Wow! Big Pants

The other day I went for my Saturday morning workout at the gym in Chester. I came home and was ready to start my chores for the day. It was a cool day so it was time to pull out the long pants. I have 2 pairs of favorite jeans. I don't know how many years I've had them, but it has been a while. They are worn out in all the right spots (and some of the wrong spots) - so soft and so comfortable.

Now I knew when I went to put my favorite "doing chores" jeans on, they would be a bit large because I had lost some weight - but I figured I could just put on a belt and enjoy the comfort of my favorite jeans I hadn't seen since before summer. So I proceeded to dig them out of the closet and put them on...it didn't take long before I realized a belt was not going to help. Not only were they too big in the waist, they were just too big everywhere! You know how little kids in diapers have that "diaper look" to them, that's what I looked like. For a brief moment I did think to myself, "I'm just kicking around the house, maybe I'll just wear them." But then I thought, "You just lost a lot of weight and now you're going to wear 'diaper pants'?? What are you thinking?" So out came every pair of pants I had in the closet. I tried them all on and each time, the same result, some worse than others but all basically unwearable. I do have one pair of jeans that pretty much fit (I had bought them early in the summer). That was it, one pair.

Most woman would probably be happy with the prospect of having to go shopping because they have nothing to wear. I however, am not like most women in that category. I do not like shopping for clothes but it's going to have to be done because one can not go around town in 'diaper pants.' It's just not right.

But here is a cool thing. I had bought a few pairs of pants from Eddie Bauer back in June. I only wore them a few times before summer finally set in. I went to put those pants on last week and they didn't fit either. They weren't horribly big but about a size too big. Since I had barely worn them and spent a fair amount of money on them I decided to contact Eddie Bauer and tell them my story. Do you know what they said, "Send them back and tell us what size you want. If we don't carry them any more, we'll refund your money." Eddie Bauer is awesome!

Despite the fact that I have basically made my wardrobe unwearable (mind you, it wasn't much of a wardrobe to begin with), I do love going to the gym - losing the weight and building the muscle. It's fun go to class and see my friends and people that have become my "gym" friends. Rachel Ryans Fitness in a very unique place, everyone there is so supportive of everyone else. Rachel herself is so 'in tune' with the needs of each person. It make me think of the bar "Cheers" - where everyone knows your name, but of course at Cheers they're just sitting around drinking beer - a little different than what happens at the gym, but everyone does know your name there.

Body vs. Mind

I've noticed something happening within myself. My mind and my body are on two different pages. And yes, this will shock all of you, but it surfaces when chocolate is involved.

I have cut down considerably on the amount of sweets in general that I eat. I really don't have much processed sugar at all any more. And "they", whoever "they" are (I'm assuming its experts in the field), say that once you cut down on your sugar intake, your body will not crave sugar as much. So the more you eat sugar, the more your body wants it, and the less you eat sugar, the less your body wants it. I have found this to be true most of the time except when it comes to a decadent chocolate dessert - my mind still wants it regardless of how my body feels. And so the battle begins, who will win? The body or the mind?

The other night I went out with some friends. They had a drink and a bite to eat. Since I had already eaten dinner, I chose to treat myself to a special chocolate dessert. There were a few good choices, including a big chocolate cake, but I finally settled on the chocolate mousse - thinking it was a better choice as far as portion size. I started eating the chocolate mousse, which was delicious, but then about half way through, my body started "talking" to me. It was saying "enough sugar", you know that feeling you get when you've had too much sugar, that's how I started to feel. But there were my eyes looking at about half of the chocolate mousse still in the dish and my brain said, "you can't waste that chocolate mousse, it's too precious, how often do you get to eat chocolate mousse?" Guess who won????

It wasn't my body (who was clearly speaking to me), it was my mind. Now what I probably should have done was excuse myself to the ladies room and called Rachel - my personal trainer/nutrition coach - and asked for a little help. She probably would have told me to ask for a little dish to take the rest home. I probably would have said there's not enough left to take home, I should just eat it. Rachel would have said it doesn't matter, take it home anyway and then you are not denying yourself of it or "wasting" it, you can have it later. And this advice probably would have worked, because it usually does work out when I call her. But none of that happened. I never called/texted her because my struggle wasn't with over-indulging on my calories (I was within my calorie count for the day), it was a struggle between what my body wanted and what my mind wanted. This was something new.

The point I am trying to make is having support and calling on that support when you need it is really key when trying to lose weight. Looking back, I should have made a quick phone call to Rachel, but since this was such a "new" struggle I was going through, it really didn't occur to me (or perhaps my mind didn't want to hear what she was going to say). So find someone you can call when you are trying to lose weight and get into a fitness routine. Find someone who will push you in the right direction even if that's not what you want to hear at the moment. It can be a friend, a personal trainer, a workout buddy, anyone who you think will keep you on the right track and tell you what you need to hear, which is not necessarily what you want to hear.

Yes, I ate the rest of that mousse even though I was "sugared out". I know, you're probably thinking this is not a good weight loss story because "the bad guys" won, and it's true they did. But I share this story for two reasons.

One, is because weight loss is full of triumphs and tribulations, steps forward and steps backward, struggles between body and mind, a constant "discovery" process. It is a learning game in so many different ways. So chalk up those setbacks to a learning experience and maybe next time the outcome will be different. I know next time I'm having a battle between the body and the mind, I will call Rachel because I have discovered something new about myself.

The other reason I share this with you is to show you the power of the mind. My mind overruled my body - the physical symptoms I was feeling - that's pretty amazing. If we can channel our mind in the right direction, we are capable of amazing things.

Interesting Thing...

As you all know, I have changed how and what I eat quite a bit. And you might be wondering how this all works with preparing meals for the family because the last thing you want to do is prepare two meals for the family. So I am going to tell you what I have done. As far as dinner goes, what I usually do is prepare a normal meal - meat, vegetable, and some sort of starch. Initially, when I was trying to get down to my goal weight, I would just skip the starch part of the meal for myself, but I now have added it back in at a smaller portion. I eat lots of vegetables and salad, and I am also a little more picky about the kind of meat I choose. We eat a lot of chicken, fish and pork - I try to stay away from the fatty meats. On rare occasions, I will make myself something different than the rest of the family, but for the most part, we all have the same thing, I just change my portions of each food group. I know, this isn't very interesting - I haven't gotten to the interesting part yet...

We still do Subway when things are a little tight time-wise in the evening. We still do pizza usually once on the weekend. However, the kids get what they want for pizza and I get my own pizza. I usually have veggies, no sauce, no mozzarella, sometimes ricotta and then Parmesan cheese. You might think it's a little weird with no sauce or mozzarella but it's actually really good. It's not greasy or soggy which I love. There's nothing worse than opening up that pizza box and seeing all the grease on the bottom of the box or worse yet, soggy dough from all the watery sauce. I have ordered this pizza when out with a group of friends and at first they look at you like you are a little crazy, but when they try it, they like it!

Now here's an interesting thing that has happen with breakfast - yes, I'm finally getting to the interesting part. I was buying my kids the "sugar cereals", Lucky Charms (a favorite), Cinnamon Toast Crunch - you get the idea. One day, Rachel and I were talking about this and she basically said all those cereals were junk (I may as well give them a bowl of sugar for breakfast) and the kids should be eating better cereal. She brought me in a sample of Kashi Go Lean Crunch for both kids to try. I gave it to them and they tried it and said, "it's not horrible" - well that was good enough for me. I decided from that point on, I would no longer buy "sugar cereals". I loaded up on various healthy cereals (with Rachel's help) and placed them into the cereal cupboard. Now we probably had 5 or so "sugar cereals" that were more than half way full. I told the kids they could finish up what was there, but then that was it, no more sugar cereals. I also explained to them why they needed to eat something healthy in the morning and how they would feel better throughout the morning because they were eating better. I received the normal moans and groans about how the cereal tasted like cardboard and "why do we have to eat it, I don't feel any different".

But here's the interesting part (I know, you've been waiting a long time to get to the interesting part), the "sugar cereals" that were about half full a month ago in the cupboard, are still half full. The kids, on their own, have chosen to eat the healthy cereals instead of the sugar cereals. They still occasionally complain about it, but I think maybe they just like to complain about it. They are choosing their own cereal and they can choose the "sugar cereals" if they want - they are right there in front of them in the cupboard - but they don't. I think it's time to throw the "sugar cereals" out, they're not eating them!