Sunday Ramblings

Good Morning!

 

I love Halloween.

My week is shaping up nicely and I’m hopeful for a decent size loss.  I balanced my free birthday lunch at Red Robin and my free birthday dinner at Tucanos and have been a Blue Dot Rock Star this week.

 

I had a sudden craving for ribs last night and asked Kenyon if we should go out to Texas Roadhouse for my free birthday sidekick of ribs or if we should eat at home and make the pork chops we had bought earlier in the week.  He said the pork chops will freeze.  Ha!  So, I pre-planned/tracked points and made call-ahead-seating reservations on my way home to pick him up.  I got home and found Kenyon napping.  Doh!  He didn’t seem like he wanted to get up and I was debating if I really needed to be spending the points and eating out again.  So, I let him sleep and I made pork chops, green beans, and garlic toast. 

I had a huge craving for fruit and needed to get a Mega Millions lottery ticket.  I ventured to Walmart near my house and paid a premium for fruit.  Oy!  I was too lazy to hunt around for better fruit prices.  Boy did it hit the spot.  There has been a lot of Halloween candy in the dispatch center this week and staying out of it has been tough.  I had a Snicker one day and yesterday counted out 10 Reeses Pieces and ate them very slowly.  I’ve looked up the points and almost all the fun size candy bars are about 4 SPV each.  That helps to keep me out of it.  I can’t rationalize spending 4 SPV on a little candy bar.  Plus, there is a fine line between a little sugar and too much sugar.  Of course that doesn’t mean I can’t put away a large amount of fruit! 

I’ve been working the 10am-8pm shift at work but I don’t seem to be getting myself up and around early enough for exercise.  Each night when I got to bed I have good intentions when I set that alarm for 6am.  Then, 6am turned into 7am and occasionally 8am!  I have no idea why I feel so tired in the mornings.  Maybe one of these days I’ll get those big girl panties on and just DO IT instead of saying I’ll do it.  I pre-planned my food today as I was packing up for work and then remembered I promised I’d bring in bagels since I had a coupon at Big Sky Bagels.  Turns out, there was already bagels from another team member but we still made do.  I tracked the half bagel and light cream cheese, which put me over my daily points, but still earns my blue dot.  That is, if I eat everything else I brought/planned. 

I’ve got one more day before WI and I also plan to earn my blue dot.

Persistance Not Perfection

I had a FB memory pop up yesterday.

 

I’m due to celebrate my 39^th birthday next week and the FB memories of my 30^th birthday have also been surfacing.  I actually love seeing all my birthday celebration memories because you know how much I love my birthday.

My starting weight was 304.8 pounds.  My goal weight was 175 pounds and nine years ago I got down to 165, which was an all-time low.  I had officially lost 139.8 pounds and 46% of my body weight.  It felt great.  Look at the collar bones!

 

 

Fast forward nine years and I am currently 46 pounds over my goal weight.  What is absolutely worth celebrating is that in July of 2016, I was 88 pounds over goal.  There are still times that I try and rack my brain on how I let myself get 88 pounds over goal.  I swore I wasn’t going to gain the weight back.  I knew I would be able to keep it off forever.  I had safeguards in place after all.  Then…life changes.

What matters right now in this moment is that I am not still 88 pounds over goal, or a more terrifying thought, that I have not gained all the weight back.  What matters in this moment is that I realized I needed to take control of my weight gain and have a hefty pep talk (pun intended) with myself about what needed to change. 

The thing with weight gain is that it is depressing.  When you are losing weight everybody is celebrating your accomplishments and giving you compliments.  When you are gaining weight, all of that stops.  Nobody really wants to give you any honest feedback about your weight gain.  Really what could they say to me?  I was already my own worst critic.  Feeling depressed about it just made eating those feelings 10x easier.  It is a vicious cycle.

Instead, of looking at the past, I chose to look at today. I have lost 83.8 pounds over the last nine years.  That is definitely a cause for a celebration.  I’m always down for a party!

We never know what life will deliver.  The ups, downs, and sideways can be the hardest to navigate.  It is exhausting trying to be perfect all the time.  Instead, I’ll keep working on persistence.

Thursday Fun At The Farmstead

My days off were split this week with Monday and Tuesday off (well, part of Tuesday) and then off again on Thursday.  It was low key but enjoyable and I always love when I get days off with Kenyon.

We are starting to redeem free birthday meals and there are a lot of them.  We started with Red Robin yesterday and this evening we will go to Tucanos.  I’m working really hard to balance the meals out and pre-plan so I know where my points are going to be at for the day.

Red Robin has a ton of low point options and they have points calculated for you in the WW app.  I knew I was having their Oktoberfest burger, which was back for the season.  It had ham, caramelized onion, Swiss cheese (which appeared to have been left out), mustard, and a pretzel bun.  I did some WW pre-planning and doing my best estimate.  I also ate only half and had a side salad in place of french fries as well as a refill of salad.  It wasn’t quite as delicious as I had hoped for the amount of points I spent on it but I still enjoyed the burger.

 

I had a low point breakfast, 0 SPV snack, and am having a low point lunch to offset Tucanos this evening.  I also have plenty of WSPA available if I need it. 

Kenyon and I planned to take my nieces to The Farmstead since we got them season passes for Christmas and they had not yet redeemed them. Hailey decided not to come so Emma invited a friend.  We had the best time with these two little girls.  Emma is just a hoot and has always had the best personality.

 

She didn’t want to leave when it was time to get home and rounded up for bed, school, and work.  She said, “I don’t want to go to stupid school tomorrow.”  I told her, “I don’t want to go to stupid work tomorrow either but I don’t have a choice.”  Kids!  I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything especially when they whine, argue, and complain.  But when they are behaved, kids are pretty fun.

Okay, time to get back to “stupid work”.  Ha!