It's time for me

This post is more for me than anyone else. I am going to be totally up front and honest with al of you. The last eight weeks have been some of the hardest. They have without a doubt been the hardest 2 months of my weight loss journey. I have been bouncing around the same one or two pounds and quite frankly I am FED UP!!!

I know that only I can change it. I know that I need to change something I just don't know 100% what that is yet. I am changing several things this week and I know I will have a good week and the weight will start coming off again.

Yesterday, I got a text from a friend that I had been on this journey with. She is actually the reason that I took that first step to loose weight and join weight watchers. Well yesterday she told me that she was no longer focused and felt that she was wasting her money because she wasn't loosing because of her lack of focus. I totally support her in her decision and she is right is you aren't focused or don't want to loose weight you re't going to.

At my meeting tonight my leader pulled me aside to talk before the meeting started. She was reaching out to me. She asked me what was going on because she knows that I have been going through this funk. She told me that she felt that she has been giving my friend my support than me. Which I think she probably has but  have been ok with that because I can do this. I hadn't hit a real rough patch until now.

While talking to my leader I realized something. I realized that I love helping others reach their goals but lately it has become exghusting. I realized that I have been focusing too much on making sure everyone else reaches their goals and not enough on myself.

Part of me even feels like I am sitting here pushing people up the hill just to have them fall down and roll over me if that makes sense. This week is about me and making sure I get back on track and reach my goals!!! I will make it happen this week!! 

No more bouncing back and worth. I will hit my 30lbs goal and I will pass it this time :-) 

My little funk

I wrote this post before the one I just published but didn't realize it was never posted. It's just as equally important though and I am sharing it now. I wrote this about a week ago. 

I have been in a little funk lately and it wasn't until last night that I actually realized just how long I have been battling the same two pounds. I have made the decision to focus on non-scale victories as stated an earlier post. I'm not going to lie it has taken me a long time to get to this piont but I am so glad that I am here now.

I am at a point in my journey where I can tell myself that this is just a bump in the road and I will get past it as long as I just stay focused and push past this. I honestly think know my support system has played a HUGE part in getting to this point. I realize now that staying active and eating right all the time are so important!!

Before if when I would hit a slump and battle the same few pounds for more than a week or two I would just give up. I would get discouraged and give up. Not this time. I am now able to understand that getting healthy isn't all about wight, its about staying active and eating properly. Doing these things is what is more important, and when you do these things the weight will come off. Sometimes it takes longer than other times but it will happen!!

My focus lately has been on improving my habits and drinking more water. I have decided that I might need to stop counting my points and start "simply filling", I will talk to my meeting leader this week depending on how I do. I have a HUGE support system and I am inspiring people without even knowing it. I have shared a lot of pictures on instagram this week because that is where alot of my support comes from and I love that I can connect to others that are on weight watchers and I can get new ideas from them as well.

I have included a few of those pictures at the end of this post. A long with a few others. Hopefully if you are struggling in your own journey, you will find this helpful and always remember "Tough times don't last, tough people do!"

This week C25K kicked my butt, but I pushed through and finished week 2!!! 

Good thing I did because I went shopping and all these tops are a size smaller than before. :-)

Someone in my life join weight watchers and decided to healthy because of me. That's pretty awesome!! 

It's Just One Day

For me Mother's Day this year didn't last just one day it was an entire weekend. On Saturday, my husband decided to keep our children all day so I could spend the day with my mom and my aunt. We went out shopping and then to lunch. When I got home, my husband informed me that he was taking the kids out for the evening so that I was able to relax.

On Sunday, I had breakfast, bacon and eggs. My husband allowed me to spend the entire afternoon just the kids and I while he took his mom out to lunch. My kids ages 2 and 4 had gone out with my husband to get me gifts yesterday, 2 packs of socks, a necklace, earrings, and 2 potted plants. I had planned on cooking dinner and right as I was about to start my husband says "oh yeah, I am getting you a crabcake from Sterlings, you're not going to cook today."

Needless to say I went all out and got the whole platter, crabcake, french fries and mac and cheese. I didn't eat all of it but I had a big enough amount and it was good....lol I have also been informed that once the kids are in bed he has a special dessert planned for us.

My weight watchers weigh-in is Tuesday and up until this weekend I was feeling very good about it. Now not so much....LOL I have decided however, that I am not going to let one day, or one weekend define my entire week. I will continue to track my food the rest of the week and I will continue to get in my activity this week.

At the beginning of the week I told myself that I was going to challenge myself and not step on the scale a single time this week. For many this isn't a problem at all, for me on the other hand this is a huge struggle!! I am fine until midweek, I always weigh myself on either Friday or Saturday morning and then every morning after that until Tuesday. On Tuesday I think I step on that scale every time I walk into the bathroom!! After the weekend I have had I really want to get on the scale and see how much "damage" I have done. I can tell you though that I have not even touched the scale!! I have thought about it and I have even reached for it but I have not once gone all the way and pulled it out to stand on!!

I know that I can make it until Tuesday evening and wait until my weigh-in to see how I have done this week. Tomorrow I will track all my food and I will run in the morning. I will do my cardio workout in the afternoon and I will walk in the evening. Tomorrow I will get back on track with the plank challenge and I will add up my miles for May to see where I stand.

I will not let one day/weekend define my week. If I gain, then I gain. This is a journey and it will take longer than overnight for the weight to come off. I leave you with this, a few pictures of how I spent my Mother's Day.

Hanging out with my wonderful children

In this fabulous dress that fits for the first time in two years!!! 

Non Scale progress

It is so easy to get focused on the scale and feel discouraged when you don't see that number getting smaller fast enough. Even I have this problem. I often get let down by what I see or don't see on the scale. Often I will feel like I have worked really hard and yet I am not loosing the amount I think I should be.

I will track everything I eat all day everyday!! I get in my activity and drink lots of water, yet I get to my weight watchers meeting and I gain! :-( Talk about depressed and discouraged!! One way I stay positive and I continue to loose weight is by focusing on my non-scale victories. Here's a list of them so far:

1. I am down almost 2 full pants sizes!!
2. I have no problem running for 90 seconds-2 minutes at a time
3. I can run with my son and not feel as out of shape as before
4. I actually enjoy getting outside to exercise
5. My shirts are all a smaller size than before
6. I am under the max weight for my camp chair
7. I have inspired others
8. My wedding rings are getting loose
9. I can hold a plank for 1 whole minute
10. I have dropped my BMI by 5 points since I started my journey....Only 10 to go and I will no longer be obese!!!!
11. I am no longer pre-hypertension

These might seem like small things and some are health related and some are not! Either way not one of these are related to the scale. I'm not really sure what my favorite thing on this list is but I love that I have so many. As I continue to loose weight I will continue to see my list grow.

Something else that has always helped me is setting non-scale goals each week. These goals can be anything as long as they are not related to the scale. Here's a list of just a few of the goals I have set in the past.

1. Walk 4-5 times this week
2. Drink 120 oz of water each day
3. Track at least one meal every day
4. Track everyday
5. Do C25K training at least 3 days this week

These goals will change as you go further in your journey. For example if you are already walking 4 days your goal might be to go 6 days. If you already track at least one meal every day make it your goal to track two meals!

Be sure to reward yourself for reaching your goals! Weather it's something small like a sticker or just pointing out to yourself and others that you have reached your goals for that week. I NEVER reward myself with food though. When I do eat something that isn't the best for me, I am sure not to call it a treat either. That's not to say that I don't eat these things because I sometimes do, but I am more aware of them and I do them less often.

I am so very excited that I can finally fee like I am getting a handle on this whole weigh loss thing. I know I still have a long way to go, and that I have alot of bad habits that I have to get rid of, but the one thing that continues to ring in my head over and over is:

                              "Tough times don't last, tough people do."

Time to Heal

As many but not all of you know, my daughter is a preemie. She was born 8 weeks early. Although we told almost every day that our little girl that was (born at 3lbs 15oz and was just 16 inches long) one of the biggest and healthiest babies in the NICU she was still there for 21 days followed by a 10 day stay at a transitional nursery in a different hospital. During her stay my husband and I were informed that our daughter was born with a hole in her heart. We also found out that she has a condition call SVT (This can cause her heart to race at a pace too high for her body to handle and if untreated she could die) she also had acid reflux that was causing her heart drop to drop to dangerous levels. As you can imagine these were some very hard things for my husband and I to hear.

Neither one of us had ever been through anything like this before and we didn't know where to turn. We had an 18 month old at home that we had to care for while I was a full time college student and my husband worked full time and we still spent at least 3-4 hours a day sitting in the NICU with our daughter. To say the least we were burnt out. Neither of us knew it though. I think our bodies went into survival mode and we did whatever we needed to in order to make it through the day. Somehow I even finished the semester with 3 A's and 1 B.

What I didn't realize is the toll the NICU and our experience had taken on me, both mentally and physically. Not ever going through anything like this before I thought that our daughter would come home and everything would be back to "normal". We would live our lives like any other family with two children. Well in part I was right. Only our "normal" was having a nurse come visit once a week to check on the baby, waking our daughter every 1-2 hours because she needed a different medicine or needed to eat, and lets not forget about the apnea monitor that she came home with. Yes, the wires we were sooo happy to get rid of had now followed us home!!

I have forgotten to mention that our daughter would sometimes stop breathing while she was asleep so we would have to wake her whenever the alarm would go off. Most parents probably are thinking the same thing I was "well at least I won't be up all night checking to see if she is breathing like I did with our son" WRONG!!!! Instead I was up all night checking to make sure the monitor was working. I quickly learned that no parent of a newborn ever gets any sleep!! I also found out that the midnight phone calls didn't stop with us coming home either.

One night I couldn't sleep so I decided to get a shower to help me sleep. It was about 3:30 am, my husband was at work and both children were asleep. I was about to get out of the shower and I heard what I thought was our smoke alarm, "Oh great the shower was too hot again, I better turn it off before it wakes the kids." As I was running down the hall the sound quickly stopped and I realized it was actually the baby's monitor. When I got to our daughter her lips were blue and she was covered in spit-up. My body went into over drive and I flipped her over, cleared her airway, and was perfectly fine. While it only lasted a few seconds before I was able to get her cleaned off and back to sleep, I totally freaked and had to call my husband and cry to him. I of course didn't get sleep that night at all.

I am telling you all of this to say this, I recently realized when asked to share a picture of my daughter that I haven't fully healed from our NICU experience. I still have break downs on our daughter's birthday and on her due date. On the day I was admitted to the hospital and the day I realized that I was going to have a preemie, and lots of days in between.

You may ask what all of this has to do with weight loss. Well I'll tell you! While pregnant with my daughter I gained 60!!! lbs. I have been holding onto that weight for the last 2 1/2 years. I realize as I am loosing that weight that I was scared to get rid of it, like if I lost the weight that I gained while pregnant I would somehow loose my daughter too. I know it sounds silly to many of you but for me it is/was a reality. People tell me all the time that there are reasons deeper than our health as to why we need to loose weight and why we put it on in the first place. I know totally understand what they mean by this now.

My loosing weight is a way for me to fully heal and say good-bye to the NICU forever!!! Yes I will need to take my daughter to follow up with her doctors and yes we will always have those memories and we will always be able to tell people our story, but it will be a part of us that has helped us to become stronger people. It will no longer be holding us back!!

As a part of my weight loss journey I have decided to get my daughter's baby book out and finish it up to this point! I am no longer going to rob her of that. It is something that she will want to look at when she gets older and she will want to know "her story".

This week was HUGE for!!! Not on the scale but mentally and emotionally because I found what one of my BIG factors are and I am now able to face my fear head on!! I will be able to heal and I can finally look at my healthy little girl as just that and not a tiny baby still stuck in the NICU being held back by "things full term babies have but are never checked for". Today we have no meds and no wires. Today all we have is your everyday "toddler problems". Mommy I peed on the floor,or where's my cuppie. My brother hit me or he isn't sharing his toys. I don't want to eat this or I just want to play outside.

At this point in the game I think it is safe to say that our daughter is healed from the NICU and it is time for her mommy to do the same. Part of that is going to be sharing with you her story and this post. It is a fresh start to getting my life back!!!

I leave you with some photos to put a face with the story:

This is our daughter when she was about a week old (top) the picture on the right is her first day in an open crib (almost 2 weeks) and the picture left is Christmas Eve (she was 32days old and her first FULL day home)

I feel no words needed to explain this...her face says it all
#toddlermomproblems

This is myself and my daughter on Easter

The top is her playing dentist with play doh. The bottom is how I found her this morning and to the right she is showing off her fashion sense :-)

What's your anchor?

This was the topic at my weight watchers meeting last week. It really got me thinking about all the different reasons that I joined weight watchers and why I continue to stick with it. I know that I joined because I was sick of being fat!! I don't really like the word fat but I still use it, usually referring to myself :-( I really should have a more positive self image and that is what I am working on.

I joined weight watchers because I was embarrassed by my weight even when it came to my husband. I never told him how much a weighed until just a couple of weeks ago!! Of course he knows I'm over weight and he has seen me naked....clearly since we have two children...LOL but I hated the way I looked naked and even with clothes on for that matter! I wanted to and still do want to look and feel sexy all the time!!

Back to the topic on hand....my anchor!! Lots of people say that their anchor is their children or something like that and it sounds great to say that your children are your reason for getting healthy and they are what keep you focused but if it isn't true than none of that matters. Of course I want to be healthy for my children and my husband but I wouldn't say that they keep me focused. Actually they tend to make it harder at times to stay focused. My husband doesn't really need to loose weight and while he is a HUGE support person for me he sometimes wants to eat things that aren't good for me or my weight loss and I often give into the temptation which again isn't good!!! My children, well they are children. They don't understand what I am doing so they eat whatever and of course always want to share with mommy!!

I shared my anchor with all of you in my last post but I don't think I actually said it was my anchor and what keeps me focused. My goal jars!!! One is labeled "pounds to loose" and the other "pounds lost" I move marbles from the pounds to loose jar into the pounds lost jar when I loose weight. One marble for each pound! I do the opposite when I gain. I move marbles from the pounds lost jar back into the pounds to loose jar. This is one thing I hate doing!!!

I keep these jars on my phone as a reminder of what I am staying focused for. I say this because I am thinking that this anchor has served it's time and my reasons for loosing weight are beginning to change and with that my anchor will change as well. My jars just don't seem to be doing their job any more. I will still keep them and I will still keep up with them but I need something else to keep me focused on the bigger picture.

Over the next few days or weeks, however long it takes I will be on a journey not just to loose weight and get healthy but to find my focus again! I need to start to really challenge myself and my body. I need to shake things up a little and kick start my weigh loss again. I will not go back to the girl I was a few months ago!! I will continue to move forward and I will continue to get smaller while doing it.

May's Fitness Challenges

Notice the word Challenges in the title of this post, Yes I am doing more than one fitness challenge in the month of May. This is a couple of reasons, first I am pretty sure I have it a plateau inmy weight loss and I think this might help. Secondly I figure why not?

I am getting sick of this up and down every week. I know it happens in weight loss and I know I have loss alot of weight already but I also know that I still have a ways to go and in order for me to continue to loose weight I need to change things up a little and actually challenge myself. I think my body is starting to get used to all the activity that I have been doing the last couple of months so this is a good way to mix things up and jump start my weight loss again.

This post I am going to leave you with the different challenges that I am going to do this month. I challenge each and every one of you to join me and start your own weight loss journey. I should tell you that even if you don't have weight to loose and you are at a healthy weight joining me in these challenges will allow you to be a healthier you!!

Challenge one is the plank challenge. I am doing this with one of my best friends. She is the girl that asked me if I could do a plank about a week ago and the answer was hell no!!! I am now up to 45 second hold. Come on who is with us???

Challenge two is 52 miles in May. I saw this on Instagram and decided to give it a try. I am training for a 5K and need to add up those miles anyway so why not push myself to finish 52 miles in a month. Really shouldn't be too hard since I've been doing about 5 miles a day and I only need a little less than 2 a day to meet this goal.

This is my before and during picture. I didn't realize how far I had come until I made this picture. While it may time some time for me to get to my goal weight I will get there. This picture is the lock screen on my phone and when ever I am feign down I look at this picture and I see who I used to be and who I am now!! I will not go back to the old me.

I will end this post with what keeps me focused....my goal jars. I made these jars with a dear friend of mine when I first joined weight watchers and I as loose more weight I move the marbles from one jar to the other. This keeps me focused because I hate having to move backward.

What a difference a day Makes

***Before you read this, let me tell you I am kinda all over the place so I am sorry!!***

Yesterday, after my meeting I felt broken and defeated. My biggest problem wasn't so much that I had gained weight. It wasn't the first time and I am sure it won't be the last, what had me feeling this way was the fact that I really didn't know what I had done to cause me to gain 2.2 lbs.

In the past this would have been enough to cause me to quit and give up. But not this time!! Instead I decided to do something about it. I talked to my meeting leader and she gave me an idea of what may have happened. I turned my "downfall" into something positive.

Yesterday I sat down and wrote out a new "workout" plan. I think this will help me get where I need to be. I also decided that I am going to refocus on my running. Instead of doing it on my own, I decided that I will probably do better using the Couch to 5K program. I restarted my training today and I killed it!! With the jogger stroller and all!!

I also had a different mind set today. It seemed like everyone around me knew that yesterday was a bad day for me and I had a sign around my neck that said "I need a pick me up" While I was running there was a group of college students (all men) that smiled at me....and not in the laughing at me way either :-) People kindly moved over to make room and I felt that people were cheering me on!!

I am totally ready to do it again tomorrow! I tracked all my food today and I can tell yo that as I sit here writing this at 7:30 pm I have already reached 100% of my activelink goal for today. I did a total of just over 5 miles and a small ab workout. If I do this everyday I know that I will be able to easily run a 5K but Sept 1st. I will also be able to reach my weight loss goals.

Someone said some very mean and hurtful things to me today as well. I was called a lazy fat ass. Considering the source I didn't let it bother me because this person is always the type to always want to hurt me for some reason. Before this would have hurt me but today I was able to say "how exactly and I am lazy fat ass? I run everyday and I walk, clocking at least 5 miles a day. Plus I have lost 30 lbs!" yes I am over weight but I am doing something about it. This person too is over weight and could loose a good 50 lbs and instead of her doing something to change it, she is stuffing her face with hot pockets and pizza rolls!! So while she can slowly kill herself with all that crap I will continue to better myself.

I have changed so much in the past six months. I am no longer the person that will allow what other say hurt me. I know my own reality and I know what I am capable of. I am strong and determined. I am going to better myself. I am not just getting healthier physically but mentally and spiritually as well. One day this person will look at all that I have done and wish they were as happy as me.

I know that I can do this!! I will do this!! There will be some days that will be better than others but I can not let those days bring me down. I will use these days to motivate me and bring me that much closer to my goal.