Category Archives: Motivation

The Real Life Hunger Games

Humor, Motivation, Weight Loss

There it was…the supermarket, looming in the distance, the arena for Round One of the games.

Set against an ominous backdrop of foreboding skies, it was a place once filled with frolic and folly, where in bygone days, I had shopped willy nilly, and without pause while purchasing whatever struck my fancy.

A label was of no consequence. I would throw caution to the wind…”labels, schmabels”, I would say. But those carefree days were over.

For I had volunteered as tribute, and now I stood here with a purpose, eyeballing that monolith with cat like cunning. Oh it was ON…

Now it was a diligently planned endeavor, I was a girl on fire, and I was on a mission.

I had a strategy, and endless contingency plans…and a pocket full of magic faerie dust.

Now, I had lists, and bar code scanners, and meal plans, and a whole route laid out.

I was armed to the teeth with coupons and Pinterest recipes, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of seasonal produce. I had points, and priorities, and Eco friendly re-usable bags.

I was a force to be reckoned with, and I was going to march on in there and take no prisoners…

But, even the most determined intentions can waiver.

And even though most of the time, I could deflect a nefarious snack item from a pretty fair distance by wielding my enchanted shield of Unicorn magic, it did seem that in some cases I was still vulnerable and easily distracted by certain specific tasty vittles.

I still felt like I had to be constantly on the look-out for dastardly delicious delights and daunting desserts of doom at every turn.

Because sometimes, I would find myself at the end of my trip to the supermarket with a whole suspicious pile of items in the cart that I had no intention or recollection of accumulating. And then, I would have to go park it somewhere in an empty corner, and have a serious conversation with myself about what needed to go back on the shelf, and why.

As if keeping it in my cart was going to get me pulled over by the Point Po Po, or frisked at the checkout… Continue reading The Real Life Hunger Games →

574 Days After Day One

Humor, Motivation, Weight Loss,

img_8648

The story continues…

Once Day One had come and gone, I was terrified that failure was inevitable.

That first week was a big wake up call, and I knew that I that I needed to pace myself.

Because, after my initial nosh fest with the Weight Watchers food on Day One, I had returned the following week, to discover that I had actually gained 1.2 pounds.

Seriously?? I wanted to give up.

My Day 8 was 282.2 lbs.

It all felt so hopeless.

But I tried to to stay the course, and I decided that I needed to once again make a list of all of my reasons not to throw in the towel.

I then faithfully continued to drive to all of my meetings for the next several weeks…

But I never went in.

I just couldn’t.

I just sat in my car, hiding in the parking lot, crying, angry with myself, and trying to work up the nerve to walk back inside.

A couple of times I had even stopped at the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way to the meeting, with the mindset, that since I probably wasn’t going in anyway, it didn’t really matter whether or not I ate the Sausage McMuffin and the hashbrown. (Okay, so there MIGHT have originally been TWO Sausage McMuffins and TWO hashbrowns in the bag, and some of it MIGHT have (hypothetically) never made it all the way to the parking lot)

I just couldn’t bring myself to go in there, and see yet another higher number on the scale.

So I just figured, that sooner or later, when I got tired of beating myself up and feeling bad, I would gain control of my downward spiral, get myself together, and actually walk back in.

And then, it finally came to me-

A divine moment of clarity disguised in a fast food wrapper…

While nibbling small bites of a hash brown, I remembered what my mom used to say about how to eat an elephant…one bite at a time, right?

Strange phrase, but the message was there. I paused …

I needed smaller goals.

Yes! I just needed something I could wrap my brain around …

Something that didn’t make me feel like I was going to have to climb Mt Everest with nothing but two forks and a shoelace… Continue reading 574 Days After Day One →

Day One

Humor, Motivation, Weight Loss, ,

img_9161
It all starts with Day One.

Day One is hopeful-

Day One is brave-

And Day One is the metaphorical line in the sand.

It’s the day that we finally protest, “Enough is enough”, and declare “I want more!”

It’s the crusade of a Warrior headed into an epic showdown for all the marbles.

When we come to the place where we cannot march forward without taking decisive action-

It’s the battle cry of the weary,  and it echoes,”I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I’m ready for a change!”

We raise our collective fists to the gods of circumstance and shout, “Let’s do this!”, with all of the motivation and good intentions that we can muster.

It’s the day that we put our foot down with purpose, and then silently ask, “What the French toast have I gotten myself into?”

Because, let’s face it, Day One is a gigantic leap of faith.

It’s a promise that we make to ourselves to make better choices and continue to follow through.

Day One carries with it a crucial mindset that you have to hold onto, even after the initial Day One has passed.

It’s a turning point, a fork in the road, and a new beginning.

The essence and spirit of which needs to be renewed for each and every subsequent day that comes in its wake.

It is the first step on an arduous journey that challenges both your body and your mind.

Its the stirrings of a fierce determination to wrestle a beast of burden and bring balance back into the fold.

And it’s the deep breath that you take before you dive headfirst into the unknown.

Day One is the very origin of greatness,

And Day One is where it all begins….

My Day One was a chilly overcast morning in October of 2012.

I remember sitting in the parking lot giving myself a well rehearsed pep talk. Continue reading Day One →

A Chance to Dance

Motivation, Weight Loss, , ,


I have always been a dancer deep down in my soul.

Dance lessons as a young girl were always my happy place, and soon became an integral part of my identity.

It was an outward expression of my creative spirit, and a way to connect with myself as I grew into a young lady.

I danced with reckless abandon.

With the entirety of my being.

Like my pants were on fire….

I was a dancer.

And I just wanted to dance.

Even while I was in high school, I joined the dance team. But due to a specific set of standards, even back then, I was considered the “fat girl”. I was “muscular”, and “big-boned”. It was just an unfortunate circumstance, that compared to the other girls, I was the heaviest. And once I had begun to see myself that way, I was never really able to “unsee” it.

Eventually, that altered version of myself became an integral part of my newly evolving identity…and that was when things began to change. Continue reading A Chance to Dance →

The Evolution of the Feel Good Pants

Humor, Motivation, Weight Loss

It was the final piece of evidence…..

While cleaning out the spare room that joins up with the laundry room, I noticed some stuff wedged in the space between the washer and the dryer.

So I grabbed the broom in an attempt to use the handle to fish it out-

I had found a truly ancient artifact … my long lost pair of old house pants.

There they were, in a size 5X.

And the only reason they probably weren’t completely worn out with holes in them, was because I had lost track of them at some point and they had been so well preserved like a fossil in the laundry room for the last few years.

I am fairly certain that I would have worn them until they had fallen apart, had they had not so mysteriously disappeared.

They were my favorite pants.

My comfy cozy, always fit me, super awesome, “feel good” pants. And looking at them now, I could hardly imagine that they had ever been mine.

So I put them on … Continue reading The Evolution of the Feel Good Pants →

The New Normal

Motivation, Weight Loss


“What’s your goal weight?”

She asked me as if it was the most routine question.

As if I hadn’t thought about it a million times before.

As if it wasn’t the only thing I had thought about for decades.

What was my goal weight?

Hmmmm….

I wished I had an answer.

All of a sudden I felt Continue reading The New Normal →

The Captain’s Wench

Motivation,

My fiancé is a boat Captain.

He currently works out of the gulf of Mexico, but over the years, he has worked in many ports including Alaska, Trinidad, and many different countries in Africa.

During the time at which my weight loss journey began, he had been working out of East Africa for about a year. While working overseas, he was on a schedule that had him abroad for 3 to 4 months at a time, and then home for one month.

I joined Weight Watchers during a time when he had just left Continue reading The Captain’s Wench →

The Weight of Words

Humor, Motivation


It was definitely up there on my list of bad decisions.

Probably in the top 10, come to think of it, somewhere between the crimping iron incident of 1988, and the time that I allowed my obviously drunk friend Cathy to pluck my eyebrows in a public restroom during a Violent Femmes concert.

And sometimes, you bounce back from these unfortunate forays into adulthood, and sometimes…not so much.

It’s hard to know why some of these things roll off your back Continue reading The Weight of Words →

Confessions of a Zumba Marshmallow

Humor, Motivation

A funny thing happened on the way to my goal weight…

Three years ago this week, when I walked into my first Zumba class, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And by the end of that class, I had gotten my ass kicked so hard, that I was actually considering pressing charges.

As I was gasping for breath, and dry heaving in the corner Continue reading Confessions of a Zumba Marshmallow →