(Insert clever title here)

So it’s day 3 of the vegan pledge, and everything seems to be going okay.  There’s some stuff that I’m not sure if it constitutes as vegan or not, but I think I’m doing pretty well.  It’s a little challenging because we’ve gone longer than usual without grocery shopping, so there is not much in the house at all.  I can definitely make it work, it just may not be what I want!

I find it interesting though how much easier it is to stay away from certain foods because I can’t eat others.  For instance, I’m eating soup right now (yep, for breakfast).  It’s homemade bean soup, totally fits the vegan requirements, and it’s super yummy and low calorie.  Normally, I would pair this with two slices of bread and some (usually light) butter.  Now, I can’t have butter, therefore the bread is not even remotely appealing.  It seems a lot of the stuff that I find myself wanting to go along with other foods are dairy based and end up being high calorie also.  I don’t know what that “means”, but it’s interesting to make a connection to my certain foods that would up my calorie consumption quite a bit.  Incidentally, I am not counting calories at this time, just kind of intuitive eating.

Along with my vegan pledge, I decided to only weigh myself once a week.  I haven’t been weighing myself much since the depression hit, mainly because I haven’t been doing anything to make the numbers on the scale go where I want to see them go!  When I am actively trying to lose weight, or even just change my eating habits, I am obsessive about weighing.  I hop on the scale every day, several times a day, after various bathroom trips and in different states of undress.  It’s pretty ridiculous.  I guess in some ways it’s good because I can catch a gain or counteract one before it gets bad, but I tend to also “overcelebrate” my losses and end up minimizing them by being too lax with my eating.  So that’s why I decided to do a once a week weigh in, but boy, is it hard!!!  I woke up this morning and after I used the bathroom the scale was just calling my name!  I would get fidgety and keep glancing at it.  I kept resisting, and finally I ate breakfast just so I wouldn’t get an (in my mind) accurate number for the day.  Can’t I just be a normal person when it comes to food and weight?

That’s about it for today.  I have some fridge cleaning to do since tomorrow is grocery day.  I’m probably going to roast some cauliflower tonight and I’ve got some squash that I need to come up with an idea for.  Time to get to work!

Last night I was reading posts and I read one where someone had taken a Gold Pledge to eat vegan for one month.  I have thought about veganism since deciding to turn vegetarian, and I’ve just never had the balls to go for it.  I think part of it is being scared to miss out on nutrition, and part of it is being scared of failing.  I checked out the website and they give you the option to make a bronze pledge, which is to eat vegan for one week, a silver pledge, which is two weeks, and a gold pledge, which is 30 days.  I decided to go for it, and I made the silver pledge.

The first reason that I like it is because it’s nice and temporary.  I can try it for a nice short amount of time, and if I feel like crap or just feel that its not for me, that’s fine because I wasn’t aiming to do it forever.  Secondly, the two week pledge means that I don’t have to deal with even more questions than I would already have to at Thanksgiving.  Since we will probably have two Thanksgivings to go to, I’d have tons of questions, and it’s just annoying to have to justify my eating habits to people.  Why didn’t people care this much when I stuffed myself with junk and fatty foods all the time?  No one thought to question that, but when I stop eating meat, and then all animal products, it’s the topic of discussion.  Way more annoyance and attention than I want to deal with!  Thirdly, I love the fact that it’s just vegan EATING and not the whole lifestyle that I have to adopt.  I don’t think that I really own a ton of stuff that is made with animal products, maybe some shoes, but I’m not ready to (or able to) throw away a ton of stuff and buy animal friendly everything yet.  Maybe at a later date…

And I must confess, I did have a bit of a hidden agenda.  I love the idea of helping out animals, but I’m also hoping that this pledge will help get me back on track with my eating.  I can’t seem to keep promises to myself, so if they’re to someone else, hopefully it will help.  This will keep me away from a lot of processed foods, cheeses, butter, and other fatty stuff that I couldn’t keep myself away from before.

So far so good for day one.   Just 13 1/2 more to go…

I feel like I’m in that movie because I wake up each day thinking I’ll be able to change my crappy habits and I end up falling back into the same routine as previous days.  :(  Only two weeks left till my appointment, and I’m hoping that maybe the doctor can give me some coping techniques so that I stop relying on food to make everything better (since it doesn’t anyway!!!).  I just hope I’m not setting myself up for disappointment by expecting too much from this doctor.

Right now I’m really tired and not feeling motivated to do anything.  I need to get to dishes and figure out something for dinner, but what I’d rather do is take a nap with the little one!  I feel pretty good that i got a couple of things done today, even though they were pretty small and inconsequential.  It feels nice to have done something though.  Anything really, at this point.

Oh, I changed my ticker on the forums today.  My original goal had been 148, so a total loss of 120 lbs.  I changed it today to 199 in the hopes that a smaller goal would be more of a motivator for me.  Then it shows that I only have 41 more lbs to go instead of 92.  Maybe I should have gone smaller than that even.  I just would really like to make my way out of the 200s at some point in time.

And I’m still trying to decide what the best eating plan will be for me.  Calorie counting just provides me way too much freedom because i can allow myself unhealthy items as long as they fit in my calorie budget, but I can’t control myself and usually end up blowing the whole day (and royally!) when I eat that kind of stuff.  Low carb really doesn’t seem feasible without eating some sort of meat, which I just can’t bring myself to do.  I really loved fat smash, but I just haven’t had the will power to stick with it lately.  I wish i could find some strength inside myself so that i could stick with it, because i do think it’s an awesome and maintainable plan for life, and it’s the way I’d like to eat.  I just can’t stay away from the emotional eating long enough to get through that “detox” phase.  Curse you, depression!  Why did you do this to me?

One of these days, I will get back on track!

I decided the other day that today would be my “Starting Over” day.  I have to get a handle on the weight loss thing.  I hate the way the crappy foods make me look, I hate the way they make me feel (physically), yet I still can’t stay away from them!  The husband was supposed to start eating healthy today too, but I’m not surprised that he decided to put it off again.  I told him that I’m starting again anyway and made him take all the pop and most of the Halloween candy with him to work.  We really don’t have anything else in the house that could derail me, so I wasn’t concerned.

Of course, I wasn’t counting on having two sick kids and a dying cat to take care of today.  Only one kid was somewhat sick last night, but he woke up too sick for school, so he stayed home today.  The other one is snotty and grouchy, so he’s a handful.  The cat has been sick, and now he’s at the point where he’s to weak to walk.  He doesn’t seem to be in any pain, so for right now our decision is to let him die a natural, peaceful death at home with the ones who love him (no comments on this please, it was a difficult and personal decision).  Anyway, all of this adds up to way more stress than I was counting on.

The morning was okay foodwise, though I didn’t eat much.  Lunch was decent, and then once the little one went down for his nap, I was cold and tired and upset and ended up digging into the Halloween candy.  Luckily, we did not keep much at all, so I ended up eating about 5 little candy bars and that’s it.  I don’t want to eat all of my son’s stuff, and the other stuff isn’t overly appealing to me, so it’s still there.  I think the key here is what I do with the rest of the day.

Lately my course of action would be to just say screw it, I ruined the day, I might as well stop depriving myself of all the stuff I want, and I’d just eat whatever I wanted.  What I would like to do is just move on from here and keep on with good choices for the rest of the day, even though I screwed up once.  I used to be able to do that, so I should be able to do it again.

I also weighed myself this morning, and the scale showed 240.6.  I was honestly surprised it wasn’t higher just because of the sheer amount of junk I’ve been eating lately.  Unfortunately, it means that I’ve gained 8.8 lbs since the beginning of October.  What a stupid, pointless, and avoidable setback.  I guess it could have been worse though, and I should just remember this going forward.

That’s it for me for today.  I just kind of have to take this one day at a time right now and deal as well as I can with whatever setbacks come my way.  Hopefully by the first of next month, I will have rid myself of these 8.8 lbs I gained back, and then some.

I can’t seem to keep it together with the food and exercise thing.  One day I’ll do well-eating right and exercising-and the next day I’ll find myself barely moving off the couch all day and eating half a pizza and a pint of ice cream as a bedtime snack.  Yikes!  I would just like some consistency so that I can make some progress!

Today has been okay so far.  I did 30 Day Shred this morning and I have been eating fine so far, though I haven’t eaten much.  I know I need to get some food into myself so I don’t get overly hungry and just blow it by eating everything.  First things first, though, I need to do some dishes!!!

I also want to start wearing my pedometer again and get to the point where I am getting in 10,000 steps a day.  I have to look back at my original goal, but I think that was my goal to reach by the end of October.  I guess I still have a few days to get there.  :)  Unfortunately, I really set myself back weight-wise, but I don’t want to let that get to me.  I think I will revise those goals so I’m not constantly looking at my failure.  That’s no way to keep myself motivated, right?

I’m hoping that I will still feel decent and motivated tonight so that maybe I can hop on the gazelle once the boys go to bed and put in a little time on there.  I know doing two workouts a day is supposed to be good for you because it keeps your metabolism higher for a longer period of time, so it’s something I’d like to do.  Not sure what tomorrow will bring since it’s grocery shopping day and the Halloween parade at L.’s school, but maybe I will somehow be able to pull my butt out of bed super early and get in a good round of P90X.  I’m really going to enjoy not having a downstairs neighbor!

Okay, now I must get to dishes before F. wakes up!!!

I think that’s what my blog is going to be.  I started it when I signed up here in July, and I’ve only written one post.  Whoops!  I actually found out that I got more comments when I posted things on the forums, so that’s why I actually neglected my blog.  Now I feel like I need a place to let out some of my thoughts and feelings and give myself some accountability without boring anyone with the minute details.  So this is it!

First, some background on me incase anyone actually reads this.  I am a stay at home mom/student in my early 30s.  I have two young boys, a toddler and a pre-schooler.  My starting weight on this journey was 268 lbs in July of this year.  By the beginning of October, I was down to 231.  I was eating well, exercising, and going through the Couch to 5K program in preparation for a 5K in December.  Since then, I have fallen into  major depression (something I’ve struggled with since my teens) and I stopped exercising, stopped caring about what I ate, and ultimately gained back 8 lbs over the past month.  Though I have since acknowledge the problem and am seeking treatment for it, I still have a long wait until my scheduled appointment and this continues to put a big kink in the plans that I had.

I am trying to get myself on track again, but it has been hard.  Some days it’s a struggle to make myself get out of bed, so making myself exercise (even something small and easy) is an insurmountable task.  I know I need to eat right, but when I’m feeling particularly down or out of control, I go right back to eating the crappy foods that are like a drug to me.  I always turned to addictions when my depression was at it’s worst, and now food just happens to be my addiction.  I don’t have the strength right now to battle the addiction, and it really sucks.  I constantly have to tell my husband not bring junk food into the house, and that if it’s there, I will eat it.  He tries to be good about it, but he really doesn’t understand.  Last night I tried again to explain it to him, how if its there, I just obsess about it and get anxious and even if I try to do something else to keep my mind off of it, I just can’t stop thinking about it.  i am like a junkie, it’s just that my drug of choice is easily available to anyone in any grocery store, convenience store, bakery, etc.  And I’m not in a place where I can overcome this.  I know some people probably just think I’m being weak and making excuses, but I would guess those people have never personally battled depression and addiction.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at now, trying to get through this and hoping that it won’t cause too much damage to my weight loss progress.  I actually exercised (twice!) yesterday, but then I gorged myself on sweets and pop and salty stuff in the evening.  This morning I had to drag myself out of bed, and breakfast was tortilla chips and pepsi, followed by a lunch of pizza and skittles.  I have not felt any desire to do anything today, but I’m hoping at some point I will feel the need to move.  I’m hoping that once I see the doctor and get on some medication, I can get back to my normal self.  I hope that the time that I’ve spent like this will not have a negative impact on my children.  I hope that they won’t suffer through this crap when they’re older.

Anyway, that is what I am feeling today.  Some days are better right now, some days are worse.  I’m hoping for more better ones than worse ones, but at this point it is out of my control.

I am starting on a weight loss journey, and hopefully for the last time!  I did something like this close to 2 years ago and did really good, lost 34 lbs, learned a lot, but also got pregnant with my youngest son.  I didn’t gain much weight while pregnant, and even lost extra weight right after he was born.  Then I got back into old habits and gained 46 lbs in the past year.  Somehow I could never find the motivation to do the things that I needed to do, the things I knew how to do, the things that I had done successfully in the past.  I had to buy size 24 clothes for our vacation this summer, and I had hoped to never buy size 24 anything again.

I finally decided that getting started again was something that I could not do on my own.  I knew that I needed a couple of resources to help me out.  One thing that I needed was something to force me to stick to healthier eating habits.  I would try to eat healthy on my own, but pizza, chocolate, and fried foods had a hold on me that I just couldn’t break.  I decided to try alli as a diet modification tool.  I knew I wasn’t able to get into good habits on my own, and I figured the possibility of oil leaking from my butt was a good motivation to stick to healthy eating habits!  I know it sounds gross, but it seriously is very good motivation.  I started with the pills 11 days ago, and I’ve already lost 10 lbs, though I know some of that is water weight too.  Still, it’s a good start!

The other resource that I knew I needed was a website where I could talk about what I was going through and communicate with people like me.  I had been part of a weightloss website 2 years ago when I lost 34 lbs, and as much as I loved it, I felt like I couldn’t go back there again.  Not that they wouldn’t accept me, because I knew they would (they had been there for me on a few other retries) but because I felt like a hypocrite going back there.  I felt like I needed to start with a clean slate, where people weren’t congratulating me for past successes and asking me for advice when I was sitting here fatter than ever before.  I did some searching and ended up here, so it looks like this is my new home.

Now I need to find some way to work exercise into my day.  This continues to be a challenge with an (almost) one year old and a 3 1/2 year old, not to mention schoolwork.  Somehow I will find a way, but in the meantime, I’m open to suggestions.  Anyway, it’s time for me to get back to my children.  Thanks for reading!