Bringing Others Into the Fold Week 26, Day 1

I'm so excited! Mom and Dad are watching Biggest Loser with me tonight. And they are inspired. Because of the events of this last week Dad has decided that he needs to increase his fitness. We've watched the Biggest Loser contestants tonight walking. As Dad started getting better at the hospital, they had him up and walking the hallways, and he wants to do more walking when he gets home. But he's afraid to just go walking around the neighborhood. For one thing, he's still not completely recovered, and for another, he has really bad allergies. I'm taking Mom and Dad back to Iowa tomorrow, and I'll be staying with them for a couple of weeks. They live in a small town with not a lot of indoor places to walk, but their local hospital has the right air quality and plenty of medical help if he has trouble. So Dad thinks it's a great plan for the two of us to go out to the hospital each day I'm there and walk -- to increase his fitness and to keep my weight loss on track. No pollen, plenty of places to sit if he needs to rest, bathrooms, and we can do it together. Perfect! I can hardly wait! Dad and I haven't been walking together since I was a teenager. It's about time we go for a walk again!

I'm packing up tonight, trying to figure what I'm going to need for two weeks away. I guess by the time I get home, it will have been about a month since I've had anything resembling what had been my normal life. When I was younger, I dreaded long periods of time without "normal". But as I have aged, I have learned to embrace them. These times provide a natural opportunity to reevaluate and make changes or improvements in my life, becoming a better me. I'm eager to see how all this shakes out and who I become. What an exciting time in my life!

Today's Tip:
One of the things my friends kept telling me this past week is to take time to take care of myself as I took care of Mom and Dad. It was very wise advice. One of the ways I did that was by making healthy food choices. Not in a stressful "OMG, I gotta do it!" way, but in a consciously purposeful way. It was one of the few things I had control over, and I found it very therapeutic. In years past not taking care of myself got me fat and took a toll on my health. In contrast, I have just come through a very difficult week feeling physically well. It's a much better way to live. Take time to take care of yourself. It really IS important.

Week 5, Day 1

I've been at this a full month, and today my weight sits at 249. Ten pounds gone -- not as much as I was hoping for by this date, but I'm okay with it. Not only are 10 pounds gone, but I'm also able to walk more than I could, and I've changed my dumbbells from 5 pounds to 8 pounds. I call that a month of success!

I walked again tonight, the fourth night in a row. I couldn't do as much tonight because I'm really sore. But according to my pedometer, I did a third of a mile, this time with no brief breaks. Add to that the roughly three miles in the three previous nights combined -- not too bad for a previously-sedentary person with a bad back and asthma. :) Adam suggested that I take a rest from walking tomorrow since I'm so sore tonight. We'll see. I'm leaning toward going ahead and heading out to walk anyway since there will be plenty of days in the coming months of winter when I won't be able to go out.

Food...I wasn't such a good girl about that today. I had pasta and chicken with a cheese sauce for dinner. Not a lot of it. My stomach has shrunken, and I can't hold as much as I used to. But still... What happened was that I baked a family-sized package of chicken breasts, and with some of it I made soup, and with the rest of it Adam made dinner. He knows I like pasta, chicken, and cheese and he wasn't thinking about the diet I'm on. He's a really good cook, so it tasted wonderful. He tried something while cooking the pasta that he had learned in a book about the Culinary Institute of America. Not a big deal, but it added some subtle but wonderful flavor to the overall meal -- he put the seasonings in the pasta water so the pasta picked up the flavors of the spices. He wants to much to go to the culinary institute here in Omaha. I wish we were financially set enough that he could do that. Someday... In the meantime, if he makes me something for dinner that isn't diet-friendly, I'm NOT going to refuse to eat it or even mention the diet. He's such a sensitive, caring son -- I'm so fortunate -- and I would never want him to feel bad about something he created for me.

Of course, tonight was another episode of the Biggest Loser. I'm kind of disappointed this season. Most of the contestants seem rather petty. I have yet to see any focus on Daniel, the young guy they brought back from another season to finish his rather daunting journey, or on Abby as she struggles through this (she's the lady who lost her husband and two children in a car accident). Like Abby said earlier, if she can get up every morning and work on her weight loss, anybody can! Instead they focus on the soap-opera-esque squabbles and machinations by all too many of this seasons contestants. I want to be educated and inspired like I was in previous seasons! I used to feel like these were people just like me. This time I'm glad they and I have nothing in common.

Still, for all my disappointment with this season, I did get a good tip tonight. Bob Harper, one of the trainers, suggested a different type of push-ups for those of us who can't do regular push-ups yet. He called them wall push-ups. Stand a bit away from the wall, put your arms straight out in front of you so your hands are on the wall, and push away. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's less stressful because you're not pushing up against gravity. He said you could also lean onto a desk or table and push away. I'm going to give it a try! If I can do that kind of push-up for now, then sooner or later I'll be able to do the regular kind. And in the meantime, I'll have a little more variety in my routine -- something to do when my legs are too tired from walking. :)

And so it goes... another week of work ahead. Miles to walk, calories to count, and a slimmer, healthier me to pursue.

Week 4, Day 5

Okay, today was an awesome day. A little iffy in the middle, but overall one of the better days I've had in a few months. Good food choices, a mile and a half or more of walking at a brisk pace, and a fun evening out. Can't beat it!

I woke up with pain, as usual. But once I got going, the pain went away. I don't know why or what I did right. But I felt really good! Not knowing how tomorrow will be, I took advantage of the lack of pain and walked as much as I could. Adam and I went out and got a new cable for my monitor at Best Buy, and I walked around the store, up and down aisles.

We stopped at a place called Jason's Deli for lunch. I got a turkey sandwich with tomatoes and lettuce leaves. Cheese came with it, so I took the slices of bread that had cheese melted on to them and set them aside, not eating them at all. Baked chips came with it, too, and I ate a few and left the rest.

I thought Adam was going out tonight, so about 6 o'clock I ate a chicken sandwich. Unfortunately, by 7:30 he was still home and he was unhappy because his plans didn't work out. So we went out and had dinner and a movie.

Since I had already had a sandwich at home, I ordered a salad -- Mesquite chicken, lettuce, corn relish and some other stuff. Seemed like a basically diet-friendly thing to order. I knew it would be big, so I planned on eating just a little bit of it and taking the rest home. Wrong. The thing was so terribly spicy hot that even my lips burned. I'm not a fan of hot food anyway, but then to have a salad that burned like that was not even close to fun. I asked for a menu so I could see what was in the salad, and nothing indicated to me that it was going to be so hot that it would burn my lips, my tongue, the sides of my mouth and my gums. The waitress was nice and without my requesting it, she asked the manager to remove it from our bill. Chili's is a decent place to eat, but never order their salads!

Since I hadn't be able to eat the salad, I was tempted to order a bit of dessert. The temptation got even greater when I asked Adam if he wanted any, and he said he didn't have room to eat a whole dessert by himself. Hmmm....if we split a dessert, it wouldn't be that many calories. It wouldn't be so bad. WRONG! It is bad. I didn't need the sugar, and I didn't need the calories. And truthfully, I wasn't even hungry. So I didn't give in.

The movie was good. We parked at one end of the parking lot, and the auditorium was the furthest away from our car, so I got some good walking in just getting to our seats and back to the car. Also, no popcorn. Adam got me Junior Mints, and I only had a few. Really! The rest of the box of mints came home with me and is put away for another day. And I had a bottle of water instead of soda. Good thing I didn't have a big tub of popcorn. We saw Zombieland, and thought it's not a scary movie, parts of it are very startling and I jumped a few times. The kind of jumping that ends up tossing popcorn all over the people nearby. Lack of popcorn -- another good reason to be on a diet. :)

It is a little bit chilly tonight. A brisk and invigorating chill , not the kind that makes you shiver. So I didn't feel like going home when we got out of the theater. I wanted to do something. Anything. Even though it was just a little before 11 o'clock, we decided to go to Walmart so I could walk around a bit. Like I said, I took advantage of the lack of pain!

From 11:15 to midnight I walked at a brisk pace. And not just "brisk for me". I think even normal people would think I was going at a pretty good clip. I stopped and rested for about 30 seconds to a minute now and then to catch my breath, and then I'd keep on going. I went around the store twice, going up and down each aisle in each section. Not window shopping or stopping to peruse. Actual walking. Though I did not yet have a pedometer, I feel certain that 45 minutes of walking has to have been at least a mile. I have a pedometer now -- one of my rest stops was in front of the exercise equipment and I grabbed a pedometer before continuing on.

So that's how my Saturday went. A good day! I hope yours was, too.