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 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 …

Mar 20 2013

Luck of the Irish!

Posted on 20 March, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Well, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day that happened earlier this week, I guess the old luck of the Irish adage has been holding true for me! I’ve actually won two pretty cool items in contests this week.

The first thing I won was a pretty cool set of Sol Republic Master Tracks headphones. I won them in a contest that Diane over at Fit to the Finish was hosting. They have a retail value of $199.99! Wow!! Here’s a pic of what they look like. As always, you can click on any of the photos to biggify them.

No sooner had I gotten over the excitement of finding out I won the headphones when I found out today that I won a cool prize from Weight Watchers, too! I’ve been taking part in their Live 360° challenge over the past six weeks. Up to this point, each week I “won” a discount for a couple of bucks or so off products like their snack bars, smoothie mixes, etc. Well, this week (which just happens to be the final week of the challenge), I won an actual prize! Check it out:

In case you can’t read the print, I won an Ultimate Weight Watchers 360° Kit. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would have LOVED to win one of the iPads or the trip to the spa in Sedona, AZ, but I can’t be too mad since I actually won a real prize. Here’s a list of all of the prizes they gave away during the course of the challenge:

• One Spa Trip for Two to Sedona, Arizona
• One Wardrobe Makeover
• 24 Apple® iPads® with Retina® display– 16GB
• 24 Apple® iPad® minis – 16GB
• 50 Weight Watchers ActiveLink® Activity Monitors each with a 6-month paid subscription
• 50 Weight Watchers PointsPlus® Fitness Series
• 50 Ultimate Weight Watchers 360° Kits
• 50 Weight Watchers Exercise Mats
• 50 Weight Watchers Easy Measure Serving Sets
• 30 Weight Watchers Electronic Food Scales
• 30 Weight Watchers Salad Solution To-Go and Salad Dressing Cruet kitchen tools
• Downloadable Weight Watchers Recipe Books
• Weight Watchers Exclusive Product Discount Coupons

So, given they were only giving away 50 of the kits, I feel pretty fortunate to have won one of them. They retail for $39.95 at the Weight Watchers centers, so it’s definitely nothing to sneeze at as a prize. Here’s a pic of all of the goodies that are included in the kit:

Given how sick I’ve been over the past few weeks, and given the fact that I’m Irish and it’s St. Patrick’s week, I’d like to think this is just the Universe’s way of making things up to me. So, dear Universe, if you’re feeling so inclined, feel free to let my Powerball ticket win tonight, too. We still can’t play Powerball here in California, but my dear friend Flo picked up a ticket with my numbers for us to play. If my numbers hit, we’ll be splitting the jackpot. Given the current jackpot is $260 million, I think I could still manage to survive on half of that. What about you, Flo?

Until next time …

Mar 17 2013

Inspiration When You Need It

Posted on 17 March, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Sometimes the Universe conspires to give you just the inspiration you need exactly when you need it. Today was one of those days.

I woke up this morning hoping to go to my weekly Weight Watchers meeting. Instead, I woke up to my horrible cough being back yet again with a vengeance. Rather than going to my meeting and disrupting things with my cough, I opted to skip it and stay home instead.

As I sat home feeling sorry for myself, I started thinking about just how few meetings I’ve been able to attend thus far in 2013. Given I’m paying $42.95 for my monthly pass, I’ve definitely be losing money. I found myself having thoughts of just giving up my monthly pass and quitting going to meetings. I know a lot of it was because I was feeling depressed over feeling sick again, but the feelings were there nonetheless.

Thankfully, I decided to do a little blog reading this afternoon. One of the first blogs I checked was my friend Dee who attends the same Sunday morning Weight Watchers meeting that I attend. Dee joined Weight Watchers about 10 months ago and we quickly because fast friends. I always look forward to seeing her at our meeting as well as chatting via email, text, and Facebook during the week. That’s Dee on the left in the photo above taken this morning with our wonderful leader Jacki on the right. They’re showing off their matching Weight Watchers swoosh tattoos they got last fall.

The inspiration Dee provided me today was from the fact that after 43 weeks and 61.6 pounds, she reached her goal weight this morning! It made me realize that even though I have a lot farther to go on my journey than Dee had on hers, I can still do this! I made a promise to myself when I joined Weight Watchers this time that I didn’t care how long it took that I was never going to quit or give up. I found myself wavering in that commitment this morning, but seeing Dee had reached her goal reminded me of my promise to myself.

So, I just wanted to first take a moment to congratulate Dee on reaching her goal, but more than that, I want to say thanks for being such a wonderful inspiration. I’m so thankful you made the move from the Monday night meeting to our Sunday morning meeting. I feel so blessed to know you and call you friend. Love you!!! xoxo

Until next time …

Mar 13 2013

Wednesday Weigh In {March 13}

Posted on 13 March, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Happy Wednesday, everyone! That means it’s time for another edition of the Wednesday Weigh In.

Once again it’s been far too long since my last blog post. Sadly, it’s due to the fact that I have been sick … again. This year has been so rough for me. It started with the flu in mid-January which resulted in missing a full week of work. I managed to get back to work for one week when I ended up sick again. That time it was due to an upper respiratory infection that came on the heels of getting over the flu. I missed another full week of work with that. I made it back to work for three weeks before the cough came back with a vengeance on March 3. After yet another couple of trips to the doctor, I found out it had developed into full blown bronchitis and I missed another full week of work. For those counting, that means I’ve already missed three full weeks of work in the past two months. Not exactly the way one wants to start a new year.

Needless to say, due to all of the sickness I’ve been battling, I haven’t made it to very many of my Weight Watchers meetings this year either. I’ve still been staying on track though and weighing in at home. I’m down about 5 pounds since my last “official” weigh in at Weight Watchers on March 3.

I have to say, I’ve been really surprised that I dropped weight this week. I’ve been on four different prescriptions, one of which was Prednisone. Generally speaking, I usually put on weight when I’m on medication, especially something like Prednisone since it’s a steroid. I nearly fell off the scale at home when I saw that I’d actually lost weight!

I’m still not completely over this crud. I’m still coughing quite a bit, but at least I’m done with the Prednisone. I’m still on the Levaquin (antibiotic) and Promethazine (codeine cough syrup) until Saturday night. I’m hoping that since I made it through the Prednisone without gaining weight that I can make it through the rest of the other meds without a gain, too.

Oh, and on one final side note, I just want to wish my Daddy a very happy 75th birthday today!

Until next time …

Mar 5 2013

Join Me in a DietBet!

Posted on 5 March, 2013 by TheDailyMel

Back in January, I took part in a new fun game that’s sweeping the interwebs called DietBet. The basic premise is that everyone who wants to participate puts a certain amount of money (decided by the game creator) into a pot. At the end of four (4) weeks, everyone who loses at least 4% of their starting body weight splits the pot.

Interested in learning more about DietBet? Here’s a video with more info:

Now, don’t worry, as the video points out, there are precautions in place to prevent cheating. Each participant will be required to submit a starting weight photo and a final weight photo which includes a secret word that DietBet will provide when it’s time to weigh in. The photos are completely confidential. By default, your actual weight is also kept private. If you choose to share it with other players in the game, you can do that in the privacy settings.

DietBet Scale Photoes

Some of the things I really love about DietBet is that it’s not based on any one particular food plan. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing Weight Watchers, calorie counting, paleo, low carb, or whatever, everyone can take part. I also really like that it’s based on a percentage of weight loss rather than a hard and fast weight loss number because it helps keep the playing field level.

As I mentioned, I took part in a DietBet game back in January. I ended up meeting my 4% goal and nearly doubled the money I put in the pot. Pretty cool, right?!

DietBet Money Jar

I’ve decided to take part in another DietBet game that starts next week. A group of us who are FitFluential Ambassadors will be participating and wanted to open it up for our readers to join in with us, too. So, who’s with me? It’s simple: just sign up, lose weight, and win money!

Until next time …

Disclaimer: FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.