An Unintended Consequence: Joy.

Well helloooooo out there, friends! I know I am terrible about blogging. As I've mentioned before. I could blog every day, but it seems boring... "I ate golean cereal again!" "I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes and on the crosstrainer for 30 minutes! I did wall-push-ups!" Except I'd write that every single day and everybody would get bored.

So, of course, today I have something specific to say, which is this: I NEVER thought that I would ever even get to this point, team. I mean, T. Swift style, never ever ever.

Never, ever, everrr!

But yesterday Me and T and my bestie and his bestie did a 5k. People do 5ks all the time. We didn't even run the whole time, but I experienced something completely bizarre-- Joy. With my friends, out in the sunshine, getting splashed with color and just moving around made me so happy.

I have no doubt in my mind that 4 months ago, I  might have enjoyed the color part of it-- but I wouldn't have been able to run with my friends, not even a little bit. I might have even gotten cranky about it. Not so.
I am not in good enough shape yet that I can run a 5k (I just very recently succeeded in running 1/2 a mile without stopping and it nearly killed me, so do with that what you will) but we did run, and dance, and skip and chase each other like little kids and I had a blast.

I've never run around with impunity-- literally not even when I was a little kid. I didn't play tag on the playground-- I knew I would lose, and ever since I was little, it just seemed silly to play a game I knew I would lose. So teensy Liz never liked exercise. Somehow adult-Liz has learned what child-Liz could never quite grasp-- which is sometimes you do things for the pure joy of doing them. (To be fair, teensy-Liz loved swimming with a wild abandon and devoured chapter books, so it's not as though I was sitting there being cold and calculating my whole childhood, I just didn't generally run or move my body for the joy of being able to do so.)

Anyway. It was awesome. We're already hoping they come back next year, but we've already decided we'll be running the whole thing, like a whole crowd of bosses :)

 I've lost 46.5 pounds as of today, the end of my 4th month of this exciting journey. I'm really excited to hit the 50lb mark, but more excited to start hitting milestones I've never seen before, like:

• Weighing Less than My (6'4", Male) Spouse 
• Not Being Obese Anymore, Ever
• I Can Run a Mile and I'm Not Even Dead!
• I Couldn't Even Wear These Pants in High School

I'm sure you all agree these are admirable goals.

How Twitter Finally Became Useful to Me

Hello friends! This is a teensy little post to let you know that if you have a desire to follow my healthiness process in a highly intense way, I started tweeting! By started tweeting, I mean, I've had Twitter for 100 years, but I finally have interesting things to say! Of course, much like the blog, you don't have to read the tweets, but I think they're fun. :) @LizGetsHealthy is my twitter. Yay!

A Lengthy Food-Related Exposition

Hello sweet readers! Welcome! I realize I don't post much anymore and there's a good reason for that: I'm boring. I've lost 35.5 pounds by doing the same thing, day after day after day. My struggles are the same, day after day after day. So I find that I come to my computer to write an entry, and realize-- I have very little to tell you, sweet internets, that you don't know already. However, someone did ask me the other day what I eat. Thusly-- I have a topic for an entry! Warning: This is an incredibly detailed breakdown of the food I eat-- it may be highly boring, but I have tried to make it fun.

Meeps, I didn't even know I had imaginary friends!

So let's start with breakfast, shall we?

Breakfast, Champions!
You may not know it, dear interwebz, but underneath my work-going, master's-degree-having, exercise-doing shell, I am terribly, terribly lazy. When I say this I mean that I require somewhere between like 8-10 hours of sleep a night to feel happy. Others figure life out with less sleep, I understand, with the help of coffee. As, in my opinion, coffee tastes like dirt, I do not drink it.

This is an accurate depiction of me being forced to drink coffee if I had stubble for some reason.

Furthermore, I am approximately 5 years old, and giving me coffee inevitably makes me shake violently and become hyperverbal. I am already kind of a chatterbox, so caffeinating me is really, really a terrible idea.

For the record, I am the double espresso owl.

Anyway. Breakfast. So, my lack of desire to consume caffeine in the mornings means I must sleep my full billion hours a night in order to fulfill my role as the office sunshine-bringer. This means that as I wish to arrive at work at 8AM, Monday through Friday... I wake up at approximately 7AM. For those of you keeping score, this does not leave long for breakfast, with all other morning-y things included.

Breakfast options for me are as follows (~300 Calories):
1. Greek yogurt + Fruit
2. Protein bar + Fruit
3. Breakfast Drink + Soymilk (Recently switched from almond milk after realizing it only had 1g of protein).

That's it. That's pretty much all I ever ever have for breakfast. Even on the weekends I rarely do anything fancier. Weekends I might do a bowl of cereal or think about making oatmeal or eggs. But fancy breakfasts lend themselves to company and my husband and brother are rarely awake at 8AM on Saturdays to have breakfast when I am hungry.

This would be the loneliest, fanciest breakfast ever at my house.

It may seem that I have teensy little breakfasts, but soon after breakfast is morning snack,

Morning Snack Means ( <200 Calories):
1. 24 Almonds.
2. Greek yogurt (if I didn't have one for breakfast).
3. Banana + 1Tbsp peanut butter.

I am so incredibly boring in this, team. I have morning snack at around 10:30, pretty much rain or shine. My morning snack is almost always at work, of course, and so lots of time I just have to nom some almonds while I'm trying to respond to some emails while my class is on break. Right now I don't have a class so I get to take the time to eat yogurt or a peanut butter banana, yay!

Lunchtime (~350 Calories)
1. A frozen something + Carrots.
2. Leftovers + Carrots.
3. Vegetarian corn dogs + Carrots.

Yes, I may well turn in to this rabbit. I will still eat carrots.

Yes, I always eat carrots with my lunch. I have been assured that though carrots have a high glycemic index, I can still eat a snack-ton of them! Hooray! Lunchtime means I usually have some sort of healthy choice or lean cuisine meal, or if I am a genius and have leftovers (like this week I have homemade chili!) then I eat those. The last like 4 Saturdays I've had 1 or 2 vegetarian corn dogs, because they are delicious. They are probably not particularly good for me, but... sometimes I get to eat them anyway. :)

So much sodium, so little pig butt. They are DELICIOUS.

Around 3 PM, I start getting a little cranky, at least on weekdays. This means that afternoon snack, though it should be something smart, like morning snack, is almost always something sweeter to keep me happy until I can head home and make dinner.

Afternoon Snack (<150 Calories)
1. Rice Cake + Fruit
2. String cheese + Fruit
3. (If I am particularly "hangry") protein bar.

Afternoon snack puts me between 800-1000 calories for the day, most of the time. I eat dinner almost immediately upon arriving at home a little after 5. Dinner is somewhat more varied as I usually share it with the other members of my household.

No, not you Seamus, dinner is for humans.

Dinner Items (~400 Calories)
1. A Frittata (2 Eggs + Mushrooms + Broccoli + shredded carrots + 2 tbsp salsa) + Veggies
2. Tacos (2.5 oz Ground turkey + 1 or 2 tortillas + .5 oz cheese + 2 tbsp Salsa + tomato) + Veggies
3. What I Call Pizza Nowadays (1 English muffin + 1/4 Cup pizza sauce + 1 oz mozzarella) + Veggies
4. Pasta (28g whole wheat pasta + 1/2 cup marinara sauce + 2.5 oz chicken + mushrooms) + Veggies
5. Stir Friday (1/3 Cup Quinoa + 2.5 oz beef or chicken + mushrooms + cauliflower) + Veggies
6. Cereal Option One (Crispix + Berries + 1/2 Cup soymilk)
7. Cereal Option Two (Kashi Golean + 1/2 Cup soymilk)

Veggies are usually carrots, but can be Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, salad, etc. A few posts back I showed a pretty accurate picture of what pasta dinner looked like before I cut my pasta serving in half. Lately I eat a really lot of frittatas, because they are easy, a delicious way to eat a lot of very random vegetables and eggs are good protein. Hooray! Basically I can put whatever vegetables I have in the fridge in a frittata. Here is a picture of a frittata, for your reference:

Mine are only slightly less fancy. I highly suggest making these. They are delicious and easy.

And, for those of you keeping score, yes, sometimes I do have a few extra calories and I eat when I get home from the gym

Night Time Snack (Varies Greatly)
1. Cereal Option One (see above)
2. Cereal Option Two (see above)
3. Greek yogurt
4. Banana + 1 Tbsp peanut butter.
5. Breakfast Drink + 1 Cup soymilk.

Self-explanatory, right? I get back from the gym and I'm a hungrypants. One of my goals in all of this is not to live a life of denial. As I'm nearing my 100th day of this process, it's especially important for me to be conscious of making this a sustainable situation. This means I flat out refuse to go to bed hungry. It makes me unhappy and anything that makes me unhappy is not sustainable. Not eating ice cream? Doable. Going to bed hungry? No snacking way, team.

Snacks is my replacement swear word so I don't sound like a pirate.

Speaking of Snacks, I have one last category!

Desserts/Indulgent Snacks
1. Frozen Yogurt Ice Cream Sandwich (80ish Calories, and so wonderous).
2. GOOD truffles (I buy these from the candy store in the mall. No processed nonsense for me, if I'm only eating one or two a week, yo).
3. 1 Pudding cup (I suggest the oreo kind, full sugar).
4. 16 Wheat thins and 1 Tbsp garden vegetable cream cheese.

On occasion, I believe I get to have something indulgent. I'm not afraid to do this, because it's part of normal eating. I believe in normal eating. Like I said, sustainability. Team, what do you eat to keep you happy and in a normal eating range? What's your most indulgent food choice? What is your healthiest? I really want to know before all of this gets boring :)

If you made it to the bottom of this post, you have some darn good perseverance skills. Yay you!

What Weight Loss is Teaching Me about Patience and Kindness

You know what, team? I completely love you all. I hope you all know how very integral you are to this process. After I posted my picture to Facebook today, I was greeted by a veritable STORM of support. All told, my picture got 65 likes and 22 comments-- considering I only have about 300 facebook friends, that's incredibly impressive of you all. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

On to our topic of the day! I learn a lot from this process, since it basically takes up all of my consciousness, haha!

This is your brain on weight-loss.

The first thing I've learned is about patience. I can thank my guru, Gretchen Rubin, for this, who has pointed out, "the things you do every day are more important than the things you do some of the time."  So I made healthiness something I do every day. If I do healthiness every day, I will lose weight. Period. It's not a question, it's not voodoo, it's not a fad diet-- it's life. If you take one step in the right direction, your path veers in that direction from that day forward, as long as you don't go back to your old path. Every day you step in the right direction takes you further and further from that old path.

This is on my calendar at work right now.

The point is, if you have trust in the process and in yourself, you don't need patience. You need persistence, yes, and strength, but you don't really need patience. I don't need to think about what I'll do when this is all over. I'm more concerned about today and tomorrow. I am a whole, healthier person today. I don't need to be impatient for a Liz that will perhaps never get here. I am me. Investing in my health has, more than anything else I have ever endeavored, helped me to develop something somewhat unknown, which is self kindness.

Or at least I am swirly nephilim eyes and peacock feathers and maybe fish eggs?

People have always told me that my blog is funny. I've always tried for it to be funny, but most of the time it is my own expense. I don't see this as a problem, necessarily, because I always do it lightheartedly, and to lift the tone of what could otherwise be very depressing entries. Self-deprecating humor has its place, and I'm not throwing it out of LGH. I am, however, starting to actually feel-- okay with me. Does this mean I'm going to put on a bikini and flounce around all summer? No. I'll probably spend this summer like every other summer in my life, wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts because that's who I am right now. I just know well enough to love that person, even though she does wear jeans in July.

30.5 Pounds. There's a lot less of me and somehow a lot more of me, and this is only the beginning of the rest of my life. It kind of blows my mind that this is just the beginning of my journey. I'm just glad I'm taking you all with me. :)

So, now you can all pronounce me a sap, and I'll go back to funny pictures and goals and calories. But today, this is what you get. Thank you all for reading. <3

How I Somehow Became Even Less Fashionable

So, there's no way to hide that I've never been a fashionable human. When I was in high school, my very favorite shirt was kind of a froggy green and said "NERD" on it in big letters. It had a rip on the side that I kept closed with a safety pin. This shirt did not fit me particularly well, nor did it look particularly good on me. I LOVED it.

Yeah, that's accurate.

We could go even further back and talk about what I wore in middle school, but there could be children reading my blog and I have no desire to pay for the amount of therapy they might need. I mean, really. Middle school was a time of bad decision making for most of us, and I, about as fashion conscious as a barn owl, probably made it worse than necessary. I remember a particular outfit I used to like-- jeans, an ice-blue fleece sweater (not a zip up, a sweater) and all of the ice-blue makeup I could find, including lip-gloss. MMM middle school in the turn of the century.

I have no idea who who this is, but this is approximately how I thought I looked in 1999.
Spoiler Alert: I did not look a darn thing like this.

I've had a lot of favorite clothing over the years. Most of it, like the nerd shirt, has been basically solid-colored and fairly ill-fitting. The result of getting much much fatter than I'd ever anticipated resulted in an amount of body-shame that even my poorly-dressed low-self-esteem middle school self would be terrified of (Which I am slowly recovering... you know what's neat about kindness? It helps to start with yourself!) Self-kindness aside, my clothing for the past two years ago has taken on a particular trend of baggy and dark-colored that nuns would approve of.

Except, the nuns might have me on the fashionable side.

Anyway, as it's clear I cannot possibly be less fashionable, I was quite startled to find that my clothing had taken on a brand new method of not fitting me and generally making me look like a sillypants. That method was being way too big. Today I wore a dress to work and I swear I spent 300% of the day pulling it up. Not a class act when your job is to teach! Meeps! I have pants but hardly any of them fit-- most of them will stay up (by virtue of still having wide wide hips and owning a belt) but they look kind of like I forgot what year it was and decided elephant pants were cool again. My sweaters fall off my shoulders and hang loose on my arms.

Elephant pants, for your reference :)

I know, team, I know this is completely #weightlossproblems #shutup #gobehealthysomewhereelse.

Right now, oddly, it is one of the biggest struggles in my journey. 11 weeks in, I have some pretty firmly placed habits as far as eating and exercising go. I'm down 26.5 pounds and there's no sign of it stopping.

Here's the problem, I should just be a regular ladyfolk and open up my closet and put on my "skinny" pants. However, at some point in gaining weight, I gave up on myself and donated most of my clothes built for a "thinner" Lizzy (AHhahaha, did you like that music joke?) Now I'm regretting that move as I'm nearing the weight I was in January of 2010, when I needed to reinvest in dress clothing. I have bought myself some new stuff, but if I keep losing at the rate I'm at, nothing is going to stay on me for long.

So it is with a strange mix of pride and apprehension that I shop, do I buy this pair of pants in a size down? I can just just squeeze into them now, is it worth it to get them for later?

Team, I've always been a terrible shopper and a terrible dresser. What do I do? Accept that I'm going to look kind of silly for the next year or so? Is there something that can be done? I can definitely hit up some second-hand and thrift stores to help out, but it turns out most of them don't have a nice stock of plus-size stuff, which is what I definitely still am.

Suggestions? Comments? Do you like elephant pants? Should I just stop whining already?

A New Feature and FOOOOOOOD

Greetings, dear friends, lovely Facebook acquaintances, beloved family, and treasured internet strangers! Today we have two cool things to talk about. I know. It's overwhelming. Last time we talked I shared that I have lost 20 pounds. It is true. I have lost twenty pounds. 21, actually, woot!

Part One: A New List!

 On occasion, someone will ask me "How are you doing it?" and my answer is always the same, "I eat 1200 calories a day and go to the gym 5 days a week whether I want to or not, NO EXCUSES."

Weight loss isn't a secret, and neither is the fact that the secret book is silly-pants.

But regarding those two things there are some pretty specific things that I do. The first is my food situation. My "secret," with that is calorie counting, seriously. I am compulsive about it. People think I am insane. (Especially my brother: for every fiber of me that is orderly, tied to rules and routine there are twelve fibers in my brother mixing Sriracha, honey, maple syrup, taco sauce, white pepper and putting it on a ham/taco meat/marinated steak pizza). I highly suggest counting your calories for a few days. The results are probably surprising! :)

I haven't gotten to this point yet. Please advise my family if you see me doing this.

The second half of that is the sheer amount of time I spend on cardio equipment. I use all kinds of things, a treadmill on a nice steep incline, a crosstrainer or an elliptical on a nice high resistance, or if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I spend time with my friends the rowing machine and the stair-stepper. Lately I do 60 minutes of cardio. When I do anything cardio, in order to avoid feeling like I want to die the dreaded BB combination, I read.

What is the BB combination? Well, it is a sad combination of what people like to lovingly refer to as "The Burn," (and then describe it as a "Good Burn," to which I say, WTF?! Are you kidding?! I weigh 230lbs! THIS IS NOT A FUN BURN!!! What burn have you ever had that was fun? Is there a difference between The Burn and getting actually physically burned?) and another thing I call "boredom."  So, BB, Burn and Boredom. Terrible combo. To defeat this, I like to read adventuresome books with heroines (okay, and heroes too). Generally, when I'm reading about people fighting in martial arts tournaments, toppling corrupt governments, defeating dark lords and falling into the Greek Underworld, I can suck it up and deal with The Burn (TM?).

Katniss Everdeen, Ginny Weasley and Annabeth Chase. (Drawn by  Burdge and colored by Jennaamariee)

So, the result of the BB combo is that I read a lot. I realized the other day that I'd finished several books entirely on cardio machines.  Thus-- for your enjoyment-- there is now a list.  That was a really long way to tell you about my new list, but there you go. Now you know what I read, really specifically.

Part Two: FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

But I bet you really want to know about why I wrote FOOOOOOOD at the top of this post? It's because yesterday, for the first time since March 3rd, I had too much to eat. I was actively full and I didn't care. Yesterday, Tarver and I paid off our last credit card. We had a snack-ton of credit card debt and now it's gone. We went out to eat and I had Chicken Saag with Basmati Rice. Not a lot of it, but probably two servings. I estimated it at just under 700 calories.

It may not look like much, but it is one of my absolute favorite foods, evar.

Let me be clear about something, team, I had/have (depending on whether or not you subscribe to the once-an-addict-always-an-addict theory) a serious binge eating problem.  I used to bake just so I could binge on cookies and dough. I used to use any cash given to me almost exclusively on burritos. That's not a joke, it's true. I used to put away half a pizza or more along with 5-6 breadsticks covered with Parmesan. Cooking at home alone I would make an entire box of pasta and eat it all in one sitting. With cheese. Whole loaves of French bread. 3 cups of rice with butter and sugar. 5 bowls of cereal. 2 rows of oreos. A whole box of girlscout cookies. 6 tacos. This isn't once in awhile I would do this, this is all the time. Several days a week, sometimes more than once a day. I had a problem.

True, lots of people struggle with much scarier binge eating problems, but please remember, I gained 70 pounds in the span of 3 years. At my heaviest weight, (Which I don't know, because I didn't even weigh myself until we'd been exercising for 2 weeks) I could have easily qualified for gastric bypass surgery. At some point I started snoring and developed acid reflux. I had a brief and scary brush with diabetes. I bought pants with a stretchy band instead of a zipper and a button. I hated myself, probably because I was killing myself very slowly.

Here is a picture of a puppy in case I am getting too intense. :)

So when I tell you I ate 700 calories of something and was aware that it was too much, you need to know that something big has changed. You need to know that this is something I struggle with every single day.  The reason I'm so crazy about my measurements is that I am scared that I'll fall off and not be able to get back on. Again. Like I did the last time and the time before that and the time before that.

Yesterday, I decided I could over-indulge within reason. The restaurant gave me a big, delicious bowl of saag. I ate two servings of a food that I love. I put the rest away and brought it home. I felt full. Am I going to do it again today, or tomorrow, or next week? No. I can't. But, I can be a normal human being and have an extra serving of a favorite dish, because damn it, sometimes it's okay to celebrate.

It's just not okay to celebrate every day. Yesterday I made a step toward eating like a regular person. Mostly eating portioned meals and vegetables and lean protein-- but sometimes, sometimes, having more of a food you love. Because food is not about punishment, sadness and death. It's not about getting as much as you can as quickly as you can. It's the uniting factor for humanity. Food is about life and sharing and yes, celebrating. 

Phew. Okay. That's what I've got for you, team. Thanks for reading! 

#WeightLossProblems

Hello sweet interwebz! Let's have a chat, shall we? Guess what?! I definitely am officially down TWENTY pounds! It's pretty awesome. Let's talk about some fun things, like the weird problems I've come across!

I'm sorry to advise you all of this sad fact: I have no pants that fit. Even the brand new pants I just got don't fit me anymore. I have several spare inches in my brand new pants, since I've lost about 3 pounds every week since we started. Let me put something into perspective for you:

Yeah. I lost 20 Pounds. Look at that.

So, looking at this delightful display (I know, so delicious) I have lost 20 pounds. Look. At. That. Thing. That's why my clothes don't fit. Seriously. 3 pounds a week means that every 10 days some random place on my body loses one of THOSE squishy things. It's kinda weird.

Another thing we should talk about. I'm sore all the dang time, and tired. Operating on a 1000 calorie deficit makes me a little tired and I have a very busy job. But dang if it isn't worth it every single morning when I get on the scale and I sleep like a baby. 

I'm sorry this post is boring but seriously, LOOK at the FAT picture!!!