Weight loss and more.....

 

Good morning!!! 

My sister came to visit this weekend. I missed her so much and was so grateful for the time we had together.

Yesterday was my first day putting back into practice those healthy eating habits and using my new food journal for inspiration. It went well. Here was my first day. 

I love how I can sit down at the end of the day and reflect on the day and the choices I made. Its very simple but it works. I am not tracking my food anywhere else but here. I am not even counting calories. The less pressure I put on myself right now the better. Im enjoying the freedom and also I still have all the knowledge in my head from loosing weight before. 

The previous page in my journal was blank so I decided to jot down my "why" for this new journey. I have more than one why and when you read through them it might seem a bit negative but for me it is important to remember how it feels to be at this weight so that next time I decide to put aside all the healthy habits I know are good for me I can reflect back and remember how uncomfortable I am. Here are my "whys." 

I have a very nasty habit of night eating. Ive had it since I could remember. I have tried everything to combat it. I literally wake up in the middle of the night (usually around midnight or one) after sleeping soundly for several hours and get up and eat. My food of choice is usually a spoon, peanut butter and sugar free jelly with a glass of milk. I dip into the peanut butter and then into the jelly and eat it straight from the spoon. Sigh!! ALL my good intentions go out the window at this time of night. Its very frustrating. Ill keep you updated on my progress. 

I like weighing in every morning. Some people say not to but I like too. It doesn't discourage me. I automatically know if I didnt eat well the day before then im going to see the numbers go up...but if I did eat good the day before then most of the time the numbers stay the same or go down. This is super motivating for me. I have a smart scale. I am proud to announce that I lost 2.4 pounds. Its amazing how just putting into practice good healthy habits can get you so far. Here are my results!!!

If you don't have a smart scale I highly recommend getting one. I got mine off amazon and I love it. When I weigh myself it goes straight to the app on my phone and gives all these cool graphs. I love keeping data on myself. Its a great way to keep yourself accountable. 

So today my sweet Skyler started high school. If you have followed me for awhile you know he has autism (high functioning autism). This qualified him to start school today (just one day a week at this point but we are not complaining). It was weird putting him on the bus with a mask. This kid has grown so much. He is 14 and is six foot one. CRAZY!!

Going to school is so needed. He has been cooped up in the house since covid started. We are so tired of being home. Our town is small and there is very little to do. He was very anxious to go to school today. 

That about sums it up. There is so much more I can share but I will will wait to post again. 

I hope this post finds you all inspired to start your own healthy habits journey. Take care my dear friends!!!

Rebekah 

Finding my skinny again!!

 

Sometimes you just have to start over....from the beginning. Well....for me it isn't quite the beginning. For those that have followed me for awhile, in the beginning I weighed 319 pounds. That was eleven years ago. I have managed to keep off about 95 of those pounds but as you can see I have managed to climb right back into the 200's. Posting my weight is embarrassing. It can almost feel like failure but Im feeling so good about myself lately that I can't be mad....I just feel determined. My mental health is so fantastic right now that I feel ready to dive into improving my physical health. Its time!

Last week I put my name in for a contest on Instagram. I follow a sweet lady named Kristy McCammon. (you can click on her name to go to her web site) She was giving away a food journal. Im a sucker for another cool journal and I was in need of a food journal to kick off my new healthy habits journey that I wanted to start. Guess what??? I WON!! I never win anything so I couldn't believe it. I chose this cover.....

The inside cover has a place for a date...I chose today to be my start date.....

The next page was blank so I personalized it with a quote that I could reflect on and I decorated it with fall stickers. I can't wait for fall!!!!

The next page is your 100 day tracker chart. Ill just use this to be able to check off the days I was able to track my food. I do not expect perfection....but I do expect myself to be consistent and honest about weighting my food down. I also decorated it with some cute fall things. 

The next page is where I will write my food. I do have the myfitnesspal app but I do find that I am more consistent lately if I can write it down and not be so concerned about calories. I have tracked my food for so many years that I have a really good idea of what I should and shouldn't be eating and I know what good portion sizes are. This journal follows the "bright line eating" lifestyle but I won't necessarily be following that exactly. I will try very hard to keep its core principles in place and that would be 1. no sugar 2. no flour 3. no snacking. I will throw in snacks though because I work a lot and I sometimes need protein. 

    

Over the last seven years I have been gazelle focused on meeting my weight goal. Its just been the past six months that I have lost focused. I could make a WHOLE bunch of excuses why I have gained the weight back (49 pounds to be exact) but that would do me no good. Life is just that way. You gain some, you loose some right? Im not mad about it. I feel great mentally. I am no longer depressed...but I want to feel great physically. 

GOAL WEIGHT 175 

Guilt is the driving force of depression!

"Guilt is the driving force for depression." my counselor said to me last week.

"What?" I said. "Can you say that again so I can write it down?"

She repeated it and I wrote it down. It was such a profound statement for me that I had to hear it again and I had to write it down so I wouldn't forget. This statement summarized my entire life. I conditioned myself into depression at the age of 44. When I heard that it opened a door for me that I felt I could actually climb out. 

I am doing really really good.....mentally. Physically I am very over weight and I feel very uncomfortable....BUT....that is OK. I am being very gentle on myself in that area. There is NO WAY I would have been able to stick to a healthy eating  pattern and loose weight in my condition just two weeks ago. I was way to debilitated mentally. 

I understand now why people go through "midlife crisis." Your 40s are truly the mid point of your existence. Its the point where you have lived about half of your life and you are able to reflect back at all the good....the bad...the ugly...the sad...the regret...and then turn all that around and from there you have two choices. You can look at the past and all the regret and pain and decide that you couldn't possibly recover from it and live the next 40 years in that same pain and guilt and regret....OR.....you can view the past as a sort of shaping of who you were really meant to be and use it as a stepping stone to help others and most importantly take your existence up a notch and be the best human being that you were meant to be. I always knew I was not meant to live an ordinary mediocre life. I knew that I was meant for greatness. That may not mean that I will be famous or rich...it simply means that I can and will achieve greatness within myself. I do not have to live in the past....but I can live with the story of the past as my tool to greatness. 

The past week has been absolutely wonderful for me. I don't know who or what to give the credit to. Literally two weeks ago I could barely function. My head was heavy, my brain was foggy, I had almost no energy and no hope for the future. I was getting prescriptions from the doctor to help solve it but the medicines made me feel worse. So, I decided to pray. I did it....I prayed and asked God to please help me. I told him I was incapable of living this life on my own and I was sick and I needed help. I also started taking a BUNCH of natural supplements and stopped taking any prescription medication. I am NOT eating healthy all the time yet and that is why my body is still puffy and im not loosing weight but my mental health is FANTASTIC!! I have energy, I have hope, I can dream again and set goals. Who do I credit that too? Ill credit it all to God because he gave us the knowledge for the supplements....but don't get me wrong....I am NOT about to embrace Christianity again....but I can pray. Thats simple enough for me. 

 I find that I am still very erratic in my decision making. I don't like this part of myself. I heard one life give a lecture on the "stories we tell ourself." She said that when we feel sad its because of a story we told ourself, if we are anxious then its because of a story we tell ourself. In essence, we tell ourself these stories and it triggers a feeling. We basically have the ability to control our emotions based on the stories we tell ourselves. It sounds complicated but its really not. I started really paying attention to what I was telling myself, particularly when I would have an anxious moment or a guilt ridden moment. What I found was the stories I was telling myself were completely irrational. For instance, If I couldn't go visit a family member that I promised I would go see I would start to feel guilty after I told them I couldn't come. The guilt came pretty strong and to combat that I would start to think of ways I could make up for my lack by maybe baking some banana bread and dropping it off at there house or crocheting a couple dishrags and dropping it off. I felt so bad that I didnt visit and I thought that maybe they wouldn't like me anymore so I would have to do stuff to make up for it. The stories I would play in my head is that they wouldn't like me anymore because I didnt visit. This was the irrational part and completely not true but my brain couldn't comprehend that.....until now. I have dealt with this sort of guilt for ALL my life. Now that I am able to sit back and listen to the stories I am telling myself when I feel guilty or sad or anxious, I can stop the cycle right in its tracks and put myself on a better path. I hope to learn soon how to completely let go of all the guilt and anxiety wrapped up in these stories I tell myself but it will take practice. 

I have said all of this because as much as I want to loose this extra 50-60 pounds I have gained, it can not be done until I fix the inside first. Loosing weight is more emotional than physical. I know this because if you have followed me for awhile you remember that I lost 135 pounds all on my own.

I am excited to be back loosing weight. Its soon. I know it is....I am so close to being ready.