I'm MOVING!!

Come see me over at:

http://lessofpaige.wordpress.com

I want to thank my first Blogging home, Blogger, but I have found a site that actually keeps up with me as I type. How refreshing!

Step Away From the Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Khalil went through the recipe for me, telling me what we needed from the pantry. (I am far too lazy busy to do work like that myself.)
While I was in the middle of cooking, he asked me "Why are you making these again?" And I told him, "Because I felt like it."
I had the honest-to-goodness true intention of eating only ONE pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookie.
I have eaten... probably close to 15, if not.. well, let's just leave it there. I didn't KNOW that they would be so good. I didn't know that the moist pumpkin would meld so well with the slightly crunchy chocolate chips. I didn't know that mixing two of my favorite flavors would rend me helpless. Honest to God, I thought I was going to eat one cookie.
On the way home tonight, I thought to myself, "I want some of those cookies". And I knew I'd eat some. Then I thought, "What if I went home and planned not to eat any cookies? What about that?" Because that has actually worked for me- if I make up my mind about something, I usually stick with it. But when I said that this time, I laughed at myself. Ha ha, that's so funny. You are just as helpless against the pumpkin-chocolate chip cookie as you are against the cookie-dough Pop-tart (I had four one day. Four.).
Needless to say, unless they all leave my house, I will not be making pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookies again "because I feel like it".
Also, as a side note? I'm watching a TiVo-ed episode of "Mi Vida Eres Tu". It's a requirement for my Spanish class. I wish I knew what they were saying.

Fall is Here

I love fall.

I like spring, too, and summer. I like spring- the coming out of winter, emerging feel of spring. I like summer, I like the sizzling hot, I like beaches, I like the heat of summer. I like winter too- but mostly just the beginning. The first snow, Christmas, and wearing sweaters.

But I love fall. I love the crisp air. I love the smell of the leaves on the ground. I love apple picking and pumpkin carving. Hay rides. I love going to fairs and fall festivals. I love the weather- it's not so warm I'm always hot, but not so cold I have to wear a jacket. I like that it's chilly in the morning and at night, but warm in the afternoon.

Also? I LOVE food for each season. Summer brings ice cream and iced coffee. Winter is time for hot chocolate.

But fall? The food that fall brings. Hot apple cider and a plethora of apple desserts. Pumpkin and apple pie. Pumpkin lattes. Cider donuts. Pumpkin bread. Thanksgiving food. Fair food! Fried dough, funnel cake, cotton candy, apple fritters, caramel apples.

Which of course leads to the dilemma. No, dilemma just isn't the right word. Temptation is I guess. I love this food. Alot of it doesn't come around all the time. And if it does... well, it's just not the same. I want to eat it. I want to let my discipline go. I want to not worry about it. A couple of times, I've already done so. But I know that I can figure out ways to do every season without always having an excuse. Once I started losing weight, I went all. summer. long. without Dairy Queen. Listen, maybe to you it's not a big deal. But for me? Huge. HuGE. Every summer, I went at least a few times a week. This summer, instead of going to DQ every week, I lost weight. I felt better. I look better.

I have to keep that. Maintain the focus and discipline. This weekend already I've felt myself not wanting to be careful. Just wanting to eat whatever when I go out. Not worry about the consequences.

But there are consequences. Thirty pounds of them.

Fall is here. I'm trying not to fall.

Love Thursday

Love Is...

My sister.

I have learned so much from my sister.

About how to be a good mother, who your children feel secure with.

About overcoming some of life's biggest challenges.

About facing your worst possible nightmare, surviving it, and moving through it with grace.

About being a sister and what that means.

About being best friends with your sister, how much that means to me, and what a gift it is.

There's so much more I could say. So much more I want to say. My sister is amazing and my best friend. I'm blessed to have her in my life.

*Brought to you by Love Thursday.*

Compliments

I got some new pants this weekend. (thanks Shannon!) They fit me and are not too big on me. I received several nice compliments today and was asked how many sizeds I had dropped.

Three.

I have dropped:
20
18
16

I now fit into 14s. I can hardly believe it. I can remember when I was at my highest weight looking at the 14s, and trying some on, and just wanting to cry because they would barely come around my stomach. Much less zip up or be comfortable.

I have done some very hard work. It's funny, and I think some piece of this is because I exercise, but the weight loss has slowed down. I'm approaching 30 pounds, and it's going more slowly. Which is fine. Because my body feels different, and I fit continually into smaller clothes! My body is changing. I measured myself on Monday, and have lost 5 inches in the last couple of weeks- almost an inch in most of the spots I measure myself. What a nice feeling.

It's this stuff, these good feelings, that I need to hang on to when I feel done. Burnt. Tired.

Two Weeks

When you start dieting, you're all gung-ho. You come up with all these ways to do it right. You print out sheets upon sheets of a food journal. You sign up to sparkpeople. You enter your food at least every night, if not as you're eating it. You obsess about both exchanges and calories. You exercise religiously. You swear off of all white carbs. You don't go out to eat because you don't know how and you don't know how many ounces of chicken are in that salad you got. You weigh and/ or measure your food. All. Of. It.

Oh? You don't. Well, I did.

And I started to see results. And they were good. And encouraging. And then I went to the MD, and he told me even better news. And that was encouraging too.

Then it got to be alot. It got old talking about it all the time. It got tiring to write about it. It got exhausting living that way. No matter how many times I convinced myself this was just a diet and at some point in my life, I could stop and it would be fine, I knew that wasn't true. Because the thing is? That I can't stop. If and when I stop, I gain weight. I've done that no less than two times now, and more than anything I don't want to do it again. All those 16, 18, and 20 sized clothes that I packed away? I want them to stay away. So I can't keep going how I'm going, all orthodox and rigid-like, but I cna't stop either.

So I decided. I would let the journaling and calorie counting go. I have a very good idea in my head of how many exchanges I can eat and how to get them in throughout my day. I gave myself two weeks to just do the exchanges in my head. At the end of two weeks I would see how I did. I also took something of a break from blogging on both this blog and my community blog. I just needed a break.

Today was the last day. I was down close to two pounds, which for this point in my journey, ain't so bad. I'm picking back up the pieces I miss- blogging- and for now letting go of the journaling and sparkpeople. I am going to keep a very close watch. If I find either my habits slipping or my weight going in the wrong direction, back to journaling it is.

In the meantime, I have to find ways to live with this. For, well, a long time. For me, this is the first steop. Seeing if I can do it without the journaling and calorie counting. Doing real-life eating sensibly, in my exchanges. We'll see from there.

On another but possibly related note, this blog has been mostly all weight loss all the time. I've had a few non-weight loss (or gain, as the case may be) related posts, but will probably do some more of that. So I can share a little more of my life. Not just the fact that I'm losing weight.

And successfully, at that.

Burnt

I kind of got burnt on it all. I was writing all of my food in a food journal, plus putting it online so I could keep track of my calories. Keeping track of water drank, food, exchanges, calories, blogging.... it all got to be too much.
So I stopped. Blogging, journaling, etc. I am still eating the way I'm supposed to, for the very most part. There is less accountability, but also less stress. If I didn't stop something, I was going to be done altogether, and that is the last thing I want. Either the journaling went or everything went.
I gave myself two weeks. Two weeks "off" of journaling to see how goes it. Monday is my official check-in, and I'll reassess from there. If I've gained weight, I'm definately going back to journaling. If I've lost, probably not, for now at least. If I'm the same, I have to think about it.

But I have missed blogging. So here I am.