Food and Memories

When I was 17 I went to Tennessee for the summer to visit my mom's side of the family. I was my first trip anywhere all by myself. While I was there I was gonna get to spend some time with my cousin who I called aunt Tammy. It was the first time I got to meet her husband and her new daughter. I had a blast there and they decided to take my cousin Eric and I to Six Flags. I really enjoyed all my time with Tammy and Rod but what stood out in my mind about my new cousin was how he talked about food. Rod got really excited about taking me to restaurants. He had all sorts of places he wanted me to go. We had to go to The Varsity when we went to Atlanta which I have to say was the worst restaurant, but the only place he took me that I didn't like. And then after Six flags he took us to a restaurant called Mic's (I think). He made me try my first chili cheese fries which I just knew I was gonna hate but I absolutely LOVED. There were other places too, but I always thought it was kinda funny how excited he got about food.
All this to say, I am about to go home for Christmas and if you talked to my husband about the things I want to do when I get home it is mostly about eating. I get to eat good Chinese food, Mexican food, coffee, scones, cinnamon rolls, fudge, wassail, and Christmas dinner the way it was when I was a kid. I could not be more excited. But it makes me realize that food is the hardest addiction to quit I guess you could say. I mean you have to eat you can't just quit eating. And memories can be tied up in food. For me Christmas means grandma's dinner rolls, mom's cinnamon rolls, turkey, fruit salad, suet pudding (even though I don't eat it), sparkling cider, and Christmas candy. Now it also means other things that I love but food is a big part of it. Thanksgiving is the same way. And going to Oregon means Jimmy Chan's, El Eradero, Sorbonot's coffee, Safeway's bagels and Barley Brown's. I do think about the fun things you do during all these things but food comes first to my mind. Normally I don't dwell on this but this visit I am because weight loss has become so important to me. And it actually it is not so much weight loss as I just want to be HEALTHY. I want to teach my kids by example how to be healthy.
So I need to start associating various events in my life with activities rather than food. So here's what I should think more about. I am going to Oregon which means snowmobiling, skiing, sledding. If I was going in the summer it would mean hiking, swimming, and camping. Christmas means going carolling, looking at lights, candlelight service at church, and spending time with family. Obviously I can still indulge myself in some of my favorite treats, but in small portions not gorging myself. And maybe if I can take the focus off of what food I get to eat and look at the things I get to do then maybe living healthy won't be so hard to do.

I'm A Quiter!

Ok so I have ALWAYS been a quiter. Things get too hard and I quit. I was no good at sports so I quit. The Air Force was too hard so I quit. College was too hard to pay for so I quit. You get the picture. I think the thing I most regret quiting was music and I really believe that quiting that made quiting everything else so much easier.
You see music was the one thing I loved to do more than anything. It was the only talent I had. But I got too arrogant with it. Back in Junior High I tried out for the high school choirs Reflections and Company "B". I had dreamed of being in those choirs since I was in first grade. No joke. So I made it into reflections my freshman year and Company "B" my Sophomore year. I really thought I was hot stuff. The problem came the next year when we got a new teacher. Not because he was a bad teacher, just the opposite. He was a great vocal teacher the problem was me. I was so arrogant I didn't think I needed any improvement. I didn't gleen all I could from his instruction. I didn't go to him for private voice lessons like others did. And when the time came to autition for the new group that he created my arrogance caused me to be an alternate rather than one of the choir members. I was crushed and I cried for weeks. Seriously I literally cried for weeks. My friends all told me that I shouldn't get down that I could always come to the rehearsals and maybe I would get in by my show of dedication and willingness to get better. And instead of taking it as a chance to improve myself I just gave up. Oh I went back my senior year and sang in Company "B" but I was so mad at my teacher and resented him. I blamed him for very long time. I still liked him just fine but I just knew that if my old teacher had been there that I would have been chosen hands down. I didn't take into consideration that my old teacher was fine with mediocrity and my new teacher pushed to makes us better. It wasn't until my brother got into middle school that I realized the disservice I did to myself. Don got the benefit of this teachers instruction for six years. Don is phenominal. Why? Because he listened and learned everything he would from that man. My brother is being asked by Eastern Oregon University to come study in their music program. I wouldn't say that I couldn't have been taught like he was I just had an unteachable attitude. But once I left school I gave up all my music dreams from being a singer to being a music teacher. And because I quit the one thing I truly loved it made it so much easier to quit everything else.
So now here I am trying to loose weight and it is easy to quit. I have quit diet and exercise programs dozens of times just in my five year marriage. I am really hoping I can quiet this inner monologue that says "you never finish anything, you are just a quiter. And that is all you will ever be." I want to be a finisher. I want to have some follow through. I want to look at myself at the end of all of this and be able to say that I finally resisted the urge to quit. Hey maybe if I can do that maybe I can take up my dreams of music and start the long road of finishing them too.

Depression and Rollerblading.

Ok so yesterday kinda knocked me on my butt. I have struggled with depression for about 9 years now. After a horrible day of yelling at everyone in my home and feeling so stressed I could have ran away from home i decided to go to the doctor. Now I have been told three times in 9 years that I may need to think about going on anti-depressants but I have always refused. So I go to the doctor and he prescribes me Zoloft and counseling with a former pastor in the area. My doc is a good Christian man who understands my concerns about anti-depressants. But I end up mentioning it to mother-in-law and she is worried about side effects and all that so I decide to do a little research before actually taking them. I end up bring up a study done by Duke University on Zoloft. Half of the people are put on Zoloft, and half have to go jogging for and hour everyday. THe ones who jogged had better and longer lasting results than the ones on Zoloft. So I talk this all out with Terry. Neither one of us have been too keen on anti-depressants so this looks pretty good to us. Even better is that diet can have an effect on depression too. So I decided to try it. The best part of this plan is that I need to lose weight but now weight loss isn't the only thing i am trying to accomplish.
So this brings me to my other half of the title. I left the house last night to go walking. I am so outta shape that I could not just start off jogging. Of course I am not really looking forward to jogging anyway because I don't enjoy it. So as i am waling arount the track I see a set of rules saying that rollerbladers couldn't go over 17 miles per hour. Now back in high school I was quite a rollerblader. I work at McDonalds which was about 3 miles from home and I would rollerblade back and forth to work. It usually took about a half an hour. In the summer I would rollerblade back and forth and then roller blades all afternoon with my friends who were on Bikes. So I'm thinking this is gonna be cake. I'll go home get my blades and finish my exercise. Ok so it was fun but I only made one 3/4 mile lap and I was exhausted! Yeah rollerblading is not as easy as i remember. I mean I can still do it but it takes more work than I thought it did. I was huffing and puffing and my face was red. apparently rollerblading burns almost as much calories as running. I guess I didn't realize how much energy I had back then. I certainly don't have it now. But i have FINALLY found something i like doing. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. You know what else i realized. My depression started and continued when i became sedintary. When i started to eat so much junk food. It does make sense that when i start getting off my butt and eat healthy that my depression might subside and maybe I can also look good in the end too: )

Bread

Ok so today is the first day of trying to diet and I am already failing miserably. My number one enemy is bread. I blame my mother really. That woman could bake the best bread in the world and she did often. When I was little she made the bread that was kind of sweet and when it would come out of the oven my sister and I would swarm, begging for warm buttered pieces for a snack. As we got older she got a bread machine and she made some other kind that was just as good but we were old enough to make it ourselves and did often. Same thing, we were like vultures waiting for the machine to ding so we could get the butter and have warm bread. We weren't the only ones either. Somer had these two friends who would come in and raid the cabinets and eat a whole loaf by themselves. I would get so mad at the I could spit. My mom also had this killer french bread recipe which she is famous for. Dad would get agravated because he liked making sandwhiches out of it and again I would take huge hunks with butter. i could eat half a loaf in one sitting.
As an adult I discovered several resteraunts that had amazing bread. When I was seventeen I went to Tennessee to visit my Grandma and Grandpa for the summer and the took me to meet my Grandma's best friend and later to be Grandpa's girlfriend Darlene. The sad part about that visit is it is bookmarked in my brain as the day I discovered Cheddar Bay Biscuits at Red Lobster. I ate eight of them with dinner. EIGHT!! At resteraunts like Olive Garden, Redlobster, and O Charleys. I just tell the waiter keep the bread baskets coming. My friend Tammy loves to tell the story of her and her husband going out to dinner with me and mine at Caraba's. The waiter came up and I told him to bring a loaf to me and one for the rest. He did and I ate mine all. I actually brought the remainder of theirs home with my left overs.
As you can see I have a love affair with bread and it is even worse than the one I have with chocolate. So my problem today comes from the to loaves of french bread i bought earlier this week to go with spagetti. We still had a half a loaf of bread and it was calling my name at lunch. I should have just thrown it out but I hate trowing out good food so I ate about three pieces with butter of course. So it has not been a stellar start to my weight loss efforts. The worse part is that I appear to have passed my love of bread on to my babies. They can eat quite a bit themselves. I am gonna have to explain to my family that white bread of any kind is no longer allowed in this house. I don't love whole wheat bread the way I love white bread. And I guess one good thing is when we go out to eat we will be able to go to some of our favorite resteraunts that doesn't serve it. My poor husband has had to deal with all resteraunts chosen going through the bread test. If it didn't have good bread we didn't go very often.
So here is to me trying to break my addiction to bread. I hope that I can once and for all get rid of it.

The Journey

Ok so the name is corny but it has a purpose. So anybody who has known me from childhood knows that I was very skinny as a child and adolescent. I was called everything from beanpole, ethiopia girl, Olive Oil, to my personal favorite mosquito bites. Oh yes mosqito bites was my friends favorite to call me in high school as I was a very late bloomer. But even when I finally "bloomed" my chickeny legs provided plenty of fuel for the fire. Little did I know I would eventually long for the days when I was called a beanpole. I will never forget the day I realized I was no longer the superskinny girl. I was sitting in my dormroom with my roommate Bitsy, who was complaining about her weight, and she commented that no one ever saw themselves as too skinny. I said I have always thought I was too skinny. She then gave me a look like I had lost my mind and in that instant I realized I HAD gained a few pounds. In the years that follwed I have gained more than a few pounds. In fact I have gain about 60. The funny thing is apparently I have always seemed to have the opposite problem that anorexics have. Instead of seeing myself as overly fat I have always seen that painfully skinny girl in the mirror. So I eat all the crap I want and get little exercise. But in recent months I have taken a good look and thought "Wow who is that fatty in the mirror!" So I am blogging about my journey back to a healthy weight. Not back to chickeny legs hopefully but a healthy weight. I weight where I can play with my kids without getting winded after five minutes. A weight where I can feel good about myself. And a new lifestyle that I can feel good about passing on to my children. So here's to the journey and I would apreciate all the encouragement you can throw my way.