It's been a quiet couple of days online for me, but it's been a hectic couple of days off the computer.  Saturday was a day of appointments.  My day started with a 9 AM dentist appointment and ended after 1 AM when we got home.  As far as being healthy and eating healthy and all that?  Saturday was an epic failure, but I'm a reasonable woman.  I don't assume I'll be able to live on planet Earth and eat 100% healthy 100% of the time.  I'm trying to eat 95% healthy 80+% of the time.  Because no one can successfully cut out all sugar, dairy, wheat, and be successful at it when you're used to having some or all of those things on a daily basis.  Reality.  I'm trying to live in it.  It sucks sometimes, but I'm coming to an understanding of sorts.  Sunday was a bit better, though I didn't eat anything until around 1, then we had my nephew's birthday dinner at Sakura where my meal was somewhere in between the healthy and not.  I had an order of gyoza, fried rice, and an all veg entree (OK, broccoli and carrots because I didn't want to be bothered to pick out the onions and I just wasn't feeling zucchini at the moment).  I'd gone a week or so without having any soda, but Saturday's Halloween party buggered that up. ... kinda makes me feel like I'm confessing at an AA meeting about a relapse.  I thrive in structure and the structure of a normal work week makes it easy to keep up with everything.   Cooking dinner, packing lunches, taking vitamins.  But weekends are usually chaos and everything falls apart for me then.  I don't make time for me - for health, for rest, for pampering, no time for me.  Partly it's because I know there is so much to do in the house, for the business, for the family, and I put me last.  Always.  Because I don't deserve my own time.  I live in the service of others, and this is the reality I have created for myself.  No time for my own life.  The only time I'm not last on my list is when I'm sick, and that's only because I'm not physically capable of not being a sick blob on the couch - and then I still try anyway.  Somehow my desire to get healthy is driven by this too, this putting me last thing.  Because while I want to be healthy for me and I want to feel better emotionally, it's not just for me.  It's so I can make the people around me happier.  So I can be here for them longer.  So I can work for them harder.  Even my desire to make me better is perverted into a self-minimizing thing where everyone else is still more important than me.  At some point, I hope that I'll realize it's OK for me to be important to myself.  In the meantime, I'll keep working at eating healthy and getting this body of mine working better.

So when I talk about eating healthy, what is it I am doing exactly?  I've broken down and paid for a Weight Watchers subscription so I can use their iPhone apps.  Their point system isn't overly complicated and it makes sense to me, and I find it easy to follow.  Hopefully I'll go longer than 3 months - which is how long I stayed on WW last time.  I quit last time because it was working and I feared success.  I still need to pick apart this fear so I can get rid of it, but I don't feel like starting to poke this beast today.  I'm not avoiding it, but I don't want it to turn into a ragey crying-fest like my last post did when I realized I was abusing myself emotionally.  But back to what I'm doing for eating healthier ... I'm also trying to take the Paleo Diet rules into account as well which basically boil down to no grains, no dairy, no sugar, yes meat, yes veg, and yes fruit.  I still lightly sweeten my tea.  I'm still having grains occasionally.  I've cut down a lot on the dairy, but it's not gone.  The Paleo thing makes grocery shopping easy too.  Just hit the produce section and the meat section and you're pretty much done.  No shopping the isles staring at all the boxes of food-like products trying to figure out which one is going to be the most yummy.  Sauces, herbs, and seasonings are my friends, and they're what's going to get me through what could potentially be a highly monotonous menu.  Speaking of herbs and seasonings, a couple days ago I made a medley of roasted veg that knocked my socks off.  I couldn't stop eating them!  Me.  The carnivore.  Couldn't stop eating veg.  It was parsnips, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, and a bit of left over polenta - all cubed up (about 6 cups), lightly coated in olive oil (2-3T), and then I added Savory Herb blend (2T*), Sandwich Sprinkle (1T*), Season-All (2tsp*), and a touch of pepper and garlic salt (*measurements are all estimates).  Apparently making veg yummy to me means adding a lot of flavor to them.  Who knew?

Emotionally I'm doing OK.  Not great, not horrible.  I'm trying very hard not to beat myself up about how nutritionally bad the weekend was and remind myself that the occasional insane days are OK.  Really actually OK.  Nothing to get worked up about, nothing to berate myself about, nothing to throw in the towel about.  And historically I throw in the towel.  If I don't perform perfectly, I give up.  But I don't feel like that's an option anymore.  I do feel it sometimes though.  I feel the hurt and the abuser coming out and starting to do what it always does, and it's so hard to stop that process.  It's been in place since I was little, and that abuser wants me to fail.  The abuser wants more fuel so it can continue to knock me down.  But I'm now determined to learn how to tell that abuser to STFU.  Awareness is the first step ... Knowing is half the battle.  I'll keep an eye on the abuser so I can keep an eye on my emotional health.  All of this feels an awful lot like I'd imagine an adult learning to walk for the first time.  You know it's something you should be able to do, but for some reason you can't and it's hard because you never learned it when you were young.  I just keep reminding myself that there is no such thing as perfection on this journey.  It's going to be hard.  I'm going to "mess up."  I'm going to be lost.  I'm going to succeed.  I also need to keep reminding myself not to minimize my successes or to fear them.  I guess my next big project is to try to figure out that fear of success.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I'm not looking forward to uncovering and rehashing some very painful events in my life because I'm almost certain that's what this fear is tied to. 

P.S.  Feel free to comment, discuss, and/or share your own stories.  We all have them and this is a safe forum to share.

No really.  There's only three letters!  But aside from that, let's think about how certain words have become taboo or insults.  When I was a kid, when someone called me fat, it hurt.  Being fat is a shameful thing to be in our society.  It's more acceptable to be a struggling alcoholic than a struggling fat person.  Everything everywhere tells you this - either directly or indirectly.  Don't know what I mean?  Directly, it's all the diet program/pill ads, fitness programs, gym ads, all the things that say you need to be skinny and ripped.  Indirectly, it's everything else in media that features thin beautiful people and the fat people are usually only there to be stupid or funny ... if they're there at all.  We are all taught that being anything other than thin and pretty isn't acceptable in this society.  Ya know what?  I say fuck all of you who think that way.  The only reason I want to lose weight is because of how I feel - certainly not what society says.

I would much rather look like the first photo than the second, but society says I should look more like Allie Crandell ... just maybe not with my ribs showing and my joints larger than my legs/arms.  I'm genuinely curious ... between the two ladies pictured at the right, what do you see as more beautiful/attractive?  This is a purely subjective exercise.  There is no right answer ... this is not a trap!  :-)  I prefer the woman who is considered plus sized, but I don't see her as fat.  Though if you ask her doctor, she's likely considered obese, if not morbidly obese.  Hard to tell from a photo.  But seriously, with all that fat pretty people in the world, why has the word "fat" become such a horrible thing?  Fat is factual. Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat!  If I think it'll get a chuckle out of you, I'll say I'm fluffy, but I'm fat.  I'm obese.  I'm morbidly obese.  Factually fat.  Unhealthily fat.  And maybe "fat" got a bad reputation because it is truth, and truth does sometimes hurt.  But there's far more offensive things to call a fat person than fat or obese.  Just go to Thesaurus.com and type in "fat" and here's what you'll see:

beefy, big, blimp, bovine, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stout, swollen, thickset, weighty, whalelike

Certainly most of those are far more insulting than "fat."  Some of them are quite factual, but the majority are more colorful.  I've been called several of them and many others over the years too.  Butterball.  Chunky.  Whale.  Fat-ass.  Tubby.  Lard.  Michelin.  Ugly.  ... And yes, hearing that all throughout my childhood put some programming in place that is very difficult to delete/rewrite as an adult.  So did the growing up with dieting.  It seems like my family was always on a diet together, but mostly it was my mother and me.  There were weekly weighings, menu/recipe cards, carefully measured portions, Jane Fonda and trampoline workouts, body measurements.  Torture.  So not only was I not acceptable to the kids at school and society, I wasn't acceptable to my family, so how could I ever be acceptable to myself?  I actually wonder if the self-loathing ever goes away.  I've gotten pretty good at shoving it in the back of the closet in the recesses of my mind, but it frequently gets out and runs rampant.  Self-loathing is self-abuse.  I don't need someone else to emotionally abuse me about how worthless or lazy I am because I'm fat, I've got that someone built right into my own brain.  You can eventually leave an abusive relationship or move out of your abusive parent's home ... but you can't move out of your own body to escape self-abuse.  And until I wrote this, I didn't realize that this is what I've been doing.  I didn't consciously realize that I've been beating myself down.  I knew I hated myself for being a failure - failure at getting healthy and losing weight, but I'm a self-abuser and I don't know how to stop.  Maybe this is where part of my fear of success lies: If I lose weight, what will my internal abuser have to lord over me?  I do know that fixing the symptom (being fat), isn't going to cure the disease (self-abuse), but will it make it easier?  I don't know.  I also don't know if seeing a shrink would help, and if it would, what specialty?  Who is trained in teaching people to reprogram their brains to not be assholes to themselves?

And you know what the worst part about this built-in-abuser is?  It stops me from receiving compliments and adoration from the person I love most: my future husband.  He adores me.  He thinks I'm beautiful and wonderful and sexy the way I am today.  I believe him too.  But somehow between believing him and believing his beliefs myself, there's a breakdown.  I can't feel about me the way he does ... and that makes me feel like an ass.  Like I'm robbing him of a more fulfilling experience with me by having this belief breakdown and the only person who is at fault is me ... or better yet, my built-in-abuser.  I imagine that getting this built-in-abuser rehabilitated will do wonders for our relationship ... if only in doing wonders for my emotional health.

And by the way, if I haven't said it yet, I'll say it now:  I have every intention of sharing all of the things.  I expect this to be a heavy, upsetting, rage-inducing, triumphant, dark, frustrating, raw, silly at times, elementary ... a drawn out way to say honest.  I will be brutally honest and I will likely surprise myself with some realizations I come to through this process.

It's today, and I don't want to. 

I don't wanna anything. 

I want to shut down, curl up, and hide from the world.  But unfortunately the mortgage doesn't get paid by me hiding under a blanket forcing cuddles on any kitties in arm's reach. 

Why?  I started a long post yesterday (which will be posted for you in the next few days) and in my brutal honesty with myself I stirred up a whole bunch of emotional crap that I didn't even know was festering.  Apparently I had an emotional storage unit that I'd forgotten about and I opened that sucker right up.  So I was sad, and hurt, and angry.  Crying and raging.  I managed to work up so much "stuff" that when I got home, I texted my sweetie telling him I really wasn't feeling going to the gym.  He lovingly encouraged me and reminded me that it's a good thing we're doing, but I just shut down.  I was exhausted emotionally (from dealing with new-found baggage) and physically (from not getting enough sleep the night before) and I just responded to him that I needed a nap and maybe things would be better after. 

I really wish they would have been better after my nap, but I had the most ragey rage dream I've ever had.  The gist of the dream was that someone was in my front yard, stealing firewood, and I went outside and confronted them.  Asked if they were going to pay for it or just steal it.  They didn't respond appropriately, so I proceeded to take a piece of firewood and bash the heck out of the car's hood and windshield.  I woke up from that dream ragey, so I got up and started prepping dinner in hopes to calm down while I waited for my sweetie to get home from work.  He came home to a rage-ball, and I told him as plainly as I could that I really didn't want go to the gym because I was an emotional and ragey wreck and it would only get worse.  He understood and kindly called to cancel our appointment with the trainer and that was that.  I feel like an ass for not going, but I feel so overwhelmed right now; that I've taken on too much all at once and I need to pull back a little.  I don't know where the happy medium is right now, but I'll find it.  I'll stumble through, step on toes, rage and cry until I get there. 

To say I've been difficult to live with me for the past few days is putting it lightly.  He's been a saint, but I know it's wearing on him.  We had an epically long conversation last night that was very needed on both sides, and I think things really can only get better from here.  I need my big strong man to be strong for me when I can't.  I need his quiet company and him next to me when I'm broken.  I need him to hold my hand while we both muddle through the hard bits together.  And I'm confident he'll do all these things.  He's just that wonderful and he loves and cares for me that much.

A difficult epiphany I had last night during dinner prep.  Apparently when I'm feeling hurt or vulnerable, I just go to angry.  Because in some way, my brain views Angry as a much safer place to be than Hurt or Vulnerable.  If I get all prickly, nothing will come close to hurt me when I'm already hurting or vulnerable.  I know it's not helpful in the long term, so I'm going to have to recognize when I do this and figure out how to work through it instead of getting prickly.  I'm also good at hiding or ignoring problems.  Again not helpful in the long term.  My list of self-improvement projects is getting longer, and I'm not liking the reality in front of me.  But I keep reminding myself that I'm engaged to a wonderful man and we want to spend the rest of our lives together.  Those lives will be longer if we're healthier and more fit.  Those lives will be better if I work through my baggage.  It's just going to be a rough journey for now and I hope (and believe) that it will all get easer as time goes on and we work through this together.

Also, I want pancakes.  And bacon if you get those silly little boots off it first.

So today we're going to the gym.  We have an appointment with a trainer who will hopefully be helpful (can you sense my skepticism?) in helping us both formulate a work out plan that will give us the best results.  So between now and 7 PM, I need to figure out what my fitness goals really are.  I have some vague ideas, but I'm going to try to articulate here, and since we know I'm good at 3s, maybe I'll just start there ...

1. Lose weight.
2. Increase endurance.
3. Increase flexibility.

Lose weight.  This one is pretty self explanatory.  I need to drop excess weight for many reasons.  I'm genetically at risk for developing Diabetes.  My body and joints hurt from all the weight.  I hate the way I look and feel because I'm obese.  I don't want to be embarrassed about how huge and flabby my arms are anymore.  I want to feel better about the way I look so I can bring back that sassy woman that wooed my future husband in the first place!  Also, when the baby factory opens, it's going to be a far easier and healthier pregnancy if I weigh less.  Losing weight will do wonders for my overall physical health AND my emotional health.  I'll feel better about me and maybe I can learn to see me the way my future husband does instead of the horribly negative way I see myself now.

Increase endurance.  I want to be the Energizer Bunny.  The Energizer Bunny doesn't get winded going up a flight of stairs.  I used to not get winded, but my recent weight gain has really taken a toll.  I also do a lot of craft shows in the fall and winter and having the endurance to get through it without taking a day afterwards to recover would be nice.  Then there's my annual volunteering at Fertile Ground Gathering each May - I need to be able to run all over that park like no one's business for 5 days and not feel like I'm dying half way into the first day.  Also, there will be kids in the future.  How the heck am I going to keep up with the kids if I can't run?  ZOMG and dancing.  I'd like to be able to rock out some Lindy Hop for a few songs without dying or getting horribly winded.

Increase flexibility.  I don't want or need to be a pretzel lady, but I enjoy Yoga and when I do it, I have to modify most poses because of my lack of flexibility.  I also can't freaking touch my toes because the muscles and tendons in my legs are so tight they're screaming when I reach to my ankles.  I don't know if there's any medical advantage to being more flexible (like I need scientific justification?), but I want to be more flexible than I am today and really that's all that matters.

Tell me your goals.  What do you want from your body that you don't have today?

I'm doing three changes a month.  If you wanna do this thing too, comment and let me know what your goals/tasks are!

1.  Consume 2 or less meals from Chipotle in November.  I love Chipotle inappropriately and it's so unhealthy (the way I order it).  I usually have it 1-2 times a week.

2. Take a multivitamin daily.

3. Track all my meals in the WW app at the very least to have a clear picture of what I'm consuming on the regular.

Also, I've downloaded the app SuperBetter ($4.99).  Check out the link and her TED Talk - It'll be 19 minutes well spent.  It's a gamer's take on real life achievement along with all the science behind it.  I like the gamer aspect and I love the science.  If you want to be one of my allies on SuperBetter, comment below and I'll send you an invite!  The more the merrier.  If you are already using SuperBetter and want an ally, send me an invite!
My Starbucks addition got me a free download code for another app called Fitness Check-up that I want to give a try too.  At this point I don't know which is better, if they'll complement each other or if they'll be redundant. 

BONUS TASK: I'll have a bonus task this month of figuring out these apps and seeing if they're helpful or not and then I'll follow up with everyone here.

I have also included a calendar below you can print out.  I'm a visual person and I do well with lists and checklists.  Feel free to print and use this for yourself for whatever your goals are.

We all know *those* people.  The ones who tout how wonderful it is to be eating healthy all of a sudden, exercising, dropping pounds, gaining muscle and general awesomeness like it flowed out of the faucet.  They're lying.  Every single one of them.  But there is valid science and psychology behind the "fake it until you make it" thing.  But really?  *Those* people are all over.  They waive their "I'm so healthy and it's the easiest, most rewarding thing on the planet" flag with such fervor that it's both annoying and makes me question their honesty.  These folks are in your life, they're all over the Internet and Facebook and TV ... everywhere.  And the people like me who are at the beginning (or re-beginning) of the struggle to get a firm grasp of health and extra awesomeness can't help but feel like failures before we even start.  At least I do.  I look at what needs to change in my life and it's overwhelming.  And I can't talk to anyone about it because the advice is always the same:  "just DO it, just eat better, just exercise, just blah blah blah."  But think about it.  I mean really think about it.  Can anyone flip a switch to change a lifetime of habit?  Yeah sure!  If you want it to change for a week and go back to the way things were before immediately.  But long term change?  That's intimidating, overwhelming, scary, stressful ...

So what do I know from past experiences?  I've written several things out, and I'm sure there's loads more, but here's a good start.

17 Things I've Learned While Trying to Lose Weight and Be Healthy
1. Being tight on money makes it hard to eat healthy.  Junk food and fast food is cheaper than Real food more often than not.

2. Being tight on time makes it hard to eat healthy.  Cooking meals from scratch takes time.  Grocery shopping takes time.  Fast food is ... well ... fast.

3. After giving up almost all soda a few years back (I say almost all, because Coke or ginger ale can be calming to an upset tummy), I found that when I did drink my soda of choice, Coke, I felt bloated, run down, and generally gross afterwards.

4. After giving up most fast food back in 2008, I find 99% of it disgusting now.  It tastes and smells horrible to me.  My only exception is Chipotle.  I still have a love affair with Chipotle.  And when I forget how gross it is and get something to eat at a drive-thru, I regret it because it tastes bad and I feel gross afterwards.  More bloating, run down, upset stomach, and usually heart burn.

5. I don't like most fruits and veggies.  And if I really don't like something and force myself to eat it, there will be uncontrollable horking.  I want to like more fruits and veg, and I'm gradually trying things I haven't before.  Apparently Brussels sprouts are OK and they kind of taste like broccoli to me. 

6. Grand sweeping changes won't last and are not livable.  Though I have found that if I make 3 small changes and keep at them for a month, then it's a lot easier to stick to those small changes than trying to live a completely different lifestyle all at once.  By small changes I mean: drink 2 more glasses of water per day, take a multivitamin daily, and have fast food half as often as usual.  Then the next month, you make 3 more changes and so on.

7. I'm afraid of succeeding.  This one sounds ridiculous, but it's true.  There's a lot of baggage here going back to my childhood.  When children suffer trauma, it creates deep programming that is often unpredictable and very difficult to change.  My fat is my shield (or so says child-brain).  Adult brain knows this is silly, but try reasoning with a toddler.  Or a cat.

8. I have a lot more energy when I exercise and weigh less.  I feel better physically, and I'm happier too.

9. I am comfortable in my current routine and with the food I eat, and I want to magically lose weight without changing anything.  The sad truth is that magic doesn't work like this and neither does sloth.  I know I'm going to have to change my routines and eating habits.  I'm going to have to be uncomfortable and do things I don't want to do.  I've heard rumors that this is what being an "adult" or "responsible" is, but I don't wanna. <tantrum> *flail* </tantrum>

10. I want to feel better.  I want to have more stamina.  I don't want to ache because of the extra weight I'm carrying around.  I want to like my body.

11. I want to live to see my grandchildren.  Heck, I want to have children so I can have grandchildren!  This is a big one for me.  This is the "why now" answer.  I want a baby.  I know I need to be healthier to be a good baby-maker.  And then after making said baby, I need to be a healthy mom so I can keep up with this new person and take epically good care of them.

12. I can't do it alone.  Or maybe I won't.  I can't tell right now.  But I need a partner.  I need someone in this WITH me who will suffer along side of me and follow the same rules I do or I feel like it's a slap in the face.  I feel like my wants are trash if I'm the only one playing by the rules.  It makes me feel like they don't care about me, that I'm not important.  If I'm cutting out all junk food, so should they.  If I'm doing X, so should they.  I don't know why I put so much emphasis on my partner doing exactly what I'm doing for diet and exercise.  When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

13. The heavier I am, the less I want sex.  It's not because sex is less enjoyable, it's because the more I weigh, the more I hate myself.  I feel disgusting.  It's hard to feel sexy and be turned on when I'm obsessed with how bad I feel about myself.

14. When I gain weight, I feel like a failure and I beat myself up about it.  Constantly.

15. I like to dance.  I love swing dancing, Dance Dance Revolution, and generally dancing like a crazy person to good music around the house.

16. I also like Aikido and Yoga.  I hate that I don't have enough money or hours in the week to do things like this and I know I won't do it at home.

17. I want knowledgeable help, but I don't want it from one of *those* people.  I don't want rainbows and glitter spewing out with advice to make everything sound so easy and wonderful.  Life changes aren't easy and wonderful.  Especially not at the beginning.  It sucks and I want someone with a brain and a firm sense of reality.  I don't have hope that this person exists.

So what's the point of all this?  I'm 36, getting married, I'm dying to have a baby, and I don't like the way I feel (physically or emotionally).  I'll blame my yet-to-be-conceived child for all of it.  I want to be healthy and I want my baby to be healthy, and I want to live a long time to spend as much time as possible with this child and their children.  And I want all of these things for my future husband too.  Reality is that if I continue down the road I'm walking, that's not going to happen.  So I have to change.  Period.  And it's going to suck.  Period.  But I'm going to chronicle the suck and hopefully after some time, that suck will change to "not so bad" and then "OK" ... is there something better than OK?  I'll let you know if I get there.  I have far more questions than answers today.  I hope to answer some along the way.

My plans for the near future are this: Go mostly paleo (please, like I can give up dairy cold turkey!), continue working with my doctor to monitor my weight and overall health, get off my ass and go to the gym - I'm paying for the membership after all!

Go ahead and share your stories too.  Stories about *those* people.  Stories about successes and failures.  What made things easier?  What sucked the most?  I want to hear from you ... just no spewing rainbows and glitter unless you're a unicorn ... in which case, how are you typing with those hooves?