight routines written out, so i won't have to do that again.

i think i'm just going to post my daily stuff here, rather than all over the forum....it will help me to approach this as a whole, rather than separate functions....so i think i will just do a daily post, which will include food, mood, exercise....and how my clothes are fitting. :)

Good Luck Re,

I think you did it right, cigs first. The weight will come off , you alreayd know how to do it and I see you are determined and sound very happy to be on the right road again.

:D

Best of luck Re...we will be here to cheer you on and give support :)

I really think you have a good plan outlined there...i can't imagine no scale but to each their own! I know it isn't good to be obsessed about it. Actually i'm getting better, i only check it about every 2-3 days now instead of 2x a day :rolleyes:

Good luck MagicRe. You have done so well, you can do it again!

Wooo Hooo

Good luck Re, you have it all planned out and you seem very determined. :)

Thanks for sharing that with us Re Huggs

I'm really glad you are back with us, you were such a help and inspiration to me before and I'm looking forward to that again...Thank you Huggs

Great to see you Re, it's been a long time. All the best for a fresh new start!

I hope the best for you, Re! Congrats on stopping smoking!! :D

All the best and congrats on the smoking! I know how hard that is.

woke up this morning and felt --- well, relieved.

no more junk food. interestingly, once the decision was made to stop eating crap, i could almost hear my body telling me it was about time.

and it was.

both honey and i are in pain from gaining too much weight, back pain, being the worst of it. not being able to do certain things for any length of time..no stamina at all.

food consumed today:

oats
turkey
peapods
almonds
yoghurt
shredded wheat
blueberries
cottage cheese ff
pot roast
tomatoes
turnip
cucumber
romaine lettuce
olive oil

while i am measuring, i'm not counting calories, per se. i'm eating five or six meals, which is what i used to do....once i get this down, i'll work out my exercise plan..nice and easy is how it's going to go this time.

last time, the stress of it all almost killed me and i believe was a component to it all blowing up in my face.

::::waves hi to everyone and says a humble thanks for the support:::::

Day two of the new program. The trouble with starting one is that some foods really do have to go away. not all of them, but most definitely jack in the box and ice cream every night. i do miss that.

i did notice when we were into the real deal for stopping the cig habit..it was like being a junkie. neither one of us could get enough salt and sugar.

for those who know me, i hadn't really had salty or very sweet foods in a very long time; yet, those were the very foods i craved. while the drug chantix was a tremendous help and it truly was....there were still changes going on in our brains and bodies....our house looked like a junk addict's heaven. hehe

5 june 2007 - food

cottage cheese
blueberries
turkey
turnip
carrots
shredded wheat
yoghurt
almonds
pot roast
cucumber
tomato
oats
olive oil

1746

yummy foods re! :D I like that you are more relaxed about things this time. :)

Heck Re, nothing I can say that you don't already know (not that I'll let that stop me) :P :

1. Getting rid of the smokes was the best thing you could ever do for yourself...been there, done that, I pick losing weight every time over that particular bit of agony.

2. A weight regain to some degree is practically impossible to avoid the first time around...so no worries...it was just a practice run for the real deal.

3. You rock.

some of what you went through, choo, has gone 'round and 'round in my own head....you're right about the smokes...although some of the body/head changes that are starting, well, all i can say is wow.

this was a weight gain of all proportion. gained it all back. there are some differences now....i'm not the high percentage of body fat i was before....and i know how to do this, so the fear isn't there. plus, i know not to starve, not to tap my foot....and, no matter what, i stopped that addiction. puts things into a whole different perspective!


june 6 2007

as expected, three days into this and i find myself hungry. hard to eat lots of water soluble foods without going through some transition...
veggies are filling, but not for long....

but so far, so good....

i have found the perfect breakfast for me....
cottage cheese and fresh blueberries with a few almonds. just the right amount of protein, low glycemic carbs and great fat....it's yummy and it takes a while to eat, too....since i work at a computer most of the day, making meals that take longer to eat makes sense to me....keeps my hands occupied when i'm not keyboarding or on the phone and it lasts a while.....i don't think anyone who has ever stopped smoking really believes it for the first six months to a year....maybe in a way it's like losing those extra pounds and keeping them off..it's one thing to get the weight off. it's quite another to keep it off. now, on the second run, i can look back and take the steps that won't repeat history.

one thing is certain. i will never eat the 1200 calorie diet again. it was physically and emotionally stressful and it hurt my metabolism.

in some ways, starting over is a good thing. for now, i can just cut back on calories, since i think i can safely say i was back to the old 4-5000 calorie per day regimen...and, then i will slowly add weights in.....nice and easy this time.

cottage cheese/ff
almonds
blueberries
yoghurt
shredded wheat
turkey
tomato
sugar snap peas
carrots
pot roast
1/2 ciabatta from jack in the box and a small onion ring.
4 sips from a soda....yep. i had a soda. they really are too sweet.

this is where i don't go nuts. no excuses....my mother in law slept over last night and honey was late getting home, so we just did the big easy.

very quiet day for work. i really don't like days like this. as soon as i start doing something, the phone rings and i have to stop. hard to work out during the day, so i'll have to do something after i'm done for the day. this has changed for me because no longer do i work sixteen hour days...something i am still getting used to....and i now have weekends off. it's a very cool deal and i'm learning first to relax and then i will learn to structure a day that includes time for me. what i won't do is make this an obsession. i'm old LOL....i don't need to see my abs....i saw them briefly. it was cool. now, my goal has changed to the pursuit of health without obsession.....that's been my downfall most of my life...being an overachiever, not allowing myself to be ordinary or even average in what i go after. in many ways, it's a good thing, because the work product or end product will be high quality. the expense sometimes, is enormous..especially on a personal level, because that's what over achievers do. they will sacrifice their own time, their own health, their own needs to 'get the job done' and the standards are so high that sometimes something is lost and usually the price is way high.
life can't be like that. one cannot sustain that level of intensity without something breaking.

i didn't keep a diary for today, although i did follow my usual program. just didn't write it down. tomorrow is another day.

i still haven't weighed myself....but i don't feel quite as bloated.

what's really striking me is the reality of what life is all about. unless i want my life to revolve around this, i have to put health and fitness in a real time place, where it takes the time it needs to take, but not too much and not too little. it's a balance that i will find as i travel down this road...

I totally agree with you. I tend to be a bit like that sometimes, too.

Re: I'm curious about your lifting...did you just stop enjoying it all at once, or was it gradual..was it related to doing it without trainers? Or in a home vs. gym enviroment? I guess I'm so curious about the "whys" because it kinda scares me (for myself) that someone could be so enthusiastic and passionate about it .... and then just not. I think I'm wondering if there were any "early warning signs" that I could look out for that led up to the loss of enthusiasm?

i think my passion was misplaced and misdirected by me. i was my own saboteur, choo.

my form had to be perfect. that statement alone takes away any fun from anything.

i had to be half dead after the work out. anything less was not a workout, if that made sense.

actually, i really like the home gym. i will say it was much easier being pushed by an ex gestapo navy seal, but i found i could easily work myself into a whipped frenzy on my own, too and push myself to my own limits, even without him or any other trainer around.

in all truth, i like sweating privately, without others looking at me. i am a fairly private person.

i think the 'perfect storm' analogy works very well, choo...in that everything blew up on me. so, unless you plan on melting down as i did, which whew, is now over, i wouldn't worry about it.

it was very abrupt, choo, and since i'm also a 'why' person, i had trouble understanding, too. i think i understand now, which i explain below, since emotional barometers are measurable, too.


carrots
turkey
oatmeal
romaine lettuce
prunes
olive oil
pinch of salt
salmon
spinach

something else i was thinking about today, as i ate some prunes, previously considered a forbidden food, since they are so high in sugar...i love prunes. i don't have to eat a cup of them. just a few is nice every once in a while.

something i've noticed on the various forums that i frequent...the 'rules' of dieting....
somehow there is a rigidity, a narrowing of options that make failure almost inevitable. we are grown to do certain things by rote. there is a certain methodology to cleaning a toilet, brushing our teeth...much depends on how we've been taught throughout our lives. add to that the biology of our personalities, it's inevitable that certain things are not as easy for some as it is for others.

the 'no eating rule' after a certain time, the battle with actual hunger causing someone to be so afraid of calories that they become a chronic undereater. the drive to get to the goal line allows for unreality and extreme pressure. it seems the more strict the rules, the higher the expectation. the one that truly banged me up was the exercise and the food relationship. i had this mind set that i had to exercise a certain amount of time for every bite i took. i never took into account that my body has functions that have to be fed in order for me to keep on living. it didn't matter that on a daily basis i needed a certain amount of calories just to stay alive.....every morsel of food was assigned a workout.

cardio became absolute torture. if i had one single drink, the extra 400 calories that week was like a lodestone around my neck. after all, the goal was to only have to 'diet' for a year and then i could maintain.

instead of enjoying that drink, i worried myself into cardio failure, overdid, underate and thoroughly made changing my lifestyle undoable.

it's interesting, this hindsight.

i went from extreme eating, no rules and instant gratification to nothing but rules, extreme dieting and disappointment that the same instant gratification from before was no longer present.

at any rate, the bruschetta chicken from jack in the box is 600 calories, while the bacon cheeseburger ciabatta, i believe, is 1200. if one does not order onion rings at 500 calories for a small nor does one order a soda...the little indulgence is doable if the calories during the day are kept in line. which is exactly what i did...and that got me my fast food so i didn't have to cook, without going hog wild.

i finally got back on the treadmill and weights. man, those weights felt good. i did a full body workout. i even made up a few exercises. easily done with free weights and cables.

my sentence for the day is 'i failed because i had too many walls'.

onward today to thinking about body recomposition. i remember when i was in school, learning about the body. i was struck by its capacity to adapt, both physiologically and psychically.

years and years of unhealthy eating takes its toll right down to the molecular structure. if you look at the overweight person under a microscope, what you see will be different than one who has not had weight difficulties. the leaner person who has been lean all throughout life will have fewer fat cells. those same fat cells will be smaller. the metabolism will function more efficiently, since it has been maintained and sustained for years. the person who has been active, who doesn't eat junk as a rule, who doesn't overeat or over indulge....is the person whose body will utilise its energy in a way that doesn't put weight on.

i have abused my body for years. i've gone to work when i should have stayed in bed. certainly, i inhaled substances that were not designed to be part of my cellular structure and i'm not just talking about cigarettes....and i've taken drugs, i've had not so moderate nights of drinking alcohol and more importantly, even when i was not heavy, i didn't feed myself as i should. i seemed to eat on the run. i ate one meal a day. i was thin, but not healthy. i obviously wasn't lean. i was just thin and could wear a size four, since i'm small in stature. eat one meal a day and you can eat whatever you want. get married and start cooking for someone who appreciates food and 50 pounds is easy to gain in six months. and then something strange happened. i kept the weight on. my body adapted to the extraordinary amounts of food i fed it...lapped it up like a starved puppy.....i had been a chronic undereater most of my adult life...suddenly my body was just overjoyed with all the abundance of food.

for ten years, i fed this body. and then of course, i finally had to admit i was fat. really fat. size 2x fat. and for someone who is lying about being 5 foot two, that's pretty fat.

but my body had already adapted. each and every system was doing its thing to maintain what i had done and the ultimate job the body has, which is to sustain life at any cost.

i saw a program on bbc several months ago and read the subsequent study about people who were overweight but were healthy. sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? but there were 20 or 25 women in this study who ate more than what they needed, calorically, but what they ate was healthy. fats mostly from plants -- carbs from whole grains and proteins. they just ate too much.

yet their blood pressures were fine, their body functions were fine. everything tested out fine. interesting, eh?

by the way, for anyone who is reading this, if anyone is reading this...these are the ramblings of me who built a house on a foundation made of toothpicks. i am going to do this journal as a means to tear down the parts of the house that didn't work and utilise the parts that did.
it certainly wasn't a total loss, what i did over the past two years. if anything, i learned quite a bit about how to do this thing the right way. and there is a right way. there is not an 'only way', but there is a right way.

oats
romaine lettuce
tomatoes
turkey
chicken wrap
tortilla chips
blueberries
cottage cheese
almond butter
cucumber
olive oil
kashi bar

june 10

i started my day off with grapefruit juice. i have missed grapefruit juice. when i lived on the east coast, i would either eat a half of a grapefruit or squeeze the juice from it. here in the pacific northwest, we don't get florida grapefruits, which are the very best, along with oranges, so tropicana will make do. 4 oz is only 45 calories or so..and it's so refreshing. great way to start the day.

i well remember the day i was talked out of drinking juice because i was wasting my calories when i could have solid food. well, i say humbug to that. while i am an advocate of getting the biggest bang for my buck, there's no reason why juice can't be used to start the day....to take vitamins...to get the juices flowing....

we are about to go under construction so cooking should be interesting. the countertops we have are 17 years old and they are tile. they are a veritable playground for microbes now....since the grout is almost non existent. they are also pinkish. blech. the stove top is also the same age as is the dishwasher and oven. and, the island is useless. we are in the process of making our central air more efficient in the house. that work starts this week. the roof will be done in stages...it's cedar shake, so repairs first, then a pressure wash, then sealant in the early fall before the rains come. plus, we found a fabulous deal on carpeting....so if i can get someone to move the beast gym piece in the living room, we maybe can replace the carpeting that was in the house when we moved in. we'll see. a sale is only good if it's useful....carpeting really wasn't on the schedule, but this is a super deal, so we'll see what we can see.

we did our shopping yesterday to stock up the kitchen. my honey is having some difficulty with his nutrients, in that he travels on the road, so it's not as if he can mix up yoghurt and shredded wheat and almonds and eat it later.
need some snack suggestions that are finger foods....but balanced, if that makes sense.

12 minutes of interval. first, i walked to warm up, then slow jog/walk and then run/walk.

grapefruit juice
shredded wheat
yoghurt
almonds
chicken breast
cherries
blueberries
cottage cheese
romaine lettuce
olive oil
almonds
almond butter
oats

Hi Re ,
you are probably the one I relate too the most . Seems we have had similar experiences , regarding , smoking , weight gain , and obsession .

Good Luck with it all , you can find that balance , that's what I am needing , balance with out obsession .

I have gained 8kgs ( not due to quitting the smokes tho lol ) .
I quit exercise .....quite abruptly also , and let my healthy eating habits fall to the wayside.

I think they call it burn out .... <_<


Time for action ....
Edited for typos B)

hey, noeleen...how goes it?

when i do something, i do it all the way.....:)

my old trainer warned me that i would implode if i tried to keep up the intensity and turns out, the bastard was right. LOL

the one thing i am following is the notion of body recomposition and the resetting of metabolism. i really don't want to diet for the rest of my life. i want to be healthy and fit. there's a difference, i'm learning. finally.

i wish you the best of the best, noeleen.....and yeah, finding that balance with an obsessive personality is not easy. :)

Thanks Re ,

very interesting , how does one reset their metabolism ?? I thought I had achieved that , and I guess I had to a certain extent , until I started my huge binges , but I don't think it's a metabolism problem I have , more so a binge eating problem ...anyone would have gained weight eating what i've been eating lately lol ....

Would love to hear more about what you are trying to achieve ....

Noeleen :)

Hey Re!
I was reading about why you and Noleen (Hi Noleen!) "burned out" on exercise...which has long been one of my greatest fears because both times I lost weight in the past exercise was the first thing I let go of before the weight came creeping and then galloping back.

I think the difference this time - cause I still love doing what I do - is that shortly after I started keeping my food journal on a new site a very experienced trainer there suggested that I look into "stress fatigue management". At the time I was still working out 6 days a week, each work-out whether cardio or strength was "balls to the walls" in intensity, etc. It was explained to me (although I guess I should have known) that if I kept pushing my body to maxium intensity and duration, as I had been for well over a year, it would start producing diminishing returns - and since the natural inclination when that happens is to push harder - eventually my body would force me to stop via my mind just saying "I don't want to do this anymore".

So, long story short...when you talk about "getting a balance" - my work-outs have gone down to 5 days a week, no more than 45 mins in duration, heavy weights are mixed in with light weights and my "structured exercise free" days have increased to 10 full days every six weeks. The thing is, not only did the change not produce a feared weight gain, I think the reason I'm still loving it is because I stopped pushing myself so hard that I came to hate it.

So, I don't know if that helps...or not....because I don't know how this would work during weight loss itself....but it does seem like with maintenance a stepping down of duration and intensity is important.

Right on. So perfectly right on.

I'm reading... and I hope I learn some from your own trials and errors so that I may not have to go through them. However, I am like you, I give whatever I do 100+% and I never accept less. Because of that, I expect too much and fail many times. So, the *balance* subject that you and Noeleen are talking of, I understand completely.

k. here's what happens when one does not work out for months. it just goes away. any stamina, flexibility, endurance...it's like starting over. just an observation, not a complaint.

but i was able to do 14 minutes of interval training today, plus an upper body workout. now i'm going to collapse on the couch.

i think my food is going to look like this today
grapefruit juice
vitamins
blueberries
cottage cheese
almond butter
cherries
chicken
carrots
peapods
oats
romaine lettuce
yoghurt
shredded wheat
almonds

choo, you nailed it for me. i had to think about the why of things. and i think, truly, the food and the working out defined me and it isn't what defines me. it is part of me, but not the whole of me, if that makes sense.

what you're saying makes perfect sense. i was working out today..and i'm sitting here resting and sweating on my keyboard...when i realised that i had kind of sort of made up an exercise. form was in line....i could feel the muscle i was working out...but there was no one looking over my shoulder, critiquing. it was nice. i will never regret having had the benefit of a trainer. and i don't regret the research and absolute submersion into this thing we call fitness because as with anything else, i 'get' it.

noeleen, body recomposition has to do with changing how your body reacts to food and exercise. believe me, even had i reset my metabolism, i would not have escaped this weight gain. no smoking really was a challenge for me, more because my husband was having a much harder time than i was and we kind of rubbed off on each other.

had i paid attention to resetting my metabolism and recomposition, i would NEVER have eaten 1200 or fewer calories for over a year. never.

i understand how it works now. i don't want to starve. 1200 calories for me was hungry all the time.

and as soon as i ate more than 1200 calories, boom. i gained weight. even though i had muscles...i had beautiful muscles...i probably still do under all this lard....:)

what i didn't do was create new neuropathways....i didn't teach my body how to react to food. so it did what it always did.

noeleen, every pound i lost was hell. i used to tell my trainer that it simply should not be this hard. it isn't. it's actually pretty simple...it's creating a calorie deficit.

i chose to eat too little and exercise too much. it will result in burn out because it cannot be sustained. it's like having a two hour orgasm. you'd die. ok. maybe you wouldn't die. but there is a reason we can only take so much intensity or extremism. the head simply cannot sustain it for long.

so , for me, at least, i was like a fire cracker, that burned brightly, got exhausted, and as choo says, produced diminishing returns. that results in pepperidge farm cookies and ice cream.

so, long story short. now, i eat six meals a day.....since i know how to combine proteins, carbs and fats and i do have favourite foods, i eat them. in varying amounts.

if i'm not home, i will eat out and find something on the menu that isn't horrid and i do not worry about it anymore. i don't exercise more or less than i was going to that day....because it's not like making up a test. it's done.

we went out to eat the other day and i had a chicken wrap rather than a bacon mushroom omelette. it worked.

choo speaks wisely. i'm just hoping i only have to do this twice, not three times.

what i've truly learned..or at least i hope i've learned is this. maintenance begins the day one decides to change their lives.

every day is going to be similar. and as the body changes, yes, there will be changes in routine. i don't know of anyone who does the same exact thing day after day. similar maybe, but not the same.

what we put ourselves through to get to that magic number will kill our program faster than anything else.

when i 'got' to 130 and i could not lose any more and my trainers wanted me to do the ridiculous, i simply gave up. it took a while to gain it all back, and yeah, i used the smoking thing as an excuse and it's not a bad one....but i gave up. i could not lose another pound. the harder i worked, the less i ate, the less i got in return. and then they wanted to cycle me down to 1000 calories a day three days a week, with the intense workouts that i did? it was enough to create the beginning of the end for me. those of you who know me when...know that balls to the wall workouts were all i ever did. there was no such thing as just working out. there was no joy in working out.

no one continues something they do not enjoy. when we have to do something, we will find reasons not to.

i actually loved working out. and then i grew to hate it. i'm going to love it again, because it will be on my terms. i've done all the reading....i've done my homework. i know what to eat, how to eat it and when. i also know the world won't come to an end if i eat ice cream once in a while.

ok. enough rambling.

choo and shy have really been so very helpful for me to finally see the light...this time i will do it....and it will be for good.

Re, this is the time you will do it for keeps. I say that because I believe it You are smart. You are armed with knowledge. You have discipline. You have a great attitude. You have muscle memory. And, most important of all.... you now know from experience what you only knew in theory before - maintaining a significant weight loss without yo-yo'ing is hard - mentally, physically, emotionally. There are days when it makes you look back at the weight loss process itself and go "darn that was easy in comparison".

I can't begin to tell you how much I want you to succeed - and be happy in that success. I know this is hard to believe, but I honestly want it as much for you as I want it for myself. You just have no idea how big a help to me you were in my first baby steps into maintenance. If I made a list of everything that helped me get my own feet onto solid ground, somewhere in the top ten would be "interaction with Re"...no joke.

So, you can always count on me to be your own personal little cheerleader in Florida......rah rah go Re!!

p.s. are you reading any of Lyle McDonald's stuff on body recomp?....that man is brilliant...brutal but brillant....one day when I get up enough nerve I'm going to have a t-shirt made up that says "Body by Lyle", take a pic in it and send it to him. Seriously, reading his stuff was the number one reason that I didn't "diet" in the traditional sense....and therefore never had a "diet" to have to come off of.

choo...first off, thank you. this time i will make it. if i can stop smoking, i can make a healthy fit body. and thank you for your support. it means quite a bit to me, since you also helped me for the now of things.

actually, reading your baby steps brought to light how difficult life was for me and how it need not be.

i remember the day i had leg pressed 360 lbs. and it wasn't good enough. i was in the presence of body builders and competitors...this WAS their life. what i failed to realise was this was not MY life. i was never going to compete. i was not a body builder. i wasn't like many i've read about on bb.com who live and breathe their chemistry, their bulks and cuts, their absolute precision in what and when they eat and how they work out and who has the better looking muscle.

yeah, there is something inside me that wants to be buff. maybe not competition buff, but definitely buff. maybe i'll get there and maybe i won't.

i only know that it should not be torture. and it was for me. it became torture.

i'm not reading anymore, choo. and, yeah, i've read lyle. i've read tom. i've read many of them. i have a library of books i've read and bookmarked internet sites i've visited. i've got an armful of studies....some in conflict, some that agree and some out of the realm of reality. i've run the gamut from medical school studies, such as harvard and johns hopkins to some guru on the west coast who only eats when the moon is waxing.

it's all good and it's all crap, i'm finding. there are certain truths when it comes to how the body works.....anyone who has studied anatomy and physiology knows that. and in reality, if one does something long enough, the body adapts.

in the same way the body adapts to poisons and toxins, it will also adapt to healthy food and exercise, especially if it's consistent over time.

so...eat healthy, exercise within reason -- to include weights and cardio....and mix things up every once in a while, so the body doesn't get too efficient at what it does.

problem with most of us is we are in a hurry to see the results. we talk about life changes, but the majority of us really mean year changes. we don't even want to wait a year to see results. what we don't realise....getting a different body is a lifetime change. what happens the first year is not the same as what happens in years to come.

you found out, choo, that the big arm muscles you had got more shapely..yeah, i've seen your pics....as time went on. patience really is the virtue....one i didn't have. one that too many of us don't have.

we keep seeing that goal line as the finish line, when, in reality, it's the starting point. we don't take into account that the metabolic function of our body doesn't change nearly as fast as our minds do. giving up cigs slows down the metabolism. not forever, but for a while. so weight loss may take longer in the beginning. there are so many factors that affect weight loss, i don't have time to list them all here.

so i do thank you, choo..keep on writing those journals..because i do read them. and for being my florida cheerleader. it means so much to me.

and i still haven't gotten on the scale. LOL

choochoo and re..i just wanted to say...you two are awesome...i really have learned the most during my journey from the two of you, and i will always have you gals to thank for that. Like re says, this is a lifelong journey...there is not an "end" to the healthy eating, to the exercising...just tweaking along the way...that is the way i'm trying to see it so that when i get to maintanance, which will happen someday, at some weight, it won't be such a shock to my system as i would have been preparing for it all along....

This process should definately not be torture. Workouts should be fun, hard work at times, but fun...at least how i look at it..unless you are indeed training to be a bodybuilder. I can't imagine going to the gym and lifting weights if i didn't enjoy it. I like doing bicep curls using 12lb dumbells and remembering when i would use 3lb dumbells and be struggling to finish a set. It is good to try to improve yourself and take pride in what you are doing..but it is not good to take things to an extreme. You definately have the right attitude this time Re.

Like choochoo said, you are going to be successful, the weight will stay off this time, and i look forward to sharing your success with you. :)

As far as fingerfood stuff goes, that has been my challenge all along with school etc. I have found the tuna lunch on the go packs to be great. Not sure what the requirements are but you can get them with reduced fat mayo.

I have also found fresh fruit individually packaged at my grocery store. so that has helped with on-the-go issues as it is already cleaned and cut.

Other than those, I take some almonds in a baggie.

Hope this helped

june 13

fast journal for this day, since i didn't really get a chance to journal at all.

contractors were here fixing my heating/airconditioner and making it more energy efficient, since it really wasn't heating or cooling the upstairs. many people in seattle don't have air conditioning.....they think it's a waste of money since it doesn't get 'hot' enough for long enough. personally, i think 5 minutes of 90 degree heat is hot enough and five minutes is too long. i am a cold air baby.
so, the banging and hammering and guy yelling went on all day long. it's over now and my house has a wonderful air filter and return vent and all kinds of goodies that recirculate wonderfully clean air. the electronic zapper is pretty cool. sounds like a bug zapper, except it zaps particles...so the air will now be cleaner in the house. awesome technology.

we also had the septic people here...hard to believe these houses were built on septic, but they were and so far, it's not been terrible...we are the only neighbourhood in this area to be on septic with semi custom built homes....seems very strange, but we loved the house, so we took the septic system. i am not excited about the fact that one day they will put in sewers and that bill will be enormous. for now, it's okay other than the fact that we can't plant trees in that area....we'll end up decking it. but that was yet another stress to deal with.

with all this going on, i had little time to do any significant lifting, so i brought some dumb bells into my office and did some chest, tri and back and some plie squats as i could. not ideal but it is what it is.

my food however did not suffer because of it.

grapefruit juice
cottage cheese
carrots
peapods
shredded wheat
yoghurt
almonds
cherries
chicken breast
steak
steamed veggies
salad with oil and vinegar
canteloupe
======================

Jaxx....my husband takes shredded wheat in a baggie and a thing of yoghurt and almonds and mixes it all together for a meal...

he also takes carrots and pea pods, since they are easy to munch on.

we are having a harder time with his food than mine, since my office is at home.

thanks, shy....we are definitely a mutual admiration society. ;)

Well, on the bright side at least you've got a partner who understands and can participate/empathize with you. I seem to have a real knack of picking guys who have some mutant "fat repellent" gene that transforms Snicker's Bars into a piece of grilled chicken and a cup of spinach....frustrating!