sleep mode

My apologies for the lack of keeping up with you, dear blog. Things have been more hectic and stressful then usual and I really had to force myself to sit down and write today. You'd think with all the frustration and negativity going on in my life from just about all sides, I'd have a lot of steam to blow off huh? Not the case for some reason

.

I need some downtime and relaxation now more than I think I've ever needed it in recent memory. I keep telling myself that if I can just get through the rest of this year, then I can start fresh in 2011. Right now, I'm sucking at everything and that is not just me being hard on myself. 

I've committed to a lot of things recently: being a CASA volunteer, starting to live a healthier lifestyle, researching what it is I want to do next professionally, pursuing my master's, being better with finances, etc. I have not been putting nearly 50% of myself into any of these things. Even my day to day activities at work and at home are suffering. I'm not sure when life became all about just barely getting through the day with my sanity, just to start the whole process again the next day, but it's happening now and has been for awhile. I just need time. Sweet, precious, unattainable time. Not even time to do it all, just time to think about it all and get my priorites straight. I need a plan and I need one now.

One might look at this and think whoa, sister, it may be time to get on some meds. I've been on some meds and I'm not nearly to the point I was when I needed them. This is me realizing that I might be going down that path again.

I think I've decided to do the best I can possibly do right now which is: take the rest of the year off. No more thinking about any of the above on a constant basis. I'm ready to say goodbye to this year and good riddance!

Starting small

I'm done whining now. Cue applause! I whine a lot when it comes to all of this and I've accepted that this is just part of the journey. Set-backs and whining come with it. I'm brushing all of that off and I just have to say, I might be very unlucky in a few areas of my life, but having great friends is not one of those areas. Throughout all of the rough areas in my life with family, finances, love (until I met Joshua, of course), school, etc--I've always been very fortunate to have a lot of strong friendships. Friends have often been the one and only thing to get me through some of the really bad stuff. It makes me so happy to have the support of so many friends right now with all of this. Emails, comments, phone calls and letters have been very important to keeping me going. I'm actually going to print off a lot of the written stuff and keep it in my book, just to remind myself to hang in there. 

After speaking with a couple of said friends, I have decided to set several very small goals that I feel like I won't so easily break all of the time. If I do, tomorrow is another day to try again. Here is what I've come up with to start with:

1. Make one healthy complete meal for dinner each week (one that I make, not Josh)

2. Have one day a week where I can eat whatever I want and not stress about it one bit

3. 30-45 minutes of cardio two times a week

4. Eat more veggies

5. Zero fast food

6. Research counselors in the area

7. Research various exercises I can do at home

8. Use small plates

9. Single helpings only

10. No food after 7:30pm on the weekdays

I'm going to try this for 2 weeks and come back to it to re-evaluate and see what I can increase and what is not working for me. I'm going to start this on Sunday because I always choose Mondays for my start dates on things and I don't know why. I'm going to have a weekly check in with my good friend, Angie to keep my focus.

Here's to small wonders...

Thanksgiving fail

I think the title says it all right there. I only had phone internet this week while we were back home for the holidays, so that is the reason for my hiatus. I really had to force myself to sit down and admit my wrong doings on here but here we are.

So I kept the grazing to a minimum, but I ate tons and tons. Most of the week it was only one large meal a day that we had, but oh my what a meal it was. Lots of starches and sweets. I barely moved all week too. I couldn't even hold out for some massive shopping on black Friday. I look and feel digusting and just all around at a low point. It didn't help matters that this was probably one of the worst holidays I've had recently in terms of family drama. I feel like I need a cleanse of some sort. I need a sauna, some kind of nutritional cleanse, multiple days in the gym and to rid myself completely of negative, self-involved people. All of which seem unattainable to me right now.

I feel overwhelmed, unmotivated and uninspired by life in general at this time in my life. Maybe it's the holidays. To quote one of my favorite movies, Untamed Heart, (I'm a Christian Slater fangirl) "It's not right to feel sh*tty this time of year, but ya know everybody does".

Psycho-analyze this

Two blogs in one night is probably never going to happen again, but as I'm sitting here in our apartment with the windows open and the wind blowing like crazy (tornado?), I feel like I should write again, so I'm going with it. 

The holiday season is very bittersweet for me, mainly for one reason. I don't really get to see most of my family members. With my dad working out of town and moving from place to place, it's hard to narrow down and time and date to spend time with him with all of us girls. There is also the issue of him not appreciating my husband for the wonderful person that he is, but that is a whole other can of worms we won't go into. I haven't spent the last 2 or 3 Thanksgivings with my mom for obvious reasons and it looks like this year will be no exception. 

Without going into the long and drawn out story of my life, let's just say I've spent a great deal of it on the receiving end of a very negative and controlling force. As a child, you aren't able to exactly choose who is in your life and who isn't. I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted as a teenager, but I didn't have the ability to get away from people who consciously tried to break me down to feeling like I was worth nothing. However it appeared to those around me, to me, it was abuse. Extreme psychological and emotional abuse. I feel like I lived in a household where I couldn't control anything around me. It's only natural to me that maybe food was the one thing I could control in my own home. Meals were always good and plentiful in my house amid the constant chaos. Of course, it was a comfort too. I'm not a "sad" eater, I'm a "happy", "sad", "angry", "excited", "bored", basically any kind of emotion,eater.

Things are a lot different in my life now, although they didn't have to be. I chose to remove myself from that situation and not look back or give it. I'm beyond proud of myself and I know how far I'm come from the child that I was going through all of that. I also know that if someone dug into the issues I have even slightly, a lot of emotions and thoughts about the past would be at the root of it all. That is scary to me. It makes me think that exploring therapy as an option would just be back-peddling. I've dealt with this part of my life by being resilient and rising above it. Turning away and not getting sucked into the black hole of it all has needlessly cost me so much. It's been painful and heart-breaking, but it's something I had to do in order to be the person I wanted to be. Really, it's what I had to do if I wanted to just plain be okay. 

I'm afraid delving back into it would just be another set-back. No, I do not care enough to go up to this person and be like this is what you did to me and blah, blah, blah. Closure, let's be friends--I don't think so. I'm not harboring hate, I just have no interest in it at all. It's like the idea of playing video games. Do I loathe playing video games? No. Is my life missing something because I don't play video games. No. Will playing video games bring something spectacular into my life? No. There's just zero interest. Life is waaaay too short to bring anyone less than spectacular into your life (something I got from Ms. Angela Dawn Huxford) and I'm not about to start doing that now.  Basically if you are less than amazing, you can go on your way and I can go on mine.

So after that rant, I'm torn on what to think about therapy. I do think I need professional help with several issues, but at what cost? Let me tell you one thing: I'd rather have a short life being fat  than have a long life of being thin if it compromises the person I am right now. Period.

Set-back city

I swear my body knows when I'm starting to get a semi-healthy rhythm going. It realizes quickly that I'm working out at the gym and consuming garbage and then BAM! I get sick. Last week was spent nursing a nasty sore throat and lots of coughing and being unable to breathe. My inability to breathe is something that has been an issue for what feels like the entire year of 2010. I can just be sitting at my desk at work and feel like I'm struggling to get enough air. Add physical activity to that and yeah, it's not pretty. I can't understand why this happens to me every single time I try to better myself. Is it psychological? Could I actually be making myself sick over making a change?


Anyway, I worked out on Monday and no other time this past week. I didn't eat badly, but I didn't eat well. I didn't eat much at all until I felt better Friday and had take-out for lunch AND dinner, which I generally make a rule about not doing. It just kind of sickens me to do two meals in one day of meals outside the home. I had Wendy's and Denny's and a coney dog at the parade. Josh and I saw the new Harry Potter movie, talked a lot, enjoyed our community. Why did that all have to include an obscene amount of calories though? Why does any good time for me have to include food?


And here we are starting the week again. Not just any week; Thanksgiving week. I feel like I need to prepare myself mentally for holiday eating. I'm not a huge Thanksgiving food person, but my husband and his mom are putting together quite the spread this year, I must say. Because I'm not a big turkey fan, I usually load up on sides; sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, baked mac and cheese--you see where I'm going with this? If there are several items to choose from I feel like I need to have some of each thing. I don't think this would be so bad if I had a little of each thing and didn't just graze all day and all night long, like we usually do.


So, I need some advice again. What do you do over the holidays to reign in the grazing and over-eating? Any little tips, no matter how insignificant they might be would be a big help to me :)

Weekend Ruts

It's Monday night and I'm definitely coming off of one of my "eat whatever I see/want" weekends. We had a big, greasy, yummy and late breakfast-for-dinner on Friday night. Saturday I went to dinner w/ family and had a big, brown-sugared out sweet potato, prime rib and lots of bread and salad. Sunday was Steak N Shake, 'nuff  said there. The thing is, I didn't eat very much in between those meals. I never stay consistent with that. I will be good about eating breakfast, lunch and dinner throughout the week and then that goes to heck on the weekends when all I want to do is eat yummy food with the family. Skipping meals is bad and it causes me to consume a days (plus, sometimes) worth of calories in one meal. This will be something I try to work on in the future.
I like the idea of eating on a schedule. This is a sample of what I would like to stick to:

8:30am-- granola bar and apple w/ peanut butter
10:00am--yogurt or pudding cup
12:00pm--lunch
3:00pm--snack (insert idea here)
6:00pm-- dinner
7:30pm- snack
NO FOOD AFTER 7:30pm is a must!!

Anyway, I was feeling pretty down about the food choices I made this weekend. I had a crazy and blah Monday at work and I came home to find a gift from a friend that really cheered me up. She put together a book of recipes, advice and a very sweet letter encouraging me to do this. She has done it herself over a steady period of time and really is a model for what I hope to do myself. It was very inspiring and thoughtful to have something like that. I was having a hard time getting my "notebook" together and this provided a start for me, which was something I needed. I'm terrible at starting anything and everything in my life.

Also, I went to the gym with my sister-in-law tonight and got a good 45 min cardio workout in. I always watch everyone on the weight machines while I'm on the eliptical and try to keep how they are doing the movements in my mind so I can go over and mimick them. That never happens. I do not want to look like an idiot, examining the charts on how to actually work the machines. I just stay away from the scary things. Every once in awhile I'll pick up the dumbbells and move them around like I know what I'm doing. Once again, I don't. No one there is looking at me and its completely dumb to think that they are. It's not about that as much as it is that I want to be working the "right" muscles and not hurting myself or just wasting my time. So, I'll be looking into online demonstrations and such, but I need to know what's right for a beginner. And when I say beginner, wow, do I mean it.

That's all for now. I'll be going to the gym again tomorrow and trying to step up the cardio a bit more :) 

elephant in the room

So far in this blog, I've explained a lot of my reasoning for why I'm wanting to start the journey to get healthier and lose weight, but not what I'm currently doing now to begin this process. I wonder why I haven't mentioned this, hmmm. Let me tell you how well it's going so far...
This week was a crazy busy week for me at work and I did not go to the gym at all. I wasn't getting home until after 8pm from a 12 hour day and I just knew I wasn't going to throw the gym in there too. I'm not beating myself up over it, which is unusual, but instead I'm accepting it and telling myself yeah that sucks but tomorrow is a new week. A much, much less busy week. I can hit the gym next time at least 3 days. My current goal is to get in the gym at least 3 days a week for 45min-1 hr workouts. I've got a notebook of some sort that I'm going to fill with exercises, routines, advice, etc that I can keep with me for various reasons. I want to have a chart to fill in what days I complete what and for how long. I'm not counting the calories I've burned and I'm NOT weighing myself. Screw that. I won't be seeing scales anytime in the near future again. That feels very liberating. 
I also want to have a place for recipes, a food journal, advice from friends, etc. I want to plan out family meals a week at a time. I've found that if I know what I'm having for dinner over the next few nights, there is less opportunity to eat junk and I'm less anxious when I have a meal to look forward to. 

We went to the store on Sunday and these are a few things we picked up:
--grapes, string cheese,ritz crackers, apples, bananas, butterscotch pudding and granola bars all to be eaten for breakfasts and/or mid-morning snacks.
--tuna, deli meats, lean cuisines, 80 cal instant potatoes, hot dogs, stuff for salad and some nasty pre-grilled chicken patties that I just can't force down, all to be eaten during lunch 
-- meatloaf, stews, crab, salmon, marie calendars lasagna, taco salad to be made this week for dinners.


I did go out to dinner with co-workers one night this week for business and had huge portion of chicken parm of which I only ate barely half of. Not because I wanted to or didn't have the room for it. I was among professionals and I didn't want to look like the piglet of the group. Especially when they all had much smaller portions and couldn't finish half of their meals without being "stuffed". When we got up to leave, I did feel nourished, but not full. This is one of my biggest problems ever. When I eat a meal I HAVE to feel full, very full before I'm satisfied. I took the rest over to Josh while he was at work, but I seriously considered taking it home and finishing it. And guess what? I was mad about it. Not super mad, not mad for very long, but I was mad that I didn't get to finish my good meal. For those of you who like to dissect "issues", there's plenty for you right here to go nuts over!


As you can see, my food options during the day are lacking. I usually get in a very tasty dinner, courtesy of my husband who is a fabulous cook, so really it's my lunches that usually suck. I'm so disheartened by the lackluster choices waiting for me at home that I order take-out or go to the drive-thru. Granted, I only do this about 1 time a week (due to not having the $) but I'm so sick of frozen lunches and tuna every single day. I have an hour for lunch and it is the quickest hour of the day by far, so everything I eat has to be made in 40 min or less if you don't count the 10 min I take to get home and 10 to get back to the office ( I like to be early getting back). 


So far, my notebook is empty. I have lots of ideas of what to put in this thing and still nothing. It's taking the step to compile it all and organize it into what I want. It's just another way to put off getting healthy, right?  Lazy, right? None of that negativity is going to help me do this, no matter how true it may be. I've got to get up and get moving.

Inspiration

There are a ton of reasons why I want to lose weight and get healthy. There's no reason not to want those things.In the past, it's been that I wanted to be a hottie. Plain and simple. After spending the majority of my life being the "friend" to many of the guys I've wanted to be in a relationship with, I've always carried the reality with me that it didn't matter how good of a listener I was, how interesting, how genuine, sweet, cool, whatever...I just didn't have the goods to make a romantic interest anything but platonic. I've never had the delusion that physical attraction doesn't matter. It's incredibly important. I for one, have never been attracted to bigger guys. I've always had a thing for the most unattainable sort: skinny, long hair, mysterious, usually a musician, you get the picture. Don't get me wrong, I have had a few guys fall for me. I have broken some hearts, people. They were always the hearts of sweet guys I just wasn't into though.  When I met my husband, I experienced for the first time in my life a mutual attraction on all levels. I experienced for the first time truly falling in love. I thought I had fallen in love before once or twice, but no. I had been the queen of unrequited love, but not true love. True love is something experienced by both parties involved.

Now I'm not saying I wouldn't have a good laugh if I lost a bunch of weight, saw a couple of those old friends I was in love with and them think I was "the one that got away" or something along those lines. Who wouldn't enjoy someone from your past realizing too late what you always knew back then. That they totally missed out on what might of been the best person to walk into their lives! In saying that, being a hottie is no longer my primary concern. Except if it comes to being a hottie for my husband, of course.

I have come to the point in my life where I am ready to be a mother. I know the thought of having children at my age makes some of my college friends visibly shudder, but it's true for me. I've felt the emotional change for about 2 years now and I feel like I am fully ready at this point. Financially and physically, nope no way. Mentally and emotionally, check. Josh and I both want to have a big family. He has 2 brothers and a sister, and they are all pretty close. I love the idea of having 3 or 4, including my stepson. I have gone through most of my life knowing exactly what kind of mother I will and won't be based on my own experiences as a child. I'm not at the point where I feel like I can now live up to my own expectations in that department. I know I won't have perfect kids. I know I won't be able to protect them from everything or prevent certain unfortunate things from happening in their lives. One thing I can at least try to do, is give them the tools to be healthy. I want my kids to want to eat fruits and veggies and play outside instead of being consumed by TV and videogames. I'm a big believer in the idea that you can't expect your kids to do/not do something if you are not a living example of what you are teaching them. I cannot be fat and lazy and not expect my kids to be the same way, in a nutshell. Or maybe worse, be so embarrassed by me that they treat overweight children (or anyone different from them) badly, which I absolutely will not tolerate for one second. My kids may be a lot of things one day, but I will not have mean children.

I am also concerned with how dangerous it would be for myself and my child to get pregnant at the weight I'm at now. I most certainly would have a high risk pregnancy and that scares me to death. What if I, simply by not taking care of myself properly, actually caused my baby to be not well? How selfish is that? I'm not on board to even want to risk that. I'm somewhat lucky in the sense that my weight has not caused a lot of medical issues. I have perfect blood pressure and cholesterol levels. I'm not diabetic. yet. My asthma is noticeably the worst it's been since I was very little. I could have all of these medical issues in an instant.

My dad was our playmate growing up and still is for my 10 year old sister. He would always get down on the floor and play with our toys, chase us, play hide and seek, all the fun stuff that tires you out fast. I wonder if I could do any of that with a child. I think so many parents don't actually play with their kids anymore and I don't want to be like that. My weight would be the one thing that would hold me back in that area.

In all, I'm making the change for myself and my future. Even in typing that out I'm doubtful of myself. I haven't felt an enormous difference within myself from all the other 400 times I've tried to make a change. There hasn't been something that has "clicked" for me yet. But, as a good friend recently told me, I need to be taking baby steps here. Slow and steady wins the race:)

Excuses

I made it to the gym 3 days this week. That is an amazing feat for me. I hated just about every second of it, like usual, but I went. For me, exercise would be just fine if it was enjoyable in the slightest. I have the wonderful advantage of having a free gym with lots of great machines and a track just down the block from where I work and it's free even. Just one of the benefits of working for a university. You think I would just jump all over the chance to utilize this service, yet I do not. Here are my excuses,er, reasons:

1. It's very overpopulated by students (granted they aren't bopsy little blondes like in the old IU days, but still)
2. The machines I want to use are rarely available
3. Most of the time I have to go alone (although having my lovely and motivating sister-in-law with us some of the week helps tremendously with that!)
4. Most of the time I have to go at the end of the work day when I'm tired, cranky and just want to be home
5. I get so unbelievably bored out of my mind 5 minutes into anything I do at the gym. Even with my jammin' Ipod.


And lastly and most importantly, I hate to be out of breath and I hate that my body just will not move the way it should. I hate the way it just screams at me when I try to push it. In all, if the act of exercise didn't have the majority of all of the above, I'd probably love it! At this point, I'd settle for a workout routine that doesn't bore me to tears. I tried Zumba for awhile and really enjoyed it. I went steadily for most of the time, got sick one week and missed and just couldn't get back to going regularly again. Now, it's too expensive. This is the problem I'm running into with most things. Weight Watchers is great, but it costs money, Zumba is great, but it costs money and finally, eating healthy from what I've experienced is super expensive. I need to find a way to eat right and workout for very little cost to me. Any ideas? Send them my way! I'd really like to know how others find a way around loathing exercise.

Enough with the excuses. Physical activity is just something that we all need to have daily in our lives. Period. If it means I need to make a little checklist of things I can do each day like park in the farthest spot away from my work building and take the stairs every time, then that's what it's going to take. I'm going to put a booklet together of some sorts. Something I can take to the gym with me to look at and check off things I've done as I go. I need some help to fill that baby so I'm going to be researching over the next few weeks to build it up.

Obsessions

I have what I call somewhat of an "obsessive" personality. When I hear a song I love for the first time, I have to play it over and over and over again on repeat. I sing it all day long for days on end. I won't listen to anything else for a short period of time and then I can move on. I've been known to be a little on the obsessed side with a few crushes in my life, which is kind of embarrassing to admit. One of my biggest obsessions however, is with food. 

I think about food in some way during all hours of the day. I have to know when exactly I'm going to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I skip a meal for some reason or another, it makes me very nervous and uneasy. When we are getting low on food in the house, I get very nervous and uneasy until we do a grocery run. If I have a craving for something unhealthy that I can easily obtain, I might be able to pass it up, but I think about it constantly after the fact. I think to myself "Wow, I wanted that and I can't have it why? Because I'm huge. If I was at a normal weight, I could have had that". For example, last night I went to the gym and what did I want to do the second I left? Eat dinner. And I wanted a McRib. They're only around for 6 weeks at a time after all. I knew Josh was at work, so I'd be on my own for dinner (which is a huge problem for me), which meant no one would no any better if I just went and grabbed some fast food after just burning calories right? It took everything I had in me to drive home and eat the perfectly good soup sitting in my fridge. The whole time I ate the delicious soup I was steaming that it wasn't a McRib. I just couldn't let it go. This is the how much effort it takes for me to not eat one unhealthy meal. If you eat three meals a day 7 days a week thats 21 meals a week, 64 meals a month, and so on that I have to fight through. It's exhausting.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want out of this blog and this transformation. I started out thinking that no matter what, I don't want to count every single carb and calorie I consume. I don't want to spend a million hours a week in the gym. I don't want to eat things that taste like cardboard for every meal. Life is so short as it is. Yes, it can be lengthened by doing these things but I don't want to live forever, especially not this way. Enjoying food is a big part of my life. I love our family gatherings that always come with good food, laughter, and fun. I love my going out to eat with my husband and staying in and eating his yummy creations. So there, I don't want to obsess over all of this right? As you can see from above, I already do, just in a different way then the health nuts do. Realizing that has made me see that neither extreme is for 

me and I just don't know how to get to a middle.  

A good friend of mine asked me a week or so ago, what is it about losing weight that scares you? I laughed it off because, hello, who would want to stay at this weight? Who would want to be uncomfortable and busting out of a size 24? Who would want to not feel pretty ever and be endangering their health more and more every day? Her question has stayed with me though and I can't shake it. So really, what does it mean when a person just will not commit to anything that has to do with changing their body even with countless opportunities? I'm hoping to find that out soon. I think it's going to be the key I've been looking for to make the change permanent and a success.

Icebreaker

Hi, my name is Ashley and I'm a 25 year old woman. I love to sing anytime, anywhere and I'm actually pretty good at it. I have a lot of other interests, mainly traveling, human rights issues, refugee resettlement, volunteering for CASA, antique stores, bed & breakfasts, etc. I've lived abroad and can speak conversational Spanish. I have two college degrees that I worked hard for. I'm married to the one and only person I've ever had a relationship with, Joshua. He's the true love of my life. I have a lot of good people in my life and make sure that I keep up my thankfulness for it all quite regularly.

I'm also tall, have green eyes and a decent complexion. Oh yeah, I also weigh 286 lbs. Whew! There I said it.That's me in the oversized background picture above this post. I look at it every once in awhile to remind myself that even at that weight I can be beautiful.

I know what you're thinking. Wow, really? That's more than a Colts' linebacker! Well, you don't look like it! You hide it pretty well! I would have never guessed that much! I've been overweight since I was 8, so that's a good 17 years of becoming masterful at hiding myself. This has been mostly accomplished by focusing so much of my energy on having a likable personality. I enjoy making people laugh, talking for hours and I've developed a true interest in getting to know the people around me. Somehow, I've always thought if I could just open my mouth and speak before anyone has a good chance to look at me, maybe they wouldn't think I was lazy or a slob or ugly. Maybe people wouldn't even associate me with weight at all. 

I'm am now at a place in my life where I'm very comfortable with who I am on the inside. I've spent a lot of time and effort exploring what kind of person I do and do not want to be for what seems like my whole life. I'm now going to spend some time focusing on my health and who I want to be on the outside. This blog will be about anything and everything related to my quest to live a healthier lifestyle. It will probably contain a lot of oversharing, whining, frustration, etc. I don't really have a problem with that because I've never been a very private person. The people who love and know me best already know this about me and for the most part, can appreciate it. The people who do not probably shouldn't spend there time reading this blog. It doesn't make me uncomfortable to talk about real things going on in my head and in my life and putting it out for the world to see, but it might make others uncomfortable. Take it or leave it! 

Even though it feels this way a lot of the time, I know I'm not the only person who has struggled and continues to struggle with being healthy and body image issues. It's my hope that people will share their experiences to help me along this journey. I need suggestions, words of encouragement, recipes, exercises and routines that have worked for you or someone you know. I'm going to keep track of my successes and failures to also hold myself accountable for the decisions I make about eating healthy and working out. I'm also going to be seeking therapy during this time to deal with these issues and sharing my experiences. 

I'm happy to be starting this new chapter. I'm not committing to a diet, work-out regimen or anything of the sort. I'm committing to taking steps to take better care of myself for the first time in my entire life. :)