8 Week Challenge, here we come!

        8 Week Challenge starts tomorrow! I'm so excited that some of you have decided to do this with me! Katie J has even offered to make us a nice award the winner can post on her blog! :) I am really excited to do this, and no matter who wins with the most loss at the end, we know we're all going to be winners because we're all going to lose weight and have this extra motivation to help get though it, together!

        I suppose we should talk about some rules now. Right now here's everyone who responded and will be taking up the Challenge with me:
Chai
100in12
Katie J

        There are four of us and I will try to go leave messages for some of the other blogs I read and keep up with, see if anyone else wants to join. You guys should too! I don't know about the monetary prize, since it may or may not be extra motivating, if it's only $20. Although, in this economy, that could buy a smaller pair of on sale jeans! You guys let me know how if you want to do that or not.

        On to the 8 Week Challenge Rules. It seems so dry to just call it the 8 Week Challenge. What about adding some more to the name? The something 8 Week Challenge? Help me out! :) I think we should go Biggest Loser style with this and calculate % body weight loss rather than numbers. I mean we can collect weight loss numbers for 8 weeks and then calculate % of loss at the end, might be a little more accurate to determine who lost the most? Also, why don't we each write a post once a week stating our goals for the week and how we plan on making the best of it to get to our own goals by the end of 8 weeks? Please let me know if you guys think I should add anything to that and then I'll write up a new post for tomorrow stating all the rules again and my own goals for these coming 8 weeks.

I can't wait! :)

Let's do a challenge, are you with me?

        I've had some major food fail in the last week. I went back to old bad habits and it really sucked. My body is feeling all sorts of gross because of it. Fortunately, I've kept up with the C25K running, so other than water I don't think I've put on any weight. I'm here, I haven't quit, I just faltered for a week. Stress looked me in the eye (and belly) and I crumbled. Stress 1, Kat 0. But I am focused again, and that's the first step, I think, to losing weight, keeping focus on the healthy lifestyle... I'm focused!

        Sometimes I need a little more to motivate me. A little fun, a little challenge. So here it is, an 8 Week Challenge, a nice round number of weeks to achieve a goal. So, from November 1 to December 19, I am going to push myself harder than I have so far. I am doubling, tripling my efforts. This Christmas my friends and family will see me thinner than they have in about 3 years. My goal? To lose at least 20lbs in 8 weeks. I will be down 20lbs by the time I weigh in on Sunday December 20th. This is going to be doubly rewarding. I will not only lose weight (best part), but also having worked my butt off (literally) for 8 weeks, by the time Christmas rolls around the week the challenge is over, I will have all that hard work I did to remind me why I should not give in to the temptation of the holiday meals. These next 8 weeks (which, by the way, include Thanksgiving and my finals week- both of which are going to test my resolve and ability to stick with the healthy lifestyle through one holiday and two weeks of crazy stress) are going to make me that much stronger, and healthier, and able to look at the spread on Christmas and New Years and pick the healthiest, smallest portions I've eaten on the holidays in years. So you can bet that when January 1st 2010 rolls around, I will be walking around with less rolls! and an even bigger resolve to make 2010 the year I achieve my goal of being 150lbs. :) I can't wait!

        Anyone want to do this with me? We can even name the challenge and make an award for the winner to display on their blog! Maybe we can even pitch in $5 each on paypal or something and winner gets a little extra dough for holiday shopping?

Morbidly obese and going up, instead of down

        I have a midterm on Monday and my diet has derailed SO badly and I am SO swamped with schoolwork that I can't even figure out how to get back on the rails right now. At the moment, I am officially a miserable failure at the lifestyle change thing and I'm back up to 251.6lbs. That's right, since I "derailed" on Friday morning I have packed on 5.2lbs. Arghhhh! Why do I do this to myself? and why aren't there more hours in the day?!?

        I would love nothing more than to be one of those tiny girls you see walking around in tiny, tiny skirts and tight tops. How difficult is that going to be, given that I am so used to giving up when things start to get a little more tough, when time starts to get a little more constrained? I was doing so well and the minute life got in the way, the minute I got too busy to deal with managing my food, I just stopped and gave in to having whatever was most convenient, whatever I wanted. I am so fed up with feeling not good enough, and beyond that just feeling SO uncomfortable in my own skin. My own stretched out, dimpled, fat skin, that doesn’t even feel like my own anymore. I feel overwhelmed by sadness whenever I see thin girls wearing gorgeous clothes, wearing whatever they want, while I am hobbling around in size 20 jeans, buying a new pair almost every other month because they keep wearing out between the legs. I want to go into a store and try on something that’s a size 10, a size 8, sizes I haven’t seen in my closet for more than 10 years now. I am only 27, I should not be hiding in ugly huge sweaters and not going out and having fun because I feel so huge and awful. And yet, and yet... Life got in the way again. I try again.

Step... away.. from the scale!!

        I need to lock up my scale or something. In the last three weeks, I have been on the scale pretty much every single day. At first, it was great. I was seeing the numbers go down on a daily basis, a few ounces here, a pound there. Not anymore! I have held steady since weigh-in on Sunday and it is making me very very anxious and sad. I know, logically, that I should just wait until weigh-in on Sunday because the numbers will surely be lower then (right??). I also know, very well, that I should not expect to keep losing huge amounts of weight per week now that all the "water weight" is gone. Knowing sometimes doesn't mean much. :( I am not happy with this and I am feeling anxious about weighing in on Sunday (which is still 4 whole days away!) because I'm afraid to weigh the same I did last Sunday. So, I need to lock up the scale. Stick it in the closet (instead of having it stare at me from the corner of my room) and not take it out except on Sunday mornings. And, if by Sunday, I really don't lose any weight this week, well, I'll freak out on that bridge if (when? oh, man, I hope not when) I get to it...

Everything that was old is new again

        I am officially down a total of 15lbs since I started eating right and being accountable for my body, myself. Woohoo! I now have less than 100lbs to go! Ok, so it's like 96lbs, but still! Less than 100! I went out last night wearing my new (old, out of my closet, but never been worn before) size 18 jeans and it felt so so so good. I knew I looked a lot better than I have in the past few months and I felt great. Not to mention, I love shopping out of my own closet and having smaller sizes fit! So motivational. Even more motivating were the numbers on the scale at weigh-in this morning... 246.4lbs. Yes!

I am inspired.
I am excited.
I am scared.
I am happy.
I am ready.
Everything changes now.
I can't wait... to feel healthy... to feel lighter... to meet the thinner me... to love the thinner me... to shop in my own closet... to buy clothes in regular sizes! ...and to feel good (in general and about myself) because I know I look good!

Sometimes

I feel like I'm all alone out here.

        I read blogs and leave comments and encourage people, but it seems like I'm the only one reading my own blog. I know I don't post very often, I'm still trying to figure out what it is I have to say, what I think and feel and how to articulate all that. But I do consistently, daily, hourly almost, update the "Daily Food Journal" link with all the food I consume on a daily basis. I guess I should post more often and say something interesting to keep people coming back for more? I need some blog-world encouragement! Is anyone out there??

Guilt

        Why do I do this to myself? Apparently I am HUGE fan of self-sabotoge. I do so well for a couple of weeks and then completely fall off the wagon without a second thought to all the hard work I've done so far. Eating 'better' has been quite an adjustment for me, for my body, for my mind. It hasn't been easy but I kept with it for 2 weeks, so why did I go and overeat again? By Friday, I had lost another 5lbs and now it's Monday and I managed to sabotage myself on Saturday and Sunday and bring my weight back up to 255.4lbs! Saturday night and Sunday night I just ate whatever I wanted without thinking about the consequences. Ok, that's not true, I thought about the consequences, but the urge to eat and eat was so strong I just gave in to it. I know that the cravings were due, in large part, to my upcoming tom. I knew how to avoid this. I knew that I could have prepared for the events I had planned and eaten beforehand and been just fine. Instead, I decided to indulge myself, enjoy myself. Well, I'm not enjoying myself now! I know I shouldn't have had as much as I did. I am back on track now and I will definitely remember how I feel right now the next time I think eating anything and everything is a good idea. How often do I have to tell myself that this time will be different and that this time I will stick to it for more than just a few weeks, before it comes true?

        I had planned on writing about guilt today, but I didn't know then how much more I was going to be feeling guilty about now. What I was referring to in my last post is the guilt I felt about eating out last Wednesday night. I had Pho and it was delicious and I had paced my eating during the rest of the day in anticipation for the eating out I was going to do at night. This didn't make me feel any less guilty about eating out. I have become so accustomed to 'eating out' being equivalent to overeating, fattening, etc, that even this healthy meal I had caused me to feel guilty! So guilty, in fact, that I felt out of sorts on Thursday and not hungry at all and couldn't eat anything all day. I basically had one cup of tea with milk, that's all, for the entire day! Even when I am on a healthy path I manage to find a way to have very disordered eating. And now I've blown it by eating even more poorly on Saturday and Sunday night. Ahh, guilty guilty guilty me. Lesson learned! I'm back on today.

        How do you guys do it? How do you deal with indulging yourself once in a while without either feeling completely guilty or just throwing off the healthy balance you achieved and tipping back over into indulging yourself too much? I really need to shake my mentality of, oh well, now that I've had too much of one thing, may as well throw in the towel and completely give in to the cravings!

I suck at writing things down!

        I'm still here, doing the lifestyle change thing. Have you checked out my food journal? I update that every day, pretty much right before or after I eat. Sometimes I wonder if I am eating the right things. The weight is coming off right now, so that at least is kind of an indication to me that I am. I wonder if I should show a nutritionist my journal and see what he/she thinks about it. Anyway, longer post soon. Hopefully it will be a good one... about guilt.....

256 lbs!

        Weigh-in was this morning, and I lost 6 lbs! I think that's pretty awesome for my first week. At first, the cravings were really horrible, but now, starting my second week, they seem to be getting a little better. Hopefully, soon enough they will be almost non-existent, more like how a normal body is supposed to operate, right?

        I've drastically changed my eating habits in the past week. I think in this week I've eaten more of a variety of food than I have in the past few years! Cooking for myself and making good food choices and writing everything down has been difficult at times, mostly because in the beginning all I wanted to do was run to the corner convenience store and buy a bag of chips. But now I'm making sure to reach for the apple, or the peach, or the popcorn instead. My body already feels a lot better. I abused it for so long with all the fast food I consumed, and yes, sometimes even purged, if only to make room for more. I find myself also thinking about food all the time now, like I never did before. I make sure I plan my meals ahead of time so I wont have the chance to mess up because I am not prepared when the hunger strikes. I look up recipes and nutritional information and wonder what I want to cook next and spend time writing down every last morsel. It might seem like a lot, but right now it's working. -6lbs means it's working and I am very happy about that, even if it has been time-consuming. I know that eventually it will be like second nature to me. Eating crap will no longer be the easy go-to option and I will find it easier to make these healthy decisions. Making the decisions has always been the easy part, it's sticking with it that I've found difficult. And so it begins, more weight loss means more motivation, means I can keep doing this because I have been doing this and it's working.

        Does anyone else find that eating healthier, making healthier choices has made you think about eating all the time? It's almost like an obsession. Who knew? Thinking about food all the time and yet losing weight because of the great choices I've been making... :)

Jeans, kind of down one size

        This morning I tried on a pair of size 18 regular (Old Navy Sweetheart jeans)... and they fit! Right now, I am still wearing my old size 20 regular stretch (Old Navy Sweetheart jeans), but I am so so so happy to know that the smaller jeans fit, a little tight, but they button up and look fine. I thought the jeans I had on were stretched out and loose, turns out I have also shrunk a tiny bit inside them!

        So far, my "lifestyle change" has included:
- For the past 3 weeks, 3 days of exercise per week during which I do the C25K program for 30 min.
- For the past few days, preparing foods in advance, keeping healthier options like carrots, apples, almonds, and yogurt on hand for snacks, and writing down everything I eat.

        I have not been on the scale to see how much it has budged (weigh-in is on Sunday morning!) but If I did I'm sure it would not be much different than where I started. The clothes fitting though is a great motivator because I know that the more I exercise and continue to eat right, the smaller my size is going to get. I love non-scale victories and smaller jeans! =)

        p.s. I say "kind of" down a size, because I've only been wearing size 20 jeans for the past few months. I was stuck at size 18 for a few years, and when I go down to 16 that is going to feel like an even bigger victory for me!

Comments are working!

        Thanks for giving me the heads-up about my comments not working... the comments box should be up and running now! :)

What's the plan?

What am I doing?

        I am planning ahead and being prepared and cooking healthy meals. I got to this weight because I always took the easy way out. Fast food was a constant companion. Cookies, chips, chocolate. My body has been put through so much. I have consumed so much junk in the past. Eating fast food is no longer an option, I will avoid it at all costs. Forever, if possible. Cooking is a must. I am preparing everything in advance to make sure hunger doesn't sneak up on me and lead me down the road to more tempting, easy options, junk.

        For exercise, I am doing the Cool Running Couch-to-5k program (C25K) which means that right now I am only exercising 3 days a week. I am going to start walking outside for exercise every other day and also do some crunches at night before bed.

        I know that I can't do this alone. I am online because I need to find people here who are going through these same struggles. I have read so many blogs lately where people have posted 100+lbs lost. That is so awesome, I hope to join their ranks one day. I am going to start leaving comments here and there, hopefully some people will come visit my page. I can use all the support I can get!