Yesterday we had our third 3 mile session out on the road with Dog and I was definitely feeling the fatigue from Tuesdays walk. The hills were a little harder to push up today for some reason, even the dog wanted to be carried most of the way.

When I get home from the walk I have the same feeling that I do when I've had a hard workout. I've always downplayed walking as a "noneffective exercise", which is silly of me, especially when you have three heart rate climbing, sweat inducing hills to walk up. You don't hit them until the way home, so you have no choice if you really want to get home and lay on the couch.

That bit about walking being noneffective if a huge obstacle for me, I get in the "all or nothing" mentality with exercise (er most things) and feel like I have to do this huge amount of cardio to be effective which of course only burns me out in a very short amount of time. I'm learning that exercise doesn't always have to be this huge chunk of time or cardio that makes me look like a contestant on the biggest loser.

I'm reminding myself that even though it's not in the gym, it still counts and three miles is definantly a good workout for me.

I made a mental list of the food I ate yesterday and here it is, if you're interested.

Breakfast/lunch: quorn chik'n patty on a bun with honey mustard. This was really random, I was hungry and wanted something quick.

Later on I had a Sobe lifewater (100 calories for the bottle)

After cleaning I found some of the pecan pralines left over from the wedding and ate a handful of those.

Dinner was oven fried fish (2 fillets) and a salad with shaved Parmesan, green and yellow peppers and ranch spritz.

After the walk I was feeling hungry so I made some oats: whole oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, walnuts and water. I made this too sweet by not measuring out the brown sugar, I will do that next time.

I'm putting a lunch together for work this morning and will take a picture of it when I get there. We plan to walk another three miles tonight.

I was hoping things would slow down a little when we got back from vacation, but that hasn't been the case. What do I mean?

This weekend we had two Father's day things to do. Neither involving my actual dad (hi dad!), going to the first Floyd County Jubilee, and acquiring a dog. We think he was abandoned by the dumpster and wondered over to the nearby church to find a new home. The same church we got married in. Being animal lovers we decided to keep him until he finds a good home.

He is really cute:

We don't know what kind of dog he is, part Maltese and...? We haven't named him, which kind of puts you in the category of dog owner so we just call him "dog" . Check out those paws! Huge for a dog that weights considerably less than our cats. Speaking of our cats, they are deeply scared and upset about his taking of residence in their home.

Things have felt chaotic around here. New dog, new job, and oh the pool that took too many hours to set up and too much money is leaking water. We're down to about a foot of water. New job? Well, not specifically new, but I've gone from working 7 hours a week to 32 doing marketing and graphic design. Two things that I really like doing and learning about so the experience is helpful and the company is nice too. I also get health insurance and Wednesday's off to work on my internet interests, so it's a pretty good situation for me right now.

Oh! 5k! At the town jubilee we spotted a booth handing out fliers for the upcoming run/walk in late August. We picked up two applications on Saturday and have started training for it. By training, I mean, walking 3 miles on our (very) hilly road once on Sunday and again last night. Right now it takes us (me) an hour and a half to walk it. I figure if the road was flat it would take less than an hour. We took Dog with us on our walk last night and he did really well, pooping outside for the first time and not acting like a freak when cars or giant dogs passed by. A pretty good walking buddy.

My goal is to be physically able to jog for at least one of the three miles without stopping. That is a big goal considering that I cannot jog for more than a minute without feeling like my butt fat is going to detach. At 273.5 lbs. (as of this morning) jogging is not easy. It makes me think things like "what if I needed to run away from something?" I couldn't do it.

That said, I've heard there is another 5k in chicago during the blogher weekend that I will be participating in. Two 5k's in one summer? madness.

I'm breaking my weight loss into smaller 10 lb. at a time goals. My start weight is 274 and my goal is 264. Today, I weigh 273.5 and aiming to get to my first goal by July 13th just to give me a place to reach towards. I like to write my next goal weight on a small note card and place it in a visual place as a reminder.

One thing that I've been looking forward to post wedding and travel is getting rid of the pressure to lose xyz pounds by xyz date. That isn't to say I want to rid myself of goals, but just this rush of feeling that I need to be thin overnight. It never works for me, and I dare say anyone else.

In my head, I have a vision of how the healthier me behaves, not looks. I read blogs like fitnessista, Kath eats real food, and threshold of greatness and know that their consistency and dedication to eating good foods and exercise is the reason why they are healthy, not to mention stunning women.

I know that if I spent any amount of time behaving like any of them, I wouldn't weigh 274 lbs. It isn't about a gimmick for them, a diet plan, failure, an infomercial exercise plan, they just do it because it makes them feel good. They energize me and get me excited about eating real food.

I want my health to be my new hobby, my dedication, what I get excited about. The pay back is more energy, self-confidence and hopefully a longer and healthier life. Not for my next event, but for my life.

Today I weigh 274. I do not feel good, healthy, attractive, or energetic at this weight. I'm not Debbie Downer on myself about it, I just want to be more realistic about how I feel and the actions that brought me here.

I know that to be consistent, I need a flexible plan of action. Starting right now. I'll be back...

We're back! I realized that I pretty much stopped blogging the week before the wedding (which was a bit crazy) the days of the wedding, the days after the wedding and the entire time I was in Europe. It was a nice long break of wedding and traveling and I'm ready to get back into the the swing of things. I've missed writing here, I've had a lot of ideas for future posts while I was away too.

So the wedding! I really could not have asked for a better day. I've known Josh for almost eight years and I'd be lying if I hadn't pictured this day at least a few times. It's strange to say, but I always knew somehow we would end up here and I'm really glad we did.

Everyone was right, the day flew by and I find myself wondering back through the memories of the day and feeling giddy all over again. When planning a wedding you never know what the atmosphere will be like and how it will all come together aesthetically, but it was even better than planned.

I wanted it to be pretty, whimsical, laid-back, memorable and a lot of fun. I could not have asked for better company to spend my day with, a lot of old friends and new ones (Krissie and Fat Bridesmaid!) traveled just for our wedding. Everything went together in a way that doesn't always happen at weddings with new groups of people mingling. I am very lucky.

Here are some photos I pulled off of facebook, I don't have official ones yet, but will post them as soon as they come in, in about three weeks. I loved our photographer, she is someone I met in college and always admired and knew I wanted to keep contact with her somehow in the future. It was nice to have someone I connect with to photograph our memories.

Here is my dress! I decided on these earrings two nights before the wedding. I debated necklaces and then decided that with the jacket and earrings, they were enough. I'm really pleased with that decision and truly felt beautiful on my wedding day. There is a lace slip the peaks through the bottom of the dress, not totally visible here, it was one of my favorite parts.

Here we are in the getaway car! Josh's mom set up "All you need is love" by the beatles for playing while we posed for pictures. It was a lot of fun.

Here are some photos of Europe, there are a tonnn of these.

We took about 582 photos between the two of us, so yeah I'll try to update those as I get them editted. We spent three days in London and another three in Dublin, with a couple of travel days in between. Europe has a lot of differences that we did not expect, money being one of them. On average it seemed like everything was double the expense for us because of the weak dollar. A buger a fries? about $32 for both of us. A pint of guiness? $9.  Fish and chips meal in a pub? $17 (for the cheapest we could find) whew!

Another difference? Free health care. I saw a lot of National Health Service buildings and felt jealous that we do not have the same here. So many people in Europe can work from home and freelance without the worry of health care. That is a luxury.

The culture and history was rich and all I wanted to do was stand around and absorb it all. The buildings and structures are architecturally beautiful and made to last over time. These buildings have been cared for and preserved, linking us to our past. This is something we don't really have over here. A building from the 1700 or 1800's is really old to us, but they go wayyy back in Europe. The buildings here just are not made beautifully and we don't seem to be asking today "will this hold up over time, will this structure link the future to the past?" everything is disposable here.

That really is what I loved the most about Europe the feeling of a real connection to the lives the existed before us. That there was another time and way of thinking. Buildings weren't just put up to cut costs, but to be beautiful and to last.

****

So we're both happy to be home now, there really is no place like home sometimes. Your own bed and cats to follow you around. I'm ready to get back on track with weight loss and work on my summer goals!

I've got blogher coming up in July, a trip I debated even going on. The expense of Europe was unexpected and I feel indulgent going on another trip so soon. I already bought my attendance ticket and knew that I would regret not going. This really is a convention that for me, validates in some way what I've been doing for over two years. It shows that I'm not the only one who is dedicated to blogging on some level and is a way to connect with other women who do the same. A good lot of them I really admire and look forward to meeting .

I pushed myself to buy my plane ticket last night which dropped about $200 dollars since I started pricing tickets in February. I need to push myself harder to monetarily validate the trip. I've been slacking a lot on work-stuff with the wedding planning and feel a need to get on top of work again.

****

Weight.

For my wedding day I weighed 268, which is a bit more than I had planned, hoping I would be around the 240's, but it was a loss that I feel good about. I didn't feel on my wedding day "I wish I was smaller" and after looking at the photos, I see a beautiful and happy woman. I don't regret anything.

However, I want to continue. Something about our trip overseas has made me evaluate my health and appearance in a way that I never have before. I want to be a responsible adult, someone who takes care of their health and happiness. Being this weight is difficult, and truly made me feel like an outsider among women who do take care of themselves. That is who I want to be, that is the person I want to be in my marriage and in my life.

Woah, getting married in eight days. Eight days until I marry my very favorite person in the whole world. Eight days until I do that in front of a lot of dear people and some we haven't seen in a very long time. The whole wedding thing is surreal to me, I'm marrying this person whom I met eight years ago and taking his last name. He was at one point a screen name. And now he is sleeping in the other room.

Me and Josh could go on and on about how weird things are. But, the truth is life in itself is really weird and that makes it cool too.

I didn't do my public weigh in althought I've lost some weight. I think it would be nice to do a final pre-wedding weigh-in to cap off what I've been doing. I'm fluctuating a lot these days, I've been down to 267 and up to 275 and everywhere in between. I'm fine with that. And know what it takes to continue seeing the number go down.

Being in the mid-260's for the wedding would feel like an accomplishment, and a weight I could fly with a little less fear. It also reminds me of where I can continue to go through the summer. I've already started thinking of my summer weight loss goals and where I'd like to be in September. I think when we get back from London/Ireland (yay!!) I will start working on new blogher goals.

Thinking about being in the 250's for blogher is sooo exciting to me!

I haven't been perfect in this last week, I did a little stress eating and haven't exercised nearly as much as I would like. Those two things go hand in hand though. As the day gets closer I am looking at my to-do list which is filled with all the small details that will make our wedding day personal. The big stuff wasn't a problem. Have a dress made, buy a suit, get hair appointment scheduled, book a dj, find a photographer, schedule a place for the ceremony and reception. done, done and done.

Now, I'm left with stuff like favor boxes, the program, finishing corsages and boutonnieres, buying drinks, filling favor boxes, arranging flowers, coming up with a wedding play list, working on the ceremony schedule, making sure everyone knows the schedule of the day. My goal is to have everything in line by Wednesday so that I can spend the last few days before the wedding calm as a cucumber, or something like that!

I had a bunch of bananas left over from the  Tour de Floyd this weekend and couldn't figure out a way to use them. Of course, I wanted to make banana bread, but lets not kid ourselves here. I'd eat the whole loaf.

Instead I pulled out the food processor added one scoop of chocolate whey protein, two bananas, 8 oz. skim milk and about 6 pecan halves (I like the crunchy bits) and let it whirl. So good! It makes two servings at about 300 calories each. I love it, this is my new breakfast.

I need to exercise. I need to stop talking about needing to exercise too. That would be good, right? My plan is to go to the gym today while I'm out and about. Bringing my gym clothes. I've got my shuffle ready. Going to the gym. If I keep saying it, it will happen. Going to the gym.

Who is working out today? me!

PS: We/I need health care reform. Like millions of Americans I need health insurance. And no, I'm not someone who sucks money out of the government for any reason at all, yet I cannot get approved for health care because of a heart condition I had when I was three and because of my weight. One I have control over, the other I don't.

Consider that in your lifetime you could get terminally ill and your current health care provider will likely find as many loop holes as possible to get out of fully covering you. Also consider the amount of money businesses shell out every year for each insured employee, the rates are staggering. The health care companies do not want public health care because it threatens to weaken their multi-trillion dollar business.

They will try to install fear and manipulate us into us to keep us from wanting this reform, why wouldn't they?

Sen. Ben Nelson was recently quoted in CQ "Nelson's problem, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game," Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a "deal breaker."

So at the end of the day, the private health care companies are more important and valuable than the life and health of citizens? Nice.

If you believe in health care reform, please go here. All you have to do is sign an online petition.

I had one of my last meetings with Paula, my friend and dress maker yesterday. I hadn't had the dress in her house for over a week and when I tried it back on for the new sash she said "you've lost weight!" and its true I didn't even consider that the reason why the waist line had dropped was because of losing weight. That was obvious. She pinned it in the back and viola dress fits again.

I was really excited to find out that making the dress smaller wouldn't be a problem (something I've stressed about and possibly developed a stomach ulcer over in the past couple of months) and we even have a meeting the wednesday before the wedding for a final fitting. That gives me two weeks to really kick it into gear before we meet again. I really love the dress! It isn't a long dress, so red shoes would actually not be hidden under any layers of fabric. Still going to wear them for the photo shoot though. It's tea length, with a bit of lace peaking from under the outside layer. A gathered waist with a thick satin waist band that ties in the back. And a jacket.

I haven't exercised any this week for no absolute reason, but will get on that today.

What else? Oh yeah! I got a lot of fruit yesterday at the local store: strawberries, pears, grapes and kiwi. Plus some vegetables too.  I tried a raw asparagus yesterday, a vegetables I ruled out long ago after trying it in the school cafeteria. It tasted like urine. Not that I'm tasting urine, but the smell of urine. Raw, it was good and could imagine that steamed with olive oil or butter and salt and pepper would make this mystery vegetable very good. Weird. What else am I not experiencing?

I was talking to Josh yesterday about my love for food and comparing it to his love for music. He loves music, he hears music and is passionate about the process of making music. He gets very intense about the decline of popular music and very intense about the general populations seemingly lack of interest in good/interesting music. Get him started on American Idol, I dare you.

That is me with food. I get intense about the lack of food appreciation in the world. It makes me cringe that I used to consider Applebee's a good meal, or McDonald's an acceptable treat. When it comes down to it, there is nothing good about most of the food out there that we eat. It is made far away, in factories, filled with chemicals and calories we were never meant to eat. Yet, advertising tells us it's quick and easy and pretty so we succumb and go on about our lives never knowing where anything we eat comes from and the process it went through to get in our mouths.

Since really taking the time to learn how to cook, a process of trial and error since I was pretty young. { I once tried to make brownies in the microwave (a la' my moms 1980's microwave recipe card set), which would have been okay had I not used a plastic container to cook them in. I should say a container tha is not microwave safe. } I've really come to appreciate the process of food. Making it, flavoring it, enjoying it. Not just something reheated, unwrapped and packaged.

When I do inventory of the food I eat and have eaten in my life. It is safe to say that over 90% of what I've consumed has been processed, packaged or made very far away. I wish I were exaggerating. I find myself wanting to reverse this as I get older. When I ate that asparagus yesterday picked right from Paula's yard I realized that this was one food item in the long chain of my consumption that I actually knew where it came from and process of it's conception. I knew she wasn't out there every morning spraying chemicals on her vegetables or in her secret lab finding ways to inject fish dna to make her asparagus the biggest and prettiest ones in the super market.

When did we get to this point? When did it become okay to eat poison? Why do we stop caring about food and the true beauty of it? When did we lower our standards for the quality of food we eat so severely that it is killing us and making us dependent on our failing health care system? There must be a tie in all of this and our expanding waistlines, right?

Sigh. See? I told you I get intense about this. And not in a finger pointing "whats wrong with you all?!" sort of way because I'm in this too and I want out, but getting out doesn't happen overnight.

Oh! I'm famous! Not really. I volunteered this past weekend at the Tour de Floyd see if you can find me (and my soon to be sister in law) in the photos section. Like the NYC marathon that I watched right from the front of my apartment building in Brooklyn, I longed to be apart of this group. I wanted to work towards something and then be in it with all of these people. They make it look fun, yet hard. Is it true that you never forget to ride a bike? Geez, I haven't been on one in a very very long time. Do they make bikes that would support my weight? hmmm

I got up early this morning to tend to some girl business. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm a total slacker when it comes to a bazillion things. I let my legs go unshaven yet like to wear skirts, let my dry feet go unslothed for weeks, yet like to wear sandals. Let my toenails go ungroomed and overall just get by daily when it comes to beauty rituals. I'm on a need-to-do basis with myself and really would like that to change. At some point in my life.

Beauty wise the only things I stay on top of are my eyebrows, hair (generally speaking) and makeup.

There is a lesson in becoming more adult-like that involves doing things that you don't really want to do in the moment, but you feel good about and are good for you, rather than doing things that feel good in that moment and make you feel bad later. IE: overeating, not exercising and in general not taking care of yourself.

Any who, I'm not saying I need to be on top of my woman-hood in superficial ways to consider myself "taken care of", but I feel better and do better. To each her own, you know?

I figure on the road to the wedding date I would work on other outer layer feel good stuff to make me feel really good physically and mentally the day off and there after. This includes and is not limited to, getting a good fake tan going by then. Not a super dark, I spend all my time in a tanning bed tan, but a healthy glow. I don't do tanning beds, at least not since high school. And have been perfecting the art of lotion tans for years. I've got it to a fine science: Shave, exfoliate, moisturize dry areas, apply tanner, let dry, put on dark clothes before bed, wake up tan. Repeat.

I love Clarins for this, but neutrogena works nicely too. I'd like to say that I'm okay with rocking my paleness, but unlike Scarlet Johansson I do not pull it off well. I have varicose veins (yep, at 26), cellulite, and stretch marks. All of these things seem to somewhat dissipate with a little extra layer of darker skin.

More fruits and vegetables are in this look-better plan too. I keep reading how good skin looks with an intense regimen of regular fruits and veggies, but still only get around to a serving or two each a day. Right now we have some very brown bananas and few red apples around, but it needs to get more intense than that. I have a dress date today and plan to stop off at the local store and stock up and then eat and eat and eat. Nobody ever got fat from fruits and vegetables, right?

The next part of this plan is daily exfoliation and moisturizing. I hate putting on lotion even though my skin always looks better for it. The reason? I wear contacts and put on makeup after I shower, neither of those things go well with lotion-hands. The solution? Put contacts in -before- the shower. Wash hands before applying makeup. That was easy.

More exercise. Obviously. I need a schedule, as I've been too willy nilly about this. This is really truly the biggest key to looking and feeling better. No amount of makeup or self tanner can compare to the glow from exercise. Not to mention the extra lumps that disappear from exercise.

First things first, weigh-in!

Hoorah! Low 270's! I know you like my knitted socks...in May. It's actually really chili and rainy lately, which I'm really over. Rain, rain,  and more rain. I look at the forecast, guess what? rain. oh well.

So, I'm down this week and super happy to see 271.5 today. It goes back in forth between this number and 272.5 and I like both. Just happened to snap this shot when I grabbed my camera and dropped the lens cap, note at the top of the photo.

I have to say that losing weight this week is attributed to balancing out my meals and making mental notes of what I'm eating. I've exercised too this past week, but not as much as I would have liked. This week will be different though. I had a few treats here and there, but overall sticking to eating less.

Last night, while Josh was out grocery shopping I had a chance to try on my dress and really see how it looks. Every time that I've tried it on it has been as someone else's house with their mirrors. I put it over my head, tied the sash and put my red peep toe high heels on and really felt pretty. And now tempted to wear red heels with my dress haha. I have three weeks to get in better shape which is my goal. Not just to look good, but to feel good.

When I exercise I feel good and more confident. I have more energy and drive. I don't want to be sluggish on my wedding day or think "man, I wish I would have exercised more". I have that chance now to feel differently in three weeks as I walk down the aisle. Differently as I bucket the airplane seat belt. Those decisions are totally up to me.

Things are moving right along on the challenge express. That's corny, I'm sorry. Thanks for the shoe compliments! They arrived yesterday and instead of being Beige, which is what  I ordered they were black and grey. Cute, but probably wouldn't go with my dress. Luckily, they were two big and would have returned them anyway.

I can't believe the wedding is in three weeks and so many people have RSVP'd! A lot of people we haven't seen in years or even met at all. One of them to my (happy) surprise is from a lady who I had my first internship with the summer after my freshman year of college. She is a self-employed graphic designer who lives a very interesting life. She hired me without any experience and gave me a lot of room to learn which I will always be grateful for. I'll never forget when she told me "I can't pay you much, just $7 an hour" and I almost fell off my chair. For me, at the time, that was big money. I sent her a resume when she wasn't hiring and she hired someone without experience, that doesn't happen often in this world. After that summer I knew I wanted to be self-employed and have been working towards that goal ever since. So, yes I'm excited to see her!

In other unrelated to weight loss news, I've been getting a lot of really weird emails. Weirder than usual, I should say. Asking if I'm a real person. I am aware that the internet world is becoming privy to the money making abilities of a weight loss blog and a lot of these weight loss bloggers are fictional. And a lot of those blogs tend to plug in pictures of people pretending to be real. I don't know if it is the graphics, the ads or both, but I am real. At least I hope I am, otherwise that could be scary. Yes, I am really a fat person blogging and have been for two years.

I also don't approve comments from anyone who links to a promotional website or  "fake" blog. I can spot one pretty quickly, but I get emails from folks saying "I left a comment linking to my website that links back to you, why did you delete it?" because you aren't a blogger. I get about 10 spam comments an entry. Sometimes a few get through, but otherwise I delete them. Not that I'm against making money online (am not, at all, and would like to make some myself) I just don't let other people make money off of links from my blog.

And now onto weight loss. My eating has been back on track this week and have been recording everything I eat and emailing it to one of my good friends who is also trying to lose weight. I've been monitoring my calories and staying below 1,500 a day. Wednesday morning I did tae bo boot camp level 2 and yesterday I didn't do much but mope around about our missing cat, who we found 24 hours later in the garage across the yard. He was cut on the face and shaken up, but so glad to be home. My sister lost her cat this week to a stomach tumor and she has been heartbroken about it. I kept thinking I would never see Simon again and knew how she must feel having her cat gone.

I have weigh-in this weekend! Which I'm hoping will be a good one and continuing to stay on track to get there. I had a pretty funny moment yesterday while feeling sorry for myself. I really wanted to make something sweet and even wrote down a recipe on a note card of something small to make. I flipped over the note card and there was a picture of myself in a pretend wedding dress, a thinner version that I made in photoshop as a visual reminder of where I want to be. I laughed out loud at the situation and ate an apple. Sometimes all we need is a reminder of our goals and where we want to be to get us back on track.