Weigh In Wednesday Kick Off - My Promises to Myself

In an effort to curb some of my recent negative obsession with my weight, I have decided to make a contract with myself.

1. I will not set unrealistic expectations for myself: To sit here and say that I will never again order a pizza on a Friday night or saying that I will work out every. single. day. is just setting myself up for failure. I will commit to doing the best that I can at each moment. No more. No less.

2. I will learn to shut up: I got a rude awaking on Monday night that the way I see myself is negatively impacting my daughter. I will not be opening my mouth to put myself down anymore. I'm going to follow the old rule of "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." 

3. I will limit my posting about this subject to one day a week: Just like there is no reason to torment my children with this, there is also no reason to keep torturing the mom blogging community either. To date (not including this one) I have counted 9 posts on the subject since I started my blog this year. It's certainly not amusing me and I'm fairly certain it's not amusing anyone else either. I am more than just my weight and I want to make sure that I'm focusing on things I do like instead.

That being said, I will be doing a Weigh in Wednesday ONLY, to report my progress and my feelings on the subject.

----------------------------------------

I had mentioned on Sunday's post that I officially decided that I needed to back on ACE. I'm happy to report that my order arrived Monday and I have been taking it for the past two days and am already getting results again. 

For the past few months, I've been working out here and there and also making a huge effort to be mindful of what and how much I eat. Despite the efforts I have been making though the scale wasn't budging even a pound. In the two days since I started back on the program, I am please to report that the scale finally moved!

Created by MyFitnessPal - Nutrition Facts For Foods

I'm so relieved to have the help of this product again. I loved it the last time and I'm falling in love with it all over again. I am not a believer in miracle pills and I know that nothing out there will do all the work for me, but ACE does help and I know from my past experience (see below) that I can't do this without it. 

Oh, I made one more decision too. I'm not just going to be a customer this time. I also volunteered to be a consultant for them because I believe in this product that much. If you're interested in learning more about it, please feel free to email at almost2nowhere@gmail.com or just click on the banner below and it will take you straight to the website.

How I See Myself is Damaging My Daughter

James and I have a nickname for Lena... Sonar. I swear that child hears literally everything. She can be in her room, with the TV on, while we're clear across the house, and all of a sudden she will chime in randomly to our conversations. We know that if we want to have any sort of private conversation that we had better go outside into the garage and most likely rev up the lawn mower, possibly while she's "sleeping," just to be on the safe side if we don't want her to ease drop on what we're saying.

Yet somehow, it never occurred to me to mask or filter out some of the things I say about myself. If you read my last post, then you know I've been feeling a little, um, self conscious lately.  Even when writing the post though, I admit that I carefully filtered out some of the harsher things I've been thinking (and saying) about myself as of late. Not once did it occur to me though that I should be applying that filter here in my own home.

Typically, we think of home as the place where we should be allowed to be ourselves. A place where we should be totally comfortable speaking our minds and being who we are without shame. I've always had the attitude that I won't pretend to be someone I'm not, but I think maybe I've let it "all hang out" just little too much in the past few months. And here's why...

Lena stood in the living room today and pulled out the waistband of her pants and told me straight faced "Mom, I think I'm losing a little weight. Look, I'm not as fat as I was before."

Excuse me, what???? 

Does this look like a fat kid to you? No? Me either!!! I blame some of this on my mother and her telling Lena a month ago that she needed to start being more girly because, and I quote, "Kids in middle school are mean and they'll call you a lesbian." I wish I was kidding about this, but I'm not. She's said the same thing to me plenty of times, but it was usually that I'm a fat lesbian (and people wonder why I have issues sometimes). Let's just say I had a not so nice little chat with Gramma....

That comment has kicked off a new concern for what other kids might think about what she wears and how her hair looks. I've been trying to help her work through that, but ultimately, that specific comment about her weight tonight is my fault. I've been talking about my own weight somewhat obsessively for the past few months and I've been in overdrive since I placed my order to get back on ACE. I did get my order today and honestly I'm excited, but I don't think I know I didn't present it in a positive way.

I don't remember what I said exactly, but I believe my comment was something along the lines of "Woo hoo it's here! Now I won't have to be such a fat ass."  Again, not word for word, but you get the point.

In the moment that my beautiful daughter stood there in front of me concerned because evidently she thinks she's fat, I started silently cussing myself out in my head. Here I've been trying to do damage control for my mother's comment to her and all the while I've been inflicting my own low self-esteem onto her while telling her as long as she's happy with herself than nothing else matters. Basically, I'm discrediting myself and in a way validating the bullshit that comes out of my mother's mouth. Fan-freaking-tastic!

While I can't instantaneously promise to see myself in a whole new light, I can promise not to open my trap anymore in front of Lena.

How I see and feel about this....

....will stay on here and only here.

I'm Going Back on ACE Weight Loss

I have always struggled with my weight. If you've been a reader of mine for a while, then you know over the past few months I have been trying to get it back under control again. I've tried Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred (personally I think she's a sadist),Wii Active Personal Trainer (my personal favorite), removing all junk food from the house, living off of Lean Cuisine meals, and even dragging my children out for a 2 mile walk in the snow and so far, I haven't lost a single freaking pound!

I came to the conclusion long ago that I have no natural metabolism. I'm not certain why that is, but I can tell you that every woman in my family (with the exception of one lucky sister) suffers from the same issue. We're all short and round. And we're not talking cute Pillsbury Dough Boy round, we're talking Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man round!

I have never wanted and/or expected to look like a Victoria's Secret model or anything, but I would prefer not to be out of breath while doing simple things like taking a walk around the block or switching loads of laundry.

A few years ago my cousin had started losing weight like crazy (again, we're all short and round in this family). We usually see her about once a month or so and the transformation that she had gone through in such a short amount of time got my attention really quick. Turns out, she had started taking a supplement called A.C.E. After seeing what it had done for her, I had her help me order some for myself as well.

After only 3 months of being on it I lost approximately 50 lbs! It helped give me the energy I needed to go out and do things and most importantly it helped control my appetite. I admit that I'm a binge eater. I will go most of the day without being hungry and then the moment I get bored, I look for something to eat and then end up consuming ridiculous amounts of crap that I should not be shoving in my face in the first place.

For the longest time I was doing well maintaining my weight without it. It had given me the jump-start I had needed and had gotten my body in habit of actually burning calories instead of storing them like a polar bear. I was active and I felt good in my own skin for the first time in forever! 

I've been off of it now for almost 3 years and in this last year the weight has gradually been creeping back on. But it wasn't until back in January when James made a comment about how I used to look better that it really hit me how badly I had let it spiral out of control again. That's when I had made the decision to get serious about it again and believe me, I have been trying, but nothing seems to be working at this point.

So this week, I decided it was time to go back to the one thing I have EVER found that works for me. I'm going back on A.C.E. because I need help. I just can't do this on my own and that's okay.