Best Laid Plans...

I don't usually post on Saturday nights but man, what a bad eating wknd it's been.  Remember how I said yesterday that I was going to do a menu plan for this week and stick to 1500 cals/day?  Yeah well...you know what they say about best laid plans, don't you?  Nothing has gone right so far.  Over calories for yesterday and today, and I think out of the 6 meals I planned (brkfst, lnch, din for both days), I actually only ate one of them.  I have a picture of it.  I made a chicken sandwich on a Thomas Everything bagel thin w/ the spinach dip I bought at Trader Joe's.  Pretty tasty, and the only thing I've actually done right in two days.

I did manage to get in a good, hard workout that I was proud of yesterday at the gym.  We work out with the trainer one day a week because that's all we can afford.  As of this past week, he gave us a sheet of exercises to do on our own the other days we're at the gym.  I don't go on Friday evening because Dwayne comes over for the wknd, so I can't meet Billie to do our workout together.  I go earlier in the day on Friday.  I did my 10 min warm-up on the elliptical, then did everything he had on the sheet 2x, and I actually did more reps than he asked for on each exercise.  I also raised the weight on a couple of them because I just didn't feel like I was doing all I could do, and I really want to push myself more on the exercise front.  Then I threw in 50 mountain climbers at the end of the routine and 30 In-Out's, just for the fun of it.  I finished up with a 20 min walk on the elliptical at a 3.5 pace.  Then I went and found Chris (our trainer) and asked him to make up some more exericse sheets for us.  I wanted to have some variety and make sure we're working out ALL of the muscle groups.  He said he'd get it done this week.  Good.  That makes me happy.

Back to the food and the feeling the need to post tonight.  I read a few blogs tonight before I posted.  The couple that REALLY stood out in my mind tonight were Jack's and Zaa's.  I'm sure you all know Jack Sh*t by now.  He's got over 800 followers in his occult.  He did a post based on a history lesson about Cortez.  He left Spain and went to conquer the Aztec's (I think), and when they got to that land, he told his crew to burn their ships.  He was leaving himself and his people no chance of failing at what they had come to do.  They absolutely HAD to win, because they had no ride home if they lost the battle.  I re-read this a couple of times because I was just in awe of what a brilliant concept that was.  And is.  It can be applied to the weight loss, or anything at all that you want to succeed at in life.  By the way, Cortez's army won.  :)

Zaababy-The Incredible Shrinking Woman is listed at the end of my blogroll.  She did such a wonderful post tonight that it brought tears to my eyes.  She and I started blogging around the same time, within a couple of weeks of each other, and she's lost 80 lbs. so far.  I've lost 41.  It just goes to show you what consistency does for you on this journey.  Had I been as consistent as her, I could be enjoying the same things that she is right now.  This is not a point of jealousy.  It's a point of pure joy for her....absolute pride and admiration in what she's doing in her corner of the world.  And it sparks a desire in me to do better.  Zaa's had some hard times along the way.....some really hard, emotional things to deal with, including deaths in the family, the death of her mother, her kitty cat, all kinds of terrible things.  And she just keeps going.  She's lost consistently ever since she started.  I let a lot of emotional crap in my life overtake me and reverse my weight loss from Oct-Dec.  I shouldn't have done that.  I should have followed Zaa's example and so many others out there that just keep duking it out.  They keep their heads down and just keep doing what needs to be done, no matter what else is going on around them. 

Heck, I get thrown off course when Mother Nature visits.  I can't imagine what kind of train wreck I'd be if someone in my family actually died, God forbid.  My emotions have really been in the toilet this week, for a lot of reasons.  I tried to not let it come through in my posts, but poor Dwayne has been beaten up something fierce.  He's the one that gets the bad end of the stick when I'm not happy and I hate that.  He puts up with a lot from me.  Besides my hormones being out of whack this week, this weather has also been weighing on me really heavy.  It's got me really down and I don't really care about much when I get like this.  I was absolutely amazed when I got on the scale and it still said 231.0, the same as last Friday.  I don't know how I've been able to stay focused enough to keep myself in the gym 5x/week, but I'm glad I have. 

Of course, the scale is back up at the moment.  Today's reading doesn't officially count, but it's all the way up to 236.0.  It's due to sodium.  I have a terrible time with it.  I decided that I finally needed to start eating through the stuff in the freezer.  There's too much processed stuff in there and I just can't bear to throw it away.  It's not really junky stuff, but some of it is pre-cooked and therein lies the sodium issue.  That's what we've been eating this wknd, and that's why I'm up 5 lbs. right now.  I've got to try and balance it out with non-processed stuff so there's no gain by the time next Friday gets here.  But I'm tired of not having enough room in the freezer to put in meats and frozen veggies that I like to buy when they go on sale, because I've been avoiding eating the stuff in the freezer for so long.  Being on unemployment, I just can't afford to throw it away or even give it away, so Dwayne and I have been eating it this weekend, and Shane and I will be eating more of it through the week I guess. 

On a good note, I haven't been bingeing.  Every day or every week that I can say that is a good day for me.  And you know what's weird?  Before I started blogging and reading other people's blogs, I never even knew what bingeing was.  It wasn't until I read several other people's blogs about bingeing that I understood what they were talking about.  The scary part is, that was my normal eating pattern for way too long.  And I called it normal.  I just called it eating too much.  But I never associated the "why" with the eating.  The tired or stressed or sad or depressed or frantic feelings that went along with eating WAY, WAY too much.  Once I started to learn more, I started trying to curb it and learn how to eat like a normal person.  The down side to that was now I was acutely aware of it, and realized how often I did it and was tempted to do it, and realized just how bad my eating problem and my relationship with food is.  Man, I've got a lot of work to do.  But thank God for education.

Thank God that I've learned so much from so many in these last 9 months or so.  And thank God for a place like Blogland where you can work through your issues and your problems without judgement.  You can gain knowledge and support along the way.  There's always someone there to help you with whatever you need, whether it's a pat on the back when you've done well, or a swift kick in the rear when you need to get your sh*t together (thank you Jack :)).  The comraderie is unbelievable.  In a world where a fat person so often feels like they're out of place, it's really nice to finally, finally find a place where I feel like I belong.  Like I'm welcome.  Like I'm part of the family.  It's nice to finally find a place where I feel like I'm good enough, no matter what size I am or how much I weigh.  And I know that feeling will be the same when I reach my goal as it was on Day One when I started at 272 lbs.  I wish I would have found you all when I was at my highest weight of 340 lbs.  It took me a while to find this place, but I'm glad I finally did.  And I know I don't say it often enough, but I'm thankful for each and every one of you.  Thanks for taking the time to stop by and visit me, see how I'm doing, and leave a word or two.  I love you guys.  Have a happy weekend and we'll talk again soon.  :)

Quote For the Day:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover."  -Mark Twain

Bagel Thin - 110 cals

Chile Lime Chicken Burger - 150 cals

Spinach Dip - 50 cals

Total Cals:  310