He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

Hello Lovelies!

I'm loving my 25 hour work week. I went to the gym when I got done at 1 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and went for a walk on the beach Tuesday morning when I didn't start until 1. It was beautiful down at the beach and I just wanted to run home, put on my bathing suit, and head back down for a swim and to bronze!

Thursday I didn't have work until 1, either, but I used the morning to see the doctor and to finally set up a joint checking and savings account for MOTH Dude and I. It's our start at saving for our wedding and a house someday and so we have money to travel to California in May and have money to buy presents at Christmas. I feel so grown up and responsible having more than $50 in an account on purpose. My sister is the saver and I'm the spender, but I'm loving seeing the money sitting in the account and thinking about the bigger picture of what it will be used for.

The reasons for the doctor's visit were a) (sorry probably too much info) I've been getting really bad stomach cramps for forever now- You know the type where it feels like you really, really need to go?- but it's not because I have to go so I know they aren't normal and I'm sick of getting them so I wanted to ask the doctor about how they diagnose people for I.B.S. He told me it's basically a process of elimination so the first thing he did was test me for celiac disease since my grandpa had it. I hope it's not that because I don't want to give up baking or sourdough bread or tortillas! He said he'd call me within the week if my test came up positive so fingers crossed that that is not the problem. And b) I randomly read about this diet drug called Phentermine on the internet last week and decided I needed it. Fortunately, the doctor agreed and I'm now on the lowest dosage to see if that helps me. It's a low level amphetamine so it's supposed to make your appetite go away and give you lots of energy. Maybe it takes a while to kick in because I've taken 2 doses so far and I'm still hungry and I'm contemplating taking a nap right now. I go back in a month to see how much weight I've lost and the doctor can give me a higher dosage if I need it. I figure I won't be lazy and I will still try and eat less and eat healthy and stick with the gym 3 days a week and I'm excited to see if this medicine helps facilitate my weight loss. The only side effects I have found so far are I'm extremely thirsty all the time (but I guess that's ok because I'm now drinking even more water than I normally do) and last night I woke up a hot, sweaty mess. Like so hot and sweaty, that my underwear and part of my shirt were soaked! (Thanks for sharing that image, right??)

So please keep your fingers crossed for me and send your skinny thoughts my way! I'm really excited and motivated at this point and want to keep the momentum up. One thing that is helping with keeping me motivated (other than the fact the fact that I don't want to look like a total beach whale in our engagement party pictures) is that one of my friends, Adam (real name so you can cheer him on), is a contestant this season on The Biggest Loser! Everyday that I go to the gym, I don't really want to go, but I keep giving myself the pep talk that the time I spend on the bike or the elliptical machine is probably like half of Adam's warm up for the day so if he can do it, then so can I!

Well, that's about it from here for now. Hope you all are having a great weekend (and enjoying the great weather if you're here in NSW or back in CA!).

Fat Bottomed Girls You Make the Rockin World Go Round

Lil D has not been feeling so little lately so it's back on the Hydroxycut for me and this time I've got to take it consistently like I was when I was back in California. It's got a ton of caffeine in it and I forgot and drank a bunch of tea and some coffee yesterday and when I went to bed at 11:30 my mind was racing and I probably didn't fall asleep for nearly an hour. Through the day I don't feel like I've got that much more energy, but it must be there if it's keeping me up like that. Hopefully I get used to it, but from taking it last time I should expect that it'll probably leave me cracked out at night for awhile.

To coincide with restarting the diet, I came across so much diet related stuff just randomly yesterday. First off, last night was the season finale of The Biggest Loser here in Australia. The winner was a guy in his 60s and he lost 68 kilos...that's nearly 150 pounds (just .4 shy of it) and the show takes place over about 5 months. There is NO way in HELL that that can be healthy. The stress on his heart from being fat and then getting super skinny has got to be pretty bad-worse than being super heavy to begin with? I dunno. I've read that these contestants don't get any counseling before or after the show to deal with the issues that made them fat in the first place and after 5 intensive months of training they are thrown out in the world and expected to maintain on their own. I've heard a lot of people end up gaining a bunch of weight back after a while. Back to this Biggest Loser, that kind of up and down yo-yoing with your weight, if he puts it back on, will for sure do some kind of damage to him. I think food is an addiction. I know I'm addicted to it. The high you get from running or a cigaretter or whatever, I get from eating something I'm really craving. Just like any other addict people addicted to food have got to fight the cravings in order to get over the addiction. And like someone addicted to anything else, most people will relapse at some time or another and have to choose to fight the good fight all over again.

Yesterday I also came across a website called "Hungry Girl." I think I had heard it mentioned somewhere before but I checked out the site and she's got some books she is selling and there are also nearly 300 recipes on there. It's cool because it's all about swapping out foods..."eat this, not that" She takes also this really yummy stuff, for example a Starbucks Chocolate Chip Frappucino, and shows you how to make it at home with way less fat and calories and without sacrificing much of the flavor. She's got recipes for egg nog, pie, mexican food, scones, shakes, egg rolls, and chicken fingers. If only we had Fiber One cereal and CoolWhip here, I'd be in heaven! Haha! She claims to have lost 20 pounds using these swaps so maybe it works? I don't think you could exclusively eat the foods on there and expect to lose a bunch of weight but maybe on the occasions where you were craving a frappucino you could now make it at home and a)save yourself some money and b)save yourself a lot of calories and fat.

Lastly, I've been following Shanna Moakler on Twitter. Mainly cause she brings the dramz and the lolz by fighting with Travis on it sometimes. Yesterday she posted that her new Bikinibook challenge was about to begin on Facebook so I went on to check it out. Basically you join a team and your team works all week to follow the rules Shanna has posted, for everything you do everyday you give yourself 1 point and if you do more of the suggested thing you give yourself an extra .5 points, so if you eat another serving of fruits or veggies you get an extra point, 2 extra serves you get 1 point, etc and then at the end of the week you give your team leader your total points for the week and send it off to Shanna and the trainer and I think the team with the most points at the end of each week wins something. If you're interested there are probably still spots on teams left as the challenge only started today. If not and you just want to follow along and maybe reward yourself for every 50 or whatever points you get, here are the rules:

* drink at least 4 bottles of water a day = 1 point
* having a food journal ( you eat it, you write it down) = 1 point
* taking a daily vitamin = 1 point
* staying TRUE to YOUR diet plan ( zone, atkins, 6 meals, whatever it will be etc) = 1 point
* doing 1 daily personal goal ( this can be taking the stairs instead of the elevator etc ) = 1 point
* 2 servings of fruits and or veggies = 1 point
* not having any JUNK food = 1 point
* at least 30 min of exercise = 1 point! for every 15min you do over the 30 min you will get half a point .5 ( so if you do and 1 hour of exercise you would have 2 points!

Doesn't sound super hardcore does it? When taking Hydroxycut you've got to drink 10 glasses of water a day anyway so I've got the first one covered. I found the last time I really lost weight a food journal helped a lot, I was embarassed if I ate something bad and had to write it down-not that anyone else saw it, it just shamed myself in to thinking "Did I really need that?". I should start taking a daily anyway. I don't get hungry very often on this pill so sticking to my diet each day, if I just think about it one day at a time, should be alright. I'm not big on the fruits or veggies but all that fiber is good for losing weight so I guess I'd better up my intake. Even on hydroxycut I allow myself one sweet a day, I just go nuts otherwise. I figure it's better to indulge the craving a little bit then deny myself and then I go nuts and eat a full cake or something. I need to get back in to exercising so I guess what better time than now. Plus I noticed it really helped when I was on the Hydroxycut before and like I said earlier, maybe it would help with me sleeping at night?

That's all from me for now. School starts today and tomorrow around here so I will be calling around to see if anyone needs teachers' aides or after school care workers. Work went well on Friday and I will be trying it solo this Thursday as the Runner's Mom is giving herself a day off. It should be fun to do it on my own. I wish they could have me on more days as I really don't mind the work and it would pay for my rent and bills and groceries and more. Oh well, baby steps. For now I am just really grateful to have some money coming in at all :) Fingers crossed for me that some other type of work comes up for me here soon!

Update: I think I'll put up my food journal at the end of this week, maybe just posted in the comments of this blog. I'll be even more shamed in to eating well if I know other people can see it all on here! :)