My weight has been on my mind lately. I'm not fat in the grand scheme of things. But according to the scale, I'm the heaviest I've ever been, and it doesn't sit well with me. I see it in photographs of myself. I realize it.
I have been exercising regularly, so that's not the problem. I have exercised regularly this year for three months and have not lost a pound. So it has become obvious to me that eating is the problem. If you follow my blog and my Project Life album, you would come to realize by now that I love to eat and I love to take photos of the food I eat. For the most part, my everyday meals are fairly healthy. It's when I eat out, or when I have desserts and treats and chocolate and candy and ice cream, that things get out of hand. And it's portion-control.
At the beginning of 2007, when my mom died, I weighed 112 lbs. I don't want to be 112 lbs again, but right now I'm almost 20 lbs more than that. My goal is to lose 10 lbs. When I run, I can definitely feel the weight of the extra 10 lbs that I'm carrying around. It does slow me down. The weight even makes me less flexible. And let's not even talk about having to purchase bigger clothes, ugh! THAT, my friends, is the tipping point.
On Wednesday I had my Aha! Epiphany Moment. My friend Mark from work came into the office on Wednesday. I hadn't seen Mark since December because he usually works from home. Mark looked skinny! Mark lost a bunch of weight and I hardly recognized him! He looked awesome. (He's an older guy, so I wasn't admiring him in THAT way, LOL. Just that his transformation was amazing.) I asked him how he did it. He said he went to his physical in October and his doctor said he needed to do something about his blood pressure and his blood sugar. When he used to work in the office all the time, he was THAT guy who couldn't stop going over to the communal candy dish all day. Once I brought in a box of cookies from the grocery store and he came and sat in my cube and ate HALF the box of cookies while he was chatting with me. He was THAT guy. But he somehow mustered up the self-discipline and stopped eating sweets and treats, and started eating healthy food and cut out simple carbs. If HE could do it, so could I!
So here I go with my eating less and eating better adventure. I'll be excited to share any progress with you. I can't promise to not show good food on this blog though. But I'll be eating less of it, and definitely no regular treats. And if we cook any healthier food that's yummy and worth sharing, I'll definitely be doing that. We love to cook good and (relatively) healthier food. I'm lucky Todd is such a chef, for sure!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
2012 Project Life | Week 12
Thank you for all your thoughtful comments on my previous post about Project Life. I have thought a lot about the purpose of Project Life to me, and why I would want to continue with it. I don't think I do Project Life just to document my memories and experiences, because I have other means for that already, such as this blog and daily journaling in Oh Life and in my Moleskine planner. I do think I enjoy being crafty and scrappy with my Project Life album. So my expectation of spending under 2 hours per week on Project Life is unreasonable. But, it doesn't mean that EVERY week I have to get all crafty with Project Life. Some weeks I'm more pressed for time and stressed and it's perfectly okay to just print out some photos and hand-write some simple journaling on the PL core kit journal cards, and call it done. Some weeks, when I have more time, I can get more scrappy with it. I had a fruitful discussion on my Facebook wall with some friends, and it spurred Nettio Designs (Lynnette) to ask the burning question: "Do You Suffer From Scrapbooker's Guilt?". I also posted the topic about Project Life taking too long for me to complete every week in the Lilypad forum and there are a lot of thoughtful posts in the thread there. And yesterday, Michelle Wooderson wrote a great post on her blog about how you can complete Project Life in a scrappy way without spending 5 hours on it every week. She gave some great tips on there, so it's worth a read for sure.
I really think the chronological aspect of Project Life and the fact that my version is doing weekly pages induces the panic and guilt when you "get behind". Or when you spend too much time on it every week and get frustrated, because you know time is ticking and next week is coming and you will do it all over again. Before Project Life, when I just scrapped pages here and there, about random things, without any chronology, I never ever felt guilty or "behind". I never felt like I spent too much time doing it either. I know Becky Higgins herself has said it's not about guilt and rules, and do it your way, and don't feel pressured, etc. But it just doesn't work that way for a lot of us, LOL.
This is Project Life Week 12. I did this last weekend, along with Week 11 at the same time.
Left-side page.
For this week's title page, I used one of the tickets I made myself and drew and colored "Week" on it. A heart stamp and some Thickers numbers and my weekly title page was done.
I stamped some Jenni Bowlin label stamps onto cardstock and cut them out to adhere onto the grid patterned paper. Then just date stamped and journaled.
The same heart stamp as the week's title page, except this time in red. I designed the "This Cat" in my Sihouette software and cut it out with the Silhouette. Then I adhered it to my gray cardstock and drew around it with a black pen so it stood out more. The cat stamp is from Catslife Press. (All supplies linked at the bottom of this post.)
A 4x6 slot using my favorite American Crafts 4x6 cardstock again. The date stamp is from Catslife Press.
Right-side page.
I had jury duty on Thursday, but did not get picked for a trial.
Had lunch with my favorite friend, Meera. I decorated a Project Life 3x4 grid journal card with washi tape and stamped on one of the tickets I made.
The upper right side was all about taking a day off on Monday, having breakfast, and going to see the Titanic Exhibit. I made a 4x6 collage of six photos we took at the museum. The "TITANIC" flag I made and cut with the Silhouette. Used another ticket I made on the journal card.
Stapled tickets from the Titanic Exhibition onto a piece of cardstock. When you go to the Titanic Exhibit, they give each visitor a "Boarding Pass" On the flip side you are assigned a name of a real passenger on the Titanic, and you can read about his/her biography. At the end of the exhibit, you come to a big wall of names and you can find the name of your person and see if he/she survived.
That's it for Week 12! This weekend I plan on doing some experimentation on the time it takes me to do a quick Project Life spread.
I really think the chronological aspect of Project Life and the fact that my version is doing weekly pages induces the panic and guilt when you "get behind". Or when you spend too much time on it every week and get frustrated, because you know time is ticking and next week is coming and you will do it all over again. Before Project Life, when I just scrapped pages here and there, about random things, without any chronology, I never ever felt guilty or "behind". I never felt like I spent too much time doing it either. I know Becky Higgins herself has said it's not about guilt and rules, and do it your way, and don't feel pressured, etc. But it just doesn't work that way for a lot of us, LOL.
This is Project Life Week 12. I did this last weekend, along with Week 11 at the same time.
Left-side page.
For this week's title page, I used one of the tickets I made myself and drew and colored "Week" on it. A heart stamp and some Thickers numbers and my weekly title page was done.
I stamped some Jenni Bowlin label stamps onto cardstock and cut them out to adhere onto the grid patterned paper. Then just date stamped and journaled.
The same heart stamp as the week's title page, except this time in red. I designed the "This Cat" in my Sihouette software and cut it out with the Silhouette. Then I adhered it to my gray cardstock and drew around it with a black pen so it stood out more. The cat stamp is from Catslife Press. (All supplies linked at the bottom of this post.)
A 4x6 slot using my favorite American Crafts 4x6 cardstock again. The date stamp is from Catslife Press.
Right-side page.
I had jury duty on Thursday, but did not get picked for a trial.
Had lunch with my favorite friend, Meera. I decorated a Project Life 3x4 grid journal card with washi tape and stamped on one of the tickets I made.
The upper right side was all about taking a day off on Monday, having breakfast, and going to see the Titanic Exhibit. I made a 4x6 collage of six photos we took at the museum. The "TITANIC" flag I made and cut with the Silhouette. Used another ticket I made on the journal card.
Stapled tickets from the Titanic Exhibition onto a piece of cardstock. When you go to the Titanic Exhibit, they give each visitor a "Boarding Pass" On the flip side you are assigned a name of a real passenger on the Titanic, and you can read about his/her biography. At the end of the exhibit, you come to a big wall of names and you can find the name of your person and see if he/she survived.
That's it for Week 12! This weekend I plan on doing some experimentation on the time it takes me to do a quick Project Life spread.