In the Beginning

In the beginning,  this blog's predecessor was known as just "Reinventing Andrea".

In those early days of my weight loss journey,  somewhere around July 6, 2010 (that was when my I weighed go my starting weight, but we'll get to that later)I had no idea that in 2016, six years later, I still wouldn't be at my goal weight of 144 pounds.

There are several reasons for that. Not excuses, and I'm not blaming anyone but myself even a few of those, like my stroke back in September. I'm also really bad about hearing "you look fine the way you are, sweetheart," when I'm in a relationship and even though I've always put my health at the top of my list of reasons for getting healthy, I'd abandon ship and swim for the buffet bar.

So, why do I have to blog, post about it and share all of my posts from My Fitness Pal? It's not to brag. It's called accountability. As much as I'm the heavily tattooed black sheep of the family, I also have a small voice in my head that says I have to please people. I know that totally makes no sense. Also, if just one person readingthis blog decides to join me on the fight of obesity,  I very well may have helped saved their life. And while I'm on that subject. I see a lot of memes on Facebook complaining about people posting every time they go to the gym. It takes just as much "energy" to be supportive and click like on their gym posts as it does to share the anti-gym posts. Just sayin'.

Why do I only weigh in once a week? We all know how much a woman's weight fluctuates from day to day because of hormones, ghosts, Satan, etc. However, I can't handle the stress of gaining just .2 pounds in just one day. I'd rather keep up with it from one Saturday to the next.

What was my starting weight? My starting weight was 375 pounds. I can't believe I ever let myself get that big. (Remember on "Whats's Eating Gilber Grape" when the mom said, "I havent always been this way.") It really did seem to creep up on me over night. The weight thing is you don't realize how big you've became by just looking down at your body. Even looking in the mirror  day in and day out you don't realize your size. (I had unconsciously avoided full-length mirrors and only used the medicine cabinet mirror) The big wake up call was when my niece was playing with my phone and took a picture of me. I deleted it as soon as I saw it. Now I wish I had saved it as a before picture.

What do I eat now? I eat normal foods you can buy in a grocery store. I've learned to cook them in a healthy way. My favorite is broiled fish. For side dishes, I like brown rice, carrots, zucchini,   and pretty much any vegetable. In the brown rice I like to sprinkle in a little dried cranberries and the Oscar Meyer Real Bacon Bits (in the yellow bag). For breakfast I have 1/3 cup of Great Value (Walmart) egg whites and either a chocolate zucchini or regular zucchini muffin. I make enough of both muffins to last the month and I use egg whites instead of whole eggs. I have a cup of decaf coffee with a little French vanilla creamer. And I'm back to drinking water all day. It helps to flush out the excess sodium. At dinner I have decaf sweet tea with lemon.

For workouts I do 40 to 45 minute light impact aerobics in the morning and a 30 to 40 minute high impact aerobics either in the afternoon or evening.

Okay, that's it for Hump Day. I hope I've inspired someone to make some life changing choices!