ready2bskinE

The Fitness Survivor challenge officially ended today, and after posting my final weigh in, I went back to the beginning of the thread to see how far I’ve come. My first weigh in for the challenge was January 3rd, so basically I have an excellent record of my progress so far this year.

In total, I’ve lost 6 lbs, 12 inches, and just over 10% body fat in that time frame. That’s quite a bit! Since it was coming off only 1 or even 1/2 a pound a time, I didn’t realize I lost so much so quickly.  I know…. 6 lbs in two months doesn’t seem like much of anything to people who lose 4 or 5 lbs per week!  LOL  But for me, at this point, it’s a HUGE amount of progress!!  I only have about 15 more lbs to go!! At this rate, I’ll be at my goal weight this summer, which is a SURPRISE to me. I thought it might take all of this year to get these last 20 lbs off. Now I have hope for a skinny summer!!! 

I know I wouldn’t have made this progress without Buddyslim and all the support I get here. Thank you all so much for helping me reach my goals!!

My goals for the next few weeks are to *find* time for all the workouts I want to do, continue putting special focus on weight training for my arms and slimming my waistline, and count those calories EVERY day. For me, that is REALLY an instrumental part of staying on track. Hope everyone has a great weekend!! 

I don’t usually blog about my personal issues; if that led you buddyslimmers to believe I don’t have them, sorry!! LOL  I DO!! 

First a little background: My sister has been MAD at me for several weeks now, stemming from my adamant refusal to provide “clean” urine for her boyfriend’s pre-employment drug screen, and my subsequent rant on how they need to GROW UP, get jobs and a place to live and STOP burdening everyone else with their problems. **Honestly, if you smoke pot but need a job, but on your big boy underwear and STOP so you can pass a FRIGGIN drug screen!!  I don’t care what you do in your spare time, but don’t come to ME to fix it when you run outta money!** (He didn’t get the job ANYWAY; couldn’t pass the background check.)  So…. My mom disconnected my sister’s phone; it was on her plan through work, and my sis REFUSED to pay her portion of the bill (no doubt to keep her and her loser BF with gas and pot money).  When sis went and got her OWN phone, she called everyone in the family to give them her new number, EXCEPT me and mom. Apparently, us telling her the TRUTH earned us top spots on her sh*t list. 

So here’s what happened…. My husband ran to store for a few items I needed last night, and my 2-yr old wanted to go with him. No problem. They went and had a good time at the store, and my daughter fell asleep in her car seat on the way home. Coming up on the last red light before my street, my hubby notices a truck swerving in and out of traffic. Well, this truck happens to match the exact description of the one tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum have been driving around. The truck comes to a stop inches from the bumper of my new car. When they take off from the red light, jerk-off speeds up beside my hubby and swerves over into his lane, like he was TRYING to hit him. More like, trying to intimidate him. Obviously with a baby asleep in the backseat, there’s not much he could do, other than swerve into the shoulder to avoid a collision. Had my daughter been safe and sound at home, there’s no doubt in my mind hubby would have swerved right back into him. Sure maybe both cars would have been wrecked, but we would have just paid our insurance deductible and gone on about our business. Those who don’t pay their bills, don’t have insurance, and therefore would have screwed themselves out of a truck. **That would have been funny!**

Anyway, hubby comes home, tells me all about what happened. I call my brother to get my sister’s number. At this point, I’m not 100% SURE it was them, so I’m hoping maybe she’ll answer and say she’s at work or something. No answer. So I leave a message describing what happened, and wondering what she’s doing? No call-back. I call again, this time I’m pissed. I basically wondered how I could tell her that her NIECE was put in danger by some MORON, and whether or not that moron was her boyfriend, how could she not care so much that she wouldn’t even return my phone call??

The only response from her: this text message to my dad and brother– Who gave Shaina my number??

WTF??!!  Y’all, what’s wrong with this girl? Am I justified in being PISSED here? I just want to basically call her, yell and cuss at her, tell her what a WORTHLESS family member she’s become. I REALLY want to slap the SH*T out of her boyfriend!! Or pistol-whip him or something. LOL  Never done that before, but it looks like it would hurt.    I’m really at a loss as to how to handle this situation. On one hand, I would *LOVE* for her to be my friend, the good, loving sister she USED to be, and I’d love to be that for her, too. But at the same time, I don’t like the person she’s become, callous and un-caring. I want to talk to her, but I know right now I’d be irrational and MEAN. (Sure, she deserves it, but I know myself, and I’d regret my meanness later.)

I don’t know what to do about her!!! (This was mainly a vent, but please feel free to share your opinions or advice!) 

Frequently after my cardio sessions, ESPECIALLY if I’ve done a high-intensity workout, like my 5K run, I get intense headaches. It starts out as my pulse beating in my temples, and within a couple of hours, it’s just like a migraine. And if I lie down, I get dizzy. And if I GET UP after lying down, forget it. I’m so dizzy it’s nearly to the point of disorientation, and sometimes I see spots.  Is that TOTALLY WEIRD??  This does NOT happen to me normally, like out of the blue for no reason. It doesn’t happen during regular activity, moderate activity, sex, or anything else. Mostly just when I run for a long time.

When I was in high school (and probably 5 or 6 times since) I had some episodes of chest pain with a headache similar to this. My chest would hurt SO BAD that I couldn’t do anything but curl into a fetal position and wait for it to pass. My heart would pound SO HARD that you could see a loose-fitting T-shirt rise and fall with the beat.  BUT the heart specialist went to did all the standard tests… EKG, stress tests, etc… Found NOTHING but a healthy heart.  LOL  Go figure!

I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar, and if so, how do you deal with it?

Yes or No? Why or why not?

Personally, I think it would be VERY helpful, not *just* for dieters, but for anyone who cares about what they put into their mouth. I think special nutrition facts sheets should be available on request that include the same information about each dish as what you would find on the back of a pre-packaged meal, the same thing that you would find online if you searched before going to the restaurant. Why not?? If you don’t care, don’t look. If you want to splurge without feeling guilty, don’t ask. BUT for those of us who want to be able to make informed decisions but didn’t have time to Google before stopping for lunch, why shouldn’t we have access to that information? Even if I decided to get a burger and fries (not likely) why shouldn’t I be able to know exactly how small of a dinner I need to eat later to counter-balance the splurge and not gain weight? If I knew of certain restaurants that provided that information as a courtesy to their waistline-conscious patrons, I would DEFINITELY choose them over others who don’t.

What do you think? Would it help you along your weight-loss journey if you knew the nutritional content of everything you put into your mouth, even when you were eating out? Or would it just make you feel guilty?

I just opened up my copy of the March issue of SHAPE magazine, and the editor’s letter section had such an inspiring quote, I thought I’d share it with you ladies this morning. The editor starts by saying that any time she’s blown her diet, or feels lazy because she didn’t work out, this quote inspires her to remember that tomorrow is a new day.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with a high spirit.

I really love SHAPE magazine; I think it’s the best one out there that focuses on women’s health. (Just my humble opinion!) So I’ll be sure to share any more inspiring quotes or stories here as I read through the pages.  Have a great weekend!!

I’m TRYING to get a few pics downloaded to the site. (Finally! LOL) I found the camera’s USB cable and it took me like an hour to figure out how to get the pics onto the computer, and now the Buddyslim thing is telling me the pictures are too big. Does anyone know how I can make them smaller so that they’ll fit here? I am totally CLUELESS as to what my next step should be. I’ve been here on Buddyslim for a while, and it is WAY past time for me to have some pics on here.

My husband was going through some pics that were saved to a memory card, trying to figure out which ones of the kids to send to his grandma. OK, that was pretty sensitive. But here’s the crappy part. When he got done, he informed me that he found a few of me holding my youngest not long after she was born, and he goes…. “You really WERE a fat-ass. You almost looked as bad as Hailey.” (His 12 year old cousin who is obese.) How MEAN is that??! First of all, he never misses a chance to put that kid down or make sure I know our kids NEVER need to look like that, or he will become their drill-sergeant. But second, and more important to me, I wondered WHY he couldn’t have turned that into a compliment, and said the same thing in a nicer way? You know, I KNEW I was fat; I KNEW I looked terrible. It takes a very special woman to carry enough weight to be considered medically obese and still look PRETTY. I am NOT that special. But why couldn’t he say something like… “Honey, I found a picture of you from a year and a half ago, and I just realized how GOOD you look now! You’ve really worked hard and lost a LOT of weight.” I mean, that would still get the point across that I looked BAD back then, but at the same time it focuses on the fact that I look BETTER *now*. But no…. He has to always say things like he was raised by his father. OK, he was, but still…. He should know a TINY bit more about how to talk to a woman by now.

Honestly, you know, he very rarely compliments me on my weight loss or fitness progress. Even when I came home bragging last night about running TWO MILES straight, he didn’t say much. I wonder if he has some kind of issue that I don’t know about. I come on Buddyslim and nearly every woman’s husband compliments them or at least acknowledges the fact that they’ve worked hard and lost weight. *sigh* Am I married to the most insensitive man, or what? I gave him a few examples of how he could have gotten his point across in a nicer way, and he just laughed at me! Does anyone have any ideas on how to train him? LOL Apparently, I’m going to have to pick up where his mom left off!

I caught this show on Discovery Health last night, and it was all about this man who had undergone a gastric bypass and lost about 130 lbs in a year. He tried lifting weights in an attempt to fill out the loose skin with muscle, but he just had SO MUCH extra skin that there was no way that would happen. He didn’t feel like he could be happy with himself or his body with that extra skin, so he decided to have reconstructive surgery. What they did was a “body lift” where they took out a whole section of skin all the way around his body, and then reconnected and sutured the skin around his “new” waist. He looked absolutely GREAT and had a SMALL waist. And to top it off, his upper body was extremely muscular because of all the weight lifting he had been doing in his attempts to fill out the loose skin.

But you know what???  HE STILL WASN’T HAPPY. He started thinking his pecs looked fat. 

I saw myself in this story. I’ve been thinking that once I’m finished losing weight, I’ll NEED a tummy tuck or something. Since I gained my weight quickly during pregnancies, my belly is pretty stretched out. I’ve tried to lose the weight slowly, to help minimize the loose skin effect, but I have no doubt that I will have SOME. So I’ve just accepted that once my kids go to school and I can afford to take it easy for a few weeks, I’ll probably have that done. And just a few weeks ago, I noticed that I even have extra skin on my breasts.    They got bigger just from gaining weight, but also nursing my kids. When I was nursing my second baby, they were size F’s, or DDD.  Went from a small C before pregnancy to DDD.  And now, they’re about D’s, which should still be big enough, but they look really TERRIBLE, so I started thinking… hmmmm…. I need a boob job too!

*sigh*  It seemed perfectly innocent and normal, until I saw this guy’s story on Discovery. Watching him, it seemed SAD that a person couldn’t be happy with their hard work until they had a PERFECT body. What is perfection, anyway?? Do I NEED to have a body considered perfect by Hollywood standards, or by 20-year old never had a kid standards??  Why can’t I just be happy with having a healthy mom body and “yeah, I nursed my kids” boobs??  Maybe I need to work on the INSIDE of me as well as the outside, before I decide that I NEED any type of surgery. I think I should at least TRY to be happy with ME, the naked, YES THIS IS MY BODY *ME*.

What’s your take on all that?? Have you considered any type of surgery?? And how do you KNOW that once one part of your body is PERFECT, you find another part to obsess over? Does the quest for perfection EVER end??