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So I finally stopped being lazy and updated a current pic of myself. You can see that my face is a little more rounder than the old pic, but I am determined to change that! I just felt like showing off my new hair color,  my hair used to be kind of reddish (didn’t care for it much) and now it is a dark brown that I think likes way more natural on me.

This week I was terrible, I didn’t exercise at all. My mom came down, and I swear all we did was eat junk. Then at work I ate a carrot cake that was too sweet and it made me feel sick. My supervisor said it could be a sign of diabetes, so I think I am going to get checked out. But I need to go back to exercising, I feel like hell when I don’t honestly.  I also had two midterms which added to my binge eating. Now that they are over with, I have no excuses. I think I better lay off the sweets, I felt kind of yucky these past few days overindulging.

I know this is gross but anyway, when I ate all of that heavy greasy food, I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom for a few days and ended up with stomach pains later on. I pretty much took it as a sign that I need to stick to the healthy food that I have grown accustomed too. I’m fine now, but sometimes your body has a way of telling you things that you wouldn’t otherwise listen to.

I hope everyone will have a great week, afterall tomorrow is a new day!

Well this morning I decided to weigh myself just to see what the effects of my hellish Jillian Michaels workout was. Check this out, I lost 4 lbs! Weird!!! I weighed 270 lbs just a few days ago, and now I’m 266. I kept thinking it was b.s. but when I got to work I had to weigh in for the Biggest Loser contest we have going on and I did eat, and the scale still said I dropped 4 lbs.  I am happy but hope it wasn’t water weight or anything cause that would suck. I do feel stronger though and sore as hell! Jillian knows how to really work a person.

Also I got a free Subway giftcard in the mail and I aced my midterm. So today did shape up to be a good day until I went walking to the bus stop. This guy told me that I looked liked someone he knew and I could have sworn I heard him say that I looked pregnant, which I assure you I don’t. Anyway, I thought I was maybe hearing things and then he said it again. I told him “It is extremely rude to tell someone who isn’t pregnant that they look pregnant. I don’t appreciate your comment.” And he said “Forgive me, I am from Africa and my English is terrible. I don’t mean anything bad by it. You are beautiful.” And I said “I don’t care. I think it’s in extremely poor taste to tell a complete stranger that they look pregnant.” And he said “Thank you for telling me this, I wasn’t aware of it.” And then get this, he proceeds to tell me how he’s homeless and that people think he’s gay. The thing that made me tell him to f*ck off was he started telling me he had sex with someone to prove he’s not gay. Um…why do I want to hear this? I told him, “I think you need to leave me alone. I don’t care for your conversation. And if you don’t you’ll force me to beat the shit out of you.” and he said “Ok, I’ll go.” UHH!! Why do I have to deal with this kind of crap on a day when I felt good!!! I sometimes hate people.

It sucks when you had a crappy day, and then you finally build yourself to have a great day and then someone totally sh*ts on it. I am not totally feeling bad cause he had really bad b.o. and look at the type person he is. All I can say is karma is a bitch, but since that guy is homeless, I don’t know how much worse it can get than that…

Well not literally. LOL. But I did her 30 Day Shred DVD and OMG it’s simple when you watch it but doing it is a whole other story. I had just finished my Turbo Jam 20 min DVD to warm myself up and I am glad I did cause my muscles were already warmed up and ready to go. Anyway, I barely made it through the DVD. I felt good afterward, but Jillian’s DVD gave me a  new goal: get through the damn DVD! I think my ultimate goal will be to make it through her advanced DVD. Once I can get through the advanced level I am pretty sure I’ll be in good shape.

I will update everyone to let them know what my progress will be with her DVD. So far, I am not too sore but I know I’ll feel it when I get up later on.

I am exhausted so I think I better go to bed. Good night everyone, and hope we all have a good day!

So I finally stopped talking and started doing! I got my butt up early and did my Turbo Jam Learn and Burn. I struggled through it a bit, mainly just trying to be coordinated and stuff, but for the most part it got easier. And after I finished the workout, a) I felt like crap! b) felt stronger. and c) was proud of the fact that I actually did it. I also began using my Calorie King program to count my calories and log in my exercise. I thought I could get away without having to do a food log but alas, I realized that was the source of my problem. When you don’t keep track of what you eat, you don’t think about it, and you don’t hold yourself accountable. I enjoy it because it gives me a sense of control and order, as unusual as that may sound. But since I started grad school, I feel that the key to me getting through it will be to organize myself, and have to do lists so that I can feel of what I accomplished on those lists. This week I actually had 99% of my homework done by Saturday. Which felt good because I was able to do it on my own.

Now back to my food log, the program made me realize I eat way too much fat. I had Mickey D’s today, granted it was a child’s happy meal, it still is what it is, unnecessary calories and grams of fat. So I will have to slowly wane myself off of it for sure. Plus after I ate the Happy Meal, I got this painful headache. I am starting to wonder if this is some sort of sign telling me to lay off the stuff cause I so did not like how I felt.

Another thing I wanted to discuss was that there is a guy that I totally have a crush on. He’s a really nice guy but I have a feeling sometimes that he might like me back. But after my friend pointed out that “maybe he likes you” , the first thing I said was “Yea right. I’m too fat. I could understand that if I was at least 40 lbs lighter.” I just couldn’t believe I said that. My weight truly has made me a pessimistic person when it comes to someone actually being attracted to me. I hate that, I never used to be that bad. Now I feel like I have to post-pone my life until most of the weight comes off which I know I’ll regret later. Anyone know what I am talking about? I think that now that I am going to begin this exercise program and take better care of myself, it might help change my thinking. I don’t want to be a miserable person, I want to be happy and not think like that. My only worst enemy truly is myself at this point, and I feel like that negativity isn’t going to help me stay consistent with exercise and help me reach my goals. I just hope that I can stay on track and totally make it happen. I am tired of the same old, same old I want to do something different for once in my life.

So I finally found a way to reward myself when I lose weight (other than looking fabulous and being healthier), I want to get a fabulous Coach purse, I have been eyeballing those purses for so long. I just needed the motivation to make me want that purse. I now I have this vision of myself being slimmer with a cool purse. Cheesy I know, but it makes me happy and smile when I think about it. I don’t know how everyone else is rewarding themselves, but that’s what I am going to do for me.

So this summer I had set out to get healthy again and wasn’t successful. I stayed with my parents for the summer to help my mom out after her surgery on her hand. Right now my parents are going through financial troubles because of the fact that my mother was let go from her job after her injury. So money was very tight and they couldn’t afford anything really healthy except fruit. I made the best of it, didn’t gain weight (which was a good thing) but didn’t lose any either.  This year I am more determined. I just turned 28 and I realized that my metabolism isn’t going to be as good as it once was. I think this time around I am doing it for the right reasons. I spent a whole summer with my mom and saw how diabetes affected the way she healed after surgery. I think seeing it in my face kind of woke me up and made me realize that I need to stop talking and start doing. I hate exercise, but I have to realize that it’s going to save my life . And now that I am in grad school, I need another way to relieve my stress without pigging out. I think exercise is going to be my outlet. I miss that mind, body, and soul thing that happens when you workout.  Plus my back is so wretched right now, from carrying all of this weight and I feel so tired and crappy all of the time. I don’t feel like myself or even recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I look old and frumpy.  My only problem when I workout is consistency, so my goal this year is to be consistent with my workouts and set goals. My ultimate goal is to be able to complete the advanced level of Jillian Michaels DVD I have and maybe to even do a half marathon when I feel confident. We’ll see how that goes. But for now, I am going to start doing my beginner’s DVD of my Turbo Jam series (Learn and Burn). The only thing I have to figure out is how I’m going to control my eating habits. I have this feeling that once I get the exercising down that everything else will just fall into place.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but there were so many things that happened these past months. First, I graduated from college, as well as my brother. My brother graduated with a degree in Finance and myself with a degree in Statistics. So now I am a master’s student in yep you guessed it, math! haha. In that time I was busy studying like mad for finals and working. Also my students have graduated from high school so now I am on summer break. Since I have nothing to do, I thought I’d go back home and help my mom out since she just had surgery on her hand. And in that time I want to exercise and study for the GRE. I figure I have no excuses like I did this past semester, it was always that I had no time but now that I do, I better take advantage of it.

The actual reason I posted on here was today I had a moment that made me really think about why I’m obese. Today I kept on having the urge almost a compulsion to order take out. I wanted pizza but what stopped me was the fact that I looked at pictures of myself when I made progress on WW last year. I looked great and I look at myself and realized I kind of pissed it all away when I was doing so well. I put on the 25 pounds I lost back on, plus an additional 16 for a grand total of yep, 41 lbs gained. I can’t believe myself, I feel so crappy and tired all of the time. And now my stomach is so big that it hurts my back even more, and it is getting harder for me to walk. At that moment I looked at my former thin pics, and realized that eating a whole large pizza by myself wasn’t going to make me feel any better or get me back to my former thinner self. So I didn’t order the pizza, and instead made dinner for myself which felt more satisfying.  I realized today that I am obsessed with food, and I really need to address the reasons why this is so. I don’t get any type of satisfaction from this eating and not to mention the havoc it is wreaking on my health.

Even though I was semi-successful on WW, I didn’t like the fact that I became obsessed with food and had an unhealthy relationship with food. The only thing I can do is make better choices and stop procrastinating with exercising. I have to change my attitude about physical fitness and realize that it’s not about losing weight but, a way to make myself healthier and feel better mentally.

My first semester at my school I was actually quite good about this, I kept active and didn’t watch much TV. Not to say that TV is bad, but when you don’t have a TV you can actually get a lot accomplished.  Also the family that I rented a room from embraced a healthy lifestyle and I think it rubbed off on me. These people were always walking and exercising, and I guess environment had a lot to do with it. They encouraged me to ride my bike more and I did, and I lost weight and looked and felt great. I wish I could go back to that time! Plus I ate a lot of organic veggies and fruits, I felt good. I remember Penny (the person I was renting from) told me to not think of what I was doing as a diet. Just think of it as doing good for my body and mind, so that I could trick my mind into not thinking of it as a diet. And it worked, did I mention Penny is a psychologist? LOL. Anyway, I realized that I need to get back to that mind frame, no more obsessively measuring or counting every single calorie, but rather just trying to have a healthy relationship with it and realize that I don’t have to have humongo-servings, because the food will be there tomorrow.

So this summer is going to be a summer of change. I have my family behind me 100% which I feel made me successful before and I have my mom who will be my walking buddy as well. I’m also going to start my Turbo Jam DVDs again. Ladies, for those of you who have problems with your abdominal area, like myself, these DVDs seriously work. I know a lot of people think it is gimmicky but it was the one workout that I could stick with and I saw results quickly. In two weeks, I remember my stomach starting to get a little definition and my back was stronger, along with my posture improving significantly. I also have been talking to a person who used Turbo Jam and lost 125 lbs with it, she is my motivation. Her name is Meredith, and she made me realize that even though I have to lose 100 pounds, I just need to take it 5 lbs at a time. Afterall, this isn’t a race, I’m in it for the long haul.

So I got this e-mail from Spark people and it motivated me to believe in myself not only in my weight loss goals but with life in general. I think I’ve always lived by this type of philosophy but sort of lost my way lately. But here it is:

Thinking for yourself in the face of doubt

If you accept someone else’s idea of reality and personal limits, you’ll have no control over your own destiny. You can only go as far as that view will let you. Do you normally accept things as they are, or do you ask “why” and “what if”? Being an individual and thinking for yourself–even while others are calling you crazy–takes courage. For many, trying a new perspective is scary. But if we always stick to the familiar, the known, we never grow and learn. Don’t be afraid to go against the grain. Ask the tough questions that everyone else is afraid to ask. Try a new way to do the same thing just to see what happens. We guarantee you that the world won’t end. You’ll see solutions that nobody else would see if they’re all looking at a problem the same way. Practice new ways to combine unrelated objects. After all, somebody had to try peanut butter and jelly for the first time.

Today I went with my students on a field trip to USC and given that the campus is flat, I thought I really didn’t walk much. I just knew at the end of the day my legs and calves were very sore. My goal lately has been to get to 7,000 steps and today, I I checked my pedometer, and realized that I ended up walking 10,143 steps which was approximately 4.5 miles!!! I more than exceeded my goal! I really was so happy at the end of the day, it felt great. At the end of the day, I came home and slept 2 hours, I was so tired from lack of sleep and all the walking I passed out!

So this week I had to go to a departmental dinner for my major, and I was going through my closet trying to find things to wear. It was a pretty laid back event, everyone wore jeans and stuff. But I wanted to wear a nicer top, different from my usual big t-shirts that I normally wear. Anyway, I realized I had all of these nice tops in my closet but they emphasized the one part of my body that I hate: my stomach! Let me be more honest, my GUT. The whole time I kept trying on my shirts I thought, “If I could only lose my stomach, I would look 90% better”. I know for some women, their problems might be their thighs or butt, for me, I’m not too concerned with those areas, cause they slim up fast, but for me, it’s my stomach. From the back I look kind of thin, but when I turn around I have this stomach that kind of hangs there and makes me look like I’m pregnant. I ended up wearing a decent shirt that didn’t really flatter my body. I was bummed the whole night, cause I kept looking at myself in the mirrors of the restaurant thinking “I look like crap, this isn’t me, this is not what I am supposed to be looking like”. So for me, I guess this is the moment that made me realize, I am so tired of having those days where I try things on and nothing looks good on me. I look forward to the one day where I can wear a nice shirt and I won’t have this stomach hanging out.