I ate WHAT?!

When I first started this whole losing weight journey in May of 2009, it was about wanting to look good again. Maybe even an attempt at regaining my youth that was fast disappearing. Oh, I went about it the right way. I changed my daily diet from unhealthy to healthy and added exercise but my motivation was wrong.

And, without the proper motivation, the effort was successful at first. But a huge failure once all was said and done.

It took me nearly one complete year to put all that weight back on. Nearly one full year. Of eating all the wrong (but delicious) foods. ONE. YEAR. You have got to be kidding me.

Somewhere around March of this year, I decided that I simply did not want to be overweight anymore. I didn't want to be unhealthy. I was screaming (inside) that this had to stop! And it did need to stop. The amounts of sugar I was ingesting was probably what 100 people should take in ANNUALLY.

And I'm pretty sure that if that is an exaggeration, it's not much of one.

So I stopped. I decided to go back to healthy. And I thought I'd kickstart the whole thing with my own diet. I called it AssOff and it was, basically, a combination of Suzanne Somers plan and the Atkins plan. Guess what? Fail. Again.

Ok, maybe not a complete fail. But what I did wrong was substitute the sugar (I would buy one of those lovely Carrot Cakes from the grocery store and eat the whole thing by the next day) habit for every food under the sun that didn't have sugar in it. Stupid.

Then my friend Julie, at Healthy, Wealth, and Wise...NOT but learning, mentioned a weight loss challenge-Slimmer this Summer. I thought about it long and hard and thought maybe I shouldn't because I was scared of letting the group down. Debbi (at Debbi Does Dieting), one of the hosts for the challenge (and please check out her recipe blog- nearly all are healthy, low calorie and delicious) said that was the very attitude that would make the challenge work for me. So I signed up. I committed.

And I lost 44 pounds! Woot!

But, I have come to realize that it's more than the weight loss now. It's more than the desire to look better or regain some youth.


Now it's about health. It's about wanting to do more. Be more. Laugh more. Enjoy life more. And live longer. It's also become about the quality of the food itself.

And today, I realized that not only has my outlook changed but I, myself, have changed also. And it's all for the better.

Hubs and I took Mother home today. She's well enough to be at her house and her sister (Aunt Betty) is going to stay with her just for a few days. We had to get something for breakfast from a fast food place so I looked at CalorieKing (there's an app for that) for something with acceptable calories.

When Hubs brought the 'food' back from Bojangles and I held my biscuit in my hand all I felt was grease. THROUGH THE WRAPPER. Are you kidding me?!

I carefully unwrapped the biscuit. I picked off a little piece. I gingerly placed the tiny bite in my mouth. I tasted grease and white flour. I may have thrown up in my mouth a little. D.I.S.G.U.S.T.I.N.G. How in the world had I ever in all my life evereverever eaten anything like this?! I must have been out of my mind.

All that white flour, processed sugar, animal fat, etc. is in the past. And so are any and all cravings for it.

I'm on a new path now. A path to a longer, healthier, more enjoyable life.

And I might be enjoying the fact that my behind is no longer big enough to serve as a table for a tea party.