I Miss Too

The lovely Alli has inspired me to post a similar "I Miss" list to remind myself of what I had when I was thinner and why I'm so ready to get it back. It's crazy to think that this will be my third time losing a significant amount of weight:

• (1)When I started highschool at 14 I weighed over 200 pounds. During my freshman year I lost between 40-45 pounds and I maintained that more or less through my senior year. I was about 160 when I graduated.
• The college years. Starting weight: 160ish. By the end of my junior year I had ballooned back up to about 220-225.
• (2)My academic year abroad in the DR (2001-2002). I've briefly mentioned some of the huge challenges I faced weight-wise during my stay in Santo Domingo. I was 21 at the time, it was my first time traveling abroad and I was scared as hell. Thankfully my sister shared the experience with me and to make a long story short, we went through a lot that year. I arrived there at about 230 pounds. Nine months later I was down to 150.
• (3)Post-undergrad years to the present. After coming back home from the DR I gained back all of the weight I had lost over the course of a year. That showed me that during my time abroad, I really didn't make it a point to learn new eating and exercise habits and let them sink into my normal routine. I was totally out of my comfort zone and I desperately needed to lose weight in order to have basic, everyday things (like not being charged double for public transportation because I took up a seat and a half). I let all of that propel me into an obsession with weight loss. While that did yield quick results, it didn't solve my issues with food. I was only placing a band-aid over my problems instead of learning a healthy lifestyle.

So that leads me to where I am today. Over the past 5 years I've more or less stayed in the 200s, reaching my highest weight of 240 during my first year of grad school. This time around I'm learning to manage food and embrace a healthy lifestyle. In doing so, the weight will come off. I'm not interested in quick fixes; I want long-term results, and I never want to see these numbers again.

My goal weight is 150 pounds. I have a bigger frame, and I think any weight smaller than that would make me look sickly. I've always found curvier women to be so much more beautiful than super skinny girls, and150 pounds on my frame looks good- slender with all the curves my husband loves and pleads with me not to lose. (Side note: My husband and I primarily speak in Spanish, and he is currently learning English. He's improved by leaps and bounds since we first met, and from time to time we go over American slang and cultural expressions. Okay, and maybe a few bad words here and there. Anyway, last weekend we happened to come across Sir Mix-Alot's video of "Baby Got Back" on YouTube, which he thought was great, lol! So now he goes around the house singing "I...Like...Big.. ButtsAndICanNotLie" in his cute Spanish accent. The man cracks me up!)

So this is my motivation:

1. Having more self-confidence.
2. Going shopping to buy the clothes that I like in the styles that I want. Not just buying whatever fits.
3. Being able to walk long distances without getting irritation rashes on my inner thighs from too much friction.
4. Sitting in public places confidently (restaurants, airplanes, buses) without worrying that I'm taking up too much space.
5. NO HEALTH ISSUES
6. No muffin top
7. Seeing my jaw line in side-profile shots
8. Looking younger
9. Feeling good about losing weight and inspiring others to reach their goals
10. Moving around with more agility and feeling like I can take on the world.

Fantasy meals

Things at work are going a lot better this morning. When I arrived I made it a point to make myself busy following up on some other tasks that I had pending from earlier in the week. Last night after Bible study I was talking with one of the guys who's been looking for work since he arrived in Spain last summer. He and his wife were married roughly a month before Chechu and me, and with the exception of finding a couple odd jobs here and there, he hasn't come across anything else. It's exasperating enough to have to look for work being single, but when you have a family to look after it makes everything ten times worse. He and his wife are contemplating moving back to London sooner than anticipated so that he'll be able to find work. After listening to his story I felt really grateful for the job that I have, even with its imperfections. While I'll definitely keep my eyes open for new opportunities, I no longer have one foot out the door as was the case yesterday.

I'm not sure why Wednesdays have become so stressful anymore. Due to last-minute schedule changes I wasn't able to attend the GOE with Rocío yesterday afternoon either. When we started together in January our meetings were set to begin at 4pm, giving us about 30-45 minutes to evangelize and/or meet with women who decided to come to the meeting. Generally if someone wants to attend we try to adapt our meeting schedule to theirs, and that's been the case as of lately. So now instead of meeting at 4, we generally start at 4:30 or a little after, which puts a huge strain on my schedule because I have to be back at work by 5pm. The fact that punctuality isn't exactly a cultural norm here coupled with the reality that meetings are usually prolonged because some of the women have questions or want to pray about certain issues leaves me totally stressed out because I can't be late getting back to work. So yesterday when Rocío called to find out if she could pick me up at 4:30 and from there go to the church to hold our meeting, I told her that I wasn't going to be able to go because it had gotten too late. She sounded kind of disappointed, but there was really nothing I could do about the situation.
So tonight I'm going to talk with Fátima, one of the church leaders, about it since she was the one who asked me to participate in this GOE with Rocío. I feel really bad about how the situation has panned out because I do want to participate. I just get stressed out with the scheduling/no-concept-of-time issues, and that inhibits me from putting my all into the meetings because I'm constantly worried that I'll be late. So I hope to get some encouraging words. Obviously with the GOE starting at 4:30 my schedule doesn't permit me to attend. But hopefully she can tell me about some other opportunities where I can get involved.

I'm still having craving issues. It got so bad yesterday afternoon that I found myself perusing Coldstone's, Applebee's and Chili's websites and creating fantasy meals- you know, like the fantasy video games people are so into nowadays. Except my action heroes were buffalo wings, a monterey-jack superburger, french fries and a big bowl of "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some" ice cream from Coldstone. Talk. About. TORTURE!
As expected, I got home last night after 11pm and begrudgingly ate my cup of garlic spinach and hard-boiled egg. Not horrible, but definitely not a fantasy meal.

I'm feeling better today, craving-wise. I hope to be able to get a workout in this afternoon during my break because that's really the only time I'll have. We'll see how it goes.

It's almost FRIDAY y'all!! :o)

Work drama

So thankfully I was able to stay on plan last night without any issues. I left work at 8pm on the nose, and immediately went straight home to work out before I could give it a second thought. It went pretty well- I did about 40 minutes of the workout and next time around I plan to get through the whole thing. I'm not sure if I'll have time to work out today or not since Wednesdays are the busiest for me. It'll most likely be 11pm or so when I get home tonight, and it'd be pretty unrealistic of me to think of working out at that hour. So, in short, barring a drastic change in schedule I'll be counting today as an off day. Cool.

In spite of my sporadic bouts of lunacy with chocolate cravings, I feel really good on this diet. It's an easy plan, I'm getting in a crap-load of fruits, vegetables and water every day, and on the whole I just feel much healthier. It's also a huge help that my husband and I are doing this together. I struggle when I have to diet on my own, and now that Chechu and I are on the same page things are going so much more smoothly. We're both losing weight and we're looking forward to seeing great results by the end of the month. For myself, a realistic goal between now and then would be 215, constituting an 11-pound loss for the month. Not to shabby, eh? I think I should be more than capable of losing a solid 5 pounds over the next three weeks.

In other news, I'm prayerfully considering a new job. My feelings about being here change sporadically, and that speaks to me of instability. Working here has made me realize that no job is perfect, but I'm really not happy where I am.

Granted, the job has definitely been a huge blessing to both me and Chechu. Last summer, after less than a month of looking for work, I sent in my application here and was hired the very next day. At the time I didn't have any of my paperwork in order to work in Spain, but my boss took me in anyway and has since been faithful in paying me my salary and everything else I've been due. But now that I've got all of my permits together, he doesn't seem to want to move. After running around like a mad woman this week to get my social security documents squared away, I contacted the company's Human Resources director to let her know that I had everything ready to be filed in the system as a "hire." She abruptly told me that she had to speak with Avelino first to go over the stipulations of my contract, etc. Fine. Immediately after speaking with her (Monday) I told Avelino that he'd have to contact her in order to file my paperwork as a company hire, and he said he'd be on it this week. So this morning when he got to the office he mentioned to Cristina that he'd be going past HR today to drop off some other documents. After their conversation I conveniently reminded him about my paperwork and asked if he wanted me to prepare copies of everything to take to HR when he went. So then the man snaps back at me with "I have to take your paperwork to HR?" Then he said that he'd speak to the director about my contract, but I'd have to go there myself to submit the paperwork. What. The. $!(·"%&)/?? That totally caught me off guard, especially since I'm an employee and as far as I know most company directors are responsible for filing their employees' documents with HR. I felt really hurt by how he responded to me, as if to say he truly could give a crap about me, the lowly immigrant.

So at this point, for as absent-minded as Avelino is, I don't know if my paperwork will ever be filed. And frankly, I'm not that interested in sticking around here any longer to find out. This afternoon I plan to send in my resume to a few language academies and translation agencies that I've come across, and all I can do is trust that whatever God has for me I'll have.

Slow day

Thankfully it's been a calm Tuesday- calm enough for two posts today! In theory I have just under an hour and a half left here in the office, and I'm praying that Avelino doesn't stop by at the last minute like he's been doing lately. That usually means overtime.

Now that we leave work an hour earlier, I have more personal time in the evenings to get things done at home. Tonight I have the following on my agenda:

1. TaeBo Basic Training @ 8:15
2. Call Sis
3. Housework: hang laundry out to dry, iron, make beds, wash dishes, make dinner for tonight and lunch for Thursday (since I won't have much time tomorrow)

After all that I plan to take a soothing, hot bath and hopefully catch a movie with Chechu if there's time. I soooooooo love our apartment. There's something about the lighting we have set up in there that makes it so relaxing in the evenings.

Diet-wise, things have continued to go well today but it's been hard nonetheless. I'm not sure what it is about cloudy, overcast days that tempt me to jump, er, plunge off the wagon. This morning I was still hungry after my mid-morning snack. I started thinking about all the food places I would visit if we were in the States right now-- Dairy Queen, Coldstone, STARBUCKS... Those thoughts led to contemplating how great it would be to go to the supermarket tonight after work (the one conveniently located down the street from our house) and just buy massive amounts of chocolate, pastries and ice cream. No DQ, Coldstone or Starbucks by any means, but a close fourth-place nonetheless. That treat run would have of course implied hurriedly eating it all at home and discarding the evidence before hubby could catch me red-handed. That sounds insane as I read it in print, but those thoughts (when they do creep up) are very real. That totally sounds like a person with an eating disorder. Do I have an eating disorder??

...As I ponder that, I'm very thankful that over the course of the afternoon my visions of sabotage have pretty much dissipated. I didn't go off the deep end at lunch and I certainly am heading straight home after work. I'm enjoying a low-fat strawberry yogurt cup for my evening snack instead of a pint of Hagen Daas, and I feel pretty good about that.

I'm also thankful that Chechu and I are doing this together. He's so encouraging and so disciplined when it comes to dieting. He's not an "enabler," he's not capricious and he doesn't give in to my "c'mon it's just one cookie (etc)" lines. He keeps me honest and that's what I need in this stage in the game.

HYC update

Hard to believe it's Tuesday already-- it feels like the past few weeks have just flown by. All in all things have been progressing quite well, in spite of my lack of free time to document it all. Work has been picking up a lot as of lately, which is a good thing for sure. After my mini-breakdown last week I've been feeling a lot better about work in general, and moreso now that I've finally gotten my social security paperwork in order after having to make a second trip to the Social Security office in Almería yesterday.

This past weekend went well, nothing too exciting though. On Saturday Chechu and I had our respective tutoring sessions in Almería, after which we ran a few errands downtown and then headed back to our side of town to do a little grocery shopping. I was surprised to see quite a number of people at the beach that afternoon. In about a month and a half, the weather will definitely be hot enough to get in the water. I can't wait!!

Saturday evening after church we went out with some of the other young adults to our usual hang-out spot: the food court at the mall. Chechu and I ended up ordering hamburgers from BK and split a small order of fries. Not too bad considering what it could have been, but a cheat nonetheless. Originally our plan was to have our once-a-week non-diet meal on Sunday during lunch, but we ended up splurging a little on Saturday as well.

Sunday was pretty low-key for me, at least at the outset. Chechu had to be in Almería for church to lead worship and at the last minute I decided to stay home. I felt like I needed the extra time to sleep in a little and catch up on some cleaning and other work around the house. Chechu got back by 3pm and we had our non-diet lunch: pork loin fillets, refried beans (healthy version), rice, salad and mixed veggies. I actually filled up on the salad and mixed veggies. I had two small pork fillets and some beans. I didn't eat any of the rice. For dessert we split a white chocolate/strawberry cheesecake ice cream bar (amazing).

On Sunday evening after taking a nap we went to walk for about an hour along the boardwalk, which was nice. I ended up buying ice cream afterwards though-- a pint of BJ's chocolate chip cookie dough, which Chechu and I split while we watched movies.

On Monday morning I definitely noticed a difference in how I felt after eating so heavily on Sunday night. All during last week as we were following the diet, I felt so much lighter after each meal, instead of that weighted-down feeling I always had before after eating lots of meat and carbs. Chechu has noticed the same feeling as well.

So this leads me to my Healthy You Challenge update for the week. I've lost 6.4 pounds!! I'm really excited about that- it's the first considerable loss that I've had since I started in February. I was on track with my exercise goals this week as well, working out 4 days. I mostly did a lot of walking. I'm also excited for Chechu- he's lost 3.8 pounds this week!

This is what I'd like to accomplish over the next seven days:

1). Have only one "cheat meal" this week. We will be out of town on Saturday to attend a young adult Christian music concert in Linares. Both of us have discussed the need to plan our meals for that day, considering that we'll either have to bring food from home or eat out. We haven't decided on either at this point, but we'll get it together over the course of the week.

2). Exercise four days this week. Last week I did a lot of walking, and in most cases it was because I had to- running errands here and there. This week I want to focus on scheduling exercise into my day. Ideally, that would mean getting up at 7am every morning to work out before Chechu has to leave for work. I'd like to try for that at least once this week and on the remaining days work out in the evenings.

3). Journal more

Happy Tuesday all!

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday started off rough. For no good reason I arrived at the office in another one of those "living abroad kind of sucks" attitudes that tend to creep up on me from time to time. I got to work and was informed that I have to jump through some additional bureaucratic hoops in order to get my social security card and have access to the worker benefits I'm entitled to. In all honesty it's not that big of a deal I guess- I just have to go to the Social Security office, fill out a form and turn it in with my green card (it's actually green, hehe). With that I'll be assigned a temporary SS card until the actual one comes in the mail. Not a big deal by any means, but given my mood yesterday morning I could only see it as yet another hassle.

After finding all that out, my other co-worker made a comment about how untidy our office was. Cristina isn't a fan of cleaning at all, and while I do enjoy keeping up with my chores at home, I tend to check all that at the door when I walk in to work. Since I don't dirty the office with cigarrette ashes or paper clippings like others do, I've never taken on an active role in keeping it neat and clean. In addition to that, I've always distanced myself from the office too, and the feeling of not belonging 100% has lead to my passive attitude towards it.
That started to change yesterday. María's remark was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I broke down. I was angry about everything that had happened that morning, mainly the negative attitude that I couldn't seem to shake. After seeing how upset I was, she got upset thinking that her comment was what made me cry. She insisted on cleaning my portion of the office so that I could sit down, relax and pull myself together. So what was initially a tense moment turned into a bonding/therapy session between the three of us. Two days ago I was certain that María didn't like me, and yesterday she was totally supportive and encouraging. She apologized for her harsh tone that comes out from time to time and I've learned to accept her personality. I've always been on good terms with Cristina, and I think María and I have turned over a new leaf in our relationship as well.

Today marks day three of the diet, and things are progressing wonderfully! I've been weighing myself daily since Tuesday just to follow the results, and I'm currently down to 221.2!! That's over five pounds in two days! I'm positive it's all water weight anyway, since I had fallen way out of the normal weight range that I've been in over the past several months. But nonetheless, seeing that drop is incredibly motivating, and I hope to lose a few more pounds before my official weigh in next Tuesday.

Admittedly I've been doing minimal exercise this week thus far. But something is better than nothing at all, right? On Tuesday night I did about 15 minutes of TaeBo, and yesterday I did about 20 minutes of brisk walking. While brief, these workouts have merited a star on my calendar, and I hope to add another one today. My goal is to exercise four days a week.

I'm looking forward to this weekend. On Sunday we have the entire day to ourselves, and I'm excited about spending an full, carefree day with my husband.

New month, new plan, new goals

Happy April 1st!

A new month feels like such a new beginning: a fresh, clean calendar full of endless possibilities; a blank canvas, if you will, and I hold the paintbrush. Depending on my willingness to work, I can and will accomplish a lot during these next thirty days.

Today marks "Day One" for Chechu and me. We've put ourselves on a doctor-ordered low-calorie/low-cholesterol diet as of today. This was decided on Saturday afternoon when we got the diet after going to Almeria for Chechu's tutoring session with one of the boys from church. Originally we set our start date for March 31, but since we weren't able to make it to the grocery store until yesterday to stock up on all the food we'd need, we decided to push the date back until today. I actually am glad that we chose to begin a day later. There's just something motivational about starting a new month off on the right foot.

Needless to say, knowing that we'd be beginning our new diet this week, I ate h o r r i b l y from Saturday night all through Monday. There was pizza, strawberry cheesecake ice cream, ham and cheese croissants and an insane amount of chocolate (among other things). I'll admit that some of the indulgences I hid and ate in secret so that Chechu wouldn't see me. I feel kind of embarrassed writing that down because it shows that even in front of my own husband I feel ashamed to expose that side of my eating habits. "Last-chance eating" has been a part of my yo-yo dieting experience since it all started many moons ago, and that's a concept that Chechu just doesn't get. To him it's a huge contradiction to b & m one minute about wanting to lose weight and then going out for pizza and ice cream the next. While he's so obviously right, I suppose that if L-C-E cycle were that easy to correct, most of us wouldn't be in the predicament we're trying to get out of.

So anyway, I'm not at all surprised with the horrid 226.8 reading I got this morning on the scale. Yep, that's up +3.8 since the last time I weighed myself. Under other circumstances I'd be down in the dumps about that, but I feel really good about this weight loss plan we're on. Today has been very positive thus far, and I'm certainly looking forward to continue.

Here's what I've eaten thus far:

B: 1 slice wheat toast w/ grated tomato, garlic, 1tsp. olive oil

Coffee w/ skim milk, no sugar

S: Banana

L: 2c. tomato pasta w/ tuna, large veggie salad w/ FF ranch

S: Mandarin orange

D: (after work) 1c. mixed vegetables, 1 slice FF white cheese, kiwi

Exercise at home tonight after work. More to come with my specific goals for April..