Hey Resolutions! Shove off!

So, "Happy New Year" and all that jazz.  Oh, and a rant to start this blog... It's "Happy New YeaR," not 'Happy New YearS."  You're celebrating a new year, not all the ones coming up for the rest of your life. We live in a culture where we shorten everything grammatical in the name of "progress," (or laziness.... YOLO, anyone?) and can't figure out which form of "there" and "your" to use. So, if you must insists on Happy New Years, then complete the damn sentence.  "Happy New YeaR'S DAY."
And while we're on the subject, it's ValentiNe's Day, not ValentiMe's Day. To quote Biff in Back to the Future II, "You sound like a damn fool when you say it that way!"  But I digress...
The word resolution is ALL OVER social media and the internet this morning.  People are taking the day to talk about what they would like to change this year from previous years and so often it involves cutting things out... sugar, booze, promiscuous sex, etc.  Then by Valentine's Day, we are back to jumping into bed with the guy who brought us chocolate and candy and champagne (some literally, some figuratively.)
This is my 33rd New Year's Day and I haven't been able to get it right yet.  This year, instead of the lame, "I resolve not to make resolutions," I have decided to make conscious choices to ADD things to my life, one day at a time.  In our nation's love of consumerism, it only makes sense.  We love to hoard, collect and just have as much as possible.  Unfortunately in my case, this also means junk in my trunk. Maybe if I start with the mindset of having, I won't feel like I'm depriving myself of anything, including a chance at the future I want with the family I am ready to start.
I have read a couple of things that have really stuck with me the last few days and have helped bring about a paradigm shift...

• “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein
• "You can be cry and be miserable and feel inadequate while you are overweight and unhealthy or you can cry and be miserable and feel inadequate while you are doing something about it" (paraphrased... I can't find the original post where I saw it, so I made it my own)

So, in the spirit of the ever-expanding consumption of goods, here's what I shall attempt to add daily:

• Actually getting out of bed when my alarm goes off
• A cold glass of water first thing in the morning to shock my insides into waking up and starting to work so that metabolism can get fired up
• Phentermine with that cold glass of water for three months
• Breakfast 
• Something physical, whether it is taking Roxy for a walk or going to the gym or doing laps in my office
• Healthy snacks so the drive thru doesn't taunt me with it's siren song
• Forgiveness when I press the sleep button, give into the song or skip breakfast and the resolve to start fresh the next morning

Call me crazy, most do. I have a friend who is such an incredible inspiration and has lost 100 pounds in just six months with no surgery and no gimmicks, just healthy nutrition and getting her heart rate up.  She will be the first to tell you she still has some to go, but I have seen first hand how when you take things one day at a time and make better choices, your whole life can change while the important things stay the same.

I can't tell you how many times I've said this before.  Shit, we all have. But since the stopwatch is starting over, it's a good measuring point.  Maybe in six months, I'll be the one saying, "That was the day that changed my life" instead of, "Well, fuck me.  If I had started when I said I would, I would be so much better off."  I am so proud and jealous of Sandra and so mad at myself because we planned to start the journey at the same time and she started putting one foot in front of the other and is halfway done with the race and I'm still hanging out at the snack table next to the starting line. 

So, stay tuned.  

A Coronation, A Curb?

Whatuuuuup?!  Ok, it's been awhile.  I suck.  I've been busy.  Fire me.  I'm sure at some point I'll get to where I've been, but here's the latest in my never ending saga of food.
Yesterday was my official coronation.  I got my first crown!  Unfortunately (but fortunately?) it's in my mouth.  I mean, who would want to wear one of those things on your head?  I'm sure they're heavy and awkward with all those jewels and frankly, anyone who even wears a tiara looks like a teenage girl getting ready for prom or her quinceanera.
Have you seen anything about the tongue patch?  It's ridiculous.  Here's a link to the original article I saw about it.  Basically, a plastic surgeon sews a patch to your tongue with sutures that deliberately stuck up so the roof of your mouth gets poked and it's uncomfortable to eat.  It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, but now, I kinda get it.
Since my teeth are so small (the ONLY place that can be described that way on my body...) the dentist decided to create a gold crown instead of a porcelain one.  It's smooth and shiny and I feel like a total badass with it.  I don't have any track marks or gunshot wound scars or a fifteen year old to show for making it out of Palmdale alive, so at least now I gots me the beginnings of a 'grill!'
Anyway, getting used to it is a little pain in the ass.  It's not a natural tooth and the grooves line up, but it's a little bit bigger than my molar was so I can feel it when I chew which is a deterrent to chew which frankly is a good thing considering if I'm chewing I have food in my mouth and when there is food in my mouth, there's a pretty good chance it's not a vegetable. If I had been born with the same affinity for celery I have for chocolate, I wouldn't be writing this right now.

So, there are a couple of different outcomes I can see from this...

1. I ignore it.  I keep going on my usual habits and keep being disgusted with myself and I keep saying 'one day I'll get healthy' and then never do.
2. I eat soft foods.  Except soft foods in my world are ice cream and mashed potatoes and yogurt.  All dairy, all fatty (and yet all so damn delicious!)
3. I avoid eating except when absolutely necessary.  Which is a good thing.  The less food, the less calories, the less of me.  When I do eat, it's fresh fruit and vegetables and get some of the cravings for the starchy foods get under control.

Because seriously, these things are out of control.  A friend of mine is down 100 pounds since June 24th.  She is such an incredible inspiration and I am so proud and jealous of her.  I want people to be proud and jealous of me!

I'll keep you updated and let you know what happens.  And you can figure out how many ways to tell me how proud and jealous you are of me.

Tight Pants And Punishment

Miss Procrastinate here....

You know when you put on those pair of pants that you refer to in your head as your 'ol' faithfuls'?  Those pants that could have been a stunt double in 'The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants'?  Those pants that always fit no matter how many cupcakes you ate?  Ya... Those pants failed me today... 

This summer a Bear Foxtrot and I did the dream diet and dropped a ton of weight... I was happy... the birds were chirping, rainbows were everywhere, and I couldn't have felt better about life.  But then, as always, the excuses for bad food choices and lazy behavior crept back in along with an extra 15 pounds.  So here I sit... disgusted with myself and the part of my stomach that is currently hanging over my jeans.  2 months ago I looked in the mirror and knew that I looked awesome from every angle... and when I was blow drying my hair and my towel would drop, I would just leave it on the floor...because I was a specimen to be admired.  Now when I blow dry my hair I have every hair clip holding that towel in place lest it fall and I have to see the last 2 months of mexican food, pizza, cupcakes, cookies, and wine.

It's even affected my mood, and my poor boyfriend is not immune.  The other day I told him that i value honesty over anything in this world, and that I always want him to be honest with me.  (Trap Setting For Men 101) He of course agreed just like I knew he would...  My next question to him was if i've gained a lot of weight and looked fat.  (This was me setting the motherlode of all traps, and he knew it)  Poor guy...  His answer was genius... "I like the way your butt looks"... I should have known he wouldn't fall for it, damn it!  Needless to say i've turned into a fat, over-emotional, walking time bomb.

Don't get me wrong... I love curves, curvy women, and anyone with an hour glass shape.  I even love my curves!  I just don't like it when they jiggle, spill over, and start to resemble a comforter shoved back into the original packaging. 

A couple of weeks ago my room mate came home with this version of the Insanity workout that only takes about 20 minutes.  We said that we are going to wake up every morning and do the workout before we get ready for work.  I was stoked!  I finally had a sister in arms!  Someone to keep me accountable and wake my ass up in the morning!....Ya... it's still sitting in the same place on our entertainment center untouched by either of us.  I blame it on my hangover in the mornings due to the fact we are making a wine bottle christmas tree this year.

Where did my motivation go?!  I need to find it, and fast!  If anyone has any tips to find motivation please share them with me!  I'll do anything at this point so i'm not ringing in the new year with extra large love handles and a piss poor disposition.  

The Binge

Every dieter knows "The Binge."  It's the final night before the diet, the final countdown and hey, since you're going on a diet anyway, it's better to weigh as MUCH as possible that next morning so your numbers for your first weigh in are impressive, right?
Today is my binge and it's pizza and beer and Magnum double chocolate bars.  Tomorrow, I have no choice but to dive head first into this process.  I'm at an all time high. At my doctor I weighed in at 306.8 pounds.

What. The. Fuck.

For those who don't know, I got to the semi-finals for Extreme Makeover Weightloss Edition.  But, I obviously didn't get on the show.  During the casting process, you have to do all sorts of leg work and surveys and pictures and a video.  This forces you to look at yourself.  REALLY look at yourself.  THIS is what you see:

I repeat.

What. The. Fuck.

Guess what.  I'm embarrassed.  I'm horrified.  I'm embarrassed to share it with you and I'm embarrassed that I carry this around every day.  

I also had to fill out forms and answer questions on how I allowed myself to get to this point.  I know I have a sugar addiction and that I'm an emotional eater.  I started off pretty strong and started a blog www.formerphoenixfatties.blogspot.com which I will copy this post to.  I met a few girls in line and they started off with a bang!  They are both down and have been working out and one even got picked to be part of a Joy Bauer heart health challenge.

I started off strong and then petered out, like I always do. The thing I did right was go to the doctor. She is such a great supporter and she wanted to try a few things before getting to the point where I am now, which is medication.  I did a sleep study and discovered I have moderate obstructive sleep apnea and have been severely sleep deprived, which hasn't helped.  It's caused my dopamine levels to go off all helter skelter and crave sugar for that dopamine rush.  It's caused unbalanced levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone and a shortage of leptin, the hormone that tells you when you're full.

"Just shut up and get to the POINT, you long winded bitch!"

Tomorrow, I start Phentermine.  It's the "good" half of phen-fen.  It's an appetite suppressant and a stimulant, so it helps burn fat and kills your cravings.  To quote the doc, "If your favorite thing in the world is a cupcake, someone can be sitting next to you eating a cupcake and you won't want one."  

What.  The.  Fuck.  

But wait, that's not all!!  I also get to do an 800-1000 calorie a day diet.  In case you were curious what that looks like, it's rabbit food.  It's low carb, low calorie, low fat.  It's no bread.  No pasta.  No sugar. No soda.  No coffee.  You know, all my favorite things.  It's a gallon of water minimum a day.  It's eggs, spinach and a little parmesan for breakfast every day.  It's lean protein and salads.  A lot of salads.  

I also made an appointment to talk to a therapist.  I'm a food addict and an emotional eater and I have some frustrations I don't know how to get out...

So, stay tuned.  

After another beer...

Pilates and F-Bombs

So if you read my last blog you'll know that Bear Fox Trot (good friend...shall remain nameless because i'm scared of how hard she'll punch me) and I are both on the HCG diet and currently on day 9. I'm here to tell you what happened on day 8.

I always knew Ja..uuummm Bear Fox Trot has never been adverse to cursing occasionally.  I'll admit it... I curse in the the heat of moment, if I stub my toe, or if the top scoop from my Cold Stone ice cream cone falls to the floor.  Last night on the other hand BFT was in true form.

The other day when she was over we planned to do something light like Pilates so that way we go from flab to fab.  When you're on this diet it is recommended that you DO NOT do any strenuous exercises. (Besides the boring meals, are you starting to see why I chose this diet?)  Anyways... Our concern is tightening up because with this type of accelerated weight loss you may be thin... but at our age things will start to let gravity take over.  I refuse to be the quintessential cartoon strip of a woman with her boobs resting in the shopping cart where the baby should be.

BFT arrived at my house promptly at 5pm and before I could even utter the words 'Want to just watch TV?', she was already changing for our first workout.  With the coffee table shoved to one side and the barstools stacked, I dusted off my old DVD copy of Winsor Pilates and got down to business.  I let BFK watch the intro because she had never ever done Pilates and needed to learn about her 'Power House' and the right breathing techniques. I guess somewhere in that intro she heard to breathe in slowly through the nose and exhale with a curse.  Let me show you an example of BFK's colorful conversation with my TV.


Skinny Pilates Chick: (While we were laying on the floor) "Slowly raise your legs to a 45 degree angle...  now raise your arms parallel to the floor and lift your head... raise your legs straight up in the air with your toes pointing up to the ceiling...aaand back down to just inches off the floor... now repeat"

(This is all I heard because BFK's colorful language made me see rainbows)

BFK: "Are you F@$#ing kidding me?! F*#% OFF!"  She then rolls over and reenacts something that looked like the mermaid dance from 'Pitch Perfect.'

Skinny Pilates Chick: "Now sit up and curl into a tight ball with your hands hugging your ankles... Now roll back.... aaaaaand roll back up."

BFK: "WTF! I can't get back up!.... F%$# OFF lady!"

ME: Dying from laughing... and trying not to fart as I roll back up.

My dear friend set a new record: DVD-20 min   Bear Fox Trot: 24 F-Bombs

Masks that are totally worth 69 cents.

Let me tell you though.... it didn't end there.  While we were cooling down and waiting for The Bachelorette to start, BFK continued to cuss at every commercial for fast food, sit down restaurants, and anything food related that came on.  I thought the 69 cent vitamin C masks I bought for us would calm her down... nope.  For the next 4 hours the language ensued.  The only time she used cussing for purposes other than yelling at the Olive Garden commercial was when Desiree gave out the final rose.






That's the down side about this diet... you almost feel like another person while you're on it.  You smell cookie boxes at the grocery store, you cuss out food commercials and well meaning fitness ladies, and lick the screen of your phone when a friend posts this on Instagram.

Photo Credit: P Doublin

The HCG Diet And Licking Sugar Cookies

This is my second bout with this diet and i'm going to be honest... There is a lot to love and hate about it.  If you don't know what it is, here's the low down: Take the HCG drops 3 times a day and only eat 500 calories a day for 3 weeks.  Then for another 3 weeks after that NO SUGAR and NO BREAD.  There are a TON of food restrictions so that way you can get down to weighing less than a ton.  That's the diet in a nutshell.  And if you scroll down to my last blog I posted you'll see that the last time I posted ANYTHING was the last time I was on this diet!  Horrible... but moving on...

The first time I did this diet over a year ago I was in hell.  I was working in a restaurant and had to smell all the yummy goodness I couldn't eat 5 days a week.  The one thing that kept me from sticking my face straight into a fondue pot full of cheese was the fact that every day I got up and weighed myself, I was 2lbs less than the day before.  Overall I lost 15lbs.  You may ask, "If you lost that much weight back then why are are you doing it again?"  Well let me tell you... I thought to myself that since i'm thin and happy now I can eat whatever I want.  Any fat that was left in my body multiplied at the speed of light with that thought, and came back with a vengeance this summer.

So here I am again... whenever I tell people what the diet consists of they either say i'm either out of my mind or the diet must be horrible for me. Yadda yadda yadda... I don't care. I literally just got rid of 9 pounds in 6 days.  Find me another diet that makes me lose weight this fast!  Thank god i'm not the only one doing this right now either... Bear Fox Trot is in the fox hole with me too on this thing so it's nice to have some support.

My Dinner

My Lunch

Salsa is your friend on this diet.

This diet comes with a lot of challenges.  Like I said before there are a ton of food restrictions.  My meals consist of spinach with lemon and pepper under grilled chicken with some spices added.  Or crab with cucumbers and salsa. Nowadays my shopping list has decreased to only buying about 7 items when I go to the grocery store.  The other day I found myself running past the wine and liquor isle. If I had stopped for even a second you would have found me sitting on the floor drinking straight out of a chardonnay bottle like a baby.  That's right NO ALCOHOL.

Food that fell from heaven...

Not to mention that in that same shopping trip I got caught doing something a lot of people might think odd.  In order to get to the produce section at the grocery store I have to walk through the bakery.  My vice (along with a many other things) is those damn sugar cookies.  You know the ones that look like they fell straight out of Channing Tatum's gorgeous abs?  Ya those ones.  So i'm walking by minding my own business when I look over and see them sitting there so innocently... Any sane person would have kept walking to healthy haven.  What do I do? Pick up a box and smell them.  That's right... I smelled them... I drank in that oh so wonderful scent with my eyes closed and a look of sheer bliss on my face.  I would have even gone as far as to lick the box had I not been interrupted by a nosy broad shooting me the 'WTF are you doing?' glare.  I quickly returned to box to its place on the shelf and ran over to the vegetables wondering where my self respect and will power went.  When I got home I seriously considered calling a friend and telling them i'd pay good money if they did my grocery shopping from now on.

I'm leaving you today with a picture of the last meal that I had the day before I started this crazy diet.  And yes.... I consider it a meal.

I'm the one on the left :-)

Crash Diets Lead To BIG Accidents Part 1

It's all in the title folks...

    I know it has been forever and a day since I've blogged.  I can chalk it up to the sheer amount of research I've been doing for this blog ie dieting, minimal exercising, eating everything in sight... But that's only partly true.  In all honesty I went on one diet, ran a total of 2 times, and did in fact eat everything in sight.  Let me take you back to June of last year...

   While I was at my ritual 6 week hair appointment at my friend Renee's Salon we got to talking about this diet she had done for about a week... It was called the HCG Diet.  To only further my curiosity her next client (an old co-worker of mine) showed up early to his hair appointment and began to tell us that he was on that very same diet.  He looked great!  He told me he had lost about 22lbs at that point and had only been on it for about 3 weeks!  Doing the math in my head I thought 'I would be a fool not to this too!  It's only 6 weeks, and I could easily get rid of that pesky 10 lbs that's been plaguing me for the last 3 years in a week and half! What really got me interested though was when he said 'When you're on the diet, they tell you to only do light workouts, but it's not something they encourage.'  Holy Crap!!!! I'd hit the mother load of all diets!  I'd lose weight at lightning speed and I didn't have to work out to do it?!?! SOLD!

   So my next step was to buy what was left of Renee's diet kit she hadn't finished and I was on my way to being super model thin...

   Now let me tell you what is required to do this diet...

1) No more than 500 calories a day for 3 weeks
2) Take HCG drops in the morning and at night
3) Vitamin B drops once every morning
4) Follow the diet plan TO. THE. T.
5) Maintain diet plan #2 for 3 weeks after to keep the weight off. (I must have missed that part)

   I know you read the whole 500 calorie part and almost peed your pants... trust me... I almost did too.  Not to mention that everyone you know will think you're freaking out of your mind to attempt such a crazy thing... and to them I said 'Just wait and see!'

  The first week and a half was awesome!  I noticed how much my hand on it's own volition would reach for the tortilla chips at work and how I salivated when I looked at the Oreo Cookie crumbs we use for the chocolate.... But I persevered and stuck to my guns. What made it easy was the fact that everyday I woke up I was so excited to weight myself and see that another 2 pounds had left the building magically over night. 

  Then it happened... that thing that happens to all women once a month.  It slowed my fast paced weight loss down to a sloths pace... I was pissed!  My cravings for anything sweet kicked up to high gear and needless to say I wasn't the most fun person to be around.  At this point I was down to below what I weighed in high school, but I wanted more...

 Week 3 I found myself eating about 410 calories of food so that way I could have that 90 calorie Grey Goose Martini at the end of my day.  This is total sabotage!  I figured since my monthly bill had stopped the weight loss I could cheat a bit... So wrong... I gained 2 lbs the next day!


To be continued...