OK, It's time to start over...

Ok so I need to face facts and admit that I'm more bummed than I sounded on this weeks Weigh In. This plateau and this weeks weight gain really got me and I'm dreading, ABSOLUTELY dreading having to log my beginning April weight on the side panel tomorrow. --->

After talking with the awesomest-cousin-in-the-whole-world-no-seriously I have come to realize that part of my binging, lack of motivation, whatever you want to call it has something to do with this lapse I'm having in to the "old me" aka the person before w0rld's FAT blog. The person with the low self esteem and laziness. The person I hated looking at in the mirror.

You see she seems to have come back to visit and she's an unwanted guest! I'm trying to get her to leave!

But it's hard. So I've decided I'm starting over. Not completely of course. I've gone too far for that. No, what I'm saying is that I need to start with small goals again.

I need to start with accomplishing the little things. Make it a habit. Things like make sure I drink enough water everyday for a week straight. Make sure I take my meds every day for a week straight. Make sure I brush my teeth, make my bed, go outside, etc. for a week straight.

You get my meaning. When this laziness and etc starts even the little things seem hard to do. I don't even feel like taking a shower sometimes and lack of hygiene etiquette is ALWAYS a bad sign. (Don't worry I do it anyway, but the fact that "I don't wanna!" isn't good)-- And very NOT like me.

So I'm starting over. I need to get myself back to healthy habits and then I can go on from there.

Never let it be said this journey was easy.

It's not all bad you know, this week when I was doing my jog I noticed that the shadow that followed me didn't look like a fat girl "trotting". It almost looked like well-shaped girl jogging. That's gotta be progress right? Hell yeah it is!

I will NEVER give up!
Love
-w0rld

Weigh In

I almost wanted to Pass on my weigh in when I looked at the scale but told myself, no. That would be avoiding the issue. So here goes:

Current Weight: 207.0 lbs (Yup gained some weight. Hell.)

Work Out Achievement(s): I was actually doing really good for a while. I went jogging once, went swimming once and tried out pilates for atleast 4 days in a row last week. But then you have to remember that I usually swim 6 days a week and add some jogging so I guess I didn't do as well as I thought. Put in the fact that I was eating cookies, chips and salsa, fruit and birthday cake all weekend since I went back to help my old boss pick up and there's a lot of time to stuff yourself I guess I pretty much ruined the progress I'd made earlier in the week.

But this isn't all bad, and to tell you the truth I don't feel that hopeless. I'm actually really proud of myself for continuing with pilates because it's a lot harder and incorporates toning my core and working my arms and my thighs in different ways.

I also got a suggestion and a lot of advice on incorporating weight training in to my work outs (and for those of you who gave me advise and are reading this now THANK YOU!) so I have a lot of new resources to start switching it up.

More and more I'm realizing I'm going to be losing the pool soon, once this job is over and I want to have a good, new routine ready for when I move on to the next job this summer.

To sum this up, I'm nowhere near giving up. I just have to try again.

Goal(s): So as I just mentioned this week is going to re-attempt my pilates work outs and force myself to get to the pool. I'm getting lazier and lazier and I'm noticing my laziness is triggering my old habit of going to the fridge because I"m "bored". This is NOT good.

It's time to force myself to movement and motivation. Like I was telling someone earlier this week, if I don't have the motivation to do something I force myself to do it anyway and hope that once I start I'll get motivated. If it never happens at least I still did it. Kicking and screaming, but I did it.

Operation:"Don't let laziness get me down!" is now in effect.

Let's see what happens eh? LOL

wish me luck!

love
-w0rld

A Feast for YOUR eyes is a Feast for My mouth!

Hello Everyone,

I have to share the amazing-ness I had earlier this week. Now don't get me wrong I've been working out and feeding myself healthy foods all week. But this Wednesday I had the great chance to meet up with old friends on the Strip and we had dinner.

I decided to try something different than my regular "Chicken Alfredo and toss some extra bread while you're at it please!" and tried the Meatball pasta instead (I know not THAT big a difference)


The meatballs were HUGE. It tasted ok but looking at the giant grilled cheese sandwich my friend was eating kind of made me want to chuck my meal and steal hers. LOL. I'm such a cheese addict. sigh~

But wait! After dinner we ordered dessert. We decided to share a slice of cheesecake (CHEESE. YES!) However what I didn't realize is the SIZE of the "slice".

My eyes almost popped out of my head when the server brought it over and I instantly knew I was in trouble.



I admit right now I dug in to this thing and had my way with one corner of this monster. And it was good.

I didn't attempt to finish it and I didn't finish my pasta either.

I'm trying to keep Bethanny Frankels words in my mind about "the point of diminishing returns" which simply means to stop eating when the "OMG this is so good" sensation with the food starts to dull. It's not always easy NOT to finish my plate but taking my time and really TASTING my food and noticing whether or not I'm enjoying it is really giving me perspective you know?

I don't feel guilty over this. It was good. I ate well. I moved on. But didn't it look beautiful?

Weigh In on Monday!

Have a great Weekend!

-w0rld

A Western and Snowy Weigh In!

Ok so it's Tuesday and I am now rested. I swear!

Here is the late Weigh In.

Current Weight: 205.6 lbs (Gaaahh! Is all I can say here. And maybe add a few curse words somewhere in the middle of, "**** This ***** plateau and **** those cookies I ate.")

Work Out Achievement(s): So most of last week was spent with me with a cold. That didn't stop me from heading to the Eastern Sierra to meet up with my old boss and his new crew, but it did stop me from working out, besides work itself (which is active all by itself.) And we ended up eating out twice in the couple of days I was out there so that means that this weekend I ended up eating:

-Two burgers, one with avocado and one with mushrooms (avocado burger!!!)
-Fries
-Mayo (I hardly ever eat Mayo nowadays but I do have the tendency of dipping my fries in mayo. Though I rarely eat fries. Am I weird?)
-Ketchup
-Cookies (Chips Ahoy Chewy mainly)
-this little chocolate fudge cake the lady from the gas station told me was really good (and it was! HA!)
-Lots and Lots of Beef Jerky (there's this store that has the only jerky I'll ever eat and since it's located in the middle of nowhere and I only go there once a year I thought it would be ok for me to go all out on these things. LOL)
-a beer (shocking I know.)
-a snapple (also shocking as I stopped drinking juices)
-and lots and lots of Cuties (those are tangerines right? either way they were yummy)

I guess this just proves that I have a very little discipline when it comes to food I haven't had in a while being put in front of me. I Really need to work on that.

But I can't say I'm completely regretful. The weekend was fun, and although the rain cancelled the work for the day (kind of defeated the purpose of me being there as "extra help") I did have fun reminiscing and hanging out with the crew. Not only that but it the storm brought snow to the near by mountains and covered them (and my car) in white.

It was beautiful.

There was even snow on the first stretch of Death Valley on my drive back to the middle of nowhere.


Canyon on the North end of Death Valley, you could still see the Sierra Mts covered in snow in the distance

It was a fun time and I'll be heading out there again this weekend to help them one more time.

Goal(s): Ok so besides the beautiful scenery I wasn't happy with my food intake nor was I happy (though I'm relieved I didn't gain more with the lack of activity all last week and this weekends food binge) with this plateau I'm still in.

So this morning I told myself I will try my HARDEST to lose 5 pounds ( I know that isn't healthy and I know it's very unlikely but you have to head for the stars to reach the moon right?) by next week. If I even get to lose 3 or 4 pounds I'd be thrilled. Hell I'd be thrilled if I lost one or two. But the point is to get serious again.

So I'm going to limit my carb intake, and up my exercise. I feel better, my cold is nearly gone and already this morning I went for a jog. I plan to return to swimming tonight too, AND I'm going to re-attempt my pilates video. Practice makes perfect and I want to be able to hold my legs up in the air and do those crunch-pumps like nobody's business.

I can do this! I'm healthy again and raring to go!

Here's one last funny pic of me in the Western Movies museum we visited on our rain day:
Do you like my chair?


Have a great week every one!

love
-w0rld

Weigh In..tomorrow!

Hello Everyone,

I just returned from a weekend out with my old boss and college crew in another section of the desert. I just finished a 3 hour drive through Death Valley, and last night I survived some crazy rainy and snowy weather.

Let's just say I had no access to a scale this morning and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open as I type this.

So I will move my Weigh In for tomorrow and hopefully have some pictures of my weekend in that post.

Till we meet again!

-w0rld

*sniff* I'm SICK! *sniff*

Yup, it's true. I am sick.

Came back to work. The days have been getting warmer. My household was sick, or maybe I didn't wear my sweater two mornings in a row (only my vest and long sleeved shirt) or maybe I accidentally left the window open the other night etc..

Fact is I am now sick. Yesterday was the sore throat. Today is the runny and sniffly nose, plugged ears and slight dizzy feeling.

My appetite is almost completely gone but at least I can still smell a little.

What does this mean?

I'm taking a break from swimming. I'm not interested in making this worse. I actually made a night run to Wal-Mart to get some meds, some vitamins, and some tangerines (and when you remember that I live 30 minutes from the nearest store that's saying something).

However I don't want to become a complete couch potato simply because I can't breathe through my nose.

So I'm going to at least try to work on some pilates moves and stretch. I never stretch. I need to stretch... and watch Some Like it Hot (god I really love that movie).

I decided that fine, I'll allow myself to get sick. (This is how I think, yes) since I didn't get sick ONCE last year. Let it come. Let it go. Move on.

Sick girl out.

<3 w0rld

Weigh In

"Would you look at that, I'm a size 16."

That's what I wanted to title this post but thought I'd put it in the beginning instead. But we'll get to that. It's Monday and that means Weigh In! Let's start:

Current Weight: 204 lbs (I used the house scale this morning, but it told me I'd lost 2 lbs so I'll keep it. LOL)

Work Out Achievement(s): Last week was a very long and stressful week. But at the same time I returned to cooking dinner for myself and promised I was no longer going to eat out. I missed swimming twice (I think) but replaced it with a jog and I finally returned to my pilates video.


I admit I wasn't able to do a lot of the moves in the core work out. Simply keeping my legs elevated at a 45 degree angle for any period of time is a challenge. But like everything else I understand that it will come with practice. Plus I noticed a lot of moves similar to swimming (like there was a move called backstroke. LOL) so it wasn't completely alien to me. I kind of liked it. I plan to do it again.

However although I wasn't able to do all the moves I STILL ended up with a sore core two days later. Ugh. LOL. I'm simply trying out new and different work outs and slowly transition myself out from strictly swimming as well as hoping I'll find a work out that can get me out of the plateau I've been in since January.

Ah plateaus. I really didn't want to admit it but it's the middle of March. And I've been stuck in the 200's for over two months. There's no other word for it. I'm starting to dislike looking at myself in the mirror again. I'm completely unsatisfied (or is it dissatisfied?) to where I am right now, but I'm no where near giving up. On the contrary I know I've gotten this far and I feel like there's a steady fire inside me urging me to continue until I AM satisfied.


So this brings me back to the first sentence. This morning I woke up and picked up a pair of slacks my mom had given me last night. They were a size 16. When I started this blog I was a size 22. I've since then gone down to a comfortable 18. But I've been stuck there (or so I thought, but I only have one pair of 18 pants... and use them constantly..) and I accepted those slacks with a bit of skepticism, simply thinking I now had "goal pants" since the waist band looked so small (to me). Last week she had sent me a care package with a couple of 16 pants and those fit, a little snuggly but not bad, however I simply told myself they were stretchy pants and moved on with my day.

Anyway I had to come up with an outfit for my interview later today (wish me luck!) and tried on the slacks.

Bring them up, suck in the gut, clip the button, pull up the zipper, exhale and...

"Holy sh**! There's barely a muffin top on these suckers!(pause. admire) Will you look at that. I guess I'm a size 16."


I admit I felt like America Ferrera in that scene from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants when I tried on those pants. Even though you KNOW she's going to fit in to those pants you can't help but be surprised when she zips those suckers up and they fit her just as well as they fit the tall long soccer player girl. No. Way.

Right at about second 0:18 is what I'm talking about.

It's safe to say I got a bit of a happy satisfied feeling when that happened and plan on wearing those slacks for my interview, a bit of a personal hidden meaning to keep me confident and happy during the interview you could say. LOL

Goal(s): It's time to continue cooking for myself and continue trying out different work out routines. I lost two pounds last week even with all the madness and things could only get better right?

Of course they can!

Have a great week!

-w0rld

Temptation tastes like Cherries

I'm home. I spent most of the day shopping around with my parents. We took a detour to our favorite ice cream shop in the local college village.

I usually buy a hand made drumstick cone out of strawberry ice cream, but today I decided I wanted something different.

Chocolate macadamia nut cookie with dark cherry chocolate ice cream. Mmmm. That's one thing I've always liked about this ice cream shop, they combine different tastes together from the generic, vanilla-chocolate-strawberry combinations.

This was an awesome change from the regular that I just couldn't feel guilty.

I was proud of my mom too because she got a chocolate almond drumstick and didn't finish it. She said she was full and decidedly took away what she didn't finish. I was proud of myself also because I didn't finish it for her. Win-win!

I finished this yummy monster and really needed some water. Sweet overload. I got a complimentary cup of water and then my parents and I "walked it off" by walking the cute little village street.

We stopped at my favorite record/music store "You rock my socks off Rhino Records!" and ended up buying a copy of Some Like It Hot and Cabaret; two epic movies of all time. Both with behind the scenes special features (Yes, I'm such a movie buff that the behind the scenes, many times, is my favorite part of a dvd. LOL)

Talk about temptation: Chocolate cherry cookie sandwich followed by Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minnelli classics. Oh yes, I'm a dork~ LOL

It was a good day today and it reminds me that not everything revolves around "calories in vs. calories out". Life has more meaning than that. Yes having a healthy body and taking care of myself is important, but it's important so that I can focus my energy to live. my. life.

I guess I'm mainly reminding myself that I need to "work [out] to live" not "live to work [out]" (unless you're an athlete. LOL. In that case more power to you!)

My life revolves around chocolate and epic burlesque-ish movies.

What does your life revolve around?

-w0rld

Update

So yesterday I made this very lengthy ranting post about how stressed I was.

I have since then made a decision. I now see a light in the tunnel... and new obstacles ahead.

What am I talking about? I made a decision on a job.. for the summer.. that will hopefully--if I play my cards right-- will help me to move toward getting in to grad school, that will help me toward a great career, where I can finally make enough money, so that I can finally get my dog, meet some people, and get my life going.

And maybe, JUST maybe have my own permanent address someday. Crazy! I know!

I feel much lighter. AND I haven't binged today either. I kind of feel like I have enough space in my head now to look at different things, like maybe spicing up the look of this blog again.. and maybe working on a new work out and food intake regime.

"I will win this inner war!! Ha Ha, Elina the Conquerer!"

That's what I like to tell myself but I admit I'm incredibly nervous. This is a big risk for me and I'm not much of a risk taker.

I tried to make a conquering face for a pic with my webcam but all that came out were these nervous looking smiles so I just let my nervous face speak for itself

But if we remember this is "The Year of Risk Taking". So here I am. Taking a risk on a job. I can do this. Right?

We'll see.

love

-w0rld

Late Weigh In/ Stress with a Capital S

Hello Everyone,

As you can tell from my title I'm a little stressed right now.

This week so far has been a little hectic and today, just now actually I kind of lost ALL of my energy and gained some anxiety, when earlier today I was fine.

I am not fine.

First of all I missed my Weigh In on Monday due to this big presentation I had been working on for weeks. It happened. It went well. I missed swimming, and blogging because of it.

But I did weigh myself that morning. The results were also not very happy:

Weigh In: 206.2 lbs (I have gained 1 lbs)

Now I know what you're thinking. "Get a grip on yourself Elina, you only gained ONE pound. This is NOT the end of the world."

You're right of course but this set back, and knowing that my loss has been trickling these last couple of months, as well as the stress eating I've been doing (yes, I have, more than once gone up to a Casino lobby vending machine and bought a candy bar while working on my presentation and having phone interviews with employers) has left me with this HUGE guilty and rotten feeling.

To top it off things aren't going well at work. The drama I usually have with my co-worker is kind of resurfacing (but not to the extent it was earlier) and things are now as stressful as ever since he was offered a job and is leaving early. This wouldn't be a problem except that there is a chance that I might have to leave early too, and my boss is FREAKING OUT.

I don't want to abandon this project but if I get offered a job and it starts early this project is over. It is EXTREMELY stressful to me to have to wait for a phone call with a job offer (that may or may not come) and MY decision will be the base on whether or not this project continues.

This is too much. I usually try not to mention too much about things that aren't "FAT blog" related but this stress, odd scheduling, bad eating, and etc are affecting my weight loss. Halting it really.

Now, I have to take a second and look at the good things. I should be glad I have a job at all right now. I should be glad that my problem is having TOO many phone interviews instead of no one being interested in my resume. I should be happy I've at least been maintaining my weight, that my over all health is good and that people have been RAVING over the presentation I did on Monday, talking about how good it was and how the word is spreading, and how they want me to present again... I should even be flattered that the restaurant cook has a little crush on me and fussed all over my dinner last night and even gave me free pie out of nowhere to keep me happy... but that is another type of stress I'm not going to get into hehehe..

And I am glad for all of it. I am! But it doesn't stop me from being stressed. It's also not a good excuse for the horrible eating habits I've been doing.

Work related, living situation related, future possible work related, personally related and weight loss related stress. All of it suddenly gained up on me an hour ago and I'm beat.

All I want to do is sleep. I want to rush in to town and check my cell phone to see if anyone left a message saying "Elina, we want YOU to work with us. And here are some extra benefits to seal the deal!" I want to run to the convenience store or drive all the way down the canyon to the Date Ranch and load myself on dates and date bread and forget about everything. I want to drive home and see my family. I want to go to Vegas and go dancing. I want to go swimming. I DON'T want to go swimming. I want to forget about work all together find a nice quiet and comfortable room with a bed, put on "This American Life" on my itunes and relax.

All of this I cannot do. I have to deal with what I have. And I have to be smart and conscious about my decisions. Food related and not.

I can do this.

Vent over.

love
-w0rld





Now, I admit things aren't all bad.

Quick Update: It's March!

So I weighed myself this morning for my "start of the Month Weigh In" I update monthly on the side panel. ---->

And it's back up to 205 lbs. I wanted to put down 204 but I couldn't lie to myself.

But then after I updated the Weigh In and I updated my 'weight loss ticker' at the top of the page I realized that this time last year I weighed 247 lbs. AND that I am 30 lbs away from my goal.

Somehow that didn't make me feel so bad. I've actually accomplished something haven't I?

Gotta keep on trucking! Move it up a notch!

That's the theme of this month: "Move it up a notch!"

Sounds good right?

Hell yeah it does!

-w.