Starting over.

Starting over.  When I finally decided it was time for me to stop the crap finally, you know the game you play, the game with yourself, just one more chip or cookie or I can eat what ever and work out harder tomorrow.  I finally realized that I was very miserable.  I mean deep down inside uncontrollable miserable.  Yelled at my kids for things they really shouldn't have been yelled at for, didn't talk to people, never really go out in public, things like that.  I will give you the best advice I gave my self.  It's really simple.  Just stick with it and it really will work. Yeah, okay.  We all have gone through it at one point.  I know, easier said than done, but it's true, please listen to me.  I would never give advice that wasn't nor that wasn't easy.  Simple and easy, the only way.  

1:  Give yourself realistic goals.  Example:  I weighed 200lbs (ok, 197.5lbs. and I refused to see that 200 pound mark, I decided for myself that was it).   10% per week is a lot to lose! 1-2 pounds is nothing, I am not kidding!!!!!  Don't kill yourself!  So in the first year I decided that I only wanted to lose 15-20 pounds and keep it off.  THIS IS A LOT! and hard to keep off. So slow and easy is realistic and much better for you and your body and mind!

2:  Drink lots of water!  You body needs water.  You may not realize it, but you may actually be thirsty and not hungry.  If you don't like water (I do hear that quite a bit) add lemon or lime even a squeeze of orange etc. but not a lot, you need the water not some sweetened drink or artificial sweetener.  Your body will love you for it, it truly will! Oh and by the way, quit drinking the soda!! That crap isn't any good for you at all!  That's a guaranteed loss of 10-15 pounds in a month all in itself, with doing nothing else, no joke, just the sugar content alone. Especially if you drink a lot of it.  

3:  Don't stop eating all together, you need to eat, rather add fruits and vegetables to your diet.  If you eat the correct servings of fruits and vegetables a day you will get balance you need and be less likely to overeat during the course of the day. (see a pattern here? eating? and correctly)

4:  Measure your food, this was hard for me but, you need to learn how to truly eat! (if you don't want to start this yet, don't, add this step once you get a schedule going)  I'm not talking go crazy.  I will give you a quick tip that trained me to do this by eye.  A handful of blueberries is a serving for blueberries, on a serving of cereal for breakfast for instance, but you need to find out exactly what you serving size is depending on the cereal you eat.  Usually it's about 1 cup. (8oz.).  Once you add the blueberries or strawberries it really does fill you up. Try it out for a few days first, don't knock it until you try it.  Oh, and don't fill the bowl to the top and put in tons of milk!  I mean come on!  This would be like 2 1/2 servings.  That's like 2+ meals.  I have done it, a lot!  DO THIS FIRST:  Pour you cereal in a bowl, no milk, your normal routine, then go get your measuring cups, see how much you actually have been pouring in the bowl every time, hmm, bet it's not a serving, more like 2 or 3.  Just cutting that back to a serving and adding fruit will help in weight loss and help better your digestive tract, you will be amazed, I was.  

Here is a few things to think about:

1/2 of a small bagel is like eating 1/2 a packaged of English Muffins (that's just half of a bagel)

1 medium fruit is the size of a baseball

a juice glass is 6 oz., not that big ol' glass you've been gulping down

1/2 cup cooked rice will fit in the palm of you hand

1 oz of cheese is about the size of 2 dominoes

3oz meat is about the size of a deck of cards

1/2 cup of fresh fruit is about the size of a baseball   

You should also eat from a smaller plate this way it seems as if you have more food on your plate.  

5:  Eat a little bit a lot of times a day.  Just kind of much out a long the day.  This way you never really overeat during one meal. 

6:  Eat protein at every meal.  It is much better for your body than carbs and more satisfying, as well as a host of extras.

7:  I tell everyone who asks me.  Don't stop eating everything, just do it in moderation.  I still eat a candy bar and ice cream.  Just not every day or on the same day.  I do not reward myself because then I have to constantly beat what I did before, this was you don't think you should have a reward every time you do something great like lose 10 pounds, if you really want that small bag of chips have it, but buy a small bag not the family sized bag.  To me this is not a game, this is life and my health.  If I want something, I am an adult and I will have it, but I need to do what is right for me.  MODERATION, MODERATION,  MODERATION!!!

8:  One of the best pieces of advice someone gave me and I can pass on is clear out your kitchen of all the crap food you have and stock up with the healthy foods!  This way you have nothing but good food to eat and munch on you won't eat the crap food and stop buying the crap food!

9:  Exercise.  A brief walk is great after a meal.  Just hanging out in the pool burns a ton of calories and so does making love so there is no reason not to burn off some calories today!  You can burn calories doing so many things, but you have to get up off your butt and do them.

10:  Best for last!  Just start now.  There is no reason to put off tomorrow what you can start today.  I mean who are you waiting for, you?  No one else is going to do this for you.  I mean really is you BFF going to the gym with you everyday?  Are they going to cook your food and watch what you eat, seriously, uh, NO! They will help and be supportive (hopefully), but they aren't spoon feeding you, you have to do it!   Just get up and do it.  Otherwise, you will be more miserable and get bigger or sicker then you were before, oh I know, I was there!  Believe me I was there! The bigger you get the more health issues you are apt to get.  Not only was I a large, okay extra large woman, but I was borderline diabetic, my allergies were horrendous, I still have some of them now, but they are better, I had so many more medical issues and besides I felt like crap daily.  I am no longer diabetic, or have high blood pressure or high cholesterol.  I feel fantastic in those aspects and an much happier.  There is no better time than the present! Get up and get moving!!

Lets go.  I have faith in you :)

It's March...still working on that resolution?

It's March, how's that New Year's resolution coming along?  Still going to the gym, all the time? I didn't think so either.  Come on now.  Resolutions, smesolitions.  Be serious and let's start again.  One day at a time.  Go slow and keep strong.  You don't need to go crazy and take five pounds off a week because Summer is just around the corner, oh year, you heard me right, 3 1/2 months.  Are you ready to put that body in a bikini?  Or speedo (please no) that went out in the early 80s?  Again, I didn't think so.  Get up and get moving.  A body that is slow and blah will stay that way!  If you are always on the move, then you will be much happier moving and so will your body.  You can't move because you're tired or cold, bah! 

What?  You're freezing.  Of course you are it's technically still spring, but it's still freezing out and it's swim suit weather will be here before you know it and then you will find something else to complain about.  Just get up and get moving, believe me, you will feel better before you know it!  You don't have to lose 40 pounds by then, because in all honesty, if you do it that quick, by winter it will all be back on and you will be just as miserable as you are right now.  Make a plan, stick with it and go slow and steady.

Go to the gym, your living room, the park, anywhere that has extra space at this point, just start!  Get your ass in gear and shake the winter blues.  I know, I feel it too!  Let's do it together, come on let's go!!

I am ready are you!  I want to tone up and get fit, I want to get in that bikini and look smoking hot with you. Come on, do this with me and I will post some new pictures soon.  I put the ones up from my fat days, fat and miserable.  I was there, and as long as I work out, I feel fantastic!  Get up out of that chair, off that sofa and work out with me.  Move and be active and your body will love you for it in return!

How long did it take you?

How long did it take you to start your first diet, your second, third or so on?  It's harder than most people think or say, unless of course they have gone through it for at least 2 months (consecutively) in their lives and I don't mean 2 days at a clip over the course of 2 years.  I mean hard core 2 months really trying a real diet.  Eating right, exercising, resting and well, somewhat stress-free.  Haha...sorry.  I had to put that there, the stress-free part.  We all know there's no such thing as stress-free, sugar-free maybe, but stress-free, ha!

I have to start off by saying I have probably dieted more in my life than most people I know.  Oh yeah, they say they have, but I know better.  They do for a week or so, then they slack or award themselves something off the wall.  I mean, come on people, what the hell?  Why would you sabotage  yourself like that.  You are your own worst enemy.  Life, it's the only one you have along with your body, mind and soul.  You only have one of each and they should be in sync with each other.  Note:  I said should be.  You need to take care of you, because no one else will do it best.  I can name off several diets, fad diets or even the well known starving one's self trick.  None of which ever worked, of course.  Okay, maybe for a short lived time they did, but the weight just came back on and ten-fold.  

At one point in my life I was just a half pound under 200 pounds and I was a woman's size 16.  All 5'2 1/2" of me (yes, have to add that half inch in there, it counts to me).  It wasn't all so long ago.  I was sick, not good at all, in body and health (if you have followed me, you'd see why).  I couldn't take looking in the mirror.  I still really don't like it to look in the mirror, to be honest with you, but I feel better about myself now.  I eat right, exercise and try to be as stress free as I possibly can.  Today I am 115 and a size 0.  I have much more energy than I ever did and want to do things.  I am smaller, feel better and happier today than when I was in high school.  

Life is there for the taking and not to be lived sitting on you butt eating, feeling like crap because that is what you are filling you body with, crap.  After all you are what you eat.  Eat like crap all day and you will feel like crap all day.

You have to start sometime and at the beginning.  It doesn't matter when, so do it today, why not, why are you waiting and who are you waiting for?  It only you who can make you do it.  Look around today at people, we are not getting any better or helping each other anymore, so just get off you butt and do it.  There is no time like the present.  You need some motivation, email me, I will motivate you!

I learned what a serving of food was and holy cow did I eat like a pig; who knew (three servings of cereal for breakfast, holy crap!).  Well if any one of my friends did, they never told me.  I know how to better myself today and I do every chance I get.

Once you know what you need the rest just follows.  Stay positive and find positive people to help you along the way.  Who care what people think of what you look like, just remember in the end you will look and feel amazing.  It is not going to happen overnight by any means and don't let some dam fad diet even pretend to tell you otherwise!

Stay focused and know who you are, this is what matters!  Every one has to weigh a little bit before they start.  I know I did.

Who's the boss?

Wide open question there, I know, but you can go off in many directions on this one. Today my thinking is directed toward work. The industry in which we wake, drink coffee, tea, and or energy drinks then run out the door to our ever-loving place of employment. As for me, hehe, don't hate me, I stay home and do this. No, I don't get paid to write, I LOVE to write. I do this for free. Yes, free, and I do enjoy it thoroughly. For the rest of you, you may or may not love your job. One can only wish that you love your job.

There are so many types of jobs and positions within these said jobs. Remembering back when I worked, I always enjoyed my job, no matter what it was. Marketing was my favorite out of them all, after all I did go to college for this. Not that I sold something to people, because all of my positions were within sales of some sort, but that I was able to enhance or magnify so to speak, the different aspects or great ideas. Me, I can sell anything. Ask Linda, lol. She was my best reference, ever!

I can remember the day I had left there (one company) and had gone on an interview, I will always put down where I am working at that time, because you either want me to work there or not, I will tell you I am leaving, always. I will never lie, nor hold anything over your head. Dedicated and a hard worker, but there are times when you have to leave for family matters, hours, etc. It happens. Here I am, in the interview and they will let me know once they verify my references, talk to other possible hires and let me know in about a week. Feeling confident, I leave, go back to work and no worries. The only reason for my leaving was to go full-time and everyone knew. The very next morning, I get a call from the regional (district, maybe, can't remember which title) manager, to have another interview. I'm now in awe, of course I go. Sitting in this huge room, I go in this office full of four or five people and they start talking to me asking me what I want from them. I was floored. I know I am a great worker, always have been, but just amazed. We go over everything and they ask when I can start. I give them a date, as I had some ads that had to be finished and couldn't leave my current boss hanging. Everything was awesome, and I had to ask them. What was their deciding factor and reasoning for such quick call-back and hire. They tell me that they spoke to my office manager Linda. Besides the fact that she will cry when I leave, they asked her how I was, the normal questions, which were all great. Then they asked her how my sales skill were, well, she responded with, "She could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo in a blizzard"! That was it, I started laughing, that's Linda, love her! Tell it like it is. They had told me no one had ever given them an answer like that ever before. I started with them a few weeks later and loved my job.

Having great bosses have always been a plus for me. If it weren't for them teaching me great things, it would have taken me on a different path in life. Most of them let me do my own thing, work my own way, style and this worked for me.  How is your boss? Does he or she treat you with respect? Do they give you the correct tools for learning? Do they teach you or do you teach them? Should you have the best of both worlds? Understanding people should be number one on every level, not just at work. How well do you work at your job? Do you enjoy going to work? These questions and more you should ask yourself.

Today, the workforce is so different than it was 20 years ago. People seem to be less productive and complain more, as if they deserve more for less work. Remembering my step-dad, being a millwright, he worked in a nuclear power plant, yes you read that right, nuclear. He worked directly on the core. Imagine that. You can't can you, being right there, radiation. I can never once remember him complaining about how shitty his job was, how underpaid he was or how he was treated unfair because they cut his hours. I would like to see you go do that, half of what he did, even a third. The man was a genius, seriously, he had taken many, many tests and scored so high, it was superior levels, Einstein levels. Yet, not one complaint about working, on the generators of a nuclear reactor. Hmmm, and I hear at least 2-3 times a week from someone I know random rants about some lame things, "Suzie" did at work and they got promoted for it, yet they have been there for seven years and can't seem to get a 50 cent raise. Hey!, get off your lazy ass and put a hint of extra effort into it, just something more, maybe showing that you actually appreciate your job. Productivity shows! (Phew, ranting today, lol,) Oh, and my step-dad, has since passed away, from of course, cancer.

There aren't too many of you out there that go above and beyond your job duties. I only know a couple of people who do this. Kudos to you! ;)  (you know who you are)


Who's the boss? Does your boss give you the credit you deserve or take your well deserved credit? If they take your credit, what do you do? What should you do? How do you go about being acknowledged? Should you mention that the idea, task at hand and or project (entire and or bulk) was because of you and or your skill-set. If you're the boss, do you take the credit for someone else's work, you know like plagiarism in college? Although you don't actually plagiarize, you just re-organize their words.  Good students will gather information and put it all together and write something well, while great students will do something all together different.

Scenario (psst, you know who this is): You're the boss, your boss shows up, gives you a list of projects to complete. Easy, peasy you're thinking, because you are one of those hands-on bosses, not the sit-in-your-office while you hand out jobs to everyone else type bosses. You know this will get done. Time goes by, poof, 25 more projects get tacked on, oh, just because you boss thinks ohhh, why not. Still you're not sweating it (on the inside you really are somewhat freaking out, just not saying anything). OH, they your boss decides to give you a time limit, still, your good. POOF, your boss's boss just shows up unannounced, and voila you are still ok, but guess what, your boss, freaks out and decides to start "helping" you. As if he has been all the time. Hmmm, now what. Do you confront your boss? Do you let the big boss know that oh he recently jumped in since you showed up. I mean what is going on? Is you boss making you look bad, good, none of the above? What is happening? Who do you confront, no one, everyone? Will the big boss know you originally were the one who did everything and "Guido" just hopped in to look good. Or was he truly trying to help? Was he told to be there? Are you being tested to see if you will say something, where do your loyalties lay? Me, I would just say, hey, so glad corporate sent you here to help. Oil only needs to be placed where there is a squeak. Karma always finds its way back around.

I do love me some great karma.

Life before...

...the Internet, was, well what was it?  Boring, not for me.  I think it was much more enriching, to be honest.  Yes, today you can Google, Bing or whatever you search engine taste is.  It hasn't been that long, but long enough that I have been to a library, a good old fashioned, sit down and be quiet, people are reading library.

I loved having to ask for information.  Especially from the older generation.  You still can.  It may not always be correct, and you had to verify and cross-check a lot of it, depending on what you were asking.  Gosh, what was that saying I was just told the other night, "the mystery of history" or something to that affect.  Either way, it made sense.  I love both worlds, but word of mouth, listening to the elderly tell you stories of when they were children is fantastic and enthralling in itself.  Sometimes the details can get intermingled with other stories, and this is where stories become inflated over time. When this happens, that's when you start to think if it's ever happened in history.  It is capable, very bound to happen, just because it's in a text book, doesn't mean it's true, 100% true.  Look at all the stories over time that have been changed and "facts have come to our attention".  Amazing, no one ever lied before the Internet, huh?  I guess only the Internet has misinformation and nowhere else.  I caught a fish and it was "this big".

Thinking about everything is just simply amazing to me.  Some people believe everything they hear, read and see, whether it be on the news, in the newspaper or Internet.  It can come from the neighbor or over-heard in the deli, but truth be told, take everything and I mean everything with a grain of salt unless you were there, especially today in the Internet era.  Come on, have you seen that gorgeous "french model" in the commercial on TV, ohh la la, bwhahaha, gets me every time. (clip below)

Anyone can tell you anything they want, it's a matter of what you believe and what you want to believe.  Think about that game from when you were little called "Operator or Telephone", you would whisper something in someone's ear then they would do the same to the next person.  This would continue around the room, until the last person heard it, then they would have to say it out loud.  Ninety percent of the time it was wrong.  It usually came out distorted and really funny.  Everyone would laugh, it was a fun game.  Thinking about it, it shows you how information being passed along through people gets distorted and mis-communicated over time, passed from person to person.  Just imagine this was only within a few minutes. History has a way of getting jumbled and mis-communicated, it's inevitable, no doubt in my mind.  The Internet has a way of letting people shape information to their own likings.  It also has a way of allowing people to search unlimited amounts of information that is absolutely true.  The difference is, which is real and which is not.  Are there parts of it that are true?  I would think and hope that most of it is, at least some of it is.  OK, just a small glimpse.  And this, this is the part that intrigues me the most. Is it live or is it Memorex?  (and for those who don't know this line, clip below, took me about 10 before I picked one, loved them all)