Day 307--Weigh Day, I'm loving this, and Zaababy is an inspiration? Peeeeshaw!!!!

Weigh Day has come and gone with another pound added to the tally. I now weigh 274, a number I haven't seen in years and years! I still can't believe I'm really doing this. I have dreamed and hoped that somehow I would find the inner strength, the willpower to lose weight. Thankfully I don't have to have any of that!
Today my joy is not coming from eating 'diet' foods, someone else's prescribed portions, or following a 'plan'. I'm going to let you in on a little secret of mine: I'm a picky eater! Yes! A 48 year old woman still does not like onions on her cheeseburger! And she likes cheeseburgers. Supposedly when you are 'dieting' you can't eat stuff like that. Everything has to be so HEALTHY and LOW IN FAT AND SODIUM AND SUGAR. No wonder so many people fall off the wagon. Incredibly enough there is a way to lose weight that even picky people like me can love. You just eat exactly what you want measured and weighed and one portion of it. I now eat without guilt.
This morning I reveled in my 8 oz orange juice and 59 g regular old mini wheats with milk. As always, the whiny Zaa inside wailed 'That's not going to be enough I'm going to starve!' whilst I was measuring everything. That seems to happen a lot. I've been eating huge servings for so long I am brainwashed as to portion sizes. I can't tell you how shocked I was when I measured out one serving of cereal oh so many days ago. Because it is an incredibly small amount. I normally have two servings of cereal unless it's heavy like grape nuts or mini wheats, then one is good. As time has gone on, the portion sizes are becoming familiar. I have been trying to 'eye' amounts of food and then weighing to see how close I am. Most of the time I am on the mark!

If you do not weigh or measure your food start immediately.

Wait, wait. You haven't heard the best part. I eat so much during the day that I am never starving. I eat 5-6 times a day of exactly what I want--portioned. How how how can this even work! Yet it does. There is hope, my fellow picky eaters. You don't have to listen to the others with their ridiculous ideas of what to eat and when to eat and how much to eat and what NEVER to eat and what you must ALWAYS eat. People automatically equate losing weight with completely changing what they eat to 'good' foods, because what they're eating has to be bad, they're fat!
One of the first things I learned on my journey was I can still eat what I want and lose weight. How it changed my life! I just couldn't stay 'on plan' before and would helplessly watch myself as if from afar falling back to the foods I loved.

Sample menu of mine:
2 bacon, 1 egg fried in bacon grease, 1 toast with butter, orange juice
1/2 a moon pie with small cup of milk
burrito made from homemade taco meat, refried beans, cheese and Taco Bell sauce yummmmmmmmm and an ounce of fritos
15 g of Ghiradelli 60% cacao chocolate chips
a piece of bologna
tuna casserole, pumpkin bread, green beans
other half of the moon pie
And is this weird or what--all that is only 1500 calories because I eat small portions. Ooooh also none of it is fat free or low fat or sugar free. It's all full fat stuff.

It's all stuff I like. In fact, if something doesn't taste good, I don't eat it. Why waste my calories on something I don't like? Get real. I love to lick the spoon when I make a cake. Am I bad for doing that? Of course not! Am I bad for going to McDonald's with my daughters while shopping? No! When we think of eating regular normal foods there's this belief that the portions are all huge. Actually people on diets like to eat huge amounts of--you guessed it--things I don't like! But they like it! I think you should eat what you like.
Okay. I have this friend named Sean. Kind of long winded, but sweet. And he looooves ice cream. He discovered early on in his weight loss journey that he could still have it and boy he would. He would drive thru McDonald's and get a small cone. So I'm reading about that and my insides are jumping up and down with excitement. Now me. I don't personally care for ice cream, and I never eat it. But I adore chocolate. So I have found ways to eat it every single day. Sometimes I'll have a fudgesicle, or chocolate cereal, or a small homemade brownie or cookie, or a chocolate malt with double malt from Sonic. I also have this thing for sour gummy worms. And I might not have mentioned this before but chocolate moon pies are one of the most delicious things on earth. Now you. Maybe you really love salty stuff--like my sister. How brash and bold of me to tell you that to lose weight you couldn't have anything with salt! You have to eat what someone else tells you to eat. And it's all bland and flavorless. How long do you think you'll stick to the new way of eating? Not long!
Are your eyes opened to the truth yet? I bet you're reading this and there's this tiny flame of hope burning in your heart. Can this be? My dear friends. Start right now by getting yourself a scale for the kitchen. Let's say that today you were planning on having tomato soup, crackers, and a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch. Guess what. You can still eat that! Look on each label and figure out how much one portion is. Write down those calories, prepare your food, and eat only one portion of each. Or wait, maybe you want a bologna sandwich with chips and a ding dong. No no you want pizza! Mmmmm leftover tacos are good too. Chili dog and french fries? Sign me up!!!
How yummy that all sounds to me! Much better than this sample menu I found specifically for mocking purposes:

Breakfast

• Hot Peanut Butter Flax Cereal
• 1/4 cup fresh or thawed frozen blueberries on cereal

Lunch

• Salad made with 4 cups chopped romaine or other dark green lettuce (i.e. not iceberg), half an avocado, and 4 oz cooked chicken meat, with Vinaigrette dressing such as Sweet and Sour Lime Dressing

Snack

• 1/4 cup whole almonds

Dinner

• Grilled or Pan-fried Steak (5 oz raw)
• 1 cup green beans, prepared as you like them
• 1 cup Mushroom and Peppers with Wine and Herbs

The only things i liked on that list were the steak, green beans and almonds. But one cup of green beans? Too much for me!

Or this one:


Breakfast

• 3 eggs with ½ cup cooked spinach and 1 cup sliced raw mushrooms, sautéed (in omelet or scrambled together)
• 1 small slice cantaloupe (about 1/8 small melon)
• 1 Apple Flax Muffin (or could save muffin for lunch)

Lunch

• 3 cups chopped romaine or other dark green lettuce
• Tuna Walnut Salad

Snack

• Another Apple Flax Muffin with a nice cup of tea

Dinner

• Lasagna in a Bowl
• Green salad with low carb dressing

The only thing I liked on that one was the cantaloupe.

Some well meaning person put those menus together and I wonder, do they actually eat that way? Weight loss is a huuuuuge money maker these days. Stuff like that sells, we are all so desperate for the 'secret' to weight loss.
That menu is fine for people who like those foods. Am I a horrid person because I don't like what someone else likes? Hey I don't criticize you for your taste in music. Don't criticize me because I don't like the foods you do.
Tailor the whole thing to fit YOU.
Today at breakfast I was filled with joy that I was eating guilt free and when I ate it all, I could stop because I knew I'll be eating again in about 2 hours or so. No more stuffing myself like there's no tomorrow. As a Mom I do plan all meals in the house and I never worry about where my next meal will come from. If I'm out and it's a meal time, I can head to Sonic or Taco Bell and eat, again, without guilt.
I am so glad God has made such a variety of foods for us to eat. You can eat what you like. And I can eat what I like. And we can all lose weight together !!!
To expand on my last post about riding a bike:

I tried not to think about it a whole lot. I used to ride bikes all the time when I was a kid. I threw on my daughter's XL jacket and headed out the door. Taking my daughter's bike firmly by the handles, I wimpishly walked it to the road so I wouldn't have to navigate my narrow walk. My daughter was with me as moral and emotional support. I got on. Boy those seats are small! I want a bike with a tractor seat. Hoping desperately that noone was looking out their windows, walking by, or driving by in their cars, I bravely put my feet on the pedals. I slowly started pedaling, lost balance a few times and had to put a foot down, and was most wobbly. But I was up and going and THEN I had to turn the corner and oooooh was I freaked but I didn't fall. Rachel walked by me so sweetly in case I did fall. I'm such a weenie. It was then determined that yes, I was riding and Rachel ran to her bike and got on and then we were off! We had a grueling route that we roughly made up on the spot of one block over, then four blocks down, one block back to our road then four blocks. How freaked I was when a car was coming! How scared I was to turn corners! How thrilling to discover that if I lean a little bit I don't immediately crumple to the ground in an embarrassing heap but instead am steering the bike! When we rode up to our driveway, I, as a big marshmallow, immediately burst into tears and hugged on Rachel because I, me, a woman who has struggled for years with weight loss and had a most abnormal life, just did something that was impossible a short year ago. We then did the whole thing again.

I have ridden it everyday since then. I am slowly becoming more familiar with the ground going by so fast.
And oh it's fun it's fun! I want a bike with a basket and a bell and all my kids think I'm a nerd but I don't care.
I never never never want to go back to what my life was like before. There is no food on earth that tastes better than riding that bike felt.
Am I beating a dead horse? I just want everyone to know that life is good while losing weight, it's not difficult, it's fun and joyful! Join me today!
So my niece messaged me on facebook and told me I inspire her. Can you believe it. I thought my life was going to be:
eating helplessly everything that called my name
getting fatter and fatter and fatter
having to buy clothes at no, not lane bryants because that stuff doesn't fit anymore, no, some specialty store
watching my world shrink smaller and smaller as I got bigger
not being able to do anything, even drying off after a shower or walking across the house to get the phone, without getting out of breath
not going upstairs in my own home unless I absolutely HAD to, actually, not using stairs at all if I could possibly maneuver it so. Dreading stairs when confronted with them. Trying bravely to walk up or down them just like everybody else but being so freaked with my legs hurting and they were so heavy and it was so hard
But instead, my life has become something out of a fairytale. Everything is better. Except I d0 feel incredibly embarrassed that I got as fat as I did. When I got married I weighed 140 pounds. Which means I gained 216 pounds in the last 29 years. You know that's the first time I actually thought about that. Doesn't that just blow the mind!!!
So to my favorite niece---Congratulations on losing 7 pounds already!!! I am honored that I am inspiring you! But my story is nothing compared to the folks on my blog roll.
And to my sister---Congratulations on losing 5 pounds!!! Soon you will love your Nazi trainer I promise!
Oh, and go visit Jack Sh*t's blog, he's having a fun giveaway today. You can find the link on my sidebar with all the other blogs.

Hugs to all my weight loss super hero super friends!!!
Toodles.