Three Years

Dude! Your gonna get em wet!

Three years this past Saturday. I was too wrapped up in my healing to realize that the time had come and gone. As much as I loved those minty bastards, I am glad that I shook that monkey from the tree.

Happy non smoking Anniversary to Me!

It is my anniversary!!

*270*

 It just dawned on me that I have not posted anything in a bit. I need to stop being so neglectful.
  November 14 was the one year anniversary of this blog. Yeah! I know that there are 19 of you visible and a couple more that just read. I always wondered how many there truly are of you. I hope I have not bored you all to death!
Today is the two year anniversary of my back surgery and being a ex-smoker! Woohoo! I have not smoked one cigarette since that last one. I am not going to lie. I have been tempted. And now that my youngest is smoking (MY BRAND!), it was hard at first but now it is no big deal. I do not want one 99% of the time.

   Last year at this time I thought I weighed 283 but later on we figured out that I really weighed 293 and probably more then that sometimes when I was not paying attention.  I have not stepped on a scale in a week but I know I am in the lower 270s to upper 260s. So I have lost 23 lbs since I started whining to you all. Damn, you would think fatty would have lost more then that. Huh? I hear of people losing a 100lbs or more in a year and I accomplished that. I will take it though but I wish it was alot more.
 I know now that the Actos was sabotaging my weight and so was my scale. Once the inches started to fall off and my clothes were getting looser, I was getting more motivated.  I get motivated when I see men look at my cleavage (yup, I am a slut. LOL), I get motivated when someone calls me Miss instead of Maam. I get motivated when a woman tells me I could not possibly have an 18 year old and then is shocked that I have an almost 23 year old. I get motivated when I got carded at the liquor store. That was a good one.
I see that my hair is longer and thicker. No more wispy wispys on top of my head. I dress better, I walk with more confidence, and I am trying to get myself together inside and out.
It may only be 23 lbs but what about this year? It could be another 20 or another 40 lbs. I have always been a slow like a turtle loser, even when I was young and lost a ton of weight. It is better on your skin anyway. It has time to TRY to snap back.


So what are my goals for this year?
I still want to weigh 210. That has not changed one bit. Now that my feet do not hurt anymore (thank you!!), I want to get moving. This puppy has got me moving my ass in ways I do not remember but I want to have a conserted effort to really work on my muscles. Abs. Back. Legs. Arms. I do not want to be skinny mini..never want that. Too much work for a former fatty to stay skinny skinny. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin and not have to wear Spanx with a dress!

Sick Day

*282*
I am sorry but I was distracted with stuff on Friday and sick yesterday and sicker today. I do not have a cold because my nose is not stuffy or running. But my ears hurt, my throat hurts, headache, and just general feeling like shit. I stayed in bed most of the day yesterday. I am going to do a few things downstairs this morning and I am going to see if the Dayquil kicks in. If it does not, back to bed for me!
I have noticed that since I quit smoking, I do not get as sick as I used to. It does not last as long. And when it is a cold, it does not go to the point of bronchitis like before. I still have a crappy immune system and I will still get sick more than others..all my life. But it is better. Quitting smoking was the absolute smartest thing I have done recently.

I am done..this is a short one for today. I did lose another definite stay away pound! Even though Fred and I ate some carbs on Friday.
Long story..I will talk about it tomorrow.

Alive with Pleasure...or something like that.

  Ahhh! Newport 100s. My brand of choice. Not the short ones. They had to be 100s and had to be in a hard pack! They were so yummy until they weren't anymore. I pretended to smoke my first ciggie when I was four years old. I snitched one from my Oldest brother`s pack when we lived on Pequot Avenue. He was sitting at the staircase and I was passing him. He stopped me dead in my tracks and told me to put it back.  I inhaled when I was 14 yrs old. My friend and I were sitting near the train tracks(cause that is a normal place for kids to hang) coughing to the burn of our first inhale  and I never looked back.
  I did have a brief respite from the coffin nails back when I was 25 years old. My dentist told me I needed to quit because my gums were in bad shape. Meaning he could not guarantee I would not get cancer in the near future. So I quit and was smoke free for four years. Then my stupid ass picked them right back up again. I worked for the phone company and we were on strike. Everyone in the picket line was smoking. Oh Sweet Newport 100s. I missed you so. If my calculations are correct, I smoked for 21 years. Same age as my Oldest. Interesting. That is a lot of fucking money I wasted. That is what made me quit..the money. Not my health. Not my family. Not the threat of dying an agonizing death. Nope Nope Nope. It was the $8.00 a pack I was paying every single day.  Plus that morning hack was just oh so attractive. NOT! I tried to quit but it never worked. Over and Over and Over. I even tried Chantix. That shit was like Tic Tacs to my addiction.   I had to do it in a way that I could not get access to them.
   I quit on the day that I had my back surgery. November 17, 2009. I grabbed a ciggy out of the pack, put it aside, and ripped up all the others that were left in the pack into the trash can outside the house. I lit it with my trusty Bic and it went into the trash also. I smoked it on the way to the hospital.
I was feeling alright when I was in the hospital but when I got out. OMG! I wanted one the moment we walked into the house.  Hubs was strong. I have to hand it to him. I had told him that no matter what I said or did, he was not to give in. I screamed only at him...poor thing. I told him to come home with a pack of cigs, he comes home with a box of patches and some bubble gum. I did not want that shit. I threw that box of patches at him every chance I got. MotherFucker! I want Cigarettes!!
He did not give in. It was night, it was cold, I was in PJs and slippers. I walked down our dead end street because I was going to be a Bad Assed Bitch and walk to 7-11..third day after back surgery. Hubs got me at end of street. Drove around the neighborhood, got almost to the store, and turned around. I cried. I cried like someone had died. And someone had. My old self. I was no longer going to be a smoker and I mourned it.
I just gave in. I could not get them myself so I might as well put the damn patches on, chew my gum, and live with it.  I swore (obviously..hehe), I ranted, I bitched, and twitched. But I did it. In two days it will be my one year anniversary. One day at a time.
Every once in a while, I will see someone out and about smoking..and I will want one really badly. Then other times I see someone smoking and it totally turns me off. I keep hold of the ones that made me not want to smoke..
Because I am never going to do it again..

And the story begins

That is what my sister used to call me when I was a chubby adolescent. Chubbette! She thought she was so funny and clever. Not realizing she probably scarred my ass for life. But I digress. This is not going to be a blog about my past crap. This is going to be a daily account of my journey into changing my life. I have always been fat but I had maintained a good weight and size for my height of 5`3". I always stayed around the 210 lb mark. Now that I look back, I looked good. I did gain weight with both of my daughter`s births but I always went back to that good ole reliable 210. Oh, how I miss you 210. Where the hell did you go??  Ten years ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. I was a non compliant diabetic. I did take my medication every day but I did not follow any other rules. The ones like lose the excess weight and do not eat that crap anymore! Now I am on pills and insulin. I started taking the insulin a month before the surgery and the quitting smoking. The weight started to creep up. Now, let me state for the record that I have not been 210 in about..umm...5 years. I have been about 230-240lb. Holy Shit! Heidi is going to be honest. I might even post some pictures. I have to be honest otherwise this whole thing would be for nothing. Right?
Okay, so the weight started to creep up. I figured it was the not smoking (i will talk about how I did that in another post) and the hell of the surgery (another post). Creep. I started to walk with Hubs. Creep. I complained to my Dr. He said I needed to eat less AND exercise. Okay. So my Youngest and I started going to the gym. Creep.
It creeped up to my current weight. Drum roll please................283 lbs! On a 5"3" frame! I am not happy. At all.  I finally figured out (after I thought I was dying or had acquired another ailment..more on that later) that the insulin and my food intake were the culprit. When you do not use insulin, your pancreas does not know what the hell it is doing. So everything goes to waste. That is why you feel like crap all the time. You maintain your weight but at a cost. Once you go on insulin, your body figures out what it`s role is in the food distribution. So instead of dumping the excess, it stores it. FAT!
So, I was feeling much better because of the insulin but I was steadily turning into an Oompah Loompah.  My self esteem went into the crapper. I was never one of those chicks that said "Do I look fat? Oh I feel fat? Is my ass fat?" I have become one of THOSE women. Nope. Not going to do that anymore.  On November 17, 2010, it will be my one year anniversary for the surgery and the not smoking. So I had a revelation. Now it is time to start a new chapter. A new anniversary. I am going to work as hard as I can to get down to that 210. I am not looking to be fashion model thin. I just want to see my old friend again.
So, excuse the mess of this blog..It will take me some time to tweak it the way I want it to look. I will post all about my journey, my weight, foods that I am cooking and I will even post about any mistakes that I encounter. Because I am only human. I am woman..Here me scream my ass off on the stair climber!!