What's Weak This Week....

My patience is what's weak this week.

I never claimed to be an overly-patient person, but this week I just want everything to hurry the hell up! My weight is down 23 pounds, I'm wearing pants that didn't fit me last month, signs of Spring are all around....but I'm not satisfied. Maybe I get too used to the fast-forward button on our DVR (Comcast's version of the TiVo). The DVR lets me fast-forward past the things I don't care to watch and get on to the good parts. Why can't I fast forward past the weight loss process and get to the part where the weight is lost? Why can't I fast forward past the part where I suck wind on the elliptical machine and get to the part where I can jog and still hold a conversation? Who wants to watch this part in the middle? Not me. It isn't too entertaining.

I know my lack of patience is making my attitude suck lately where weight loss and fitness are concerned. I also know all the wise quotes about "enjoying the journey," and "it's the journey and not the destination" and all that sort of crap. But I'm not feeling it this week. Maybe next week I can enjoy the status quo, but this week I want a fast forward button.

Before & After

I've had a printout of these "before & after" pictures from an online simulator sitting on the dresser in my master bedroom closet for a few months. The "before" picture is to the left and has my starting weight 2 months ago. The "after" picture is to the right. My husband, bless his stretching-the-truth-soul said I look more like the "after" picture than the "before." Note to self, must give him more sex for this comment. :)


Check out your own weight loss simulator from the folks at Prevention magazine. You can even try on different swimsuits without the terror and excruciatingly unflattering fluorescent lighting that usually accompanies trying on swimsuits!

Sugar Plump Panties

Panties! A normal everyday necessity for most (not necessarily 20-something female celebrities), but a real pain for people losing weight. I mean we all have our favorite pairs. The ones that stay where they are supposed to, don't ride up, wash well, aren't too embarrassing looking, feel good on, etc. Then there is the shrink factor. This means the ones that when they are not being worn, shrink down to a little looking size, so that when you hold them up they don't look like they fit a Porsche, but look tiny and demure.

Then you start losing weight and suddenly your panties aren't there with ya. They are falling off. Never at home, mind you, usually out in public when it would be awkward to pull them up discretely. Not to mention panties aren't cheap. Well the good ones aren't. You could buy a 6-pack of the fruit of the looms at Target or something, but I doubt they would ever feel good on. The ones I like tend to cost at least $6-10 a pair. And while I'm the queen of shopping bargains, I still figure I have a good two to three hundred bucks invested in panties. What!?

And what do you do with the panties when they become too big? Not like you can give them to goodwill. Not like you can have a clothes exchange with your buddies and say "hey, does anyone want my old fat panties?" Does Al Gore realize how many fat girl panties are filling up our overcrowded city landfills each year? Surely this contribute to global warming.

I will probably be disowned for publicly sharing this next tidbit. My mother, raised during the depression and ever so crafty, takes her old underwear (usually worn out, not outgrown) and cuts them up for cleaning rags. An ironic fact since there is ample fabric in her panties and she does little or no cleaning. She has cut up pieces of cotton in her home that date back to the 70s. In fact, when my brother and his new bride were visiting a few years ago, my mother offered some of her "special cleaning rags" to my sister-in-law. I could only mildly imagine the horrified look on her face as her new mother-in-law offered her some hunks-o-granny-panties that she should pack with her on the airplane and take back to her home. What bonding that would be every time she pulled out the spray can of Lemon Pledge to think "I'm cleaning my table with cloth that used to adorn your mom's ass crack." I'm telling ya, that might be enough to keep me from eating at that table.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter, to those of you who celebrate the holiday! When I was a kid, we used to celebrate two Easters. Because my dad is Greek, we had a second Easter celebration for Greek Easter. Greek Easter is usually at least a week or two past regular US easter, which I think is done so that they can buy the candy on sale after the holiday (but you didn't hear that from me). Anyway, what I remember of Greek Easter was basically the opportunity for more candy. The rest of the actual celebration was much like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you've seen that movie you pretty much understand any Greek celebration I've ever been to, although I haven't been to any in about 25 years.

Anyhow....it has been quite a while since I posted anything. I'm on and off the wagon more than I care to admit with my habits. I do feel pretty good that somehow that glimmer of hope resides in me each time I get back on the wagon. I went to my doctor's last week and he said I'd lost 16 pounds in 3 months. The nurse said that was fantastic. I was standing there thinking "geez, is that it??" In my mind I figure I should be able to lose 16 pounds in a week, so when I think of 16 pounds over 3 months it seems depressing. However, as the nurse pointed out, it is in excess of one pound a week which is very sensible. I need to learn how to not make sensible feel like a failure, I guess. :)

Stay tuned for more adventures of the sugar plump fairy!

P.S. I think this is my first easter EVER without a chocolate easter bunny. And ya know what? I survived.

Sometimes you give, sometimes you take

Sometimes I'm so concerned about helping others that I forget to help myself. Or maybe it's just that it seems easier to help others than to help myself. And certainly anything is easier for me than asking for help. However, to live life to its fullest, sometimes you give, sometimes you take.

When I first started this blog, oh about a month ago, I was on the honeymoon phase of my renewed healthy habits and doing quite well. Then, as usually happens with me, something happens to discourage me and my "all or nothing" personality takes over, deems myself a failure, and stops trying so hard.

Well, as a "failure," (my words) I didn't really want to share the details. What fun is that pointing out your flaws? But the reality of losing weight (part of what I promised this blog would be about) is that sometimes you do well and sometimes you don't. It is how you handle the times you don't that make the difference.

Now that my "failure" party is over, I'm re-dedicating myself to good habits and am feeling better already. I've been reading other blogs, websites and books like crazy looking for inspiration and finding tons of it (no pun intended). In the next few days I'll be posting more on what I've found inspirational, as a means of "paying it forward."

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Sleeping is making me stress about sleeping

Apparently too little sleep makes you fat. And apparently too much sleep also makes you fat. One would think there would be some magical calculation out there for the optimal number of hours you need, but I keep seeing conflicting information. Add to this my own social observation of my dog, a 2 year old daschund mix, who sleeps about 18 hours a day and is skinny as a rail. What gives?

Is it the quality of the sleep? Is it the number of hours a day spent in bed? If you get some good sex before sleeping does this add or subtract from your hours? If you lay in bed worrying about sleeping, or the errands you forgot to run, does that affect your perfect sleep number equation?

And what about those pills? There's one that makes you sleepwalk and eat hotdog buns in the middle of the night. Then there's the one that appears to give you trippy hallucinations about butterflies. Then there's the one that supposedly makes you dream of talking beavers and Abe Lincoln. Does drugged sleep count as better sleep than natural sleep?

All I know is I wake up still tired almost every single morning. Then I worry I had too much sleep or I worry I didn't have enough. Either way, I didn't have quality sleep, which I feel is unobtainable. Maybe I'm overthinking things. I'm guessing the reason my dog can sleep 18 hours is he has no worries.

Pancakes bigger than my head

You know you've been low-carbing it when the thought of pancakes bigger than your head make you start to drool...just a little bit. The gals over at HungryGirl, (a fun site for daily emails about new low-calorie, sometimes low-carb products) featured a site today that makes pillows in the form of food! The "stack of pancakes pillow" looks yummy. If I had that pillow sitting on a chair anywhere in my house, I'd be hungry 24-7. They did have some "pear" pillows, but somehow they just didn't look as scrumptious.

Does sometimes just looking at pictures of food make you hungry? I know if I'm really jonesing for something not on my plan, that is a guarantee that commercials with gooey and yummy looking shots of that specific food will be on tv. Commercials are evil that way. I saw a great postcard on Post Secret once that said something like "I google my cravings when I'm hungry." In the back of my head I thought to myself "wow, at least I don't do that!" Hey, an unfair judgement, but we have to draw the line somewhere.