The 30 Second Choice

Ms. Procrastinate here...

The last three weeks i've been giving this a lot of thought... choice. We make choices everyday. Good, bad, to finish what's on our plate, or to put the leftovers in the fridge for later. When you're in the grocery store we make a choice to buy healthy items or even not so healthy items. In the morning we have the choice to listen to our alarm when it goes off and get out of bed... or we hit the snooze button and think, "5 more minutes and i'll get up." I don't know about you but when I make that choice to hit the snooze button I know i'm not getting up for at least another 30 min. And every 5 minutes i'll hit the button and think, "just 5 more minutes" knowing that i'm lying to myself. *slaps hand to forehead*

I was once told that every time you say you're GOING to do something and DON'T do it, your self confidence takes a hit. Sooooooo true! And yet, here I am saying that i'm going to find someone to loan me their P90X or Insanity workout DVD's and i've only asked one person and never followed through. I said I was going to eat like a damn rabbit for 90 days and drink lots of water, but what's true is that right now i'm on my 2nd cup of coffee. Bad choices!

Also what I do reflects and shows up on others around me. Example: When
I stop blogging... iheartbread and Muffin Top stop too. Coincidence? Nope! When I care to blog they care to blog and vice versa.

So on to my thoughts about the 30 Seconds Choice... Granted a lot of people make great choices in those 30 seconds. For those of us with diet and weight loss issues, great choices maybe come once in a while. Let's face the facts here... if we made the right choices we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. I know 30 seconds doesn't seem like a long time but i'm not talking about the whole decision making process here.

I'm talking about the amount of time it takes for you to start talking yourself into the wrong choice. It only takes one thought to start you going down the shady path in your mind type of thing. Get it?! Example: I have 2 choices for lunch...Taco Bell or a homemade sandwich with grapes. The first thought the steers me towards the bad choice is "it'll be easier to drive a block and get lunch than take 15 minutes to hunt down everything I need to make the sandwich." Once THAT thought comes up i'll start to justify it! "And taco bell is so cheap anyways I might as well." It's so stupid!!! THEEEEEN I'll make my self feel better about making that choice. "So because i'm eating at Taco Bell i'll get a Diet Pepsi and do 30 minutes on the Wii fit." Ya... like that'll ever happen. I'll make up some other excuse later about how I don't have enough time to workout. Can anyone relate!?!?!

So my challenge to you readers (all 15 of you, lol) is to catch that ONE thought in that 30 seconds that gets you speeding towards the choice that isn't best for you. Write down what it is and put it up somewhere that you'll see it all the time, and ask yourself, "How often does this one thought come up?" You'd be surprised! And i'll do the same of course and let you know what it is.

Happy dieting everyone!

impossible

That's how i describe this Slim Fast bullshit. Maybe if I had a "normal job" with a "normal schedule" it would be conceivable, but with a person who works nights and doesn't wake up for "breakfast," it's not a good time.
Well, maybe if i got up early enough, had a shake, went to the gym, had a snack, got ready for work, had a shake, etc.... So it's either that it really IS impossible or I'm not giving it enough effort.

But I'll tell you what, be prepared. I'm hungry. A lot of liquid going in means a lot of liquid going out. My first day doing this I was quite weak and didn't have a lot of energy at work. I ran out of milk so I didn't do it for a few days and I felt better. Hmmm, wonder if there's a connection....
Of course when you're adjusting to ANY new plan, there's going to be lulls in energy. Maybe I notice it more because I have such a physically demanding job. Who knows and really, who cares?
I got more milk, I'm going to keep trying. Starting my day with a shake DOES remind me to take in less calories throughout the day. And my pants DID feel a bit looser this morning....

30 more days of this crap?!

That's my first thought. I'm on day one and I already can't stick with the program. I didn't go off and binge or anything, but I woke up late and got my schedule all out of whack. I had a shake this morning with 2% milk and some blackberries added to my milk chocolate flavored torture... ahem, meal. In all honesty, it wasn't bad. You blend it with some ice and for awhile, it's pretty filling. I had an apple before leaving for work and was planning on having a salad (joy!) when I got to work.
Buuuuut, I got a call when I was in the locker room that apparently I was late and was supposed to start at two instead of three. Oops. Oh well. I should have still gotten a break. Buuuuuut that didn't happen. I got a table and they stayed until preshit, ahem, preshift then I had to set up for a table at 5:30. Fortunately for me, we're starting these rotisserie specials, so we had to try the first one today. It was a balsalmic glazed lamb with minted olive oil on top of sauteed spinach and served with a quinoa pilaf.
I tell you what, that quinoa pilaf saved the heads of everyone at work. During preshift I could feel the belly start to rumble. I drank a couple glasses of water and was seriously looking at my knuckles wondering if I could gnaw them off without anyone noticing. Of course, the bread cart is wide open next to me and I could smell the fresh bakeness of it. Forget Chinese water torture. You want to drive ME crazy? Tell me not to eat it.
The plus side to not plunging into the bread cart headfirst is that I know if I could resist it once, I can resist it again. I gave up white bread, white flour and white sugar for awhile and didn't eat the bread and after awhile, I got out of the habit and it wasn't a temptation anymore. But that takes time.
Fortunately for me #2 is that we were busy, so I didn't have a chance to think that much about the pinball game going on in my insides. I did grab a banana partway through the shift and that helped curb the echo emanating from my digestive system.
I'm home now and I considered having another shake, but I wasn't sure if that'd be a good idea, so I ate a peach and made some hot tea. I'm hoping that'll fill the void. Because, frankly, I'm hungry.

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."