I found my blog today.  I have not even thought about writing in it until today.  

Today is a new day.

Yesterday, my Doc told me that I needed to lose 100 pounds.  My excess weight is affecting my lungs and causing me to wheeze and have trouble sleeping.  He said that losing weight would, plain and simple, reverse this.

So I'm going to blog the whole thing.
  

Hello world of the living..I'm back and ready to go.

I don't want to try and analyze anything to death, ad nauseum, but I keep finding myself back to the starting block where I feel like I'm revving up after having lost my way somehow.  Is that my lifestyle that I've lived all these years...feast or famine?  Is it doing things that I can't maintain, and that are bound to fail?  Whatever has brought me here, starting over, here I am.  OK.

I wrote down this evening.some notes and some honest answers.  I'm a big girl now.

Why EXACTLY am I overweight? 
#1.  Because I eat more than my body needs...I do this, I know I do.  I eat because the food is there and think about it all the time.  This has been my lifelong pattern except for a few times I was able to eat intuitively.
#2.  Because I get very little exercise.  I know this, and know that I feel better and lose weight better and move better when I go to the pool.  Yes, my legs and body hurt when I do, but then they hurt/ache when I don't.  Hmm.. no rocket science required to figure that out.

OK, those are the definite "whys." 

Is my obesity medicine-related?  Not sure
Is my obesity thyroid-related?  Not sure
Is my obesity illness-related?  No

Can I fix #1 and #2 above?  Yes
WILL I fix #1 and #2 above?  IDK on a long-term basis
WHAT will happen if I don't fix or modify #1 and #2 above?  A. Worse knees  B. Worse breathing  C. Worse health  D. Worse pain all over   E.  Less life here on earth.

Do I find pleasure in food?  Yes.   It's fun, it's exciting, it's calming, it's pretty, it's satisfying, it's homey, it's snuggly.  Where are my other pleasures, and has food usurped them in my life?

My other pleasures:

~communing with God
~Color!!  And more color!!
~Animals
~Nature and plants
~Creating and inventing
~Deals and Bargains and Hunting the same

So, it stands to reason that I need to increase the regularity and general presence of the pleasures in my life.  The deals and bargains, my dogs, and communing with God now and then are the only pleasures I have at the moment...the others are non-existent.  I want to start out in the manner, and let the dependence on food as most of my pleasure diminish.

Wi.l.l I do what I just wrote, or will I stay in the Ready, Set phase of this endeavor?  I don't know...it could go either way.  I could go home and get involved in something else and then never go back to this blog for another year and a half.  Very possible.  I hope and pray that what brought me here tonight continues to push me into the future with this.  I will try my best.

What a year and a half, what a year and a half......

Take several very hard things to deal with and shove them down my throat, and that's what it's been like since I last posted.   OK, enough said.

This is my last post that refers to the past 1.5 years.  Behind me....on to the future.

Rollin' down the track...ain't never gonna look back.

Today was a most remarkable one.  We finished getting all of the carpet out of the living room, leaving behind a not-too-shabby-looking wood floor.  It's a wonderful feeling!!

Then, went to the pool this a.m.  Haven't been in months and months.  I had to really push myself.  Of course, I always find it easier when I pray daily for God's help in making all these changes and then all of a sudden (well, not a miracle or anything!) one day I CAN do what I've not been able to push myself to do for days and months.  :)

At the pool, I connected up with a woman I used to work with who is going to the very classes in the pool that I've been shy about going to -- so I'm going starting this Tuesday!!  I also met a woman who has lost over 100 pounds by swimming in the pool daily.  It's seems the pool was "stocked" with inspirational people today!  Even the lifeguards were carrying on and having a great time with everyone.  I worked for about an hour and did lots of different exercises to stretch and also some cardio.  I even took my friend's challenge to pull myself up out of the pool onto the side -- like a dolphin does at a show -- and I did it!  Not too shabby for being very out of shape!  I thoroughly enjoyed myself today. 

What joys will tomorrow bring!!??

The carpet is leaving the building....

Tuesday is the day set to take the living room carpet up!  I'm very excited that can't wait!  We may even get to the dining room carpet.  In the meantime, I am straightening and re-arranging and collecting stuff for Good Will and for yard sales.  I feel a great sense of power and promise. 

Here we go!!

Well, the brothers are gone now, but one will be back today...and I'll just have to work around him, as he's going to be staying here for a few weeks.  But I'm NOT going to let that sidetrack me...you hear me!!??   Actually, I'm hoping he will help me with my clean-em-up efforts and be some muscle for me.  The 1st thing on the agenda is to take up the old carpet in this house that is aggravating my allergies.  I'm aiming for Friday to get that done.  And that makes me think....I need to have a schedule for the changes that I'm effecting here.  That will help me focus and help my brother know how to schedule his work around what I need to get done.  I will make a schedule today.  Check!

My project starts Monday!

It's hard to do much with my brothers here in the house----cause they're staying in the rooms I need to de-clutter!  One brother leaves Sunday...and one will be staying, but hopefully for not much longer, as it is really unplanned that he was going to be coming back here, since he had trekked out to the West Coast I thought for quite a while.  But I'm just NOT going to let this de-rail me.  I'm not happy here in my own home and that's just not the way it should be, people. 

I'm working up to this by doing SOMETHING over and above my daily routine every day.  I have to wonder why I haven't done more, because the feeling of accomplishment is very, very rich.  I could get addicted to it. 

The fire sparked and burned!

It's the end of the day, and I can look back and see that I did put some laundry away, did some dishes, and feel good about that.  I devoted the rest of the day sorting and counting t-shirts that my brother is having printed, so I felt I helped him there.  I have a good feeling tonight....and good solid plans for tomorrow.  Put away rest of laundry, mop kitchen and bathroom.  Ready, GO...set.

Light my fire...

As I so often do, what looked doable yesterday seems very hard to start on today.  I've been living my life like that since...well, since forever.  If I don't feel like it, I don't do it.  I guess there's merit to that in some ways, but in others, I never seem to get much done...especially since I rarely have any deadlines that are imposed on me nowadays.  I'm trying to move to the place that I self-impose deadlines for myself.  I feel like I'll gradually see my life changing as I do more and more of this. 

OK, here I go to put away some more laundry.  I'm getting up....  Here I go....  I'm standing up as I push the "publish button....  :)

Wash-a-bye baby!

Well, in my quest to find peace, harmony, and complete organization in my household :), I have done all my laundry -- ALL of it, and it was plenty -- in the last 2 days.  I finished it up today.  I have put away some of it -- the rest is either folded or....not folded.   If not for BOTH of my brothers coming in today from out of town to stay at my house, I would have taken pictures and posted them, like my friend Shannon suggested.  I will do that later. 

I got very tired and very sore today, but I'm proud to say that I worked through it.  I guess I'm of the mindset somewhere between "use or lose it" and "don't put too much wear on those overtaxed joints! Wait til you lose more weight."  Because being pre-occupied with the latter of those is putting me in a funk -- and bringing out some kind of inner slug in me -- I choose the former.  If I blow a knee turning the corner into my bedroom with an armload of undies, it'll just have to be.

Tomorrow's agenda is waiting til those dudes leave on their appointed rounds and then get the rest of the laundry folded and put away.  I will then vacuum and dust.   I also need to clean off the dining room table and put away the groceries I bought recently.  (BTW, I found Davinci's sugar free syrup that I love to put in my cofffee for $2.56 a bottle at a close-out at Kroger!! Bought 10 bottles!) 

I'm turning 56 soon.

OK, it's about time that I got my shit together. No self-loathing, no criticism....just a statement of fact. I read a post by Shannon with Through Thick and Thin about "living in the future" and that's exact-tactly what I've been doing for years. Sooooo many undone projects, ideas, and plans. I have great intentions but they never get developed. All the "materials" for those plans are sitting around my house.....my really small house.

The times I HAVE accomplished one of my plans, I've been thrilled and proud beyond belief. So...that tells me that getting off this road to hell will be...heaven! :)

A by-product of this endeavor is that I will be taking my focus away from food. Eating and bingeing have been my company throughout all this, and have been the way I handled the depression and frustration of not being able to.....get a damn thing done. I think of all the things I want to do...oh, yeah, and all the things I don't want to do like chores and bills and such...and I eat. I actually realized this was my coping mechanism of choice a few years ago. But I didn't know what to do with that information. I didn't know how to change anything.

In the last few months, everything seems to have come together....or is getting pretty damn close. I want to take charge. I don't want to wake up 5 years from now and say "what if?"

Who cares if it took me this long to get here? "Ain't nobody's business but my own..."