Yep. Relief came at 4:30 this morning. I will not divulge details because that’d be just gross. But, nevertheless I am dancing and singing around the house this morning - feeling energized. All the crap is out! (literally) YAY!!!!!
******TMI WARNING******THIS POST DISCUSSES POO*******
I haven’t had a “normal” bowel movement in a few months now. Now, before you freak out thinking that I have 2 months worth of poo trapped in my intestines, I DO poo - but it’s the rabbit pellet kind and I never feel fully….uh….emptied. A couple of times I’ve done the castor oil thing (it REALLY does work) and I’ve just started a metamucil regimine. I think that a lot of it has to do with stress. My life is pretty stressful at the moment. But I just feel so bloated!!!! I think if I got rid of all my poo, it’d make for a good 2-3 pound loss!!! So……………here’s to eliminating the poo!!!!!!!
J
So, I took a couple of steps in the right direction last night. I spoke up on the WW@Home forum on 3FC and signed up for TBL Challenge which starts January 4.
I was a HUGE participator on the WW@Home forum last year - it kept me SO accountable and it was so great to have a group of ladies to talk to about my successes and my failures and to have a place to post my weigh in every week.
I was also big into the Biggest Loser challenges. I was even a leader of the Black Team for 2 challenges in a row. I had to drop out for the last one because of our photography business taking off so big. However, we are learning how to manage our time better - and I NEEEEED that kind of “competivness” part to keep me excited and on track.
So I see these two steps as great and positive steps…..
Next step? Setting up a mini-goal ticker on 3FC and posting it on here…..
YAY!
J
Over the past few days I have seen Oprah all over the TV. Not for her Angel Network, not for her talk show, not for her “favorite things” episodes…but for her weight gain. A lot of news stations are reporting this like it’s some national tragedy - like Oprah has failed herself and failed her viewers. While I’m not excited to see that Oprah has gained weight back (I would never cheer for someone to gain weight back), I am glad that she is opening up about it. I plan on getting the magazine issue that it’s in. I can completely identify with her. Granted, I haven’t packed back on 40 pounds - but I might as well have with the way that I feel. At my lowest weight on this “weight loss journey”, I was around 188 pounds, a weight that I can never remember being at in my adulthood. I was excited about eating right and exercising. I was excited to step on a scale every week to see where I was at. And now, I am teetering on the edge of 200 pounds again, a weight that I SWORE I would never see on the scale again! I read a part of the Oprah article online, it is she said “I was so frustrated that I started eating whatever I wanted—and that’s never good. My drug of choice is food. I use food for the same reasons an addict uses drugs: to comfort, to soothe, to ease stress.” Oh Oprah - I get it, I understand it and I completely relate!!! That’s one reason why I get so frustrated with the media and the way that they report. The news that I’ve seen is making it seem as if Oprah let herself get out of control. What most news people (and just people in general) don’t get is that food is a drug for some people. It gives them comfort, peace, happiness, joy. It lets people know that everything is going to be okay. For me, food acts like a big old hug. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I WISH that it wasn’t that way - but it is. That’s why weight is a big, huge struggle for me. Last year, I had a grip on it. I felt as if I was able to find other things to help take my stresses out on other than a bag of Oreos. Over the course of the last 6 months, I have reverted back to running into the arms of the one constant in my life that will never leave me: FOOD!
I don’t enjoy being fat. I don’t enjoy my heart racing when I eat something fat-laden. I don’t enjoy having to stuff myself into jeans that once upon a time were getting loose on me. I don’t enjoy having to worry about my health. I don’t enjoy the pit-fall of emotions that comes after I dive into a plate of “insert any starchy, sugary, salty food here”. It’s so odd that I can come up with so many flowery, feel-good words to associate with eating, but every word I can think of about my weight might as well begin with a streak of curse words…..
Anyway, I know that I’m in the midst of changing myself back into how I once was. I know that I can do it. I also know how hard it was to do the first time. Prayer, prayer and prayer again.
J
Well, here I am. December 6, 2008. The re-start day of my weight loss journey. There is good news and bad news today.
The bad news is that I am back up to 197.6 pounds! That is nearly 10 pounds more than my lowest weight on this journey. The good news? I’m not back to 200 pounds (which was one of my concerns).
So, how do I plan to lose the weight? Same as always - Weight Watchers! I love that program and it has always worked.
So, it’s time for me to take a deep breath - and get on with it already!!!!!!!
Ready…………
Set………..
GO!!!!!!!!!
I love how my post below this one was from AUGUST and I promised in that one that I would be doing an update in the next couple of days…. and update that apparently never happened. Oops! Well. I’m back - sort of. I’m off of the weight loss train though I haven’t gained back all my weight. However, I’m waiting until after Thanksgiving to get going on it again.
Hubby and I have decided that we want more kids. In order to do that, I want to be in the 160’s. So, after Thanksgiving, I will be going full force! I have not forgotten 3FC or all the ladies on there and I look forward to getting back on there and getting the job done!
J
I have not abandoned my blog… we have been out of town for the past week doing a wedding in Atlanta (oh, and we did engagement photos too). So, part of the time we were gone we were without any access to the internet. The other times we were at FedEx Kinkos to check mail, but since we were charged per minute to do that, we kept it to the bare minimum of checking business related stuff. So, I will have an update to add on here later today or tomorrow….
Wow, I thought the scale was supposed to go the other way!? Well, it’s not suprising to me though. Ever since I got back from my moms my eating has been HORRENDOUS! (I don’t even know how to spell that word - but it doesn’t matter).
I think a lot of it is my…….
WARNING - INFO. CONCERNING MY BOWELS AHEAD……..
It’s my bowel movements. I think it’s stress coupled with the lack of fresh veggies and fruits that causes my bm’s to be……. of a rabbit pellet consistency. I’m lucky to go every 2-3 days. At my mothers house - I was having one a day and they were as normal pooh should be! The very day I got back here…. voila - rabbit pellets!! hooray! I haven’t been to workout in over a MONTH! and I have yet to buy any fresh veggies or fruit.
Monday I am going to meet one of my best friends at the gym (she works there now…yay!) and we are going to set up a workout schedule so that we can workout together. I do SO much better when I have someone to workout with. So, Monday is kind of a re-start day for me, I guess. It’s just really time to get this fat ass in gear and do it already!!!!! I was doing SO well…. and then - blah!
So, This coming week it is my goal to get into the fruits and veggies (and other healthy foods), keep track of my points (oh yeah, I’m on WW again, I should be tracking what I eat…..duh!) and get back into the gym.
At least I’m still blogging….right?
In other news, I watched Michael Phelps go into World History tonight. That was SUCH an inspiration to watch! I cried like a baby when I saw his mother tearing up. How proud she must be! Heck, I’m proud of him and I don’t even know him! GO USA!
Have you ever just had one of the most “WTF just happened” kind of days?? Because I just had one of those days yesterday that took me straight back to the immaturity of 3rd grade. I found myself falling asleep last night in bed saying “what the….? how the heck did this just happen…?”. Oddly enough, this has nothing to do with food.
Let me fill you in.
The hubby and I have a photography business. I think that everyone should know that by now…ha! My husbands best friend of nearly 15 years is getting married in October. His fiance is a friend of mine (at the moment, the word “friend” is being used loosely) and she was the bridesmaid at our wedding. Hubby’s best friend was the Best Man. They started dating the month after our wedding. Awww.. how sweet.
Fast forward 5 years. They are now engaged and getting married in October (yep, the wedding I’m supposed to be in). They asked us last year how much we would charge them to do their engagement pictures. We talked about it and told them we’d love to do them for free as a wedding present to them. We were supposed to do their pictures this past Spring to give them time to lose some weight. Well, they never lost the weight. Then, they decided to do them in July of this year. They (or she, rather) wanted to wait until the last possible day in July to shoot the pictures to give them a month to lose some weight (we were talking about this in June). But she wanted the pictures to display at her bridal showers. She’s having 5 of them, the first one was this past weekend, Aug. 2. I tell her, no problem. We will take your pictures on the last Sunday of July and we will move them to the top of the list for editing.
So, we take the pictures. I tell them they will have them by Thursday. They call on Tuesday wanting to know if the pictures are done. They want to come pick them up. I think “wow”. Did they really, seriously just call 2 days after we shot their pictures and expect them to be done? But my hubby busted his REAR to finish them up (I had already edited my part of them so I could come to my parents house for a few days). THEN, after my husband tells them they’ll be ready Tuesday night, she has my husbands best friend call and ask if they can also have the originals. WHAT? WHAT? Really? Please tell me you are kidding? I know that we are your friends, but this is also our business. It’s how we make money. And you want us to hand over the edited photos as well as the originals? So, I tell my husband absolutely not. It’s not how photographers do it. So, my husband “accidentally” deleted the originals so he wouldn’t have to lie when he told them the originals got deleted. So, what would normally take us nearly a week to edit, we did in 2 days! I would think that that would deserve some sort of appreciation….
Already, at this point, I’ve discussed with my husband how much more trouble these 2 have been than any paying customers. We’ve bent over backward to accomodate them and we don’t get “thanks, we appreciate it so much”…. we just get absolute crap! 
But wait, there’s more….
She had asked me if I would take pictures at her Bridal shower. I say “no problem”. My hubby needs to keep our camera in Oklahoma, so she said I could use her camera. So, I bring my lens and memory card and use her camera to take some pictures at the shower. I was really excited about the pictures I was able to take. I couldn’t wait to edit them to give her some really cool pictures from her shower. Well, this brings us to last night.
I’m on the phone with my husband when I hear his friends cell phone ring (the hubby went to his friends house to hang out while I came to my parents house). I hear the best friend ask my husband to ask me where the pictures are at. I tell him that they are on my memory card here at my parents house. It is then that all hell breaks loose. I’m not even kidding. This girl goes on a f-l-i-p-p-i-n rampage like I’ve just taken her most prized possession and burned it in the street and ran over it with my car two or three times while laughing hysterically in her face. I’m not even kidding. I wish I was dramatizing this a little more than what really happened - but sadly, I am not. She goes on a rampage. After about 20 minutes he says “why don’t you just call julie and talk to her about it”. At that point, I tell my husband I will not be answering any phone calls from her when she is like that. I am not a confrontational person in the least bit and break down into a heap of emotions and bawl like a baby. There is no way I’m going to let her do that to me. She apparently thinks that I have taken the pictures hostage and will refuse to let her see them (she, her mother and her future mother-in-law all sat at the shower and looked through the pictures). She did try to call me, but I did not answer. So, she called her fiance back (all the while I’m on the phone with my husband). She said that if I’m not going to answer the phone she’s just going to come to my parents house then. (wow!). I tell the hubby that if she even dares to come over here, and ring the doorbell at nearly 11:00 at night while my kids are sleeping and make the dogs go crazy, I will not answer, but my dad will……and he won’t be happy. So, she’s still flipping out. I hear bits and pieces of what her fiance is saying to her because he’s pacing the hallway trying to calm her down. (I’m not even kidding…. she’s doing this over 40 pictures from a bridal shower). I’m bawling my eyes out because I haven’t seen this much drama since I was a TEENAGER! So then she wants to know if she can get her pictures tomorrow. Well, I don’t have a card reader at my parents house nor do I feel like shelling out money to go get the pictures put on a disc for her. She apparently wants them all on her mothers computer before she leaves to go back to Oklahoma the next day (which would be today). I hear her fiance telling her that her mother doesn’t have a way to view RAW images on her computer, so none of the pictures would pull up even if she had them.
Eventually she starts saying that it’s not about the pictures anymore, it’s about me not talking to her on the phone. I say bullcrap - if it wasn’t about the pictures anymore she’d stop bringing up the question of when tomorrow she can come get them from me. That problem would have been solved the second that he told her her mothers computer would be useless in getting any of the pictures off the disc. However, she was determined to get the pictures (unedited) asap, regardless if the computer could read the files or not. She was stamping her feet acting like a 2 year old in the midst of a tantrum. AND, her fiance tells her that SHE gets the SAME way when something happens to really piss her off - she doesn’t want to confront anyone or talk to anyone about it until things cool off. Yet, she can’t understand why I don’t want to talk to her after she absolutely flipped her ever lovin lid over 40 pictures!!!!!
So, I tell the hubby I’m going to write her an email via myspace. He tells his friend that. His friend tells her. She sends me a text message that says (and I am quoting this) “please do not send a message through myspace, I will not be checking it”. Wow again. Is she really being this immature? Over 40 pictures? Really?
So, I write her a message anyway. Not only do I send it via Myspace, I also send it to her via Facebook and 2 of her email addresses. She was on myspace last night shortly after I sent it. She did not read it until this morning. I did not get a reply from her, nothing.
Here is what my message said:
The subject was : “Someone once said ‘it’s not a really wedding without some kind of drama’”
Crap… isn’t that what I said a few months ago. Double crap because I didn’t ever intend to be part of any drama involved with your wedding….
Listen - I apologize to the moon and back that I forgot to tell you about using our memory card to take pictures today. It was an honest to God mistake, I swear. If I could go back in time I would even have written a big sign on my forehead that said “HEY *her name was here*, I WANT TO USE MY OWN MEMORY CARD TODAY”.
I swear to you it was not done to infuriate anyone, it was not done with malicious intent, I did not kidnap your pictures, I’m not holding your pictures hostage… I was excited to get to come take some really cool, nifty pictures of a bridal shower for a friend of mine whose wedding I get to be in! The only pictures I got of my bridal shower (my one single bridal shower) was with Tina’s camera and I didn’t get them until AFTER my wedding. So, I wanted to do for you what was not done for me and take some neat pictures and be able to edit them for you and make them look SO super-cool so that you could have some awesome pictures of your Branson Shower. That was it. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky or devious. I would hope that you’ve known me long enough to know that I wouldn’t do that. There are, maybe 50 pictures, and it would take literally 2 hours to edit them. I wasn’t planning on waiting to do it in my free time. Like your engagement pictures, I planned to put them at the top of the pile of pictures that we have to edit. That’s it. That was my plan. Had I used my own camera today, that would have still been my plan. 75% of my bridal party sucked and didn’t want to be on top of things or didn’t want to do things for me. I don’t want to be that kind of a “bridal party” for you guys. I realize that this is a H-U-G-E misunderstanding that was caused by my forgetfulness. I’m sorry that it got blown out of all kinds of proportion like it was. It sucks. It sucks big ass. It sucks even bigger ass if you don’t read this tonight.
I’m going to call our old neighbors tomorrow to see if they have a card reader to see if I can burn off your pictures so I can somehow get them to you tomorrow. I’ll text or call you either way when I find out something from them.
So…………………………..this is where we are…….
I am sorry that I didn’t tell you about the memory card, but you have to trust me, *her name here*, that I’m not an evil person who is out to mis-lead you or in some way screw you over…..
As far as me not talking on the phone… I get like this. This put me on a HUGE emotional roller coaster tonight - one like I haven’t been on in a while - I think because you are one of my few friends and I haven’t experienced anything like this with any of my friends since the Erika/Tina days). I went through many emotions at one time tonight. People are different in how they react to things like this. Some people want to talk to everyone about it… others (such as myself) would prefer to let everything cool off and withdraw myself from everyone (except for Brett, for obvious reasons). It has nothing to do with you at all. I wouldn’t want to talk to my mom, dad, sister, aunts, uncles… even people who have nothing to do with the situation. I can’t explain it. I wish I could then maybe I could fix it. So… there’s my attempt to trying to somewhat help you understand that part (though I think I confused myself…sheesh!!!!)
PS yes, I sent this to any email address I have of yours….. I’m just really cool like that.
There it is. So, I expected some sort of a “it’s okay, I apologize for blowing up about it” email or text today. But, alas… nothing. All I got from her was a text this morning that said “hey I am leaving in less than an hour am I going to be able to get my pictures?”. To that I told her I would be mailing the card to my husband and he could put them on a disc for her. She then asked if it wouldn’t be cheaper for her to take the card to him (why on earth is she SO desperate to get ahold of the pictures?!?!). So, I finally threw my hands in the air, decided to take the high road and I put the card in the mailbox and told her to come pick it up. So, no apology from her. Nothing. No “I’m sorry, I over reacted”. It was just…. ” I want my pictures”. It would have felt SOOO good to me to tell her to forget it, she couldn’t get her pictures today and would just have to wait until I edited them. But, for once, I wanted to be the bigger person.
I believe that I will probably be dropping out of their wedding. If she can’t be mature enough to apologize for something that she shared fault in, I don’t have time for the drama surrounding it. My life is too short to endure stuff like this from people who I consider a friend. She threw a tantrum, yelled, screamed, stamped her foot and got her way. The only satisfaction I have is in knowing that her mothers computer can’t read those types of files…. so even if she tried to put them on there it wouldn’t work. She should be back in Oklahoma right now. I only wonder what kind of conversation she and her fiance are having. I wonder how pleased she is with herself since she got her way. From now on, any pictures I take at all, no matter who they are for… I am going to be sure to make it known that I will not be giving anyone ANY unedited photos. PERIOD!
So………. with all things, I will keep you updated. It just feels SO good to VENT!!!
I just found out last night that I have a new mini-goal before the one in October. My 10 year high school reunion will be September 20! I am SO excited to be able to see everyone that I went to high school with. Most of them I haven’t even seen since graduation night. Now, I was never popular in high school, I had 1 friend, never went to dances, rarely talked to anyone - however I never had any enemies either. People from high school remember me. So I’m excited to go back and see everyone, unveil my new body (clothed of course…haha) and let them see my new personality that has developed over the last few years. I am nothing like I was in high school, and that’s a good thing. I’ve often said that if I could go back and re-do high school, knowing what I know now, I would do it in a heartbeat! I would pay more attention in class, and I would be a lot more outspoken.
I do know that the reunion falls on the same date as a wedding shower for the wedding I’m going to be in in October. oops. My husband told me last night to not even worry about that. He also asked if I have plans to take him to the reunion, too. That made me even more excited as I didn’t think it’d be something he’d be interested in. So, I’m SUPER happy. My mini-goal for that weekend (Sept. 19-20) will be to be 175. Ready……. set…… GO!!!!
