A New Beginning

I got to 154.0 today, yay. I can’t wait to play some rock band to celebrate! I am all about the Beatles edition that is coming out soon. 148, here I come!

Blarg! I am so tired of seeing 155.0 on the scale right now. 154 is a “healthy” weight for my height according to BMI and I am really anxious to see 154 already! I know I won’t actually be any healthier at 154 than I am at 155 right now, I know my clothes won’t really fit differently, and I know no one will be able to see the difference, but I just want it to happen already. Have I mentioned before that I am not a patient person? I’m not. At all. Okay, rant over.

Despite that above rant, I am actually feeling good. I haven’t been running, and as a result my left foot feels so much better. I am pretty positive that I fractured it at my wedding on March 28th and it has hurt ever since. I kept running anyway, but there were times I could barely walk or stand because of the pain. So, I’m glad to have that gone. I actually had a cut on my right foot too, so for several months both of my feet hurt, which was pretty ridiculous. I can’t believe that in all that time I never skipped a single workout. I pretty much rule, I must say…

So, it has been all bike, elliptical and stair stepping for me for a couple weeks. I have increased the resistance on the elliptical a lot, so that has helped. I don’t know why I wasn’t doing that before, but it was getting to the point where doing the interval workout on there didn’t even cause me to break a sweat. That is definitely not an issue now. Sadly though, my gym membership at my posh, over priced gym is over at the end of this week. That means that starting Monday I’m going to have to work out at home before work. That is very scary, because it is so much easier to stay in bed or do something else when you don’t have to get out of the house by a certain time. But, the benefit is that I’ll get to watch whatever I want on TV and not have to worry about skinny, old, bald guy changing the channel to CNBC without even asking. Old man, how I hate you so… I fear you will never understand how completely rude you are…

In any event, I am excited about getting to 154. It’s gonna happen. Soon. And then it will be on to bigger and better (actually, smaller and better) things. I want to get down to 150 before I take my next set of progress pictures, even though it has been forever since I took any. Maybe I’ll do it at 152 or something, we’ll see. I actually let my friend borrow/have the bikini I had been wearing in my pictures, so I need to get it back from her because I know she didn’t use it anyway and I want the continuity for the pictures. I hope I’ll be posting those very soon… but 5 pounds will take awhile to lose, I realize. I’m at the point where every pound takes a major effort. My effort definitely ebbs and flows lately, too.

Since it started I’ve been a follower of More To Love on FOX. I didn’t know if I would like the show or not, but I am entertained enough by it to watch it. I like having a show that I’m “into.” I have the TV on a lot, but it’s usually as background noise because being in a big house (or even my small condo when I had it) alone makes me a little anxious if there is no noise at all. Every nail pop or creeky floorboard freaks me out. So, I have the TV on, but usually I’m crafting, IMing, looking at real estate, cooking, writing a contract, etc. I very rarely pay attention and I usually watch stuff I don’t need to pay attention to at all. So, it’s nice to have a show that I enjoy watching and make a point to watch. Anyway, back to the point, I do like watching More To Love. I think the bachelor, Luke, seems like a really nice and genuine guy. He doesn’t come off as cocky and he seems to genuinely find the women on the show attractive and I think he really does care about them a lot, even the ones he has to send home.

I like most of the women too, and I totally identify with everything they say about how much their emotions and their entire lives are tied into their weight and appearance. It is amazing how your weight can totally define you, even if no one else sees it or cares. I’ve always been on the heavy side and it is just a “big” part of who I am, even though I don’t think people even necessairly thought of me as heavy, I always have. I still do now, even though I’m only one pound overweight. But, now that I’ve lost weight, I feel bad for the women in a way because I can tell that some of them don’t think losing weight is even a possibility. And that’s crazy talk because in most cases, our weight is something fully within our control. It doesn’t feel like we can control it, especially when we’ve got a lot to lose, but we can. I felt bad for Kristian last night, because I’m sure she thinks she was sent home partially because of her size, even though I am positive her size had nothing to do with it. She is such a sweet girl and obviously is very generous and kind. I don’t think she “needs” to lose weight to find love, not at all, but I hope she realizes that losing weight is something she can do. I think she would feel so much better if she did it, too, because I just know how much better I physically feel now, not to mention how much lighter I feel mentally as well.

Anyway, I’m anxious to see who Luke ends up with. For some reason I feel like the couple that results from this show has a higher probability of actually staying together, but I don’t know why. I’ve never really watched The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, but for some reason the people on those shows just always seemed shallow and more interested in becoming a star than in actually finding love. So I guess that is why I think More To Love could have a better than typical end result. Time will tell, I suppose. I also can’t wait for The Biggest Loser to start up again… September 15th will be here before you know it.

I haven’t posted in awhile because life has been crazy busy lately.  I am basically just maintaining my weight lately, which is kind of annoying, but oh well.  At least I’m not gaining out of control or anything.  I keep wanting to make a serious push to start losing again, but then I don’t do it.  I guess there are just other things on my mind lately.  That’s a total understatement, actually, I have way too much on my mind!

Topping the list is that I started my real estate brokerage, finally.  It’s called The Property Shop, LLC and so far has not made any money for me.  But, my mom, who is my only agent besides myself, has two buyers that are actively looking.  I’ve got one rental listing and one house, though it happens to be my own house.  Oh well!  I hope to get some clients soon, but at the moment am more concerned with getting my own house staged and the rest of this initial paperwork done.  There is a lot of red tape in the real estate business, let me tell you…

In addition to that there is the problem that I have zero interest in my actual job anymore.  I just cannot get motivated to do anything lately.  If I don’t have real estate stuff to do when I’m here, I go nuts.  You’d think I’d be posting on here all the time because I have nothing else to do, yet somehow I don’t have the motivation to even do that!  It is nuts.  I need to find a way to be interested in this; at the very least interested enough that I don’t end up actually losing my job, you know?  I just hate this stuff, I really do.

Back to the topic at hand, did anyone else see that Time magazine article about how exercise doesn’t mean weight loss?  Well, I read it and I don’t really know what to think about it.   I know first hand that if you have bad eating habits, no amount of exercise is going to make you lose weight.  At least it doesn’t for me.  But, I also think that without my strong commitment to exercise I would not have lost nearly as much weight and probably would have lost muscle instead of gained it.  So, I basically think the article is hogwash.  At the same time, one of the points the author made did resonate with me; the idea he mentioned that we can only exert so much during a day.  I definitely have noticed that when I work out hard in the morning (which I do 4 or 5 mornings a week before work) I don’t have the energy to do much after work.  But, when I don’t work out, I usually am more active in the evening.  Of course, calorie-wise, I’m sure I burn more on the days I work out anyway it’s just that I’ve noticed I’m more lethargic in the evenings.

The thing that really annoys me though, is just how much misinformation there is out there about weight loss.  Really, it is just insane.  First they’re telling me alcohol and caffeine are health hazards, then next week they’re actually good for your heart, but they’re bad for weight loss, good for thyroid function, good for something else, yada, yada, yada.  Just so we’re clear, I made up those good/bad qualities, I’m no doctor and I’m just as confused as everyone else about this stuff.  I tend to avoid reading the nutrition articles in Shape/Self/Health now because I hate all the conflicting information.  Plus, have you ever noticed that when they tell you about the benefits of a certain food or drink (they love to tout the benefits of green tea, for example) the quantity of whatever miracle food it is that you have to consume in order to get any benefit is insane?  Seriously, I saw one that said you get some benefit, I forget what it is, by drinking 4 cups of coffee a day.  That same magazine talked about the miracle powers of about 15 other foods in the issue, yet, if I were to eat the quantities they described to get the benefits, I could only eat about 3 of them a day and that would require every calorie I’m allotted.  Somehow I doubt a diet dominated by 2 or 3 foods is really all that great for anyone over a long period…

I know everyone is different and I think that we probably all lose weight in slightly different ways.  But, even so, how is it that we can get such totally conflicting messages from “experts?”  I mean, someone saying exercise won’t lead to weight loss seems pretty insane.  How that even got to become a cover story for Time Magazine is actually worrisome.  If they’ll report that, what wouldn’t they report?