the halfway point

I'm halfway to my goal of losing 140 pounds!

Things I've learned over the last nine months:

-You can only make life-changing changes for yourself.  You can't do them for anyone else.  If you're not ready to make a change for YOU, you won't stick to it and you'll never finish.  You have to make the committment internally before anything externally will change.  I've stopped and started so many exercise and diet programs over the last 15 years, but I was never fully committed to any of them, because I wasn't making the changes for myself.  This time I am and it's making all the difference.

-You need a good support system.  I love each of my friends and family, but honestly guys...sometimes you suck as a support system.  I've made some HUGE changes in my life when it comes to how and what I'm eating.  A lot of the time you're really good at understanding and supporting me, but sometimes it really hurts when I've explained what I'm doing and why, and yet you undermine my efforts by telling me I'm "crazy", or "weird", or offering me things that you know I'm choosing not to eat anymore.  It makes me feel like you don't really care about me, because you're trying to pull me back down when I'm trying so hard to climb this incredibly hard mountain.  I appreciate all the times you are supportive and hope that you'll continue to cheer me on this journey.

-You need to have clear and attainable goals.  Yes, my overall goal is huge: 140 pounds, but I'm not focusing on that.  That's on the horizon.  What I focus on is smaller weekly and monthly goals.  When I started back in January I told myself all I have to do is lose 10 pounds a month and go to the gym three days a week. That's easy!  I can totally do that!  Before you know it, you've lost 40, 50, 60, 70!  pounds and now I'm working out 6 days a week.  So awesome!

When I originally made this lifestyle change, I thought I would be farther along this road by now than I currently am.  if I had stuck with my "lose 10 pounds a month" goal I should be close to 100 pounds lost by now.  However, I'm still pretty freaking proud of myself for being where I am.  It hasn't always been easy.  In fact, sometimes it downright sucked.  But I am starting to notice little things that make me happy and are helping to keep me motivated.  For instance: I don't have to squish myself into a seat at the movie theatre--I actually have some extra room now!  My towel now wraps around me and the edges touch--they don't overlap yet, but they will soon!  My tight clothes are now really loose--time to go shopping again!  I look forward to exercising and actually miss it when I don't do it!  I can actually taste the food I'm eating and I love it--I don't have to doctor everything up with sugar, salt, cheese, or sauces, I like things plain with good spices so I can really enjoy it!

Another goal I made for losing weight and getting in shape, was the trip to Europe I went on this summer.  I knew I had several long plane rides ahead of me and I didn't want to be squished and uncomfortable the whole way over and back.  I also knew we were going to be walking a lot and didn't want to keel over and die of a heart attack the first day.  I was still heavier than I would have liked to be when I went, but nowhere near where I had been, and I know if I hadn't been working out for the 6 months before I left I wouldn't have been able to do everything we did and enjoy the trip.  One of the big accomplishments was I didn't have to struggle to get the seat belt on and, in fact, was able to even cinch it in some!  That hasn't happened for a long time.

A big reason I had for making these changes is the fact that I'm still single.  I'm so tired of being alone.  I'm tired of feeling like I don't matter and I'm not pretty enough, or good enough, for someone to want to get to know me.  I know there are many variables involved with meeting, dating, and finding the right person to marry.  Some of them I can control and some of them I can't.  One of the ones I can control is how I look and trying to be as attractive as possible to the opposite sex.  Being 150 pounds overweight wasn't really helping matters any in that regard.  So I decided to change some of the things I could about myself.  I'm still a  long way to my goal, but I feel better about myself and how I look today than I have in a really long time.  The old adage of "before you love someone else you have to love yourself first" comes to mind a lot.  I'm working on loving myself more.  It's hard after too many years to count of feeling like a failure and big, fat, worthless nobody, but I'm working on changing my inner-speak and recognizing all the good things about myself.  I haven't really been able to look at myself in the mirror for a long time because I didn't like what I saw there.  That is slowly starting to change as I'm striving to accept and be happy with who I am.

There have been times over the last nine months that I've wanted to give up.  There have been weeks where I've gone back to old habits and had to fight to get back on track.  There have been days when I've questioned why I'm doing what I'm doing when everyone around me is enjoying all the things I used to enjoy.  There are hours when I have to constantly battle my inner demons and struggle to hold onto the last threads of my willpower.  But, I'm doing it!  I'm learning to recognize my food issues and work towards breaking those habits and establishing new and better ones.  I'm learning to listen to my body, and not my head, when it comes to when and what I should eat.  I'm learning to be healthy and to enjoy life.

I still have a long ways to go, but I'm keeping the end goal in sight.

The last couple weeks, as I've struggled with some crazy, out of control hormones, and feeling depressed because I wasn't seeing as much movement on the scale as I wanted to and I thought about just giving up and throwing in the towel, this line from one of the Winnie the Pooh movies keeps repeating over and over in my head:

On those hungry days, when all I want to do is eat everything "bad" in sight, I keep reminding myself that I'm stronger than I seem.  I can do it.  I can say no to the sugar, carbs, chips, whatever it is.  I'm better than that.  I deserve better than that.  And pretty soon I'm going to reach my goal and look back and marvel at what I've accomplished!  I can't wait for that day.

pomegranate cafe

Aunt Jeri is in town this weekend to work with Mom on the family history book they are putting together.  Dad and the girls went camping for the ward camp-out, so we (the three of us: Mom, Jeri, and I) decided to go out for dinner.  I found a vegan restaurant in Phoenix that I wanted to try out.  It was about a half hour away, but SO worth it!  The food was amazing!  Everything they make (desserts and bread included!) is vegan, but they offer people the option on some of their dishes to make them vegetarian by using eggs and dairy cheese.

There were so many yummy things on the menu, I had a hard time deciding on just one.  I wanted to try everything!  Jeri bought a couple of the desserts that they had and we're going to try them out tomorrow.

My dinner: Blue Corn Taco Salad.

Mom's dinner: The Lumberjack (she had eggs and dairy cheese instead of tofu and vegan cheese)

Jeri got the soup of the day: Mushroom Quinoa.

They had a cool mural made by some little guys.  It's made all out of plastic drink lids.

Will definitely be going back again!

i have knees!

So I was sitting in the bathroom today at work and I noticed something that made me smile and made me ridiculously excited:  I have knees!!

I know what you're wondering.  Haven't I always had knees?  How can I walk around with them?

Okay.  Yes.  I've always had knees.   BUT NOW!  I can actually see some definition!  I have knees and not just fat blobs!

Can you see it??  The definition??  (It's easier to see in the left one.)  I have knees!

Also, I have elbows! (please ignore the rest of my fat arms...)

And look at these size tags in the pair of pants and shirt I bought at Goodwill last week:

The scale is still being stubborn and not moving as much as I want it to, but there are other things changing in my body.  I'm trying to change my focus from the numbers to these other indicators that I'm doing good things and I'm on the right track.

apples to apples

We played Apples to Apples on Monday for FHE.  Except we played it a little different.  Instead of having a hand of 7 red cards, we split the deck up between us and kept our pile face down in front of us.  We each took turns being the "judge" and turning over a green card, then for each round we just flipped over the top red card without knowing what it was going to be.  It was kind of funny.

At the end I always look at my green cards to see "what I am."  Here's what I got...


Bogus
Heartless
Smelly
Misunderstood
Obnoxious
Dead
Odd
Woebegone
Hopeless
Rough
Funky
Lazy
Ridiculous

Appetizing
Peaceful
Dainty
Flirtatious
Dreamy

I'm either a zombie.  Or a delicious dessert.

california dreamin'

What did you do for Labor Day?

I went to California and Disneyland!

We left Friday after work.  On the way out of town we saw this little piece of awesomeness:

Then it got even better when THIS drove up in between us and the Ghostbusters:

Definitely don't see THAT everyday!

While we drove we listened to this:

It was a pretty good book.  I watched the movie a few years ago but didn't remember very much about it.  It was fun to listen to the audiobook and remember the story again.

While we drove we could see a lot of dark clouds and rain around us (but none fell on us), and Julia fell asleep:

We stayed here:

We stayed in a suite with a king bed, a hide-a-bed, and a roll-away.  When we walked in, the first thing we saw was THE BIGGEST COCKROACH EVER CRAWLING UP THE WALL!!  Us girls all freaked out.  Luckily Dad was there.  He trapped it in a cup and flushed it.  *shudders*  Luckily that was the only bug we saw while we were there.

On Saturday Faith, Julia and I went here:

I LOVE DISNEYLAND!  I don't know why I love it so much, but it really is "The Happiest Place on Earth".    We spent all day (12 hours) at both parks.  Faith had never been to California Adventure, so it was fun to introduce her to the rides there.  PLUS!  We got to go to the new Cars Land!  So cool!!

 Faith got a Birthday button (and EVERYONE told her "Happy Birthday" all weekend)

Faith found Sophia! (her current favorite princess)

When I knew we were going to be going to Disneyland I made reservations for us at The Blue Bayou (the restaurant that's part of The Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  The girls hadn't ever been there before, and since we were celebrating Faith's birthday I thought it would be fun.  And it was!

 Monte Cristos!

And since they knew it was her birthday, Faith got a free dessert!

Three words:  DOLE WHIP FLOATS!

One of the goals we had for this weekend was to find Peter Pan for Julia.  Because she loves him.  We looked all day while we were walking around.  It seemed like we saw everybody BUT Peter.  But then!  We were in line for Alice in Wonderland and the Soundsational Parade was going on.  Suddenly!  There he was!  And Julia flipped out.  For a brief moment I literally thought she was going to launch herself over everyone in line in order to go tackle him.  But, she held herself back.

Here's our before and after pictures from Saturday:

On Sunday we all slept in, then took a drive around town.  First we went to try to find the Hollywood sign.  This is as close as we could find to get:

Then we went to the LA Temple.  The grounds were so pretty!  Gorgeous roses and gardens:

We made a quick stop in to the Visitor's Center to use the bathrooms.  On the walls they had some awesome art from some Primary aged kids from one of the Spanish Stakes in the area.  Here are a couple of the ones we liked best:

Next, we decided to go find the La Brea Tar Pits.  So cool!!  There's a museum there and they have some models of some mammoths showing how animals got caught in the pits.

 There's tar still bubbling up through even the concrete walls...and the ground outside of the fenced off area...

 A HUGE nasty spider.  There's nothing in the picture to compare it to, but trust me.  It was MASSIVE.

 There was some different scultures (sculturies?) in the park.  We had to take a picture.

While we were driving we saw this:

Yes.  That's a red car with a pink fuzzy mustache.

I just.  I don't know.

we wanted to go to Santa Monica, because none of us have gone there.  But there were SO MANY people, so we drove along the coast for a while until we finally stopped in Venice.  We walked out onto the pier (which was gross).  However, there was a BIG pelican just hanging out at the end of the pier.  Kind of cool.  And one of the fishermen caught a couple little rays that he then threw back into the water.

Monday it was back to Disneyland:

We left the park about 7pm Monday night and drove home (well, actually Dad drove home while the rest of us passed out).  It was a fun weekend, but SO HOT!!  Seriously.  The humidity was CRAZY.  I've never sweat so much in my life.  Except when I was in Rome.  It was ridiculous.  I have a couple blisters on my feet and I am EXHAUSTED, but it was so worth it.  Such a great weekend!