The Mental Journey

I am coming to realize how much of the journey is dependent on my mental image of myself. If you will remember, back in September I wrote a post entitled "30 Things I Wish You Knew About My Invisible Illness". It was an impulsive thing that I did but it has literally changed my life. It was after that post that I started to realize my own strength. Having always seen myself as weak and broken, this was a startling revelation for me. I am still trying to process all that this means and am trying to incorporate this new reality into my every day life and more importantly, into my way of thinking. But it is hard not to go back to the negative ways of thinking. I still can't do everything that I would like to do but I am becoming more willing to at least try instead of giving up before even starting.

Learning that I am strong enough has helped me start exercising again. That knowledge has given me the strength to continue on this weight loss journey without giving up because "I just can't".

Here is an exciting development: I am now officially down 10% from my starting weight. I see my doctor every six months for med checks and she told me at the last visit that she would love to see me down 10% at my next visit. I have already met that challenge and I don't go back until August. Now I am working on losing 10% of my current weight.

Bento Lunch

Here is another bento lunch that Samantha and I had this week. I really enjoy going to eat lunch with her at school and do so as often as I can. I usually don't tell her I am coming so that it is a surprise. I try and so something different every time, making sure I include her some of her favorite foods. I didn't want to go to the store so I improvised. I had some salmon so I cooked that and then broke it up with some green onions and mayo and then filled the jumbo shells with that mixture. There was a lemon wedge to squeeze over that and some corn in the top tier. The bottom tier has a hard boiled egg, some blueberries and cheese kabobs, tomatoes and carrots with hummus as a dip for the veggies.

I am linking to the What's for Lunch Wednesday.

A Victory

May is always an incredibly busy month for me and this one has been no exception. The first weekend I went to Cleveland to deliver some supplies to the tornado relief going on there, the second one was Mother's Day, my birthday was on the 16th and my nephews Cole and Silas had birthdays on the 22nd and 23rd. So in the last three weeks I have been on the road, celebrated three birthdays and Mother's Day. AND I STILL LOST WEIGHT! The numbers weren't as high as they had been being but I would have been happy just staying put. To see a reduction means, to me, that I am really incorporating the healthy changes I have been making. I did meet my goal of losing 30 lbs before my birthday. More importantly, I was able to run around the aquarium in Chattanooga chasing a four year old and had no problem keeping up with him. A very proud moment was when he decided to run up a very large staircase, across the viewing podium and down the other side, I was able to run behind him and wasn't out of breath. Becoming healthy is feeling good!

Update and a Bento

I lost .8 of a lb. last week. I am not disappointed with that because it is still progress. I taught a couple of classes this weekend and that ended up throwing off my eating schedule a little. That plus a couple of fast food meals. Normally I plan better than that though!

I have my bento lunch pictured above. I have a tuna salad wrapped in a tortilla with some spinach leaves, some strawberries and grapes in the top tier and a tossed salad in the bottom tier. I am linking this bento to What's For Lunch Wednesday.

Dancing, A Goal Met, Update

First off, the good news, I lost another 1.6 lbs last week. I am starting to really notice a huge difference in the way I feel. Other people are starting to notice the weight loss too. That feels good. I wanted to be 30 lbs lighter on my birthday and I am on track to do that. Monday is my birthday and weigh in day and I plan on hitting that number. I am excited about that too.

Kip bought an Kinect for the XBox the other day. It's pretty interesting. In addition to the sports game that came with it he bought one of the dance games. Talk about fun! I NEVER dance in front of anyone, not EVER. But we both did the other night. He has been playing with it more than I have but it is just another way of getting in some activity so that all our exercise doesn't feel like work. On Sunday instead of sitting around and watching TV after dinner we got the random idea to go bowling instead. Of course I had my coupon but they have a Sunday night special that included shoe rental and three hours of bowling. I think we bowled 5 games. Since it was only the two of us it was a pretty quick turn around so we were moving pretty much constantly. We had already eaten dinner so we weren't tempted by all the deep fried snack bar food and we had a couple of hours of movement and FUN!

Another goal I have been working on is improving my overall fitness. I have been walking on the treadmill pretty regularly and have been gradually increasing my speed and the distance I am walking. I have finally worked up to the distance of a 5K (3.1 miles). Not only am I walking that much, but I am doing it in less than an hour. Slightly less, but still less than an hour. One of the goals for the year is to enter a 5K so I am pretty happy with that.

Cheese Crackers

Kip and I both LOVE cheese crackers. But since I am trying to learn how to make a lot of the products that I used to buy I went on an internet search for a homemade version. WOW!! These were amazingly good and will be made many, many more times in my kitchen. Not too often though because they are absolutely addicting and they didn't last very long around the house. I rolled some out thin and they were very crispy and delicious and some I rolled out a little thinker and they were delicious too. For snacking on, I loved the crispier ones but I think the thicker ones would be great to serve with homemade tomato soup.

It was funny Samantha was over here on the day I was making them. She loved them too and has stopped asking why am I making instead of buying things. Her answer is always "it tastes better to make your own". When her mom arrived to pick her up she ran to the kitchen and came back with one hand full of crackers and the other hand had one cracker. She offered the one cracker to her mom to taste and kept the rest for herself!