May 16 2013

Thursday Thoughts: Inspiration

Posted on 16 May, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Earlier today, my friend Dee and I were chatting back and forth via email. She sent me a link to a list of The 100 Most Inspirational Weight Loss Bloggers of 2013 as compiled by someone over at Diet-to-Go. She mentioned that I was probably already aware of a lot of the sites, but many were new to her. I was definitely familiar with a lot of them as I’ve met many of the featured bloggers n the past at FitBloggin’ and various meet-ups.

The next comment she made completely threw me for a loop. She wanted to know why *I* wasn’t on the list. I emailed her back to thank her for the vote of confidence but quipped that there was that pesky little detail about the whole “weight loss” thing in the title and I’ve not been too successful in that department of late. Well, I can assure you, those were not the words I should have said. Dee responded with comments so touching that I actually teared up sitting in my office. Thank goodness the door was closed! Here’s what she said:

That doesn’t mean you are not inspirational, Mel!!

You inspired me to crawl out of my shell and stalk you, sitting behind you until I had the courage to speak up and interrupt your conversations with the other girls. Up till then, I had lived here for 2 years and still had no friends outside of work! I never did anything outside of my house, other than running errands, and I wasn’t happy about that. After making friends with you, Penny, Kerry, Rebecca and Tonja I was inspired to “play” WW with you all and stay in the game so I could keep contributing to your conversations. I wanted to be one of the “cool girls.” Your support and encouragement, not to mention your vast knowledge about the right food choices and tips about eTools are the reason I kept going and playing this game. Don’t forget – I hunted you down at the grocery store, for crying out loud! How much more stalk-y can you get? LOL! I wanted to know what you know.

You inspire me DAILY MEL (ha-ha – get it??) And don’t you forget it!

The really amazing part of all this is that while I’ve been going up and down playing with the same 10 pounds for the past 18 months, Dee joined our little Sunday Weight Watchers groups just a little over a year ago. Since then, she’s lost nearly 70 pounds and reached Lifetime status a couple of weeks ago. Here was this weight loss rock star telling ME that I inspire HER! I was completely blown away by that and replied to let her know. She then hit me up with yet another amazing comment:

Sometimes we may not know the impact we have, until someone points it out. You need a good pointing-out.

I really feel like the universe was sending me a strong message this morning. No sooner had I finished the email conversation with Dee than I saw this amazing image posted on Instagram by Shannon. Oh, and be sure to check out her site. She’s lost over 185 pounds on Weight Watchers!

Clearly, today has been all about reminding me that inspiring others doesn’t necessarily always come from just losing a lot of weight on the scale. In the past when I’d lost the 138 pounds about eight years ago, I felt like an inspiration because I was a weight loss successfull story. As I slowly began regaining the weight over the years, I no longer felt that way. If anything, I felt like the complete antithesis of inspirational — I felt like an utter failure. Dee’s words and Shannon’s image reminded me that I am NOT a failure even though I’m nowhere close to being a healthy weight … yet! This whole thing just made me realize how easy it is for us to get bogged down in whether or not the number on the scale is moving downward that we forget how sometimes just being tenacious and never giving up can also be incredibly inspirational to others.

What, or who, inspires you? Please leave a comment and let me know. If it’s a person and they blog or have a website, please leave the link to their site so I can check it out!

Until next time …

May 15 2013

Wordless Wednesday: My New Baby

Posted on 15 May, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Until next time …

May 14 2013

Quest Nutrition Review

Posted on 14 May, 2013 by TheDailyMel

As a FitFluential Ambassador, I was recently given the opportunity to try some of the products available from Quest Nutrition. I had never tried this brand before and the nice folks over a Quest sent me quite a nice complimentary selection to sample for this review!

There was a sampler box of 12 flavors of their protein bars. They also sent extra bars in the chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate brownie flavors which seem to be a favorites of most people. They also included some of their new Quest Cravings high protein peanut butter cups. I have to admit, I was pretty stoked to try those, but more about that later.

If you aren’t familiar with Quest products, they contain no sugar, gluten, soy protein, or junk ingredients and are available at most GNC stores. They can also be purchased from the Quest online store and on Amazon.

I have to say, one of the things that really impressed me was the wide variety of flavors they carry. In addition to the aforementioned chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate brownie flavors, they also have banana nut muffin, chocolate peanut butter, cinnamon roll, coconut cashew, strawberry cheesecake, lemon cream pie, vanilla almond crunch, peanut butter supreme, apple pie, mixed berry bliss, and peanut nut butter & jelly. I decided to give the chocolate chip cookie dough a try first.

These bars are definitely a different texture than a lot of the other bars I’ve tried in the past. They’re soft & chewy rather than crispy & crunchy. A couple of my friends said they didn’t care for them for that reason, but that’s one of the reasons I actually DO like them. If you want a real treat, pop the bar in the microwave for about 15-20 seconds and then it’s warm, soft, and chewy. Yum! You can even put the in the oven and bake them into a sort of cookie. For those of you like me who are on Weight Watchers, these bars come in at around 5 PointsPlus value each. For those following other programs, they range from 160 to 210 calories per bar and have 2-6g of net carbs, depending upon the flavor.

Next up, I decided to give the new Quest Cravings high protein peanut butter cups a try. I was amazed when I saw on the label that these had only 1g of sugar and 20g of protein for TWO cups! I don’t know if it’s due to the lack of sugar or the high amount of protein, but these cups are definitely a bit more dry than a traditional peanut butter cup. It didn’t necessarily bother me, but I thought I would point it out. I had these as a post workout snack, so I was chugging quite a bit of water at the time, so that helped. Of course, I’m sure it would’ve been even better with a nice cold glass of milk. Despite that one small thing, I thought these had a really nice flavor as well, but I still think the bars are my favorite. Nutritionally speaking, the peanut butter cups come in at 7 PointsPlus for two cups on Weight Watchers. For those on other programs, they’re 240 calories and 4 net carbs for two cups.

If you want to learn more about Quest, you can visit their website, find them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and check them out on Instagram. I highly recommend the Instagram option right now because they’re running a contest for reaching over 20,000 followers there. The contest ends tomorrow (Wednesday, May 15) at 6 p.m. PDT. However you choose to follow them, just let them know that @TheDailyMel sent you their way.

Until next time …

Disclaimer: Quest Nutrition provided me with samples of their product line for the purposes of this review. I received no additional compensation. As always, all opinions are entirely my own.

May 12 2013

Starting Over … Again

Posted on 12 May, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Starting Over

They say confession is good for the soul, right? Well, I confess that I’ve been horribly off track with my eating over the past month. It started with the emotions of dealing with my family and I just never got back on track after that. I won’t go into the full list of food porn, but let’s just summarize by saying there’s been lots of fast food, pizza, ice cream, sweet tea, etc. As a result, in the past month I’ve regained every bit of the weight I’d lost thus far this year.

Even worse, this is a pattern I’ve fallen into time and time again to the point that I basically weigh exactly what I did when I walked into the doors of Weight Watchers this last time back in October 2011. I made a vow to myself at that point that I would stick with it — good, bad, or ugly. This is my LAST time of joining Weight Watchers. There have definitely been more than a few times, especially lately, that I’ve considered quitting. Fortunately, I have an amazing group of friends at my regular Sunday morning meeting that keep me going back even when I’m struggling.

It starts with my amazing leader, Jacki, and our two receptionists, Summer and Nicole. In addition to the staff, I’ve developed such amazing friendships with my “crew” of other members like Dee, Kerry, Penny, Tonia, and Becky. We all sit together at over in our little “amen corner” and even email, text, keep in touch on Facebook, etc. throughout the week. They have truly become an anchor for me on this journey.

Even though I didn’t quit, I decided that I really needed a mental and physical reboot to get me back on track. I’ve reached a point in my life where I realized that if I don’t do this now, that I probably won’t ever do it. I’ll be turning 50 on my next birthday (February 2014). Other than the brief period in 2003-2004 when I lost a substantial amount of weight, I’ve been more than 100 pounds overweight since college, so that’s nearly 30 years at this point. It’s BEYOND time for me to do something about this once and for all.

Thankfully, Summer hooked me up in the weigh-in booth with a sparkling new fresh start. She reset my weight loss history so I’m starting over at Day 1 all over again. She gave me a new weight record so that I don’t have to even look back at the past and see all of the yo-yo losses and gains. She even gave me a cute little smiley face and Bravo sticker on my weight record booklet for encouragement. She’s the best!!

In an effort to really reset myself, I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a loooooong time, years even. I’ve decided to start sharing not just the results of my weigh in here on my blog, but to share my actual weight, too. I know this is likely going to open me up for rude comments by trolls. If that happens, I might revisit this at some point in the future. For now though, I just feel like I want to “come clean” and get honest with myself by putting it all out there regarding where I am at with my weight loss efforts. So, here it is …

Starting Weight

Back in 2004 when I lost 138 pounds and was under 200 pounds for the first time in years, I never dreamed in a million years that I would ever be this close to the 300 pound mark again. I never thought I would be one of the people who would regain that much of my weight back again, but here I am. There’s nothing I can do to change that fact or the past, but I can start moving forward again from here.

The good news? I’ve still managed to keep off 40 pounds from my all-time heaviest weight back in 2001. Even better? The weight I am now is just a number on the scale. It doesn’t define who I am as a person, my self-worth, beauty, etc. It’s just a number and it can go down as long as I follow my food plan, exercise several times per week, and limit empty calories from things like sugar, alcohol, processed snack foods, etc. How much and how quickly that happens is all up to me.

So, there you have it. I know I’ve not particularly been an inspiration to anyone in a long time when it comes to actual weight loss, but I hope that I am at least inspiring others out there to NEVER give up and to always keep trying. On that note, I’ll leave you with this thought that Jacki gave us a couple of weeks ago at our meeting:

If you don’t quit, you can’t fail.

Until next time …

Apr 20 2013

Sometimes Life is Hard

Posted on 20 April, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Warning: This post is kind of a rambling and personal brain dump. Feel free to skip it if you want. I promise I won’t be offended.

Life is Hard

Sometime, life is hard, especially when emotional baggage is involved. For me, this week has been hard … really hard. I feel almost guilty saying that, too. In light of what the victims in Boston are going through, it feels really petty to say my life has been hard this week, but you know what? It has been. My emotions have been beating up on me and I’m just spent. What I really want to do this weekend is just curl up into a ball, sleep, and ignore the world, but I can’t. I have things that have to be done, so in true Southern woman fashion, I’ll just suck it up, slap on a smile, and move ahead.

I don’t really have much of a relationship with my immediate family (long story), so we very rarely talk to each other and see each other even less. So, when an occasion arises where I do have to interact with them, it definitely makes an impact.

This week was one of those times. I found out from my dad via email on Wednesday morning that my mom had been recently diagnosed with scoliosis (which the doctor said she’s likely had for YEARS) and had undergone corrective surgery on Tuesday at a hospital just outside of Nashville (about 90 miles from where they live). Yes, I found out via email the day after she’d had surgery after never having been told she’d been diagnosed. Yeah, that’s just how my family rolls.

Being the dutiful daughter, I’ve called the hospital several times to check in on her condition. Thankfully, she’s doing well and is being released today to go home. I’ve actually spoken with my parents more this week than I probably have in the past five years combined.

Speaking with them as much as I have this week brought up a flood of memories of the reasons why our relationship fractured in the first place. It brought up memories from my childhood that 10+ years of therapy wasn’t been able to exorcise. It’s been rough. It’s been painful. It’s been exhausting.

I guess the thing I’ve actually hated most about this week is that it’s also been a horrible reminder of just how far I have to go to conquer emotional eating. After every conversation with my parents, I found myself within the hour eating crap food. A couple of times I hit the vending machine at work and got candy bars. Once, when it was closer to lunch time, I went to the cafeteria and instead of getting my usual salad, went to the grill and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. It’s as if all the lessons I’ve learned from Weight Watchers just flew right out the window. I was an emotional basketcase and, quite frankly, didn’t give a fuck in that moment of what I was shoving in my mouth. I just wanted something to fill that gaping black hole of memories that had been ripped open yet again.

I really wish I could say that after 40+ years of dealing with these childhood issues that I’d finally conquered them, but I know I haven’t. In fact, I don’t even know if I ever will. I just know that I really want to work on finding better ways to cope with these emotions when they come up rather than immediately turning to crap food.

I know it’s going to be ugly when I step on the scale tomorrow at my Weight Watchers meeting. Even though I know that, I’m still going to go and face the scale. Ignoring it won’t change what happened, so I might as well face the music and own up to it.

I don’t really know why I’m writing about all this. Perhaps I just needed to spew it all out here in order to get it out of my head so I can move forward. I know that just keeping it bottled up inside definitely doesn’t serve me well, so perhaps putting it out there here on my blog will. I know this has been totally random, so thanks for putting up with my spewing stream of consciousness this morning.

Until next time …

Apr 15 2013

My Thoughts on Boston

Posted on 15 April, 2013 by TheDailyMel

When I was younger, I used to be a runner. I loved the feel of the wind in my hair and the freedom running afforded me. I especially loved those times when I would get in that “zone” where I felt like I could just run forever. During those years, I had the pleasure of visiting Boston several times and running at various locations around the city. I especially loved running in the Back Bay area which is the area where the Boston Marathon finish line is located.

Now that I’m older, overweight, and had to have a knee surgery last year to repair a torn meniscus, I’m a walker. Even though I’m “just” a walker these days, I still enjoy watching marathons, triathlons, etc., and following the progress of my friends as they participate in them.

This morning I was following the progress of two friends during the race. I also had a third friend who was running Boston today, but didn’t know it until later in the day. Anyway, no sooner had I finished posting on my Facebook page to congratulate a friend on her finish than I heard the news of the explosions. Thankfully, the two other friends I had running the race both both OK as well.

The more and more news that came out, the more my heart began to ache. When the news came out that one of the fatalities was an 8-year old child, all I could do was weep and send out thoughts of condolence to the child’s family. I just can’t wrap my brain around why someone would target the finish line of a marathon for an act of terrorism. If you want to read a first-hand account of what it was like being at the explosion site, you can check out this amazing post written by Tori — Scariest Moment of my Life. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like to be there in the midst of that chaos not knowing if my loved one was OK, whether another bomb might go off, etc.

I’ve seen a lot of speculation by people on social media over whether this was an act of an individual, a domestic terrorist group, or an international terrorist group. Personally, it doesn’t really matter to me. I just hope the authorities catch the person(s) responsible and bring them to justice.

To all of the runners who participated at Boston today, you are in my thoughts. To those who were in the area of the explosion when it happened and saw the untold horrors, you are in my thoughts that you can find peace from the memories of what you witnessed. To the people of the city of Boston, you are in my thoughts. To the families of those killed, you have my deepest condolences and are in my thoughts. To those injured, I’m sending you speedy recovery wishes. To the person(s) responsible for this, I hope you rot in hell for perpetuating this cowardly act on innocent men, women, and children.

Until next time … prayers for Boston.