A healthy start makes a difference, right?

Up and at em. Lord help me.  I’m so sore, my head aches.

I know that the soreness and headaches would go away if I lost the weight.  I don’t need a sleep study to know I’m not getting enough oxygen during the night.  I can’t sleep on my stomach or my back and I can only sleep on my side–and usually on my right. 

My left side hurts too much after about 30 minutes of laying on it.  I wrenched my shoulder this summer falling on a bridge in Colorado.   And after having all this weight on one side most of the night, it hurts too. 

There are so many times in the night when I wake up because I stopped breathing.  That shit has got to stop.

Right now I wake up so sore that I can’t even begin to think about exercising first thing in the morning. 

My tailbone hurts.  Why the hell does my tailbone hurt?

Anyway, all that has little to do with the title of this post. 

I’m up. I made the kids their lunches and in the process made mine too.  I’ve got a nice spring mix/baby spinach salad with grape tomatoes and baby carrots topped with just 5 or 6 croutons and some watered down Fat Free Ranch Dressing.  I’ve got a turkey sandwhich on 100% whole wheat with fat free miracle whip.  I even packed snacks of a small granny smith apple and some light yoplait yogurt in case I get hungry in the morning or afternoon.

I ate my breakfakst–a banana and 1 cup of fiber one honey clusters cereal with a cup of skim milk.  I’m nearly finished with my 1st 32 oz bottle of water of the day.  I’m working on getting back to drinking at least 4 of those a day (if not more).

Yesterday, I had the same breakfast and only had time to snarf down the sandwhich for lunch.  Came home starving and had way too large a helping of spaghetti and meat sauce and lord help me FOUR slices of garlic toast.  I LOVE my husband’s garlic toast. It’s a definite weakness.

Then, later in the evening, I polished off the cookie dough ice cream.  Another weakness.  But i’ts out of the house now and I’m not bringing it back–not even for my birthday in 11 days. 

I didn’t drink any diet coke yesterday–that was a masterful exhibition of will power.  I WANTED that damn diet coke.  I drove by Sonic twice during the day while running errands and I did not swing in for a Route 44 Diet Coke, telling myself each time over and over again “YOU DO NOT NEED THAT DIET COKE. You may WANT it. But you do not NEED it.  My husband recently referred to our diet pop drinking as poison.  He’s right.  It’s so bad for us. And I’m trying to think of it that way whenever I think of it at all.

This morning I weighed in at 295.something.   That’s down from the 298.8 I popped on Monday and 297.3 yesterday.  It’s water weight beging shed as my body figures out I’m not going to deprive it of what it needs most–and I will take it as a good start.  It means that just the small changes I’ve made in the last three days are making a difference.

I’m working myself back up to exercise.  Right now I just don’t have the energy–but that should begin changing as I continue to give my body the healthy fuel it needs.  Then I’ll start working that back into the routine.  But for now, I’ll concentrate on making the changes to my diet stick and changing my thinking about the process.  I’ve been doing this off and on for years–you’d think I’d have that part mastered too.  But clearly all the times “off” indicate that I have far from mastered changing my thinking.  I can change my eating, but if I don’t change my thinking about all of it and actively work on nurturing that attitude everyday, then it’s all lost the next time I hit a wall of stress.   I’ll just go back to all my old bad habits, and I don’t want to do that anymore.  I never want to see 295 again.  I refuse to see 300 or higher again, and its time I refuse to see each number I hit on the way down to my healthy weight again too.