Don't hate me because of my BMI score.

Because according to super scary HBO documentary, I am officially skinny enough to escape anti-fat lady discrimination.  Take that, stupid size-ists.

For those of you who didn't catch that particular post, I watched a documentary called Weight of a Nation (I think, sorry if I got the name wrong), which, to be honest, was ridiculously bleak on the whole topic of weight loss.  For example, apparently women experience various forms of weight-discrimination when they reach a BMI of 27.  Because apparently, humanity is a big ugly JERK.

Anyway, back to my happy, after yesterday morning's run I weighed in at 166, bringing me down to a BMI of a respectably tiny... 26.8.  And yeah, I really thought it was a fluke.  I figured I'd sweated off a pound or so that I would pretty quickly gain back after a glass or two of water.  But shock of all shocks, I woke up this morning to find that IT DID NOT COME BACK.  So I am doing a happy dance and drinking a victory cup of coffee and celebrating the first officially achieved goal of the summer.

Also- this is my good mood, rockin awesome celebration picture after the run.

It should also be stated that I'm starting to feel a little bit like a runner again.  I felt incredibly relieved when I hit my first mile and wasn't winded yet (something of a novelty these days).  I was also happy when I hit mile 3 and still hadn't quit out.  By 3.5 miles though, I had to walk due to a stupidly painful blister on my right big toe.  I ran another probably half mile later on, and made it home with 5 miles done.  My running pace is embarrassingly slow, averaging a 12.5 minute mile, but I'm cool with it.  Even that is actually an improvement over what I was doing a month ago, (closer to a 13.5 minute mile), so I know I'm moving in the right direction.  I ran my last half marathon with a 11.45 minute average per mile, I'd like to get that down to 11 flat by next April.

Let it be said, real quick, that I'm not starving myself.  I am on an appropriate diet and I'm exercising when I can.  I am officially doctor approved for everything I am doing here.  That being said, I'm about 2 1/2 weeks into weight losing, and I've definitely kicked it up this week, so seemingly gotten things moving for the first real time lately.

And this morning I weighed 163.4.

Yeah.  It's kind of amaze-balls.

If you're counting, that's 5 pounds down since Monday, and almost 10 pounds down since my first Monday weigh-in.  Now I know that this stuff can go up and down, and I might actually weigh MORE than this by Monday, in fact, I'd almost expect it.  But I'm staying on the diet, and I'm getting in shape, and bless the Lord, THE FREAKING SCALE IS ACTUALLY MOVING.

In case your curious, I've gotten past the part that is slow and depressing and sucks.  This is the part where it's awesome.  This is the part where every goal you have feels totally achievable.

Speaking of goals, it's time for me to write the goals that I already have in my head and in my Lose It App.  So here's some numbers for your calculating pleasure:

Top-end healthy weight for my height: 155

Pre-pregnancy low weight: 146

College-age low weight (achieved at age 20, during my 2 month stay in Japan): 128

Current weight goal: 120.

Yeah.  It's lofty.  No, it's not unhealthy.  Under all the chubs, I have a small frame, and for my height, this gets me a BMI of around 20, on the low end of the healthy range.  And yes, if I start getting all toned and muscular I will adjust my goals. From the start of this journey, I'm asking for a total weight loss of 53 pounds.

But here's the thing.  I'm turning 29 in October.  I don't want to be an okay version of myself.  I want to become the BEST version of myself.  I want some real, praise-worthy "after" pictures.  I want to wear a flipping bikini, and I want to look HOT in it.  I know I'm going to struggle to be thin for the rest of my life, because I am a human and because I am a girl and because I have spent too many years being overweight.  But if I'm GOING to struggle anyway, I'd rather struggle to maintain the 120's rather than struggle around 150.  That makes sense, right?

Okay folks, I'm off to play mommy and exercise and stuff, good luck with all your goals today!!

Rage, Rage Against the... the how hungry I am.

A short but wonderful visit from my husband's brother and his wife has left me thinking a little bit more about weight loss this week.  Husband's brother is a surgeon, which means he comes equipped with all sorts of "medical facts", some of which made me want to "smack medicine in the face for being a jerk".  Like the first bomb he dropped on my good mood:  Weight loss, obtained by diet and exercise alone, has a 20% success rate.  Ouch.  I don't know if you "get math", but that's a really low percent, and I've never been able to obtain sufficient hubris to just ASSUME I'm one of the 20%.  Of course, betting on your own failure might make you more RIGHT, but it sure as heck doesn't make you more BETTER.  Or you know, something said with better grammar.  Just the same, even assuming I can work hard and overcome, that does give you a glimpse as to how difficult this whole thing is.  It is still very much a hard cold slap in the face.

The next fact he had, I've actually heard before.  Exercise makes you hungry.  If you're a woman, exercise makes you RAVENOUS.  Your body doesn't understand that fat can be bad, because bodies were built to protect against starvation, not against Super Super Morbid Obesity ( http://www.johnhustedmd.com/bmi.htm It's a thing.  I just learned that.  And to be honest, it doesn't sound NEARLY as super as they want you to think.)  A woman's body looks at exercise and screams that it will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO BEAR CHILDREN IF YOU DO THAT STOP STOP STOP, then tries its dangdest to make you eat everything you see to punish you for it.  Because of that, he recommends that it might be better to avoid exercise to lose weight.  You'll have an easier time sticking to the diet if you don't trigger your body's panic response.

For him, the rainbow through the fat-clouds seems to be bariatric surgery.  I know, I know.  You're thinking, he's a surgeon, of course he'd recommend surgery.  But just the same, if you'd heard all the amazing health benefits from the surgery, plus the 80% success rate in maintaining weight loss, you'd be signing up for the miracle surgery too.

Okay, so personally, I don't think I'm quite ready to subject my internal organs to the surgeon's knife.  Not that it doesn't sound great, not that I don't think I have weight to lose and diabetes to avoid, I'm just going to stick with the cheaper, less invasive (read: scary) methods of weight loss for now.  Oh, and I am going to work out, too.  Because I have a fool-proof secret method for not over eating as a result.  You want in?

I call it the Screaming and Bitching and Crying and Whining Method.  As you can imagine, my husband is a HUGE fan.  Basically, you let yourself succumb to the emotions of hunger, but not the normal behavioral response, i.e., eating.  You let yourself feel depressed. And angry.  And in denial.  And you blame others.  Basically, you go through each of the stages of grief every single day.  But the most important part is that you DO. NOT. EAT.  Well, more than your daily allotted calories, that is.  Eat a little, geez.  In my experience, if you do this for three straight weeks, your body decides to give up on you, acceptance arrives, and you don't feel quite so wickedly, painfully, torturously hungry anymore.

That's it, Folks.  My great big secret to weight loss.  So if you'll excuse me, I've got some working out to do.  Then, I've got to go weep openly over a tray of leftover brownies I'm not allowed to eat.  Awesome.

Onward and Upward, Week 3, here we come!

Quick sum up of week 2:

~Family visits

~Negative Amounts of Exercise-- Like, exercise from previous weeks should no longer be counted.  That's how bad this week was.

~Emotions and sad things that give you emotions

~Stomach flu

And Finally

~ 3.5 pound weight loss

Obviously some positives and negatives there, so positive and so negative in fact, that I can't exactly call it a good or bad week.  It was wonder-terrible.  Maybe that should be a new thing.  Oh, and I can't blame having company on my lack of exercise, since the company exercised.  I CAN blame the stomach flu, and my children, which I am always happy to do.  So there you have it, week 2, summed.

My weigh in this morning, right around 168.5, was a tad disappointing to me.  I've seen lower over the past few days, not a TON lower, but a good pound beneath my current weightage.  That thought reminded me of my last Monday's post, where I had a similar complaint.  It also reminded me that LAST Monday, I weighed in at 172.  That thought gave me a new idea.  I decided to start posting my Monday weigh ins, just to have a nice, once-weekly idea of how this is all going.  This also lets me see what "over all" progress is looking like more than the day to day weigh ins are, since there tends to be such a high degree of volatility in the day to day.  That being said, you'll notice some additional updating around the blog, as I decided to make some adjustments and clean things up a bit.  If you noticed, hope you like it.  If you didn't, well then I guess it doesn't really matter either way.

One of the little adjustments you may care to take note of us that little icon off to your left, and maybe up a bit.  Just under the About Me section.  Go ahead, take a look.  It's purple.  You see?  It says that I intend to lose a marathon.  In 13 weeks, beginning June 18, actually.  I found this lovely blog created by a girl named Jess, and she has started a 13 week marathoner challenge.  And although I found this too late to be IN the challenge (seems she got a thousand participants and closed the registration) I thought I would consider myself to be contest-adjacent, and use this 26.2 pound weight loss as my personal goal too.  So as far as this puppy goes, I've got 12 weeks and 22.7 pounds left!!  Achieving this challange will mean I get down to 145.8 pounds by September 17.  For those of you keeping track, that would be lower than my last weight loss low by an entire 0.2 pounds.  So yeah, it's ambitious, but I'm TOTALLY into it.  There ya go accountability family, that's the new goal!!  The idea that I can be even thinner than before as I reach my 29th (oh God, it hurts, it hurts) birthday in October, well that feels like a super great idea.  Feel free to yell at me if you hear or see or read that I'm eating too much or exercising too little, because I've got some lofty goals to reach, and I could really use that kind of kick in the pants!

Now on to week 3 with a bullet!

Yuck. I mean it. Yuck.

Having the stomach flu when you already have children is a bad freaking choice, I tell you what.

After all of the little things you do for your kids in that day-to-day battle called "keep your children alive... it's the law", you'd think they might be willing to show even the slightest modicum of consideration in return.

It would seem, though, that this is asking way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much.

Toddlers don't care if you were up all night puking your brains out.  Toddlers still want to play and still need to eat and may very well still poo themselves just to top it off. (Thanks a whole lot for that by the way, Sweetie.  That wasn't hard on Mommy's already queasy stomach at ALL.)

And newborns, as a matter of fact, seem to be able to sense this weakness and feed off of it.  "You're distracted and unhappy, aren't you?  PERFORM AMAZING FEATS TO KEEP ME FROM SCREAMING MY LUNGS OUT IMMEDIATELY OR I WILL SCREAM MY LUNGS OUT."  I assume this must be the thought process, because something certainly turned my normally easy-going baby into a cantankerous little fuss-budget.

This thought always makes me laugh at those stupid teenagers who want to have babies because they want someone to love them unconditionally.  Okay, maybe not laugh, that speaks to a pretty serious place of need, and that's like, ridiculously sad.  But let's be honest, babies are the kind of people that respond to the worst day of your life by pooping in your lap.  They don't make life easier, they aren't terribly fun on shopping trips, and five bazillion couples can contest to the fact that they will NOT fix your marriage.  Babies are self-absorbed, screaming little poop-machines.

Self-absorbed screaming little poop-machines that I love very, very much, mind you.

Side note, if you think I talk too much about poop, then I can say that you have not yet met any children.  Or at the very least, I can say that you have not yet met MY children.  They're adorable, but my goodness can they ever bring it.

Anyway, I'm writing this today because I actually feel better, and the "wanting to die" sensation of the last couple days wasn't conducive to anything more strenuous than frequent napping.

In other recent news, my husband noticed my new profile picture (seen below) and decided to comment.

"Where is THAT picture from?  You look really skinny there!"

Which I think begs the question:  Is a complement given 1 year late, when it's 20 pounds no-longer-true, still a compliment?  Ah, what the heck, I'll take it.  I find I frequently look better in retrospect anyway.

Happy Sunday y'all!

One week in!!

This morning marks one whole week since starting the diet, which means one down, the rest of my life to go!  Everyone say YAAAAAAAAaaaaa...aaaa...aa....ay?  And of course my weigh in this morning shows an official weight loss of

drum roll please....

brrrrrrrr ba dumbadumbadumbadumbadumbadumbadum...

Prettymuchnothing!!!! YEEEA... no, wait, that's a bad thing.  I retract my celebration and instead submit some pretty serious pouting.  Harumph.

Okay, so I think that on last Monday I weighed in around 173, today was about 172, so maybe I lost a pound or something. Yippidy freakin do.  This whole week I've been vascilating from 169 and 172, so being at the upper end there feels, ya know, not as good as I would like.

Oddly enough though, I'm not suffering from any level of depression with this whole working out, dieting, and not really losing weight thing.  As some of you already know, I've been here before.  Almost 2 years ago when I first started dieting, spending a week with no real observable weight loss was the thing that almost derailed me.  Cuz seriously, it kind of blows.

This time though, I do have a couple pieces of knowledge that I did not have then.  1)  I know about last time.  I know that pressing on eventually worked.  First two weeks: bupkis.  Next 8 months: 45 pounds, gone.  So, you know.  Worth it.

Number 2 piece of knowledge is even more encouraging:  This time, I'm already taking my measurements.  So this time I know that, despite the lackluster weight loss, I've already lost an inch on my waist and 3/4 inch around my kangaroo pouch belly.  So now I have to ask you, HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!? Totally crazy freaking awesome, that's how.

That's it for today, folks.  Here's hoping to see more number-movement in the next few days, but I'm not exactly holding my breath, as we have company coming over and I can foresee some diet-bending in my near future.  Yikes!

The Devil Inside Me

No, not like the Exorcist, just so we're clear.  Or even like the movie that my title rips off.  (Except I haven't seen it, so technically, I can't be sure.)  Just the same though, I've got a nasty little demon sitting on my shoulder, or up inside my ear, attempting to sabotage a great deal about my life right now.  And in case you were curious, It. Feels. Awesome.

Life is tough at the moment, for a couple of small reasons, and one really big reason.  My grandfather, one of the most incredible people I've ever had the pleasure to meet in person, is really not doing well.  I guess you always expect that one day you'll lose your grandparents, but to be honest, I'd really rather not.  My grandfather is a very important person to me, and I really think it would be just fine if lived another 15 or 20 years.  Oddly enough, though, it seems I don't get to make those decisions.  My grandfather's future is in a more capable set of hands than my own, I know that, but that doesn't mean that part of me wouldn't prefer to take the reigns here.

Obviously, this Big Bad has taken over a great deal of my thought and prayer life.  But there are always the little day to day things too.  Like money.  Like how my beautiful little boy who I love and would NOT sell back even if that were an option, will have cost us about 5k just to get out of my body and out of the hospital, never mind the little additional cost of keeping mim alive for the next 18 or so years (since after that, it's on him).  And like how earlier this week, the husband's transmission decided to get, shall we say, creative, about when it wanted to allow the car to move.  Still not sure about the full damage there, but we saw some pretty cartoonish dollar signs in the mechanic's eyes, so I assume that this can't be good.

And lastly there's always the niggling little issue of my diet.  Today is day 4, and I know for a fact that I'm entering into the hard times.  I've been here before dozens of times.  I've touched a "bottom" weight on day 3, only to see a slightly higher weight on day 4.  On top of it, I know that there's a decent chance that tomorrow could be higher still.  Yes, I'm still dieting, yes, exercising at least 30 minutes a day (starting small, I know), but somewhere between water retention, rejuvenating new muscles, and the body's panicked reaction to any weight loss whatsoever, I may not see another "net" pound loss for another week or two.  Which makes it VERY easy to give up now.

The demon on my shoulder wants me to despair.  He wants me to quit.  He wants me to panic.  He wants me focus on myself and my wants in a way that makes me useless to myself, my God, and my family.  He wants to make me focus on my own insurmountable faults and weaknesses because good Lord, he knows that they are there, and he knows that they are many.  And the linch pin here, is that he wants me not to pray.  He keeps telling me not to bother with praying about minor issues such as my health and our financial status when there is such a big issue at hand.  How selfish is it, he says, to worry about your pant size when your grandfather is fighting for his life? And it's a hard argument to answer, I must say.  It's certainly kept me from praying about a vast number of things throughout my life so far.

But today was different for me.  Today, I informed the nasty demon that my God is infinite.  That my God can hurt with my family over this scare while he bears the burden of my family's financial concerns, while he sustains me past my own physical weaknesses.  God can hurt when thousands of his children undergo genocide while at the same time hurting for one of his children who fell down and skinned her knee.  My God isn't just big enough for the big things, he's big enough for the little ones too.

He's also, by the way, the God of insurmountable blessings.  He's the God that has redeemed so many places of pain and heartache in my own life that at this point, I can't even keep track.  He's the God that has already blessed me far beyond what my imagination could have conjured, despite my own weaknesses and propensity for sin.

So despite life being a little tough these days, I'm not spending every day plagued by anxiety as I once was.  Not because there are less things to be anxious about, but because I'm learning more and more about how to pray.  And even more importantly, about who I'm praying to.

Day 3. Dum dum duuuum.

Wow.  I forgot how much it sucks to run when you're wildly out of shape.  It hurt and then I stopped.  Yikes.

So today is my 3rd official day of dieting, and I've found a new way that my body is attempting to sabatoge me.  Basically, it's trying to get me to eat crap.  No, not junk food, like, LITERAL. CRAP.

Okay, maybe not actual fecal matter.  But I did see a Dorito's Taco Bell taco commercial and thought something along the lines of "Mmmm.  Wait... mmmm?"  I promise you know that I will NOT be eating a Dorito's taco because, seriously?  Ew. That looks incredibly McNasty.  But now that I'm on a diet, now that I've decided to deprive my body of the delicious normal food that it wants, it seems to have lowered its standards some.

I've been here before.  This is the time of the diet when you do stuff like, drink chocolate syrup straight out of the bottle or eat sugar cubes.  Because even though all of these things are so disgusting you might be gagging right now, my body is more than willing to try anything to get the influx of crap it so desperately wants.

I will resist the poo-taco*.  I will resist the chocolate syrup and I will not buy sugar cubes and I will avoid any other sort of sugar intake that would make a normal brained person refuse to be my friend anymore.  I promises.

It should also be noted that today was my second post baby day under 170, as I weighed in at 169.6.  I took some absolutely terrifying "pre" tummy pictures, which were, again, terrifying and you don't get to see, unless I'm suddenly sporting a really impressive "post" tummy.  Let's hope that happens soon.

Anyway, tough day 3 has come to an end, here's hoping tomorrow doesn't present any major chinks in the diet armor.  Night night y'all!

*Also, I'm pretty sure that calling it a poo-taco seals my fate on ever receiving any sort of endorsement from either of the aforementioned poo-taco collaborators.  That's a bummer.