Fat as Hell…

I just wanted to let everyone know that in response to my unbridled love of all things html and my extreme neediness, the lovely and fabulous Paola created an online form in which you can simply type in your food intake + calories (or theoretically, you could probably even put in “points” if you’re following the WW not-a-diet plan) and just like magic *poof* it not only adds them all up for you, but it also generates the html that you’ll need in order to import the table into your blog.

Amazing!

(Here’s the link, one more time, just in case you missed it!)

I’ve been using it for about a week now, and although I’m sure she’ll deny it, I’m fairly convinced that this new gadget has somehow contributed to my recent ability to stay within all my caloric goals. I’m not sure how she does it… but that Paola’s magic.

*wink*

And finally, in the “better late than never” department… a week or so ago, Felicia posted another entry in the “fun photo challenge.” In this installment, we were all challenged to show where we lived. As I said, I’m a little late out of the gate, but none the less, here’s my digs. (Sorry the picture is so blurry… but it’s the only one I had that showed both the house and the pond/lake across the street which, trust me, makes everything look far more glamorous than it really is). Anyway…

PS: At the risk of repeating myself, thanks so much to all of you who took the time to either leave me some kind words in response to my last post or for simply sending some gentle thoughts my way. There are times in life when we really need reminding of how much goodness there actually is in the world and I’m so grateful to all of you for helping me remember. *mwah!*

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Poking about online, recently, I’ve seen some really good advice that has caused me to a) think more about how and why I’m doing this b) evaluate whether my strategies are as effective as they should/could be and c) get my ass back in gear during a period when it’s been *really* hard to stay motivated.

Firstly, John over at John Is Fit wrote a great post with his 9 tips for “Kick-Starting Your Dormant Weight Loss Blog.” This post is *so* good and I’ve seen *so* many “dormant” weight loss blogs lately that I’ve seriously considered just sprinkling this link all over cyberspace — like a little motivational fairy. :) I have to confess, though, I still haven’t done #5 yet, but I *have* done the others and it’s helped me pick up where I left off a month ago. Even if you’re not in a weight loss/blogging slump right now, I’d recommend bookmarking this link — just in case.

In this post, Alice responds to a television program called I Can Make You Thin that claims that weight loss can be achieved by eating what you want, when you want and whenever you’re hungry. Yeah good one. Alice responds in the perfect way by outlining her own steps for success, which as you might imagine, fall in complete contrast to those of the show. I find this kind of self reflection to be so healthy. After all, when we share our own methods for success, who knows, we might even help someone else in the process. That said, I loved Alice’s suggestion #5. I’ve been thinking about it all day and plan to put it into practice the moment I finish this post! :)

And finally, there was this article from MSN that outlined 10 common “Diet flubs” along with suggestions to fix them. Number 10 made me want to write this post. It is as follows:

Diet flub #10: You slim down solo.
It’s tempting to keep your 10-pound goal a secret (and wow everybody later with your results), but coming clean about your diet to pals increases your odds of success, according to an analysis of 46 studies by researchers at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston. People with social support lost 6 percent more weight than those who dropped pounds on their own.

Gosh. That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? People with social support lose more weight than those without it.

Of course, I didn’t need the health experts over at MSN to tell me that I owe a great deal of my success to having a network of brilliant and compassionate people to lean on during all of this. But still, having them say it does provide just a smidge of validation. What’s more it also makes me all the more motivated to keep all this writing and reading, posting and clicking up, even on those nights/weeks when I just don’t feel up to it.

So… there go.
Go do some clicking now.
Really.
Go on. :)

263.2 - 260.0 = -3.2lbs

It’s weird, but I almost feel guilty posting another loss when so many of the bloggers that I am reading right now have hit plateaus. I was there for entire month of December — trying to do all the right things, exercising until I thought I would collapse, drinking enough water to drown a fish and yet hopping on the scale each day only to see the same exact number. It’s so frustrating. If I were in charge of the world, there’d be no such thing as plateaus. There also wouldn’t be any paper cuts, but that’s a post of a different color.

Speaking of which…

I saw this article while floating around cyberspace the other day, and I have to say that it really bothers me. Essentially, it’s about a lawmaker in Mississippi who has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for restaurateurs to serve fat people — kind of like how it is illegal for a bartender to serve people who have clearly had too much to drink. According to the politician who introduced the measure, he knew it would never pass, but that he was trying to shed some light on the problem of obesity in his state.

Hmmmm.

I don’t know. I feel like I have more to say on this, but I can’t seem to organize my thoughts right now. The whole thing just strikes me as terribly unsavory. Obesity is a problem. But this kind of thing isn’t the answer.