Moving Forward

Hi, all!

How are you all doing on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon? I'm doing wonderful today, a little bored, but wonderful nevertheless. Yesterday afternoon I turned in my final paper and presentation, which means that I'm officially done! Now I just need to wait for my grades and I will officially have my Bachelor's degree! :) It feels really strange to be done with my degree, especially since I went from being extremely busy to not having to do anything. So today has been filled with a few new things, which are time-consuming.

I began applying for jobs today, mostly on this freelance data entry and virtual assistant website. However, I also applied for a few online tutor positions as well. I'm hoping that I will get a few of these positions and I can begin saving up money and paying off some bills. Plus, I'm hoping that I'll be able to continue doing these things once I move because they'll offer a more flexible schedule. When I start grad school in September, I'll need a more flexible schedule because of when I have classes.

Also, I wrote out some monthly goals for May and weekly goals. It's been a few months since I wrote down any goals, but I always seem to do better when I'm working toward something. While I was thinking about what I hope to accomplish, I decided to view my yearly goals that I wrote back in December. God, I am not doing so hot thus far, however, I should graduate having a 3.9 GPA for my Bachelor's degree. So that's one goal that will be completed, plus, I will be starting graduate school in September. I have been reading at least 30 minutes/day as well. The rest of my goals haven't been going so well. There is no way that I will get down to 240 lbs because I'd have to lose 73.4 lbs over the next 7 months. It would be amazing to be able to do that, but it would be incredibly unhealthy. My current goal is to get down anywhere between 280 and 260, which would be 1 or 1.5 pounds each week.

My dad closed tonight at work, so I was unable to exercise right away in the morning, and I almost pushed it back until this evening. However, around when I was going to be making lunch, I decided to bite the bullet and get my workout in right then. I still am not able to do a ton, but I did some more walking today and I loved it! While my lunch was in the oven, I walked and it ended up being 53 minutes. Right now, I'm trying to not focus on the calorie burn but the fitness minutes because I'm trying to get back into the routine of exercising again. My hip is definitely feeling it after walking so long, but I'm icing it down and enjoying the burn.

Yesterday, I have a really good day. I got in a 30-minute walk and I was under my calorie goal. Today, I had a great workout and I'm on track to be under my calorie goal again. Last night I did have a snack, some delicious homemade applesauce that my grandmother made. So, what I chose was lower calorie at least. I know that at times my food addiction will be more difficult, but if I want to overcome this, I need to put in the work now.

Well, I'm off, hopefully, tomorrow I'll have more positive news to report. I hope that you all have a wonderful evening. Until next time!

~Sara~

Update and Addiction

Hi, all!

How are you all today? I'm sorry it has been so long since my last post, 10 weeks. Eek! Sadly, not a ton of things have happened since then, but I do have some very exciting news. I have just a couple days until I graduate with my Bachelor's degree, May 3rd is the official final day! :) Plus, I went out to Seattle for my grad school interview and just a few days later, I found out that I was accepted! So, by September at the latest, I'll be moving out to Seattle.

April 2015

I need to be honest about some now, over the past months I have gained back almost all of the weight I had lost. I'm incredibly disappointed in myself and now I have to start over again. This morning, I looked at my weight chart over the past 90 days and it has been a gradual increase. On February 1st, I weighed 295.2 lbs and yesterday I weighed 313.4 lbs. How have I gained 18 lbs since February?!? That is only 12 weeks, what did I do to myself? A few weeks ago I was visiting my best friend and I saw just how much I let myself go. She loves taking pictures, so she did and I looked so big. I didn't realize that I looked this big again, I almost cried when I saw the photos. I tried to make a change, but it just didn't happen. Then on Saturday I got another unwanted, reality check, I'm up a clothing size and I'm not happy about it. Don't get me wrong, the clothes I bought are super cute, but I'm supposed to be going down in size, not up. Hopefully, these were the reality checks I needed and I'll be able to get back on track again. I have hope because my weigh-in yesterday showed a loss of .2 lbs from the week before. It wasn't a huge loss, but it's a step in the right direction.

Today I worked out for the first time since the beginning of February. I haven't been able to do a lot because I've had an issue with my hip for almost a week, but I wanted to get back into the routine of exercising. All I did was walk with 2lb weights in my hands, but it was still a workout. Honestly, I'm starting from scratch and it saddens me because I use to be able to do so much. Today I was winded after walking for 30 minutes, but at least I'm starting now and not after I gain any more weight. Tomorrow I'm going to walk again and I'll work myself up to more, as I did before.

The final thing that I need to say is going to be the hardest. Time to come clean and admit something to me and everyone else. I am addicted to food and use it as a crutch. I eat not only when I'm hungry, but when I'm bored, anxious, depressed, happy, and every other time. I don't use food to simply nourish my body, I use it to make myself feel better. It's like any other addiction, I crave it to make myself feel better and not because I need it. I'm trying to work through my addiction and have a different relationship with food. This isn't something that will happen overnight and I will have times where I give in and don't accomplish what I hope to, but I will never stop fighting. Changing my mindset is the first thing I have to do, so that's the plan. Plus, I'm going to try to eat less processed foods and more fruits, vegetables and lean proteins.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm off to put the finishing touches on my final and then do some planning for the week. I hope that you all have a wonderful day! Until next time!

~Sara~

Getting Back

Hi all!

How are you all doing today? It is absolutely amazing here, our weather here will be in the upper 50's to mid 60's the rest of the week :) This is my perfect weather, not too warm and not too cold. This post is going to be a pretty short one because I have an incredibly busy day ahead, my homework really needs to get done.

Although I haven't been perfect this week, I have improved since the past weeks. My nutrition has been right around my calorie goal every day besides yesterday and I've exercised 170 minutes and over 1100 calories burned. My exercise has only been walking, doctors orders, but every little bit helps. So I am looking forward to my weigh-in this week, to see if I finally have a loss, after weeks of gains or maintaining.

This weekend is also our shopping week, so I'll have more food choices. Before we go, I'm trying to come up with a list of foods I can have for lunch's that are lower calorie and filling. One thing that I'm trying to do is add more protein and fewer processed carbs. I know that I have a carb addiction and pretty much every meal has some sort of processed carb, so I'm trying to cut back a bit.

Before I end this, I just wanted to talk about something that I brought up in my last post. I am in my final year of undergrad work and have applied for graduate school. Honestly, I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am about this fact. My graduate work is something I have been looking forward to for awhile now and it is hopefully less than a year away now. Even though I am excited, I cannot believe that I am at this point in my life. I have only applied to one graduate school and I do not have a plan B but I have faith. Seattle Pacific University is where I have applied to, so hopefully I'll get accepted and be moving out to Seattle in August.

So exciting times are here and will be coming again. My homework is calling me though and there is a lot of it to get done. Until next time.

~Sara~

Addiction

Hey all!

Happy Tuesday! How are you all doing today? It's another cold day here in WI, -35 with windchill but thankfully it's suppose to warm a bit, starting tomorrow and suppose to be in the mid-30's by Friday. :) Oh and I have to say Happy Birthday to my nephew! He's turning 6 today, I cannot believe that one!

I didn't have a very good day nutritionally yesterday. The day was going quite well until dinner time and beyond. I ate a healthy, breakfast, lunch and a small afternoon snack, I was right on track with my calories and had about 900 or so left for dinner and the rest of the evening. Well, I ate a little more than I should have at dinner, which would have been okay, if I would have stopped there. But of course, I continued eating throughout the evening. I had ice cream for dessert, then popcorn later and cheese and crackers after that. Ugh... I'm disappointed in myself but it could have been a lot worse, I suppose. Today is a new day though and I'll try to make better choices today.

Okay, so I know that I usually try to keep things lighter here but I ran across something this morning and felt the need to write about it, so here we go. Addiction. You may be wondering, how did this topic come about? Well I was on FB this morning and there was a photo shopped picture of Cory Monteith and Lea Michele, it's been going around ever since his death in July. If you all don't know who these people are, they were/are on Glee. Cory died of a drug overdose, he was an addict and people didn't realize how bad it had gotten again.

Some of the comments on this picture, really got me thinking. A few of these comments were quite rude, especially to Cory, in terms of his death which they correlated to his life in general. He was not a bad person just because he got caught up in drugs and eventually lost his fight against them. We all have struggles and can be addicted to almost anything. Sure, a drug addiction may be worse than others because it can easy take your life but an addiction is an addiction and having one doesn't make you a bad person.
Some addictions that I can think of off the top of my head are:
Drug, alcohol, pornography, food, coffee, TV, money, shopping, prescription pills, cigarettes, weight loss.

I'll admit something, I still struggle with food addiction. How do you think I ate my way to 315 pounds before? Every day is a struggle, both internally and externally. Who's going to win at every specific meal? Will it be my food addiction or my will power? I'm just going to be blunt, it sucks. How often does a person want a healthy meal over a comfort food? Not very often, let me tell you. People don't realize that a food addiction can be deadly, but it's a slow death. If you have a food addiction, you can eat yourself to a very high weight and many people die of complications (high blood pressure, heart failure, blood clots, ect...). All I can do is keeping fighting every day and some day I will overcome my addiction.

Just remember, even if an addiction cannot kill you, does not mean that it's any harder than an addiction that can kill. Addictions can break-up families (of any kind), friendships, careers and just life in general. If you are suffering from an addiction don't be afraid to ask for help, whether it be a friend or family member or professional help. It does not show weakness, it shows strength. Don't ever give up the fight!

This post was quite serious, but necessary, I believe. Now it's time to watch a movie marathon with my mother. :) Have a wonderful day everyone. So until next time!

~Sara~