Back to Reality

When I speak of reality, I mean a food plan that you can live with long-term!  We will be receiving our new meal plans tomorrow but we were able to discuss some of the fabulous parts that are being added and were not a part of the last Biggest Loser.  We have been given permission to have one cheat meal per week.  That cheat meal could be one of two things: alcohol (3 glasses of wine, vodka water or light beer) OR eat anything we want for one meal!  Seeing as I rarely drink, have hardly ever drank beer (and recently seemed to have a mild allergic reaction to it), and it is not recommended to drink on my medication, I don't think my doctors would be happy with me drinking. 

So, I went straight out and had my favourite perogie pizza with sour cream for dinner and then chased it with a glass of milk!  YUM!  Hello gluten, hello dairy, nice to see you again.  I only hope they do not bring unwanted visitors with them (meaning they better not make me sick tonight)!  It was super yummy and such a great cheat that I feel like I really got cheating out of my system. 

Also being added to our plan is one dessert per week as long as it's one of Kathy's recipes and I'm completely fine with that because her brownies are delicious (I still have some frozen that have been waiting to be eaten).  I also found out that her "Mancakes" or "Protein pancakes" are on the plan and can be eaten every day AND with more maple syrup than before...how can this possibly be legal?!  If only everyone knew these tricks and recipes, there would be a lot less people overweight and a lot more happy, skinny people.  I will be cooking up massive amounts this weekend to freeze and devour every day until I either turn into a pancake or Kathy tells me to stop, whichever comes first!

Now, onto the difficult part of my night.  Kathy Smart is our incredible nutritionist whom I cannot say enough nice things about.  She is a sweetheart, brilliant nutritionist full of fabulous knowledge, and creates the most amazing recipes.  On top of all of that, she is also a trainer.  She does not train others often but has trained several of our other trainers at one time or another.  For the very first time, she was our fitness trainer tonight. 

Oh-my-gosh!  I feel like I took a trip to hell and they turned up the heat so I could sweat buckets while the devil sat and laughed!  Kathy is unstoppable, literally (we were practically begging her to make it end).  When you think you are done, nope.  It if seemed tough, like you need a rest, that means you are just begining.  One of our trainers said she is the only trainer who ever brought him close to throwing up (and HE has brought all of US to that point)!  Someone else said they watched her train another group once and when she thought they were doing an intense workout, she discovered it was actually their cool-down!  How can someone with a heart of gold be so evil in a workout??  At least she does it with a smile and her positive attitude is infectious which helped it to be a positive experience, no matter how difficult it was (but shhhh, don't tell Kathy I said that)!!

I believe I can hear my bed calling me as I write this.  I might fall into it like a ton of bricks (or at least 259.8lbs of bricks!) but that just means I won't have to move for a few hours.  I know I will be sore tomorrow, but what I'm dreading is the "2nd day after" (which is always the worst) because I have dance class to make it through in one piece on Saturday.  Wish me luck!

Goodnight and God bless!

Giving Thanks

It's a funny thing when you become a blogger.  You begin with a purpose whether it be speaking your mind, updating those around with your current thoughts and activities, or maybe even just your opinions on a range of subjects.  In my case it was to keep those I loved infomed, bring awareness to people about my dibilitating disease, and to put my progress into writing in order to hold myself accountable.  Sometimes, however, magic happens and it turns into more than that.  It is still all of that but so much more.  My blog entries have now had over 2500 views combined (and no, they are not all from me)!  Regulrly I run into friends, coworkers, aquaintances and family members who stop me and tell me to keep up the blog because they are reading it and folloing my journey.  Every single time someone tells me that, I am inspired.  But mostly, I feel blessed.

This weekend, here in Canada, was Thanksgiving.  I spent a wonderful day on Saturday eating fabulous food with family.  When I say I spent it with family, I mean I spent it with 50 of my closst family members each of whom I love dearly and would be lost without!  There were some who could not make it, and their absence was noticed (yes, even in a crowd that big we notice whem someone is missing).  I cannot help but feel so incredibly blessed for the amazing people in my life whom I have the privilege to call my family.  There are many that live far away that I rarely get to see and I think of each of them often.  Even those ones do not hesitate to reach out to me from afar to let me know they are supporting me and this journey that I am on.  Because of this wonderful thing we call the internet, we are all able to remain connected even with oceans between us.  I just want to take this moment to tell every one of you how much I love you and how thankful I am that you are a part of my life.

This weekend was a test for those of us trying to watch what we eat (as it has been my whole life, but usually I don't care if I fail that test)!  Luckily and unfortunately my famly has several people who have sentivities to gluten, dairy, nuts, soy and are either vegan or vegetarian.  Becase of this, I had so many options to choose from this year at our massive meal (I'm quite sure we could feed an army with the amount of food we always have) that would fit into my new way of life.  I think about half (or more) of my meal remained gluten free and vegan.  However, with the rest I allowed myself to enjoy a few items that love.  I did not overindulge like I usually would have, but I did eat more than what I have been the past few months which left me feeling very full.  I felt a bit ill at first but it settled much quicker than years and holidays past.  I was very grateful for that because that just makes it more comfortable for sleeping (be honest, sleeping is what we all do after eating turkey)!

Now, I'm not sure if eating those few extra items I shouldn't have are the culprits, but I have been feeling very "off" for a few days now.  I cannot seam to get myself back on track.  I am not overindulging but rather undereating now.  I have been overly tired to the point of exhaustion.  I am sleeping close to 12 hours per night, getting up for a few hours and then needing a nap for an hour or more.  It does not seem to matter how much I sleep.  I am used to feeling like this during one of my many RA flares, but my joints don't feel like they are flaring right now.  I also have no energy to even warm up the food I have frozen so I'd just rather not eat and go back to bed.  It's a very strange way to feel specially since every time I eat something I just end up feeling very nauseous afterwards and it lasts for hours.  I have been dealing with a lot of stress lately and today I had my MRI.  Hopefully between the MRI results and trying to get rid some of the stress, things will sort themselves out and I'll be back to myself in no time.  Well, enough about that...

Tonight officially marks the two-week point of Biggest Loser Ottawa 3.  That means it was another weigh-in tonight.  Being that it was Thanksgiving weekend and we were all given approval for a 1-hour cheat meal, I don't think many of us were expecting fantastic numbers tonight.  But let's be honest, I'm NEVER expecting good numbers!  Luckily I had a workout yesterday with Pedro and our regular class tonight with Kristy.  That helped to burn off some of that meal before stepping on the scale.   I am down to 259.8 lbs which means that even with Thanksgiving, I lost 4.4 lbs this week giving me a total of 9.8 lbs in only 2 weeks (3.64%)!  For those who want to know what this means in total from where I began in June, I have now lost a grand total of 46.8 lbs (15.26%)!!!

With that good news delivered, I bid you goodnight and God bless!