Well, that New Year resolution fell apart fast . . .

Yes, I was amused when I logged in today, January 1, 2010, and saw that my last post was January 1, 2009. And it was a lame post at that -- probably one of the worst attempts at a New Year's resolution ever. My diet/weight didn't fare much better. I weighed in this morning at 237.0, which is the biggest I have ever been. I may have been a pound higher a few weeks ago -- I can't remember, so let's call this the biggest I've been. And this is not good. For the first time in my life, I really think my weight is slowing me down. And my husband, a wonderful man who still thinks I'm beautiful, is worried for my health, too. So I have to do something. It may involve this blog, it may not. But it has to be something.

New Year, New Blog Entries!

I'm going to try this blog thing YET AGAIN, but I don't have much else to say right now -- just wanted to get a post up on January 1st! Happy New Year!

Thursday update

Morning weigh-in:

Daily gain/loss: -1/4 lb.
Total loss from peak (7/8/08): -1/2 lb.

I made it through my first day back in the box pretty well. I staggered my meals well enough that I did not feel hungry: I started with a cereal for breakfast to immediately satisfy my hunger. In the late morning I had a double shake. I was going to put fruit in it but found out I didn't have the frozen fruit I thought I had, so I just used sugar-free syrup instead. I had a later lunch of the lasagna entree with a can of green beans and 4 oz. can of mushrooms on the side. Then, because I had to work at a charity outdoor event in the evening, where I know there would be some tempting food, I filled up on a dinner of savory chicken entree mixed with HMR Soup mixed with a can of garbanzo beans and another 4oz can of mushrooms. That really helped me resist the kettle corn I kept smelling at the event -- it's good and it helped start my descent (or should I say ascent on the scale) last summer. However, as I browsed the vendors of jewelry, etc., after my shift was over, I sampled a cracker and a small meatball with BBQ sauce (the vendor was selling bottles of the sauce) on it before realizing I was going out of the box. I wasn't even hungry, I just wanted to sample the sauce (which wasn't that good). Because it was so small I don't think I'm going to say I was out of box on my mid-week call, but I can't do that again!!!!!

Almost forgot my daily numbers -- don't know if I'll do it everyday but here goes:

S: 2 shakes/1 soup = 3
C: 1
E: 2
V: 7
F: 0
PA: 360 calories (continuous strolling/standing at charity event for 3 hours times 2 cal/min)

Tuesday "Transition Day" Success

As I mentioned yesterday, I took Tuesday as a "transition" day -- no bread, crackers, alcohol, etc., but I did have some lean meats and some cheese on some salads. I also got in two HMR shakes with an HMR cereal mixed in, and two HMR beef stew entrees mixed together, and I got 4 vegetables from the salads.

This morning, I was down one-fourth of a pound. Yea! And when I got up I immediately had an HMR cereal to keep me in the box.

Starting Weight/Lifetime Peak (from Tuesday morning.

I hesitate to put my weight down, and I'm not sure I'll do it everyday, but I will give my starting weight from yesterday: 217 lbs. on the bathroom scale yesterday morning, 218.5 on the HMR scale with clothes before noon. I think it's the highest I've weighed on the bathroom scale (I know it is on the HMR scale), though I have not weighed myself everyday for a while, so I may have weighed more on a couple of days.

I've been hovering between 215 and 217 for about a month now (when I have weighed), and this has actually represented a slowdown of my weight gain. I have cut out some things in recent weeks: I try not to keep crackers in the house, and I would allow myself to get a southern chicken sandwich at McDonalds every few days but I stopped getting fries with it. But I know it is not enough, so let's get back in the box!

Let's try this again . . .

It's been a long, long time, but I'm going to try to do this blog again. I am trying to get back on a diet and I'm hoping this will help my accountability.

What's happened in the meantime? Well, a lot of nice things, actually. I lost about 50 pounds on HMR in the fall '06 and spring '07. I did the decision-free product-only program, and I was "in the box" (no straying) from late October '06 until mid-March '07. I took HMR entrees to banquets and even a few restaurants. A sad thing that happened during that period was my grandmother passing away, but my decision-free discipline on my diet gave me some amount of control during a difficult time, and I took comfort in that.

By February '07, I was turning heads, and I met a wonderful man who turned out to be my soulmate, and we married earlier this year. As I went into maintenance last summer, he encouraged me to eat more indulgent things. He meant well -- he didn't want me to be deprived. He has also dealt with the pain of weight issues before, and I think he bent over backwards to make me feel comfortable no matter what I ate.

But of course, I gained my weight back as I kept on eating. I gained about twenty-five pounds by the time I got married, but I still looked pretty in the wedding dress. (My husband says I was the "most beautiful thing he'd ever seen", and I believe him.) In the six months since the wedding, however, I went nuts and gained another thirty pounds, and am now about nine pounds heavier than when I started HMR in October 2006. It was a combination of "yea, no more dress to try to fit into anymore!" and some mild depression over losing my job not long afterward. I kept going to maintenance classes (I had already paid for a year) and sometimes met the maintenance minimums, but I wasn't really into it. However, I didn't feel I could afford to restart HMR's weight loss program, so I was happy to hear that they were doing a summer "Blitz", where you do short weight-loss classes but don't pay anything extra except for a minimum food purchase.

So, I go back in the box tomorrow, though I had a good "transition" day today -- I had salads with chicken and salmon on them, but I didn't have any bread, alcohol, or junk food, and I had a double HMR shake. I've got my wonderful husband's support, too, so that will help me a lot. I feel like I'm just in the right mind set to take this on, at least for the next four weeks of Blitz.

Wish me luck!!!!!

test post

this is a test post that I will take down soon.

"Last Meals"

One of the "best" things I did was give myself about two weeks between the HMR info class and the day I started the diet. The primary reason I did that was so I could adjust my work schedule around the first week medical visit and class requirements, but I think I also got a psychological boost by being able to eat "real food" for that much longer. I did splurge, and though I know that wasn't exactly healthy for me, I did not really eat more than I was eating lately anyway (which is why I had to go on a diet, of course). The time just helped my mind adjust. I got to have my last McDonalds quarter pounder value meal and my last Taco Bell crunchwrap supreme. I think I had Donato's Pizza somewhere in there, but that might have been before the info meeting. (I avoided Papa John's, though, because it is so salty -- I didn't want my weight to rocket up that high.) I got to have tortellini a final time at home. The worst thing I ate was probably a whole bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish per day, four days in a row. Yeah, that sounds even worse when I see it in writing.

The timing also worked out so that I got to enjoy two professional lunches just before I started the diet -- one of the lunches was very nice and formal and I was glad I did not have to make a fuss over special diet food. (The other one was just a big deli sandwich, though it was tasty.)

I saved my best "last meal" for last -- the night before my diet started, I went to Bonefish and had grilled salmon with that lime tomato sauce I really like, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, and bread dipped in olive oil. Yum.

And you know, the only thing I've really missed since starting the diet is the salmon.

Yes, I really have been dieting this time! -- Here's what I picked and why

I thought I was going to blog more before I started my new plan, but I guess I got too busy. I definitely have busy since I started the diet a little over three weeks ago.

So here's the deal -- I decided to do the HMR program associated with the University of Kentucky. A few months ago I wrote that I wasn't sure I could do that, but my utter inability to get myself on any kind of plan changed my mind. In other words, I was getting desperate. :-)

I had explored a few other options -- I thought about ordering Nutrisystem food -- I knew there'd be no difference between that and what I had done on Jenny Craig, but I thought I might enjoy slightly different entree choices. I also explored a new program at a Georgetown, Kentucky, hospital called HALT -- it offered medical monitoring and meetings with a dietician, but it did not appear to have a hard and fast food program, and I wasn't sure I was going to be disciplined enough to make healthy food choices without someone handing the food to me. (At first I was also annoyed when they seemed oblivious to the schedules of all the working women in the room -- they said the class would be Thursday afternoons, but were not sure of the time. They did eventually decide to make the class at 5pm to accommodate people.)

Meanwhile, my mother had encouraged me to go to the HMR program's informational meeting on Thursday evenings, but I could not find time to leave my office in time to make any of those held in September. I finally got to go, however, on the second Thursday in October -- I had had a long week of getting up earlier than I used to in order to adjust to my new boss's schedule and preparing for a big meeting I had that Thursday morning. But the meeting went well and my new boss complimented me and I found myself with time to make it to Lexington for a 6:30pm meeting, though just barely. My mother met me there.

I missed a few minutes, but it felt like the program coordinator just jumped into describing what the program was -- no great platitudes or promises, just a description of the different variations of the program: all shakes, shakes and entrees (which I had not really realized you could do), or shakes and entrees and fruits and vegetables (what they call "Healthy Solutions"). She described the medical monitoring levels, etc. She described the class attendance requirement. In other words, she was pretty straightforward. Her style acknowledged that losing weight is tough, and keeping weight off is hard. I liked the approach.

Then she announced what time the current "core" class was: 4:30pm on Wednesdays. My heart sank. Given the late time for the info session, I had really hoped it would be a true evening class that would not require me to miss work. Why, I asked myself, do these programs not realize how busy a working woman is? Who are these classes for anyway?

After she finished speaking, she announced that the staff would be making appointments for those still interested in the order we arrived. Since Mom and me were the last ones there, we stayed in the conference room after everyone went to another room. I told Mom I was disappointed about the 4:30 time, and Mom agreed. But I started to discuss aloud that my new boss might understand and would let me take the time once a week, based on what I had observed of her so far -- I was thinking particularly about how my boss had gone out of her way to compliment me about the meeting. Before I completed the whole thought, I let the stress that had been building inside me out and began crying a little. Mom understood, and then we laughed a little, too. The coordinator came by during this time and gave me a tissue. I discussed my dilemna with her a little too. She listened, and I liked her even more.

In the end, I went ahead and signed up for my introductory physical -- I put it over a week out in order to give myself time to talk to my boss and adjust my schedule. And I put it on a day I knew I was going to be out of the office and in Lexington anyway. The next day, the coordinator called and told me that if the 4:30 pm was a real burden I could switch to a 6:15 class when that new core class started in a few weeks, even though the program usually didn't encourage that because I'd be sitting through some of the same stuff again. Told you I liked her.

But I didn't need to worry about my boss's reaction -- when I discussed the matter with her a couple of days later, she was fine it, which I figured she would be. I like her, too.