I have officially checked out for the afternoon- or at least for the next hour or so that I'll be here at work. It's kind of been one of those lonely/needy days where I don't want to be by myself. However, working in a very small office with only one other co-worker who happens to be out of town at the moment has made for a very quiet Friday. Too quiet, considering my mood. Sigh. Thank goodness for messenger in moments like these!

So I got on the scale again this morning and I'm still at 220. Considering the week I've had I suppose it could have been a lot worse, so I won't complain. I haven't been as diligent about portion control, and there have been a few chocolate and ice cream run-ins as well. The good thing about that is that I was able to stay in control of exactly how much I ate instead of mindlessly plowing into the bon-bons and neopolitan ice cream (not my personal favorite, but a close second nonetheless) like I would have done under other circumstances. I'm sure the chocolate fixes can be tied to hormones, as they've been flaring up this week.

Compared to my four consecutive workouts last week, this week in turn has been pretty bad in terms of exercise. Other than walking yesterday in San José and Níjar I haven't done anything. Not one blessed minute. Sigh.

Today hasn't been any different either. For breakfast I did have yogurt and my usual Danacol, and for lunch we had cashew roasted chicken, garlic and parsley tortellini, left over green beans and more kiwi salad. Pretty healthy, right? I managed to have just one serving of everything instead of filling up my plate a couple times like i usually do. All good there.. Here's where things go slightly awry... I ended up taking an afternoon nap with my husband and I woke up ravenously hungry as usual. Before leaving the house I grabbed two baggies of chocolate (2 reese's mini, 2 hershey's kisses in each), two bon-bons and a yogurt. One positive in a sea of negative, right? Sigh..

So I've fed my loneliness with chocolate and peanut butter this afternoon. I don't apologize for it, and quite honestly I don't feel bad about it. It is what it is- a day in the life of Marianna's weight loss journey that won't go down in the record books as "best day ever." Hell, this whole week wouldn't make that category. And you know what, it's okay. I realize that this is a process, which implies that there will be good days and bad days. Especially since I've just recently renewed my focus, it's going to take a little bit of time to adjust. Next week is a brand new week, and I'm all ready for it.

After work I'll be on my way to the bus station to meet Courtney. From there the three of us will be going to our favorite tapas bar for dinner, La Virgen Chica, and then head back home. I'll post more about the weekend as it progresses..

San Jose, Níjar

La pareja feliz...


The gorgeous husband...


"Oh no, SEAGULLS!!"

Really cute crafts we found at a local store in San José..






Local landscape...









We had a great time on our trip yesterday. After yet another delicious breakfast at La Brújula, we drove out to San José, a beach town located about half an hour outside of Almería. I had been there before a couple summers ago to go to the beach with Charo and some of the other girls from the church. Gorgeous beach with low tides. This time around since we're not quite in sun-bathing weather we walked through the town, taking pictures and stopping at some of the local shops along the way. It really is a beautiful, tranquil place to spend an afternoon. After our visit to SJ, we drove another 20 minutes north to Níjar, a town known for its jarrapas, which are specialty area rugs. We ended up buying one for our living room, along with a couple more wall hangings.

After a day's worth of walking we came back home, took our siesta and then Chechu headed back out for his class with David, followed by leading worship before the men's Bible study. I stayed home doing some additional cooking and cleaning and finally organizing our guest room.

This weekend Courtney will be coming to stay with us and we're both thrilled to have her. She gets in from Granada tonight and will head back on Sunday evening. It looks like tomorrow we'll head out to Cuevas de Almanzora to see the art exhibits and tomorrow night after church we'll probably go and hang out with the young adults, as is customary on Saturday nights.

Work this morning has been extremely uneventful, although I have been productive in getting some things done. Since yesterday was a holiday a lot of people are on "puente" today, which is very common here. If a holiday falls on a Thursday a lot of companies close that Friday as well, making for a long weekend. Cristina was given today off to go to Valladolid, and whenever she isn't here it's pretty quiet. I still have to make lunch for today, so I'm going to leave a little earlier than usual. I'll be back this afternoon, continuing on with documenting my weight loss plans.. 'Ta hora!

Sitting on the dock of the bay...

wasting tiiii-iiiii-iiime... Or at least that's what it feels like.

It annoys me to no end that I've been blogging consistently about weight loss throughout practically the entire month of February and I've seen little to no actual results.
Well, I take that back. While the numbers haven't moved down that much on the scale, I have seen improvements in other areas of this process- mainly my newly-found determination to lose weight and my efforts to incorporate proper eating and exercise into my daily routine. This time a month or so ago, weight loss was probably the last thing on my mind. I was seemingly content with the additional "happy weight" that I knew I had put on since the wedding (albeit an underestimation) and still drawn to indulge. I blogged a few times about how summer was approaching and that I needed to get my health in order, but it all felt like empty rhetoric since my heart wasn't really into the whole thing at the time. I suppose I wrote in the hopes of scrounging up some motivation to get started.

Well since then, praise the Lord, I've woken up to my three-fold reality:

1. At my current weight my body is over-exerting itself to keep me going and carry me around. I can no longer blame my lower back pain and sore knees on my not-so-perfect mattress. I snore at night because the extra fat around my neck is obviously impeding me from breathing properly. I am genetically prone to high cholesterol (which I have), diabetes and other heart conditions which, if I'm not careful, can easily become serious health problems. These sound like health issues that would normally be faced by senior citizens. I AM JUST TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD!!! This leads me to the crystal clear truth that I have to make my health and my husband's health a priority. I don't even want to think about all of the problems that could arise if I continue to be careless.
2. I am not the sexy newlywed that I wanted to be. In spite of my husband's rebuttals, the rolls of fat hanging over my thong are just not attractive. Regardless of how much wonder is in my wonder bras, I (literally) can't get around all of the back fat that bulges out from the sides. There is some kind of weird love-handle that is right over my butt that gives it this weird shape. Certainly not the black-girl-butt that I've always wanted and would have in its absence. I won't continue on with my laundry list of flaws because, well, that would just be counter-productive. I've tried the self-abuse motivation tactic many times before, only to run to the nearest convenience store for yet another B&J fix. The truth of it all is that I do want to see myself as attractive. I want to wear all the sexy Victoria's Secret lingerie that I've never been able to buy. I want to go to the beach this summer in a bathing suit that complements my figure. I want to be able to walk out in public with my head held high, knowing that I look good. So that leads me to the third part of my reality
3. I need to learn to accept and love myself for who I am and where I am. God loves me now, and will continue to love me regardless of what I weigh. My body is His temple, and it, therefore, commands my respect. That translates into taking pride in my appearance and my health. So I'm going to go for it- I'm going to start to love me. MARIANNA VIRGINIA MOORE-MARTINEZ: I LOVE YOU! I RESPECT YOU AND I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU. I WILL TAKE PRIDE IN YOU AND HONOR YOU. AS A CHILD OF GOD, YOU DESERVE IT!

What an epiphany. For the first time, ever, I comprehend that God has entrusted my body to me. It's up to me to love it and take care of it. It's time to kick this into high-gear.

More tomorrow

It seems like everyone around me is ill-- Riss has acute bronchitis, and there are several hermanitos from the church that are sick too. I was starting to feel a little woosy myself this evening before leaving the office, certain that my boss had kindly passed along his nasty cooties to me since, ironically, he's been coming in now more regularly than ever, cold and all. I'm feeling slightly better now that I'm back home. Hopefully with some rest tonight I'll be able to shake off whatever this is.

Chechu and I just ordered pizza... Oops, there goes the A for effort for today. The only positive thing, diet wise, that has occurred today was my vegetarian lasagna that we had for lunch. A-MA-zing, if I do say so myself. Since Chechu took the laptop to work today my original plan was to work out this afternoon before going back to the office. And that just didn't happen. Seeing that we woke up late from our nap I figured that I'd spend the remainder of the afternoon straightening up and work out when I got back home in the evening. With the piping hot pizza sitting here, that's not going to happen either.

Sigh.. Tomorrow I'm getting this together, for real. TO BE CONTINUED...

Friday-Monday Review

It's so hard to believe that we're already in the last week of February. I guess that's logical seeing that this is the shortest month of the year, but it's still pretty cool to think that March will be here by the weekend. That means summer is inching closer and closer around the corner. YAY.

I've got killer cramps today and I'm feeling a little nauseous. In spite of that, however, I actually have more motivation to be here in the office- a stark contrast to my lackluster mood on Friday when all I wanted to do was go home. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain that motivation during the afternoon hours when staying on task can prove to be quite a challenge. However, I do have something to look forward to over the next few days, which should help to keep my mojo running. This is actually a short workweek for us since Thursday is a local holiday here, el Día de Andalucía, and all businesses will be closed to observe it. Chechu and I were going to take another stab at visiting Cuevas de Almanzora since we weren't able to go on Saturday, but I've just found out that the museums will be closed for the holiday. Crap. Oh well, I'm sure we'll come up with something else entertaining to do, even if it is just relaxing and watching movies, which doesn't sound all that bad.

So onto the weekend in review...

• Saturday. Chechu and I went to breakfast at our favorite café, La Brújula, and I had one of my prized tostadas con tomate with salt and garlic-scented olive oil. I honestly have no idea how we've missed out on that breakfast tradition in the States... Afterward we headed over to Almería- I went to my English class with Jennifer and Chechu had his regular tutoring session with David. Following our classes we went to Carrefour in search of a bookcase. Initially we planned to put it in our guest room, since that's become the deposit for all of our books and papers, but we decided to pit it in our livingroom instead. It looks amazing!! We look so intellectual with all of our books out on display. Little does Chechu know that I have a huge stack of my own books that I intend to bring back with me on our next trip to PA to add to the collection... After church service we went to Gastón's birthday party, which was a lot of fun. I ended up going against my original plan, eating pizza and a slice of birthday cake. Sigh..

• Sunday. We stayed in all morning to do some house cleaning and organizing. Thankfully the guest room is now more orderly, however the house cleaning part wasn't as complete as I would have liked. I suppose that'll be my treat for this week, as I do genuinely enjoy it.. We drove up to Granada with Sarai to be at church by 6pm. It was a really nice service with a great message. Bastian preached since Dani and Lili were both out of town. I really enjoy listening to him speak. We got home last night around midnight and we were both starving so we cut up the last bit of cured ham that we have left and made sandwiches. Sigh. At least I didn't have the chocolate that I was so close to grabbing.

I did get on the scale on Saturday, and I'm currently at 219.0 again. So this means that over the past couple weeks I've lost...NOTHING. Third and final sigh. I can be proud of a few things though, mainly that exercise is starting to become part of my normal routine. I didn't work out over the weekend, but I do intend on starting back up this evening after work. I realize that this is going to be one of the key elements to my weight loss and I really want to get into it. I worked out a surprising four days last week, and I intend to do that or better this week. By March I want to get up to five days, and eventually reach six days. I know that isn't an impossible goal. If I'm consistent with it, I will achieve it.

I'm on my way back home for lunch, but I'll be back at some point this afternoon. I really want to go over my goals and my PLAN to reach them.

Working for the weekend..

Soo glad today is Friday. This week hasn't been as stressful as others have been, but nonetheless I'll be glad to get out of the office for a couple of days. It turns out that we won't be able to go to Cuevas on Saturday like we had originally planned since Chechu has to lead worship at church that afternoon. But, since we'll be sticking around here we will be able to catch up on a few pending errands, specifically buying a bookcase for our guest room since it has become the temporary deposit for all our stuff. On Sunday morning we'll be able to relax a bit since Chechu doesn't have to be at church, although he does have to be in Granada that afternoon, and I may go with him depending on whether or not there is room for me. Otherwise I'll be spending a quiet afternoon at home catching up on some other work.

Yesterday's kiwi/mandarin salad was a huge success- so much so that I'm thinking about repeating the experience again with today's lunch. I also made beans with rice to go with the rest of the porkloin fillets we have left over. Lately I've become keen on watching my portion intake, which is a big key for me. After the wedding I started getting used to eating huge portions again, and it's been a hard habit to break. I've noticed however that even during this short amount of time that I've been on plan, I am a lot more conscious about what I put into my body and when to stop eating after getting that first "I'm full" feeling. This way I'm actually able to taste and enjoy food instead of mindlessly throwing it down the trap.

After three consecutive workouts I'm starting to become passionate about exercise again. The thought of only working out three times a week doesn't seem like enough anymore, so I'm running with that thought and going for my fourth workout today. I wasn't able to exercise this morning but I purposely left my laptop at home so that I can do Turbo Jam this afternoon before coming back to work. I'm actually excited about exercising today, which is something that I honestly can't believe. This just goes to prove the point I made in a previous post about how mental this whole process is. Being "on" is a decision that I have to make first in my mind and in my heart, and then everything else will just follow suit.

It's practically March and with each passing day I get more and more excited about summer. Almost everyone here in the office is on a pre-summer diet and exercise plan. My health is of course my main priority, but I also want to look my best. There's nothing like walking out of your house feeling fully confident in how you look, and I owe that to myself.

It's a beautiful morning

Although it never really gets that cold here, the spring-like temperatures we've been having lately have certainly brightened my mood, making me more and more anxious for those gloriously hot days of summer to finally arrive. I'm really excited about these next few months and I'm looking forward to see and experience everything that the Lord has in store for us.

In spite of a few hang-ups, the past couple days have gone really well diet-wise. After my TaeBo workout on Tuesday night, I was also motivated to get up on Wednesday morning and work out to Turbo Jam. It was actually a lot of fun. I also weighed myself yesterday after exercising, and I was pleased to see that I had come down to 219.8. I don't want to get obsessed with weighing myself everyday, and having the scale right there in the bathroom makes it difficult to bypass in the mornings. Nevertheless, I'll hold off until Saturday or Sunday morning to see where I stand. My initial goal was to be at 210 by the first week in March, and seeing how that is roughly nine pounds away, I may have to up my goal to 215 by the 1st, which is fine. I don't care if it takes me until the second or third week in March to get down to 210- the important thing is that I get there at some point in March.

Slowly but surely we're changing our eating habits. Since Chechu had the afternoon off yesterday he took care of doing our grocery shopping for the next couple weeks. I added Balsamic vinegar and some dried fruits and nuts to the list to incorporate in our meals this week. Being a meat-and-potatoes type of guy, he kind of wrinkled his cute little nose at first, hehe, but he's willing to try anything new. I plan to make a kiwi & mandarin orange salad for lunch this afternoon with a few cashews sprinked in with balsamic vinegar and a dash of olive oil.. MMMMM! I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that it will be well-received.

I've happily bought into the whole "siesta" tradition here in Spain. Before Chechu and I got married I wasn't that into it, but now that we're living on our own it has become one of the daily routine aspects that I really enjoy- mostly because it's an uninterrupted hour that I get to spend with my husband right in the middle of the day. I suppose that in a perfect world, we'd take that time to go for walks or do more productive things which, from time to time we have done in the past. I don't think it'd be difficult for me to fall out of the siesta habit, but Chechu's case is alltogether different seeing that he was born into the siesta culture.. Nevertheless, I think we could incorporate noon-time walks maybe once a week on one of the days where he doesn't work during the afternoons. Hey, I've just come up with a great idea!! I should bring it up at lunch over our kiwi/mandarin salad!

I plan to do Turbo Jam this afternoon after Chechu leaves for work, from 3:45-4:30. Taking time out for exercise means that I'll have to put off my household chores until tonight when I get home from the office, which won't be an issue for me as I enjoy cleaning the apartment in the evenings after work. Somehow it relaxes me. Strange, I know, but all I can do is pray that it lasts! We just bought this new pine-scented floor cleaner, and I'm anxious to try it out!