I'm baaack, and bigger than ever.

Good morning,

So, I'm back. I have really really been struggling with my weight recently, and this morning I was thinking to myself perhaps I need to start journaling (and not just what I eat -- although that too), but journaling about his process or gaining and losing and -- to quote Andie Mitchell (who's blog never fails to lift me up) -- loving myself at every weight.

Well since I've last spoken to all of you I've moved from New York to Atlanta and finally to Salt Lake City, UT. I've also gained nearly 60 pounds. Making me the heaviest I've ever been. Okay, I have recently lost some weight so I am currently 8 pounds under the heaviest I have ever been.  Also, it should be noted that those 8 pounds have come off painfully slowly, and I mean PAINFULLY slowly.

My biggest struggle right now (and probably always, if I'm being honest) is binge eating. I am a textbook case of Binge Eating Disorder(BED). And while I've known this for sometime, I think this is the first time in my life I am looking at this disorder as an actual disorder, as opposed to just my lack of willpower and self control

I've started reading a few books on BED, and hopefully someday soon I will muster up the courage to start treatment with a therapist.

In the meantime I'll be tracking my calories, and weighing in weekly on Wednesdays (mostly because I like the alliteration).

I will also be checking in here with my thoughts, my struggles, my triumphs, my self proclaimed "witty" observations, and my weigh-ins.

Tracking Tracking Tracking

I once had a Weight Watchers leader who said, every week without fail, "If you bite it, write it," and the longer I am on this journey the more I believe in her wisdom.  

Tracking, journaling whatever you like to call it, makes all the difference in the world! *At least for me...  Have you ever tried to binge eat while measuring and writing down everything before you eat it?  Trust me, it's basically impossible.  Which means, if I'm tracking, I'm not binging.   My latest bad habit is writing down everything I plan to eat for the day first thing in the morning.  Don't get me wrong, having a plan for the day is not a bad habit.  But when I write everything down at 7am and tuck my journal away for the rest of the day, by the time I get home, and I'm sitting on the couch wanting to eat four pumpkin cookies (I mean, this is clearly a hypothetical...) my poor sad little journal is the furthest thing from my mind.  

**For the record my journal is not actually sad or poor at all... it's actually adorable, see below. 

My fantastic friend Michelle sent this journal to me for Christmas and I pretty much love everything about it!

Anyway, back to the point, my new goal for the week is to track everything and anything that goes in my mouth, the moment BEFORE it goes in my mouth.  Writing down the aftermath of a binge eating session may be cathartic but it is in no way helpful in prevention.  

In other news... the pumpkin cookie story may not have been as hypothetical as I would like, but on the bright side because of my craving for cookies and the lack of chocolate chips in my apartment, I did come up with a pretty awesome pumpkin cookie recipe.  They are light and fluffy, and would be perfect with a glaze if I only had the patience to make one.  As is, I ended up rolling them in a mixture of sugar, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.  YUM!

*Please forgive my loose measurements; I wasn't kidding when I said I made it up:

1 stick butter softened

A little less than 1/2 of a large can of Libby's 100% Pumpkin Puree 

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

-- Mix ingredients together until well blended, then add

Three cups of flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

and a dash of nutmeg

Blend together with the wet ingredients, dough will be very sticky.  

Now, you can just drop them by the spoonful onto a baking sheet and sprinkle the sugar/cinnamon/pumpkin pie spice mixture over them right then and there OR (and I recommend this) you can refrigerate the dough overnight (or until firm) which will allow you to roll the dough into a ball which can then be dipped in the sugar mixture for a much better sugar coating.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

*As previously mentioned, feel free to throw the sugar mixture out the window and make a delicious glaze to go on top, which is my plan next time... Next time I also plan to not eat 4 in a row -- wish me luck!

Hiding from my health coach...

Good Morning,

So yesterday I confessed my weekend blunders to all of you, and yet I haven't called my Health Coach in weeks.

Did I tell you I have a health coach?  Because I do, and she is wonderful, and knowledgeable and kind, so very very kind.  Yet, somehow I feel like I can only call her when I have good news to report.  I want to call her up and say 

"Yes of course I stuck to the plan you gave me!"  
"Yes of course I lost X amount of pounds this week" 
"Yes I do feel so much better than I used to"

But I can't say any of those things. Right now I don't feel better, I haven't stuck to the plan, and I gained a pound this week.  What's strange is I have a health coach to help me through all of this. To help me when I'm struggling, and yet I only seem to reach out to her when I'm not.  Sometimes I look at before and after photos, I read stories of the women who have lost the weight and changed their lives and they are always saying "If I can do, so can you!", but it doesn't always feel like that is the case.  I have dreamt about being thin my whole life, I have wanted it so badly I could taste it (while simultaneously tasting cake back in the real world... go figure), yet a small part of me seems to have accepted I will never actually get there.  

So... here is to hoping that small part of me is wrong.  And to that end, I solemnly swear to call my Health Coach tonight, and actually tell her what has been going on, and then I am going to listen to what she says and actually try to do it. 

~Meg

The first recorded downfall

So.... My One Month Challenge must begin anew today.  Sunday afternoon I fell prey to a hungry stomach, a pint of Pinkberry, and my own lack of willpower.  

Well, the story really begins on Saturday night... when I ate (this is going to sound ridiculous) 1.5 Oreos and one gummy shark.  Now, while this did ruin my "One Month Challenge" I felt like it was  huge triumph for my long term goals of being able to have a treat without falling off the deep end.  I was even super excited to blog about it to all of you!  

But then Sunday came along, and after attending a Soul Cycle class that morning (as a complete side note if you live in the New York area and have not been to Soul Cycle you have to try it.  It isn't cheap, but it is an incredible work out, I may have been on a bike the entire time but I came away with sore arms, abs and legs, plus a renewed sense of energy and excitement... it's life changing -- and you may run into Kelly Ripa.  AMAZING). So I went to Soul Cycle, then church, then passed up a dozen different kinds of cookies at the small reception after church and went home to defrost my chicken breast... and that is when it happened. I reached into the freezer to pull out the chicken and spotted a pint of forgotten Pinkberry frozen yogurt, I was starving at this point (amateur mistake, I should never let myself get that hungry) and decided that because I had worked out I "deserved" this Pinkberry.  Strangely I didn't think I deserved to keep my promise to myself, or to lose weight, but I deserved frozen yogurt.  

It only spiraled from there as I had Monday off work, and was blessed to spend that evening and the next day relaxing and watching movies with some of my favorite people.  While the company and the entertainment were superb, I took my slip up as a green light to spend the next day and half snacking on muffins, cookies, and various other treats.  

So... here is my confession, but today is a new day, and a new week, and I am picking myself up and getting back on the horse.  After confessing this story to one of my best friends this morning she said "how about we get back on board and pretend it never happened."  Which is exactly what I am doing, onward and upward (or downward in the case of the scale). 

~Meg

A New Beginning -- And the "One Month Challenge"

Good Morning Internet People,

So I know I have said this before, but I am once again "back" to blogging.  I even made it a New Year's Resolution, and if there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I take my New Year's Resolutions very seriously.  I like them to be specific and measurable (I know, I know, I sound like I'm presenting at a high school leadership retreat), but seriously, I love goals and if you can't measure it, how can you be sure you accomplished it?

So, all that being said, I'm BACK (again)!  And I have decided to take this blog in a slightly different direction than before.  Now you may not have known the direction before since I only posted three times and had a different objective each time...  So perhaps it is that before there was no direction and now there is, so her we go!

THE CONFESSION:  I, Megan Smith, am a dieter.  I have been dieting since I was about 13 years old.  In the past 15 years, dieting has been hard, sometimes successful, sometimes fun, sometimes easy, but always, always something I was very private about.

THE NEW PLAN: The new plan is to stop being private about it, and instead talk about here... on the internet, where anyone and everyone can read about it.  

In the past few months, I have become obsessed with a few ladies and their weight loss blogs.  Namely Liz, Andie and Rebecca.   I relate to them, I'm inspired by them, I'm comforted by them, and since imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I have decided to be more like them.  I don't want to be ashamed of my struggle with weight loss anymore, I want to be proud of my accomplishments, and honest about my set backs. Which brings me here, to this blog, which I don't really know how to work yet, and of which, I am still a little scared.  

So, speaking of accomplishments and set backs, let’s talk about goals:

LONG TERM GOALS: 

• Weight at 135 (in the interest of full disclosure I currently weigh 174)

Now, I know I rambled on and on about goals being measurable and I am about to confess a goal that is not as measurable as I would like, but just go with me on this one.  I want to have a healthy relationship with food.  I want to eat a piece of cake on my birthday without having a panic attack.  I want to eat a piece of chocolate without eating 20 chocolates after that first one.  I want to be the kind of person who can have half a cookie and then be done.  I tend to have an "all or nothing" mentality about healthy choices, I'm either "perfect" or binging on fried foods and baked goods (oh so good baked goods).  So, basically what I'm saying is I want to have it all, health and the occasional treat dipped in batter or covered in frosting, you know the kind of treat that makes life worth living. 

SHORT TERM GOALS:

Now to the title of this post....

"THE ONE MONTH CHALLENGE" I have recently started a new health program.  It is called "Take Shape for Life" and I have the pleasure of working with a wonderful wonderful health coach named Lexi Hooley (send me a message if you want her info, I am happy to pass it along).  Now, the program is geared toward building healthy habits to change your life forever, and it starts out with a pretty strict eating plan.  I've been doing this for 2.5 months now and have lost 18 pounds (wahoo), but I've also been doing the program in a wishy-washy fashion.  I'll eat on plan for 3-4 days out of the week and still manage to lose a little bit of weight, but I know I can do better!  So I have decided to challenge myself to commit 100% to this plan for one month.  

So there you have it!  I am currently on day 3 of The One Month Challenge.  Day two was rough... but I made it through and even said no to homemade brownies that looked gooey and delicious, because just for now, just for 27 more days, I am making healthy eating a priority over brownies.  Or as I like to think of it, this time I am choosing me, and my goals, over brownies and birthday cake (other people's birthday cake, on my birthday, there will be cake... just wanted to be clear about that). 

So if you are still here, and have made it to the end of this ridiculously long post, THANK YOU!  I am so looking forward to sharing this journey with you. And if you want to join me in "THE ONE MONTH CHALLENGE" well I just can't think of anything better (I'll even give you the first two days off). 

~Meg  

Fire Fire Fire!

Remember when I said I jumped over fire...

Warrior Dash!

Every summer a group of crazies get together to bring people across the US a little something called "Warrior Dash."  This year myself, along with some good friends, decided to participate in Warrior Dash!  The result was a weekend of mud and fun that I cannot wait to do again!  If this race is offered anywhere near you, trust me, you want to be a part of it.

Some background on the Dash:

The "Northeast" Warrior Dash is a 3.23 mile race in the Catskill mountains.  As you make your way up and down the mountain you will encounter a myriad of different obstacles, such as...  (and yes I did get these names off the Warrior Dash website http://www.warriordash.com/register2010_northeast.php)

"Tunnels of Terror"
"Warrior Walls"
"Cargo Climbs"
"Slithering Swamp" (which is really just a river, but very very cold)
"Catskill Skid" (otherwise known as the longest slip n slide I have ever seen going down a mountain, and possibly my favorite obstacle, even if it did result in the most bruises.)
"Warrior Roast" (which yes, means I jumped over fire!)
and last but certainly not least
"Muddy Mayhem" (which is a giant mud pit topped off with barbed wire, to make sure you really get down in there)

"Muddy Mayhem" in action!

Now it just wouldn't make any sense to do any of these crazy things if not dressed properly, so of course we planned ahead and made sure to order our bright blue (or as the website liked to call them "Peacock") Tutu's ahead of time. 

Don't worry we also brought our fan club!

Along with our tutu's we made T-shirts with a sassy saying, which in turn evoked some sassiness directed towards me from a Warrior Dash worker.  As my shirt said "Mean Girls Finish First" and I was far from first.  But hey I was running up a mountain in a tutu, while she was standing on a mountain handing out water in a T-shirt.  I don't think she had any room to talk. 

In the end we walked away with some great memories, a new Viking hat, a Warrior Medal (which yes, everyone got... at least everyone who finished) and some great photos of us looking like this...