Beyond Willpower

Okay, so I've been posting a bit stealth lately, here and there with little promotion. I was sort of waiting for the new year but at the same time I had things to say. Now, regardless of what your ideas about new year's resolutions are, I ask you to please watch this video, it goes over the findings of a study on new years resolution behaviors, it's quite interesting: Now, what am I doing here? I almost never make new year resolutions. I'm always worried about letting myself down, but hell, I have to try right? So, here it goes, I resolve to: Eat a 90% whole foods diet Lose 95 lbs before this day next year Start exercising, (this is a goal that will progress over the course of the year) Juice regularly As I expressed in my first post back in awhile , I've been gone due to medication related weight gain and my inability to get a handle on it. Circumstances were dire in October, and they changed my meds and added a new medication, w...

This is what a binge worthy day looks like: add stress stress and more stress then, just add pizza, that you didn't even have to PAY FOR minus a lunch break and there you have it!  (I'm an optician) we had this kind of day: we have 23 appointments, everyone is showing up PLUS we are taking walk ins for exams, then we're also taking outside scrips who want to buy glasses from us and it's so busy we can't even take a lunch break.  This is perfect breeding grounds for a binge, or at least, some unhealthy eating. Especially since the manager wanted to be nice, (which it was really), and buy us all pizza since we wouldn't get a lunch and this way we could eat on the run. But today was different. I knew last night today was going to be insane, it's the end of the year and everyone has waited until the last possible moment to get their glasses, tomorrow will be equally crazy I'm certain, if not more so.  So this morning I get up 15 minutes e...

So, as I've mentioned, I live in Pittsburgh, PA. We have a pinball arcade place here called Kickback pinball cafe. We've been meaning to get down there and today we finally did!  Luckily they had some food options that worked out for us. We both had a salad. mixed greens, nuts, seeds, goat cheese and a light truffle kind of dressing, it was so good!  We also had kale chips. That inspired me to come home and bust out the dehydrator and make kale chips of my own! I have made them before but they were kind of a failure. The first batch was too salty, the second batch had no flavor. This time I looked up a recipe for a cashew based vegan 'cheese' sauce, so as I type this they are dehydrating! This is a pic of our fridge after we got all of our veggies. Some things you see in there are green juices, almond milk, and all that green stuff on the top shelf of the fridge is Tupperware full of chopped veggies to make tossing them in a salad or munching on them throughout...

Here's the hard truth. I have diabetes. i have non alcoholic fatty liver disease, I'm working my way to high blood pressure, in the hospital they figured out it was white coat hypertension but it's still not as good as it used to bed. I feel like I'm dying, I'm rotting, from the inside out. I have been on medications that caused metabolic syndrome, making me fat after I worked SO HARD to lose those 90 lbs.  Some days my liver hurts, it will either ache, or if I bend or strain it will hurt, and sometimes it just burns. Also, fatty liver slows your metabolism, making it harder to lose weight. Me on my wedding day March 9th, at my high weight. (I am currently -20 lbs from here) I'm buying a bottle of liver cleanse/detox pills tomorrow. Along with that I'm also going to juice 3 times a day and eat as much raw fruits and veggies as I possibly can as a part of my daily diet. Certain fats are good too so I will be trying to eat avocado and eggs as well,...

I spent all week long preparing for this party, cleaning, baking, cooking, buying goodies and snacks and it went off without a hitch! I'd like to thank my husband Joey and my friend Bri who helped so much! I made vegan samoas, buckeyes, mint chip cookies, wedding cookies, and peanut butter blondies. I also made ham for sammiches, vegan chili and vegan buffalo chicken dip, the last two were especially well received, the buffalo dip was pretty much gone by the end of the night, and I had made a GIANT pot of vegan chili, which people were taking home at the end of the night. I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Oh, and I almost forgot, as a last minute thing right before people started showing up, I made roasted brussel sprouts (and added cauliflower), and did them up maple glazed style. Soooo good! Unfortunately I got distracted by entertaining (I haven't had a blog for awhile) and TOTALLY FORGOT to take pictures! :( Either way, it was fun, we drank, and p...

So, I'm having a holiday party this coming Saturday. I have a bunch of friends who all have different dietary restrictions/choices. I'm trying to cater to my vegan and dairy free friends as well as my high protein diet friends who are trying to cut out carbs! I have decided to make two different types of cookies, Lazy Samoas and mint chip and I'm making peanut butter blondies and also buckeyes. I'm super excited. All of these recipes will be coming from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar Food wise, I'll be making vegan chili, and roasted ham to be sliced for sammiches. I have a cocktail style dip and vegan buffalo chicken dip. I've made the vegan buffalo chicken dip twice, once with seitain (this did not turn out well, sorry T.J) and once with smart strips 'chicken'. That came out FANTASTIC! We did buy some groceries for the house today as well, and we are making veg choices when eating out, and then eating the left over meat that's in t...

So tonight I was talking with my cousin, who also struggles with food issues. She said that cooking something different for herself than what the rest of the family eats was a challenge, because she would just pick off the kids plates anyhow. This is something I never really understood. My mom did this same exact thing when I lived at home. Making herself some small bland dish and watching us chow down on more fatty fare. I said to my cousin, "They should eat what you eat." Now I'm not a parent, never will be, so maybe I'm entirely wrong here. It SEEMS....especially coming from OUR family where most of us have struggled with our weight to varying degrees, that you would want to nip it in the bud so to speak. Get those kids eating healthy before they become a parent making a separate meal for themselves down the line, picking off their kids plates. But then the question becomes, how do you get them to eat this bland boring food you've been making for yoursel...

So, I'm giving beyond willpower a little face lift here, there is a bar along the right hand side of the screen with all your navigational doodads. I'm not really paying attention to my weight until the new year, but I'm not binging or anything, I've lost 3 lbs this week just by reducing the Abilify from 30 mgs to 15. I have a confession...Augh, this makes me really angry. Back in the day our friends would come over and open our fridge and freezer and say "Wow, you guys eat really healthy!" Well, a friend came over recently and looked in our fridge/freezer and said "Wow, you have a lot of bachelor food!" MY. GOD. That was some sort of MOMENT for me. I was SO embarassed and SO upset. So, I've realized what we need to do over the course of the next few weeks. We need to eat all the frozen crap that we have and either eat/give away whatever meat is left in the end and then go SHOPPING! And get some of THIS! It's a process. W...

So....it's been awhile. I'd like to explain my absence. For starters, I had mentioned going on Wellbutrin and that it helped my appetite....well, that turned out to be true to a degree. I did manage to lose about 30 lbs, very.....very....slowly.... But whatever, I was happy to have lost anything. Recently I was hospitalized, and taken off the Wellbutrin, but, put on Lithium. Now, I've been on Lithium in the past, by itself. So I figured this would be a great time to get off Abilify! So, I gained about 6 lbs between the hospital and also came out without the Wellbutrin. I was on 30 mgs of Abilify, and I'm now down to 15. I'm going off slowly, but I can see that it's helping already. I can't wait to be off of it entirely! The last time I went off Abilify (But didn't' replace it with anything else) I was stable for nine months, and in those nine months I lost 90 lbs. I went back on Abilify for the next couple of years, and I gained 130 lbs!!!! I...

Well, it's been about ten days since I've been gf and vegan and watching what I eat, I'm still gaining. I went to the dr, and she said that anti psychotics like abilify can cause metabolic disorder and that people have been successfully treated for such a thing with metformin. Luckily, I do not have diabetes, but this drug is a diabetes drug, she says though that it should help with my weight loss. She is also going to check me for cushings disease at a later date. I guess that is an overproduction of cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and it makes you gain/unable to lose. So we're checking everything. I'm so happy with this new Dr. I feel like she is very thorough. I've seen her twice now and she really listens. I was also put on something for chronic migraines as well. I'm having pain around my liver area when it's pressed as well, she is checking my enzymes and we'll go from there. Also, checking me for celiac and lupus. It was a busy day!...