Day 4

Real quick before I go to bed.

Breakfast
-Protein smoothie (milk, 1/2 a banana, 1 scoop protein powder, some chocolate ovaltine since I don't have coco powder)

Lunch
-McDonalds (most of a medium sweet tea, most of a medium fry, two plain cheeseburgers)

Dinner
-Homemade chicken nuggets
-Glass of sweet tea

There were several glasses of water, mostly in the afternoon and evening. I know I drank at least four in the last three hours.

And I was supposed to go to bed 3 hours ago -_-

Detox

I have been having a little bit of trouble staying away from the junk. I find myself sitting here thinking about it far too much. So I decided to try a juice fast to help clean out the bad toxins from all the years of junk and fast food and to jump start the weight loss.

I was at the store a little bit ago and it's been a while since I tried to just incorporate the juice into my day just to have something really good for me in there so I couldn't remember how much of everything I need. Gonna go look at the recipe again and figure it out then write it all down so I can go back just before I run out of this stuff, which won't be long.

Day 3

I did okay again today. While I did have some junk food I didn't eat much.

Breakfast
-Breakfast pizza (croissant rolls, eggs, sausage, peppers, onions, mushrooms, jalapenos, and cheese)
-Glass of water
-Glass of sweet tea

Lunch
-Nibbled on popcorn and twizzlers
-Three glasses of water over the course of a few hours

Dinner
-Red beans and rice leftovers
-Glass of water

Dessert
-Two pieces (a few hours apart) of pumpkin spice cake with chocolate chips and butter cream frosting

Snack
-Bowl of coco crispies

I did have two swallows of my sister's Coke and there was more water interspersed throughout there.

Haven't taken my measurements yet, I know I'm being really lazy about it, haha. And tonight I'm going to bed earlier than I normally do.

Food Stuff

Forgot to put up the food post yesterday so I'll put down as much as I can remember from then and then stuff for today. I'll also do the measurements tomorrow.

Yesterday:

Breakfast
-Greek yogurt with 1/2 a banana, a teaspoon of finely chopped pecans, some dried blueberries, homemade granola, and flax seed.
-Glass of water

Lunch
-Leftovers of smoked sausage, red bell pepper, onions, and kidney beans
-Glass of water

Dinner
-4 Asada tacos (marinated beef, cilantro, onions, green sauce, and lime juice on small corn tortillas)
-Spanish rice
-1/2 a serving of refried beans with a little bit of cheddar cheese and onions
-Glass of sweet tea

Dessert
-Two s'mores
-Some pomegranate seeds

Snack
-Four graham crackers squares with 2 Tbsp of peanut butter
-Glass of water

There was some other glasses of water in there but I still didn't drink as much as I should have.

Today:

Breakfast
-Monkey bread
-Glass of whole milk

Lunch
-2 Chicken lettuce wraps
-Glass of water

Dinner
-Red beans and rice (smoked sausage, kidney beans, rice)
-Glass of sweet tea

Dessert
-One square of pumpkin spice cake with chocolate chips and butter cream frosting.

Again, other glasses of water and then a few swallows of some very strong lipton tea since I have a headache and no tylenol or anything.

So yesterday I did really well until dinner time, but it's so hard to have just one or two of those tacos. And really, they're not that bad considering everything is fresh. The fattiest thing was probably the green sauce because of the avocado in it but that's good fat. And the corn tortillas had the most carbs. That's just for the tacos, though. I did have two servings of the rice and then of course the refried beans have loads of starch in them. Not even sure why they're called refried. My sister made them from scratch and all it was, was boiling them, draining them, then mashing them.

As for today I did much worse. I got up and waited for forever for my sister to wake up because I thought she was going to make this breakfast pizza today. By 10:30am I was getting so hungry I was feeling nauseous so I went ahead and made this biscuit monkey bread. It took a little bit so I didn't eat it for close to an hour and then about two hours after that we ate lunch. Also I spent most of the day over at my sister's place and they have a lot of things to snack on. I avoided most of it but did nibble on a few things.

Also, I saw some pictures of myself today, one from when I was big and pregnant and one from this past Christmas. The pregnant one was really cute because I was posing and all and with my huge belly I didn't look fat at all. Then the Christmas one I was sitting on the floor hunched over helping William with something so I looked ginormous and it just grossed me out. I tell you what, that picture was some motivation. I should get that printed out and stick it to my fridge. I don't want to continue looking like that. I want to look like how I feel I look. I know I'm overweight but I honestly don't think I look as big as I must actually be. And also, in my dreams I've only twice had dreams where I was overweight and felt self-conscious. Several dreams total where I was overweight but I'm usually not self-conscious at all about how I look and the funny thing is that in dreams where I should feel self-conscious, I'm naked. But for the most part I'm always fit in my dreams. It's how I see myself. My poor self-esteem comes from how I think others see me and how they feel about the fact that I'm overweight. The bright side of all of this is that it could be worse. I could be totally oblivious to my weight and what I eat and just let myself go until I can't go through the store without an electric cart. I feel bad for those people who have to use those things because of weight. It's so debilitating being that heavy and no one should have to deal with it.

My middle sister is fairly overweight as well. Though she was still lighter than me until after I had William then I was about 5 or 10lbs lighter than her. Now she's back to being lighter since she's pregnant and all the throwing up and the baby taking nutrition has caused her to lose weight. But she did just says she's finally starting to gain. Well, anyway, her frame is not for weight. She's got a petite frame. She'd have a lovely willowy figure at her ideal size and weight. Because of the weight she has knee problems and I really hope they don't get worse when the baby gets good and big. We live on the second floor of the 4-plex and she already has trouble with the stairs thanks to her knees. I'm lucky I'm built for weight. I have wide feet and plenty of muscle and I'm strong because the weight I carried most of my life came on gradually so I was able to build up my strength. Being pregnant only affected my hip joints in the morning when I was getting up (and they affect me now if I don't do a few hip exercises/stretches at least every few nights) but I could still do everything I always did, though most of the time people wouldn't let me carry several grocery bags into the house.

Anyway, I won't be like this any longer. I don't want to see pictures of myself and think, "Gross!" I want to look the way I feel I look.

William and My Weight

Some more on the update front about my lovely little man. He's been feeding himself for several months now but only last month did he decide he wanted to feed himself with a utensil. He's does pretty well for his age, I suppose, not really sure what's considered doing well and doing poorly. He does make quite a bit of mess, but that's to be expected. It's also nice to see him beginning to eat some meat. I was at a loss as to what to give him that would give him protein for a good while since he's now getting cow's milk and hasn't had a bottle of breastmilk for about a week now. Then my mom reminded me about Greek yogurt and I remembered that it was a great source of protein when I was on my gestational diabetes diet so I bought a big container of it and he loves that. I won't push meat on him until he's good any ready but I do offer it to him.

He's eaten an egg but it's hard to get him to eat it again. He won't even try it but I know he likes it. He ate the one because my sister managed to pop a tiny piece in his mouth when he had it open, laughing. But after that one egg he still won't eat it right away. Yesterday we let him try a piece of hamburger from McDonald's. I really don't care to give him fast food but I must admit I have given him fries from time to time because I am bad and have fast food myself. If you've ever had kids you know how they are, they want what you're eating so it was either give him a fry or drive myself insane with his whining and screaming. Believe me it's not something I'm going to give in to all of the time. But it shouldn't be so bad since I'm trying to change my eating habits. No fast food, no soda for starters. I'm happy to say that he has NEVER had soda. I grew up on the stuff and I'd much rather him have french fries from McDonald's or Wendy's than soda. Well other than that the only meat he really eats is chicken nuggets. He's had some from a local restaurant here and I make homemade ones that I much prefer over any fast food or restaurant ones. Oddly enough, though, he won't touch chicken if you hand him some from a breast, just chunks in chicken nugget form.

But he's a pretty good eater other than meat. Oh! Beans. That's the form of protein I was giving him before I remembered yogurt. He loooves beans because he can feed himself with his fingers and he probably likes the taste, haha.

Well, on to my first weight loss post.

I checked my weight this morning on an empty stomach. 222.8lbs, which means I've lost two pounds in the last week, yay! I did start controlling my portions some and since I'm broke and finally got my food stamps done up I've been making it a point to cook dinner. Since I'm not working and still on Christmas break from school I have the time. Course, school starts on the 17th so I'm planning on putting together some crock pot meals and make-ahead freezer meals so on days I go to school I can easily get something done.

Anyways, I haven't measured myself yet, I'll do that tonight when I make my food diary post. Oh and I have a nifty scale that calculates body fat percentage, too. Sad, and embarrassing, to say that I am 4% away from being half fat but the good thing about it is that I am 4% below being half fat!! Yay! I was scared I'd be over 50%. I don't know what's a good percentage of fat for a woman so I'm not really going to look at that except to help me out when I feel like I haven't lost enough by seeing if I lost fat and gained muscle.

So the big goal is to be at least 140lbs by September. September is the month I realized I was actually thin back when I was 16 and losing weight the first time. I mean I saw the scale and all but I rarely bought any clothes and never much paid attention to the size during that period until my mom took me shopping for all new outfits. Really I don't even care about the weight. I care about the size. I mean I'm the same size I was at 193lbs but I'm 222lbs, so you see it's stupid to focus on weight, instead focus on your pant size.

So 140lbs and a size 9 is what I want to be. I'm tempted to go a little further and see how I look as a size 6 but we'll see about that when I reach my goal of a size 9. I loved the way I looked as a 9 because I was thin but I was soft. I had fat in all the right places and I looked healthy, I wasn't even self-conscious about the way I looked even though I still had a bit of a belly roll because I wasn't toned. But I'll be working on toning throughout this time because the pregnancy stretched out my stomach and the water weight made my arms balloon and they haven't exactly recovered.

But that's just my long-term goal. I'm going to set short term goals as well. Monthly I'd like to lose between 10-15lbs and weekly around 2-3lbs. Those are safe. I don't know anything about losing inches so while I'll keep track of that either every week or every month it's not something that I'm going to say, "I want to lose this many inches in this amount of time."

And with that, day one is begun.

Quick Update and More

William is quite the handful. He's been climbing on things a lot lately and even moving stuff to tables and counters in order to climb on it to reach food. He drank out of a plain old cup without spilling anything (did that several times with the same drink), he can now sign "please" and even made a two word sentence with his signs saying, "More, please," when I asked him if he'd like more chips the other day. He's got all his teeth he's supposed to have in now (well maybe more so because they say that at 9 months a baby is only supposed to have two teeth but William had eight and now he has all four front teeth, all four eye teeth, and all four if his 1 year molars). And there's loads more but I should really be getting to bed since it's 2:45am.

First, though, I want to say I'm hijacking this blog for my weight loss stuff. I've needed to lose weight for a few years now and keep getting sidetracked with delicious food or crazy men. It's January and this is the month I started in when I began my first ever successful weight loss. I was 16 years old, 193lbs, and a size 18. Right now I'm 25 years old, 224lbs, and a size 18 (and no that's not a lie or vanity sizing, I have jeans from when I was 16 before I lost the weight and after being washed they fit perfectly, I'm more muscular than the average woman). Pre-pregnancy I was 230lbs. By the time I was due to be induced I was 253lbs. When I finally went back to work when William was 5 months I was 205lbs (weight gain from going from a house that has money to buy the good food and more of a schedule so meals were prepared daily to a place where I'm broke half the time and thanks to work and school and William I barely have time to do anything else). When I was 16 and lost weight I went from the weight and size I mentioned above to 142lbs and a size 9. A size 9 is considered on the bigger size of skinny. For me it was perfect. As soon as I reached that weight I stopped all the good things I was doing like eating right and exercising. Luckily my portion control was doing well and the only reason I gained anything back was because of depression eating.

So I've done it before, I know what I need to do, but now I just need to do it. I also saw someone else's blog with a weight loss challenge and part of it was to adopt two good habits. I'm thinking for me, this is going to be getting to bed at a decent hour and moisturizing my face at least every night but I will do it in the morning if I have time. My mom says it looks like I have rosacea and part of that is dry skin that won't sluff off like it's supposed to so I have rough patches on my face and I found with daily moisturizing (putting a good layer of cream on and leaving it there for 30 minutes) it helps a lot and I have baby soft skin ^_^

I will post tomorrow what my weight is (I'm thinking it's going to be more than 224lbs, that's just what I remember from when I weighed myself the week before this past one). I'll also take measurements. I'll even keep a food diary. I'm planning on going on a diabetic diet of sorts. Pretty much just using the guidelines from my gestational diabetes diet but with less calories (though I'm not really going to be counting them, just eating right and portion control because that's all you really need along with exercise).

Anyways that's all until tomorrow morning.

He's Getting Older

Why does our little ones growing up have to be both amazing and sad? It's not fair. With each passing day I see William getting older. The way he moves, the noises he makes, his personality is just exploding. He's started asking for milk again, using the sign for it. He stopped for a while and while in the car today he made the sign for it. Oh and he decided to give me TWO kisses today. I seriously has tears in my eyes because he NEVER gives me kisses. And his teeth I believe have all finally broken through enough and have stopped paining him. Today and yesterday he only had maybe three tantrums whereas for the past month he's been having these little meltdowns more than ten times a day and I just wanted to scream and pull my hair out.

So eight teeth have all come above the gum line. With luck I shouldn't have to deal with teething again for about another 10 months when his two year molars come in. Oh and today he decided he really wanted to try his hand at eating with a fork and spoon. And he accidentally whistled and tried to do it again but couldn't. And he's getting the hang of calling me mama but right now it only seems to be when he needs my help. Like when he kept putting his mango slice in the cab of his toy bulldozer and couldn't get it out. *sigh* I miss my baby but I do so love the little man he's becoming and it's so great seeing him discover new things and hone his skills.