My Diet - Week Three

So last week started off REALLY good for the most part. Tuesday, I measured when I weigh and I’ve lost a total of 8.25 inches! I was so happy! Wednesday was another matter altogether.

I should explain something. Were I work, we eat…a lot…and often. EVERYONE has multiple snacks in their desks. We have potlucks to celebrate every conceivable occasion. The running joke is that the company encourages us to eat so much so that our rears expand to fit snugly in the chairs and therefore no one is in danger of falling out of them. We are quite literally staffed mostly by overweight people. Wednesday, we celebrated my ex-supervisor’s (she got a promotion, the lucky broad) birthday with…yep, you guessed it, a massive potluck.

These things are mostly political in nature. If you don’t participate, you’re pretty much ostracized. So…while I REALLY wanted to stay on this diet, I also didn’t want to fall out of favor with anyone. So…I signed up to bring a garden salad. I figured I would make sure I could participate by bringing something I could eat.

ALL DAY leading up to serving the food people were asking me if I was going to eat and I kept saying yes, but I’d only eat the salad that I brought because nothing else we were serving was allowed. Oh wow…chicken and dumplin’s, cocktail weenies in BBQ sauce, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, rigatoni casserole…it was all there including 5 different kinds of desert not including the custom-made cake. Dude, when I say we eat…I mean we EAT! LOL!

So after I was done helping serve the food, I got my cup of salad, put my salad spritzer on it and sat down to eat my little lunch at my desk away from everyone else, which I knew was a calculated risk. Sure enough, people started stopping by to chat. And while they told me how amazed they were by my restraint and how they would NEVER have the strength to do it themselves, they munched on their food in front of me and dropped crumbs on my desk. They weren’t being intentionally cruel, just careless and thoughtless.

I put up with it all day long but my friend Tay can tell you I was in the WORST possible mood. I got off work and I just…broke. I took Little Man to the Happy China restaurant and we got take-out. I came home, ate every bit that I could stuff in my mouth without throwing up, feeling horribly guilty the whole time, and then when I was done…had to find something to do. After all, if I was at least productive then maybe my lapse wouldn’t be so bad right? I went through one of the drawers I have of my mom’s things. I read letters she’d written to Grandma a long time ago and I looked at pictures of me and my sister when we were little. One of the letters really caught me by surprise, though now that I think about it, it really shouldn’t have. One of her many letters to Grandma, when she was living just an hour away, before I even knew I had a baby sister, she was just telling Grandma what she was doing, which wasn’t much. She was going to school and taking care of my sister as a baby and that was pretty much it.

But the one thing that hit me hard was that she said, “I’m happy right now”. Not, “being a mother makes me happy” or “doing this is fulfilling”. Just…”happy right now”. I burst into tears. I cried and cried. I let out the guilt and the confusion and the anger of my day and honestly a LOT of emotions that had been building up inside me. And afterwards I felt SO MUCH BETTER!

And then I was mad because I realized that if I had just had a good cry BEFORE I went to get food, I probably wouldn’t have even done it.

Yeah…I’m not REALLY in-touch with my emotions most of the time. I tend to find them inconvenient or irrational and tuck them away, intending to find a way to get rid of them later and then I eventually explode. Need to work on that…eventually. Right now, I don’t have time.

See?!?!?!

Ok, I know I’m at least half-crazy. Let’s face it, I wasn’t the most stable person in the world BEFORE I started this damn diet. So I KNOW being on the diet hasn’t helped, but I haven’t lost any friends yet and have managed to control myself for the most part. So I think that should be considered an accomplishment!

Anyway, I walked away from that with this plan. I was going to go on a supplement only fast for the next 4 days, taking 5 supplements per day which would REALLY drop my calorie count, but it would get me back into ketosis because I was positive I would be out of it by morning at least. So Thursday and Friday I did my liquid diet. I wasn’t going to weigh-in until Monday. Figured I’d find some sort of excuse, but on Friday I seemed to be back in ketosis surprisingly, so I talked myself into going. And I was SO glad that I had! The last time I actually weighed was the previous Thursday, so this is over a 9 day period technically, but I had lost 6 pounds taking me from 276 to 270!

I was so happy and proud of myself!

Then I had the weekend from hell and basically just feel lucky to be alive and in one piece. Ok so my weekend…was a freaking Visa commercial!

Saturday morning I was grocery shopping and then reading for the whole weekend. Those were the sum total of my plans and it sounded heavenly! But, I got suckered into taking Little Man on a mini camping trip with a bunch of my buddies and their kids. “It’ll be great! There’re all these air-conditioned cabins for the parents to sleep in and the kids will have a ball camping in their tents outside!” Couldn’t be bad right? Wrong. I don’t normally do things like this.

I hate the outdoors unless it’s the dead of winter and everything is either dead or hibernating.

I use my weight as an excuse: I can’t be expected to go roll around in the dirt! I’m too fat for that! I can’t handle it!

BUT, I said no and then I saw Little Man’s face fall. It was like all the hope and life had been sucked right out of him, and I remembered Grandma bitching at me just the day before about how I never do anything special with him. I felt guilty for holding him back. So I agreed to go despite the fact that I had this mantra playing in my head the whole time we got ready and drove up there going, “this is SUCH a bad idea! What the hell are you thinking? You’re not prepared for this! You are going to regret this in the worst possible way!” It turns out, that little voice in my head was right, but I’m jumping ahead of myself here.

So we pack up everything you can possibly think of, including food for me so I don’t break my diet…well everything but the car-charger for the cell phone, which I had taken out because I got my car washed Saturday morning and for some strange reason, I thought the car wash people might steel it (SO stupid). So I forgot it wasn’t in the car when we left. So we drive 3 or 4 hours into BFE Alabama to this camp site which has apparently been shut-down at some point due to the bad economy. We decide to stay there anyway because by this time, it’s about 2pm or something and we just figured “screw it”. So we broke in…great idea.

The cabins are all boarded up, can’t get in them and there’s no electricity or running water anyway. But some of us had been smart enough to bring our own water so we figured we’d still be ok. Wrong.

The whole place is like one giant nest of chiggers. These things are NASTY. They burrow under your skin where they live and just bite you over and over and over again. In fact the only way to get rid of them is to suffocate the skin where they’re living, which is highly unpleasant because it’s like painting your leg with clear nail polish. Just…icky. Chiggers may or may not be repelled by bug-repellant, it depends on what kind you get. Guess what? We didn’t have the right kind.

So we’re all being eaten alive.

Oh wait, I forgot a very important piece of info. Right when we got there, I pulled out my cooler full of my food and set it next to mine and Little Man’s little campsite. Well genius outdoors man that he is, the husband of one of my buddies decides to back his truck up between two trees so we can jerry-rig all the tents together and maybe sleep sitting up in the back of the truck and not on the ground. Which sounded like a good idea until he backed over my cooler and totally destroyed it and everything in it.

Now see, I’d skipped breakfast and lunch in my hurry to get everything together to get out there with everyone, so all of my food was in there and I had intended to eat some once I got a chance to sit still…so I was already starving and then I had no food and no water left because it was demolished in my cooler. I was…upset.



Everyone was all “it’ll be ok. You can just eat real food for the weekend. It won’t be that bad”. Yeah…no. I had binged Wednesday night. I refused to do it again. But I eventually caved and ate a hotdog because I had this horrible head ache and felt so damn nauseous. So I spent the rest of the day trying to deal. Just trying to stand back and let Little Man have fun because I never do stuff like this with him. They had this little satellite TV and someone had brought a laptop. So I was watching the Forbes list on E and I even managed to make a facebook update before the dead tree that some other genius outdoorsman had hooked the portable satellite up to collapsed, crushing the TV, the car it was sitting on and loosing the internet connection.

By this time, I was hot, hungry, pissy, dirty, and being eaten alive by bugs. Little Man was all of those things except hungry. We were done. So I said screw it and decided to leave. We packed what was left of our stuff into the car and right as we were about to pull out onto the little road, my friend Buffy (swear her parents called her that as a joke, but it stuck) asked me if I knew my way home. I figured if I just kept heading east I’d eventually hit something I recognized (because I’d followed them up there and had no earthly idea where I was), and in my head I was telling myself I was a big girl and we’d be fine, so I said yes. I looked at my phone, noticed it was almost dead, realized I didn’t have the charger and THOUGHT about staying, but decided to try going home anyway. STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

So off we drove.

Gotta explain. It’s summer so it’s not actually dark here until around 8:30pm. It was like…7:30 or something, so still plenty light outside. I got a flat tire right at the edge of what looked like a little pseudo-town. You know, the kind of place you typically drive through when you’re going through BFE to get to somewhere else. I get out see that it’s my rear driver’s tire and realize I’ve got a real problem. My phone is dead and before RT, when I’d taken my car to get a thorough check up, they’d rotated the tires but put the hub cap back on so that it was actually blocking the air thingy. My lug-nuts and hub cap are attached. So, I figure I’m fine. I have a spare. I get out the kit and start trying to get the lug-nuts off. About this time this guy with all of 4 teeth comes over asking (if you could call what came out of his mouth some kind of language) if I needed help.

Yep, I did. So we screwed with it for about 30 minutes before he says it’s just not coming off and he needs his air gun to get it off. Thankfully, he runs the one and only gas station/repair shop/convenience store in town. I’m all like cool, you do that and I will go call my insurance.

Guess what? Some moron drunk driver had taken out the telephone pole into town earlier that day. No phones. Didn’t know when it would be fixed, probably not until tomorrow. The air gun he’d lent to his buddy who’d driven off to god knows where the day before to take his wife to the hospital because she was in labor. And my phone was now dead. Great. I’m starting to feel like I’m in the middle of some horror movie like “the Hills Have Eyes” or something. Little Man’s actually freaked out too so he’s stuck to me like glue, which didn’t help my temper at all.

The guy was nice enough to let me into his little convenience store to grab $20 worth of snacks. You KNOW none of that was on my list of allowed foods, but I didn’t have a choice. We were starving and had no other options. He woke up his wife, who woke up her friend, who woke up her cousin to come let me rent a room at this little dive of a hotel/motel. They looked at my visa card like I was crazy when I handed it to them to pay for the room. Dude, as broke as I am, I was just praying they’d accept it. With no phones, they couldn’t run it, so they had to write down all the numbers, which made me nervous, but whatever.

We go to our little room and weren’t terribly surprised that it was a worse than a dump. But despite the fact that the place gave us the heebie-jeebies, it seemed somehow more secure than sleeping in the car, just not by much.

Seriously, the place was down-right creepy. And to top it off, there was no lock on the door, only a latch…and that latch was only attached by one tiny little nail. Needless to say we didn’t sleep. Little Man and I were both too freaked out to sleep. We sat on the floor and played go fish with cards made of the pages of my food diary. All the while, I’m thinking about this is how people end up buried in the woods and how stupid I was to leave the camp alone WITH a dead phone and hoping that at least if we still weren’t home by Monday my family would wonder where the hell we were.

The sun FINALLY came up but no one in town was around. They were all at their creepy little church. So Little Man and I stayed in our creepy little hotel room and waited until we saw activity around 1pm. We walked over to the gas station and the guy said he still hadn’t seen his friend. I’m thinking we’re never going to get out of this hell-hole and telling the Almighty that I’m sorry I’m such a stubborn bitch, even if he did help make me that way.

Right about then this guy pulls up in a telephone company truck and guess what? It’s his friend. Yeah. He’s there to fix the phones AND he can give back the air gun. So the guy gets my tire off, actually patches the flat and right before I tear out of there at top speed, I ask what the name of the town is. He says, “ain’t no town here. Just a place.”…so not only don’t I know where the hell I am, I don’t know where the hell I’ll be running from so I never make the mistake of going within 100 square miles of the place again. I drove until I hit Georgia, got out, got directions back to Pensacola and managed to get home around 7pm last night, totally exhausted and munching on chips and coke the whole way.

I WILL NEVER GO CAMPING AGAIN. No amount of guilt can convince me to do it. Not happening. Never. And when Little Man asks why I won’t go camping with him, I will (using the most wise mouth words of my wonderful friend Kay) remind him of the last time Mommy gave in to him and we almost died in Deliverance Country.

I know it’s overly dramatic, but DUDE! YOU didn’t go through it so give me a break! LOL!

So, I knew I had eaten what I wasn’t supposed to eat and even though I knew I’d had no choice in the matter, I still felt guilty about it, because if I’d just listened to myself and not gone, or at least stayed with the group instead of trying to head home alone, I’d have been fine. I was going to go on my super strict fluid-only diet again before I weighed, but instead I just dropped myself back down to the 500 calorie diet today and will only stay on it until I’m back in ketosis again.

The best possible news to come out of this hellish weekend was that I lost a half of a pound! The counselor said it was probably more due to the stress and fear than anything else, but hey, I’ll take it! LOL!

So now, I know that I can be active with my son, but that I should plan MUCH MORE CAREFULLY and not go haring off on an adventure like that again. Little Man slept with me last night which means it affected him as much as it affected me. So I know I probably won’t be sleeping alone for the rest of the week and I feel I deserve it.

I was stupid to put myself and my son in danger that way and I’m WAY too stubborn. I was LUCKY it ended the way it did and it only cost me:

Food, water and ice = $75
Junk food at the Deliverance, BFE convenience store = $20
Gas before I left the state of Florida = $40
Gas on my way back (stopping at every gas station I saw…just in case) = $55

But it all added up to:

Getting out of Deliverance, BFE alive and in one piece AND still loosing half of a pound = priceless! LOL!

OH! I’m so flaky! When I was at the grocery store Saturday morning I knew I needed batteries for something, but couldn’t remember what it was. NOW I remember! I needed them for the camera because it’s dead. So no picture today, but I’ll grab batteries tomorrow and take it.

My Diet - Week Two

So this week’s update is late. I almost didn’t even write it. I was thoroughly disgusted with the diet and myself this past week.

It started off badly. I had to sit through the family birthday party (we have 4 or 5 birthdays in the month of June so it’s just easier to celebrate all at once), watching everyone else eat huge steaks with grilled sweet potatoes, cake and ice cream, and I couldn’t have any. I had my little 4 ounces of plain, flavorless steak that I massacred with salt and pepper and my ½ cup of brussel sprouts…that was it. Oh! And a cup of coffee, sans creamer. My Uncle did the steak, it was perfectly rare. My aunt did the brussel sprouts; they were perfect too. And the coffee was infused with coconut so it tasted great. I had no reason to complain about what I had to eat, but…it still TOTALLY sucked to watch everyone else eat the food I can’t have. Needless to say, I dreamed about steak that night. I woke up cranky. Imagine that.

I also woke up with the distinct memory of eating two pieces of bread with butter in the middle of the night. At first, I thought it was just a dream, but when I went into the kitchen, there was the tub of butter still sitting out on the counter. I was SO angry with myself! I don’t eat in my sleep! At least I never have before! It’s not uncommon for me to wake in the middle of the night and grab a snack, but I’ve always been awake for it before. My only explanation was that I was just that tired that I was hungry but didn’t wake up fully, or I might have stopped myself.

I say “might” because honestly, if I was that hungry, I might not have stopped myself. I can’t complain, I knew this diet would be way more than just difficult for me. But I was very angry at myself for the slip, and I was not in ketosis anymore. I went in to weigh on Monday (6/8/2009) and had only lost 1.5 pounds. I say “only” because with the sacrifice I’m making for this diet, the payback should have been much higher. My counselor talked me down, because even though it was the end of the day, I was still really pissed at myself, the world…air…everything.

I was just flat pissed-off. I was supposed to have been on the 600 calorie diet from Sunday until Wednesday, but because of my slip and drastic difference between what I SHOULD have lost and what I actually lost (and also the fact that I was not in ketosis anymore), I had to go back on the 500 calorie diet starting Tuesday.

So I did. I went through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, eating only what I was supposed to eat, totally pissed at everyone and everything, including myself and was just generally a really unpleasant person to be around. To salve my wounded spirit, I added Creole seasoning to everything. You know that Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning that’s so spicy it will literally burn your lips? Yep, that’s the stuff. OOOOOHHHH! Damn it’s good! LOL!

So I weighed in again on Thursday…and had lost a grand total of 3 ounces!!!!!!!!!!!! There are no appropriate words to describe how totally angry and upset I was. Those of you that know me, know that I don’t shy away from using the inappropriate words…pretty much ever. But this time…no, not even going there. There’s no point. I’m pretty sure you understand how upset I was. Apparently there’s so much sodium in my happy little seasoning, that I was retaining water like a damn sponge. Now, to look at the back of the thing, there’s only 310 mg to every serving, which is ¼ tsp. However, you’re only supposed to have 2100mg of salt per day and when I say I put that stuff on EVERYTHING, I don’t mean I dusted it lightly. I coated my food with the stuff. I put it on my morning egg, my salad, my veggies, my chicken…If there’d been more food, I’d have put it on that too.

Yep, I LOVE spicy! It’s my downfall. I like sweets. Dessert is fabulous, but…roll out the spicy and I’m there.

So, I only lost 3 *cuss, cuss* ounces and had to stop using my seasoning and had to stay on the 500 calorie diet.

You’re not supposed to stay on the 500 calorie diet for more than 4 days at a time, because your caloric intake is so dangerously low and because eventually, your body will FORCE you to cheat. So I had to have the will of a freakin’ mountain. I’m telling you, I don’t think I have ever been more unpleasant in my life than I was right up til yesterday afternoon.

Not to mention, that F-ing KFC commercial came on 72 MF-ing times! Mind you, this is with me frantically surfing channels trying to avoid ALL food commercials. I don’t even eat KFC! I prefer Popeye’s for the red beans and rice and Churches for the Jalapeno Cheddar poppers. Screw the chicken. I don’t really like it that much unless it’s made by someone’s grandma. But it came on so many times I had to count.

When the commercial for the Honey BBQ chicken strip sandwich from Whataburger came on, it was almost game-over. I’m telling you, I had my keys and my wallet in my hands so fast I didn’t even realize I’d moved. My son, Little Man, looked up at me and said, “Mommy? Where are you going?” That’s pretty much the only thing that snapped me out of it. I really like that sandwich.

But despite the hell of food commercials, which I now firmly believe should be banned from TV, I held strong…or suffered greatly. Either way you look at it, I made it through the weekend without cheating.

I FINALLY got back into ketosis, finished out the day (making sure there was absolutely no food in the house that I could eat that didn’t require actual preparation so I couldn’t eat it in my sleep), and woke up this morning tired, cranky and pissy. But, at least I’m back in ketosis and finally on the 600 calorie diet. I’ve gone through the whole day almost. Last is dinner.

I got to have my 600 calorie breakfast (I DON’T mean that the one meal was 600 calories) which I’ve been looking forward to for 2 weeks now because I got to have diet cheese.

Most diet cheese is shit. Nasty, nasty stuff I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. But, the laughing cow diet spreadable swiss is FABULOUS. I got a wedge of that and spread it on my slice of bread that I’m allowed. And I ate my ½ of a small orange, took my fish oil (to keep my hair and skin from turning into sandpaper), my vitamins, my minerals and my allergy meds…and then spent 2 hours trying not to throw up.

I can’t take my allergy meds on an empty stomach ever. I can’t even take them and turn right around and eat something. There HAS to be something substantial on my stomach for at least 5 minutes before I take this stuff. Apparently, ½ a small orange and a slice of bread with diet spreadable cheese is not what my stomach considers substantial enough to mitigate the nastiness my allergy pill causes down there. I wanted to die. Seriously. There is only one thing I hate more than throwing up. I will avoid throwing up at all costs.

Which meant that for 2 hours, death was preferable to vomiting.

Then it passed and the rest of my day went along as only Mondays do, leaving me practically homicidal by the time my second break rolled around. However it all got better. I went to this store that’s right next to work and they had these sexy-ass heels…in only my size…on sale! Seriously, how could a Monday possibly be better? LOL!

So thanks to my new fabulous shoes, I had a great day. I don’t weigh until tomorrow, but I also get measured again tomorrow, so this coming Sunday, I will have actual measurements to post. Yay me.

This week’s picture, I took in my living room. I purposely have on the same clothes I wore last week. I will attempt to do this as long as possible (the pants are REALLY loose already) to try to make it evident how much I’m loosing. My grand total so far in my two completed weeks is 13 pounds (I don’t count the ounces. I’d prefer to even forget about that weigh-in entirely).

Kisses, Hugs and Spanx,

Luci

My Diet - Week One

Maybe not everyone in the world knows yet…but they will soon. I started a diet last Sunday. If you take a look at my profile pictures, you might think it’s obvious why I did this. And you might be partially correct, but there’s more to it than that.

I’ve been fat for the last 10 years. My weight has fluctuated wildly over that time span, but I certainly haven’t been what anyone would consider “thin”. After my son was born, I got comfortable being chubby. There was a lot of work to do. And I didn’t have time to worry about myself. Before I knew it, I weighed more than I’d ever weighed in my life, had grey hairs poking out of my head and was over 30 with a kid I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with.
I remember saying I’d loose weight and get healthy eventually. “One Day” I’d get thin again and take my kid to Disney World. “Next year” I’d be a little skinnier and could go to the fair and ride the roller-coasters. I made excuses for why I couldn’t go to the beach to play volley ball with my friends and I’ve been surfing alone for years. I used to be a competitive swimmer, yet I haven’t been in a pool in a really long time. I have NEVER gone to a high school reunion.

In fact, I almost didn’t go to the RT Book Lover’s Convention this year. It was my first time to go. I’d been dreaming about going for years. There were a bucketful of reasons I almost talked myself out of going. Only one of them was my weight, but it was a very big reason. Now, if you have read my Mother’s Day post, you know why I actually went. It’s ironic actually, because Mom used to be one of the reasons I hide from my problems. But now, I have to give her credit for helping me face them.

I went to RT, had a BLAST and came home filled with the fires of hope and purpose. I finally wanted to loose weight badly enough to actually go for it. I want to be a true professional in the publishing industry. I have skills that I want to showcase and ideas that I want to share. I want to go back to RT next year with a little experience under my belt to go along with all of that. But…I also WANT the cover to match the story inside.

After all, we must admit that the main thing we look for when we shop for books is the cover art. If it grabs your attention, you pick it up to read the synopsis on the back. Now we might not buy the book if we don’t like the subject of the story, but in the end if we do buy it, we have to credit the cover for the sale. Because we never would have even picked it up if it weren’t for the eye-catching art on the cover.

I’m a fantastic book with a pretty crappy cover right now. I need better cover art. No one can give me that. I have to do it myself. So I started a diet.

I didn’t go out and just start going to Weight Watchers or pick up that book on the South Beach diet. I didn’t use “eenie meenie, minenie, mo”. I had seen co-workers who started a diet in January and are now 70 pounds lighter. I remember walking past their desks while they were eating their lunches and thinking they were starving themselves and that it was so ridiculous and would never work. But when I came back from RT, that was the diet I wanted to do. I know it works. I have seen the dramatic and amazing results. That’s what I want.

So I made an appointment for my consultation and got started. I officially started the diet last Sunday. I weighed in on Tuesday and had lost 4 pounds already. I weighed in again yesterday and had lost another 4.5 pounds. I weigh 277 pounds now! Just another 107-127 pounds to go and I’ll be happy. I don’t necessarily have a weight as a goal. It’s more of a look, but I know that look is around 170-150. So that’s my goal.

This is the Physician’s Weight Loss diet. I have to say, it’s expensive as all hell. If you really want to know how much, email me or message me privately and I’ll tell you. But for now, it’s enough to just say that the cost of this diet is putting a real strain on my finances. However, I KNOW it works so it’s worth it to me.

What I want is to feel sexy again; to go shopping and actually find clothes in my size; to be comfortable in my own skin; to be visually as interesting and eye-catching as I feel inside; to date and have fun and maybe actually find my Prince Charming (though I know that’s a long-shot); to pursue my chosen profession with vigor; to play soccer with my son and go camping and go to the water park with him and maybe swim competitively a little and to live to be some insanely old age where I get to hold his grand-children and watch the world change. I don’t care if I have to wear diapers. I just want to be there for everything.

Maybe I don’t really know what I want to look like. I know I’ll never be a super-model. But that’s ok because I don’t WANT to be one. Maybe I don’t know what my ideal weight actually is, but I’ll know when I get there. I’ll know, because that’s when my son will hug me, and his arms will actually go all the way around me. When that day comes, I’ll know I’ve arrived at my destination. But I’ve got a long way to go before I get there. It’s going to be one hell of a trip. So I thought maybe I’d take ya’ll with me.

I plan to blog about my diet journey, once a week, with a weigh-in report and a picture. I estimate that I’ll be done within the next 31 weeks. My goal is to let other people see my journey, to maybe inspire others to do the same, or maybe just to give other people the chance to know me better.

So whether your reasons for reading this are just mild curiosity or if you actually have goals of your own and want to know that you’re not the only one striving to reach them, welcome! If you want to talk or have questions, contact me. If you want to share the goals you’re working towards, go ahead. We all have dreams, we should all be striving to make them come true. And sometimes when you’re sitting there thinking about it, it’s scary. But knowing someone else who is putting themselves out there, someone who is also working towards a goal, sometimes it makes it easier to take that first step.

So this week was HARD! The first 4 days were the worst because I was just so hungry. My body is used to eating all the time. I never realized how often I really used to eat. I muched my way through the whole day. Well not anymore. It took me 4 days to get used to not eating constantly. Now, I just have to be aware that when my brain tells me I'm hungry, it's usually wrong. I'm not hungry, I'm bored. BIG difference. Hunger, true hunger, is accompanied by that hollow feeling in your stomach. If that's not there, I'm not hungry. I think this is going to be one of the hardest things for me to fight.

Secondly, with this first week of dieting, I was comsuming the least amount of calories that I will consume in this whole 32 week process. That was hard to deal with for several reasons.

1. I'm used to eating all the time

2. taking in so little food, my brain it telling my body that it can't possibly be full, even when I AM full.

3. I'm tired, cranky and a total space cadet.

This diet is controlled by a doctor-advised staff, so they pay very close attention to you when you tell them things like this. Since I just started the diet, there's no real worry because these things were expected. But...being this tired really is a pain in the ass. The space-cadet part is annoying. I'm not used to being brainless and knowing that I'm acting that way pisses me off. Actually...right now everything pisses me off. I knew that would happen. It's a private demon I will have to overcome. I know what triggers it, I know where it comes from in my head and I know how to deal with it. It will just take time.

When I heard that I had lost a total of 8.5 pounds, I was very proud of myself, as were my family and friends. Everyone is very supportive. But I got that urge to celebrate and had to really work hard to stop myself from going out to get a burger or chinese food to celebrate. It took a lot of reasoning with myself to finally put a stop to that urge. In my head I kept hearing "just one meal off-diet is ok. You can't be expected to eat like this for the rest of your life." That's true to a point. I won't be eating like this for the rest of my life. I dropped to 500 calories per day to shock my system, to make it start using fat for energy. It was a necessary step.

But it's NOT ok to go off-diet to celebrate. It's been ok for the last ten years. I've been fat for the last ten years...trust me, there's a connection. And no I won't eat like this for the rest of my life, but it's absolutely necessary that I do this. The diet won't work if I don't work the diet.

This is only getting harder right now. I expect to be tired and weak for the next 2 weeks or so before my energy level actually starts to improve. I can't stress enough how truly exhausted I am.

I don't want to sugar-coat this journey for anyone. I don't expect this to be a breeze. I expect it to be hell on earth for me. I fully expect to be completely miserable for a while. I weighed 300 pounds not so long ago. My goal is to basically loose HALF OF ME. That's not an easy thing.
For now, I am very proud of myself for getting through the first week.

If you have questions or want more details of the diet itself, please feel free to contact me at luci.calanor@yahoo.com

Kisses, Hugs and Spanx,

Luci