The Temple of the Turtle

As I mentioned in my previous post, I plan to lose 1.5 pounds per week in 2009. That’s 78 pounds if you’re counting, but the total poundage I want to lose is 73, which is 1.4 pounds a week. But let’s not split hairs. Sheesh.

At first glance, that might not sound so difficult. But let’s get real. My ideal weight is 200 pounds. I haven’t weighed 200 pounds since my senior year in high school, which was 15 years ago. In other words, I’m planning on undoing 15 years of damage in 365 days. Are you starting to understand the challenge that I’m about to face?  Damn. I sure am.

The first step is to redesign my eating habits. For the entire month of January I’m going to deny myself the pleasure of eating refined sugars. Why so drastic? Man, I want to start this off with a bang. Not to mention I’ll still be doing my walk/runs during this time.

While I’m not following a diet per se, I am going to use the principles laid forth by the editor of Men’s Health Magazine in his book The Abs Diet. Not because I think I’ll end up with killer abs, but because the plan seems to make sense. Not that I won’t bastardize for my own uses. The plan focuses around eating lean proteins, but it never says to kick refined sugars for a month.

So what happens on February 1? Hopefully I won’t crave chocolate and crap like I do now. Hopefully I can focus on eating what’s healthy, but we’ll jump that bridge when we get there.

2009. It’s amost here. If you’re like me, you’re vamping up with new goals for the new year. As for my fitness, plan to lose 1 1/2 pounds per week in 2009. Scared? Hell yeah. Check out the rest of my goals here:

http://shandefinitive.blogspot.com/2008/11/year-of-five-fs.html

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’ll tell ya it isn’t because I’ve been diligently working out.

I’ve been in kind of a funk lately. It all started around election-time (for obvious reasons), and then my employer went through a round of lay-offs, and now I’m just kind of looking around wondering where November went and asking myself, “What just happened?”

I haven’t been micro-bursting, not to mention lifting or weighing in. What the heck?!

I was hoping to get a jump on this, but I’m pretty sure I’m back to square one. That’s OK. Square one is like home to me.  I spend a lot of time in square one. But now it’s time to go.

This is the first ever guest post on TTotT! The following post is by Natasha from My Hair is Better than Yours. Be sure to check her blog out!

Citizens of the world are engaged in many theaters of war. Along side the literal ones, there are the countless figural ones: terror, drugs, halitosis and obesity, to name a few. I am a Veteran of the War on Obesity. The WoO.

There are varied reasons why or how an individual can come to find themselves fighting this war, yet, I believe that the lone principal for winning is universal and therefore, I asked Shannon if I could share. And before you ask, no, it isn’t this, this or this.

Let me share my fat story.

It’s nothing spectacular. I grew up fat. I never needed a Rascal or anything to get around Wal-mart, but I had thunder thighs and belly rolls. I had friends and a social life, but I didn’t have boyfriends and my love life consisted of Nora Roberts novels and my imagination. At the age of 23, I would get winded climbing UP a flight of stairs and my knees would hurt climbing DOWN a flight of stairs. My acute phobia of elevators and escalators forced me to take a severe look at what I was letting my body become: Morbidly Obese. Not attractive.

I could go into how I was an emotional eater – if I felt an emotion, I was eating – or I could relate a period of my life where my self esteem tanked faster and further than our current economy, but neither are the reason I was fat. I was fat because I had no self respect. I didn’t respect my emotions enough to confront them head on, without the aid of food. I didn’t respect my own body, I didn’t respect my mind and I didn’t respect myself – my being, my heart & soul and all that other hippie shit.

And then one day, something finally clicked into place and I was able to follow a program that allowed me to lose 100 pounds and counting. Yes, the program was amazing and worked very well for me, but it wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t been in the right place mentally.

As soon as I took responsibility for how I got myself into my size 20 pants, I finally had the tool to get myself out of them. It took time, and in fact, I haven’t reached my final goal – but I know I will. It was hard and I struggled daily and slipped often, but I always took responsibility.

Just as Shannon says on his personal finance blog: The credit card companies didn’t get you into debt… YOU did, and you’re the only person to get you out. Fancy that that is the same principal for weight loss.

I’ve been staring at my Stats, and there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. It doesn’t help that I have yet to start tracking my hip-to-waist ratio. Or is it waist-to-hip?  I don’t remember.

I’m seriously off track here thanks to being off the wagon on Monday and Tuesday. My goal was to start my weight-lifting circuit the week daylight savings time ended, but that hasn’t happened. I’ve missed two days of my walk/micro-bursting.

The good news is I haven’t lost much ground, so tomorrow I hit the pavement!