Christmas Challenges

I was sitting here tonight about ready to order a pizza and wings and decided it was probably a better idea to write instead, since it's 11:30 and I'm not really hungry I'm just sad.

Christmas has always been one of my favourite times of year, like I'm sure it is for most people. The funny thing with me and Christmas is that if something is going to go wrong it seems to happen now. I have dealt with the family fights and even the end of a close friendship all around Christmas but for the last 10 Christmas's I had back up. I knew no matter what was going on I could send an email off to Will and know he would calm me down, reassure me or just be a shoulder to cry on. This year that is missing. I have been really lucky so far because up until this weekend I was starting to feel really good. In fact after last weekend where I got to meet one of my favourite country singers, Paul Brandt, and that left me feeling the closest to normal that I have felt since August. This weekend though has been tough. I realized that although I have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit that I'm not there. Normally I have everything done and ready but this year I can't seem to get things done. Monday we have our potluck at work which I always love but today I have been seriously considering calling in sick so I don't have to go and put on my happy face. Part of me wishes that I was also not going to my sister's for Christmas so I could just hide and let the day pass. This of course has led to me feeling guilty about wanting to avoid the holiday.

I hate that I feel this way but am not sure how to fight it. I can see now why Christmas can be a hard time of year for people and why you hear about so many sad people. You want to be happy and you don't want to bring anyone else down but if you aren't feeling that way it's hard to know where to turn. I have been trying to find ways to deal with my feelings so that I don't have a negative affect on anyone elses holiday. I have spent a lot of time writing in my journal. I also have been listening to music, especially a handful of songs that make me feel like someone understands. I have also started trying to pray. I don't necessarily believe in god but I do think there is something to be said for asking what you want out loud and for sending your love out into the world. In the end though I guess I just keep having to put one foot in front of the other with a little faith that things will get better and that I will be able to deal with this grief and move past it.

I know this blog has sort of lost its direction lately but in some ways that is kind of like my weight loss journey itself. I guess it just shows how although we may plan on one thing that sometimes life has other plans. But like my weight loss journey I will keep plugging away and I will get this blog on track along with my world. I will find a way to put all the pieces back together.

Anyway for all of you who still read my blog I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, I may not be feeling it but I do hope each and everyone else is. Remember to take time to show your loved ones how much you care, do not take them for granted because you never know how much time you will really have with the people you love. "We only have today, forever isn't waiting" - Paul Brandt.

When Your World is Flipped Upside Down....Walk on the Ceiling

Well it’s been a few months again since I wrote and a lot has been going on in that time. My weight has been bouncing around up and down along side my crazy schedule. In the last few months I have had some really great things happens – a vacation out to visit my parents, a cousin’s wedding, and starting a new job of sorts (well at least a new way to potentially make a little more money). I have also been dealing with some more negative things – emotions around dealing with death, work stress and the attempt at dating again. Both the good and the bad have pushed me and challenged me in ways I didn’t really think about. They have made it possible for me to learn a few lessons about myself.

First keeping really busy probably wasn’t the best thing I could have done for myself. I don’t think I’m unusual in the fact that instead of dealing with the grief of losing my best friend that I just created a world where I didn’t have to slow down. The busier I was the easier it was to sleep and to keep my brain from spinning out of control. Of course anyone else that has done the same thing knows that it actually doesn’t work and I learned this lesson the hard way. I found myself feeling like I was burning out and then I found the emotions I was trying to run from creeping back in at random moments making me more emotional that I normally am. It got the point where I was feeling horrible most of the time and I felt like everything was just overwhelming me. This of course was probably the biggest reason I ended up struggling with things like meal plans and exercising because I didn’t have the mental energy or desire to figure everything out. I knew that I had to stop this so I started to let myself actually feel whatever emotion presented itself in a given situation. If I felt like crying I would cry, if I felt like yelling I would yell, ect. I knew that putting on a happy face wasn’t going to actually help me deal with the emotions and to be able to move forward from it. I did discover that although there were a lot of emotional moments, they passed more quickly if I just let them happen. The biggest challenge that I am also working on is letting go of the guilt I feel for not getting to visit Will again and for not writing him as often as I used to. This is a bit more of challenge and the guilt still creeps back but I just remind myself that Will knew that I loved him. I always told him how much he meant to me and how much his friendship, guidance and love meat to me and that is the best anyone can ask for.

The second thing I have learned is that I’m stronger than I thought I was. There have been moments where I have doubted if I can keep going on now that I don’t have someone to go to for advice or to listen to me. Will always told me that I was strong and always knew how to make me feel better when everything was falling around me, but I always doubted if I would have gotten through some of the past stuff if he wasn’t around. In the last couple months though I have shown that I can keep moving forward and deal with a lot of the situations that I never thought I could. Two of the major things that I used Will’s help and guidance for in the past were family stress that always comes with their visits home or my visits out there, as well as the downsides of dating when things don’t go the way I want or expect them to go. It wasn’t easy and I’m not going to lie there have been moments where I really believed I couldn’t do it without Will but I did. I wrote in my journal a lot and worked through the issues and problems that came up. The cool thing was that in writing in my journal in some ways I was able to bring Will’s guidance back as I remembered things he had told me in the past. I know that there will be challenges in my future that will challenge me beyond what I think my limits are but at least I can know that at least one person has always thought I was capable of doing anything and that is something powerful to be able to hold on to and to be able to guide me through any challenge I may have to face, emotional or otherwise.

I’m slowly finding my way again. I didn’t realize how much I counted on Will to help keep me positive and to help remind me that I have a lot of good qualities. I do feel like my whole world has been flipped upside down but more and more I feel like I’m learning to walk on the ceiling  I’m excited to be making some money with scrapbooking. I’m feeling good about my new weight loss goals. I’m not so confident in the whole dating thing but I am still trying to be open to the idea that there may yet be someone out there who is a match for me. Life is too short to be lazy and not actually work toward my goals and if nothing else came out of losing my best friend it did cause me to really stop and look at my life and figure out what my priorities are and what they should be. It is time for me to live up to the faith Will always put in me and that is now what I strive to do. I have refocused on my weight loss goals as well as continuing to retrain myself to see the good qualities within myself even without someone to point them out to me.

Remembering Will

“To kiara kitten from William Gerber, greetings!” “Take good care and blessed be! I am now and always Very Truly Yours, Wm. Gerber.” These two sentences were the very first the very last thing my dear friend Will wrote to me. In between these two sentences was nearly 12 years of an amazing friendship that I will cherish forever. This blog entry is in memory of my ‘best online friend’ who became so much more.

Will found me online when he came across some stories I had written. In the introduction to the story I had included an email address for anyone that wished to share comments or offer feedback and Will took me up on the offer. He sent me a rather lengthy first email full of information and feedback. Since he took the time to write me I felt obligated to respond back thanking him for the information and the encouragement to write more. These first two email started a string of emails all around stories I had written. Within a month our emails started to shift more to real life happenings and to getting to know each other. I found Will fascinating, with a whole wealth of experience and stories to share, which of course came from the fact that he was 25 years older than me. In my early emails I shared stories about what I was doing at university, my first boyfriend and ideas I had for writing. The more we wrote the more I knew we were very similar and like-minded, even if I was still pretty careful what I revealed.

Like most young adults (I was only 20 when we first started talking) I had a lot of drama in my life and because I have always been able to work things out best in writing, Will started to hear about a lot of it. This is when I discovered the true value in having a cyber-friend in my life. I could tell him anything and I would never have to see him, so any embarssament I might have had disappeared, along with any fear of judgement. If he didn’t like what I wrote he could stop responding, like many before him had. The cool thing of course is that he didn’t, and that unlike my journal this random person at the end of my writing could respond and he always did. Whether it was just a friendly word of support or maybe some advice I could always count on a response from him. We continued this way strictly over email and the odd snail mail letter for over a year.

Then at the start of the summer in 2001 my very first boyfriend broke up with me and I was devastated. Again I opened my email and wrote long letters with the struggles as I tried to stay friends with a boy I was in love with but who no longer felt the same about me. I decided early in the summer that I needed to get away from the city before going back to school so I could sort everything out and enter university with a clear mind, so I asked if maybe Will had ever thought about meeting in person. I thought going down to meet him and his wife and all the friends he had long talked about in email seemed like a great idea, not to mention I could escape the city and in fact the country. Plans were made and after a more than day long trip on the greyhound (through a scary border crossing and some pretty seedy greyhound stations I might add) I arrived in the middle of nowhere at 5am in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm, tired, nervous and scared no one was actually going to be waiting for me. I couldn’t help but think that I was about to enter into my very own horror story, where an unsuspecting girl goes off to meet a man she met online and he turns out to be a crazy axe murder. So as I stepped off the bus my instinct was to turn around and run back on but Will was in fact standing at the base of the stairs holding an umbrella out and with a smile on his face. He didn’t look like an axe murder (although then again who really knows what they look like) so I left the safety of the bus to follow him to his car. I will admit that now looking back on that meeting I’m not sure it was probably the smartest idea but then again when we are young do we really think logically about things like that. Hehe It has created a great story and memory for me though, one that I have shared often especially with people who are about to meet their own online friends.

The week that I spent in Ames was great. I spent my days wandering around exploring and my evenings hanging out with Will and his wife. I met a lot of Will’s friends and got to see how Will really spends his time instead of just reading about it. I did spend some of the week worrying about the impression I was making and being self-conscious but Will worked hard to make me feel completely comfortable. He was warm, sweet and very caring. Both Will and his wife welcomed me into their home, kept me fed and entertained. I got really get to know Will on a different level. I got to see that his intelligence wasn’t just online but that he really was a brilliant man. He became more real and I knew after the week that he would forever have a part of my heart. Sadly all vacations have to come to an end and this was no different, I had to go back home to start a new year at university and begin to deal with reality again. Once I got home I sent off an email thanking him for a wonderful time and making sure he still wanted to be a friend for fear the visit hadn’t been as positive for him as it had been for me. I should say I have had a lot of bad luck with online people who judge me based on my appearance and I feared Will would do the same. Of course since that was 10 years ago you all know that I was foolish for worrying. This trip was supposed to be the first of many more. Regrettably I never got back down to visit him again. I’m kicking myself for that now but I guess it just serves as a reminder not to procrastinate on life because you never know when it will disappear.

One thing that did come out of the trip though was the fact that Will forever became Will for me. Let me explain that a bit. Most of his friends and family call him Bill. When I came back from the trip I did ask him which he preferred I call him and he said I could use either and I decided that it would be Will. I guess since that is how I first met him and started addressing him it was engrained in my head. Bill never sounded right to me (of course I’m sure Will doesn’t sound right to all his friends and family either). Whenever I think of him it is always as Will and even when I see Bill written on something about him I still read it as Will. Funny how the mind works sometimes.

Over the years Will and I continued to trade emails, presents, cards and even some phone calls. He helped me deal with a couple more break ups with boyfriends and even what I should do when one friend proposed to me. He was there when my grandparents passed away and when my cousin Jamie was killed. I’m pretty sure he heard about every fight I had with my family and all the drama that came from my various work places. Will also got to hear about the good things in my life especially my various trips. He was the one that actually helped prepare me for the emotional wave that was going to hit when I visited Auschwitz. He was the first person I would tell when something really good happened or when I was excited about something. Will was also the only person I was every 100% honest to about my weight. I am pretty sure he knew me better than I knew myself, or at least he could see things in me that I didn’t always see. All the stuff you go through while growing up and finding yourself,f he was there for. He saw me go from a shy insecure girl to a more confidant and happy woman. I hope he realized how much of a role he played in my growth and how much I valued his opinions. I wouldn’t be the same person today had I not know him. I’m pretty sure I would still have been lost in my own head trying to sort things out. Will meant the world to me and he will be deeply missed. I will love him always and miss him forever, but I shall go on keeping him in my heart and memories.

My love goes out to his wife, family and friends. May you all find comfort in knowing how much he mattered to each of us.

“When a good bye is so unexpected and sudden, when the pain seems unbearable and the loss impossible it is the wise heart that knows that sometimes it has to look back and remember in order to look forward and hope.”

RIP Will

I found out today that one of my closest friends died of a heart attack. Will was someone I met online through my writing 12 years ago when I was 20. It was an unlikely friendship since he was 25 years my senior but somehow we became friends. He is the only person that knew me and all my layers. He knew me inside and out. Will was there when my first boyfriend broke up with me (and even let me visit him) and helped me deal with the loss of another close friend who walked away after I turned down his proposal. Anytime I was fighting with my family or just needed a little reassurance that I was on the right track he was there for me. He helped me decide that it was time to leave Walmart and has been the first person I ask advice from when it came to men. I'm don't remember a time when he wasn't just an email away. I don't know what I'm going to do without him. He has left an open hole in my soul that will never be filled but I will hold him in my heart forever. My email inbox will be empty without your messages.

Thank you Will for all you have given me and all you have taught me. Thank you for listening to me and cheering me on. Thank you for all your advice and your patience. Thank you most of all for always being my friend. It means the world to me to have had you in my life and I hope you knew how much I loved you. I will miss you and love you always.

It amazes me how quickly time passes

I can't believe that it has been nearly 3 months since I last wrote in my blog especially when I think how much stuff has happened. I have been working hard on my weight loss and have been growing more confident in myself. I'm pushing towards losing 75 pounds before the end of the year. It will be a challenge but it is doable and I'm very excited about having something to work for.

I have also stopped saying that I will wait to date until I'm done losing weight. I have started looking online again to see if i can find someone to share my journey with. I don't know if anything will come of it but I suppose I can't expect prince charming to just walk up to my front door. The reality that I came to is that the guy that I'm going to end up falling for is going to be someone that will love me as much now as he will when I'm smaller. It may take a while to find that person but at least now I'm being open to searching.

Along with my new desire to start dating again I have also gained a new wardrobe. It started when I needed a dress for a wedding. I realized that I loved wearing it and decided I wanted more, so I have just bought 6 more dresses tonight and I can't wait to wear each of them. My inner girl is finally breaking through and I feel great about it. There is no reason for me to hide behind t-shirts and pants.

I'm just in a really good mood today and I couldn't help but share it. I hope this post finds you all well and I promise not to wait another 3 months to post again. (I do think it is high time to get disciplined again and start doing it once a week ;-) Oh and here is a pic of me all dressed up.

Change...it is the only thing that is for sure

Hello all. The last month has been a wee bit crazy. I took a vacation to Vegas, celebrated a birthday and gained a roommate. Each thing added its own challenges and sadly they did play a negative role on my weight loss. In the last month I have managed to put on just under 6 pounds. This is frustrating of course but I accept that it is my fault and that I could have done things differently and still managed to maintain my weight or even lost some. Like most things in life that we do everything is an opportunity to learn and grow and I although the outcome of the last month was not a success I have learned from the past and am getting closer to success. I looked back to two years ago when I went to Vegas for my birthday. Like this year I was also doing weight watchers the difference is last time I gained twice as much weight. I came back have put on 12 pounds in about a 3 week period. So the way I look at it is I am learning. I was more careful and tried to stay active even if my food choices were not always the best. It was easier to be more conscious of what I was eating and making better choices. The way I figure it next year I should have even less problems doing the right things and with a little hard work will achieve the success I want ;-)

But that isn't really what I want to write about today. I think the thing that is most on my mind right now is dealing with having a roommate again. I have lived on my own for about 6 years, renting my parents house so they do not have to sell it yet, but as of the beginning of this month my brother got a job that moved him back to Calgary which has meant he has moved back into the house. There are certain advantages to this, the biggest of course meaning that I now pay half the rent that I was, which means I can put more money on to my debt and into my savings. The challenges however are mounting. It is hard to completely change your routines when someone else comes in and has his own routines. We are trying to balance out work out time, cooking time, and tv time to name a few things. I'm not used to sharing or even having to think twice about what I'm doing and when I'm doing it. Rather than letting this getting me down I'm trying to look at it positively. I mean now I know that if I want to use my treadmill I had better do it right when I get home so that I'm not getting in my brother's way of wanting to use it. This has meant that I don't procrastinate on it and I have been getting it done. I mean we all know that once you sit down in front of the tv in the evening, especially after a long day of work, it can be hard to get back up to work out. This is only one example of trying to take the positive side of things but I am working really hard to make the best out of the situation.

I guess I tell this because it reaffirms what I have always believed about change. It happens and we know it happens. The world isn't perfect and just when we think that things are the way we want them something else will change. Where I think we struggle with this is the fact that we just keep wanting it to be back the way it was, but we know this won't happen. So what I have done is made a conscious choice to accept the changes and deal with them as best as I can. I wake up in the morning and tell myself that yes it sucks sometimes that I have to do things differently than I want but it should not stop me from doing those same things. I won't let my situation changing shake me from the goals I'm working so hard towards. All change can be positive if you are willing to look for the good side to it but it does take work and it is not always easy. I just keep reminding myself to take it one day at a time.

Anyway enough of that. The other thing I wanted to say in my blog is that I'm going to be starting a new blog, along with this one. Tentatively I'm hoping to start it up in the beginning of June but I have to work out a few kinks including a name for it. It is going to be a recipe based blog. I'm going to try new recipes every week and not only post stories and pictures of the food but I will also post the recipes and the Weight Watchers point value for the food/meals. I'm really looking forward to this. It is a good opportunity to try new foods and to share recipes, not to mention practice more with my camera.

Taking My Own Advice

After my last blog entry I realized I really have to take the challenge of doing things i don't like or that make me feel uncomfortable and just do them not only in my weight loss journey but also in other aspects of my life.

For the last two years I have struggled at work. I have lost the love of the job that I used to have and it is because I have felt like I was not being respected, and that the knowledge that I have was being taken for granted. There have been many times I had sat down to write an email to my manager to explain what was going on and let her know about my frustrations. As always though I waited to send the email until I had calmed down, which also gave me time to talk myself out of saying anything. I would tell myself that it didn't matter and that as long as I'm doing the best job I can who cares. The problem was I cared and I cared a lot. Each time I talked myself out of saying something things would be ok and then I would forget about it. But gradually the distance in between my major frustrations began to shorten and I also started to realize it was having a direct impact on my job. So finally I sent one of the emails I had written and then sat down and talked with my manager. I feel incredibly lucky to have the manager I do. She is a wonderful person and is very fair. She listened to my frustrations and reassured me that I was of value. In the end I don't know if it will make any difference at work but it did make a difference in me. As soon as I talked to my manager it was like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. Will this feeling last, who knows but at least now I know that I can express my opinion and be open and it won't be a bad thing.

I'm also proud of myself because in the last two weekends I survived the buffets at my Stage West and Rosebud season ticket performances. I still ate more than I should have I'm sure but I made a conscious effort to choose more of the correct choices and to limit the amount of food I put on my plate. I also did not pile my dessert plate full of treats for after dinner. It gives me hope for my upcoming trip to Vegas. I have decided that this time when I go to Vegas I do not want to gain weight. I'm determined to focus on enjoying my vacation by doing fun things not by eating. I'm ready to make the hard choices even when I'm on vacation and I know this will carry me through and help me get to my ultimate goals of 250 pounds lost.

Why

Ever wonder why we fight so hard against the things that are good for us. I have been thinking about that a lot over the last few weeks. It's funny how our brains work. In the last little while I have been battling hard to make the right choices and not always winning. I have had some pretty bad days where I just feel horrible and it is entirely because I have over indulged in things like sugar or fat. I'm starting to really pay attention to my brain and the things I think. I'm starting to realize how careful I have to be with my random mind wanderings. I have always lived my life in my mind and it's only now that I'm starting to realize how that may just be my one of my biggest downfalls. Another example of this weird thinking is when it comes to exercise. It is really easy to think I'm tired or I don't feel like it today and really to create a million excuses to avoid getting on that treadmill. I find excuses all the time but I have also learned to battle them and the thing is as tired as I am when I start working out by the end I feel amazing. It's a slow journey but slowly my brain is changing. I'm recognizing what truly makes me feel good and what doesn't. Sure exercising sucks and sure eating healthy doesn't always taste the best but how I feel inside makes up for that.

I write this for only one reason and that is because I needed to tell myself that I am on track. It is a struggle every day and I just have to remember that it is the challenge and the struggle that will make reaching my goal feel so much better.

Importance of Time Off

I know that it seems like common sense to take time off for yourself. Everyone tells us to take time off for ourselves and we all know that we should. I however seemed to briefly forget about that little important fact and it all caught up to me on Thursday. I woke up completely exhausted and dragging. I don't very often have that feeling of being lethargic but that would have been the only way I could explain how I was feeling on Thursday.

Now just to give you an idea of what a day in my life looks like here is the brief overview. I wake up at 4:50am and get up to work out. Then I jump in the shower and get dressed. Then I have just enough time to have breakfast and head off to work at 6:45. After picking up a friend I head off to work until 4:30. Then it is off to drop my friend off at home and then I usually arrive at home around 5:30pm. Then it's time to jump on my treadmill for anywhere from 30-60mins (depending on the day and what's on tv). After the treadmill I throw the tv on and make dinner while listening/watching it. After dinner it's time for dishes and to make a lunch and then by 9 I'm heading off bed to curl up read a chapter of a book and then sleep only to start it all over again. In all of that there is not much time to just sit and relax. Now normally this isn't to bad because I have weekends to relax but the last several weekends have been filled with visiting friends, theatre and just general running around.

So with all of that in mind on Thursday I realized looking back in my daytimer that I have't really taken time off in about three weeks. So my solution to my lethargic state was to do nothing Thursday night. I didn't work out. I didn't do dishes. I sat my butt on the couch and curled up with one of my cats and watched two episodes of my new favourite show Top Gear (a British car show that I think is hilarious...it also helps that 1 of the 3 presenters is really cute) and then curled up in bed with a book for an hour before going to sleep. I had an amazing sleep and woke up feeling better on Friday. The best part about all of this is that for as hard as I have been working the last few weeks I had actually gained weight the last two weigh ins...not much but enough that it annoyed me...but this week I was down 2.8 pounds. It could be a coincidence but I tend to think it's my bodies way of saying that it is ok to take a little time off if I'm good most of the rest of the time.

Needless to say all of this has reminded me that there is a need for balance. I have the type of personality that tends to go full throtle into things so every once and awhile I just have to remind myself that I need to balance everything out. So that is my goal for the next few weeks. I'm going to be working hard to try and find the balance between everything that is going on in my life. I can do everything I need and want to do I just can't do it all at once. :-) No one can.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

I was one of those people that used to think I couldn’t eat healthy because it was so much more expensive and it takes way too much time to prepare it. Well I have been converted. I had a surreal moment when I came in from groceries tonight, over half my bags were filled with fruits and vegetables and the only bad thing I had bought was a pizza for dinner tonight. The best part is I did it all for under my weekly grocery budget.

A year ago I started a new budget based around this Canadian tv show called ”'Til Debt Do Us Part” and when it came to groceries at first I really struggled. I have given myself $100 per week which then seemed like not nearly enough. At the time though my bags would come home from the grocery store full of prepared, pre-packaged easy meals as well as a fair amount of junk that I know I didn’t need. But my desire to become debt free and to become healthier was enough to push me to make changes and in the last year I have made a great deal of changes when it comes to food. I know many of you like me probably struggle both with money and weight loss so here are my steps to eating healthy on a budget. Maybe one of them will help you.

The first step I did was to create my budget. I tracked my normal spending for a month to get an idea of what I was actually spending on everything. When it came to food I was averaging about 200-300 per week. This of course also included eating out which I did a lot. I then decided to take it one step further and look at my food spending in terms of eating out, junk food and real groceries and what I found is that if I cut out the eating out and junk food I could slash the budget a long way. However, the reality of life is we can’t cut that far because there are always occasions when you want to go out or you just want a bag of chips. Life is too short not to have a little extra for fun stuff. So after some playing around for several months with different budget numbers for food I finally settled on the 100. It did take some tweaking and patience to get the right figure that would let me enjoy my life and yet still be responsible to my budget.

The second step I did actually came out of a challenge I gave myself to not eat out for one month back in the fall. During that time I started to cook large meals on the weekend so I could freeze the leftovers so that not only could I use them for dinners during the week but I also had easy lunches. This of course cut down not only on my habit of grabbing quick meals out but it also cut down on me buying those pre-packaged frozen dinners. The best part for me about this step is that I was getting way more food, way better food, far fewer preservatives and unknow ingredients, and it also cost me less weight watchers points than those tv dinners and meals out I had previously been eating. It does take a little effort to prepare a bunch of food on the weekends but for me since I only have to feed myself and most recipes make 4-6 servings it really wasn’t too bad. The most important part of this step I think though is to invest in a slow cooker. Mine has saved me so much time and effort. They really are a very handy and amazing appliance. On Sunday’s I throw something in the slow cooker as well as make a traditional oven dinner and then bang most of my cooking is done for the week and it only takes me an afternoon.

The third step which I have really only been doing for the last month or so is really planning what I want to eat for a week. I was buying tonnes of fruit and veggies but because I didn’t have a plan for it I started to find I was throwing a lot of it out. I hate to waste food and especially on a budget it hurts a little to know you are throwing out food that you spent hard earned money on. So I started to plan. I make sure I know how many servings of any type of food I need in a week as well as any special ingredients I might need for a new recipe that I’m trying. I create my list and write down the amount of money I have to spend on the paper. This helps keep me focused on what I really need in the store versus things that might creep up onto you and slip into the cart. The hardest part is keeping a running tally of your total as you go so you know you haven't gone over your budget. Since planning, the amount of wasted food has gone to nothing and my grocery bills have dropped a little more.

The fourth step that I have started is being more adventurous with food. I always thought of myself as a fairly picky eater and although I am opened minded and will try new foods but only if I really have to (usually when other people have cooked them for me). But in the last little while I have made an effort especially with fruits and vegetables to buy things that are on sale instead of my old standbys. The variety you can get in your diet just by buying things that are on sale is kind of cool. Every week there is usually something else that is on cheap. And since fruits and veggies tend to add up to the majority of my grocery list if I can save money there I’ll take it. I have also discovered some new foods that I like because of it including different types of squash and mangoes which have been the most recent ones that I have tried.

With those four steps I have completely changed my shopping and cooking habits. The best part of it is I know that not only am I saving money but I am eating healthier. I also have more money left over each week so I can treat myself to an evening out with friends without feeling guilty or blowing my budget. It really doesn’t have to be hard but you do have to figure out what matters to you and exactly what you want. For me it has been easy because the two most important goals in my life right now are to lose weight/get healthy and to get debt free. As long as I keep those things in mind it becomes a whole lot easier to make the right choices. I know it’s not for everyone but at least I can say without any doubts I no longer think that I can’t eat healthy for cheap. At the very least all the healthy fresh food just seems to stretch further and it also leaves you fuller longer so you eat less of it. It’s a total win win in my books.

Back and Blogging Once Again

Well after three months of silence I have decided it is more then time to return to my efforts on my blog. Like many, the last three months were crazy busy with the build up to Christmas then of course dealing with the holidays and then the fight to get everything back on track in January. Amongst all the normal craziness Weight Watchers changed their program which also meant I felt like I was starting over with my weight loss journey, having to learn everything all over again. But now all that aside I am back and ready to share.

The last three weeks have been exciting for me. I have finally fully implemented and accepted the changes to Weight Watchers. The best part is how good it has made me feel. In truth although the program is completely different in a lot of ways it is still the same. I'm not going to go into specifics because if you really want to know about it there are better sources on it but what I will say is that I love it. Although my weight was up this week (only .8 of a pound) I have been feeling like I have more control in my choices. I also find that I'm more empowered to be able to make better choices.

All of that aside what I want to share tonight actually comes from my actual paper journal. Maybe it's just because the entry means a lot to me but I thought maybe others may wish to read it as well. So here it is:

I was just in the shower when a thought occurred to me. I was thinking about Weight Watchers and my story & journey. I know I sometimes get frustrated with how long it is taking me but it just popped that it really isn't surprising. As of Mar 12,2009 when I rejoined Weight Watchers and weighed in at 405 pounds I had spent nearly 30 years making bad lifestyle choices and not taking care of myself. Sure some of the time I had bursts of trying to do the right thing and in there my parents also had a role both in setting some of my bad habits as well as trying to fix them but in the end it all added up to 30 years (well 29 years and 10 months) and 405 pounds. Since that first weigh in when my whole reality crashed in on me I have been working to change my whole life. I am having to retrain my mind, body and soul to be able to move forward. I had no frame of reference for myself being healthy so I had no experience to draw on. I also had a great deal of fear which now makes sense. I was moving in a completely unknown direction which can be scary for any of us.

I find myself thinking all this because I was up .8 pounds today. It bugs me a little that I am struggling but it makes sense for me to struggle. I have to completely change my entire life and thought processes. Not an easy thing to do even if you haven't been dealing with these things forever. The flip side though is really how much I have changed in two years. I make considerably more healthy choices. Fruits and veggies are included every day now. I'm not eating bags upon bags of chips. Most of all I have realized how important being active really is to me. In the last two years I have hiked a mountain with my dad, which is something I hadn't done since I was a teen. I spent a summer rollerskating and now I can even add jogging to that list.

I have no reason to feel frustrated at my progress and looking at it like this has reminded me just how far I really have come. My life has been forever changed from that weigh in nearly two years ago. I may only be down 26ish pounds but I have come a long way.

I know many of my friends who are also working on changing their lives are feeling frustrated and struggling. I think this is a natural frustration come February as the motivation of new years resolutions starts to fade and the real work begins. Don't let it get to you though...take some time and look back on your own journey. Find the things that really have changed and even if you think nothing has changed think about the knowledge you have gained. None of us stay static in life, we all grow each and ever day. We are not the same person we were yesterday and we will not be the same person tomorrow. We just have to keep working on ourselves to find the truths that lie within our souls.