April Showers Bring.....

me back to do some serious catchin' up - if Ms. Johnson hasn't fired me yet!!

Hey all!! Tax season, audits and the usual first quarter b.s. is just about finished, so I will make my return on April 1st! Bigger (yep) and better than ever!

What was that Dolly Parton song "Starting Over Again"? .......

Cya!

If nothing that I have said so far has persuaded you....

Where the hell are we?

The Gang! Ken, Me, Michele, Cynthia, and Little Lizzie!

...to change your lifestyle and get healthy and fit.....please read on!!

Hi All!

I have been really happy lately, just really, really happy. Dunno if it is the exercise or the vitamins or what, but I have just been elated. OH!! I know why! It happened last Friday....

I was getting some lunch. It had been a long week and I decided that I would treat myself to some pizza - crustless of course! (God, I love this diet!!) So I placed my order and sat on a bench in the foyer to wait.

Now, let me set the scene for you. Here I was, little ol me, in my cute Jones New York slinky top, my boot cut slim pants, and my brand new wig (yes I unapologetically wear wigs! You got a problem with that, you are more than welcome to come over and do my hair every morning!)

In short, I was looking F - I - N - E fine! To me anyways....Anyhoo, there was this guy in the buffet line probably 30 feet from me. Tall, cowboy lookin guy, wavy hair, nice butt - and he kept looking over at me! ME! It was like, get some pizza, look at me, get some salad, look at me, get some cheesy bread, you get the idea....

Now I am a stickler for eye contact and smiling and saying 'hello'. I don't trust anyone that cannot return your gaze, especially when speaking to you. When you are a big girl tho, eye contact from another male can be rare. Sometimes you get the quick look away, or the look over your head thing, or the look scared and run in the other direction. Ladies, any man that would do any of these things is not worth the precious breath that you are wasting on them.......MOOOVE OOON!

Oh, back to the story...so anyway, dude was looking at me, and I smiled and said "Hi! How are ya?" and dude KEPT EYE CONTACT, KEPT SMILING and said "Good, how are you?"

I said "Fine" and he said, get this, he said "Yes ya are"! Just like that, country twang and all!

Then he went and probably joined his wife for lunch......but that one moment made me feel so wonderful!!!

And it happened a couple more times this weekend! Eye contact, little conversation, no ones running away.......Dang, I must be getting good looking!

Every one says that they can see the loss in my face....which I thought was a nice way of saying "....but your butt is still massive..." but..I am starting to see and feel different, better, more energetic. Every morning is like Christmas....wait, barf, change that.....Every morning is exciting because of the subtle changes that I am going thru.

Weigh in is this Friday and so far I am at 228. I am a qualified size 20 and an and 18 in elastic.

My body and the scale are doing two opposite things, so I have come to a decision. The first weigh in showed our team with a total loss of 37 pounds. The number one team had a loss of 90 pounds. So I don't think that we are going to win this one. But my team is not giving up the fight for fitness!

In my obsessive battle with the scale, and because of a slight injury, I decided to drop the weight training, thinking it was the training that was keeping my weight from dropping. (Sorry, Grant)

Well, I am starting weights up again, along with my powerwalking and my new sport, hiking. In the end, its only numbers on a scale. And those numbers are the only thing blocking the total picture - my health. So, no more jumping on the scale until it says what I think it should say, no more fretting over hormonal/water retention bouts, no more weighing up to 10 times a day!

I will continue my diet and exercise plan, and let my body do it's thing the way it wants to. Make Peace and Mooooove On!!

Well gotta get some of my fabby new clothes out for work tomorrow! Life is really fun!! Oh, and the pics are of a hiking trip that my team went on a couple weeks ago - four miles in the woods! We had a great time!!

Til next time.....YOU CAN DO IT!

Permanent Weight Loss and Yes, Diets DO Work

Gaining weight is easy, losing it is hard and according to several well published studies keeping it off is damn near impossible. Studies show that 95% of people who lose weight put it back on in five years or less.

95%

Ouch.

Why is that? I'm not sure what the studies say but my guess is people don't fully change their lives. The diet/exercise program they were on was just temporary. They started their weight loss regime to reach a goal: reunion, new years, summertime, something. And once that goal is reach they go right back to their old, fatty ways.

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar:

You start your diet/exercise regime. You follow it to the letter (mostly), the whole time counting the pounds you lost and the counting down the days until you can end this godforsaken diet. Ouch. And the moment you reach your goal weight it's HELLO OREOS! WOO HOO!

And then we complain that diets never work and how is it we managed to put the weight back on so fast. And this is for those of us who actually got started to begin with.

LOL.

As a person who has gained and lost twenty pounds most of my adult life I understand the process all too well. What I've come to realize however, is there is only one way to lose the weight and to keep it off: Recognize that whatever I do I have to do it FOR LIFE.

That's right. For life.

So if you're going to do Atkins, you're going to do Atkins for life. If you're going to do Weight Watchers, you're going to do Weight Watchers for life. If you're going to do The Zone, you're gonna do it for life. It's just that simple.

You can't look at a 'diet' as a temporary thing. It's PERMANENT. So change your way of thinking and recognize that whatever you decide to do, it needs to be something you can do forever.

For me for example, I recognize I can't be on a diet that's not going to allow me to eat ice cream...lol. I can't. I tried. It never works. SMH. And the reality of it is I just eat more ice cream. LOL. I've never been good at deprivation.

So think long and hard before you start that next diet program. Ask yourself if this is something you can do for life. If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board and try again. Remember it shouldn't feel like a diet. It should feel like your life. 'Cause the truth of the matter is...it is.