Okay, so here’s the deal.  Back in September I had stated that I would do certain things to help me lose weight.  Guess what?  I didn’t do them.  Is it any wonder, then, that I am heavier?

What has worked best for me in the past – Weight Watchers.  More specifically, the weighing and measuring of food worked better for me.  Maybe even the writing things down.  (I know I said this before, Mr. S., so hush.)

So, as of this morning, I’m measuring things out again.  I have to do this.  Wait – I just read something in regard to changing attitudes, so let me refrain that.  I want to do this, because it is the best way for me to be successful.  And I’m writing it down.

Don’t know what I’ll be having for lunch.  I am going to a cooking class through the Nutritional Options for Wellness program at noon.  I’m assuming that the timing of the class means that I will be fed.  It’s run by a nutritionist, so I’m also assuming it will be healthy and low-fat/sugar.  I’m assuming a lot, and I realize that is dangerous… 

I went to a nutritionist a few years back, when Joe and I were living in Ludington.  Here are the ranges she gave me for meal, snack, and daily calories and carbs:

Per day:  1500 – 2000 calories; 100 g (minimum) – 250 g of carbohydrates.

Per meal:  300 – 600 calories; 30 – 75 g of carbohydrates.

Per snack:  0 – 300 calories; 0 – 40 g of carbohydrates.

The higher numbers are for when I am more active.  Right now, I’m sticking to the lower numbers.

So here’s how I did at breakfast (in the interest of accountability):

2 hard-cooked eggs (150 calories, 0 carbs, and 9 g of fat); 2 slices of English muffin toast (180 calories, 36 carbs, and 1 g of fat); Hellman’s Light Mayo – 1 tbsp. (35 calories, 1 carb, and 3.5 g of fat); yellow mustard – 1 tsp. (o calories, 0 carbs, and 0 fat – gotta love that mustard!); one glass of unsweetened iced tea (0 calories, 0 carbs, and 0 g o fat). 

Breakfast totals: 365 calories, 37 g of carbs, and 13.5 g of fat.  (I think that’s roughly 4 – 5% fat for the meal.)

So that’s what I’m doing.  Counting it out, writing it down, and sharing with whoever cares to read it.  Again, I know it’s the same thing I said back in September.  It’s just taken me 7 months to actually do it!

I’ve got “The Doctor’s Pocket Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter” book, that I have had for a few years to help me out with the counting. 

I want to do this!  I want to do this!  I want to do this…!

Yes, I’m angry (and that, my friends, is an understatement).  Yes, I’m frustrated.  You’d think after 29 years of dieting, I would get something right.

This all looks very calm.  I’ve purposely refrained from using exclamation points.  And the words in my head have gone through a great deal of censoring before they come out through my fingers to the keyboard.

Sigh…

So, this approach does not seem to work for me.  Don’t know what I’m going to do going forward – I’ll have to think on it a while.

Okay, after three months I have lost (drumroll, please)… about 6 1/4 pounds.  I know, slow down!  I was hoping for something closer to 2 pounds a week, rather than 2 pounds a month.

On the up side, I’m moving in the right direction…

I think most of that weight was lost in the last month – with no car, I’ve been doing more walking.  Can’t say I’m enjoying walking to and from the bus stops in this cold and snow, though.  But, I do what I gotta do.

Oh, and my fasting blood sugar is about 30 points lower than it was in September.  Maybe I’ll actually get a pat on the back from the doctor when I see him on Tuesday. 

That’s actually about all I have to report, really.  Don’t want to fall into the old bitchy trap where I complain about everything that’s wrong.  Weight’s down!  Sugar’s down!  Yay!!! 

Contemplating asking the doc about doing the Glucerna thing, though…

I’m hoping it will help, but I haven’t gotten on the scale this week because I’m afraid it won’t.  I’ll get past that, and have to check at some point, but right now I’m just a big chicken!  I guess the memories of working out five days a week and gaining all that weight still haunt me…

Trying to stay positive through all this.  It’s a work in progress.

The fact that I have gone through the third week, now, of  “having” a temping assignment but not actually working/getting paid hasn’t been helping.  It’s a little annoying, to say the least, and I’m really getting tempted to tell them to stick it somewhere uncomfortable… But then I remember that I signed up in November last year, and didn’t get any assignments until January.

The whole bus schedule thing may make it a moot point, anyway.  I’ll have to take three buses to get there, and there is very little time between the scheduled arrival time of the second bus and the scheduled departure time of the third bus – only 3 minutes.  Most of the time the buses are running at least two or three minutes late.  If I miss that third bus, it’s an hour before it leaves again.  I can’t take an earlier bus, because it’s the first run of the day for all three – actually not for the first two, but it’s the first run where they all should meet up.

Maybe I’m worrying over nothing.  I can at least give it a shot, and see what happens…

I wish I wasn’t such a worrier!  I get myself tied up in knots, and, of course, I eat over it, and a lot of times there’s no reason to worry.  I’m working on it, really I am.  Something along the lines of, “Just F.R.O.G. it!”  (Something I heard recently – Fully Rely On God.)

It’s hard to let go of old habits – eating habits, worry habits, negative-thinking habits…  So easy to fall back into them.  But I keep “talking” to myself, trying to do a 180.  Eventually it will sink in.  Right?

The doctor’s visit – according to their scale, I’ve lost a pound.  But I’m up 5 from June when I had the great visit.  Cholesterol and bp are still good.  Sugar (A1c) is up to 7.2 (in June it was 6.5), and because the sugar is up, so are the triglycerides.  So it was a mixed-bag kind of visit.

I’m actually surprised that my weight didn’t go up this week.  I had two M&M’s splurges (and not the single serving size, sad to say).  I think the lack of sunshine, combined with the fluxuating hormones are kicking my butt right now.

The good thing is, it’s Halloween, all the candy goes on sale tomorrow, and we don’t have any money.  In this case, it is a good thing.

I was supposed to start my new temping assignment on the 26th.  It was pushed back to Nov. 2nd because they had to get a whole room set up for all the new temps coming in (wiring computers, setting up cubicles, etc.), and they didn’t get a chance to do that in time.  Got a call yesterday morning that they still weren’t done with that stuff, so I won’t be starting on the 2nd – it’ll be sometime this coming week, but not Monday…

This whole thing kind of bummed me out because I was looking forward to getting a check on Nov. 6th, which would have happened had I started on Oct. 26th.  November 6th is Joe’s birthday, and I was looking forward to actually being able to take him out to dinner, or something.

I know; whine, whine, whine.  Sorry.  I’m still working on being more positive, believe it or not.  And most of the time I think I’m doing okay with that.  But when I start typing like this, in a stream-of-consciousness style, it becomes apparent to me that there is still work to do.

So, it’s time for an exercise in gratitude.  This seems to help, at least to some extent, when I’m feeling down…

I am grateful for:

• having a roof over our heads
• having heat and electricity
• having a car that gets us where we need to go
• having the love of a good man
• having two dogs that make me laugh and always make me feel welcome when I come home

• having been given the chance to be friends with my mom

And that’s just for starters…

Okay, feeling a little better now! 

Anyway, as far as weight, etc., goes, there is no change from last time to this.  So, that’s not a big deal.  But I will get on to the reason for the title of this post.

On Saturday there was a fundraiser at our church – this included things like an Ionic Foot Detox treatment, Foot Reflexology, and an Aura Photograph.  Joe and I both took part in all three as an anniversary present.

If you have never had an Ionic Foot Detox, it is a very interesting experience.  There is a tub with a little bit of distilled water in it, mixed with mineral salts.  You place your feet in, and the “blades” that are also in the tub are turned on, adding an electrical charge (always either a negative charge, or a positive one – never both at the same time!).

What happens, almost immediately, is that the water starts to change color as “stuff” starts to come out of your body.  I don’t have the sheet with me today, but there is a whole list of what may be found in the water during and after your session.  The theory is, thinking of the human body as a pond of water, all the “junk” sinks down to the bottom (like sediment in a pond) – the bottom being your feet.  Your feet contain the largest pores in the body, so that is where all that “crap” can be released.  (By the way, if you have a problem with really stinky feet, that is supposedly your body trying to remove all the toxins, and this therapy helps with that.)

When the session is completed, especially on the first treatment, what you end up with is a tub full of sludge.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  It’s really gross.  Part of my “sludge” included many black flecks, which are heavy metals (which can be aluminum, mercury, fluoride…).  Not cool.  I’m currently thinking about coming up with some way to replace all my amalgam tooth fillings with the white ones (amalgams can sometimes contain up to 52% mercury, some say).

The Foot Reflexology involves manipulating pressure points on the bottom of your feet.  There are spots on the feet which correspond to different areas of the body.  The easiest way for me to describe it is as a form of accupressure.  If there are areas on your feet which are sensitive, that means you have some issues in the corresponding area of your body.  This was not nearly as disturbing! 

Then the aura photography takes a picture of the energy field (or aura) around your body.  Mine was mostly yellow.  Joe’s had a lot of blue in it, if I remember correctly.  Don’t remember all the meanings behind the colors right now.

Joe and I are actually thinking of continuing the Ionic Foot Detox treatments.  The woman who does them wasn’t in church yesterday, so we didn’t get a chance to ask about how often they are recommended, or how much she normally charges…

How’d I do it?  Ate very little at meals, and didn’t have any snacky stuff, to speak of, in the house.  Couldn’t afford any more!  There’s an upside to poverty after all…

Kidding.

Actually I had a temp assignment from Wednesday through Tuesday, so I was away from home.  Can’t say I was keeping busy – they just wanted me to answer phones, and I don’t think they rang as often as they thought they did.  I basically got paid to read three + books…  “Cake” job…

I’ve been trying to combat the low self-esteem I’ve been dealing with most of my life.  The suggestions I’ve been able to find all say pretty much the same thing: Use affirmations to reprogram your mind to more positive thoughts about yourself.  (For that reason I was originally going to title this entry “…and gosh darn it, people like me!”  But then I lost a couple pounds and had to change it!)

Part of my “reprogramming” has been trying to remember more positive moments with the people whose negative actions/words got stuck in my brain and play on a loop.  It’s easier with some.  There’s one person in particular that I have no positive memories of, period!  I’ll have to ask a mutual friend to tell me something positive about her (i.e. she’s an excellent mother, or something…) to help me out.

This week I actually got some decent exercise – it seems that every time we go up to Ludington, I actually get some in!  This time we were up to visit a friend from Arizona who was home for a while (visited Mom, too!).  After lunch, Tammy, Joe and I went out to the State Park and took a walk in the woods. (So happy to see there is still someplace to walk that hasn’t been “board-walked” or paved!)

It was embarassing how often I had to stop to catch my breath (What did I expect?), but it was worth it.  I loved it!  Haven’t been able to do that in a while.  God bless the chiropractor…

I also managed to get the kitchen organized again, so my plan is to start cooking again.  Starting tonight.  It’s that or starve, because we don’t have any money to eat out!

So, I guess I’m not really spinning my wheels.  There is progress in some areas.  It just seems like nothing is happening when I step on the stupid scale…

We’ve had issues with our neighbors again – or, more accurately, issues with their guests.  There was some hostility directed to the “white people” downstairs (that would be us).  This is one of the reasons I am not so inclined to take a walk in our neighborhood.  It’s not the first time.

This is also why I get more exercise when I go up to Ludington for a visit – I feel safer.  I’m working on figuring something out.  I keep thinking about trying one of my work-out vids again.  The chiro says walking is the best exercise for me, but maybe if I take it easy on the video work-outs…?

I would have thought that four days of entertaining a one-year-old would have taken care of some calories.  There was a lot of crawling around on the floor, bending and lifting to pick her up, and lifting her above my head… my muscles sure felt it!  Ah, well…

OK – if I’m honest, KFC isn’t entirely to blame for my fasting reading this morning.  Yesterday was our first day in a week or so with money, and we (Joe and I – I’m not using the “royal we”) snacked a lot.  And more than once this week, all I had for lunch was fruit and yogurt, and by the time we got home at night, I was stuffing as much food in my mouth as I could because I was HUNGRY!

Again, I’m finding that when I don’t eat enough at lunchtime I tend to go overboard in the evenings.  There was a week a couple of months back when I did really well – something healthy for breakfast, a piece of fruit in the middle of the morning, soup for lunch, another piece of fruit in mid-afternoon, and I wasn’t so hungry come dinnertime.  My sugar did even better when I had just half a piece of fruit at breaktimes, but I was hungrier and had less control later in the day.

I got sick of soup every day, but that worked better than the other things I ate at lunch.  Since I didn’t want soup all the time, and was having a difficult time figuring out what to eat instead, I think I got discouraged.  Maybe a little too easily…

Guess I need to figure that out, and get back to actually cooking.  We’ve been wasting too much of our money eating out because I don’t like working in our dinky little kitchen.  And then we eat a lot of pasta-type stuff when we are forced to eat in.  Even if I make “healthier” choices in what fast foods I’m eating, it’s still more money than we need to be laying out.

Okay – my project for this week is an overhaul of the kitchen so I can better utilize what little space we have.  Then maybe I can get myself to actually cook more, and have more control over what we are eating, rather than all kinds of fast food. 

Wish me luck!

Okay, here we go with update number one…

For those of you who do not know what has been going on with me over the last couple of years, I will attempt a brief recap of events.

I was not over 300 pounds until I was put on a certain medication.  In spite of all I was doing – working out 5 days a week, and adjusting my diet from time to time to see what might work – my weight continued to go up.  Nothing I did helped.

Finally, I asked my doctor about weight loss surgery.  He sighed and said, “Normally I would say no, but, in your case, I think it’s a good idea.” 

Crap!  I was expecting him to say no!

So, since we actually had insurance, I started jumping through the hoops required by the insurance company before they would agree to cover the surgery.  This started in October, 2006.

On January 29, 2007, I received a letter in the mail from the insurance company stating that they would indeed cover the surgery.  Within an hour of my opening that letter, Joe lost his job.

I called the human resources office of Joe’s now former employer, on the suggestion of my surgeon’s office, to see how long our insurance coverage would last.  We only had two more days of coverage available to us.  If it had been a 30-day grace period, the surgeon may have been able to squeeze in the surgery.  But, apparently, it was not to be.

January 31, 2007 was the last day we had health insurance.  I continued to get medications from my doctor’s office, through samples, until we moved down to Hillsdale for Joe’s new job.  I looked through the phone book and did not find anything resembling a free clinic, so I had no more medications after my samples ran out around the middle of October.

About two weeks after that, I started losing weight.  The medication that put me over awful number must have worked its way out of my system, because over the next several months all the weight I had gained on the meds went away.

In September of last year I really needed to see a doctor.  I looked through the phone book again, and this time I found that there was indeed a free clinic – and it had been there for over 20 years!  Either I looked under the wrong heading before, or I had skimmed right past the listing.

Anyway, I saw the doctor, was yelled at by one of the nurses – she was right, I knew, but she wouldn’t let it go.  It was a relief to get away from her!  The doctor put me back on the same medication, and since then my weight has gone back up.

So here I am in almost the same boat I was in two years ago.  The difference this time is that I am not exercising as much because a back problem has come up.  I’m seeing a chiropractor to get that straightened out (pun not entirely intended).  Without insurance, though, I no longer have the weight loss surgery option.

That gets you caught up.

I was looking over my diary entries over the past week, and realized something – I’m really good at coming up with excuses as to why I didn’t make better food choices.  One thing after another is used as a reason for “misbehaving.”

But that is life – one thing after another is going to continue happening.  I have to work on a “no excuses attitude” in addition to the “no fear attitude.”

By the way, “Feel the fear and do it anyway” is attributed to Susan Jeffers.  It’s on a painted disc of glass that I was carrying in my coat pocket when I still needed to wear a coat…