Feeling Obese

Hello everyone!

So far I have had a good day today. I have counted my calories and I’m still within my target. I have decided I am not going to weigh for a few days. If I can at least hold my weight steady, it’s better than gaining.

I don’t know why this has to be so hard.

Yesterday I was feeling miserable, bloated, and just generally obese. I realized that I’m doing this to myself. I am allowing it to happen. Eating too much equals feeling lousy, and I’m the only one to blame for how I feel.

And guess what? It is possible to overeat healthy food. Generally, I’m a pretty healthy eater. I don’t remember the last time I ate greasy fast food. We don’t allow junk food in the house. I haven’t bought Twinkies or any other Hostess type packs since starting this journey years ago.

Not all fat people chow down on the most common food offenders of obesity.

But eating too much is eating too much, even if the eating too much is only done a couple of meals on the weekend.

My biggest problem lately has been not counting my calories. I get busy, busy, busy and forget to count my calories and before I know it, it’s the end of the day and I never got around to it. So I have no way of knowing how I’m really doing, even on good days.

So my goal this week is to be faithful at counting my calories every day and to exercise at least 5 days.

I don’t want to feel miserable any more!

A Sweet and Healthy Treat You’ll Love

Just in case you haven’t been introduced to the delicious wonder of banana soft serve, I thought I’d share it with you. You’re welcome.

I posted this recipe almost three years ago, so I think it’s time to share it again.

Banana soft serve is made of nothing but frozen bananas. It tastes like ice cream.

Who am I kidding, you’re not going to read any more so I’ll just share the link to the recipe for the creamy goodness that is Banana Soft Serve.

Enjoy!

Always

 

Recycling and Storing Grocery Bags

Don’t mind me—I’m just saving the environment.

I wouldn’t call myself an environmentalist or anything, but I do believe in taking care of the environment that we live in by keeping it clean and not being wasteful.

If I were an environmentalist, I probably would opt for re-usable bags, which I do—when it’s convenient. It’s probably the better option, but unless I’m shopping at Aldi—I’m not always prepared for it with environmentally conscious reusable bags in hand.

So I do use plastic grocery bags. And when I get home and unload all of my groceries, I always keep the bags for reuse as kitchen garbage bags. A grocery bag fits perfectly within my under-sink garbage can and let’s face it—it’s a pretty inexpensive garbage bag!

I was storing the bags under the sink and it got cluttered and messy, taking up way too much room under the sink. I found a great idea on Pinterest and decided to give it a try—I love it!

You’ll need an empty coffee can. The one I used was made of cardboard. It was all I had in the house, and it’s actually working just fine!

Carefully cut a slot into the top of the lid, as shown below. Maybe yours won’t be as crooked as mine.

Next, remove the lid and stuff grocery sacks into the container one by one until the entire can if filled. They will squeeze in pretty tight, so really pack them down!

Put the lid back on and pull part of the top grocery bag through the slot. You’ll have a handy storage container for grocery sacks!

You can also recycle grocery bags by dropping them off at a designated receptacle. I know many of the grocery stores in my area offer this option. Some consignment stores accept grocery bag donations also. This is just an easy way you can prevent waste by recycling!

Not Waiting to Live Any Longer

If you look on the right hand side bar, you’ll see a section titled “My Goal Rewards”. Throughout my weight loss, I’ve set rewards for every 10 lbs. lost and I will continue to do so. Over the years, I earned a Columbia fleece, a new pair of shoes, an iPod, my favorite lotions, and a lot of other things! Looking at it all together it looks pretty expensive! But it was over a long period of time and well worth it for the incentive.

I came within a couple of pounds of meeting my 198 goal reward which was to go to an amusement park and ride all of the rides. I have always felt like I was too heavy to participate in a lot of activities like this. Afraid of the looks I would receive if I couldn’t fit in the seat or something of the like. Had this ever happened to me? No, but I think it’s a fear that most overweight people have.

We wanted to go to an amusement park last year and we kept putting it off because I was so close to my goal and I needed to “earn” it. And this year, I am so much farther from that goal and decided that enough was enough. I wasn’t going to let a number on the scale keep me from living life.

So we went to am amusement park this past weekend. I rode every roller coaster at the park. I hated every single minute of it but I was brave enough to do it. I learned that roller coasters are not for me and I really don’t care if I never go on one again.

But I lived. I always wanted to go and I did it. Discovering that I didn’t really enjoy it is ok! Now I know. I did enjoy the water rides a lot though. I also put on my swim suit and enjoyed floating around in a tube in the lazy river of the attached water park. I may be embarrassed of my weight, but I’m not going to let it stop me from living any more.

An interesting part of this trip is that I saw quite a few people larger than me. I saw a couple of women struggle to lift their legs to climb into a raft. I saw the people in line in front of me snicker as they watched the women struggle and I wanted to make them feel how ashamed those women must have felt. It’s not funny. It’s heart breaking. And this is probably why I had avoided going to an amusement park while overweight. People are cruel.

I wish people would consider the fact that they don’t know the whole story before they decide to judge every obese person they see. More than likely, there’s a deep struggle and lots of anguish going on inside past the layers of fat. It’s never ok to laugh at others for their struggles. Some struggles are visible and others aren’t. Some of our struggles are just a lot more obvious.

But no matter how obvious the struggle, it’s important to be alive. It’s important to experience the thrills of life. What good is a life if it’s spent not truly living but only surviving.

I choose to live NOW, even as I struggle to improve my life and become the person that I want to be. There might not be a tomorrow and I am choosing to live today.

Fishing

It seems like every summer hubby and I make a list of the fun things we’d like to do while the weather is nice. Many times we don’t actually accomplish all of them, but make our way through what we have time for. We took care of a couple of items over the long holiday weekend!

My younger brother came to stay with us Wednesday night through Sunday. He doesn’t get to come out very often because of work, so we made the best of the time that we had and it was jam packed with fun.

Hubby and I always seem to have fishing on our summer fun list and we never actually go fishing. In fact, the last time we went fishing was when we were dating and we’ve been married for almost 7 years!

So hubby, my brother, and I headed out for a short fishing trip at a local park. We only had two poles and one of them broke half way through the day, but it worked out!

I really enjoyed the peacefulness of being outside with hardly anyone around. It was a beautiful day. I took some pictures, as usual! Due to recent flooding, the water looks kind of disgusting around the shore.

But the good news was that there was a slab of concrete with a bench and while the concrete was covered with water, the bench was not. It made for a nice and cool place to fish and get our feet a little wet.

Beautiful scenery!

We didn’t catch any fish—but we did break a fishing line with a bobber attached. We saw the bobber disappear and a fish flop around on the water. Too bad for that fish!

I now have a 1-year fishing license so hubby and I hope to go fishing again this summer! It will be a nice weekend date.

Happy 4th of July (a little late!)

I hope that you all had a wonderful 4th of July! My vacation fun started on Wednesday evening and just ended today. It was a busy time with lots of fun filled activities! I will be sure to share some of them this week.

On the 4th, hubby and I participated in our fourth 4th of July 5K. This is always an anniversary, in a sense, because this race was the very first 5K we ever participated in.

Throughout the four years, I have walked/run, set PRs, and overcome obstacles. This year was one of those walk/run years. I am hoping that by next year I will be in a better place and I can finish with a greater sense of accomplishment. This year, I was just happy to be lapping the people on the couch and to have finished.

Next year will be our fifth anniversary of our first 5K. I will make it my goal to be proud of where I am so that I can look back on the previous years and see progress, not disappointment.

Scenic Train Ride

This past weekend, hubby and I took his parents out for their anniversary gift. We gave them a Groupon that included four tickets on a two hour scenic train ride and entrance to the railroad history museum. It was a nice day trip to Ames/Boone, Iowa and we were able to eat lunch at the famed Iowa restaurant, Hickory Park.

I’ll share a few pictures from the experience with you! We started with the museum, which was interesting because we live near where a railroad once ran and hubby grew up close to the railroad.

This is some service type vehicle that was used back in the day. The servicemen would pedal it along the tracks. Wouldn’t that be fun exercise? With no trains, of course.

And then we hopped on the train. We sat in the open air train. It was a beautiful and cool day.

The entire excursion was run by volunteers, just to keep the train going due to lack of funds.

Part of the ride included crossing a railroad trestle that is 156 ft. high. It was a little eerie, but a beautiful view! We stopped on the bridge and the locomotive let out steam to bring out a rainbow.

Can you see the little boy poking his head out the window? So cute.

I’m always taking photos of scenery. I just can’t resist nature against the backdrop of a beautiful blue sky. It’s breath taking.

This is Iowa. I have grown to love the wide open spaces and the sense of freedom felt when standing in the middle of it all.

Yet another excursion, thanks to Groupon! What’s next?!

More than my Weight

I just posted about how I didn’t have anything else to say about weight loss and wouldn’t you know, I follow that up with a post about weight loss.

So here’s what got me thinking. I had basically stopped blogging regularly because I knew I wasn’t a super star in the weight loss world and felt like nobody wanted to read what I had to say.

And then you all commented about how there was more to me than my weight and that you all wanted to know about me as a person too.

It hit me as I read your comments. I let my weight control my identity. I allow my worth to be the equivalent of my weight on the scale. The higher the number, the less value I have as a person. My happiness is largely controlled by how my clothes fit.

In my mind, I am only as good as what I currently weigh.

When I lost almost 90 lbs., I discovered that I had worth. This was new to me because it was the first time I had ever lost a significant amount of weight in my adult life. I thought I had figured it out. I was not my weight. I was an amazing person who could accomplish anything that I set my mind to.

In retrospect, having gained back almost 40 of those lbs., I realize that even then, my worth was the equivalent to the number on the scale. I valued myself because I weighed less. And today, that part of my mentality hasn’t changed a bit. I despise myself because I weigh more.

If I am not solely a reflection of the number on the scale, then who am I? As a first step to learn to truly love myself for who I am, beyond the scale, I’m going to tell you who I am.

I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and friend. I am a child of God. I am a an editor, a technical writer, a marketing writer, a blogger, and photographer. I am a cook, a gardener, an artist, and singer. I am a walker, a jogger, a biker, and swimmer.

I am so much more than my weight. One of these days, I’ll believe it.