Weight update!

I just weighed myself and I'm feeling pretty good right now. I'm down to 279 lbs! That means I have lost 17 lbs in a bit less than 2 weeks. The next 2 weeks I'm going to try to get rid of another 5-10 lbs. I'm feeling so much better. 17 lbs isn't all that much weight when you're overweight but what that loss has done for my self esteem is great! Plus I feel like I'm eating much healthier, I am definitely making better choices. I haven't "starved" myself at all. In fact, I have eaten at Mc Donald's 3 times! I have to say I love the new bacon cheese quarter pounder there. Its delicious! But everything is alright, in MODERATION. 

So I thought I would talk about some other things today. One thing which I know most of you can connect with me on is money. Money is so tight right now. My husband as you know is disabled, still on work comp. We don't get very much on work comp. I think people working full time fast food make more than we do per week. When he was injured, we had been working together but I was not able to keep driving on my own due to not being able to put out the same amount of miles as team drivers. So I had to step out of the truck and Dennis needed me to be home to help him anyway. The loss of income has been almost devastating but somehow, by the grace of God, we have managed to get this far without going completely under. We did have a small thrift store that we had to close, but we are still able to sleep with a roof over our heads and put food in our stomachs. Not long ago I came up with a plan to be able to pay off some bills. I managed to get a couple paid off and now I have a bad tooth. Not only do I have one, but Zach, who we take care of, has a bad tooth and now Dennis has one too. I'm thinking to myself, what in the world is going on? So first to be fixed up will be Zach. He broke a tooth that had previously been broken, or rather the crown came off and they have to revamp the tooth to put a new crown on, almost $1,000.00... I had to ask "how much?" again because I couldn't believe how expensive it is. So paying off the bills has to take a back burner, but I'm still sure Ill have a couple paid off by the end of summer, first of fall. Last Christmas was a meek one, I'm hoping that this one will be a great Christmas.


Let me introduce you to the rest of my family :o)

This is the love of my life, Dennis. In August we will have been married for 13 yrs. I couldn't have asked for a better husband. He may have complications in his life but he is still amazing to me and I don't know how I would live without him.

This is Zach. He has brought so many smiles and so much laughter into our lives. Everyone in our family just loves him. He has Aspergers Syndrome which I think adds to his awesome personality. He helps make our days much brighter :o)

This is Jake, he was a wedding gift to each other and is 13 years old. He is such a sweet loving boy!

This is Dixie. When Jake was a year old he wanted to play with other animals so much that we decided to get Dixie for him. She is super smart and we love her to death!

This is Rufus on the left and Beethoven on the right. Both were rescued from the outdoors. Rufus showed up on our doorstep in Louisiana. Beethoven showed up in my step daughters backyard. I cant tell you how much this cat has done for Dennis and his spirits!

This is Friday. We found her trying to keep warm on the ordering pad at Mc Donald's a couple of winters ago. It was 4 degrees outside and  when Dennis opened the door and called to her, she climbed into the car on her own and up onto his chest. It was on a Friday night :o)

That's my family! I hate to stop and rush off, but I have to get something to eat so my sugar doesn't get too low. I hope you all have a great day!

Ok I really did cheat this time...

While my hubby and I were out yesterday for his doctor appointment, we hadnt eaten all day because we just hadnt had any time to stop and eat so we stopped at McDonalds and had a burger. We split a medium fry, which I shouldnt have had and feel guilty about. I had a bacon quarter pounder. It was delicious lol I ended up feeling guilty over my choice to eat them but its alright to have what I want now and then and isnt the end of the world. My hubsand on the other hand, had 2 shakes yesterday! lol He lost about 3 lbs last week so thats not bad at all. I think he may have put them back on though with those shakes. We'll have to see :o)

So I went shopping yesterday after the appointments were done. I looked at a couple of shoe stores including a Shoe Depot which has about 500 different styles of shoes. I ended up with a pair of shoes from Wal-Mart for $12.95 because I just couldnt find what I wanted in the size I wanted. Oh well, Ill eventually find some I love and these will do for now. My other pair is falling apart on me so this is good. I got myself a couple of bra's too. JC Penney had a sale going on and I couldnt resist.

Well, today I have to go to town, get prescriptions filled, hit Wal-Mart up for dog and cat food and bleach for my hair. Ive decided its time to go full blonde. Hopefully it looks as good as Im wanting it to look. I will probably post again later so keep an eye open :o)

Another good day :o)

So earlier today I had a small Caesar salad with tortellini with Alfredo sauce and its left me feeling over stuffed some hours later ugh. I love salads but I'm thinking I'm going to have one or the other next time.

Today has been a decent day. It was pretty cold when I first woke up but its warm now which is nice. I was saddened to find out that a good friend of mine passed away a couple of years ago. I had lost contact when I moved away and was hoping to reconnect. Just a few weeks ago I found another friend, through facebook, just a day too late. She too had passed just hours before I found where she was living. Its sad to think that I'm 44 and my friends are passing away. Makes you think about your own mortality. I just have to be thankful that I know the Lord and that I'm getting up each day to live life as long as He allows it. But that's part of why I want to lose weight. I don't want to die young because I'm overweight. I want to die from old age. I've been thinking a lot about life lately. My parents live so far away. I wished they lived closer but in their old age I guess they don't want the hassle of moving although if anything happens to my father my mother will come live with us. Its just disheartening to hear about these bad things and loss of life going on. Well, I'm done talking about downer things...

My garden is doing alright so far. A couple of tomato plants have been munched on by something though and no flowers yet. Hopefully they're start bursting out flowers soon. My pepper plants all look nice and strong also. Ill have to take some pics when they're doing a bit better, show it off!

Tomorrow I'm going to be on the go all day. Not only do I have a doctor appointment but so does my husband and our friend who lives with us, then we have to drive about an hour or so to another town for my husbands other doctor appointment. Afterwards I want to go to the mall to look at dresses for my nieces wedding although I'm hoping to have to get a much smaller size!

Ok, well I'm going to finish playing Black Ops before our movie starts. We're watching Safe Haven, or I think that's what its called. Have a great night!

So ok, Ive cheated!

I bet you think I cheated on my dieting or eating healthy but nope. I had told myself I wasn't going to weigh more than once a week, but I was standing at the counter, fixing my glass of iced tea and I noticed the scale sitting there on the floor. It was calling me. I'm glad I cheated and got on the scale though because it says I'm down to 281lbs! I'm so excited! That's a weight loss of 15lbs already! Yay me! Yeah I know, this isn't my first time dieting, its probably water weight or whatever, but it still feels good to know that I'm doing something right and I'm feeling good too.

Ok, so, Ive been kind of feeling like I have cabin fever. I take care of my husband so I'm home most of the time and I normally have him with me if I'm out. Some might think that staying at home would be kind of nice but after being on the open road for many years its a big change of pace. Well, more like a screeching halt lol But I'm finding some crafty things to do. I have decided I'm going to try to make a rug out of old sheets. I have a few but I'm sure I can find some at yard sales to cut up for one. That's one thing my husband and I like to do, yard sale. We had a small thrift store for a while but we decided to close it due to being in a horrible location. We were just meeting ends, but one day we hope to open a new store. For now though, its crafting or gardening for me. I love to sew, quilt, crochet, paint, I also enjoy drawing, although I don't think I'm very good, I don't mind, I still enjoy it.

I think Ill go find something crafty to do now. Ill be posting again soon!

So...here I am

  So I got a couple of pictures and ugh. I have always hated pictures of myself but wow, I hate overweight body shots of myself even more! But here I am, as promised.

I plan on taking pictures every week, even though I don't think there will really be a difference until I've dropped a lot of it off. It will make for a good video later on maybe :o)

Anyway, I had mentioned before I would be counting carbs. I don't just count carbs however. I do look at what I'm eating, if it has a lot of processed sugar, if its a lot of calories etc. But in counting carbs, I'm not very strict on myself probably because Ive been a diabetic for a while now and I do it with a glance. Basically I do it like this. 15 grams of carbohydrates = 1 carb. I eat no more than 13 carbs in a day, which by age I could have 19 in a day but since I'm trying to lose weight I keep below 13 carbs. Its normally more like about 8 carbs to be honest. I HATE eating breakfast. I just cant seem to want to eat even 2 or 3 hours after I wake up. I'm just not hungry. So I drink an Atkins Shake for breakfast. There's like 0 carbs and I believe the french vanilla has about 130-140 calories. I get calcium, protein and vitamins out of it so that works for me and I can stand to drink that for breakfast. So I have no carbs for breakfast. I usually have a 3 carb lunch and 3 carb dinner. I only drink unsweetened ice tea, sweetened with Splenda, which by the way is a fabulous sweetener! I drink water too, I don't drink much cola or pop but when I do its usually just one glass and very rarely. I count each slice of bread as 1 carb even if its a bit under one. No fries! Potato products are bad for diabetics, its like injecting sugar into your veins lol I don't drink alcohol so no worries there either. I love salads and for salads you only have to really count the dressing or croutons. I don't eat carrots because carrots are very high in sugar. Eggs have only trace carbs so I like putting them on a salad too. Ok, sorry about getting distracted there. When I count a carb, if its 10g of carbohydrates, I still count it as a carb. If its 20 carbohydrates, I count is as a carb. You can count carbs as half carbs if you like or add up the carbohydrates from 202 to 292 and divide them by 15 to get your total count but this is how I do it. Yes I cheat myself out of some carbohydrates but in the long run I'm not missing it and if I want to grab 1 potato chip, (yes I'm so bad!) or have a piece of chocolate, I'm not going overboard to do so. 

One thing people have problems with especially in this day and age, is fast food. Yeah you can get healthy things at fast food but people want to have that juicy (or greasy yuck) burger now and then. I was a truck driver for many years and one of the things I used to do is order burgers without the bun. Carl's Jr and Hardees both have excellent burgers, wrapped in large leaves of lettuce. There you go, you get your calories you need but no carbs. Yay! We like food with no carbs. Something else I like is dill pickles. Dill pickles have almost no carbs and no calories so its a great snack when you feel hungry and just need to take the edge off. I'm out of pickles now, note to self, buy pickles. lol 

Other than losing weight this summer, I'm growing a garden, which the leaves are being eaten by a bug so I need to get something to put on them that's organic to keep them off. I'm growing lots of tomatoes and peppers. Green beans, sweet peas, corn, squash, cucumbers, pickles and carrots. Carrots only because my husband loves them. Im planning on getting some strawberry plants too. Everything else I started from seed. My niece is getting married in August and hopefully Ill be down in weight and be able to wear a pretty dress for the occasion. I'm trying to find it in me, to start a video diary and post the videos on here, but I have high social anxiety among other issues and even recording a video of myself when I'm alone is nerve wracking. 

Ok, time for me to settle down for the night!

So Im a lazy blogger

Ok, I know I said Id post pictures and whatnot yesterday but I'm a lazy blogger. lol. So later today Ill try to do that. My starting weight, I'm so embarrassed to say, is 292lbs. Wow. When did I gain so much weight? I have always been overweight. 180 lbs in high school, 220 in my mid 20's but wow. Yeah, its time for change. I don't want to lose weight because its the "thing" to do or to make other people happy. I'm not losing weight to be skinny, I'm never going to be skinny, or to look better. I'm doing it for health reasons. I'm doing it so I don't die in 10 years. I'm doing it so I don't have a heart attack. I'm doing it so Ill be able to get up and move around and not ache and hurt so much. I'm simply doing this, for me and me alone.

My husband has jumped on the band wagon now and is going to try to lose some weight with me. After his accident 6 years ago he went from a very active, healthy man to one who is bound to his bed for most of his time, not being able to walk, or be active. Its caused him to gain about 60 lbs. I still think he's sexy :o)

So later today Ill get those pics up and probably talk about other stuff too. By the way, day 1 of counting carbs went well, although I probably could have had a few more carbs than I did. I only had 8 carbs, I could have had 13. Alright, things to do!

So this is my first post. I named my blog "The first day" because of my mother. She has always told me my whole life, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life". I'm sure that most of you heard that from your own parents as well. A very true statement for me today as I embark on a personal quest, to lose weight. Yes I know there are a lot of weight loss blogs. Mine wont be simply about weight loss, although I will be tracking mine as the days pass and another "first day" is before me. 

I like to say that I'm a walking medical disaster, in a jokingly manner of course. But I do have a few health issues that I am dealing with. First, I'm overweight. I'm not just a little overweight, I'm technically "obese". I hate that word by the way. I can joke around and say I'm pleasantly plump or that I'm just fluffy but at the end of the day, I'm just plain fat. Ive been overweight pretty much my entire life. When I look at pictures from when I was 9, I was overweight even then. I have had a lot of tragic things happen in my life that I do feel had an impact on me that helped me to become overweight.

I have hypothyroidism, of which I have recently been put on medication for and I am actually taking it now. I've never been good about taking care of myself, but even though I keep protesting it, I keep getting older lol so its time to start taking care of myself. 

I'm a diabetic. My grandmother was diabetic, my mother is diabetic and about 7 years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I tried all sorts of pills, then used insulin for a while which was a blessing, but after not being able to afford the insulin I am back on a pill for it. Thank God its not Metformin, that was horrible for me. So one of the things I need to do is check my sugar a bit more often. Especially since Ill be counting carbs, trying to take off some weight and starting to exercise. My doctor said to just check it every now and then but I think Ill make it a habit of a fasting check every other morning and a random check every couple of days. I haven't decided if I will bore you with the results of those checks yet.

Skin issues. Ugh! I hate this part of my life. I have a rare, genetic form of psoriasis. Palmo Plantar Pustular Psoriasis, better know as PPPP. This has been hard to deal with at times. It is small, very painful blisters that I get only on the palms of my hands and feet. Well around the edges of my feet too. Sometimes I will have a small spot the size of a quarter flare up, sometimes its the entire surface. Ill post some photos of what this looks like so you get a general idea of what I'm talking about. 

I also have Hidradenitis Suppurativa, another skin disease, which causes boils that are connected under the skin to other boils by tunnel like tubes which makes it very hard to treat. I know, this is disgusting to me too but I want to be as open and honest as I can about myself.

Diabetic neuropathy oh joy! I HATE this. I can't tell you how many nights I have laid in bed with my feet feeling like they're on fire and me wiggling my legs all over the place in hopes to get some relief which doesn't come. My doctor recently gave me some pain meds to help deal with the pain and it has been a bit better but yeah, I wouldn't even wish this on anyone. 

I'm in the very early stages of kidney disease. This is a good thing for me to know, because it's early enough to reverse it. I'm currently taking Lisinopril which is a blood pressure medication, but I'm taking it to help protect my kidneys, not to lower my blood pressure. My blood pressure isn't really high enough for me to take medication for it but this is used often to help the kidneys of diabetics.

I have retinopathy. This was first discovered when I was 17 years old. I had my first bleed in my left eye. I had laser surgery the day after they discovered it and thank God I didn't lose my sight in that eye! They said had it been another week without the surgery my retina would have detached and I would have been permanently blind in that eye. Well, I'm 44 now, and Ive had a small bleed in my right eye. This is something that a lot of diabetics have to deal with unfortunately. What happens is the blood vessels in the eye grow too fast so they are weak, then they break open and cause scar tissue to form on the retina. Without laser surgery to kill the blood vessels it can get out of control and cause blindness. I have had surgery on my left eye several times now. The biggest annoyance to me is the blood that's left floating around in the gel in the eye. Sometimes I cant see something directly in line of view, Ill have to move my eye around to get the blood to move over. I don't like driving at night anymore, its a bit scary for me although Ive never had an accident, I just don't feel I see as good driving at night. If you're a diabetic you should see a retina specialist at least once a year to have your eyes checked.

I have depression, caused by a menagerie of things, some of which Ill be talking about in the future. I luckily have a therapist and good medications so I'm not sitting on the couch unable to do anything because I'm crying all day uncontrollably. Yes, it was that bad. But you know, I think things will be looking even brighter than they have been. Life is looking good these days :O)

So this is what I physically am dealing with. I also take care of my husband, who after being injured on the job 6 years ago, has been unable to walk due to a chronic pain disease called RSD/CRPS. Ill be talking about that a lot too as I'm dealing with doctors on a constant basis and my husband who I love so very much, struggles to deal with everyday life while being in so much pain. Just so you know, RSD is not just pain, its skin discoloration, hair changes, swelling, calcium uptake, muscle loss, tremors... Ill get into this on another day. On another first day to be exact :o) 

So later today I'm going to post some pictures, maybe dress up the blog some, post my weight, talk about how I do my carb counting and some other stuff that has popped into my head.

I guess that's it for now then!