the great oz has spoken!

So, I'm going with the votes of all two of you who cast one: The Slim Fast plan. I start tomorrow. Blech. The last two days I've been living it up in anticipation for this crap. I've drunk the equivalent of two bottles of red wine and a bottle of champagne, eaten very bad mexican food, cheeseburgers, a cobb salad drenched in ranch and a brownie batter concrete from Culver's.
I DID go to Walmart to get some shake powder and some fruit for my "two shakes, three snacks and a sensible dinner." The "sensible dinner" part I can get at work five days a week and making something at home or having a frozen dinner two days a week shouldn't be too much of a challenge.
The hardest part for me is going to be not eating when I get home or when I'm out and about. I'm DEFINITELY an emotional eater and I'll also have to deal with some of my demons in a new way.
Since I just finished gorging on the Cobb and the concrete, I'm going to wait until the morning to weigh in and do my waist and hip measurements. According to the doctor today, I was 244, but since I won't be going in in a month, I want to have an accessible control scale.
Wish me luck. The next month may be filled with rants and raves and confessions of hunger and hatred. I may admit to a murder on here, but since you guys are kind of like my therapy, I'll consider anything said on here to be attorney-client privilege.

It's on you, Slim Fast. You say "give us a week, we'll take off the weight." I'm holding you to that, bitches!

AM update: 240 on home scale. waist 39.5 hips 53 thighs 50.5 Do your magic Slim Fast!

Choose Your Own Adventure

Do you remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books from way back in the day? You'd be on a crusade with some of your friends and you come to the opening of a cave and "you decide to enter the cave... turn to page 17" or "you and your friends back away from the cave and find a different route.... turn to page 84." I never understood how those books worked. It must have been an editor's logistical nightmare!
"Shut it Muffin Top and get to the point!" you're probably thinking... I've decided to let YOU choose my adventure! I've obviously fallen off the wagon AGAIN (damn I need to get that wheel fixed...) so instead of going back and forth and debating which method to try this month, I'm going to let you choose for me! So, here are your options:

*The Slim Fast Program
*Detox Green tea or Herbal tea
*Hoodia Superthin


Whatever you choose will be started on September 1st.

Ready, set, VOTE*!

*you do not have to be 18 as this is not a political election.

NKOTB

New Kid On The Blog.
Yup...that's me!

My name is Melissa…but will be better known as iheartbread on this blog. I’m a 29 year old woman living in Garden Grove with my husband and the most adorable dog in the world, Halo. I wasn’t fat all my life, so I don’t have any of those “Ive been fat since birth” or “Ive been fat for as far as I can remember” lines. Nope…I did this all on my own.

I think I started packing on the pounds in high school...I wasn't huge then...but I was by no means small. I guess I never looked back after that. When I met my husband back in 2003, I was around 180 lbs….I haven’t seen that number in almost 7 years! I managed to put on close to 95 pounds during that time. I obviously took full advantage of the “we’re comfortable with each other” stage of our relationship. Haha I made sure that stage lasted a rrrreeeallllyyy long time.

So I ate and ate and ate and ate. I became so unhappy, so I ate more. Then I would diet and lose 3 lbs, so I rewarded myself with eating. Food tied into every single aspect of my life. I ate for EVERY emotion and I didn’t know how to direct my feelings towards anything else other than food. My fat ass was too lazy so I rarely exercised. My knees hurt, my ankles hurt, I always had to catch my breath after one flight of stairs and STILL I chose food. Me = miserable.

I tried all kinds of diets! No carb, weight watchers, nutrisystem...and YES! They work! BUT! They aren’t realistic and long term (well Weight Watchers might be if you're into writing things down…which I'm not). My weight loss isn’t going to be a temporary fix or something to drop a few pounds. Im changing the way I love day to freakin day! I need to do this FOREVER! I need something I can live with…and dammit I need to be able to have cake sometimes!!!

So on February 10th of this year, myself and 3 of my girlfriends came up with a Biggest Loser Challenge...a 6 month challenge where we put money in the pot, made up our rules, weighed in every week and the person with the greatest percentage lost would win the pot!
And the end of that 6 months, I lost a total of 51.8 pounds! This is the most I have ever lost EVER. And I did it all by myself! I’m becoming a different person and I’m loving every moment of it.

In the blogs to come I will be sharing some of the tips and tricks that have worked for me these past 6 months, as well as blog about weight loss in general and how much it can really suck sometimes but how hard work is truly the most rewarding!!
I know I still have a LONG way to go (I hope to get back to around 180 and decide WTF to do then!) but I look forward to sharing this journey with you…the setbacks, the triumphs, the struggles and the FOOD 

Tight pants and sushi don't mix

Ms Procrastinate here...

Note to self: Don't wear your skinny jeans (ie... the ones you haven't been able to fit into for a year) on a first date when you go for sushi.

I was sooooo excited when I put on my pair of Hollister jeans today and they actually fit! And by 'fit' I mean that I could actually get them buttoned up while I laid on the floor and sucked in my stomach with all of my might. So instead of conceding and wearing another pair of jeans that ACTUALLY fit I decided on wearing a top that covered the love handles that were spilling over the sides. *sigh*

My date for the night asked me where I want to go and like an idiot I said, "Sushi sounds good." And in all fairness I did warn him that I am the least sexiest woman on earth because i'll just shove the whole roll in my mouth and not be able to breathe until I swallow about half of it. All was going great until about 3/4 of the way through the meal I was talking about sushi and how when you eat it you get really full, but about 2 hours later your hungry again. He told me that the reason is that rice expands in your stomach making you more full. Now I don't know if he saw my 'Oh Shit' reaction, but I promptly put down my chop sticks, thinking about the word EXPAND and what that could mean for my already tight as hell jeans, and said a quick prayer. It went something like this: "Please god don't let my pants split open! I promise i'll eat right from now on and exercise like Richard Simmons."

Miss Procrastinate knows what she's talking about. I was doing so well and then I skipped a day at the gym. Then two... Now it's been like three weeks since I've been and I've noticed a total connection between going to the gym and eating healthier. When I'm working out and feeling good, I'm more inclined to make better choices and not give in to crap. That, unfortunately, has NOT been the case recently.
And when I mean recently, I mean like 15 minutes ago. As in, I had Coldstone for breakfast. It was leftover from last night. I drove with my old roommate from Kansas to Phoenix and along the way, we had a bet going as to how many FedEx trucks we would see. I DRASTICALLY underestimated. Originally, she bet 63 and I bet 48. When we were at 21 trucks after only 3 hours, we upped it. She then changed her estimate to 103 so anything below that, I won. The stakes? A Gotta-Have-It from Coldstone... in a waffle bowl. Anyway, I lost so I owed her ice cream. She ate half of it and left the rest in the freezer. Since I have no willpower whatsoever, I finished it. So now I feel like crap, just want to go back to bed and am asking myself WHY I DO THIS?!
Looking at the pictures from the trip, I can see how bloated my face has gotten again after it was beginning to thin out. It may be time to try out some of this craziness we hear about, like a cleanse... or anorexia... or SOMETHING...

5 Slices of Pizza Negates 3 Mile Run

Miss Procrastinate here...

Sooooooooo..... (twiddles thumbs and sighs)

I have been a bad bad bad girl. This morning a good girl woke up and went for a 3 mile run. Then the bad girl took over the good girl and forced her to eat 5 slices of pizza for dunch. (dunch=dinner/lunch) Not very conducive to raising my ass up to high expectations... and when I say 'ass' I do in fact mean my ass.

So If you've been reading lately you will probably have noticed that muffin top and myself seem to have fallen off the wagon. It happens to all dieters at one time or another when that 'one slice of cake', or that 'extra cup of coffee', or that 'one little piece of chocolate' turn into 5 slice pizza binges. I hope you are starting to notice a trend here... 2-3 weeks strong and then it all falls apart... nothing new for myself and speaking for Muffin Top, probably not new for her either. If you can't relate you're probably blonde, skinny, and rich. Oh how I envy you!

Moving on.... so last week I was hanging out with a good friend of mine (to protect her identity i'll call her Buzz Numero 1.) Buzz Numero 1 and Buzz Numero 2 (her twin) and I went for pizza, dip-n-dots, and vino. (Like I said before, I haven't been good.) When Buzz 2 had to leave for work Buzz 1 and I broke out the vino and started to chat. We were discussing my blog and I asked her how she stays so thin. Her answer: "Get a bad boyfriend." When I stopped laughing and pulled myself together long enough to speak coherently I asked her what she was talking about. She proceeded to tell me that when she dated this total lemon that she was so stressed out that she dropped about 15 pounds. Not saying that this is something I want to try but now I know that dating a complete jackass may have some rewards.

To be honest the girls are coming over tonight for more vino, however I have been scheduled to run 2 more days than usual this week. Aaaaand to top that off we will have a work out of our own tonight playing some very interactive Wii games that make for a great arm workout.

ta ta for now.... Look for a new blogger coming soon!