So, day 4 is down, and all is well on the MF front. I am making a concentrated effort to have my life and eat my MF too. The first time around I did lose a lot of weight, but I also lost focus on things in my life tht had nothing to do with weight.

Balance....it is so hard to acheive at times. I strive for it, but one hair on fire event after another comes along and blows all of my balance to sh&t.

So, back up plan, just deal with it. So....I am staying on plan, and having a life.

My goal during Decmeber is to think about other people and to perform random acts of kindsness....or kindful acts of randomness. Yesterday I bought a 5 dollar gift card at Starbucks and left it with the Barista togive to the next person who came in. I wrote "Happy Holidays from me, please pay it forward".

Today I called the local animal shleter and asked them for a list of items for donation. Ran out to the store, picked up the requested items and dropped them off. Bonus...got to look at cute dogs and cats....not a bonus...husband wouldnt let me take any of them home. Apparently 2 dogs, 3 cats and 5 chickens are enough pets. What evs....

Anyway. It makes me feel good to do stuff like that. It is good to not be 100 percent focused on me me me ALL THE TIME. There is a whole world out there that is much bigger than me and my crazy bullsh*t. Other people have bigger worries than my losing 90 pounds. It makes what I need to do seem OK and normal.

So....doing a random act does not have to cost any money. It can be volunteering, it can be cleaning out your pantry and donating food to your local food bank. It can be as simple as opening a door for a stranger. Im working it in....one thing a day...until I don't even think of it....I just do it.

My life is not just about my weight, it is about the person I am under the pounds. Our souls all weigh the same.

So I have a choice today, I can look at the window at the wet, rainy gray Washington day and suffer from an episode of Seasonal Adjustment Disorder (SAD).....OR I can focus on the happiness and good health of my family and the fact that I am back on Medifast concentrating on losing 90 more pounds....

I think I will pick the second option. And I might be nice to a stranger just for good measure.....

Great on plan day 2. It is actually easier than I thought....the good habits are coming back really quick...and my body is going to thank me! I drank tons of water today......that should make for a fun night!:)

Hi all! Hope all is well out here in MF land. I have been off the program for a few months for various reasons. But I am cleared to be back on the program now....so YEAH!!!! I have gained back about 18 pounds, but under the circumstances, I am OK with that.  Luckily, I have all my MF food on hand, I kept it, in the hopes Iwould be able to come back, so I have about 2 months worth!

I restarted my ticker at 268 pounds as my starting weight. I started at 330 last September (09) but I want today to be my start date. I have 93 pounds to lose! Yeah! It seems smaller when you do it in chunks like that!

So, hopefully some of my MF friends are still out and about....and if not so, Im sure there are new friends. I am starting from scratch, so it should be a wild and rewarding ride!!!!!

Well...wanted to drop in now...the nextr few weeks for me are going to be out of control due to forces of nature at my work. So I wanted to get a blog in real quick as I do not know when I will be able to take time to do this.

Today while I am at work, I am having my husband hide the scale from me. I have an ongoing battle with the scale that doesnt always help me. My doctor took me off the water pill I have been on for 4 years, and I immediately gained back 10 pounds in the last week. So I am back up at 259. Logically I know it is going to even out and go down again, but it is hard to continue to be stuck in the 250's. So...I am increasing my water intake and sticking to my 5/1 and Im not going to weigh....seeing the daily gain or loss is just too much. I am going to weigh in 1 time a month and that is it. That way I am unaware of the daily changes. I can be down 5 pounds one day and back up three the next. Emotinally it is not good. My thyroid being too low contributes to the water retention which is why I have needed the water pill.. .But long term use of the water pill is hard on your organs.

So, I know that if I just eat 5/1 and the LG I will get there and I am going to stop torturing myself. I am a compulsive weigher, and I think that mentally when I dont see the number I want it tends to set me off on a negative trip.

Without the scale though I do have to commit myself to the 5/1 and LG, becasue I use the scale as part of my reason to stay 100 percent. But now I know that it is not about the number....it is about eating this way becasue it makes me feel better and I have more energy.

I will report in next month on the weigh in and hopefully eek out a couple blogs along the way!

Good luck to everyone!

Losing weight is not pretty or for the faint of heart, and Im not talking about loose skin, or body changes. Some of those do end up pretty...but thinking that losing weight is JUST eating 5 packets a day and a lean and green is just scratching the surface.

It is a good start though. It gets your body on a schedule and helps you deal with cravings and hunger....so MF packets totally do the job there.

The hard part is the mental and emotional. By doing this and commiting to it, you are admitting thast you have a problem with weight. You might be 10 pounds overweight or 300 pounds overweight. But whatever that number is, in your head, you are fat...or whatever word you like to call it.

I like the word fat...it is only three letters long, and as I am a bad typist...I go for the short hand. That being said, I hate BEING fat. If you want to think that being fat is just a physical thing, then you are not giving fat credit.

Fat has played a way bigger part of your life then making your clothes uncomfortable or making it hard to fit into a booth at a restaurant. Deep down inside fat has guided you in your relationships and probably your career choices.

We give fat a lot of power in our life, whether it deserves it or not. I have made plenty of major decisions about events I have wanted to attend, places I have wanted to go, or people that I have chose to date with my fat in the background, yelling at me that I could or could not do something due to it!

Some vacations or sports or social event decisons were made based on, did I have an outfit or would i be able to find clothes that were approriate. Would I be able to fit into required areas? Would everyone be staring at me?

Some men Ive dated were based on "Will he accept me fat? Will he think I am attractive, will I feel comfrtable undressing in front of him, will I feel weird if he hugs me and feels my fat rolls?

I'm typing it and it just sounds ridiculous, but it is soooooo true.

Beig a fat person has shaped me, becasue I have been fat for a long time I have been overly sensitive and defensive...I have made up excuses and defended it....but deep down inside the worst feeling was that in my heart, I felt like a loser, like a failure becasue I chose to let it go on and on and I wouldnt end it. I wouldnt do what I needed to do to get taht fat monkey off of me.

I directed my anger and pain at other people and things because I was mad at the world that I was not a naturally thin person. I now realize that everyone has a respnsibility towards themselves and how they choose to taqke care of themselves. Sure, there are some "naturally" thin people out there who eat crap and stay thinb,. but that doesnt mean they are healthy or that they dont have health issues.

Really healthy and fit people eat right and exercise and they work at it and make choices to do so. I was jealous of people who were willing to work and put out effort and I was mad at them because them making good choices was making mne look bad! I didnt want to work at my own health! How stupid was that???

So...here I am fat....but less fat. Here I am admitting that it is still a struggle, but now I know I am taking responsiblity for and working for my health. I am trying to make good decisions and be a healthy person.

Fat still does play into my life and decisions, but not the same way that it did. I am on a mission to eliminate fat from my life, and to be a healthy person. I dont know how long that will take, but now that I am taking responsibility for it...I have to stick with it.

Weight loss is not my goal....health is. To be healthy I must weigh a normal weight. MF and my new attitude will get me there.

I made a promise to myself taht this time (the 1000th time that I have tried an eating plan or to loose weight) that I would not quit or give up on myself...that I would come back everytime I fell down. And for a year now I have stuck to that (and I have fell down many times). I am healthier now than I have been in a long time. I am not the fastest loser out here and never will be...getting to goal by a certain time hangs around in the back of my head...but my real goal of becoming healthy will be my goal until the day I die....that is the only way to make it work.

When I describe myself, I use the "F" word. You know..."fat". This word is very offensive to some people. I'm not sure what the politically correct word is now days. Is it:

Pleasantly Plump

Obese

Overweight

Height and Weight Challenged

Big Boned

It is what it is. If you are 10 pounds over your target weight, you are overweight. There are degrees of how overweight you are.

I am confused. Fat is an adjective, just as skinny, curvy, stout, plump, shapely are. It describes a body shape. But the word "fat" has a negative connotation.

Well.....it should. Being fat is not a healthy or positive thing. Being overely sensitive about it doesnt make it go away. If you are a person who is really offended by being called fat, there is one way to stop it. To become not fat.

There are millions of studies about human nature and how people process and make determinations about people within the first few seconds of seeing them. It is in our natures to do it, and it is biological. We unconsciously "judge" people before we even know we are. It is called a first impression. It happens the first seconds that we see someone. Here is a link on it:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2010

It is not fun to be fat. I know I have been looked at and judged because of my fat over the years. But it wasn't other peoples fault that they were judging me...I was giving them something to make a snap judgement about. It is not the rest of the world's job to discover my wonderful personality and look beyond my fat. Luckily some people have.

Don't blame your fat or the unhappiness it has brought to you on anyone else. It is your responsibility. Maybe it was a medical condition, but for most of us it was choices.

The good thing about being fat, is that you have the power to change it. You can be less fat, or not fat at all. All of us are here on MF because we want to change.

 I am not here to defend my weight or to be in a fat person enabling club. There are people I feel sorry for, drug addicts, alcoholics, food addicts....but my feeling sorry for them doesnt change them. Their deisre to change is what changes them. I support any person who tries to change their life for the better.

I am not going to candy coat or coddle or defend fat. Those exercises just keep you fat and help you justify and defend it. FAT WILL KILL YOU.

Stand up for cancer was on the other night. Way more people die a year from obesity related diseases than from cancer or any other disease.

Fat is the elephant in the room...and it shouldnt be. Accept that you are fat, and accept that you can change it and you will.

Love to hear your comments on what a nice way to say fat is.

In two recent blogs of mine, I have had a couple of people say "You are entitled to your opinion, but....." and then they go on to explain how I am mean or how I pissed them off or something of that nature.

If you truly mean that "you are entitled to your opinion....." you don't follow it with a "but here is why you are wrong and I am right". Because that is actually telling someone that they are NOT entitled to their opinion.

This isn't high school....it's blogging. At the top of the blog page it says this: "This is where the creativity happens. Share your thoughts, dreams, success or whatever you want."

There is such a simple solution. If someone blogs something that turns you off....you can choose to leave their page and never read their stuff again.

You can disagree without being rude. Or you can post something that says...."your opinion was interesting...it made me think the following....".

Maybe some of my blogs are controversial...maybe they make you think or touch a raw nerve. Maybe that is the perfect opportunity to think about why it is affecting you that way.

I don't go out of my way to piss people off. I am trying to make people laugh...some people don't appreciate my sense of humor and that is fine. But one particular person launched a personal attack on me, and I didn't appreciate it. I left their comment up because I don't believe in censoring things. This person is new out here, hasn't been on the program very long, and will hopefully learn some blogging manners. They are also an obviously super sensitive person who is probably not very happy. Hopefully losing weight will help this person.

I think over the year I have been out here, most people who have commented have enjoyed my blogs or got something out of them.

This is based on an actual event from this morning. I think I am on a fashion bent this week.

This morning started out great. It is my husband’s birthday, and we decided to go out to breakfast. We had just finished our meal when my husband gave me the “look behind you very casually, but don’t be noticeable while you do it” look. As a married couple we have developed a very sophisticated secret series of body language, nods, looks, sounds and facial expressions that would rival that of the Native American Code Talkers from World War II. I call it Lassie language. In that TV show Lassie would come in and through doggie body language alert everyone to the fact that Timmy was in the well. Without saying a single word. And by the way, what was wrong with that kid? I can’t count how many times that little *** well in a well. Or maybe I just keep seeing the same episode on TV land. Anyway, as humans, we do this in order to alert each other when something or somebody in our midst is completely ridiculous or inappropriate, and in the hopes that we will not get our asses kicked for openly making fun of someone. Most married couples have a similar language. It also means we can talk less words to each other, which helps eliminate useless fighting that talking in words sometimes brings.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT:
So, as I have gotten the body language from my human Lassie, I turn around and see something so horrible that I almost feel a scream well up in my throat, which I choke back. There in front of me is a very large man (6 ft 5" 300 pounds) in a dark blue with racing stripe VELOUR track suit. This is wrong, wrong, WRONG on so many levels.
Let’s talk about fashion and velour, but not together. And that is because velour should not be used in fashion. Something that can be used as upholstery should not be used as clothing. I’m easily offended by the clothing choices people make. I know that makes me a bad person. There are a lot of reasons that I’m probably going to hell and being offended by tasteless fashion choices is probably one of the least bad things that is buying me a ticket there. I’m not a fashion model and I am fat. The good thing about velour is that fat and skinny people all look bad in it. It is a non-discriminating bad choice. I don’t care if Juicy Couture or Puma make tracksuits out of this stuff. You can associate the word “Juicy” and a sleek jungle animal to velour and it is still what it is….crap. It’ s like trying to polish a turd. It just doesn’t work.

I think this picture illustrates how horrific and unnecessary velour is.
My other pet peeve is that 80 percent of people who wear track suits or exercise gear in public have no intention of going near a track or working out. It is usually overweight people who are wearing it so they can accommodate eating with abandon and not having to deal with constricting pants. I think there should be a law that states if you are wearing clothing that implies you are going to work out, you should have to work out while wearing it. Working out does not count as walking into McDonalds to get a Big Mac and fries and then walking over to DQ for a sundae.
There is one provision for Velour and one acceptable situation. Velour can be worn on Christmas Day. If everyone is going to wear a ridiculous Christmas sweater, then it is OK to wear something that Snoop Dog’s couch is covered in….velour and hemp.

 

BRINGING IT HOME:
I don’t think you should wear fuzzy, furry stuff that pimps decorate their houses with. It is tacky. There are a lot of better and fun ways to be tacky that will not cause people to want to poke their eyes out. There are some things you can never un-see. Lurch from the restaurant in his velour tracksuit this morning was one of them.
I have included links for Lassie and the Native American Code talkers because those are interesting in a nostalgic kind of way. I have included the link for velour just in case you want to poke your eyes out. I have included the link for Hemp because I support Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey and Willie Nelson in anything they do….including naked bongo playing. I couldn’t link all of the pot smokers in Hollywood, so here is one general link for all of those Cannabis lovers!

Go check out my blogs at :

http://notmadeup.wordpress.com/

How can I be the Mother of a full term adult???? I'm not even that mature. If she is a grown up, that means I am supposed to be one too!

When your in your 20's you never think you will be 40. I remember my Mom turning for and I thought that was SOOOOO old, I was 16 at the time.

What I have learned, is time is going faster as I get older. Christmas seems to come about every 3 months. I have spent the last 15 years weighing over 300 pounds. I plan on spending the rest of my life weighing well under 200 pounds. Im at 249 right now, so I still have a way to go. Now that time is moving faster, I have to hunker down and commit in full to the rest of my life.

I have been fat all of my daughters life. My son is going to be 14. I want him to have some childhood memories of me being healthy and having energy. I feel guilty that my daughter never had the chance to see me that way when she was little. I was still a fun Mom, but my weight held me back from a lot of things.

You never truly understand that YOUR fat affects other people, especially kids. YOUR fat keeps you from taking pictures, it keeps you from physical activites and outings that are fun and education for them. It prevents memories from being made, becasue we want to pretend our fat doesnt affect our lives, but it does.

I hope that in the next 24 years of my daughters life, I present a healthier more balanced image of a woman to her.

Marketing is the key to success. You can have a great idea, but if you don’t advertise no one will ever hear about it. Today at the local coffee shop, they were discussing promotional ideas and things you could do to earn a discount  of your coffee drink. I’m all over this eavesdropping session as I am an admitted snooty coffee whore and will consider just about anything to get an extra 25 cents off per drink. Ideas are flying around “Wear a Turban Tuesday”….sure I’ll do that….”Wacky Wednesday”….well that one is easy as I am wacky everyday. It could be “Sell your husband into while slavery Friday” and I can’t say that I wouldn’t consider it. But just as I’m contemplating where I can buy a good used turban, the following suggestion stops me cold in my tracks. “Moo Moo Mondays!”…..

WHHHHHAAAATTT? My blood runs cold and I get a slightly nauseous feeling…you know the one you get where you stub your big toe so hard you think you might instantly puke. That feeling. The cute perky twentysomething girl says “What’s a Moo Moo?” Well obviously she didn’t have a Mom from the 70′s.

As a fat girl, just the mere mention of “Moo Moo” can set into motion a series of emotional events that can easily land you in the local psych ward for 48 hour observation. You can try to make a Moo Moo fashionable, you can try to pretend that it is an acceptable piece of clothing. But it’s not. If you get any of those mailers from Roman’s or Fingerhut, on the back page they usually show a normal sized younger brunette woman(a blond, no matter what her size would never be caught dead in one) modeling the Moo Moo. It kind of looks like a house dress or house coat. THIS IS A LIE. No one under 50 wears a Moo Moo. No one under a size 18 wears a Moo Moo. So marketing people at Fingerhut, give it a rest! We are not fooled by your pretty brunette size 6 bimbo. Under that Moo Moo she is wearing a string bikini, and she is leaving this appointment to go shoot her Sport Illustrated cover. She would NEVER wear that outside of your ad.

Something this girl would never wear if not being paid

So, we know who doesn’t wear a Moo Moo…so who does? My Mother, circa 1972-1979. That’s who. Almost every day and for any occasion. I think she had mood Moo Moo’s. The black Moo Moo with small white polka dots was the “I’m depressed Moo Moo. The crazy purple and orange paisley Moo Moo was the “Let’s Party Moo Moo”. The light blue Moo Moo with the dark green stripe down the front was the “I’m a serious Housewife Moo Moo”. But let’s get one thing straight, Moo Moo’s were totally acceptable for any time place or event. I remember many a drive to the grocery store with my Mom decked out in the lovely yellow with daisies Moo Moo, (must have been for grocery shopping). She would accessorize by wearing a lovely scarf on her head (that went over her rollers of course). If it was a special day she would wear the light blue eyeshadow and coral lipstick. We would top this jaunty look off with big ass gold hoop earing and cat eyeglasses. The finishing touch was the lit cigarette dangling from her lips. I remember it would bounce up and down as she talked. She didn’t believe in always supporting the cigarette as that would not allow her to have two fee hands to complete tasks like driving, crocheting, cooking or tending to our open wounds. She could let the ash get REALLY long before she flicked it. But, no matter what you think about this get up, circa 1972…she was one hot Moo Moo MaMa.

During these years, my Mom was “pleasantly plump”. She was probably a size 16-18 by today’s standard. She had been skinny her whole life, so becoming chubby was hard for her. A Moo Moo hid a multitude of sins, like wide hips. It could also hide a jack hammer, two labrador retrievers, a picnic basket , 2 watermelons and Big Wheel. (Actual things found under Moo Moos). If something had been lost at your house, there is a good chance it had gotten swept up in the Moo Moo. The Moo Moo is a black hole.  

BRINGING IT HOME

So with 60 percent of adult americans overweight, what do we do with the Moo Moo? Do we say “To hell with it, I will just be fat and wear a Moo Moo!”??? NO WE DON”T! I don’t care how many mood Moo Moo’s there are, there is not a “I feel hot and sexy” Moo Moo. If the word “Moo Moo” is attached, it instantly voids the words “hot” and “sexy”. If you want to feel good about yourself and have a healthy self-esteem you can’t wear something that sounds like a sound a cow makes. If you are considering killing yourself or want to be disowned from your family, wearing a Moo Moo is an option.

I have included links for crocheting and how to treat open wounds. Both of these activities keep your hands busy and make it hard to eat. Eating less might keep you out of a Moo Moo. I included the link for the black hole to replace some of the brain cells you just wasted reading about Moo Moo’s. I don’t want to contribute to anyone in this world becoming more stupid. You can do that all on your own.

 

To read my other blogs check out my site:

http://notmadeup.wordpress.com/