Beyond Willpower

Wow. It's been since MAY. and before May, I was already struggling. I've had some issues. For one, I switched birth control. I was trying out one of those ones where you only get it every 3 months. I was getting mine every 6 weeks. It just wasn't working. It also gave me the worst PMS style cravings every minute of every day. If I could have eaten a deep fried, chocolate covered, ice cream topped pizza every day I would have. It was pretty awful. Then, to make matters worse, I went back on lyrica (weight gainer). I stayed on it way past the point where it actually worked. I stopped being gluten free and I even ate dairy because my pain had gotten better. Now my pain is back, the drug isn't working, and it never EVER worked as well as being gluten free and vegan did. Also, I was searching for my first full time job since 2005 when I went on disability. I have now worked my way OFF disability and have gotten a new full time job as an optician. I'm VERY happy at ...

So I just read this post  about 'letting it all hang out' in the summer, by Fluvia Lacerda, a Brazilian plus size model. She. Is. Gorgeous. First, let me say, my 'thinspiration' pics are always plus size models. I have no desire to be skinny. I want to ROCK my curves. Anyhow, this is what the lovely Fluvia Lacerda looks like: So she writes this blog post about how you should accept your fat body and don't care about the judgements from other people, etc, etc. I'm thinking to myself, she looks amazing, who is judging her? Then I google her and find a 'celebrity weight gain' site that is talking all kinds of smack on her 'chunky arms' and her 'expanding waistline'. I want to cry. Seriously. If you can look like THAT and still get insulted by these people (who are the equivilant to me, of frat boys yelling "fat bitch" at me from their porch) then I just hate this world.  I ASPIRE to be as 'fat' and 'chunky'...

Well, I'm still losing!!!! I will update my ticker once a month after my study appt. But just wanted to let you know that I'm back in the game and still going strong! Tonight will be about a week and a half on Lyrica. I'm feeling good. I plan to do yoga tonight. It will be my first time doing it in a long time. But once I get off here I am going to go ahead and get to it! Tonight for dinner I made gluten free, vegan spinach alfredo. Yum! Be sure to check out my recipe here: "Nothing to say but Mmmm", vegan alfredo There is a strange peace in not struggling with your emotions and motivation (or lack thereof) or you're willpower or whatever it is you want to call it. I feel truly hopeful for the first time in over a year. I just can't believe the difference coming off that bc made. Thank you portia! It's much better.  Anyhow, I'm off to do some yoga! Might go for a walk later too if joey doesn't get home too late. ...

Before I say anything else let me just say... I used to use blogger because I hated wordpress. Now bloggers interface is a bit more like wordpress. HATE! ehem... Anyhow...I'm doing good. I'm still on plan, exercising, I've started taking lyrica and working more hours. Things are going well. The pain is bad sometimes, tear inducing honestly, but...I hope the lyrica kicks in full force in the next few weeks as I increase the dose and I can start feeling better. I am doing my pt. I'm eating well. I've been taking a banana and nuts with me to work for lunch and staying AWAY from the pizza place. I think I Should start juicing in the morning and taking it to work with me to drink throughout the day. Oh btw, I had made a post a few weeks back about wanting to go to cedar point. I am an idiot. I can't go to cedar point because amusement park rides DESTROY MY BODY. When I went to kennywood last year I could only stay a couple of hours and it was so painful...

I've been struggling with coming here and writing this blog. I have been steadily gaining weight since last August. I had originally lost 80 lbs and I gained 50 of that back. I was miserable. I've finally gotten on track for realz and have lost my first 10 lbs. I will be adjusting my ticker to reflect what's really going on. I'm not entirely sure what happened. I mean...I ate too much. Yup. But why? What derailed me and what kept me off track? What got me back on track? How do I figure out how to make these backsliding episodes shorter and further in between? I am now at 40 lbs lost. Augh. I just keep telling myself I did it before I can do it again, and then some. I think what originally derailed me was work. I had started working almost full time hours last august-october, it eventually proved too much for me fibromyalgia wise, but during that time I was under a lot of stress and spent a lot of time at work, I didn't bring my own food and the only things...

My sister, her fiance' and me and my bf want to all go to cedar point this august. As of last year at 240 lbs I could fit in all the rides at kennywood, but I hear that for a couple of the rides at Cedar Point (millennium force and top thrill dragster) you need to be of certain weight/height. (under 200 lbs or under a size 18 for a woman.) I'm under a size 18 at like 230-240 so since I'm not 5 feet tall I should be fine if I can lose some before August to get me back down to a 16. Millenium Force: Top Thrill Dragster: Anyhow, I haven't felt this peppy about weight loss in awhile. Guess I just needed some type of outside goal. I froze the cupcakes! Giving more away today when I see my friend. It was fun though. :)

Well, I finally got my cupcake stuff in the mail yesterday, but I wasn't here, I was down home. I came home today and made two different styles of cupcake. I made a chocolate espresso coconut one: and a far less glamorous but equally tasty peanut butter filled and frosted one: These are both recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World . I did half ass it a little cuz I was out of gluten free all purpose flour, so I bought a couple of boxes of gluten free cake mix and used that instead. Still yummy! Giving some away to the neighbors, saving me from myself! Back on track tomorrow!

Well, I ended up being able to come down home for Easter dinner. My mom doesn't really know what to cook for me, I don't make it easy that's for sure. So I brought some materials to make my own food. I'm making pasta in a veggie/"meat" sauce, and I also made a banana toffee pudding pie with a graham cracker style crust made from gluten free chex cereal, butter and almond milk.... and of course, the staple, peanut butter blondies. (Who doesn't love peanut butter?! Come on now....) I'll post a picture of the pie later, right now blog booster is not cooperating. It came out good though. :) I also made a gf bob's red mill wholesome something or other bread. It's way better than other ones I've tried. Very soft and fluffy. I also made it with some garlic salt and basil. It's really good! Anyhow, happy to be home, glad I brought some food. :) It was a pain but I like baking. Back on track monday!

So another on plan day, hurrah. :) Tonight I'm making avocado pesto pasta from a recipe I got from the website: www.chefchloe.com Doesn't it look amazing!: Be sure to check out her website if you haven't already! So I know that my sudden interest in baking is probably not the best thing for my diet. BUT, last night I made peanut butter blondies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar . They are one of my absolute favorite recipes from that book. Anyhow, I somehow managed to eat some and stay within' my calorie range yesterday and I left some for Joey and took the rest to give away at work. There is ONE left. It's for tomorrow. Half of it, the other half is for joey. :) Anyhow, so I'm feeling so into baking ever since I found a flour to gluten free flour conversion chart ! I used it last night for the blondies and it WORKED> Came out far better than the previous method I was using: Guessing! :( So, last night I ordered Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The Wo...

Okay, so, I'm tracking and exercising. Feeling good. I have another study appt in a month, they weigh me. I'm going to try not to weight myself more than once (at the two week mark) and then once at the month mark. I feel like obsessing on the scale is not a good idea for my mental state at the moment. Not that the scale obsession is EVER good. I just want to do the right things regardless. I've come up with a few new recipes since I've been gone. There's a spicy mac n cheese and a pot pie and I will hopefully get my chili recipe up at some point. I wanted to do it in the fall but that didn't work out. I've had a difficult winter. I got mad at my physical therapist, she was not respecting my boundaries on a certain issue, so I quit seeing her and stopped doing my PT altogether.I'm going to start that back up today. I've been struggling with my moods. It's seemed like I've been tweaking my meds every other month. I hate the effect the seas...

Well, I got my 6 month check up at the study and my blood work keeps coming back better and better, even though I've gained some. For the first time in memory, last check up my sugar was normal at 99, this time it was normal at 95, my cholesterol was 209 before, and now it is within' normal ranges at 195. These are still high numbers for as well as I eat, I feel like genetics have something to do with the cholesterol. (my very thin vegetarian great aunt had an eleventybilliondruple bypass a few years ago.) Okay, maybe it was a quadruple, but still it was bad. and my gpa has high cholesterol as well. I've doubled my dose of fish oil, hoping that helps. Oh! My triglycerides, which were 146 last time were 119 this time!!!! WOoooooooOOooooOOooo! :D At one time they were 260, normal is under 150. My thyroid is a bit low, my hair is falling out and crispy in some places and I am not binging but I'm gaining as if I were. I'm worried. I am tracking everything ...

So, I haven't had much to say lately, mainly because it's been a struggle and I feel like you guys are probably sick of hearing me whine. I'm sick of hearing me whine. It's been about a week or maybe a bit more, that I've been doing well. I haven't been weighing,  right now I don't think it's that important. It's more important to get my eating on track than it is to beat myself up for not losing or for gaining .5 ounces or whatever. I've decided to set my goal low. Every 6 months I get weighed and blood work and all that for my study I am doing, and my goal is to lose 20 lbs in the next six months. I know it's slow going, but I think it's all I can handle at the moment. I'm doing well with my food, drinking fresh juices, I think tomorrow I will start tracking again. For the last week I've just been trying to make better choices. btw, I had my blood work (cholesterol, thyroid, sugar, etc) checked in january and I haven...

Well, the ticker is finally moving in a downward trend and staying there. I've lost 3 lbs this week. I've been eating 1500 cals, doing 30 mins on the bike a night (would like to do 30 in the morning too. will do that tomorrow) and drinking water, green tea, and fresh juice. at the moment I'm drinking some pineapple, kale and spinach juice. It was so overwhelmingly sweet that after two stems of kale I added about 2 or 3 handfulls of spinach and it's perfect. Mmmmm. :) Trying to get more dark leafy greens in. So last year for me, was about weight loss. Now that I think I understand the whole weight loss process (whether I follow it all the time is another story altogether) I think this year the focus is going to be on whole foods and health. I do eat vegan (except recently I did slip up and have dairy a few times when eating out, but not since being back on plan.) and I do generally eat whole foods. BUT....not enough. I feel like more veggies could work their way into m...

The first three days... So, my observations of the last three days. They have felt damn near effortless. I don't understand why sometimes it is SO easyt and other times it's nearly impossible to keep the unhealthy food out of my mouth!  I am doing a new fitness challenge as well. 500 miles in one year, and 10k fitness mins in one year. Let's do this... Don't we all start out a new project, diet, new year, with this vigor? This...I can do it, I can take on the world mentality? Over the course of the first few months though, those fireworks start to fizzle, and eventually go out. We all stumble and fall, sometimes we blow a tire, sometimes, against all better judgement, we get so fed up with ourselves that we get out and slash the other three. That's what happened to me at the end of last year. I haven't done myself in though. It's time to get up, and start walking to my destination, car and slashed tires be damned.  I know it's not always going to b...

The holidays hit me hard, and I feel like such a failure, so here I am, tail between my legs, promising a new start. again.  but if there is one thing that is true about me, it's that I have a hard time giving up. Since thanksgiving I have gained... 12 lbs.  Last year I made it through the holidays and even lost some weight. I know that today, is just another day, and that the only extra meaning it may have is meaning that we ascribe to it. But, today is new years day and I got a new healthy lifestyle calendar for Christmas and it feels  like if ever there was a time for renewed energy to focus on weight loss now is the time. Unless I want to start spending money on new clothes, I'd best get on it. I threw out all my old 'fatter clothes' and I'm pretty broke so a new wardrobe is not in order. It's time to get my butt in gear. Joey has gained weight too, we have a tendency to gain/lose together, as I'm sure is no surprise. No more eating out for awhil...