The Derailed Train

Isn't it ironic...My last post was about making a u-turn and getting back on track and it was filled with so much optimism and promises and now here I am, almost two months later, completely derailed, with perhaps just one wheel on the track.

Here's the truth: I've been avoiding this blog. I could tell you of all the things I'm attempting to do(buying a home being chief amongst them) but the truth is that this blog has always in a way held me accountable to myself and because I have for the past couple of months, failed miserably at the weight loss game, I have played the "see no evil" game with myself. I've been like my little nephew who when he doesn't want to be social will close his eyes and pretend not to see you. I have done the same with my weight. The problem is that for the first time in a long time, this year, I made progress and so the part of me that has changed is in deep battle with the part of me that hasn't, so there is this nagging voice that's telling me to stop the bullshit and get back on track.

Friends, I haven't run in forever, I have eaten every fried, greasy thing I can find. I have stuffed my face with cookies, cakes and candy and I've done it with the little devil on my shoulder gagging the little angel on my other shoulder and promising to kill her and her family if she tries to talk me out of my food debauchery.

I.FEEL.LIKE.CRAP! For the past two weeks, my digestive system has been acting up. I feel bloated, gassy, and lethargic. My muscles feel like they are seizing up and I'm feeling aches and pains that worry me.

I can't blame the fact that my Weight Watchers meetings at work are on hiatus until the first of the year. There are still meetings in my neighborhood and if it meant enough to me, I'd go. I can't blame stress because there will always, of and on, be life issues that bring a certain degree of stress and will I always eat my stress away? If so, I'll always be in battle with my weight.

The lowest weight I saw on the scale was 225lbs back in September. It was an anomaly and didn't last long. The last time I weighed, I was 231lbs. I can feel every bit of those extra pounds. I can't do this anymore.

I'm not going to make any grand declarations this time around. I'm just going to do what I started off doing, making the changes I need to make and documenting the journey. I have learned that even this; even failure, is part of the journey. This is who I am: a person struggling to choose good over not so good, healthy over not so healthy, exercise over laying on my couch, and if I can do this even 80% of the time, I am already winning the battle.

Happy Trails, mon amis!

Lara

Making a U-Turn.

Here's the truth: I stopped writing for a while because I lost my motivation. I was tired, week after week, of gaining and losing the same 1 - 2 lbs and only half-heartedly following the WW plan, while others in my WW group had lost in 6 weeks more than I've lost since I started this plan over 5 months ago! BUT, thanks to the prodding of good friend(thanks, Syl and Tangy) and a sudden drop in weight(more on this later), I'm BACK! I must say, I've missed writing, missed this blog, missed focusing on me.

What have I been up to? Well, I was the maid-of-honor at a friend's wedding. For weeks before that, I was doing a bunch of running around trying to get ready for that, as well as taking on my huge decluttering project, while having a house guest and starting a new job. I feel like I've been constantly on the move for a month, which is a huge change of pace for me. The wedding was great, and somehow, while in Maryland, even without working out, or tracking, I lost 4 lbs over the weekend?! I attribute it to the fact that we got very little sleep, ate pretty sporadically and when we did eat, it was healthy, Nigerian food. I came back and got a cold/flu which also adversely affected my appetite. So without much deliberate effort, I've dropped to the lowest weight I've seen on the scale in a while which is 225.5lbs. Needless to say, I'm thrilled.

Now I haven't worked out in quite a while. The last bit of exercise I did was Zumba two weeks ago. I miss running. I was to get up and go kickboxing this morning but my body is still so tired for being up late coughing my lungs up, that I turned over and went back to sleep.

So, now that my life is getting back to normal, it's time to regroup for the hundreth time this year. I'm calling on the wisdom of Dr. Oz in his book: You on a Diet. In it, he mentions making a dietary/fitness u-turn when you get off track. Instead of completely giving up and regressing, acknowledge you've lost your way and then turn around and go back in the right direction. Even though I'm still losing weight, I'm not happy with the fact that I've gotten off the fitness track and my diet is still in dire need of work. I just don't FEEL good.

Also, even though I'm glad I lost weight before the wedding, the photos still show me how far I have to go. I still battle with feeling smaller than I look and it's disheartening having to contend with your true size in pictures, but it's all a part of the journey and as Maya Angelou says: "Won't take nothing for my journey now."

Alright friends, here we go again!

The struggle continues.

Lara

My Favorite "Health" Foods

I'm not a big fan of the words "health food" because I feel that ideally, most everything we eat should be healthy. Unfortunately, as a culture, we have become so far removed from what real food should taste like that anything that's really good for us is thought of as boring, bland, etc...

I tend to straddle the fence between eating pure, unadulterated food and pure, junky, crappy food. But one thing is for sure, when I eat a bunch of junk, my body starts craving something healthy and wholesome. It is usually at that point that I make something with one or more of these healthy ingredients.

1) Short-grain brown rice: I had tried long-grain brown rice several times before first trying the shorter variety. I never could get into the longer-grain kind because they always came out mushy and gross. When I first tried the short-grain rice at a Chinese restaurant, I instantly fell in love with its chewy texture and almost nutty taste. I will even go as far as to say I prefer it to white rice. If you haven't tried it, give it a whirl.

2) Spinach: Before I started drinking green smoothies, the only time I really ate spinach was when I made a Nigerian dish with it or ate spinach salad. Now it's appearing more and more in my consciousness. You can't go wrong with this powerful vegetable

3) Kashi Go Lean Crunch + Vanilla Silk Soy: I list these two together because this is my breakfast staple. The combo is so perfect together. Kashi's cereals are filling and healthy but I tend to have to soak the Crunch for a little while as the grains are quite hard and might be detrimental to my dental work.

4) Plain Greek Yogurt: I love the thickness and creaminess of this yogurt. It's also slightly tart so I love the fact that I can control the level of sweetness by adding a touch of honey. I usually will cut up some fresh fruits like apples, peaches, or mangoes in the yogurt with a few walnuts or almonds. YUM!

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my favorites. What are your favorite health foods? Do share, I always needs suggestions!

Happy Eating!

Lara.

Zumba!!!!!!!!!!!

So, as I mentioned in the previous post, this past week, I decided to branch out of my gym and kickboxing rut and try something new. For the past couple of years, every other month, I would go to the website of a local Dallas dance/pilates studio (www.movestudio.com) and browse through their list of classes thinking I would some day join. Well, last week, I did that and noticed that they had a one week trial for unlimted classes at $15 for the whole week and icing on cake, they also had a Zumba class. Now I'd tried Zumba once before but did not particularly enjoy it. It was held in a small martial arts gym with navy blue carpets in the exercise room. Seriously, who exercises on carpet? It lacked a lot of energy and so while I got a good workout, I wasn't particularly interested in going back.

Well, when I saw this studio had a Zumba class, I decided to check it out. If you haven't already heard about Zumba, it's a cardio dance routine that combines latin, reggae, hip hop, etc dance with fun, funky music. Check out this link for an example:



SO, last Sunday, I signed up for the one week trial and went to the studio. It was a calm, quiet, really zen studio which I immediately felt comfy in. This particular zumba class was held by a first time teacher. She said it would be a non-verbal class so we basically had to follow her cues which took some getting used to, particularly since she was sometimes off beat and my body was trying to do its own thing, but overall, I got an awesome workout and left sweaty and sore.

On Tuesday, I tried another Zumba class held by another instructor with a coworker I convinced to join me. That was mega fun. The music was great, she threw in some country line dancing, reggae, jive, etc, and her movements were spot on with the music so I will definately keep going back to that. Then on Thursday, I went for what was described as a Cardio Latin dance class which was taught by this big, burly man who immediately told us the dancing was modeled after Arthur Murray's dance classes. Needless to say, I spent the whole hour spinning around in circles trying to figure out what the hell he was doing. My coworker and I decided we didn't care too much for that one. It was very ballroomish and wasn't what I was looking for. Silver lining: I still got a good workout(and a few dizzy spells) just from trying to keep up.

Afterwards, on our way out, we noticed a hip-hop class ending. It looked like a lot of fun and my friend and I decided to stay for the next class which was hip-hop level 2. Whew! We were already sore and tired but decided to milk our one week trial. That class was HARD! It was highly choreographed and the tiny a$$ instructor wanted us doing floor work. At one point, I had the class cracking up because I told her I had to get off the floor piece by piece, not bouncing off it like she was doing. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one who couldn't get on and off the floor like a limber teenage street dancer so she modified the moves. By the time we left that night at 9:30pm, all either of us wanted to do was go home, shower and sleep!!!!

So, I've decided to stick to just the Zumba. I'll go twice a week on Tuesdays and Sundays. The classes are incredibly pricey but they are worth the extra workout and fun. After all, if I was to hire a personal trainer, I'd be paying at least $50/session and with this, I'm paying about $11/class so... I'm frugal(read: cheap) but I will just have to blindly go into this one and keep telling myself that the end justifies the means.

Anyone else try Zumba? What are your thoughts?

Till next time,
XoXo

Lara

Back after a small hiatus...

Behold! Your prodigal blogger is back! I didn't go anywhere, my mind has just been in a million different places and trying to chill out enough to gather my thoughts has proven quite difficult. But, the good thing about having a blog is that it calls and nags at you till you finally sit down and put down all those posts you've had swimming in your head. SO, here I am.

The past two weeks have been interesting, weight wise. My weight has fluctuated around 230 lbs. I have been gaining and losing the same couple of pounds every other day. I've seen 228, 229 and 230, and 232 on the scale. My WW weight last week was 230lbs. The week before, it was 232 lbs. Yesterday, I went over to a friends and had a couple of drinks, some chips, gumbo and crab legs. The food was great but far saltier than I've grown accustomed to. This morning, the scale registered at 232 lbs. I know a lot of it is water retention so I'm attemping to combat that today before my weigh-in tomorrow. I also had sushi on Friday at a sushi buffet(all you can eat) so needless to say, I've been doing tons of salt lately.

I've also been in and out of tracking. I've gotten better about it but by Wednesday usually, I start slipping. Personally, for me, I know I have only one of two choices when it comes to whether or not I'll lose weight: I either have to track religiously or cook my own food. If I eat out and don't track, I'm in deep doodoo. So which is it going to be, Lara?

Anyway, I've also tried a few new things exercise wise. I'll write more about them in my next post.

Ciao!

Lara

Exhaling...

The heavens must have heard my pleas...Today, I woke up feeling lighter so I decided to take a chance and weigh on my home scale. It registered 228.5lbs, 0.9 lbs less than it did yesterday. I don't know if it's just "noise" but I will take it because I don't think I've seen that number years!

I have no explanation for it. I haven't worked out since Saturday due to my wonky back but I was deliberate with my food yesterday. Even though I ate out, I pre-planned.

Here is a quick summary:

Breakfast - Oatmeal with a peach, a few walnuts and brown sugar
Lunch - Taco Bueno, two chicken soft tacos and 1/2 a cup of mexican rice. I ate one taco for lunch and the rice and the other a few hours later when I started feeling hungrier.
Dinner - Chick-Fil-A, Chargrilled Chicken and Fruit salad(I love this salad) with spicy dressing.

Now, yesterday, I got hungrier quicker than I have in the past month or so, so I think that's a clear indication that my portions have been out of control again which will explain the ups and downs in my weight loss. BTW, I went on this website:
Dottie's Weight Loss Zone to find out the points values of the fast foods I was going to eat. It made the decision making process so much easier because had I not, I would have consumed a lot more.

So here's to the powerful magic of TRACKING and CONSCIOUSNESS where food is concerned. My battle now lies in keeping this momentum and not seeing the number go up, and also working to bring it down even further.

Ciao ya'll.

Lara

And now, a word on MOTIVATION

Since I'm needing a boost in motivation, I'm trying to read and watch as much as I can about weight loss to help me regain the mental fortitude to keep the faith and stay in the battle.

Over the weekend, I was able to catch a rerun of a show called XXX-Weight loss, or something like that. Sounds sketchy but it was basically featuring people who'd lost about 100 lbs or more naturally. The three X's come from the fact that they used unconventional methods to lose the weight - one man biked across the country, another one lady ran marathons, another took up belly dancing and switched to organic foods. For all of them, they made radical changes in order to fight the weight.

Here is another great success story I ran into over the weekend. I watched her YouTube videos over the weekend and while she wasn't saying anything I didn't already know, just seeing her results really started to get my mind moving again in the direction of radical change.

Check her out:


This begs the question: "What radical change am I willing to make to get this weight off?"

XoXo

Lara