The Pitfalls of Fried Chicken

I am lucky enough (or unlucky enough?) to not only have a mother who makes excellent homemade fried chicken, but to have a mother-in-law who does as well.
Now, they are different types of fried chicken. My mom’s is more Popeye’s and my mom-in-law’s is more Kentucky Fried. But they are the same in that they are both MOTHERFUCKING DELICIOUS.

There’s a problem with this. That problem is that its delicious fried chicken.

Its kind of like this: Awesome Fried Chicken + Fat Girl = Fatter Girl

And this fried chicken, you must understand, cannot be eaten in tiny portions. That is physically impossible. No one can eat this chicken without being like:

I feel guilty after eating this chicken. Like I feel like I’ve gained 10 pounds, even though I logically know that’s impossible. Its gotten to the point where if I know I will be eating fried chicken for dinner, I won’t eat anything else all day. Or I’ll “bird eat” as my mother calls it. I know this is not really healthy or good for my diet, but I can’t help it.

How do you deal with food guilt?

Second Verse (Hopefully Not Exactly the Same as the First)

Alright, so, I think one thing we can all agree on is this: April (and at this point the majority of May) was a total disaster. I went into a weird shut-down mode. I have managed to not gain wait, which is good. But I all but stopped my workouts, which is very bad.
And as for the blog? Psh, forget about it. Virtually no updates; certainly nothing awesome to report. I almost literally forgot about it. I felt like I wasn’t worthy to write about this so-called “weight loss journey”, when I had effectively chloroformed my weight loss journey as it struggled, duck-taped it unto some garbage bags, and buried it alive.
I felt terrible about this. So terrible that I gave up, and I wasn’t coming back. This blog was going to rot, and I thought seriously that no one would care. 😦 But I couldn’t quite do it. Thankfully. All this time (trust me, it has seemed like a much longer amount of time than it really has been) my neglected blog has been rattling somewhere in the back of my head.

Long story short, today is the first anniversary (this has a point, I promise) of the day my fiance proposed to me, i.e. gave me my bling. For my anniversary present, my fiance has pushed me into getting back to my workouts, and mostly back to my blog. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy this.
And he knows it. And it really made him sad to see me not doing something I like because of the circular argument of: I can’t so I’m not, I’m not because I can’t. So thanks to him, here comes From Blimp to Bombshell v2. 🙂

During the hiatus, I really didn’t deviate from my diet much. But my exercising….well to be honest, there really wasn’t much exercising at all, like basically none. *pulls blanket over head*
So today, I did a lot of stretching. And then I found this YouTube video (which I will also add to the end of the post) and did it twice. I didn’t have weights, or rather I couldn’t find the weights, so I improvised with large-ish water-filled Gatorade bottles. 🙂
Today was a good day.
Compared to the last 1 1/2+ months, today was an excellent day! 😀

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YouTube: Beginner Workout For Plus Size Women and Men by Scott Tousignant

 

I Came Into This Unprepared

Hi! I’ve been kind of sick, and also I had the root canal, so I’m in a bit of a pain-haze, and also in a bit of a haze from the medication to combat the pain.
I also finished Banjo-Kazooie, not that that’s really important, but I did 100% complete it. 100 Jiggies, 900 Notes, and I even did the Stop ‘N Swop, which may or may not be pointless. So yeah, I rocked that bitch.

So anyway, you know, despite not posting for days at a time, I’m really committed to this blog. Which is why, depressed and perhaps a little fever-addled the other day, I started crying about it. I hadn’t posted for days, and I hadn’t posted for days prior to my last post either. So, as I should’ve expected (because of me being the way I am) I felt like a HUGE failure, and I had that knee-jerk urge to give up and hide.

But I’m not. I can’t. I hide from things that feel too daunting; I have a record of doing that, and that is a bad thing. I have to break that pattern, or I won’t ever complete my quest to become a better, healthier version of myself. Because if anything is daunting, and scary and hard, this is.

But I thought about it, and I really did come into this unprepared. I had this sunny outlook; I was going to post something substantial every day, cause you know, that wouldn’t be difficult or anything. And for some reason, I apparently thought if something unexpected happened, like being super sick or preoccupied with something *gasp* more important than the blog, like my family or my future husband, well I seem to have thought that would have no effect on my writing/posting capabilities.

Clearly, I was wrong.

In the future, I will try to at least post a daily blurb, but I won’t make any promises. I am at least happy to report that I’ve somehow stayed on track with my diet, although with the root canal I can only eat soft food for at least a couple days. I doubt that will be great for my diet, although it will probably make it easier to not eat too much on Easter! O_O

I’m Back

You may have noticed (or not; I don’t know how closely you pay attention, but its all good) that I’ve been MIA for the last few days.

Now, I could lie my pretty little head off because this is the internet, so how would anyone know? I could say my internet was down or something, and no one could really contradict me. BUT if I did that, if I lied, then this blog would start to become pointless.

The truth is that I just haven’t felt like posting. I haven’t felt like doing jack-shit. Basically I’ve been sitting on my butt for a few days playing Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox360.

Its not as bad as it seems though, I have been continuing to use MyFitnessPal, and I’m still on track with my diet, partially thanks to MFP. And I’ve not been completely inactive, I was walking up and down the stairs when I felt like it, clinging shakily to the handrail.

You may remember from my last post, me talking about a medicine I had started taking in an effort to put off yet another root canal. It didn’t really work, so I’m probably going to have to have the RC anyway, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that that medication was FROM HELL.

It was a corticosteroid, for anti-inflammatory purposes, and it made me feel like I was having the Flu. My body ached all over, and I was shaking all the time. My legs were so achy and stiff, and they were so weak that they kept giving out under me. I fell a few times, and when I had a doctor’s appointment, there’s no way I could’ve gotten to it on my own. I’m just really thankful my fiance was there to support me. Literally support me; I couldn’t walk on my own very well.

Thankfully I’m done with it now because it was a six-day course. Thank God! I’m still having the effects from it, but they are letting up gradually. I’m not as shaky and my legs seem to be getting stronger, so hopefully in a few days I will be back to normal and able to restart my usual routine. 🙂

Until then, I’m gonna closely watch what I’m eating, walk when I can, and 100% complete Banjo-Kazooie.

Positive Cheating!

First off, know that I’m iron-deficient anemic, so when I’m on my period, I am really weak and tired from blood loss. Before I decided to start really taking this weight loss thing seriously, I didn’t ever do anything while I was having my period, because I’m always exhausted and also because exercise makes my period worse. But I feel like I just can’t do that anymore. I feel like I’m being lazy.

That may have been TMI. I’m sorry if it was, but it is relevant.

This particular Curse Week, I am in a double-whammy type of situation. Not only am I dealing with the normal misery (exhaustion, sometimes-almost-crippling pain, and I’m always hungry) but I’m also on a medication this week that makes me more tired, more hungry, more cramp-y, and it thins my blood, so I’m losing kind of huge amounts, which makes everything worse.

So all day, I feel like this:

I attempted to do a real workout, but I made it only about 5 minutes before I felt like crawling into my bed and curling up to die.

Later though, in a (failed) attempt to occupy myself so that my cramps would get better because I wouldn’t be noticing how bad they were, I started cleaning.
I cleaned like a boss.

Seriously, like, you could probably eat off my bathroom floor right now.

Cleaning is a pretty good workout, but you’re not officially working out, so you don’t really notice. Positive cheating! WOO!

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So, I signed up for MyFitnessPal today, meaning that I’m officially totally keeping track. Yay!

My goal is to lose 1 pound per week, for now, and although I haven’t really figured the site out just yet, I seem to have come in under my calorie goal (goal is 1,960 calories per day, and I got 1,039 from food, and I burned 299 from exercise)!

And I also made it over my exercise goal. The goal is 103 calories burned per day (Yes, I’m purposely not setting the bar high, for now.) Today, I burned 299 calories. Even without doing a full workout-workout, I burned more calories than I usually do because of the cleaning!

So, I’m totally counting today as a victory, and now I’m going to eat a piece of dark chocolate (because I CAN, and guilt-free too!) and then I’m going to bed and passing out!

See you in the next post, and remember, anything you do burns some amount of calories. So if you didn’t make it to the gym, don’t beat yourself up over it, and vacuum your house instead! Not only do you burn a surprising (at least to me) amount of calories, but you also channel your frustration into a cleaner house, and you feel better! Today, I killed not two, but three birds with one stone, and you can too!*

*No birds were harmed in today’s activity or in the making of this post.

Snow is a Workout

SO it snowed basically all night last night, because Colorado. I think we got a foot or so. It’s been melting all afternoon, and I think its mainly slush now, and it will be all gone tomorrow because its going to be in the 50s and then in the mid-70s in a couple days.

But this morning, when I was out at a horribly early time (I’m not a morning person. At all.) it was definitely solid, wet & heavy snow. And it was still snowing. I hate snow, except if I’m safely inside, and then its gorgeous. But if I’m in it, I hate it. Especially deep snow, because I have short legs, so its a bitch to walk through.

The kitty pictured here adequately sums up my feelings.

Anyway, the point is this: today I walked for about 15 minutes total, going at a fairly moderate pace. Not too slow because I was running late, but not too fast because I didn’t want to fall on the snow/ice.

According to MyFitnessPal (I haven’t made an account yet, but I kind of consult it) walking at a moderate pace for that amount of time at my weight means I burned about 106 calories, which is something like 44 less than I burn using the Sky Glider for 10 minutes.
But here’s the fun part, and this is where the snow comes in. According to Bill McArdle, an exercise physiologist and Scientific Advisor to Weight Watchers International, who is quoted here on weightwatchers.com, “Walking in packed snow increases by 60 percent the calories burned compared to walking on a paved road, while walking in soft snow triples the calories burned compared to walking at the same speed on a treadmill. In addition, the added resistance of the snow can firm and tone the muscles.”

I’m going to assume that ‘soft snow’ means fresh snow that isn’t packed down, so if I go by that, then I really burned something like 318 calories and I’m sure you can see why that makes me smile, especially since yesterday was such a bad day for me. 😀

And I’m also quite happy because last week at the doctor, I weighed 284 pounds, and today at the doctor I weighed 283 pounds. I lost a pound in a week! And actually, probably more. Because I’ve got The Curse this week, and all that water-weight that comes with it. So in a conservative estimate I’ll say that I’m carrying an extra pound from that. And, because of the snow and cold, I was wearing ALL THE CLOTHES, so that may be a little bit more fake-weight. So…I probably lost at least 2 pounds in a week!
I’m totally over yesterday’s fuck-up and I am back on track!

I Quit

Just kidding! April Fools! 😀

Wasn’t that hilarious? I am just so funny, ain’t I?

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Seriously though, this is basically a post just to meet my goal of an entry every day.

I am emotionally exhausted today. I had to go to the dentist for a couple fillings today too, and they put me on laughing gas so I don’t freak out, because I am terrified of dentists. My childhood dentist was an expert in torture. Laughing gas is a total life saver for me, and its a great thing to have if you’re having dental work done.
Unfortunately though, after they take me off of it, my whole body aches for several hours. So that’s happening.

I did manage 7 minutes on the Sky Glider, which is definitely not great, but its better than nothing.

This post is short, because I’m just so tired mentally and physically. But I did want to tell you guys, I’m going to start using My Fitness Pal when I am feeling better, both for the food journal and to track how many calories I’ve burned each day.

I actually didn’t know that My Fitness Pal was a thing before. That changed though, completely thanks to Jamie, the great girl behind the My Onederland Blog. Now, if you don’t know this blog, I highly recommend clicking on that link there to go read and subscribe to it. Jamie makes really helpful posts (which is how I found out about My Fitness Pal, among other things) and she’s also done an awesome job losing weight, so, for me at least, she and her blog are super inspiring.

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That’s all for today, but I have a completely off-topic request for you guys. My childhood best friend’s dad is in the hospital. They thought he had a heart attack or a stroke but he didn’t, so they don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he’s in renal failure. She’s asked her friends to pray, and as her friend, I’m going to ask that if any of you are the praying type that you would please pray for him as well. I believe that the more people pray, the more powerful the prayer is. 🙂 And if you’re not the praying type, that’s fine too. Just think good thoughts for him, create good vibrations. 🙂

I’m Shrinking

You’d think I’d be excited and happy about this, since shrinking is my goal, and sort of the whole point. But, weirdly, I’m not. I guess I just always need something to bitch about.

The problem is my jewelry. I can hear you thinking: “Well, that’s pretty trivial and superficial. She should be looking at the big picture.” And you’re right…..but you’re also wrong.

You see, I have certain jewelry that I never take off. I wear three silver hoops in each ear, a captive bead/hoop piercing in my lip, two toe rings- a silver one with pot leaves etched into it and a silver scroll-work one with a peridot stone set into it, a necklace holding 1/2 of a ‘sisters’ heart pendant, a cross made of silver and fake diamonds, and my Grandpa’s St. Christopher medallion, and I wear one ring on each hand.

I can shrink all I want and most of my jewelry won’t go anywhere. Obviously my various piercings will stay put, my toe-rings are adjustable, and a necklace is a neckless. But my rings….they are the issue.

On my right hand, I have a silver scroll-work ring with a black stone. My daddy bought it for me when I was 13, and since I put it on, the only times it has been taken off were for surgeries and after I tried to kill myself when I was in the hospital for a week and I wasn’t allowed to have any personal property. Its very important to me, and its been falling off lately. Its come off 4 times just today. 😦 And, of course, on my left hand I wear my engagement ring.

What you have to understand is that I never realized my fingers would get smaller when I lost weight. My hands don’t look fat, you know? But they are and I’m really worried that my dad’s ring is going to fall off when I’m out shopping or at the doctor and I’ll never see it again. And I’m incredibly  worried that the same fate will befall my beautiful engagement ring. 😦 Now, for my dad’s ring at least, I thought about putting it on my necklace with my other important things. But the truth is, I feel completely naked without it on my finger and I can’t do it.

Obviously, I’m not going to quit dieting and exercising just because I’m scared of losing my rings, but I am really upset about it. Both of the rings are irreplaceable. Even if I could find an exact copy of either of them, it wouldn’t be the same because it would completely lack the sentimental value that these rings have. If I lose one of them, it’ll be gone forever. 😥

No Workout Today

No. Non. Nein. Niet.

Shit shit shit shit.

I’m totally beating myself up over this. 😦

But I promise its not because I’m lazy or I’m just giving up after less than a week. I mean, my God, I would never forgive myself for being that weak.
And, I suppose, its technically not an activity free day, but at about a minute and a half, it might as well be. /insert scowl and self-abusive thoughts/

The reason it happened, or rather didn’t happen, was because as I was on the Sky Glider, I had this huge head rush and had the weird sensation which is like feeling/hearing water rushing through my head and I immediately stopped. I sat down and waited to feel better. It didn’t take long, but I was too scared to get back to the workout.

You see, as of last year, I learned to take the head-rush-strange-feeling combo as a warning, which is what it is. Its a warning that I’m going to pass out. Before I realized this, I had only passed out once, when I was 12 and went trick-or-treating with what we thought was a bad cold, but after I fell on the staircase leading to the door of a mansion that belonged to a client of my mother’s (I am the proud daughter of a former housekeeper) my father took me to the ER the next day and it turned out I had a pretty bad case of pneumonia. Bad enough to be hospitalized, but I wasn’t, because I begged my dad not to sign the papers, and so he took care of me at home. (As a side note, my dad worked his butt off for like three weeks when this happened, because I was so weak I couldn’t even get out of bed without help, and the day after he took me to the ER, my mom severely sprained her ankle at work, so he was playing nurse for both of us with the very unwilling help of my little brother) That pneumonia also scarred my lungs, which makes it hard to work out because I can’t breathe properly. Its a problem.
Anyway, until last year, I had forgotten what it felt like immediately before passing out.

Last year, I went home to Missouri for a little over a month to help my mom, because one day in January she had called me to say my Nana had cancer and then the next day, she called again to tell me that my dad also had cancer. It was a really bad month, needless to say. While I was home, my Nana had a surgery to cut out part of her colon. I was not getting much sleep and I went to see her in the hospital and it upset me greatly, and then I was at the house working nonstop doing everything to avoid just sitting and breaking down. I went to the kitchen to get dinner, and the warning came but I didn’t know it for what it was, and then I was on my back in the floor. One ambulance ride, two Valium and some kind of shot for pain, a CT scan of my head and some facial stitches later, I was back at my Nana’s house looking like I’d been in a bar-fight (My chin was badly bruised, my tooth was chipped, my lip was busted, and I was sporting a few stitches under my lip. I had fallen forward first, hitting my face on the counter causing me to bite through my skin.) The plus side was that I now knew the warning signs so that if it happened again, at least I wouldn’t break myself that badly.

This is the scar I have from that incident. It doesn’t show up as vividly in bad lighting (i.e. this picture) but I’m very self-conscious about it, and my lipstick always looks a little lopsided now. The scar won’t let me forget what happened, and neither will the ambulance bill that I’m paying off more than a year after it happened.

In short, these days when I get the warning sign, I stop what I’m doing and sit my ass down. So combine that with my fear of dying during a workout, and you get me, sitting in my chair, reading a book, and grumbling.
I tried to find the stupid weights of John’s (my fiance) so I could at least do something, but I can’t find them. /bangs head/

But I guess it might not be so bad. All I’ve eaten today was a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast/lunch, 2 packages of fruit snacks (100 calories each) for a snack, and a small bowl of home-made soup for dinner. So it could definitely be worse. But I’m still pissed off about it, even if it was for my own safety. 😡

A Small Hot Air Balloon, At Most

My darling fiancé saw the title of this blog, and says its not appropriate. He insists I am not a blimp. If I must refer to myself as a type of airborne object, he says I’m just a small hot air balloon, at the very most. I can’t explain to you guys how happy he makes me. I smile and laugh more now with him than at any other time in my life that I can really remember. Its a blessing. 😀

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Not much to write about really. Kind of uneventful today. I didn’t eat breakfast at all, which I really don’t like doing. I seem to have more energy if I eat breakfast, even if its small. I prefer it to be small, for what I think are obvious reasons.

But no breakfast because I had a therapist appointment and had to rush out. She let me use the scale, and I was at 284. Three more pounds than last time, three weeks ago? She says its probably just water-weight, and she’s probably right, because its near my period and I am swollen a little. But still, I’m pretty bummed out. 😦
We started a new kind of therapy today, its basically a thought journal. If I have negative emotions, I write them down and then try to deconstruct them to make myself feel better. I think it will be really useful, and maybe I can use it to feel better about the maybe extra 3 pounds.
On the other hand, I worked out for 10 minutes today in the evening. That’s not much, but its more than the last time, and any exercise is better than doing nothing but sitting on my ass. 😉