25 Days of Christmas Part 1

I've decided that one of the new traditions I want to start with the kids is to do something holiday related for the 24 days before Christmas.  Today was Day 1:

                                                                   Advent Calendars

Cupcake was so excited about these that she kept asking when we were doing them from the time she got home from school until she mysteriously disappeared to 185 lbs. house for dinner and when she came home I forgot all about it.  

Plus she ended up going to sleep early (she's been going to bed around 8pm and getting up at 6am ever since she got back from her cruise to Italy with 185 lbs. and his girlfriend).  While I can't complain about her new found sleep pattern (she was so NOT a morning person before, there were quite a few arguments about getting up for school in the past), it means that it sometimes throws me off.

So Cupcake and Snickerdoodle will be opening their box tomorrow morning, but Caramel did hers (she couldn't do it tomorrow anyway since she leaves for school at 6:40am and the other two--or at least Snickerdoodle right now--aren't awake at that point).

Where Have You Been?

Okay, that should be--where have I been?  

It's been a crazy month with a lot of ups and downs, but I'm optimistic that things are going to start stabilizing soon.  Only time will tell.

On the weight loss front, I'm at a stand still.  Mostly that's because I've fallen off the wagon.  I've been horrible about watching what I eat (thankfully I haven't gone full throttle like I've done in the past where I eat everything and anything in sight after failing at the diet) and haven't been doing great at the exercise either.  Thankfully I haven't gained any of the weight back, and I'm definitely keeping an eye on the weight to make sure that doesn't happen.  The past couple of days I've had a bit of depression, but I'm hoping that tomorrow will be better and I can get back on track with the eating AND exercising (I did walk 6 miles yesterday).

So to recap as of December 1 I weigh 160 lbs.  No pictures this month either because obviously nothing changed.

Happy Halloween!

1st picture taken at 184 lbs.  2nd picture taken at 160 lbs.

22 lbs. less!

Another whirlwind two weeks and I amazingly met my 2nd mini goal--to be 160 by Halloween!!!!  I'm barely there, 160.8 lbs. this afternoon but close enough for me, especially given that I've been batting the same 2-3 lbs. up and down for the past week or so.  It's been a great weight loss month.

On the subject of the rollercoaster things are going okay.  I've taken myself out of the situation for the most part and that helps immensely.  I am trying my best to think positively (no matter how much I want to think otherwise and no matter how much it hurts me that he does some of what he does) and to co-parent with him the best that I can while also not compromising myself. 

The good news is that I've had something else to poor all my focus into lately.  For my birthday in January, I'm taking the kids to Walt Disney World.  We're all very excited and I've spent the past couple weeks focusing on where we're going to stay, what we're going to eat, what we're going to do...  It has really helped keep my mind positive even when things aren't going the way I want them to.  I can't wait until January and on the weight front, my next goal is to be 145 lbs. or less by the time we leave (that's what I weighed when I got pregnant with Snickerdoodle).  

Mini Goal #1

Whew, it's been an interesting 2 weeks.  On the diet front I met my first mini goal early.  My first goal was to make it to 165 lbs. (which sadly enough is what I weighed 9 months pregnant with Caramel) by Halloween.  As of today I'm 163 lbs.!!!  So now I've changed my goal to be 160 lbs. by Halloween instead (35 lbs. total loss).

On the rollercoaster front, things got a lot worse before they got a lot better.  To sum it all up, 185 lbs. decided to have HER spend the night on his birthday weekend (after he had been giving me the impression for the previous 2 weeks that we were working on our relationship).  I had a mini breakdown because of it.  We've moved on though.  We're no longer working on our relationship and I'm trying hard to move on which so far is working pretty well.  It helps that the more than I find out about HER the more I've lost some of my jealousy of HER (which I'll admit was making things worse for me, my self esteem was horrible and it was made worse by thinking he'd met the perfect woman--but I found that she's definitely not the perfect woman and I'd rather she not even have any influence over my kids because we obviously have different values).  

I'm looking forward pretty optimistically which has been helped by my being almost half way to goal and I can only think it can't possibly get worse than it has been the past couple months.

Plateau and a Look Back

It's been a tough couple weeks weight wise.  I've been bouncing the same 2 - 3lbs. up and down and have been having a hard time sticking with my eating plan as well.  Thankfully I was able to climb back on yesterday and have been doing pretty good today (although I did eat 1 BBQ potato chip a few minutes ago and it was so good!).  

Tuesday I took Caramel to Disneyland for the day.  We had so much fun and boy we walked a ton. Of course I made up for all the walking by eating clam chowder in a bread bowl for lunch at the pier in California Adventure and then having the yummy buffet at Storyteller's Cafe.  Amazingly I walked 29,748 steps; 5,207 of those were aerobic; burned 1048 calories, and 12.2 miles that day!!  I plan on taking Cupcake next Tuesday (Caramel had Monday and Tuesday off, so I felt a little guilty that Cupcake who LOVES Disney didn't get to go so I'm planning on taking her out of school early--Snickerdoodle isn't that big of a Disney fan).

I was looking at my Spark People account today and found out some interesting things.  I signed on to sparkpeople in January of this year, but it wasn't the right time for me.  185 lbs. and I were having problems (actually at that point we were pretty much indifferent to each other--we barely acknowledged the other person) and not long after is when he started going clubbing and signed onto the various online dating sites.  So I did the initial set up and then didn't sign on again.  So this morning I signed on to enter in some nutritional information (I was trying to find out how many calories the soup I'm making for dinner would be) and saw this:

LAST ENTRY

Weigh yourself:  193 lbs.  1/17/08  (currently 170 lbs.)

Measure your waist:  43.5"  1/17/08  (currently 39")

Measure your hips:  50"  1/17/08  (currently 44")

Measure your neck:  15"  1/17/08 (currently 13.5")

So since January I've lost 23 lbs. (of course all of those happened in the past 2.5 months), lost over 4 inches from my waist, 6 inches from my hips, and over 1 inch from my neck.  

Monthly Update

The monthly before and after pictures.  First pictures were taken at 182 lbs. on August 20, second pictures were taken at 169 lbs. on September 24--13 pounds down!!!  The pictures don't show much difference except for maybe in my face.  You almost may notice that I got my hair cut shorter and interestingly in the first pictures I was wearing makeup whereas the second set was after a long day helping at school so no makeup.  What you can't tell is that I'm wearing size 18 jeans in picture 1 and size 14 jeans in picture 2.  

What I should do is take pictures in tighter clothes so it's more obvious, but my mom isn't here often enough and I can't seem to take decent pictures of myself.  It'd be great if I lost another 13 lbs. this month because then I'll officially be less than I've been since before Cupcake was born (I lost a bunch of weight--and then put a bunch of it back on--before I got pregnant with her so I estimate that I was about 155lbs. when I got pregnant).  However, I'm realistic, I'll be happy if I make it to that weight by Thanksgiving!  My October goal is to be 165lbs. by Halloween which seems very realistic.

25 Pounds

Today's weigh in showed 169 lbs. or 26 lbs. lost so far.  I should be jumping for joy--especially since my most recent purchased size 18P are too big and the size 14's fit perfectly.  Instead I spent most of the day depressed.   What's wrong with me?  Am I ever going to feel good enough?