Emotional Eating

Hi, all!

Happy Friday! How are you all doing today? I'm doing alright, a little bored, but other than that I can't complain. The weekend will be upon us soon, any fun plans for the weekend? My weekend will probably be a boring one unless I have to work, but I'm not sure of my schedule yet.

Last night I had an extremely emotional few hours and I'm proud to say that I didn't turn to food. In fact, I was under my calorie goal yesterday, which is amazing. The more amazing thing is that I'm turning to food less in emotional situations. Now, I'm viewing food as more of a thing to nourish my body instead of using it to help me through my emotions. How amazing is that?!? I hope that we can all learn to view food this way because I think we would eat a whole lot healthier then.

As I said, I was under my calorie goal yesterday and I got in a workout. Sadly, I wasn't able to workout until the afternoon and that screwed up my schedule. I'm used to working out in the morning and yesterday I didn't get to until after lunch. My workout was definitely lacking and I think that was because I had a carb-heavy lunch, so my body felt pretty weighed down. It's amazing how much more energy I had during my workout this morning, so hopefully I'll be able to stick with my morning workouts and have a lot of energy during it.

Well, I'm off. I hope that you all have an amazing afternoon, evening and weekend. Until next time!

~Sara~

Mindset

Hi, all!

Happy Monday! How are all of you doing today? It's a pretty dreary day here, but I love it and am thankful nevertheless. Today marks a new week and we get a chance to begin new. So make some goals for yourself, get a workout in and make healthy food choices.

Yesterday I did not have a good day nutritionally, honestly, my whole weekend was full with unhealthy food choices. Today is a new day though and I will make healthier choices.It would be incredibly easy for me to just give in and continue making unhealthy food choices, however, I am choosing to be healthier. I see a difference in myself because before I would be eating the amount of calories I did over the weekend, plus many more. Honestly, I was eating at least 3500 calories each day, and that was probably a lower estimate. Now I feel sick to my stomach when I eat even 3000 calories in a day. What a difference! It's no wonder why I had no energy and felt incredibly lethargic before. Something that also contributed to that was the fact that most of my diet was carbs and fat, I did get a bit of protein, but only if there was some protein in those carbs and fats. When I look at the facts, it is amazing that I only weighed 315 pounds at my highest. If I would have continued on that path, I have no doubt that I would have eaten myself to death. I'm incredibly thankful that I decided to change my fitness and eating habits because I feel so much healthier and happier now. Who knows where I would be right now if I didn't make that change.

Today has been a wonderful day so far. I'm on track with my nutrition and I had a great 68-minute walk, with weights. This week and next week I'm set with a bunch of delicious food, even some for evening snacks, that will help me stay on track. Although some of the dinners are a bit higher calorie, I will make sure to stay on track and eat those higher calorie meals with moderation. Honestly, moderation is my goal. I will eat higher calorie foods sometimes, even unhealthy foods, but I will make sure that they fit into my calorie goal and I will only eat one serving of them, instead of multiple servings. I'm not going to give up the foods that I love, simply because I'm trying to lose weight. I'll lose weight while still eating my favorite foods, but they'll be healthier versions of them or smaller portions.

While I was writing this post I realized something that I need to stop. In my mind, I kept on say bad food choices instead of unhealthy food choices. This is something that I need to reevaluate in my mind because unhealthy and bad are two very different things. It's all a part of overcoming my food addiction and gaining a healthier relationship with food. If I see a food as "bad", that has a very negative connotation with it. However, if I say something in unhealthy, it means that it does not have a lot of health benefits. In my opinion, something being unhealthy is much better than something being bad. I'm going to work hard to change my mindset because it will help me a lot in the future.

Okay, I'm off to get some things done around the house. I hope that you all have a wonderful day and evening. Until next time!

~Sara~

Life

Hi, all!

Happy Wednesday! How are you all doing today? It's another beautiful day here in southeastern Wisconsin and I'm just feeling happy today. I was blessed with another day to live my life freely, without many restrictions. This is something not all people get to say, so I am thankful. Last night and earlier this morning I was pondering on this and I the fact that life is short was forefront in my mind. After losing one of my best friends 6.5 years ago, I realize how short life is and how it can end at any moment. I think this is something that we forget sometimes, we don't realize how any of us could be gone in a minute. Each of us have been blessed with another day of life and we need to embrace it and live. Today I want to remind each of you (and myself) to live, don't focus on the past because we can't change it. Live for today and look toward the future. Most importantly, do things you love, pursue your passions, don't take people for granted because you never know when it will be your last day (or theirs). When my best friend died, I wasn't able to say goodbye to her because of our accident and that haunted me for awhile. I never told her how much she meant to me and that her friendship was precious to me. Don't make the same mistake I did, tell your friends and family how much they mean to you because if you don't do it now, you might never get to.

I have to tell you, I'm feeling extremely blessed lately because I've had more good days than bad. This is something that probably won't always happen, I accept that fact, however, I'm glad that things are like this in the beginning. There will be days that I struggle and there will be days where I do well, however, I am going to use each day to learn more about myself and work through my food addiction. I have come to the realization that I will probably never eat completely clean, I will have some processed foods in my diet. I'll go out to eat from time to time. I'll have pizza, nachos, Chinese, Italian, chips, ice cream, and thousands of other foods. And yes, sometimes I will eat more than I should, it is a part of life. I'm not perfect if you didn't already know that, and you aren't either. None of us are perfect, 100% of the time. There will be times where we overeat or eat something that isn't 100% healthy. So what? That's life sometimes and we deal with it. Heck, there will be weeks (sometimes months) where we maintain or gain weight, but we shouldn't be ashamed. These things are all a part of our journey and there's  nothing we can do about it. We each need to own up to our mistakes and the things that we struggle with if we don't then we can never move past them.

Okay, moving onto yesterday's results. I had a pretty good day, I was under my calories again and had a shorter workout. I'm proud of myself though because my mother and I went out for dinner (it was teacher appreciation day and she got a free meal. Also, my father was working last night.). The restaurant we went to has a variety of yummy food, plus a lot of higher calorie options. However, I ordered foods that would fit into my nutritional goals, plus it was delicious. In the afternoon, I also had a shorter workout. I started out walking with 2 lb dumbells, but my ankle and hip were hurting, so then I just did some upper body strength training. In the past, I probably would have just stopped and not worked out because of this. Honestly, I probably would have just eaten crappy then as well. Things are different now though and I continued to eat within my calorie range and I exercised in a way that I could without pain. I may do the same today or I might have a rest day, only time will tell.

This morning I went out for coffee with my best friend again, I'm loving these get together's with her. Sadly, within a few days things will get back to our normal and then I won't see her for awhile. In fact, I may not see her in person again before I move. This is life, being an adult and being away from your best friend isn't fun. Distance won't get in between our friendship though. I'm going to be seeing her again tonight and we'll either be getting coffee or dinner with another one of our friends.

Well, I'm off to make myself some lunch. I hope that you all have an amazing afternoon and evening. Until next time!

~Sara~

Vlog - Big News, Reflecting on May, Looking toward June (Day 617)

Hi all!

Happy Friday! How are you all doing today? It's a cloudy and cooler day here in Wisconsin and to be honest, I'm in love with it. :) Okay so I have so much to talk about today and not a ton of free time available to me. I'll try to not have this post be too incredibly long.

First I want to do a little reflecting on May. All-in-all it has been a really great month and I'm proud to say that I reached all of my goals except one - starting the 30DS again. But I have been doing other exercising - walking/jogging intervals and workout videos mostly. I lost 3.8 pounds, which is .8 pounds over my goal for the month! Not sure where my measurements are, I need to invest in a new measuring tape because I cannot for the life of me, find mine.

Now onto my goals for June.

1. Lose 3 pounds

2. Continue doing walking/jogging intervals - 3 days a week

3. Keep up with carb cycling

4. Focus on making healthy food choices

5. Start off every morning by saying a few positive things about myself

6. Continue to do well in school

7. Stay positive

8. Strength train - 3 days a week

9. Drink 100 oz of water a day

10. Blog at least 5 days a weeks

11. Have a real zeal for life

And last but not least, my crazy exciting news. So without further ado I give you me in my vlog. :)

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, positive vibes, etc... and for everything you do. I love you all and cannot wait to start this next chapter of my life. Things will be different but it's so freaking exciting, I cannot even stand it. Thank you all again! Time to go finish some homework and get ready for our garage sale tonight. Have a wonderful day everyone! So until next time.

~Sara~

Changes Ahead (Day 574)

Hi all!

Happy Thursday! How are you all doing today? Yet again, it's been a week since I've last blogged, I hate being "that" blogger". I'm trying to do better but it's difficult while I'm still in Texas. Hopefully today will be the start of blogging on a more consistent basis.

I have been making some changes to my blog and there are a few more to come. The name of my blog has changed from "A Year of Transformation" to "Yearning for More: My journey to becoming the healthy, happy, and successful me". Plus I won a new layout design from a giveaway done by Summer (she blogs at Oh Summer Candy) but the actual blog design was done by Kotryna (she blogs at Girl With a Movie Camera). I cannot wait for my new design, you'll all see it in a few days. :) Let me tell you about the other things I won in the giveaway. First is a large ad space from Erica at Being Erica for 60 days and a Queen Bee ad space from Autumn at Gypsybeee for 30 days. I am super excited for all these changes that are in the process of happening.

As I stated before, I've changed the name of my blog and I want to explain why and what my new name means to me. Mostly, I decided to change my name because this journey is not "a year of transformation", heck, in September it will mark 2 years on my weight loss journey. My new name means so many things to me, I struggled trying to figure out what name I should pick. So many things flooded my mind but each one just didn't describe what I was trying to say. That is until "Yearning for More" came to my mind. I am yearning for more out of my life and I'm on a journey to become healthy, happy and successful in all aspects of my life. I cannot wait to see this change in action.

After a few days of not really being able to talk to Abid, he and I were actually able to have a decent conversation today. It was really nice, to say the least, I've missed him a ton. Plus I was able to see him, that always makes my day better. I was able to talk to his pastor today as well, it was nice hearing things from him as well. They are all excited for me to come and visit there someday, hopefully in the near future. He was telling me how often Abid talks about me and how much he loves me. Even though I already know these things, it's nice to hear from people around him as well.

Well my first class at CCU is almost completed! I cannot believe that it has almost been 10 weeks already. We're currently on week 9 and all I've really got between me and an A are 3 papers (I should be fine with all of them) and 2 discussion posts. As long as I don't bomb those 3 papers, which I won't, papers are my speciality, I will get an A. Currently I have a 97.6%, so I'm not worried. :) I'm really excited about starting my new classes though. My current classmates (well one more like it) have really gotten on my nerves, not to mention that my class has 4 students, including me. That makes our discussion's quite difficult, but oh well. I've learned a lot during this session.

This post is long enough already, plus we'll probably be heading out sometime soon after John gets home from work in a few. So be looking for my new design over the next few days and I'll try to be blogging more.   Have a wonderful day everyone! So until next time!

~Sara~