What is your importance level?

I have come across a few blogs here and there and there seems to be a theme running through them.
On blogs where the weight loss has stalled apart from injury or medical reasons...meaning, where no good reasons exist, there seems to be a theme.
That theme is...lack of importance attached to the goal.
Oh, there is a lot of chest thumping and self flagellation, but no forward momentum.
I used to do this.
I am so fat, and I am so tired.
I wish I wasn't such a fat pig.
blah  blah blah...
Now, I am not discounting feelings of low self esteem.
They stink.
When your are obese, You really do feel bad about yourself.
But yet, you don't attach level 10 importance to your health.
Quick.
Think of something that you would never let slip.
Would you let your five year old walk home from school through a rough neighborhood?
Would you leave the  kid with Leon, the neighborhood pimp?
Would you start shooting heroin?
Would you stop paying your house payment because you were 'just too busy."
Would you tell your kids to skip doing homework or going to school, so they could just hang with you?
No.
You need to, if you want to lose weight in a consistent manner...attach level 10 importance to your weight loss efforts.
It isn't a 'well, I would like to"
It's a "it's going to happen, and anyone trying to stop me is going to draw back a bloody nub."
It isn't "well, I guess I am going to have to eat cardboard until I get down to my goal weight and then I can eat again."
It's "I'd better find a new way of eating that I like and enjoy and can live with for the rest.of.my.life."
It's "My kids are watching me, and how I treat myself will inevitably be how they treat themselves when they grow up."
Or it will be..."I wish I had lost weight when I had the opportunity, now I am 50 or 60 and dying of congestive heart failure."
You are important.
This is important.
It may be the most important thing you will ever do.
So instead of beating yourself up
Say "I'll feel worse about myself tomorrow, today I will treat myself with kindness and respect...I will feed it less and move it more."
Do it for you.
Hugs,
Chris

Happy Blogger and end of month weigh iN.....oooooohhhhhh....

Okey dokey,
So, I am going to post my end of month weigh in...I started the month at 188, I end the month at 178.
10 lbs.
Not bad. I fully expect my weight loss to sloooowwww down in the coming months. It can't keep going at this pace, and I will keep my calories at or around 1400 for the month of February.
I drink one cup of coffee a day now.
I have replaced the other with a diet coke.
I drink 8 cups of water...
my food will be 300 to 350 for breakfast
100 for coffee
300 to 350 for lunch
600-700 for dinner.

I already have many good meals of all types in these calorie ranges.
In February, I have one high calorie day planned.
That is February 6th...my oldest's 16th birthday.
The rest of the month I will be op.
I want to be 170 by the end of the month...and it is a short month.
That leaves me with 27 days in which to create a 28000 calorie deficit....not easy.
I will give it all I've got...captain.
sorry, couldn't resist.
the borg.

lol.
wow, my brain is firing on all cylinders tonight.
quick,
10 things that make me happy...
for alan.
I would put up an award picture but at this point my right side of my blog is going to be dedicated to 10 lb pictures....which means I am going to have to put up a new one.
I will do this until I hit 138.
So....
10 things that make me happy...
1.)Being in normal sizes.
2.) My new belted, double breasted, tweed jacket I bought today in size large for half off. :o)
3.) Picking my oldestdaughter up from a Birthday party attended by a group of good Kids. All lovers of God, all respectful and bright go getters.  Watching her happy face as she talked about her time at the party. Knowing she has good taste in Friends.
4.) Buying clothes for my youngest and watching her try them on. It feels good to be able to buy your kids nice things.
Knowing this makes me appreciate how hard it must have been for my mom to have to tell us no to things all the time...
and steve here is one for you...something you didn't know about me.  This is something I hold near and dear to my heart.
Wait... first let me finish my list.
5.) Leo adopted Duke (our lab) as part of his cat family today. He went up and rubbed his head against Duke's in greeting tonight as Duke was laying in the living room.  very sweet.

6.) Finding out coral is one of my new favorite colors.  Beats Beige, black, almost black and grey.

7.) That new song by Selena Gomez...the one that plays right off now on my blog.
I don't know what it's referring to...but I do know that when I finally go clubbing in a short skirt...I am going to request that song. What a great song.  Full of energy and positive vibes.

8.) I finally got my girl scouts their well earned silver key ornament badges.  I will be handing those out at the next meeting.

9.)I have Already put in our initial troop cookie order and nothing went kabluey.

10.) I threw away some of my husband's ratty old shirts and bought him some new ones...at 75 % off, there is a heck of a sale going on at the PX as they clear out winter gear to replace it with the spring clothes...so...woooohooo.  Sale time. lol.  sales make me happy.

Okay, so Steve,
something you didn't know about me...
Everyone knows I was poor growing up. My mom made about 3.25 an hour in 1986. She supplemented her income with sewing our clothes and growing our food and making door stops from fabric people gave her and government rice...
So anyways, one day we were in some store, I think it was meijers.  We were clothes shopping and every year I got three pairs of pants, three shirts and socks, underwear and new shoes. I already had a coat. It was a grey wool coat with fur on the collar (not real lol) 
I hated that coat.
Someone gave it to me.
I saw an 80's tastic coat.
Leather on the shoulders, charcoal grey with patchwork stuff, velvet and some flowers. can't remember the whole thing now.
I was 15, and old enought to know that an 89 dollar coat was NOT going to happen.
So, I turned around and was going to walk away and mom says, "You like that coat?"
I said, "No."
I knew we couldn't afford it.
She said "Yes, you do."
I said "Well, it's nice, but it's not worth 89 bucks."
She goes "Oh...okay."
So we finish shopping.
That Christmas I had only two gifts under the tree, while my brothers had five or six.
But I knew how my mom worked, she gave us an equal amount.
I opened one and it was  a teddy bear.
The next gift I opened was that coat.
That coat represented four full days of work.
She worked four full days,
Just so I could have a fancy coat.
I cried.

Well, that is about all...
Hope you guys have a great day,
Thank you again Alan for the happy blogger award.
Hugs,
Chris

I told my husband my weight..and a perfect 10 update.

Hey all,
I had a really good day...
first, perfect 10
been getting 8 cups of water
getting in bed by 11
exercise...5 out of 7....but i was injured.
started pilates...so still doing upper body toning.
other than that going good.

I told my husband my weight this morning...I will tell you all on the first.
Needless to say, it was far enough away from 200 that I felt comfortable telling him.
His response "You told me your weight!" 
Shock and awe.
Then I told him what weight I started at..
He said, "It wasn't that bad!"
I said "It was to me."

lol.
Oh, and the biggest thing today...
I went clothes shopping....
I have been to a few stores over the last few weeks...trying to see what kind of things I like.
You see, I haven't spent time buying things I like for at least 10 to 15 years.  I have bought things that:
were loose
were dark
were cheap
wouldn't call attention to me.
But I didn't buy things that would be:
form fitting
bright
pretty
or
call attention to myself.
That is the kind of shirt I bought tonight...
wait, lets see if I can not only find a picture, but upload it..

this should be a crap shoot.

Well there, it's the same shape, mine is just slightly more coral with embroidered flowers.
It's a LARGE....lol, not and EXTRA LARGE.
Not a 1x. Or a woman's size...it's a 12/14.
Beyond awesome.





I was so happy that I showed it to a friend.
The best part of  the night was when I pulled a size 24 skirt off a rack and wrap it across the front of me and halfway around my back.
It almost doubled..in forty more pounds it will double.
That made it reality for me. 
I used to wear a 24 no more than 8 months ago.
I also bought a pair of 14's, which I can pull up and zip.
I haven't been in 14's since 1997.
After that, I switched to stretchy pants and for the last 13 years or so, it was all downhill.
I recieved the happy blogger award from Alan from fools fitness...
I will do the things that make me happy tomorrow again.
Just for alan...
I have ten more, and ten more and ten more...
life makes me happy.
Have a great night.
your fashion forward blogger,
Chris

Plows, pilates and Pain...or how i spent my afternoon.

Hey all,
I broke out a dvd a freind gave me the other day.
First off, I went to the gym and hopped on Christian for 35 minutes.
(For any new followers, I named my first elliptical after Christian bale because it made it more fun to hop on him one hour a day, six days a week. )
anywhoo.
I did 35 minutes because the roads were deteriorating and I didn't want to have a bad accident on the way home...as it was, I passed a bad accident...police cars, wreckers, the whole nine.
So I get home and think "Well, chris...Why don't you break out one of those DVD's Amber gave  you.
What could it hurt?
Me   Nothing, thought I.
This CD is in 10 minute intervals.
At first I was only going to do the ab workout and the arm workout. 
But the bun and thigh workout happened to be between those two sections.
Sso..being too lazy to fast forward per se, I did the bun and thigh workout as well.
Let me just say...
OW!
By the end of the Ab burn, I had my feet over my head while I attempted to use " my lower abs to curl my legs back up and out and around"...
Barring actually accomplishing this, I started laughing uncontrollably,
I thought of something I saw on Fitcetera .
It was Ellen Degeneres with her shake weight and this weird thigh contraption thingy.
She said "I don't know WHAT I'm training for...but I hope it never happens.
Well,
Ditto.
If I do that twice a week, I will indeed have abs of steel.
Or, I will be the first human case of self suffocation by my own *ss.

Hope all of you are on target..
tomorrow is my perfect 10 update.
I look forward to it...It might not have been a perfect week, but it was productive.
My weigh in is coming up here on the first...it should be interesting.
Have a great night guys.
Talk to you later.
Hugs,
Chris

Walking, and talking on my day off...

I realized today was supposed to be my 'day off' exercise...but get this, I wanted to take a walk...so I did.
Just two miles.
But it felt good.
I haven't done much else today.
I homeschooled, right now we are reading about the constitutional convention.
How none of us agreed but then we compromised and worked things out.
That was a long time ago.
I don't think I have heard the word constitution in a while.
I was listening to the 'Before the State of the Union' show on the radio tonight.
They were talking about all the things Barack obama was going to need to say, or do, or be, to 'fix' things.
He was going to need to sound authentic.
He was going to need to sound 'sincere'.
His speech writers were going to have to build the 'architecture" of his speech.
I thought.
'What?"
then...
'Oh, I get it...it's HARD to stack sh*t that high.'
ba dum bump.
I feel sorry for him.
No really.
We need to stop looking to one man to save us...He is only a man.
Not a God.
I feel sorry for him...
Not because I agree with him.
But because there are times when I really do believe he wants things to work.
But it isn't.....working.
Because what we really need to do, is to cut back on spending in major ways...and people squeal like stuck pigs when their programs are cut.
He is herding cats.
We, the American people, have created this problem.
Maybe we need to stop blaming our elected representatives and start blaming ourselves.
We voted for them...and even if we didn't vote for a particular them...they are still are representatives.
We need to become our grandparents.
We need to give things up and sacrifice.
Cuts should start at the local level...say "No,Thank You!" to federal funds and use volunteerism to fill in the gaps in the public sector. Like why in the world do we need a paid county commissioner?
It should be someone who has a real job...the mayor should have a real job...people should come together and make decisions on a community level.
When this country was founded, we didn't have professional politicians.
It should be trickle up...not trickle down.
Our whole society has become an inverse pyramid. A teeny tiny portion of people supporting, through their tax dollars, a top heavy, bloated government bureaucracy.
Our politicians are People paid to pander professionally to the various  specialty groups that make up their constituency.
They can't do what's right for everyone, because the purple and yellow striped midgets with shingles  might get p*ssed.
I remember back in Michigan, we had a representative named Dave Camp.
Every year he would scrimp and save, and send the surplus money to run his offices back to the Michigan government.
He always sent money back.
I don't remember, and I don't care, if he was a democrat or republican.
We need responsible, reasonable, FRUGAL people running our country.
This is not the big ole free money jamboree. I am sick of watching politicians using a tax money give away to buy votes.
We have to stop buying the line that they are doing it for us...and accept that we...us..the people need to do things not just for us, but for our children and our children's children.
Because when it comes right down to it, it isn't this generation that will pay if we muck things up on an epic scale.
It's the America of the future.
Will we still be the land of the free, the home of the brave?
Will we still be the beacon of hope to people the world over?
Only if we can find it within ourselves to take our lumps now.
I swear to God this is the last time I will do this....for a while.
Your worried about America ...but hopeful for the future, and blogging about exercise and good eating tomorrow....
blogger,
Chris

going Gi jane...

Hey all,
Well, today I went to Iron horse park and did the 2.8 mile vita course...lol.
It has sit ups and pullups and a cargo net climb...
so everything went well but the hang ups pull-ups.
I was determined to try everything, even if I suspected I couldn't.
So there I was on the corner of polio and anthrax streets (who names these streets) and I jump up to grab the bar in a feeble futile attempt to hoist my still porky, but shrinking *ss into the air.
Who should trot by, but two rather diminutive damsels giggling at me their own private joke.
I'm not paranoid.
So, I  gasped, shlumped and flumped ran up over the big hill and down the other side where the cargo net awaited me. Assuming I was alone...I climbed up, swaying to and fro, flung my leg over the bar at the top and gave a triumphant ahhhh ahhh....as I struggled not to fall off...plus i am scared conquering my fear of heights.
So I hear clip clop clip clop...and look up just in time to see the look of amusement admiration on the face of a passing jogger.
I heaved myself down the other side...with undue haste dignity.
And finished my walk /Jog.

Guys, 80 lbs ago, that hill wasn't run up (however much I heaved and hoed after stopping...I still ran up it), those little situp and pull up things were not attempted, and that cargo net was given nary a passing glance. I remember three months ago I went up to that cargo net, and shook it...watched it sway...and grabbed on and put up a foot and thought...no way in heck.
This time, I put my feet on and climbed...I used my left arm to anchor me on the bar, while my right hand held on  to the bar to swivel over the top and down the other side.
That is huge.
huge for me.
I feel capable. More so every day I get leaner and healthier.  This victory happens one choice at a time.
One pound, one day at a time.

Okay, so I was reading this blog.
And she was talking about reading books and how reading 6 of these books was the average.
so i  copied the list and will mark with an x, all the books I have read.
Here goes.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee x (my all time favorite ever)
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x (own it)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy tried and tried and tried...it's boring.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen X (another favorite)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne X (one of my favorites)
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving X
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (I should)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad x (depressing tale of colonialism in africa...)
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams X
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo X

I've read fifty two...that being said, I like to read.
Interesting what they thought was 'worth reading'....I don't think I would have put davinci code in there before selected poets or some others...but what do I know.
lol.
Well, hope all is well with you guys.
talk to you later,
Your reading and net climbing blogger,
Chris

Saying what you want...and getting it.

Hey all,
Back to the gym again today (yeah!)  I did 60 minutes on ARNOLD....and burned 607 calories.
I still wasn't going full tilt.  But I had a good burn.  I then went and took the time for my arm workout and I stretched instead.
I am going to get serious about stretching.
I think I may have two toning days once I hit 175 (which isn't far off) and four cardio days of which two are sit ups.
Then on my down day I will stretch or tai chi or something.
Hey, hold it...my blog editor is different.  I am not sure I like this at all....Sitting here typing and I type tai chi...(spelling correct I hope think)...and can't find spell check above. Hey, but I do have a strike through...
what a sh*tty great idea.  I may spell like h*ll, but at least I can be snarky via strike through.
oy.
Anyways.
So the workout was great and calories were great, 1480.
But I got a little pms-y this evening. My hubby rarely wakes up happy, he has a crappy attitude "low blood sugar' when  he wakes up.  So, I kind of asked him to stop being a D*ck bad person tonight.
Why it bothered me tonight as opposed to any other time, I don't know. It just did.
I thought about it on the way to the gym and on the way  back and realized that while I don't expect his attention all the time. The twenty minutes a day we talk, I don't want to be looked at like someone who is an irritant, or who won't shut up.
He does it alot.
So, I came home and explained my d*ck comment reasoning. We ended up having a really good conversation about why he never gets any how to meet my emotional needs so we both have a more fulfilling relationship.  That includes time spent talking and bonding. 
Yes guys, I know you want to get straight to things, but we ladies just aren't built that way.
We actually have to like you first. And liking you includes things like asking "Hey, how was your day."
etc.
I think it's the first time I didn't get myself all worked up over my being angry and blurting something out.
I used to get all nervous and try to 'fix' things.
I came home and explained why I got upset, did apologize for calling him a d*ck not very nice name.
He accepted and we worked things out.
whoa....imagine that.
I used to be very dysfunctional when it came to stifling expressing my feelings.
This is a good step forward.
I can't use food to stuff my feelings.
So my feelings come out...since it's all new to me...they aren't always expressed in the best way.
It doesn't mean I am WRONG about feeling that way, but learning how to express my feelings in appropriate ways is a learning process. I'm getting there.
Your emotionally stable growing blogger,
Chris