I gots me a little pedometer from Weight Watchers(tm). It not only tells me how many steps i’ve walked or how many miles i’ve walked, it tells me how that activity translates into extra food points for me to eat. The first two weeks of WW you don’t get any activity points anyway, but by then I’ll know how much more i need to be moving around to gain a point or two.

So, right now it says I’ve walked 1,335 steps, or .35 miles just from walking around in my office and going to lunch. I’m guessing 1/2 of my steps were to and from the bathroom, so there ya go! More water = more exercise. How about that? I wouldn’t have ever thought of that. Heehee.

I’m signing up for the monthly pass with WW so I pay the least amount per meeting (just over $9) and i get to use all the eTools online for free. My husband and I also agreed (I told him I was getting it, he said good idea) that it makes the most sense for me to buy the electronic food scale that will help me control my portion sizes and points (400 foods preprogrammed in as to how many points for how much weight that food is), in order to make my weight loss journey more successful and less frustrating.

I am 100% committed to making my goal this time instead of quitting when I got bored of the food I could eat (Mentality = food should be delicious and i should have as much as i want). YOU READ IT HERE FOLKS! Accountability is key for me, because otherwise I’ll start to cheat myself when the novelty wears off.

I am guessing that it will take me almost a year to lose the weight, given inevitable plateaus and bad weeks. This means that by NEXT SUMMER, theoretically, I could be unabashedly wearing a bikini in front of other people. (This means Melissa is on the hook to cut off that saggy skin). Now, I know perfectly well it could also take me TWO years, or more, to lose this weight. It all depends on me, which is kind of nice. I can make or break my own success.

So, on my computer here at work i have a little sign for myself that says:
FOOD = FUEL
Make sure you use high octane!

So, if it isn’t healthy fuel for my body, I have no business eating it.
And really, isn’t it all about mindset? Learning not to view food as a comfort or reward system, but as a necessity for living, and the fact that i need FAR FAR less than my American brain has been trained to see as portions.

A couple of days ago I was less than thrilled about the impending change in my diet and my lifestyle. Today, I could hardly be more excited about all the changes I’m going to be making and seeing.  And, I swear to God that if I ever actually fit into a pants size 10, I’ll be dancing up on the catwalk again at Embers… alone! Because Baby, if you’ve got it, flaunt it! (I’ve never actually worn a size 10 pair of pants because by the time my stepmother took control of my clothing debacle I was already a size 11 juniors!)

I think pretty much everyone knows that drinking water helps you lose weight, and as today is my first day back on weight watchers I am being very dutiful about it. But for heaven’s sake! It’s just after 11am and I’m going to be going pee AGAIN after I post this. I think this makes 4 times since 8:00 am. That’s more than once an hour. Thank God my job doesn’t involve me being out on the road and making sales calls or anything! You’d have to know where to find every public bathroom in a 20 mile radius!

ok, gotta GO!

Starting Weight Watchers tomorrow night. There is a meeting near my house at 7pm which is very convenient for me. I really prefer the Weight Watcher Centers where they have meetings all day everyday, but you take what you can get. The closest center isn’t close at all. I contacted the headquarters to get my Lifetime Membership Number. (oooh, ahhhh) So, I’m all ready to go. All except the dread of starting over.

The new outlook on food I’m cultivating is this:

1. The POINT of eating is to put fuel in my body.
2. The point of eating is NOT to provide pleasure for my body.
3. The pleasure of eating good food is just an added plus.
4. Thus, eating does not have to be pleasurable, it just has to be good fuel.
5. Good fuel for my body is not provided when I eat empty calories from sugar and processed grains and such.
6. High Quality food is full of nutrients and may or may not taste good. It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the fuel in the body.
7. Once in a while, having a little food that is pleasurable and not good fuel is okay. Just, not enough to live on.

I have been operating on the “I only eat food that tastes good” theory, and that theory has helped me to put on a lot of weight in my life. I am going to try to operate on a new Operating System: Eat to Live, don’t Live to Eat. If food doesn’t taste the way I like, I’ll eat less of it. Eventually my tastes will change and the sugared, processed foods won’t taste as good anyway. Higher nutrition content in food = less food needed to feel full and satisfied. If i could eat by taking a pill or get my nutrition from an IV every night, and never need real food again, sign me up.

The problem is I enjoy the social aspect of eating. I can still enjoy that aspect, it just provides a higher temptation level.
I want to be able to look at a box of donuts and say “ok, what in here will provide good fuel?” answer: “Nothing.”, and move on, past the donuts and on to the small bowl of oatmeal or egg or whatever.

Foods I do not currently eat that I would like to learn to either enjoy or at least tolerate:
Lentils
Legumes in general
Cottage Cheese
Non-fat Yogurt
Whole Wheat bread
Flaxseed
Tofu
Watch me turn into a granola girl… you know the ones i mean.

The time has come….
the pictures don’t lie
goodbye beloved alfredo sauce, farewell delicious bread, au revoir ice cream!

Next stop: Weight Watchers
Starting weight:  ummmm i’ll just keep that to myself for now
Goal weight: 130

Here is a picture of Melissa and me, a few drinks for the worse, at a recent party where we finally got to meet in person.
We have formed a mutual admiration society. Mutual adoration society?  Lovin’ YOU!

For the record, I’m feeling much better. Still kind of hard to breathe, but very little coughing. Stuffy head feeling, like there is cotton inside, but not stuffed up and congested. Tired, but not exhausted.

I couldn’t sleep last night. My cough medicine with vicodin worked great except for not putting me to sleep, which I am not sure it’s supposed to do, it’s supposed to make it so you can sleep by dulling any pain and suppressing your cough. But, you know how vicodin is, i couldn’t sleep, but i didn’t care. i hardly coughed at all. i spent roughly 5-6 hours laying on the bed just drifting from thought to thought, looking out the sliding glass door, and occasionally patting John on the arm or back or whatever to reassure him i was there when he woke up throughout the night. And it was all just… fine. I can see why people become addicted to it.  It doesn’t really get rid of your pain, it just makes it so you don’t care about the pain, the pain is fine. It’s a very floaty feeling.

Then about 4:30ish I started actually falling asleep, fell asleep for good when john left for work, and slept until approximately 10am. Might need a nap later.

hungry. would like bagels with cream cheese from Noah’s Bagels. will probably settle for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i want cereal, but the pharmacist said something to john about no dairy with my antibiotic. I may have to call for further clarification. not sure i can survive without having me some cereal.

I’m sick with a bad cold. John got it a few days before me. So, we’re home together. He made yummy pancakes for me this morning. For me and the kids really, but James wasn’t up so he didn’t get any. In fact he has only just emerged from his cave. It is currently 12:55, so I’d say it was about 12:30.  When I woke up last night at 2am I suggested to both kids (14 and 16) that it was getting late and they should get to sleep.  When I got up again at 4am, the house was definitely quiet in that way that suggests no one else is awake. I love that quiet.

So, we’ve spent the last few days watching movies mostly. All but one I would never have watched if I hadn’t moved my computer into the living room recently to hang out with John.

1. Lifeforce – SO, SO, SO HORRIBLE, that it was kind of fantastic. Outer-space vampires, zombies, bad acting, worse acting. Patrick Stewart was in it. I’m guessing he doesn’t list this first on his resume’.
2. The Haunting (The remake, not the 1940’s version).  I could never have watched this if i hadn’t been paying half attention to my computer while it was on, so i couldn’t get caught up in the scary stuff. Big names in this movie: Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson, and Lili Taylor. Special effects were fun. Storyline was semi-plausible. Overall, however, it was quite ridiculous.
3. Eight Below – I need a Siberian Husky now. SOOOOOO cute of a movie.It’s a Disney family flick, and I’m just a sucker for any movie about cute animals surviving on their own. I need to own this one.  Note to self: put on Amazon wishlist. (This is the one I got from Netflix for me to watch.)
4. Million-Dollar Baby – Boxing movie? ugh. BUT, i was wrong. It was freaking AWESOME. Oh man i cried though.
5. The Constant Gardener – Amazing movie (so far – it’s on right now) GREAT storyline. My fears come to life though. Were I brave enough, no doubt I’d be getting myself killed too. Oh, more crying. Now I see why all the fuss was made over this movie. Really well made, and difficult to watch because we know that it’s true in the real world, not Dypraxa, but other things.  Africans (and others from third world countries) are slaughtered by the greed of European countries, and it’s all “regrettable” and whistleblowers get killed, which is also “regrettable”. Do we care? Yes of course we care, but we as individuals are paralyzed by our powerlessness, unable to do much more than possibly “get involved”. And even as groups, large groups, there is still a powerlessness embedded in the fight, because the rich and powerful are above the law and can buy people off for a small sum to them. I don’t know all of that as fact, but I know it in the same way that I know I am not in charge of the company I work for, someone else is. I can take it or leave it, i can even change it, but I can’t direct it. I can’t change the mindset of the leaders. Fortunately, I work for a good company, and their work is all geared toward helping and not harming. Thank God.

Back to resting. I only have so many sick days you know. Got to get better!!

I am now officially accepted as a seminary student at George Fox in Portland. The dean says there are students from over 40 denominations. That should make class discussions interesting… I’m not sure I realized there were so many Christian denominations, as I’m sure 40 isn’t all there is. I’m sure there isn’t one representative of every denomination existing.

Our group interview consisted of a group exercise on Values and Consensus. We were split up into groups of 6-7 people, and were each given a sheet of paper with 10 pictures on it. We were to identify what each picture symbolized to us individually, then, we were to rank each symbol in order of value to us individually (all within 5 minutes). Then  as a group we were to try to come to a group consensus on the meaning of each symbol (10 minutes), and then try to reach a consensus as to the rankings of the symbols. There was a staff member with each group to go over the directions and then watch and make some notes, but there was no further interaction once we had started, other than to let us know how much time we had left for each section if we asked.
The pictures consisted of:
A. a gold statue with a sword and weighing scales
B. a man holding a small baby and a woman next to him looking over at the baby and smiling.
C. a big red heart
D. an open Bible
E. a picture of very tall trees, grouped closely together
F. 8 different flags blowing in the wind. One was the USA’s flag, the others were not as discernible for me as I’m not familiar with them.
G. a brick building with a steeple and a bell tower.
H. a young child’s face with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in front of his mouth and nose
I. a smiling man with a white collar and a black garment.
J. a mortar board hat on someone’s head and next to that a gift card for a graduation.

The group consensus on the meaning of the symbols was this:
A. Justice / B. Family / C. Love / D. Scripture – Word of God
E. Environment / F. Culture / G. Church body / H. Prayer
I. Ministry / J. Education

The Group Consensus of rankings came out like this:
1 (C). Love
2 (D). Scripture
3 (H). Prayer
4 (B). Family
5 (G). Church Body
6 (I). Ministry of all people
7 (J). Education
8 (E). Environment
9 (A). Justice
10 (F). Culture

The biggest debates were as to whether Love or Scripture was more important, and then again with Prayer and Family. Interesting to note is that everyone in our group had those as 1 & 2, and then as 3&4 in their rankings. Nobody argued that Family was more important than Love or Scripture for instance. Once we got through Education, it became a bit of a toss up.

After this was over we reconvened as a larger group to go over “how did our rankings change, solidify, or remain unaffected as a result of group discussion?” and “how did we feel about the group exercise assignments?”. We were basically advised that if we didn’t enjoy this type of interaction and exercise that George Fox probably wasn’t the right seminary for us. Personally, I thought it was fun. I’m guessing we had the easiest group though, because lots of people talked about how difficult it was to agree on the symbols because of semantics, and then agree on values when people were coming from such diverse backgrounds. My group was completely quiet until one guy piped up to say, “well you haven’t heard anyone from our group speak up, and I’m guessing that’s because we had an easy time of it, it was very smooth with everyone getting their say and getting heard, but agreement came easily.”  My rankings changed through group discussion, but only because some of my symbols changed meanings after group discussion. The values didn’t change rankings, but the symbols representing those values changed pictures.

All in all it was a very interesting experience. Nothing like I had imagined it would be. Now I’m excited for class to begin!

Yesterday after work I fell down the stairs in my building. Not the entire staircase, but the last 3 stairs above the paving tile floor. My hands were full and everything went flying as I fell forward, not backwards. First of all, I think I’m damn lucky for not REALLY hurting myself. I left work a little late, and was laying on the floor wondering if i had broken my neck how long it would have taken someone to find me. Ironically that floor holds a naturopathic doctors office, a chiropractors office and an acupuncture and eastern medicine clinic, but no one was on their way in or out at 5:30 pm.

Today I go to the doctor’s at 2:30 to make sure nothing is really worse than I think, because my office says it has to be a worker’s comp claim since I was still on company business (taking the mail to the mailbox). That’s fine, i have a long list of minor complaints… bruises and abrations, a slightly twisted ankle. Nothing life threatening, or work interfering, just annoying.

Then, at 4pm I have a group interview at the Seminary I’m applying to attend. I couldn’t wear my normal work shoes with my ankle kinda hurting, so i’m wearing flip-flops. I’m sure that looks nice and professional.  I trust they won’t care as I’m applying to be a student and not a staff member.

Harry Potter film came out yesterday and this is the first one I haven’t gone to IMMEDIATELY. I don’t know if I’ll try to go this weekend or not. It’s not as if they can give away the ending… I’ve read the book 3 times. However, the new book comes out next week and I’m going to get it right away and then stay off the internet from the time i get it until the time i finish it, (generally one day) so that I won’t see any spoilers.  Bad enough I saw a tiny bit of a spoiler of LOST before I saw the finale, I’ll be really pissed if I see or hear a spoiler for this book!!

Ok, well, today lunch is being delivered to our office from Buster’s BBQ for my boss’s birthday, so I should probably get a couple of things done before then. Today is kind of a loss for work. I came in late due to my bruised and battered body, am having a long lunch likely for my boss’ birthday, then leaving for a doctor appt, coming back for maybe an hour or less, then going to my school interview across the street. 

Man I’m sore. Don’t try this at home kids, it hurts.

it’s too hot. moving makes me perspire. sleeping was difficult last night.
i would like to take a nap in my air-conditioned office even though it’s still too hot for me.
everyone else is fine. this makes me wonder about being pre-menopausal. God i hope not.
i have lots of work to do today, and no desire whatsoever to do it.
my eyes are crossing when i type. ugh.