Pray for strength

My sister is in town for the long weekend, so I'm going to take a few days away from the blog.

When you read this, you can pray for me, though.

She brought a 70-piece box of Godiva with her.

If you don't hear from me by early next week, you'll know that my strength failed me and I'm in a sugar coma.

Virtual Me

So I've lost a total of about 15 pounds since my husband left.

Well, the total is probably more like 25 if you count all the weight I've re-gained and then re-lost.

Several times.

But I am at a new low, at least since way before I got pregnant with Audrey, and since I am yet again awake and trying to cough up a lung at a horrible hour (is there any good hour to expel a major organ?), I thought I'd update you all on my weight loss.

So, anyway, me in June is on the left, and me currently is on the right. It looks so dramatic on screen, but I actually haven't even gone down a size yet!



You know what it is? The website automatically distributes the weight over your whole boday, but I am here to tell you that that is NOT how it works.

It would be nice if I lost from my stomach.

I, however, lost from my forearms.

I have very svelte wrists.

My fingers are positively thin, and my wedding ring spins circles on my finger again.

My stomach still looks pregnant.

And that is just not fair.

Watch me shrink

A virtual model of how I look now (shudder)...

Hopefully I'll have a different model to put up next month!

Hi, my name is Christy...

And I’m addicted to sugar.

I don’t know how it happened! We were staying in hotels and constantly on the go, and we’d stop at Starbucks here, get a little dessert there…

And now I’m stressed out, tired, and every day when my kids go down for their naps, I scour the cupboards for something sweet to eat! I tell myself that it will be just one small bite, but yeah, that isn’t working.

I think I have to go completely sugar free to detox because I seriously cannot resist these cravings right now!

Originally posted at OWOA

The Red Dress

Blest over at One Weigh or Another asked us to dream big and share, if we could do anything after we lost all the weight we want to, what would we do?

My dream is this red dress that I own. Not so much the dress itself, but what the dress represents.

I wore this dress last year when my husband and I went to Cancun after he returned from Afghanistan. I was 15 pounds from my weight goal.

I looked good. I felt good.

I wore a bathing suit in public.

I frolicked at the beach.

Frolicked.

In a bathing suit.

In public.

I didn't care if my husband saw me out of the dress either ;)

Also, I was a better mommy. I had more energy.

I got down on the floor and played with my kids more. The whole family went for walks and jogs together. I played at the park instead of just watching my kids play.

I want to be that person again when I lose all this weight.

I was whonked upside the head!

With love, of course.

My friend blest whonked me over at the One Weigh or Another website. I'm trying to lose 65 pounds with OWOA's support (now down to about 60 pounds), and I don't think the freshly made donut I ate yesterday is on my diet.

Did I mention it was a Rolo donut? Caramel glaze with mini chocolate chips...mmmm...

Ahem.

Anyway.

I have this pattern with weight loss that I've never been quite able to break. I can't just diet. I have to diet AND exercise regularly. If I'm not exercising regularly then I find it really hard to eat well.

I mean, I hate to sweat, and if I do get all sweaty then I'm not going make it in vain and eat poorly, you know?

But if I'm not working out, well then I probably won't lose much anyway, so why not eat that nice hot donut? Or the ice cream and bread pudding dessert that we got at Applebees on Friday night. Or the toffee almond bar I had at Starbucks with Chloe. (Since the gooey, fattening truth about the donut is out, I might as well divulge my whole weekend's snacking.)

But now that my little secret is out, I am going to work harder this week! I will eat well and not give in to snacking! And I will exercise more than once.

And if I get snacky, I'll have a cup of coffee. Or two.

No, it's not my New Year's Resolution...

But it is time to lose some weight. I told myself I would start the Monday after I hit the 6-week postpartum mark.

That is coming sooner than I'd like!

Of course, how I'm going to squeeze a workout in when most days I can't even squeeze a shower in, I don't know.

But it will add to the nose-tickling essence of spit-up and diapers that I carry with me now, won't it?

I still haven't quite decided on my game plan this time around.

Here's my weight loss history (because I know you want ALL the details, and besides actually putting these numbers out there is a reality check!)

I spent most of my college years around 145 pounds, which was perfectly fine, since I'm 5'8. I could have lost a few, and at times did, but I was comfortable.

Then I went to grad school.

And got engaged during grad school.

And planned a wedding during grad school.

And got married three days after I finished grad school, and was somewhere around 160 pounds. I didn't own a scale at the time, so I'm just judging by the number of times I thought, "All my pants have shrunk. I really need to quit drying them in the dryer."

By the end of my first year of marriage I was 186 pounds.

Then I got pregnant. After that I was 204.

A combination of Power 90 and Windsor Pilates videos and calorie-counting got me to 170 and then I got pregnant again. After that I was 212.

I got down to 196 with my videos again, and then Isaac was sent to Afghanistan and the kids and I moved in with my parents. Since we were getting all kinds of hazardous duty pay, I went on Nutrisystem and got a personal trainer, and in my spare time used the Couch to 5k running plan. And got down to 166.

Then my husband came home. And I got pregnant. And yesterday was the 6-week mark and I am 215.

Ultimately I'd like to be 150.

Which means I want to lose 65 pounds.

Let me just take a moment to ponder the enormous enormity of that number.

Ok. Since I have three children and my husband is back so I have someone to, you know, talk to and do stuff with in the evenings, I don't know when I'm going to find the time to exercise. I think I'm going to use these Billy Blanks Bootcamp dvd's I got last year but never used. But I'm also going to go check out a new gym around the corner. And I'll apply the eating principles I learned on Nutrisystem and probably count my calories, too.

*Sigh* Maybe I should go eat another chocolate chip hazelnut bagel before this all kicks in on Monday...of course, we're out of hazelnut cream cheese, so it just won't be the same...