saturday stats - the bandwagon story

Once when I was in middle school, one of the principals, in an attempt to quiet a cafeteria full of prepubescent teenagers, warned us not to "fall off the bandwagon."  Of course, few of us understood the reference and was thought she was just babbling crazy talk.

(After teaching high school, I'm pretty convinced that all teenagers are certain that their school leaders spout out crazy talk all day long.)

Anyway, we just thought it was hilarious and we laughed like a pack of hyenas in a lunchroom den.  I came home from school expecting my family to roll on the ground in stitches of laughter when I told my amazing story.

Nobody got it.

I figured that I just needed to repeat the story a few dozen times and let it sink in.  To my dismay, the more I recounted the tale, the less funny it became.  My mom tried to explain that it was a "you had to be there" kind of story and to this day in my family, whenever someone tries to tell a story that just isn't funny anymore we refer to it as "a bandwagon story."

Well, this is kind of like a bandwagon story except that it was never really funny.

I fell off the bandwagon.

I left for my week long vacation with the shaky resolve to stick to my diet completely.  I felt like I was no where near my weight loss goal so why should I take a break?  That quickly turned into, "Well, just a few treats.  It is a vacation after all."

When I passed the fudge counter at the BYU bookstore, all bets were off and I found myself flung from a diet bandwagon speeding out of control.  Luckily a big pile of soft fluffy fudge broke my fall.

It was pretty easy to justify since I was out of town and I don't go on many vacations.  However, when I got home, it was even harder to get back on.  Day after day of the past week, I ran alongside the bandwagon trying to jump back on but my feeble attempts were in vain.

It's really frustrating and disappointing especially since I have no one else to blame but myself.  I wish I could blame that BYU fudge but I'm pretty sure inanimate objects have no control over my actions.

I'm trying to use this as a learning opportunity.  There are two lessons to be learned, I think.  First of all, I think that vacations are a great time to take a little break from the diet.  It's okay to have a pound taste of delicious fudge. (Why am I so hung up on this fudge?)  That being said, I could have been way healthier on my trip.  I could have made my plan of attack ahead of time and simply chosen a few off plan treats to enjoy.

Secondly, and this is the lesson I'm still grappling with, how do you get back on that dumb diet bandwagon?  This is not the first time I have been derailed by a vacation, holiday, or special event.  It seems like nearly every month has some celebration that has to do with eating.  I truly believe that I need to find a balance in life between fasting from all indulgences forever and going absolutely crazy any special occasion that passes my calendar.

What do you do to get back on the bandwagon?

saturday stats - prunella

I have two sick babies today.  We have spent the evening living off of popsicles and prune juice.

That's right.  Prune juice.

You never realize how fully entrenched into motherhood you are until the most pressing concern of your entire week is getting someone to have a bowel movement.

Incidentally, we have been watching a lot of Arthur.  Netflix lost a contract to Nickelodeon which has resulted in the loss of Wonder Pets.  We are still recovering.  One of the main characters on Arthur is named Prunella which has been fitting for our week.

I'll spare you the details but we had a major success this afternoon.  Prune juice is truly magical.

So that's it really.  I'm tired and sitting in a messy living room and I don't even care and I'm watching cooking shows because I feel like it.  But really, when you're dieting it feels more like self imposed torture.  I'm really not a masochist.  I just love cooking shows.

Here are the stats.  I'm too tired to do the kind of maths that would be required to calculate a weekly total.  Also the picture is upside down.  Sorry about that.

saturday stats - err what?

Today we went to the pool.  We walked outside of our apartment and across the parking lot to a pool filled with approximately five hundred seventy nine people swimming.  They were freely imbibing and beer bottles littered the pool area.  At three thirty in the afternoon.

Something told us that it was not a family friendly environment today so we decided to drive over to the pool at my parents' neighborhood.  Buckling a toddler dressed in a swimsuit into a black carseat that has been baking in a car in the afternoon heat is a real treat.  After witnessing the acrobatic stunts Katelyn pulled off to avoid being strapped into the hot seat, I think she might have a real promising career in the circus.

Anyway, we finally made it to the pool.  By the time the car had cooled to a bearable eighty five degrees we had reached our destination.  The pool felt like a nice warm bath which is just what you are hoping for when it is a hundred and four out.  Literally.  And I always use that word correctly.

Despite the heat we had a great time swimming.  My parents met us at the pool and we busted out the water wings for the first time.  My parents' pool has a lap lane so we all took turns racing each other and holding Kate.  We exhausted ourselves.

By the time we got home and up the stairs we realized that we were fresh out of diapers so an executive decision was made that I would go out and buy some while Dave watched Kate. (Don't worry.  There was a diaper in my bag so I didn't have to pick up any carpet cleaner at the store.  We are not that ill prepared.)

A scary thing happened at Walmart today.  Somehow a giant tub of Blue Bell ice cream ended up in my cart by the time I reached check out.  I'm serious.  I got to the line and I was like, "Wha?!?"  I had to sheepishly inform the check out employee that I had changed my mind because I was sure not going to lose my place in line to walk to the back of the store and put it away.  Remember I was facing a mountain of tasks including walking across the parking lot, loading the car, driving home in an oven on wheels, and crawling up the boiling hot stairs.  I would be lucky if I didn't melt in the process.

"I changed my mind," I told her.  She asked if I wanted to exchange it for a different flavor and I almost said, "Yes.  Butter Crunch please."  Instead I just told her the obvious truth.  I'm fat and I'm working on becoming less fat.  She laughed and we ended up having a nice discussion about weight loss and "the Freshman Fifteen."

Good news.  I made it home only slightly heat struck.  Bad news.  Check out my scale.  Someone please tell me that this just means the batteries are dead and I'm not too fat to be weighed.

plateaus are only pretty in the desert

Once when I was a small child my family and I drive to Utah for a summer vacation.  (Actually a lot of times we drove to Utah for the summer but I am thinking of one time in particular.)  I had a little vinyl puffy journal complete with a tiny lock and kittens on the front.  I used that diary to chronicle our journey.  I wrote in sloppy handwriting with a giant crayon and the words took up three lines instead of just one.  One of the things I wrote about were the plateaus we passed in New Mexico.

I had just learned about plateaus and mesas in school.  A plateau was like a mountain with the point cut off so it was flat on top.  A mesa was a little plateau.  Growing up in southeast Texas, the closest I came to a mountain at home was a big anthill.  I thought that the plateaus were amazing.  They weren't in a chain of plateaus like the Wasatch mountain range of Utah I was used to.

How did they get so flat on the top?  How did they get there in the first place?  Did anybody live on the top?

Now that I am an adult, I do not think plateaus are so cool, especially when I am talking about a plateau on the scale.  It is frustrating and upsetting after a week of dieting.  I know they are to be expected.  I just spent yesterday explaining to my sister that lulls in weight loss happen for any number of reasons.

Maybe you ate a lot of salt yesterday.  Maybe you've been working out a lot and gained some muscle mass.  Maybe an ant crawled into the scale and is having a good laugh messing with the numbers.

When it happens to you though, it is downright depressing.

Weekly: +1 pounds
 Total: 18 pounds

saturday stats - scaling the scale

I had a doctor's appointment last week.  I'm so lucky to have my mom nearby to watch Katelyn for these occasions.  I have never been to the doctor with a toddler but I'm sure it is loads of fun.

Anyway, while there it was reconfirmed that I am one healthy fat person.  I'm always glad to hear that my blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol levels are normal.  It makes me want to fist pump a chubby hand into the air in celebration as I evade obesity related illness once more.

I know it's only a matter of time though.  That's why I started this blog to lose weight, blah, blah, blah.  You already know all of this.

Anyway, while I was there, I started talking about weight loss and my doctor told me that he only weighs every six months!  Every six months!!!  Can you believe it?!?

Anyway...

Maybe I should work on not weighing every single day but I'd hate to turn Saturday Stats into a Semi-Annual Stats sort of thing.  I'll stick with once weekly for now.

Upon my return, I was summoned immediately by Kate to look at the book she had been reading with her grandma.  It is a Sesame Street book and one page has a picture of The Count with his bat friends and my mom has taught her to scream, "Eek!" when she turns to that page.  I'm glad.  Everyone should have a healthy fear of bats and rabies.

I have to admit something.  I started losing weight before I began writing this blog.  My actual starting weight was 275 and not 267.  At first I decided I just wouldn't mention it because...  I don't know.  I guess I just wanted a fresh start.  But now I'm like, no!  I'm going to claim all of the weight I've lost!

So here are my weekly totals...

Weekly: 1.5 pounds

Total: 19 pounds

saturday stats: i hope you weren't expecting perfection

This is the story of how I ate an ice cream cone for breakfast yesterday morning.

Dave and I share a car.  We share a tiny, beat up, prune juice stained Kia Rio. (One year and two months ago I would have never guessed that prune juice stains would be such a problem but trust me, they are.) Lucky for us, his employer has purchased a bus pass for him.  So if I want mobility during the day, I just have to make the five minute drive to the Kroger's parking lot where the bus picks him up.

When I was a full time working sugar mama I would have relished in the ability to stay at home all day eating bonbons and watching TV.  As a stay at home mom, I have found that there are never any bonbons, the only TV show Kate lets me watch is Arthur, and pretty soon the walls close in and you start to feel imprisoned in a jail of laundry and dirty dishes.  So most days I like to get out and this means either hoping for charity from my mom or taking Dave to the bus.

No big deal right?

Wrong.

Getting Dave to work on time means waking up my sleeping baby at 7:15 in the morning.

Let me repeat this for emphasis.

In the morning!

Waking my sleeping baby!!!

Yesterday morning I was not in a good mood.  Dave was in a great mood because it was Friday and his perkiness made me feel like the cheeriness of his voice was turned up to maximum volume and seeing at his bright smiling face was like staring directly into the sun.

(A very handsome sun, I might add.)

On days like yesterday, what drags me out of bed is the promise of a Diet Coke from the McDonald's drive through on the way home.  The McDonald's drive through is always a bitter sweet experience for me because while I get a sweet, chilly, effervescent Diet Coke I also am subjected to a visual assault of lustrously greasy fried foods.

I really truly have a hard time believing people who claim to "hate" McDonald's.  Maybe they hate the idea of it.  Maybe they hate the way it makes you feel later.  Maybe Ronald really just freaks them out.  But I'd like to sit down with them at one of those sticky booths and watch them eat a perfectly salted fry and lie to my face when they insist they don't like it.

Anyway, every time I'm there I look longingly at the food and try to justify getting something for my Diet Coke to wash down but ever since they printed those calorie counts my best logic still can't rationalize my way around it.

Until today.

Almost every morning I eat a fat free yogurt with a handful of raw almonds for breakfast.  The calorie count comes out to be somewhere around 250.  A McDonald's ice cream cone is 170 and I decided it was sort of yogurt so I ordered one.

And that is how I found myself licking a delicious ice cream cone at 7:30 in the morning.

And I didn't even feel bad.

Well okay.  I did feel a twinge of remorse when Katelyn spotted the ice cream cone in her carseat mirror and started begging like a dog.  And I kind of hoped no one who knew me was driving along Highway Six at 7:30 in the morning watching me eat my ice cream cone for breakfast.

I never said I was perfect.

I like this picture because the ice cream cone looks like it's surrounded by glorious clouds.  Also the caption literally read, "Healthy ice cream cone."  So...  I was just being healthy.

So I spent all day yesterday debating whether or not I should share this information with all of you.  I argued to myself that I ate even less calories because of the ice cream cone and that really, it was just a good serving of dairy.  Eventually I reminded of the true purpose of this blog.  I wanted to portray a real and raw account of weight loss, obesity, and food addiction and not a sucralose coated before and after picture.  I've been nothing if not honest here and I wasn't going to change over 170 calories worth of McDonald's ice cream.

Yeah, I need a new pedicure.

I hope I haven't been too disappointing.

Weekly Total: 2.5 pounds
Grand Total: 9.5 pounds

saturday stats: chicken strips

My mom says that she can tell that I lost weight when she looks at my face...of course she is a little biased.

Well I for one am relieved to see that the scale went down a bit this week.

At one point yesterday afternoon I realized that my weigh in was looming and I started to freak out a bit.  I will openly admit to weighing myself every day.  I know there are a lot of theories about the negative effects of daily weigh ins and whatever but I am stubborn and still weigh myself every morning right after I use the bathroom and before I eat or drink anything.

Maybe I am just set in my weighs.

Get it ?!?

So I knew that I had lost weight but then I started worrying about retaining water from the day before and the scale not looking like I had lost weight.  I decided I just needed to chill out and let it go.  No one is waiting to execute me if I don't lose any weight.

Right?

And then we went to Whataburger for date night and I had chicken strips and thought, "!!!!!!! Sodium!!!!!  I am going to be bloated for Saturday Stats!"

In a way it was a good thing because when I was perusing the kitchen for a late night snack, I changed my mind and went to bed.

So I guess what I am really trying to say is thanks for reading and keeping me honest in the process.  Your cyber support has provided me with an accountability that I lacked in the past.

I'm just glad the chicken strips didn't ruin everything.

saturday stats: it's just a number right?

I asked Dave to take a few pictures of me to post a before shot but then I chickened out and made him crop them so they only showed my face.  One step at a time...

I wrote yesterday's inaugural post in the afternoon while Kate was napping.  Then she woke up and the sounds of her crying jostled me back into real daily life.  My evenings consist of Cheerios and diapers with plastic toys that sing and wooden puzzle pieces.  I cut up pieces of cheese and pickles, sweep the kitchen floor for the billionth time of the day, and wipe clean two little hands and one smiling face.  I re-roll the toilet paper (again) and pack my diaper bag.  We look for birds and dogs on the way out to the car and buckle seatbelts and carseats and drive away to pick Dave up from work.  After that it is folding laundry while Dave chases Katelyn around the living room, her laughter piercing the air like fireworks.

Bath time, story time, prayer time, bed time.

By the time I sat down with my computer to face my impending exposure, my confidence had waned.  Pressing the publish button on Blogger was no big deal.  Only a handful of acquaintances might stumble over to this corner of the internet.  But as my finger hovered over the Facebook share button, my heart jumped into my throat and my stomach rumbled.

This meant commitment.  This was real.

So imagine my dread as tonight I hit the execute button on a post that will reveal my weight on the internet.

One time when I was pregnant with Kate, Dave came with me to one of my prenatal appointments.  It was a great day.  I got to hear little Katelyn's heart beat and see her kicking and squirming around on the ultrasound.  We went back upstairs to hopefully hear the doctor confirm that our little "Lentil," as we called her, was healthy and well.

She was perfect.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  It was wonderful.

And then, as only a thin person would do, she nonchalantly said my weight out loud.

IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND!

I just about died right on the spot slumped over the table with the stirrups.  Dave could sense that I was totally and completely mortified.  I weighed more than him.  It was humiliating.

For months, we both pretended that it didn't even happen until one day I was about to weigh myself and told him to look away.

"I know how much you weigh," he admitted, cutting the tension that was still lingering. (Which I already knew he knew that I knew that he knew how much I weighed anyway.)  I just stared blankly at him.  "It doesn't matter," he continued, "It's just a number and you are just as beautiful now as you were before.  You have always been beautiful to me."

So I guess the point of that story is to remind myself that my weight is just a number.  You don't have to see the scale that I'm standing on to notice that I'm overweight.  Why should posting a stupid number make a difference?  If I didn't, it would probably just seem that I'm not taking this seriously.

So here you go.  Try to do a little drumroll with your thumbs on the computer please.

TA DA!!!!!!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to crawl under the covers and lie there for a day or so to decompress.