Have you ever felt like this too?

For years my doctors blamed every illness, pain or symptom on my weight. And I don't know when it happened, but some where along the way I started agreeing. The attached is an article taken from a Salt Lake Tribune.

You're not sick...you're just fat

Weigh In

I'm down another 1.8 this week. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough to keep me on track for my goal of 10 lbs per month. February is a short month, but I'm going to have to try hard as heck to make up the difference because I really want to be in Onederland by October!!

Work wise, I'm exhausted! I keep running into road blocks and other obstacles along the way that completely wreck havoc with the progress I'd made with my project. But I am ultimately getting some where! And it's a challenge so I'm happy!

Diet and Exercise Myths

Woo Hoo! I was reading an article on Science Daily called Experts "Weigh In" on Popular Diet and Exercise Myths tonight and I was so happy to see #10...

You have to sweat to have a good workout.

False. Tyne says "Sweating is not necessarily an indicator of exertion--sweating is your body's way of cooling itself." It is possible to burn a significant number of calories without breaking a sweat: try taking a walk, or doing some light weight training or working out in a swimming
pool.

For some reason I've always followed the guidelines of "It's a great workout if..."

1. You have trouble talking while doing the exercise
2. You sweat

Now I can stop beating myself up when I don't break into a sweat while exercising!!

Fact or Fiction - ScienceDaily

Fugees

Sometimes all it takes is reading about a part of someone else's life to make me realize how silly I'm being for getting upset about losing only .2 - that there are some people that face bigger obstacles every day than I could ever imagine!!

Taken from the New York Times (it caught my eye because my first apartment was in Clarkston - ahhh, so many, many years ago.)

CLARKSTON, Ga., Jan. 20 — Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park.

“There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,” Lee Swaney, a retired owner of a heating and air-conditioning business, told the local paper. “Those fields weren’t made for soccer.”

In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game.

But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. It’s not football. It’s not baseball. The fields weren’t made for it. Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people.

Caught in the middle is a boys soccer program called the Fugees — short for refugees, though most opponents guess the name refers to the hip-hop band.

Fungees Family soccer team website

The Daffodil Principle

Received via email...

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead "I will come next Tuesday", I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

"Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!"

My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother." "Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her. "But first we're going to see the daffodils. It's just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "I'll drive. I'm used to this."

"Carolyn," I said sternly, "Please turn around." "It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, " Daffodil Garden " We got out of the car, each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight.

It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and butter yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

"Who did this?" I asked Carolyn. "Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking", was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time--often just one baby-step at time--and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world ...

"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said.

She was right. It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use today?"

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting.....

• Until your car or home is paid off
• Until you get a new car or home
• Until your kids leave the house
• Until you go back to school
• Until you finish school
• Until you clean the house
• Until you organize the garage
• Until you clean off your desk
• Until you lose 10 lbs.
• Until you gain 10 lbs.
• Until you get married
• Until you get a divorce
• Until you have kids
• Until the kids go to school
• Until you retire
• Until summer
• Until spring
• Until winter
• Until fall
• Until you die...

There is no better time than right now to be happy.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
So work like you don't need money.
Love like you've never been hurt, and, Dance like no one's watching.

Happy it's the weekend

My week ended with the disturbing realization that I had made my payment for my home mortgage to Citibank Financial by mistake! I had to scramble around last night to adjust my budget (I have funds in savings - but I don't want to touch that account unless I absolutely have to) so that I could pay the mortgage company. Since my balance at Citibank was only $120, I had to call to request a refund of the remaining credit showing on the account - so I should get that back in about 2 weeks (funny how it only took 24 hours for them to get my online "mis" payment and cash it out, but it takes 2 weeks for them to give it back to me!).

Diet wise, I hanging in there! For some reason the last two days have been hard - but hard in an unusual way. Even though I'm eating and I'm not hungry, I have been having trouble getting in enough calories to stay in a "healthy" range. Thursday I think I finished up with 890 calories and yesterday I got stuck at 970 (Both days I had to drink an extra glass of milk to get it up as high as I did). Today I did much better with total calorie intake of 1204. But I can tell that I'm not getting in enough because I'm exhausted. (I got up at 6 this morning - which isn't that bad for a weekend. But then I went back to bed around 10 this morning for a short nap (I thought it was because I was cold and thought I would warm up if I crawled back into bed). My short nap lasted until 3 this afternoon. A part of me is thinking that the Graves could be getting ready to strike again at full force so I'll have to keep my eye on it.

Someone Lied!

I recently read a thread on skin tags on one of the sites that I visit. Cut them off yourself, it doesn't hurt. Yeah right! I went out this weekend and bought me a new pair of small scissors so that I could try to remove some skin tags. Last night I started my self-operation. After sterilizing the scissors I proceeded to snip at the first one. Pulling and laying it flat so that I could get it as close to the base as possible as the forum thread instructed. Snip. Hmmm - the scissors didn't cut through completely. Snip, Snip. Ouch, Ouch - it is pinching. Snip, snip, snip. Ouch, Ouch, Ouch!! It really pinched, but after six snips I had cut the little monster off. And then came the blood!!! I must have bled for 12 hours straight because I know I went through a box of small round bandaids - on the ONE skin tag I managed to take off!! It burned last night and then today every time I moved in certain ways I could feel a small pull where it used to be. A few minutes ago I decided to check out my recently amputated skin tag (for all I knew it could still be bleeding!). I carefully peeled back the bandaid...only to find that either the skin tag has already grown back or I didn't cut it down as far as I thought I did because there it was waving at me!!

I am officially waiting until I win the lottery so that I can afford go to a dermatologist who can put me under while removing every skin tag on my body!! Anyone need a pair of scissors or a bottle of rubbing alcohol??

Feeling very sorry for myself :'(

My pudgy little fingers are just going to type the ramblings of my mind. I'm not PMS'ing but there seems to be something going on in my little pea brain because I'm feeling terribly sorry for myself.

I've joined several online support groups in the last two years - 4 of which I visit daily. I post, I try to encourage, I try to offer advise, I try to express sympathy when needed. Bottom line - I try to respond to all posts that I read and show that I care. So why do I feel that people don't really care one way or the other if I post? I can post a reply to a message and not receive any acknowledgements that anyone has even read my post - yet the person that posts right behind me gets acknowledged. EVEN IF THEY'VE POSTED THE SAME THING I JUST SAID!!! It's bad enough when you reply to a message and the originator only acknowledges the people in their little click, but when it looks like I am being singled out to be disregarded or overlooked I have to start wondering what is wrong with me. And then there are those that only post occassionally, yet everyone crawls out of the woodwork to respond to them when they decide to make an appearance.

I'm just having a little pity party for myself. By tomorrow I'm sure I'll be able to come back here and delete this post.

WOW - this blog thing works! I feel better already and while I still don't know why I'm suddenly so sensititve about this, the party is over! I think I'm just too boring for the average person! :D

It's All In A Good Night's Sleep

I tape a lot of programs during the week and try to watch them on the weekends. I finally got around to watching an episode of Oprah last Sunday night. This episode dealt with dust mites - ugghhh!! Maybe I've just been walking around with my head in the sand but I never realized that you needed to change out your pillows every two or three years! I had six full size pillows on my bed - all of them were at least 10 years old and two of them (my favorites - feather pillows made by my grandmother) were much older than that! Shoot - according to the program if you can bend the pillow and it doesn't pop back on it's own it is time to replace them. To me that was the point where I'd finally got it broken in!! But I digress - I watched this episode Sunday night - after all the stores were closed! I couldn't sleep with the pillows knowing that there were millions of little mites coming out of the pillows at night and crawling up my nose and down my throat!! I've been super busy at work so I haven't had a chance to look around for new pillows. So for a week I slept without any pillows. Yesterday I finally purchased two new pillows (good pillows are not cheap! So it's going to be a while before I replace the other 4). I slept so good last night!

On the exercise front - I checked out a Tai Chi DVD yesterday at the library. I'm so uncoordinated that it took me an hour just to get the six basic moves down but I'm on a roll now. Of course, it was so gentle that I don't feel that I've exercised at all. I'm counting it as an exercise because it's listed on FitDay but I only counted 1/2 towards my daily exercise total. Tomorrow I'm going to the advanced moves - gotta love those of us that have no grace! :)

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

It has been a good work week for me. I finished Phase I of my project at work (now on to Phase II - V!) and I won the Administrator of the Year award at work. There is a part of me that feels that the award may have been a political move as I am the only admin that came over from the company merger last June. But another part of me knows that I am a hard worker and that I'm a fast learner so maybe I do deserve it. I just feel sorry for the other people that I know work hard but have never received the award. Further work notes...I received my annual raise. It wasn't that great (3%) but it was more than what I anticipated because with the company merger the agreement was that I had to be offered a job at my current salary or more so I started here making more than the majority (or possibly all) of the existing administrative staff. I had assumed that I wouldn't get anything to help get the other admin more into my salary range. By the way, the maximum that was given out to any employee was the 3%.

On the health front, I've stayed within my calorie range every day, I have managed to maintain my goal to cut my wasted calories back by 50%, I'm still following my plan of eating out no more than twice a week (only once last week!!) and I've been exercising this week. I had one day where I only got in 30 minutes of exercise. My weekly goal is 7 hours total so I can make it up this weekend, but it still put a little scare into me because the the following day I was feeling kinda blah about exercise again which was too close to a trend for me. Instead of giving into it though, I forced myself to workout. I've only done 3 different types of exercise this week so I need to get in another to meet my goal of 4+ different types of exercise per week which is doable. And I have an appointment next week to check out LA Fitness - my small raise will more than pay for the cost of a membership if I decide to sign on. It is near work, it opens at 5 each morning and it has a pool where they teach water aerobic classes so it is sounding very tempting. And if I do sign on, it will help tremendously with my weight training goal of 2 hours per week - at the present time I am failing miserably at it! I am managing to get in a total of 1 hour, but that's it!! And weight wise - the last two days I've been seeing numbers in a new decade. Woo Hoo! Of course, my official weigh in isn't until Tuesday so it could fluctuate back up but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Binge eating and more on diet drugs...

I found this artical on binge eating interesting.

Binge Eating Disorder

And I was surprised to find this article regarding an announcement from the FDA yesterday for the first prescription diet drug for dogs. What?? Maybe the FTC and the FDA need to compare notes.

Diet Prescription for Dogs

FTC exposes four popular diet pill labels for false advertisement...

I've never taken diet pills - I always thought they were just another way to scam people out of their hard earned money. But wait...when did One A Day Weight Smart become a diet pill??? I always thought of them as a vitamin supplement! I guess I have taken diet pills after all. Bottom line - I need to start reading more carefully!

KGET News

Just for today.....


JUST FOR TODAY
I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all of my problems at once. I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill them with sunshine.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will accept what is. I will face reality, I will correct those things I can correct, and accept those I cannot.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will improve my mind. I will read something requires effort, thought, and concentration. I will not be a mental loafer.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will make a conscious effort to be agreeable. I will be kind and courteous to those who cross my path, and I'll not speak ill of others. I will improve my appearance, speak softly, and not interrupt when someone else is talking.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will refrain from improving anybody but myself.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will do something positive to improve my health. If I'm a smoker, I'll quit. If I am overweight, I will eat healthfully--if only just for today. And not only that, I will get off the couch and take a brisk walk, even if it's only around the block.

JUST FOR TODAY
I will gather the courage to do what is right and take responsibility for my own actions.


(Copied from Dear Abby - but I think it's based on the original Just For Today from AA )

Kicking Butt!

Action #1 was (IS!!) : Exercise at least 7 hours per week, with at least 2 hours of strength training to ensure muscle growth and to burn more calories.

I'm off to a good start on the 7 hours per week - so far I've gotten in 2 hours and 10 minutes. But I'm going to have to step up the strength training - so far I've only gotten in 30 minutes. And from what I remember (something for me to check out!) you shouldn't do strength training two days in a row. I vaguely remember that you're supposed to rest your muscles (or in my case that would be the singular "muscle"!) on alternating days.

Action #2 is: Add variety to my workout - minimum of 4 different types of exercise per week - to keep my body guessing and to prevent boredom.

I'm off to a fantatic start here. While I've still stuck with the stationary bike for 30 minutes every day, on the 31st I pulled out the balance ball and did a 30 minute DVD routine and yesterday I did 30 minutes of Pilates. And I don't know which one did it - more than likely it was both of them - I am sore as all crap today! What a great feeling!! But what really makes me happy is that today I did a 15 minute Kick Boxing program! I wasn't the prettiest thing kicking, I didn't kick higher than everyone (anyone) else and I wasn't the most graceful thing but I had fun! I think this is something that I'm really going to try to focus on once I lose a bunch of weight! Now for anyone that is counting - I need a minimum of 4 different types of exercise per week. So far this week I've incorporated:

1. Stationary Bike
2. Pilates
3. Balance Ball (this one doesn't really count since it was done on the 31st, but that's ok)
4. Weights
5. Kick Boxing

That means that I can just ride the stationary bike the rest of the week (except for the 1-1/2 hours of strenght training that is) if I want to. But of course I don't want to. :)