End of June update....

Not a whole lot to update lately. I was in a slump earlier in the week. I felt like I was tired of doing this and I wanted to just eat everything in sight! I had horrible cravings and wanted to just binge on everything but I was able to control it for the most part. Had a few bad things but didn't binge or eat until I felt sick or disgusted afterwards. I seem to have gotten through it and have gotten back on track again. Been working out again this week, even been getting some extra exercise in the evenings playing outside with my husband and kids, plus doing weight lifting too on top of my normal workouts. I was planning on weighing myself this morning but I forgot, LOL! I like to weigh myself first thing in the morning before I have anything to eat or drink and I didn't even think about it until after I had already eaten breakfast (which by the way was 2 multi-grain waffles with sugar free syrup, about a quarter of a pop tart and water) so I plan on weighing tomorrow morning. Last weekend I wore the jeans that I bought a few months back that were 2 sizes smaller than normal. I didn't know what to expect with them since I've been kind of off track here and there..but they still fit. I don't think they were much looser, maybe a little, but they definitely weren't any tighter so that makes me happy. I just need to really get my butt motivated again like I was before. I don't want to go back to being the pig that I used to be. Next week will be that damned time of the month again and I'm always starving around that time, but hopefully I can muddle through it without doing too bad. I've been really working on the blogging thing lately. I need to get some more readers! I'm going to have to come up with some good ideas to get more interaction and find out how many of you really pay attention to what I write here and in my other 2 blogs!

A great tool to use!

I have just found a great new website to help you along the weightloss journey! It's called myfitnesspal and it is loaded with all sorts of helpful information.

The website includes a calorie counter that has a database of over 6,000 foods for you to look up and get all of the nutritional facts on and keep track of how many calories you are eating each day!

It also includes a diet journal for you to keep up to date on your diet journey and post about your struggles and accomplishments along the way!

Another great thing I like is the food diary where you can write down and keep track of everything you put into your mouth each day. It's been proven that people who keep a food diary every day are more likely to put less in their mouth!

I really love the discussion forums where you can receive advice and tips from other members and share your stories along the way. I do believe that forums/message boards really do help keep me motivated every day! It's nice to know that I'm not alone in this and that there are others out there struggling the same as I am.

You can also get a personal diet profile made just for you and your body type to help get you headed into the right direction for weight loss. Along with your own personal diet profile they also support diets like Atkins, the Zone, the South Beach diet and many more.

If you are working out every day the website also includes a calories burned calculator so you can figure out approximately how many calories you have burned each day with your workouts.

The website is free to join so there's nothing to lose except the pounds!

This is a sponsored post.

Eat to Live, Don't Live to Eat!

Food is like an addiction to someone like me. If you have never had an eating disorder then you will never understand it and probably laugh at me for calling it an addiction. That's what it is though. Someone who is like me craves food. Even when we don't necessarily truly feel hunger, we still crave it. We use food to comfort us when we are sad. We use food to reward ourselves when something good happens. The cravings sometimes get out of control and we feel like we need just one more "fix". One more candy bar. One more piece of pizza. Why? It's kind of dumb when you think about it. All that happens is you chew it up and swallow it into your stomach and then poop it out! Why should that process give us satisfaction? Why should we eat and eat until we feel sick? What makes us get to this point?

I was watching Celebrity Fit Club lastnight and Dustin Diamond (who I happen to loathe, btw) was saying that he wanted to eat what he wanted and be happy. It made me think, why should food define our happiness? Why should we depend on food to make ourselves feel better? Our life, our family, our jobs and so many countless other things in life should be what makes us happy, not food!

Ironically, the entire time I was watching it I was thinking about the leftover pizza in the fridge from the night before! I went into the kitchen to retreive it and couldn't find it anywhere in the fridge. I knew there was some left and I knew I hadn't seen my husband eat it, so where was it? Then I remembered something that my husband does sometimes. I don't know WHY he does it, but when we have leftovers he will usually just set them in the microwave until "later". LOL Sometimes later never comes because when the food is in the microwave we usually forget about it! So I checked the microwave and there it was. It had been in the microwave for over 24 hours, ofcourse it couldn't be eaten. I was so pissed at my husband! Asking him why he doesn't just put food in the fridge instead of just sticking it in the microwave! I was so mad because I had been thinking about that pizza all night and I wanted it! Even though I knew I shouldn't be eating it, I wanted it! Then I sat there asking myself why was I getting so mad over a couple slices of stupid pizza? Why was I getting THAT upset over it? How stupid is that to get mad over food? It's not like I'm starving and needed it. It was just because I wanted it! I was then able to calm down and realize how dumb I was acting and realizing that I didn't need to eat it and honestly wasn't even very hungry!

Why does it have to get to this point? My great aunt once told me, "I don't eat because I want to, I eat because I have to". I laughed it off and sarcastically said, "me, too!". That's how it should be though. Food is meant to nourish the body and give us energy not to be an addiction! How did it get to this point? What happened in my head that I feel that stuffing my face will make me feel better? That's disgusting! Today, I kind of have a new outlook on food. Maybe i had an epiphany lastnight because of the stupid pizza and yeah, dumbass Dustin Diamond. I need to eat to live, not live to eat!

Update 6/11/07

Ok, it's update time again. The week before and after my vacation I got way off track with my eating and working out. Being sick didn't help any either! So last week I got myself back on track as much as I could. I couldn't believe how out of it my body was just from not working out for two weeks. I put in Turbo Jam and couln't even do half of it without feeling as if I was going to pass out! The heat last week didn't help any either, however I'm slowly working myself back into it. My husband just recently got a weight bench so he has been helping me with weight/strength training. He's a really great coach, too! <3 <3 lol Anyway, I decided to weigh myself again Friday just to see where I stood, expecting to have gained 5 lbs or more, lol. I was shocked when the scales said I lost an additional 2 lbs! I don't know how I lost, but I did and it made me very happy, and also motivated me to keep going again. I'm almost to the 30 pound mark, it's in my reach! It's been more difficult lately for me to be able to work out because of having a lot of appointments and things like that so I haven't been working out 5 days a week, but have been trying to as much as I can. I know it's going to take time to build back up to where I was doing good workouts 5 days a week, but I'll get there eventually.

My biggest obstacle right now is my husband, lol! It's not like he's intentionally trying to sabotage my weight loss, but he eats what he wants (he gets an 8 hour work out at his job every day, lol). He's always grabbing junk food at the store and it's sooo tempting to me! I asked him if he was trying to keep me fat so that I wont leave him for someone else..he didn't like that too well! He just doesn't understand that it is important for me to lose this weight. He thinks I'm beautiful the way I am and he gets angry when I call myself fat because he says I'm not fat! I appreciate that he sees me as being beautiful but I want to lose the weight for myself and my family, too so that I can be around for a very long time! Plus I want to set a good example for my kids so they don't end up in the same mess I'm in now.

Pain Is Temporary!

After you have begun incorporating exercise into your daily routine, here is a great workout video that I started out with myself and love! The Biggest Loser workout video #2! I love this DVD because you can pick and choose which workouts you want to do for the day. They have workouts designed for men and women, both. Toning and cardio (high intensity and low intensitvy )exercises along with a warm up exercise to get your muscles all stretched out and ready! Some of the exercise do include a workout ball, but you really don't need it. I love the video because it shows REAL people working out! It has the contestants from the Biggest Loser 2 before they lost all of the weight, so they are all struggling just like me! The DVD also comes with some other features giving some of the contestants personal success stories along with recipes and other great advice.

OT: Our trip to NYC

Planet Hollywood

Broadway Street

my husband and I on the Staten Island Ferry

Well, I did get lots and LOTS of exercise walking around the city. I was so sore from walking by the time we left I was walking like an old lady!

Our alarm clock was set for 3:00 am saturday morning to give us time to wake up and get to the airport. At 2:45am Northwest airlines called us with a recording saying that our flight had been cancelled and they put us on another flight scheduled to arrive in NY at 5:30pm! SEVEN hours after the original arrival time! I was irate and freaking out, so Roger called the airlines and told them that we were on a tight schedule and needed something else, so they got us on a Continental flight that would change planes in Cleveland and would arrive in NY one minute later than our original plane! Since we were put on new flights at the last minute we had separate seats on both flights. Luckily, the little puddle jumper plane from Toledo to Cleveland only had 4 people on it (all 4 were supposed to be on the one that got cancelled), so we could sit wherever we wanted. However, the big plane from Cleveland to Laguardia was full and the grumpy old man sitting with Roger refused to switch seats with me, so I was at the front of the plane and my husband was in the back! Anyway, we saw some beautiful scenery on the way. The plane flew right over NYC and we could see everything from the plane. All of the skyscrapers and the statue of liberty.

We get off of the plane and not even 2 minutes of walking from the gate we literally run into Mark Henry from WWE! He looked really pissed though so we didn't try to talk to him. We get a shuttle to our hotel and in the middle of all of the airport traffic we see like 7 cops surrounding a car, trying to break into it. Some twat left her little kid (small enough to be in a car seat) in the car and the kid locked the doors!

We got to the hotel and since it was too early to check in we went to Jen and Mike's room. Crissie was already there waiting in their room, too! I haven't seen Crissie since our wedding almost 4 years ago and I haven't seen Jen in like 7 years?? Crissie then told us the story from the night before when she was sitting in the hotel lobby in the middle of the night and heard someone screaming and someone came running in saying, "Get a towel".. Thinking someone was hurt she went to look and there was a naked woman running around the parking lot waving the towel over her head, LOL! Only in NY, right??

Once we got checked into our room we got ready to go. The hotel guy told us that the best way to see the city is to buy the metro pass for $7, you can use the bus and subway all day long as much as you want until 3am. Awesome! So we got on the bus and took that to the subway and then went on to Grand Central Station. The subway is a great place for people watchers like me. I love to watch people and you can find alllll kinds of crazy different people on the subway. On our first subway ride we had a man just take out his guitar in the middle of the train and start singing for everyone. The city was packed! We first found a place to eat and then walked around some taking in all of the sights. Then decided to go to the Empire State Building. On the way there I see Morgan Freeman standing on the sidewalk taking photos with people..but wait, he isn't moving? It was a wax statue of him! I thought it was really him at first! We were at the Wax Museum but decided it was too expensive to go into, lol. Then we saw Dave Atell (not sure of the spelling) from the show Insomniac just sitting having a drink but I think he heard us talking about him because he got up and walked away really fast.

So, we get to the Empire State Building. UGH! It was hot out to begin with and we had to wait in line for almost 2 hours just to get up to the top and it was soo damned crowded up there we could barely even get a chance to see anything! By the time we finally DID get up there we were all so pissed off we just wanted to go back down. But guess what? There was a wait to get OUT of the building, too! Oh yeah and they wanted to charge $25 for the group photo they took of us HAHAHA! No way! I had my own camera and could get a lot of pics developed for $25!

After we finally got out of the Empire State Building we had plans to go get the ferry around the statue of liberty but we ended up at Ground Zero. There was a very somber feeling being at ground zero. There was a fire department right across the street from ground zero who were first on the scene when 9-11 happened. They had all kinds of memorials for their fallen firefighters and some of the firefighters who were there when it happened were out there meeting people.

We walked around some more and then decided it was time to go back to the hotel and relax a little bit before going to Duff's. That was a mess. It ended up taking us an hour and a half to get back to the hotel because of construction and other things along the way. We got back to the hotel, had dinner and then realized that we were all wayyy too tired and sore from all of the walking and couldn't deal with more public transportation to get to Duff's that night, LOL! We all ended up falling asleep soon after we got back to our rooms.

The next morning, Crissie found out that some of her friends had come to NY to look for her at Duffs, so she got ahold of them to meet them in the city later on and go home with them. We had breakfast with Jen and Mike before they left back to PA and then we headed off to the city again. Our first stop was the Staten Island Ferry which was a beautiful ride! Went right by the statue of liberty and you could see all of the city from the ferry. It was very relaxing!

After the Ferry we headed back to the Subway to find Crissie's friends. We saw lots of crazy things in the subway stations! After Crissie left, Roger and I were going to go to Rockefeller Center but ended up just walking around. I saw a bunch of lights and something told me to go that way. The crowds were getting bigger and bigger. People coming up to us offering us Rolex watches and Gucci purses! We ended up in Times Square! MTV building, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, M & M World, Broadway..all kinds of things. It was crowded there. Oh yeah, we also saw P. Diddy in his limo (ack). There were limos everywhere, cops everywhere, swat everywhere, street performers, everything! We found some Irish pubs and went into O'Lunneys so Roger could have an Irish beer. We went into Planet Hollywood and saw all sorts of cool props from different movies. We had dinner at Famiglia Pizza which was authentic sicilian pizza and was very famous for their pizza and I know why! yummmm! We ended up just walking around Broadway taking in all of the sights until we were too tired to do anything else! Then we headed back to our hotel and crashed. Had another horrible experience with Northwest Airlines on the way back (dont fly northwest!) but we made it home safely Monday evening. Ohio just seems so quiet and..boring after being in NYC..nothing is quiet there, lol!

To see all of my NY pics, you can check out my myspace page and go to view pics!