The tipping point

I have been thinking about my journy so far, and realized that I have been building up to this point for a long time. When reading weight loss stories it is motivating and depressing at the same time. The stories always come off like, "I just woke up one morning and I decided to exercise and follow, fill in the blank diet program, and Poof I am skinny!" So I thought I would spend some time reflecting on how I came to this current path.

I have never been happy with how I look. When I got married I was 170 lbs (I am 5 ft tall) and then with each of my children I gained 30 lbs. So 60 lbs later I hate the way I look. I went through a long period of time where I would read diet books, Stop the Insanity, Fit for Life, Eat Right For Your Type etc. And would start off with good intentions, but I could never really get off the ground with any diet program. In Jan 2003 I joined weight watchers with some friends from work and was able to stick with the program for a while, but I continued to drink Dr pepper and eat cookies. I did add in salad, and wheat bread, but I never really stuck with it. I would go through fits and starts where I would stay on the program and then I would fall off the wagon. I did manage to loose 20 lbs and achieve my first 10 % goal about a year later, then I just quit. I can't really say why exactly, but I think fear of success had a little to do with it. I hate it when people day "you look like you have lost weight" I don't know why exactly but I do. You would think I would be ecstatic, I DO WANT to lose weight, I guess I just don't want other people to notice. And so I bounced back up to 228 or so.

Growing up I never had a consistent role model for food. We were stuck in survival mode. I do not remember sitter down to dinner as a family consistently. My Mom has been overweight my entire life. And with divorces and instabilities, my life growing up was never consistent enough to worry about food. When I got to be a teenager, I wanted to do something different. I remember making resolutions to go for bike rids, walks, whatever and never being able to follow through. I hated the way I looked, I felt horrible about myself, so I did not want to go out in public, and so it was a vicious cycle. When I was in High School both my mom and step father worked at Taco Bell. I think between the two of them they were making like $800 a month, so again what we were eating was not exactly at the top of the priority list.

I did make it to college where I met my husband. 10 months later were were married and 9 months later we were parents ( had my second daughter two years later.) For the next six years I was just trying to get through college. I still hated how I looked, and I continued to make on again off again resolutions, never sticking with anything longer than a few days or weeks. I would look at skinny people and wonder how do they do it? I knew that there was another way. I read about how herbs were good for you and that there were alternatives to western doctors. But living on student loans there was not extra money to try anything too expensive. And so I got stuck plugging along with the day to day.

I finally Graduated in 1999 and headed out into the world of work. We moved in with my mom and wound up staying there for 3 years. In that time I went back to school to get my teaching certificate and I started teaching.

When I think about the way I have cooked for my family I realize that we have never really eaten consistently healthy. I don't keep soda in the house, but there are TV dinners and the like. I have never really known how to really get started. I would look at all those foods in the produce section and have no idea where to start. Sure I could make a salad, but how on earth do you make eggplant or artichokes? So my vegetables were pretty much limited to mixed frozen veggies.

I remember reading about the Paleo diet and thinking this makes sense. But again I failed in the take off. How do you go about changing your eating habits? I would try to eliminate HFCS, but would have no idea how to go about replacing the foods that had been eliminated. I would stall out and old habits would win over.

So it has been an extremely incremental change for me. It started with reading, and being open to new ideas and food. I tried experimenting and even weight watchers. Then I finally went to ext reams and tried the Master Cleanse.

So Starting again into this journy, I have enough amassed "background knowledge" to maybe make some lasting changes. I really think the lemonade cleanse and the green smoothies are making a difference this time around. Also I look at my girls. Both of them are "overweight" and I fear for their health and happiness. I want to help them. Unfortunately it has taken me so long! They are 13 and 11. I will just have to try to be a good example and help them see the how and whys of healthy eating. I think I have reached my personal tipping point, the point where I have to do something different to hell with what anybody else says.

update

So Summer is fully underway. It has been two weeks since I started the lemonade cleanse, and I have been spending a lot of time reading about the Raw Food Diet. I am not sure that this is the best plan for me and the family, but we have been adding more healthy things. The last 3 nights I served a salad with dinner, still using the store bought dressings, but I am focusing on small steps here!

I have still not had any soda. The husband and I went out to eat yesterday at Carinos I had a spinach salad with walnut crusted chicken and a turkey panini and an Ice tea. I ate way tooo much!

My current indulgence is oatmeal cookies that I made to take advantage of the home made granola that I made that did not turn out as well as I might have liked. These have sugar in them, but at least they are homemade and chemical free.

The daughters have started to at least be open to trying Green Smoothies. They have been making Spinach, mango, bannana smoothies. So steps in the right direction.

Cheating

So I really cheated yesterday. I had 3 or 4 of the daughters chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, these left a "bad" taste in my mouth, and left me wanting to eat everything in the house. I had a salad and then was still wanting something so I tried to have some Death By Chocolate Ice Cream, this too left a bad taste in my mouth. I gave the ice cream to the husband and finally I was able to subvert my "eat everything in sight" desires by having an apple and peanut butter (yes it was Jiff) So still there was some HFCS but I do still have food in the house that needs to be eaten. We will replace it with better stuff.

I started this morning off with a smoothie. I used frozen mixed berries so it is not green, perhaps I can get the family to try this one.

Going to extremes

So here I am, back at this silly blog, posting again. I know that no one is ever going to run across this silly thing, but still I want to have some outlet for my thoughts.

Summer is upon us, and again I am going into it FAT! I am 5ft 0in and 220+ pounds! AGGGGGGG
Talk about a heart attack waiting to happen. I have been walking fairly diligently since last summer, (I am averaging about 8000 steps/day) but alas no real weight loss, could be the all that ice cream I had for dinner...

So. With summer here and no commitments, no places to go no papers to grade. I decided to get drastic with this whole diet/healthy living thing. I decided to try the Master cleanse, otherwise known as the Lemon aid diet. I lasted 4 days. Here is my Master cleanse experience.

• Day 1: I felt fine, Hungry, but fine. I had 6 glasses of lemonade, I found if I decreased the maple syrup a bit it was more palatable. I went to the store to get lemons and was able to control myself.
• Day 2: I was still hungry, but did alright
• Day 3: The daughter made cookies, still I stuck to the plan.
• Day 4: I thought I was going to make the whole 10 days but the evening of day 4 I must have brewed my senna tea too long because I woke up with horrible stomach cramps.
• Day 5: I woke up feeling like some one had been punching me in the stomach all night. I decided to break the fast and had OJ and grapefruit juice and 2 slices of home made wheat bread on day.
• Day 6: (today) I woke up with a headache and tried to have more wheat bread and pineapple for breakfast, but ended up throwing it all up. This has been something that has been happening a lot lately, I wake up in the morning with a headache and then get nauseous and end up throwing up several times. Usually by mid day I am doing better and am able to keep food down, but still feel tired. so I do not know if this was a result of the fast or just normal me. We went out shopping and we went to Subway for lunch. I went ahead and ordered a footlong, but only ate half, I ate the other half for dinner. And we had iced tea to drink.
  

So I learned a few things.

1. First off I have way more self control than I ever thought I could have. I went to the GROCERY store several times and still stuck to the program. My Daughter made Chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips and I refrained.
   
2. I did succeed in loosing weight. I am down 6 lbs. I did set out to loose weight on this fast, but I also wanted to rid myself of my sugar addiction, and reliance on food when I am bored. I Can change the way that I look at food.
   
3. I learned that I can control the food that I eat. I am not a helpless victim and I can figure this out even the sea of contradicting advice that is out there.
   
4. I also learned that I can put me first, to hell with what other people think.
   

While perusing the message boards on the master cleanse site I noticed someone mentioned "green smoothies" I did a Google search and found that a green smoothie is made with greens and fruit. I thought "hey maybe I could do that!" I have tried juicing in the past, but was put off by all the wasted fruit fiber that is left over after juicing. I mean, when you pay all that money and end up throwing most of the food away, something is wrong with this picture!

So I went to the store tonight and bought kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, red lettuce ( for salad), strawberries (on sale froze half) , blueberries & raspberries (also on sale) Apples, and fresh ginger. Usually vegetables are quickly forgotten in the drawers of my refrigerator, but I washed them when we got home (took about 45 min) and put them in bags in the frig.

My current diet resolutions:

1. NO SUGAR: Will refrain from sugar as much as possible, I am not going to worry about the sugar in bread and condiments for now.
2. NO High fructose sugar! Bye Bye SODA!
3. Eat food that remembers where it came from! Green smoothies to help a lot here!
4. try out vegetarian meals. Meat is still fine for now.

I may or may not keep this updated. But I know now that I have all the will power that this is going to take to make the transition from junk food to whole food.