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Showing posts from January, 2018

D14 Pride

I'm sure I'm not the only kid who hated to hear "disappointed" from their parents. As in "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed." I'd rather you be mad! Mad I can handle. Mad I can fix. Disappointed hits me where it hurts. It's such a powerful message and it really rattles me to my core.

"I'm mad" means you're mad at something I've done. An action. I can fix that! I can apologize, do it differently and move on.

"I'm disappointed" means I am fundamentally wrong. Whatever the action was that made you mad I can't fix because it came from a place of me being broken deep down, somewhere unfixable.

Disappointed to me feels doomed, heavy and terrible.

To me the exact opposite of disappointment is pride.

I feel proud of myself when I make choices that I know are better for me. When I make the choice to do something that will result in a good outcome I feel good! Sometimes there is a delayed gratification on the scale and t…
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D13 I'm Worth It

Short and sweet:

I'm worth it.

I deserve to feel good. I deserve to look good. I deserve love and respect and if I don't give it to myself, who will!?

Good food and an occasional indulgence feels good. Exercise and an occasional rest day feels good. I feel good when I treat myself well and I deserve to feel good so I'm gonna keep treating myself well!

-t
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D12 Variety!

I remember once when I was shopping with my extremely thin sister and her extremely thin friend asking the sales associate for a certain top to bring to them in the dressing room. I was in a store I had never shopped at and could not shop at because I far exceeded the top of their size range.

The associate looked at me disgusted and said "they're one size fits all". Well, excuse me. Bitch.

I was very limited to the stores I could shop at. Some department stores had Plus Size sections and there were a few specialty stores but I couldn't shop at 95% of stores at the mall.

Charlotte Russe opened at our local mall a couple years ago and I wanted to go in so badly when I saw it. I loved the shoes and the clothing on the mannequins and I wanted to see more but I was terrified. Every time we went to the mall I'd slow down and admire the window and I'd keep walking. My wife kept asking me if I wanted to go in but I kept refusing.

One time she lovingly pushed a little too…
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D11 I'm A Maniac

Day 11 is brought to you by my manic need to control EVERYTHING.

I never realized I was such a control freak but when we adopted Tallulah I became aware of my blatant need to control everything. I want to control her interactions with my cat and force him out of his domain before he's ready because even though he's comfortable downstairs, I'm not comfortable with him being down there!

I realized that my anxiety would absolutely cause a huge issues as animals are super sensitive and I started trying to calm myself down by acknowledging the issue. However, in acknowledging my desire to control my pets I started to recognize a familiar pattern.

I'm a control freak.

I mean I should've known and I think deep down I always have. It makes so much sense now why the crazy restrictive diet I was on "worked". Because it gave me such rigid structure that I didn't need to think about it! It controlled me so I could relax for once...or at least I thought I was relaxing…
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D10 Clearer Skin

I've always had terrible skin. My acne was ugly as well as painful. It was bad enough that I was extremely overweight, I should've at least had clear skin! Some people get all the terrible luck and I am one of those people.

I tried pills that upset my stomach, creams that made my skin peel off and even holistic treatments but nothing seemed to work. My face hurt!!

I finally gave up the pursuit of clearer skin thinking it was one of my crosses to bear. Even in my 20's when I should've outgrown the awkwardness of being a teenager I didn't.

I bought expensive makeup and did my best to camouflage the blinding red and white dots all over my face and most of the time I wouldn't leave my house without a full face of makeup on. It made spontaneity a no-go...

Several pounds into my journey my skin started clearing up, slowly but surely. I was shocked! I think the wonderful, yummy and nutritious foods are the reason I started seeing it clear up. I know it could also be t…
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D9 Shopping!

I never enjoyed clothes shopping. I always enjoyed admiring other peoples wardrobes but my size and shape made it extremely difficult for me to find clothes I like. There wasn't a lot of variety, the bigger clothes were never as trendy as the smaller clothes and if you were lucky enough to find something trendy it was probably ridiculously expensive.

I'm not saying that these days I LOVE shopping (unless it's for shoes!) but I will say it's a heck of a lot easier to do now and I think I'll enjoy it even a little more once I relinquish a few of the pounds I'm currently holding onto.

Every time I put something back because I didn't like it, not because it didn't fit is a little win for me!

-t
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Saying Hello To Tallulah

I started blogging again on 12/30/2017 and committed to a blog a day in 2018. That's 365 blogs I'm committing to write, though I'm sure I'll end up over that and I'm OK with that. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with Writing My Success Story and I'm still discovering the "theme" of this blog but really and truly I think the theme is just going to be me recording my day to day life. It will be mostly health and wellness based and pertain to Weight Watchers and Massage therapy but there will also be tons and tons of posts about my family because I love them and because it's growing.

NO!! We are not expecting a human child. Not yet.

However, we did welcome a new addition into our home. Her name is Tallulah and she is every bit as sweet, feminine and silly as her name. Our hearts are full and overflowing with joy. We loved our Ugly so much and when she passed we weren't sure that pain would ever go away and now we are certain it won't; …
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D8 To Lighten The Load

I am not sure if my worrying is genetic or if I just learned it from my worrier mother but I'm a worrier. I worry about everything; most of the things I worry about are totally and completely out of my control which makes me worry more! If I can't control it, I can't fix it. Occasionally I'll get a bried break from all the worrying and then I'll worry about the fact that I have nothing to worry about.

The truth is worrying is a choice I make. I can choose to worry or I can choose to accept that worry will not change things. There are things in my life that I do have the ability to change and things in my life that I need to accept I cannot change. It is not my job to worry constantly and it's not healthy for me either.

Mindfulness is something I'm starting to practice but it's going very slowly. However, slow is sustainable and I like sustainable. Mindfulness is a lot like a weight loss journey; it'll never end. There is no black or white, just tons a…
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D7 Stop Existing, Start Living!

I can't take credit Stop Existing, Start Living! I stole it from a meme I saw on Connect (which is WW only social media, like Facebook or Instagram but only for WW members)

I was like THIS!! THIS IS MY DAY 7!!

People often say that WW saved their lives and I think that's beautiful and special and it speaks to them but WW did not save my life. Before WW there wasn't much of a life to save. Sure I had some really good things in my life, like my wife and my dogs and I loved them but I had absolutely NO vision. I had no self confidence and I felt like nothing would ever change. I was sure we would be married, living with my parents and our dogs until the day my parents died at which point we'd probably be homeless. That is if there was still a "we" by then. If you've ever been married and lived at home at the same time, you know the stress is real.

I wanted to change it, I just didn't know how. My track record wasn't great. I tried a few schools when I g…
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D6 I Deserve It

I used to have a huge portion of something fattening and sugary and say "it's OK. I deserve this!" and I really believed I did.

It made me feel like crap to eat crap but I did it because I thought I deserved to feel like crap.  I ate both to soothe and punish myself.

I thought if everyone around me was saying I was less-than, well I must be! If 1 person says something cruel it hurts, if 2 people say something cruel it hurts twice as much but if the majority of people surrounding you are saying the same thing than it must be true, right? Majority rules. It hurts, but it's true.

I didn't have the confidence, the desire or the drive to fight the majority so I gave in and I accepted that this was my fate. I deserved to feel terrible both physically and mentally all the time so I fed that.

With massive amounts of crap. It wasn't just the quality of the food that was the problem, it was also the quantity.

I joined WW because deep down I heard myself saying "WHY? Wh…
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D5 For my Fur (& future) Family

When I take time to consider WHY I want to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle a huge part of my motivation is for the fur family I do have and the future family we haven't yet created.

I adopted my first dog Lexi (aka Ugly) a couple years before I joined WW. She was a high energy, holy terror (you can read more about her here if you are so inclined) who caused A LOT of trouble and burned a LOT of calories being bad. Yet, she still became overweight pretty quickly. My terrible eating habits started to rub off on my dog! I would feed her constantly. If she was good (which she rarely was!) I tried to show her how proud of her I was by treating her. She was not great on a leash and what would've helped is walking her more but I didn't have the energy with 100+ pounds on my body to walk her.

Then we adopted Karlee who is a Puggle and predisposed to weight issues because of her breed (pug/beagle mix). She came to us THIN but every time she did something cute I gave her a t…
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D4 Energy

Today my why is the natural energy boost I get from making better choices! I feel so much lighter and less “blech” when I take care of myself. When I’m not making choices that make me feel good something as simple as doing the dishes can feel like climbing Everest.

I'm someone who is very easily overwhelmed and I'm a wicked self-sabotager. I pile WAY to much on my plate and then SURPRISE I can't do it all. I failed. I suck. I'll never get ahead so I don't even bother trying. It's exhausting and I don't just mean mentally.

When I overwhelm myself I become paralyzed and I feel glued to my couch. I'll keep telling myself "5 more minutes" meaning after 5 more minutes I'll get up and start doing the dishes but then I think to myself "then after that I have wipe the counters and unload the dishwasher and I just don't have all that energy!" So you know what I do instead? EAT. Which makes more dishes. And makes me feel like crap.

The ne…
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D3 Confidence

Before I joined WW I was very used to being the biggest person in the room; even as a child I was typically much larger than most of the adults. It is a cruel trick ya know, being so large yet seemingly so invisible. It was easy for people to talk around me, not include me and function as if I were not there. I was the proverbial elephant in the room. I was so angry when I was ignored and wondered why I wasn't worth talking to but if someone approached I panicked and withdrew. What on earth would we talk about!? I didn't know how to make small talk! My conversational skills were lacking because I was so used to being bullied by my peers my entire life I did anything and everything I could not to give them ammunition. I kept as quiet as I could and hoped that this would make me invisible and then I got angry at people when they gave me what I wanted and ignored me.

The thing is, then I didn't know that I wanted  to be ignored. I didn't realize how much I was praying for …
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D2 Run!

Because I'm a recovering black-or-white thinker who is trying REALLY hard to stay away from extremes I struggle to justify wanting to lose more weight. I''ve already lost a lot, how much more should I want or expect to lose? I often find myself wondering if my motivation is healthy or if I'm slipping back into unhealthy thinking and behaviors. When I got down to my lowest weight it was motivated by aesthetics. I wanted to LOOK a certain way. It didn't matter how I felt (crazy and crappy) it just mattered how I looked but I never looked the way I wanted to. I was never skinny enough. My quest for skinny made me scary and totally unhealthy. Thank goodness it didn't last long but there have been side effects that have stuck around long after the crazy diet stopped.

I think of black and white like a spectrum. One is far from the other and in the middle is all that glorious gray. It gets darker gray as we head closer to the black side of the spectrum and lighter gray…
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D1 Shoes

Day 1 of 31 Reasons WHY I want to commit to living my healthiest life with Weight Watchers and exercise.

THE SHOES!!!

I have much deeper reasons and I'll probably explore those later on this month but I'm going with vanity to start and I'm OK with it. 

I love my new shoe collection. It grows by the day and it makes me so happy. Every time I slip on a pair I feel so feminine yet strong. It takes a certain skill to stand on spikes and it is one that I just recently developed.

Before I started WW with over 100 extra pounds on my body I couldn't trust that my feet and ankles wouldn't collapse under me if I tried to prop them up in a cute shoe. I wore sensible shoes but longed to wear the uber sexy heels I saw other women in. They screamed sexy and I wanted that. I didn't feel sexy. I didn't feel strong. I didn't feel powerful.

I felt deprived. 

Plus size fashion has come a long way but when I need it most of the articles of clothes had cartoon characters on them…
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