Senior night and more.

 

First of all, I hope all of you who are in the path of Sandy will be safe and sound!! Please keep us posted on your situation!

 

 

Now, a quick recap of the weekend:  Friday night was senior night at the football game.  Parents escort their sons onto the field, it was nice.  I survived being in the same vicinity as my ex-husband, and I survived having to wear my glasses for the night.  It was freezing cold...by Louisiana standards anyway and super windy...thus, the messed up hair!  Below is a pic of me and my son.

 

 

I had a nice weekend, and my eye is doing much better.  I got my new glasses and I feel better about having to wear them.  I can see much better too.  My old glasses were an old prescription so, it's a bonus to see.  The pic below is me with my new specs and no, it's not your imagination, my hair is darker, I colored on Saturday.  Fresh hair color always makes me feel better too! 

 

 

Not much else going on.  I had a terrible incident this weekend...food wise.  Let's just say it involved cheese puffs and gingerbread Oreos.  OH MY!

 

Today is Monday...back to reality!

 

Hope your week is good!

Big Hugs!

T

4 eyes!

I scratched my eye, or something and have inflammation on my cornea...so I have to wear my glasses for a whole week! I have to do eye drops every 4 hours and I am not too happy about it.  I wore glasses for years and years and I hated the way I looked without my glasses. My glasses were like a buffer between me and the world. I felt kind of, less exposed when I had them on.  When I got divorced, I changed a lot of things about myself, one of them was that I got contacts again. I started taking better care of myself and caring more about my appearance.  So, now...I'm having to wear my glasses and it's making me feel things that I don't want to feel.  I feel like the old version of me.  When I look at myself in the mirror, I feel so frumpy and fat! What gives?  I suppose that I just associate the glasses with the previous me.  I did order some new glasses that are a little more fashionable...but they won't be in til next week.  So until then...I'm stuck in the glass lane!

Tonight is senior night at the football game.  I have to take a picture with my son...I would go without my glasses, but then I wouldn't be able to find my way on or off the field.  Oh well, I'm excited about the game either way.

Happy Weekend!
Big Hugs!
T

A funny thing happened on my way to drink another shake...

Happy Monday folks! Thanks for all of your encouraging comments.  As always, it feels good to know that you guys are reading and taking the time to be a part of my journey.

In my last post, I told you about my attempt to lose this last 25 pounds and that I had gotten Visalus shakes.  As I said, I was really struggling and feeling kind of bad. But I kept going and did feel a little better.  However, by Thursday, I really started feeling strange, I got hives and I started having really bad palpitations.  Now, I have thyroid disease, Hashimoto's to be exact, hives and irregular heart beat are always a symptom when my levels are off.  I take daily medication and feel pretty good most of the time.  I had blood work scheduled to check my levels, and so I went to do that, but then put a call in to my Endocrinologist to let them know that I was feeling really strange.  The nurse called me back and said that my labs weren't in yet, but she would call me on Monday.  So, I go home and of course searched the web for reasons why my thyroid levels might suddenly change when they've been under control.  The first article I came across was one warning about supplements and shakes, to check the lable, many of them have high amounts of iodine as well as ground bovine thyroid glands and that they have very generic sounding names...ewww! Anyway, this one does have high iodine and lots of other supplements that I can't pronounce.  I stopped drinking them and voila...I'm fine today!  So, lesson learned...read the ingredients before starting on a new supplement of any kind.  I was really shocked by how bad I was feeling in such a short time! I talked to the Endocrinologist today to let them know, they said they had just ordered more blood work, because my levels were so off!
So, I'm back to just trying to eat right and move more.  Just gotta keep on keepin on!

This weekend I had a wonderful time.  We have wine festival downtown, it's an amazing event with lots of wine, food and music. There are a limited amount of tickets sold, so it's not super crowded.  They block of a big section of our historic downtown...and it's just a lovely event.  It was so much fun, My sister and couple of our girlfriends went together.  The weather was beautiful and it was just a great time. 

I'll leave you with a couple of pics from the festival.

Marty, Dawn and my sister Amelia

Me walking the red carpet...this was after the festival...key word here is WINE! lol!

I hope you all have a great week.  Now that I'm feeling better, I sure will!
Big Hugs!
T

Shakes, shakes and more shakes...

Hey there! How are you?  I hope all is well.  Things are okay here. 
Thank you for your sweet words on my last post.  I really do appreciate the comments and the sentiment behind them.

Okay, so as I said in my last post, I really want to lose 25 pounds before my 50th birthday, that's in 4 months.  I bought some Visalus shakes and started yesterday.  A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch and a sensible dinner. First of all, they taste really good, but yesterday was awful, I was starving most of the day, and I had a terrible headache.  I got home and stir fried green beans, chicken and mushrooms for my "sensible dinner."

One of my problems with the band is that when I get past hungry...you know, to the point where I'm feeling sick from it, it never goes well when I do eat.  I only ate a fourth of a cup of food, and didn't feel stuck at all, then suddenly, I was hurting, I PB'd bad, like 30 minutes before all was said and done.  Not the way I wanted to end the night.  So, I ended up having a 3rd shake for supper last night.

Today, I've had my two shakes and a hand full of almonds.  Again, I'm starving! I always do a shake for breakfast anyway, because I'm super tight in the mornings, but by lunch I can usually eat pretty well.  Lunch is not the time of day that's really a problem for me.  So, maybe I should reassess this and eat my lunch instead of drinking it.  I know I've only given it 2 days, but man...my head hurts again, and I'm afraid I might have another repeat of last night.  I really need to be careful with my food choices tonight and take it slow.   I'm going to have a little wine tonight too, that always helps with the passage of food, lol!

Other than that, things are going pretty well.  It's deer season, so my hubby will be MIA soon.  He works hard, so I'm glad he has something that's relaxing for him.  Oh...big news, I forgot to share, he quit chewing tobacco.   I'm so proud of him, I know it was so hard.

I'm glad it's Wednesday and the week is half over.  I'm ready for the weekend, I'm ready to just relax.

I hope you all have a great day.
Big Hugs!
T

Infrequent at best!

That's me.  I just can't get into blogging lately.  I read Catherine's post and felt bad and was flattered at the same time that she mentioned my blog and that she missed reading my posts.  Sometimes we start to think that we are just part of the scenery.  Both in blogland and real life.  I know sometimes in the evenings when I'm doing laundry and cooking or cleaning, I feel like part of the scenery, just a machine running in the background.  My family has grown accustomed to the hum of the machine and they find that white noise comforting.  Other than that, I wonder if the things I do for them really matter.  They matter to me, but do they really matter to them?  Do they stop every once in a while and say..."man, it's nice that I always have clean towels and underwear." Or do they only notice on the rare occasion that some other commitment has me behind schedule and I don't get something done? At work, I feel fortunate that I have a really good job that helps me provide for my family, but I don't necessarily feel needed, challenged or appreciated on a daily basis.  I've let that feeling bleed into other areas of my life.  And I need to take a moment to realign my attitude.  I need to remember why I get up early or stay up late to get things done.  I need to remember why I show up at work and that there are rewards for all of those moments.

After Catherine mentioned all of the blogs that have tapered off, I went to find a few that were so important to me, people who inspired me and encouraged me and gave me good information about the band and what was in store for me.  Like Catherine, I too felt bummed when I realized how many of them hadn't blogged in a year, some even three years. 

I see a lot of us banded bloggers spinning our wheels with the band.  Not really going anywhere, some of us even going backwards.  It scares me a little and makes me feel more pressure to get moving in a downward direction again.  It also makes me grateful that I haven't gone backward, even if I'm not moving forward, I'm not going back!

I will turn 50 in 4 months and I really want to be at my goal weight.  That means I have to lose 30 pounds.  Considering the fact that it took me one year to lose 15, I'm not sure what I have to do to get the job done.  I don't feel like a failure at all.  I'm really proud of how far I've come and I think the band was the right decision for me.  I do think that I've put dieting in the background....kind of gotten used to the white noise of just living....humming along, not going backwards, but not going forward either.  And it's time to change that.  It's time to change my attitude toward dieting and work and many other areas in my life as well.

Thanks Catherine for the reminder.  Yet another way that you've been an inspiration to me: your commitment to maintaining a healthy weight and your commitment to blogging as part of that journey and as a way of paying it forward.  I for one appreciate it!

Big Hugs,
Theresa

Small victories along the way...

Hey Folks! I've seen so many wonderful pictures from the BOOBS weekend and know that you all had a wonderful time.  I'm sorry I had to miss this year, but at least I have the memories of the two previous wonderful weekends! Love seeing the pictures on FB, keep them coming!

 

It was Homecoming week at my children's school.  My oldest son and my step-daughter are seniors and my oldest plays football, so it was a jam packed week for us.  I'm glad it's over! As a senior football mom, I was very busy, we did a skit for the pep rally and decorated the float and we went to the Homecoming dance to have one dance with our sons that night. 

 

On January 22, 2010, I was waiting to get banded and I wrote a blog post entitled:

"Tell me what you want, what you really, really, want..."

In that post, I listed my top 10 reasons for wanting the band, they were:

 



 

10. To no longer be obese.
9. To feel comfortable in my clothes.
8. To get my blood pressure under control.
7. To take a beach vacation and not feel inclined to wear at tent!
6. To adjust the seat in my car without having to move my butt to one side to get my arm down there!
5. To no longer know the Muffin man! (he lives above my waist)
4. To weigh less than my husband.
3. To wear a football mom shirt and not feel so out of place.
2. To weigh less than the average starting lineman on any given Sunday.
And the number one thing I want from the band....
1. For my personality to be bigger than my butt!

Well, most of those things have happened for me. 
10. On the BMI chart, I'm still considered obese, by .5, but I've lost 10 BMI points since I was banded.
9. check and I can shop in regular stores!
8.I'm off one blood pressure medication and my numbers are excellent.
7.check
6.check
5.check
4.that was a check, until Paleo Man got all svelte on me, but it will be again!
3.check, see photo below

 

My oldest and me at the pep rally, right after the Senior Mom skit.  I wasn't the smallest mom out there, but I wasn't the biggest either, and I felt pretty normal...it's good to blend in !

 



2.check

1.my butt's not small...but my personality is bigger!

 

I've spent so much of the last year beating myself up for not losing more weight, for losing my mojo and for so many other things.  I need to give myself a little credit for how far I've come and for the fact that in a year's time, my weight has not fluctuated more than five pounds.  That's a big deal and I need to look at it that way.  I need to cleanse myself of these negative thoughts and just do what used to work for me.  It will work again.

 

Now on to a few cute pics from Homecoming!



My oldest son and his girlfriend.

 



My youngest and his date.

 

My step daughter opted out of Homecoming, as her boyfriend goes to another school.

And this is me and my oldest....as senior football players and their moms dance.

 

I'm looking forward to a slower paced week ahead of me. I'm thankful for my wonderful family and thankful for the stamina to keep up with such a busy, eventful week. And, I'm thankful for my band!

 

I hope you all have a great week!

Big Hugs!

T