FIVE FREAKIN' PERCENT!! (and other stuff)

As of tonight, the end of my sixth week of Weight Watchers, I have officially reached (and surpassed) my 5% goal. Oh yes, my lovelies, that's right. FIVE freakin' percent of my body weight. Which, because I have more lard in my ass than all of Europe used to spread on their bread during WW2, is rather a lot.

When I started this journey six weeks ago, I said I wasn't going to divulge my weight. I feared the mere act of reading the number might send you into convulsions from the shock because, trust me, it was (and still is) a shockingly high number. My mother just about fell off my couch when I told her what it was.

However, in order to fully and properly gloat about my current acheivement, I must break my vow of silence. So, please brace yourself. Also, bear in mind that any mocking, cruel words, or shaming will not be tolerated and I will be forced to come and sit on you. Which will be fun for me but might require the hiring of a chiropractor for you. You have been warned.

Now that that's out of the way...

6 weeks ago, I walked into my first NZ Weight Watchers meeting with a tummy full of huge ass butterflies (or maybe moths, I haven't quite figured that out yet) and waddled up to the scale. I just about cried when the woman wrote down my weight. And yet, it wasn't as high as I was expecting.

158.6 kgs

When I looked at it at first, I thought "Hey, that'd be awesome if it was pounds!!" and then held back the tears again as I converted it into pounds and realised how incredibly heavy I'd gotten. Yet it wasn't as heavy as I had BEEN! Have you done the math yet? That's 348.92 lbs.

(pause for dramatic effect and picking up of jaws off dust covered floor)

I'll admit I was sorely tempted to just say "Screw this" and walk away. Right then. Right there.

But I didn't. I've kept going. And now, after 6 weeks I have the pleasure of being able to jump up and down (carefully for fear of black eyes and sprained boobage) with glee for having reached (and surpassed. Don't forget surpassed!!) my 5% goal.

I lost 600 grams (1.32 lbs) this week.

My total weight loss for six weeks? 8.1 kgs !!!! (17.82 lbs)

WOOOOOOOO!!!!!

*~*~*~*

On a slightly less exciting note, I set a couple of goals tonight at my meeting.

1) A bunch of us have decided to sign up for the local half marathon. Feel free to die on my behalf, I'll wait. Done? Ok. Yeah. I agreed to do it, but only if I could walk the whole way. Which, YAY, is totally possible. I have until May 8th to be able to walk 21kms without (a) dying and (b) well, that was about it.

2) A few of us are also going to do the triathlon at the end of 2010. This is a far more achievable goal as far as I'm concerned. I'll likely also end up walking part of that too. I'm never going to be much of a runner.

Goals. Important, yes? Potentially death inducing? Yup. But I'm still gonna do it.

*~*~*~*

Also? I had the pleasure of meeting the lovely (and gorgeous!) Rachel from my Weight Watchers forums tonight. She's visiting from Christchurch and is very sweet, very funny and very leggy. Rachel, it was a pleasure to meet you and I'm very sorry I had to run out of there....family duties. If you're ever back here again, maybe we can grab coffee.

Oops sorry!!

I totally forgot to come and post a quick update. Between work and Christmas, this kind of got lost in the fray.

So. Last week I only lost 400 grams (0.8 ish pounds). I was kind of bummed out but I was horrible at keeping an eye on my food that week and barely exercised.

THIS week, I lost 1.8kgs (3.96 pounds)!!! I've been walking and some other stuff and it paid off.

So over five weeks, I've lost a grand total of 7.5 kgs (16.5 pounds). Some of my clothes are fitting better, I feel better and I'm sloooooowly beginning to look better.

We'll see how I do at weigh in on the 30th after Christmas dinner and all.

Merry Christmas y'all!!

Here's to never throwing up!

See what Snoopy is doing there? That cute little "happy dance"? That's me tonight!! Oh yeah it is!

I lost.....

**drum roll please**

2.1 kgs

at the meeting tonight! (That's 4.62 lbs).

That brings my total weightloss for the last THREE weeks to 5.1kgs (11.22 lbs).

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got a bookmark for hitting my 5kg mark. Kind of a cool little reward thing.

I can't even begin to describe the feeling when I see the numbers going DOWN. It's kind of odd actually.

On the one hand, I'm overjoyed to see the weight coming off. I know that if I keep working hard, if I keep doing what I am meant to do and don't cheat, then I will keep losing weight and inches. But on the other hand, it's very emotional as I reflect back on the reasons WHY I am where I am. Obviously I try not to dwell on the latter too much but I definitely need to go there occasionally. If I don't address the reasons why I got fat in the first place, then it's just going to happen all over again and I definitely don't want that.

I realised over the last couple weeks that as I walk into the meeting on Wednesday nights, I'm hesitant. I want to be there but I don't want to be there. Does that make any sense? I want to track how I'm doing, I WANT to see my weight go down but I really don't want to see what is at that very moment in time...because I know it's too high, I know it's not where I want it to be.

So I stand in line and wait my turn. I fidget and talk to people around me, I read the information that I've been given for this week and I wait. Sometimes I make it to the front of the line in 2 minutes, sometimes it takes 15. Either way, I always end up staring at those scales and I always consider walking away. After all, my husband and children love me the way I am. I could just walk away and they wouldn't say a word.

But I stay.

I stay and stare at the scale and try to ignore the butterflies in my tummy that have been getting worse as I worked my way down the line. I stare at the scales and then I look at the skinny woman sitting behind the desk and I have to try to remind myself that it wasn't that long ago that she was standing on this side and hoping that she wasn't being judged. I stare at them and pray for a loss. Any loss.

And then I step on.

At that moment, right when I step on, I feel like I'm going to throw up. Every single week. Seriously. And yet, so far (knock wood...lots of it), I've been successful. But I know that these same things will happen each week. I just hope that I never actually throw up. Because, y'know, embarrassing!

Sun makes everything better

Good Morning Peeples! It's a lovely Tuesday morning here (announcing this might seem strange to many of my readers who are in Australia and are now all "um..DUH...it's Tuesday here too", but I thought I'd make it easy for my North American buds cos sometimes it's confusing) and I'm feeling great!

I didn't manage a walk yesterday because I had a sick wee Boy Spawn home from school and, well, I was just being lazy. To be honest I should have gone for a walk once Hotty Hubby was home but I didn't. I could make excuses about having to make dinner or tidy up or whatever, but they'd be total crap. In fact, in the interests of full transparency, Hotty Hubby got home at 4:30 and we didn't get dinner til 7:00. It only took me 20 minutes to make dinner. Think maybe I could have fit a walk in there? Yeah. I just couldn't. be. ASSED!

However, I did drink a crap load of water, did well with my points and generally enjoyed the sunshine-y day. I even made macaroni and cheese for dinner. From scratch. And not a K or a D in sight (ok...for my Aussie buddies, the K&D are from Kraft Dinner...makers of awesome mac 'n' cheese back in the homeland)! I was so impressed with myself. 5 points per serve, the kids liked it and hubby said I was welcome to make it again. YAY!

I have weigh in tomorrow evening and I'm a teensy bit nervous but I think I'll be ok. Fingers crossed! I shall be blobbish no more! Instead of Shamu, I shall be ..um...I can't think of a thin animal with a human-like name...but that's what I'll be.

Check back tomorrow to see how I did!

Thoughts

As I come to the end of what has been a rather great weekend here in town, I've been pondering a few things.

See, I've been watching Biggest Loser Australia on the mornings that I haven't been working and it's inspiring and frustrating all at the same time.

Confused?

Inspiring ~ these people have left their families and friends behind to go off to what is, for all intents and purposes, a "fat camp" and work their asses off (quite literally) in the hopes of a) becoming healthier, lighter, fitter and possibly better looking and b) win a crap load of money. I watch them work out for hours a day and they're doing really well. And in the process, they're facing a lot of truths about themselves.

Frustrating ~ they are working themselves to the bone at this camp and yeah, they're losing weight, but are they REALLY learning anything? They're fed healthy food, they're told how to work out and it just keeps falling off. Because they have. nothing. else. to. do! If I had hours to work out every day and a personal chef to feed me nothing but a 1200 calorie, healthy diet...I'd be thin too!

What I like the best about this show though, is that the people really have to face some honest truths about themselves, and I think that's the hardest part of the whole weightloss journey - facing the reasons WHY we are where we are and what the repercussions of that are. Just the other day, this guy Sharif said that he was embarrassed to walk down the street with his wife. Not embarrassed for himself (although I'm sure that was part of it)...but embarrassed for HER because she was a tiny little thing and he was...well....he was fat. Very.

I get it. I totally get it. I've felt the same way about going places with my hubby a lot of the time. Next week we have his staff Christmas party to go to, with a bunch of people I've never met, and I'm terrified. I'm worried that they'll judge him because of me. I hate that other people, specifically my family, might be judged, laughed at or talked about because I am overweight. It's hard when he looks like this:

And I look like..well....this:

You get my point. Right?

So what else have I been pondering and doing?

~*~ I really need to give up the negative inner conversations with myself. They aren't helping and in fact, I think they're really holding me back in some areas. Just the other night at my Weight Watchers meeting, I told my leader that written on my bathroom mirror was "You would speak to others the way you speak to yourself". And I wouldn't. So why can't I follow that?

~*~ On Friday afternoon I walked to the school to pick up the kids instead of driving. It's 1.6kms each way, so a round trip is 3.2kms (2 miles). My mother's been saying I should walk on the nice days instead of driving, but I just kept brushing it off as yet another "Mom-ism". This time it occurred to me on my own ...so I did it. And I felt GREAT afterwards.

~*~ I've been really struggling with finding point friendly recipes for dinner time. I do fine at breakfast and lunch and even with snacking during the day...but come dinner time, I'm lost. So I make dinner for Hubby and the kids and then I have a sandwich and a salad. BO-RING! Anyone have any inspiration for me? Something I could make in the slow cooker would be great!

~*~ It has come to my attention that I am not nearly as sweet as I had originally thought. Those who know me are NOT shocked by this revelation, but it rocked me to the core. See, I went for a walk tonight...In. The. Rain. I walked for 3.5kms (2.2 miles) and I walked hard. Felt awesome when I got home too!

~*~ Black Eyed Peas and Paramore are fantastic to walk to.

~*~ People in this town are supportive. On my walk, I had a woman give me the thumbs up as she drove by, and a GUY honk and yell out his window "Good job girl!!" as he watched me walk. It was great and gave me the oomph to keep going all the way home.


That's it for today lovelies.

Another week gone...

This is just going to be a short post. An itemized list, if you will.

1. I didn't get the job. I can't say whether it was because they didn't want to hire a fat chick or if my qualifications were just not up to par. Either way, I am not employed in my field. Yet. I'm still looking.
2. I didn't have the best week, as far as food is concerned, but I didn't have a bad week either. I stayed in my points range every day, but probably could have made some better choices. I bought some WW bars and stuff last week and I was eating them for snacks. Chocolate-y and yummy. And yet, I'm WELL aware that I should have been eating fruit instead. So I will change that this week. More salad and fruits...less other stuff.
3. My whole "I can't go cold turkey with the soda/pop so I'm going to drink an entire bottle of water for every glass of Coke Zero that I drink" thing was crap. A day and a half in, and I was drinking Coke Zero and no water. So that will change this week too. Water, water, water, water.
4. I didn't exercise. At all. Pathetic really. I didn't even bother to go for a walk. Now, in my defense it has been pretty much pouring rain for the last 3 days and I can't very well walk in the rain can I? I'd melt! All that sugary sweetness that I possess would just melt away! Ok, ok I know....it's all crap. And I will be going for at LEAST a 30 minute walk every day this week. AND checking out the sports centre.
5. All that stuff aside though? I did lose 800 grams this week. (That's 1.74 pounds for my North American friends.) I'm happy with that. A loss is a loss right?

That's it for today darlings. Have a good week!!