It's time to stop the dancing

On February 17, 2009 I was at my lowest weight (in about 10 years) of 154.6. Last Sunday I was 156.0. A gain of 1.4 pounds in the last four months. Basically I've been doing maintenance.

I've been dancing around 155 for months. I've gone up and down a few pounds. In March I was even up to 166.4, but I always settle back to around 155. This is not my goal weight, and it will not become my goal weight (it's 135).

I'm not exactly happy about this maintenance thing. I want to get to goal, I really do, but I don't seem to be willing to make the extra effort that is needed for me to get there.

Some days I wonder if I can even get there from here. Is it possible to lose another 20 pounds? I honestly don't know because I really haven't been trying. Every day I'm a failure at weight loss. The reason is simple. I eat too much. I exercise really hard, five to six times a week, and that's the only reason I'm maintaining.

I'm still doing the Missouri 60 challenge, but this morning I found another challenge that's perfect for me. I found it on Amy's Quest to Get Skinny, the challenge is for 15 weeks.

My personal goal, that I copied from Krista, is to lose 15 pounds in the 15 weeks. I can totally do this. That's one pound a week. Seriously, who can't lose one pound a week? Okay, that would be me for the past four months, but I fully intend to change that starting right now.

This is week one, and I'm using Sunday's weighin for my start, 156 pounds. If I make the 15 in 15, that will put me at 141. Very close to my goal weight. I'm going to change things up a bit to do this, so I need a plan. A real plan I can follow. More on that later, right now I'm just excited I'm even thinking about making some actual progress.

Let the challenge begin! If I make it, or should I say, when I make it, then I'll really be dancing!

My Sunday in pictures

Today's weighin:
My starting weight was 239.2, current weight is 156, making a total loss of -83.2.

Here's my Missouri 60 Challenge picture (Tony/anti-jared's challenge). Since I don't have anything nice to say about my picture I won't say anything. It's obvious what I need to work on. I'll post a similar picture in 60 days. Hopefully there'll be an improvement. You can click on the picture for a larger view (if you dare).

I biked to my Weight Watchers meeting at 8:30 a.m. I saw a lot of cool stuff on my way there, but I didn't have time to stop and take pictures. I was flying like a bat out of hell to make it on time, a record 5 miles in 20 minutes (big hills), 203 calories burned one-way (almost the same on the way home). Heart rate high of 159, average 137 (resting pulse is 48).

Here are pictures of what I saw, but these aren't my pictures (from the web).

Lots of these cool yellow butterflies, they were everywhere.


Willow Goldenfinch, which is the Washington State bird, I saw several of these. So pretty.


A bunny stopped on the trail in front of me (which made me stop). My bunny was actually prettier, with stripes on his side and a beige colored tail.

A lady with platinum blonde hair and pink stripes in it. She was wearing a pink shirt. Actually looked kind of pretty. Perhaps my next hairstyle (?).

The coolest thing I saw was a lady in a bright red sporty-looking wheelchair. She was being pulled by a very large dog. I'm not sure what kind of dog he was, but huge, with curly blonde fur. The lady was tiny, maybe 110 pounds, and about 35 years old. The dog was on some kind of harness thing pulling the wheelchair. The lady was videotaping the dog and her surroundings. They were on the dirt trail that runs along the paved trail that I was on.

I wanted to ask the lady if it was okay if I took their picture, but I was in a hurry and I wasn't sure how she'd respond to a stranger approaching her (or what the dog would do). I kept on biking, but it was a memorable scene.

It was a great bike ride, perfect weather today. I LOVE riding my bike. It's my own little piece of heaven.

Except one thing. Lately, I've been plagued by a recurring dream/nightmare. In my dream I'm riding my bike downhill, really fast (which I do a lot). I try to brake to slow down but my brakes don't work. I look down and can see the brake line is cut and the frayed brake wires are hanging loose. I can't stop and I'm going faster and faster. I'm scared. Then I wake up. I wonder what would happen if I didn't wake up. Die?

2 fat-phobic moments this weekend

We went to my son's this weekend - I missed my grandson's 13th birthday, so we went down there to take him shopping for it, a couple of weeks late.
Most of the time, when we go down there and stay at the motel, I go swimming in the motel pool and use the hot tub. Until this past weekend, I've never had anyone make any nasty comments about my size. This time, though, some guy was in there with his wife and their young son (I think the kid was probably about 5 years old). The kid was cute, wearing goggles, throwing a weighted toy on the bottom of the pool and jumping in to pick it up. His parents were sitting in lounge chairs, mom was reading a book, and dad was drinking beer (out of glass bottles) and eating Cheetos. I had been alternating pool and hot tub for about 3 hours, and finally got out of the pool to sit in one of the chairs for a while and talk to my daughter-in-law and DH for a while, and the two grandsons (Mykel and Austin) played in the pool. When I got up to go sit in the hot tub for a bit, the little kid's dad said to his wife "If you ever get that fat, I'll kill you." I didn't hear him say it, he was behind me and the kids were noisy, but Tina heard him and it pissed her off, big time. My son had just called her and asked her to meet him at our room so he could change into his swim trunks, so when Tina went out to meet him, she stopped at the desk to ask if beverages in glass containers were allowed in the pool area. When they said no, she told them there was a man in there drinking beer in glass bottles. So the desk clerk went in and told him to finish the beer in the bottle, throw it away and he couldn't drink anything out of a glass container in there. Keep in mind that DH and my grandsons were still in the pool area, and Tina and Jon came back after the desk clerk had told the guy no glass bottles in the pool area. So when we all finally get ready to leave, who gets dirty looks from the SOB? DH, and he doesn't know what he's done to deserve it (neither do I, because I don't find out about any of this until we get back to our room). So then Tina tells us what he said about me, what she did, and that that was why DH got the dirty look, SOB thought DH had ratted him out (which makes no sense to me, DH had never left the pool area at all, Tina had been in and out several times, going to have a cigarette). I told her she should have told me what he said, that I would have had several choice responses for him. She wanted to know what I would have said and I told her I'd have told him: "If you'd kill your wife just because she got fat, then I feel sorry for her having to be married to a shallow asshat like you. She certainly deserves better than that." I also would have told him that my body was not public property and he had no right to comment on it at all, that he didn't know me from Adam and his opinion wasn't worth the breath it took to speak it.
When DH and I were getting ready to check out this morning, we were walking down the hall with all of our stuff (I was carrying my purse, my soft-sided cooler with a couple of sodas in it, the camera bag, and the bag that had all of our swimming gear in it, DH was carrying the other cooler that had his soda in it and our bag with our clothes in it), we passed that SOB in the hallway and got dirty looks from him again. WTF is it with people who have said nasty things about others, and done shit they knew they shouldn't have done (it's posted by the door into the pool area "NO GLASS CONTAINERS ALLOWED") that they have to blame someone else when they get caught? Fucker is lucky that I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about me, whether I'm fully dressed, or just in a swimsuit. It wasn't worth my time and effort to tell him he's an idiot, he's probably been told that more times than he can remember. And I hate to tell him, he can be nasty all he wants, I'm still going to use the pool and the hot tub and I'm still going to wear my swimsuit, and I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm not there to impress them, I'm there to have a good time with DH and the rest of my family.
That was incident number two. Incident number one was when we went out to dinner on Friday night. Jon wanted to eat at the China Buffet, so that was where we went. We were picking out what we wanted to eat, and another family was trying to decide what they wanted to eat. One of the kids was a cute little girl, about 5 or 6, and her mom told her "Tell me what you want, and I'll put it on the plate for you." The little girl said she wanted some of the sweet & sour chicken and her mom told her no, that would make her fat, she needed to eat the meat/veggies/mushrooms instead. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "If you don't want her eating certain things, then fix her plate for her and don't tell her she can pick out what she wants to eat. Telling her she can pick out what she wants to eat, then telling her she can't have it because it's going to make her fat sure as shit isn't doing her any favors. Good way to give her a disordered relationship with food."
I normally don't run into this kind of shit very often, maybe once a year or so, but twice in one weekend, that was just too much.
But we did have a good visit, went rummage-saling with Tina and the boys on Saturday morning while Jon was at his motorcycle license classes. Mykel found an almost-complete set of golf clubs with bag for $1, and Tina found some books for Jon and some clothes for the "reds" (her 3 red-headed nieces). Austin didn't find anything he wanted, but he'll read the books when Jon is done with them. DH found a couple of kissing angels to add to his small collection, and I didn't find anything I wanted (I usually look for Noritake painted china plates, but those are kinda rare at rummage sales).
It was hilarious watching Mykel hit the golf ball (and the tennis balls) with his new clubs. Max (the pit bull) was out of his kennel, and he was chasing the balls. Mykel and Austin would hit the balls, then run and try to get them before Max could (they weren't successful). Max would get the ball, run off with it, they would chase him, he would get tired of running from them, flop down in the shade, they would try to sneak up on him, he would wait until they were close enough to touch him, and off he would go again. I'm not sure who had more fun - the dog, the boys, or us adults watching them. And Max is not easily fooled. Austin grabbed Max's soccer ball from the kennel and threw it, hollering "go get it, Max", thinking Max would drop the golf ball or the tennis ball. Nope, Max knew they weren't hitting the soccer ball with the golf clubs...........he wasn't having any part of that at all.
All in all, it was a good weekend, in spite of the fat-phobia.