The never ending battle!

After writing my first blog I was so excited! It really is a lot of fun. I hope I get some followers. Now this post is more towards my girls that are in the same boat that I am in with goals to loose weight before the summer.

Between my cousin, my sister and myself, we are constantly trying to loose weight. Sometimes we are trying to loose unrealistic numbers, but for the most part we are all trying to loose weight to be healthy and to feel as good on the outside, as we do on the inside. Speaking of the inside I think that is where my weight loss battle really begins.

Ever since I can remember I have been trying to lose weight for one reason or another. My freshman year in college is when I lost the most weight and didn't even realize it was happening. I dropped more then 20 lbs and kept it off until recently when I moved back home from LA and gained 15 back. Talk about disappointing. So, I did what most women would do. I cried, ate everything in site and still tried to fit myself into pants I wore at the beginning of college just to make myself cry some more. After that was over with I got my head together and really started focusing on loosing the weight.

I went to the gym and made the personal trainers write me a new program for new weight and cardio exercises. I was supposed to go at least 3 times a week and do at least 45 mins of cardio. Well that lasted about a week. The eating healthy part was even worse. I stuck to eating healthy for about 2 days. So, after a week of falling off the wagon and eating everything insight on the weekend to have a fresh start on Monday, I tried the weight loss thing all over again. I fell off the wagon yet again.

Though out all of my on and off the wagon weeks, I did seem to lose 4lbs. But today I am starting new and Fresh! My goal is to loose 30lbs by the end of May. I think that is very possible. I want to get my cholesterol down below "borderline high," as my Doctor says, and I definitely want to decrease my chances of getting diabetes. Another thing I want to do is increase my energy. I always noticed that this would happen when I worked out regularly and I just felt better about myself.

Now that I have an understanding on why I want to loose weight for the healthy aspects of it, there are also mental and emotional aspects of why I want to loose weight. I don't know where to begin with this, but lately I have been doing a lot of thinking and analysing why I may not be able to stick to my efforts at loosing weight right now. The biggest thing I found was that over the years I have become an emotional eater.

I never classified myself as an emotional eater because I honestly wasn't. I used to have way more self control and I ate because I liked to. If I was sad I didn't really look at food to fill a void, and if I was happy, at that point in my life, I would just go out with my friends and get drunk lol. We were young! But now, I have turned into an emotional eater. People tend to associated emotional eating with unhappiness, but i was pretty freaking happy out there. My eating started to increase when I was happy. I saw how happy I was getting when I had a fun weekend planned with my friends, that consisted of us consuming a lot of unhealthy food. I mean I would get way too happy about going some where to get avocado egg rolls and heart attack fries. I mean lets face it, heart attack fries? Well, I think that name itself screams the person consuming them is going to die in only a matter of time. Even though I saw myself eating more in LA I still kept off my weight and actually lost about 10 lbs while I was out there. That's why I didn't really look into it that much at that time.

When this was all happening I never realized how fast and easy that weight came off, but I still wasn't happy. You always want to loose more. Now I look at myself, having gained 15 lbs and I'm extremely upset that I let myself gain so much weight. It was so easy to gain it back!! Of course when I was at school I was walking at least 4 miles a day and I am sure that had a lot to do with it, and during the week I could only afford fruits and veggie, so there was the ideal diet. I owe the Mexican grocery store I shopped at a lot, since it priced good stuff so low lol.

With all this happy emotional eating, as i call it, in mind I have to come to some sort of conclusion with all this. This is what I have so far. Eating plays such a huge role in my family life style that it is inevitable to stray from it. I consider my friends family. On the weekends when I was with them, it was only bound to happen that we were all going to get together and eat. But, I would be good during the week, so i didn't feel as bad.

Now to acknowledge the sad emotional eating. My second year in college I met this guy. I though things were great. But, looking back on it, I now can see how unhealthy the relationship was. Many times, he compared me to his Ex-girlfriend and told me over and over again how he liked her body. He would tell me that his friends called me fat and that when they saw my picture the first words out of their mouth were "wow the late night eating and boozing is caught up to her!" I would always try to brush it off and be the strong woman I am, but it was tearing me down big time inside. Over and over again, I would hear his side with his friends and tell me that he thinks they were right and that I am unhealthy and that if we were to get married I would need to watch what I eat because he didn't want someone he was married to be over weight. At this point even though he was being mean to me, I thought we were going to get married and I could only think about "what if i got pregnant?" "Would he leave me if I gained weight?" "If i like to eat now, then its only gonna get worse when I'm pregnant!" This is when I saw how I was turning to food to make my sadness go away.

When I was upset, I'd call my cousin and the first thing we would do is grab something really bad to eat. Or, we'd go to a bar and drink and then get Del Taco on the way home. When ever I cried, I would eat and it would make me feel better. Well at least sometimes it would, then I would be mad at myself for eating so much and I would feel even worse. I couldn't win. But, even though I ate this way, I still kept my weight off so I didn't worry about it as much.

Now, home in Rochester, 15 lbs heavier I saw how my emotional eating has gotten out of control. I was still in the relationship with this guy up until November and I wasn't exercising as much as I did in CA. But I ate just as much, if not more. My whole relationship consisted of tears and being torn down about my physical appearance, I just kept eating what ever I saw in sight and every mondayI would start a diet. I just kept gaining weight. Finally, fed up with my relationship and at a low point with my life, i knew i needed a change. I got rid of the asshole, pulled out my skinny jeans and got serious about loosing the LBS! I look back and can't get over how I let that asshole bring me down like that. But it is what it is, and now I'm moving forward to it. Mine and his relationship is a whole different blog, if not 5 more posts.

Today, February 23rd, I am finally starting this for real. I'll be honest I got off to a rocky start though. I didn't eat breakfast, the most important meal in the day to jump start my tabo(my word for metabolism), and for lunch I ordered a turkey and cheese pianni. Thank god my buddy at work was hungry and he ever so nicely hinted to wanting half of my sandwich. Knowing that I shouldn't eat the whole thing, I gladly gave up half, and if you know me, I dont share food, and I drank my bottle of water and felt satisfied. I said, "buddy, were going to help each other todya, I need to loose weight and you are hungry, so you will help my by eating half of the sandwhich and I'll help you by making sure you are not hungry!" I planned on going to the gym, but i didn't make it. I was starving so I went home for dinner around 8 and ate some baked chicken tenders and lots of salad, and then had a low-fat chocolate pudding cup with fat free cool whip! I can feel my pants getting looser already.

I plan on sticking with this. I need to. I want to feel great this summer and my goal is to be able to wear a white tank top from old navy with jeans and heals and just look hot! I am finally not changing my body for a guy, I am doing it for myself and I think maybe that is why it will work this time. When i lost 20lbs years ago, I did it for myself, not for anyone else. I am starting to think of how I can still hang out with friends and go to restaurants, but find self discipline in myself to realize I enjoy the company of friends more then food. Don't get me wrong I may not always go for the chicken salad with oil and vinegar, but I promise I will be more conscious about what I am eating and i will eat to feel full, not eat to feel like I am going to puke.

I'm happy now and I feel like this is the time it is going to work. I know I will have set backs and I am not going to loose 20 lbs in a week, but at least I'm in the right mind set.

So to all my ladies out there trying to loose weight. I'm here for you sisters, we are a diet tribe and we can make this happen! I will be regularly blogging about my success and my set backs, but I will always be encouraging myself to keep going and I will never fail on you! Stay focused and don't think of this time as a painful diet. Think of this time as life, and the faster we change our eating habits, for what ever reason they may be the way they are, and we increase our exercise, we can't do anything, but succeed! Feel free to comment and give suggestions.

If you didn't get anything out of reading this post at least remember to love yourself for who you are and never let anyone, take who you are, away from you.

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”

~Sophia Loren