NEW YEAR, NEW ME!!!

Hello Everyone!
After a very long hiatus, I am back with fresh new attitude and a willingness to get back on track and shed this damn weight for good! More important, I am really wanting to eat healthier, BE heathier.
Somehow during the summer of 2010 I just gave up... on a whole lot of things. I'm not sure how I lost "me" but I think I've found myself again. I cannot believe that my weight is up to 187 pounds. Never in my life did I ever imagine I would EVER weight this much. It blows my mind that I've carried this weight around this past year and that I weight more than I weighed at the time I gave birth to my son 12 years ago. My full term weight was 171.
In January of 2011 I had made a "come back" video and was up to 177 pounds. I thought that was the highest I would ever get. I didn't follow up with videos, I wasn't really ready at that time to commit to a healthy lifestyle or to anything for that matter. Once I stopped making videos, I started gaining weight. When I started this journey on YouTube in 2009 I never dreamed that it would be the tool to my success. Without that accountability I was lost. I have no support at home from family or friends, no one else I know is overweight. My YouTube friends are the only ones I can really relate to and they have been my backbone. I am so thankful for each and every one of them.
I'm so glad that I've come back to this blog and making videos. I'm not a quitter. A procrastinator, yes, but not a quitter. So, onwards and upwards my friends!

Way Behind!!!

Wow! I am SO far behind on these blogs! I always forget about it to be honest (sorry little innocent blog) I've had a pretty crazy intense last couple of months. After several visits to specialists out of town, we found a surgeon that specializes in rectal cancer and his recommendation was to just remove the tumor and surrounding tissues and see what stage she's in and he was pretty sure it was only stage 1. He was correct. He removed it and it's all done, no chemo or radiation for her, she is such a lucky gal, we couldn't even believe it.
So now that's all done and over, we can focus and get back to our "normal" lives. For me, that means getting this darn weight off, back to eating right again. These past few months, specifically the past month, I've eaten pretty darn bad. I've had vending machine food, hospital food, restraunt food late at night.... basically just eating to stay alive and not really caring much what it was. I did gain about 4 pounds but considering... that is not bad at all. I did continue my workout routine which probably saved me from really falling off my wagon completely. I've added weight training and continue with TheBarbieWithMuscle (YouTube) fat loss challenge. A lot of the girls participating are doing so great, it's so inspiring!
So, onward I press doing all that I can...my eating is still not back to the great place that it was before the bad news about my mom but I'm getting there and that's what counts right?

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone! I know I'm really REALLY bad at updating this blog! I've got to get into a routine and then it will all come together I'm sure.
So much time has gone by.... I'm very good about keeping up on my videos on YouTube but for some reason drop the ball here. I see so many wonderful and creative blogs, I get jealous! I need to play around with the page format and style, pics, all that kind of great stuff so I promise that I will soon :)
So, what have I been up to? Well, weight-wise I'm at probably 158.5, I was at 157.9 a couple of days ago but that was before New Year's Eve and soon seriously bad news that we received this past Monday. My mom found out she has cancer. Rectal cancer to be exact. She's had some bleeding this year and her doctor sort of chalked it up to hemorrhoids and she finally was very insistant on getting a coloscopy so she had that done a couple of weeks ago and she wasn't quite "under" so she heard the doctor say, "Oh, that's not good" and it turns out she has a tumor just at the entrance of her rectum which is very small but flat and very difficult to get to surgically so they are going to start with a round of chemo and radiation to start with and surgery to follow. She took the news in stride as this is the 2nd time she's heard the dreaded "C" word. She had breast cancer back in 2003 and she fought that and has been fine since.
The day we got the news we decided to go out and celebrate New Years early which sounds really strange but getting trashed seemed like the best way (at the time) for us (my sister, mom, and I) to handle the news. We were well on our way to getting there when we got the call that she had to head off to the hospital for her CT scan so that spoiled our plans. She was really excited for us to celebrate New Years together though so we went to her Elks Lodge where she's a member and they had dinner, live music, and dancing (she LOVES to dance) so it was a good time. They even dedicated a song to her which was so nice, very touching. We all cried at the stroke of midnight followed by smiles so it was all good :)
I'm not sure how to post a link to that video but I'll try:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqlaYNmjFCs
I don't know how they put that cute box YouTube video link in here... I've got a learn how to navigate on here!

Oh my gosh, I haven't been bloggin' for a while now! I need to get caught up! So my last weigh in was Friday, Nov. 6th and I weighed in at 159.8 so I'm down a total of 13 pounds since Aug 24th.. not too bad.
I had a wonderful Halloween this year, so many trick-or-treaters, I could no believe! We actually ran out of candy and had to make a grocery run! The kids were dressed up so cute and in great spirits, I loved them all.
I'm going to keep this short and sweet since it's 2:48am and I can't sleep... I think I should at least try now....

WOW, missed blog on 4th & 5th Weigh-ins!!

Ooops! I haven't been blogging! Bad girl. So my 4th weigh-in (Sept 21st) was a downer, no loss that week but my 5th weigh-in (Sept 28th) did ok with 2 pounds that week. I want it to go so much faster but it's a good pace so I'll take it! I feel SO much better and have more energy, everything feels better which is really motivating because that's just makes it so much easier to keep up with it. I do "cheat" every now and again but my "cheats" these days don't even come close to the way I was eating so I'm making permanent changes all the way around. That's the way I want it to be, I don't ever want to feel bad for eating anything but I want to saty in control of what I'm eating too. A couple M&M's here and there won't inhibit my loss right? :)
So there it is. I'm spending much less time worrying about what I'm eating (and NOT eating) and just staying busy with work and now decorating for Halloween... LOVE! I'm putting up some more tutorials on Halloween looks too because that is SO much fun!
Until next week..... :)

3rd Weigh In & Measurements

So today was my 3rd weigh in and I'm so happy! After last weigh in I was a little bummed because I showed no loss but I knew it would show up this week and I lost 3 pounds this week. I'm @ 162.3- A total of 10 pounds in 3 weeks! Not bad hah? The measurements really shocked me too, 8.5 inches! I didn't feel like I've shrunk that much! This whole plan is really getting easy and I can't believe that I waited this long to try this hard to loose the weight. I have tried and nothing seemed to work but this sure does! I can visualize being thin again now and how good it's going to feel to feel light again. I'm hoping by Christmas I will have lost it all or at least be within 10 pounds of my goal. I love posting this whole journey on YouTube and blogging... it really makes a difference and holds me accountable. And on the plus side, I can visually SEE the results. Just looking at my face at the start to 3 weeks later, you can really see a difference. I am "de-puffing!"

2nd Weigh-In... bummer

Well, I had my 2nd weigh-in yesterday... it was EXACTLY the same! I was a little bummed but not surprised since I started my cycle on Friday. Before that Friday, I noticed that my weigh loss had stopped for the previous 4 days and was wondering, "What the heck?" and there ya have it. I ate pretty well except that Kandee Johnson posted a video on You Tube making cupcakes and I just HAD to try them out, I couldn't resist! Making cupcakes is one of my favorite things to do and in fact, for the past 2 years, I had been researching the business of cupcakereies (sp?) and have wanted to open up my own shop. I've got the spot picked and the concept, the name, everything. Anyway, I made a half batch and yes, I did eat.... but even with that, I didn't gain and that's a good thing. You know, life is gonna happen and you have to live but that's just one slip and you get right back on the plan and you're good. So many people slip up and they just figure, "Oh, screw it, I've slipped up, I might as well just eat this, and then this..." and on it goes. I don't look at it that way. When I slip, I move on, don't dwell on it. It's funny because although my weight was the same and showed no loss yesterday, today, it was 162.8, a 2.5 pound loss! Weird. I drank a lot of water yesterday though and my period is pretty much over so maybe that's all it took, who knows. I'll take it!