Topics covered:

• Feeling better from last week
• Explaining my 6 Week Bootcamp
• Updating the Ultimate Reward Clothing Jar!

This week's random cameo of Callie

• Walk, jog, run, elipp, arc train, stair climb or precor 175 miles (14.6 miles per week in 12 weeks)

Week 1: 5.59
Week 2: 8.51
Week 3: 9.38
Week 4: 15.2
Week 5: 20.07
Week 6: 19.48
Week 7: 17.34
Week 8: 6.36

Weeks to go: 4
Miles to go: 73.07 (18.27 miles/week)

GAK! I better start hoofin' it BIG time if I plan on earning those new sneaks in four (4?!?!?) more weeks.

I spent most of the last few days coming up w/a better game plan for me. I feel confident enough I have exercise down. I like my routine. I feel the urge to go to the gym and I pack a pretty mean gym bag. Which leaves...food...

Also in the last few days, I've come to accept, I HAVE to track my food. I suffer from either not eating enough or what I'm eating being out of balance. So I first made a meal plan of things I know I'd eat...then I plugged it in fitday, to see how nutritionally balanced it was, I'm striving for 50/25/25 (carbs, protein, fat) and tweaked it a bit to ensure the calories were over 1500 and under 1800.

Then...

Topics covered:

• More on how I "lost it"

Not weight. Not body fat. Not inches. Damn near my mind. And it all started w/the scale.

All last week, the daily weigh-ins were leaving me in a grumpy mood, but not too grumpy, I was figuring any day now I'll see a big whoosh drop. The day I expected the whoosh to kick in, it didn't and I was on my way to having a maintain or even a gain from the week before. I saw red.

Saturday AM, I glimpsed 189, but it wasn't official, so I just filed it away. Sunday AM I saw 191 and all hell broke loose. But not so much hell as the dam that was holding back pent up emotions just caved and I spent the entire 3 day weekend in bed. Sleeping. Too tired to get up to do much more than I had to, then I slept again.

The emotions ran the gamut.

• Walk, jog, run, elipp, arc train, stair climb or precor 175 miles (14.6 miles per week in 12 weeks)

Week 1: 5.59
Week 2: 8.51
Week 3: 9.38
Week 4: 15.20
Week 5: 20.07
Week 6: 19.48
Week 7: 17.34

Weeks to go: 5
Miles to go: 79.43 (15.86 miles/week)

First week I'm under 16 miles for the week. Man I came so close to crossing the 100 mile mark. My week got hiccuped and by Saturday I had to take it as an off day or else fer shure I would've hit 100.

191.6lbs

Ya know, when you plod along day by day, it's hard to "see" changes. Especially when week to week, you go up 2lbs to lose 1lb to gain 1.5lbs to lose .5lbs. It's enough to drive a woman to drink.

Luckily for me, I've been taking pictures for yearsssssss. Unluckily for me, I've been taking pictures for yearsssssssss.

In other words, I can see times when I was "slimmer" than I am today, but was till "fatter" than I was a few months before that.

Anyhoozle, it's all in the past and all I'm concerned w/is the recent past, when I revised my day 1 back to be November 12th of last year.

Since then, I've slowly crawled out of my rut, consistently taken my daily pudge pics and every 30 days taken my updated logo pic. It's about time to do a compare and contrast.

Going forward, I'll do these every 30 days. It helps to realize that even losing "just 7lbs" there are changes to my body. Though @ times it's hard for me to really "see" it. But that's b/c I have all sorts of disordered ways of looking @ myself. When I stare at them too hard, it all looks the same.

@ first glance, even I can admit I see a change and feel deep down, I can do this.

If you are a slow loser, I suggest you take pics and just compare them from week to week. It may be enough for you to ignore the scale.

Now, I am aware that 99.9% of my audience is women. Save for the sole guy, well it now may be two guys so lets make that 99.8% of my audience is women, that read my site, I'm doing what I do for the girls. This review, of LL Cool J's Platinum Workout is especially for the ladies. Yes I know his program seems to be catered to men, but TRUST me when I say you want to get a copy of this book. It is a page after page of glossy color photos of the delectable Mr. Todd Smith.

One thing you must do though, you have to open the book. Don't be tempted, like I was, to just gaze at the front cover. Lovingly studying all the indents and ripples...and...veins...and tattoos...and dimples...and girth...and...wait...where was I?

Dammit...reviewing a book. Fine. Review I shall...

Sorry for the bad lighting. My cinematographer is so fired.

Topics covered:

• Emotionally stressful weekend, good and bad
• Tempting eats
• Almost famous
• Updating the Ultimate Reward Clothing Jar!

This week's random cameo of Callie

And THIS is too cute!!! Look what some did for me...Callie has a twin...

Thanks Kittykat1374

• Walk, jog, run, elipp, arc train, stair climb or precor 175 miles (14.6 miles per week in 12 weeks)

Week 1: 5.59
Week 2: 8.51
Week 3: 9.38
Week 4: 15.2
Week 5: 20.07
Week 6: 19.48

Weeks to go: 6
Miles to go: 96.77 (16.12 miles/week)

Aw shucks. I missed beating last week by thismuch...

Now that I'm @ the ½ way point for the first quarter of the year...nothing but net from here on out.

What exactly does that trite phrase mean? I dunno.

190.8lbs

I am in a somber mood today.

I take my role as a public weight loss blogger extremely seriously. Perhaps @ times, too seriously, but that's my own personal demons to battle. I post things I like, don't like, do, don't do w/the acute awareness that my words and actions can be influential to a few folks.

To that end, I try to be as honest and forthcoming as I can in demystifying the whole weight loss experience that one doesn't wake up overnight and voila become 60lbs lighter. It's a day after day struggle, victory, setbacks & huzzahs. The damn thing is a process.

And in that process...you try things.

I've alluded to doing this before, but I'm never specific, again b/c I know it may influence someone else and b/c I always due my own extensive research before I try something as benign as eating fruit to as radical as diet pills.

Coming off the news of of Anna Nicole Smith's passing yesterday, and while there are tons of factors that could've led up to her death, including harboring an unhealed broken heart after losing her son, last night, I made a decision to never ever again use diet pills.

This post isn't a call to promote any new fangled diet pill, to slam me for my own use, or attack that industry as a whole. I am not saying her use of diet pills contributed to her death, but I do have a right to voice an opinion and share my thoughts on how something makes me feel.

That said, below, I'll share my own history w/diet pills and at the end, while I don't particularly like to steer comments in any given direction, if you'd like to share your own history w/diet pills (I'd rather you not name specific names yea or nay) or your feelings on Anna or the extreme measures people use to lose weight, feel free.

So I started off the year, w/my first workout being done in bare feet. Today I reached a new low, or perhaps I should say high as it's the only way to go after baring feet...I worked out in clogs.

So a few weeks back, raiding every Kroger for Lean Cuisines on sale, similar to how Elaine raided every drug store to stock up on the sponge, I found myself heading down the cereal aisle just to see what's new on the market.

There I spied a sole box of something called Fiber One Chewy Bars in peanut butter flavor. I picked up the box and sniffed it.

Could this be real?!?! My precious Fiber One in a tasty bar format?

Looking over my shoulder to see if I was being Punk'd then realizing I was just being silly, I tossed it in the cart.

YES that is my pajama top! Blame Target

Topics covered:

• Three weeks of gains
• Feeling frustrated
• Theorizing on what's going on
• Deciding what to do next
• Glad about other gains
• Updating the Ultimate Reward Clothing Jar!

No random cameo of Callie this week Sorry, she was sleeping and asked not to be disturbed...diva!

• Walk, jog, run, elipp, arc train, stair climb or precor 175 miles (14.6 miles per week in 12 weeks)

Week 1: 5.59
Week 2: 8.51
Week 3: 9.38
Week 4: 15.2
Week 5: 20.07

Weeks to go: 7
Miles to go: 116.25 (16.60 miles/week)

192.6lbs

My weight this week?

I have absolutely no idea what loving myself means. Sure on a literal level, I get it. Love yourself. Fine. But on a practical level, I'm twiddling my thumbs on today, day 2 of 30 days of love.

Challenge me to do something physical, say run, no problem. Tell me to look myself square in the eye and really see what the mirror reflects, I feel like I will literally die.

Yesterday and today I did a feeble, positive affirmation, in my head. Later in the month, I have ideas of various things I can treat myself too, like manicures, a facial etc, but they seem so superficial. I'm not sure how I even begin to scratch the surface of how I feel about myself.

"You are free to fail a thousand times, and then to get back up and achieve stunning success." - Ralph Marston