Finally…some sunshine

I’m feeling hopeful currently. I joined Gold’s Gym on Friday. I went in Sat (50 min) and Sun (45 min) and did cardio. I feel really good about it. In my opinion the key is to keep my calories low…take refined sugar out of my diet, and get enough good food fuel to allow me to work out a minimum of 5 day per week.

I really feel like the way I look is impeding my social life. I don’t get asked out. I have great friends but my want for a partner dulls my mood sometimes and I don’t want to be out looking at other couples or seeing men who don’t make eye contact. I want to be desired. I want to be attractive in the generally accepted sense, and I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that.

I weighted in at Gold’s and I’m 190.4 as of yesterday. That’s actually about 7 pounds less than I thought so that was good, but I want to get down to at least 140 (I’m 5′5″ by the way). 130 would be ideal with good muscle tone. I’m very impatient about these things and I want to see results. I’m trying to calm myself and realize that 50 pounds will not drop off over night. One of the best things I can do for myself right now is realize that I’ve been addicted to food. For the past 2 weeks I’ve really monitored my eating and realized the the motivation for me to eat often times is mental. I’m not hungry at all. I’m eating for all the wrong reasons. I’ve now committed myself to “mindful” eating…knowing why I’m eating and not eating when I know I’m just trying to medicate myself with food. It’s going to be hard because I’ve been doing this since childhood when I used to sneak and eat fruit or by sweets from the corner store. I learned a lot of this behavior from family members as well. However, I want to be free and I will be free.

Today was a good day!!!

Today was a good good day eating wise.  I didn’t binge.  I didn’t over do the sweets.  I made a conscious decision not the think and obsess over food today.  Your mind has so much do to with you successfully reaching your weight loss goals.  I feel like I really am getting closer to understanding my food addiction.  I notice that when I’m really craving food, may times I’m not even hungry.  I’m teaching myself to eat out of hunger, not emotion or boredom.  I’m thinking about food right now.  I would love some pizza…let me stop thinking about it….lol

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this, but I’m amazed at how much the motivation to eat comes from the mind and not the tummy.

What guys say: The pros and cons of dating beautiful women

From AskMen.com, article - Dating beautiful women

Let’s be honest. In the 21st century, good-looking women have the world — literally — by the balls. For Very Attractive Women, men are panting puppets, sex is available on demand and money flows from male wallets in a never-ending stream of avarice.

Without lifting a finger, Very Attractive Women enjoy lives that most people can only fantasize about.

For men, the lure of Very Attractive Women is obvious:

They are arm candy

They boost male self-esteem

They increase a man’s status among other males

They heat a guy’s sexual juices to the boiling point

They’re just damn good to look at

But Very Attractive Women have their dark sides as well:

They can be shallow, self-centered and self-absorbed

They are generally takers, not givers — and they have absolutely no conscience about sex-ploiting the male gender

They think they have gold-plated vaginas

They expect men to slavishly cater to them

They are experts at sexual manipulation and revel in the control they have over men

They auction the use of their bodies to the highest bidder they can attract

Their appeal is their appearance, not their sparkling personalities

They can be bitchy and arrogant

They can be psychologically unstable

They may not be loyal, moving to the highest bidder

They are very, very expensive

Despite these drawbacks, Very Attractive Women are what most guys are looking for. But since these women are constantly bombarded with male attention, they can afford to be highly selective about the men they date.

So little food…so many calories

This is why people are fat.   There are too many calories in what we eat, and too few vitamins and nutrients.  I have had 2 bottles of juice (no fat, about 60 grams of sugar, and 310 calories), and a bowl of broccoli and cheese soup from Au Bon Pain (460 calories, 28 grams of fat, not much sugar).  That means I’ve had 760 calories!  I’ve only had one real meal!!!  Barely a meal at that!!!   See, if you eat prepackaged and restaurant meals…you are getting a lot of calories and saturated fats…oh and sugar.  But the kicker is…you might not be eating much food.

I’m on liquids for a while.  Hate if you want.  Tell me about how it’s bad for me if you want.  I don’t care.

Today has been a good day

After videoing myself the other day feeling fat and ugly I feel better.  I feel more motivated to lose some weight.  I’m going to do whatever I have to do.  I just can’t live like this anymore.

I realize I am addicted to food.  I dont’ eat out of hunger, I eat because I’m

lonely

tired

sad

bored

enjoying being out with friends/social settings

mad/upset

I dont’ eat so that my body has fuel and nutrients.  I should eat so that my body is healthy and nourished…but that’s not my motiviation.  I use food like an addict uses drugs, to feel good, feel a high.

Today I’m going all day without getting high.

Creating Appearance Motivation

I thought this was an awesome article!!  Read the rest at kristensguide.com.

When it comes to appearances, if we have a positive body-concept, then we need to think about why we don’t feel that it is important that other people see our bodies the way we know our bodies should look like.

You will need a journal to do this since you actually need to write down your lists and such. Just thinking about them isn’t enough.

1. Define Your Body-Concept
   Make a list or draw a picture of what you think your body-concept is.DO NOT clip out photos of models in magazines! They aren’t you. You’re never going to look like them without extensive plastic surgery. Plus, there’s a very good chance that your body-concept is just as (if not more) attractive as that air-brushed model who spends the majority of the day focusing on looking good. One man’s idea of beauty is another man’s idea of ugly.
2. Recognize the Benefits
   Make a list of all the benefits of using your body-concept to create your body-image, doing what it takes to make your body look like your healthy body-concept.Your body is a billboard, proudly displaying the message “I care about myself. I care about my family’s health. I want to be alive and vibrant for as long as possible because I love my kids, my partner, and my relatives and friends. I care about the tax-payers who would have to pay for my disabilities from obesity. I want my partner to have an attractive mate.”

   Your body is an example for others. “I got healthy, and you can too.”

   It’s fun to be attractive, and it feels good when people respond to you because they think you’re attractive.

   When you take time to look good for other people, it helps them feel important and respected. If you just go to your job interview in a pair of sweats, your potential boss is going to assume that you don’t think the she is important enough to dress up for, and she’ll probably decide not to hire you before you even say “Hello.” Likewise, if you go on your first date with Mister/Miss Right without brushing your hair or your teeth, they’re not going to feel like you really care about the date or them, so it would be doubtful that they would call you back.

3. Recognize the Excuses
   Make a list of all the reasons (excuses for) why you don’t invest the effort into changing your body to fit your body-concept.
   • “I don’t want to be one of those vain people who focus on their looks all day.”
   • “I don’t want people to think that I’m shallow because I look too good.”
   • “I don’t want people to flirt with me because I’m married, and I don’t want my husband to think that I’m trying to cheat on him by being flirtatious.”
   • “I want people to focus on me, not my looks.”
   • “I have bigger things to worry about than how I look.
   • “I don’t have enough time to give myself a make-over every day.”
   • “I’m just going to get old and fall apart anyhow, so why bother?”
   • “I’m not going to lose the weight anyhow, so why bother?”
4. Recognize the Contradictions
   Every excuse has a contradiction in itself. For every excuse, write down how your excuse actually defeats itself.
   • Excuse: “I want people to focus on me, not my looks.”
     Contradiction: “People tend to ignore unattractive people, so people wouldn’t focus on me much at all, let alone my looks.”
   • Excuse: “I don’t want people to think that I’m shallow because I look too good.”
     Contradiction: “People are more likely to think that I am in control of my life and know what I want rather than shallow. If I don’t try to look my best, they’ll just think that I have no self-respect nor respect for others since I don’t try to look good for them either.”

Self Control

It’s my experience that self control is better than any pill, any diet plan, or any diet book.  For any plan to lose weight to be successful you have to be able to deny yourself.  I’ve always found pleasure in eating the things that I know will contribute to my being overweight.  I hate and loved eating chocolate, junk food, fast food, fatty food…etc.  My love hate relationship was only broken when I made up my mind that I was tired of not feeling attractive.  I was, and at this point am again, tired of going to the store and settling on the clothes that fit instead of the clothes that I want to wear.  When you are tired of something little like food being such a big influence on your life, you will change.  The power being your change will be self control.

Most people don’t deal well with other people telling them that they can’t have something, let alone denying themselves.  To deny yourself, in many cultures and religions, is the path to greater health and increased spiritual perception.  When you have self control regarding what you put in your mouth you can focus on other things.  You can feel yourself with wisdom and spirit.

Weight Loss by any means necessary…

Is it really so wrong to be radical in your approach to loosing weight.  What I’m really talking about is not eating…much.  I know that there is a huge Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia movement online of people who have decided that it’s ok that they have eating disorders.  I can understand how many of these people think that it’s none of societies business if their obsession with being thin kills them.  Drug users, people who have unprotected sex, people who drive dangerously…etc…are all targets of campaigns and efforts to get them to change, so why not people who have “eating disorders”.  But, since overeating, being overweight, and eating junk food is just as dangerous…where is the campaign against that?

If society is going to glorify and envy thin, beautiful models and actresses why is it penalizing young women who buy into the beauty status quo.  These young women are obsessed with weight loss like a young hockey player is obsessed with being good.  The problem for both comes in when loosing weight or being the best is the most important thing in their lives.   There is nothing wrong with loosing weight.  Nothing wrong with being thin.  However you have to know the limits and how to stay healthy.

I am all for fasting, radical dieting, etc.  I really think that eating nothing but a raw food diet is the answer for most overweight and weight obsessed people.  It limits what you can eat and eliminates almost all processed food.  I think that people should limit what they eat and eat less.  The only reason that we don’t have massive campaigns to get people to eat better and loose weight is because we have a huge food industry and diet industry that feeds off the fat public.  People make money because I stuff treats, snacks, value meals, and junk into my body.   Then later on the medical industry will make money curing us all of cancer, diabetes, and other diseases that can be linked to our eating patterns.

In the end, whatever works for you and you can manage your health doing…I’m all in favor.  If you are dieting, limiting, fasting…I really don’t care.  I don’t care what other people think.  You can go from 190 to 120 fasting, and if you don’t tell people they will talk about how good you look, how fine you are.  But as soon as you tell them you didn’t eat…they want to put you in treatment.  Do they put their fat friends who are sitting down to a huge value meal day after day in a treatment center?  Do they suggest that they get some help? NO.  Why?  People get offended when you suggest that they need to lose weight.  Well, I’m offended that people feel they know what is best for others in the fight to loose pounds.

You do what works for you.  I’ll do what works for me.  If you don’t want to know…don’t ask.

I’m Just Not Attracted To Her

The I’m Just Not Attracted To Her series at Boundless.org by Michael Lawrence is a real Eye Opener.

“How many times have I talked to a single guy who wants to get married, only to hear him say that he knows lots of great women? He admits these women have godly characters and fantastic personalities. But he’s not dating any of them. When I ask why not, the reply comes with a sigh. “I’m just not attracted to them.” Pity the single Christian man with high standards and good taste. He can’t help it he’s single. The godly women he knows just aren’t beautiful enough.

This is not just a Christian problem. Debra Dickerson, an African-American writer for Salon magazine, reflected on her sense of sadness after watching the brazenly crude and essentially misogynistic movie, The Wedding Crashers. (It came out a couple of years ago, and I sincerely hope you didn’t see it.) Was she depressed at the way women were viewed simply as objects of lust, trophies to be won, conquests to be notched? Unfortunately not. She was depressed because, “by the end of the parade of weddings crashed and women laid, the crashers had seduced their way through every culture and every ethnicity but mine…. Why didn’t they want to seduce me, too?” she asks. The answer, left painfully unspoken, was that they didn’t find her ethnicity beautiful. While the judgment that black is not beautiful is patently false, that knowledge did not ease Dickerson’s pain at being implicitly labeled “undesirable.”"

Damn, as a black woman I understand her pain.  I’m not acceptable to some just because I’m black, regardless of my beauty.  Now of course, I’m not going to let that stop me, but I do acknowledge the craziness of it.  It exists whether I accept it or not.  Click here to read the whole 2 part article.

Study: Men Go for Good Looks

WASHINGTON — Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

“Just because people say they’re looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn’t mean that is what they’ll end up choosing,” Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, “following Darwin’s principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something different.”

Their study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany.

Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s and took part in “speed dating,” short meetings of three to seven minutes in which people chat, then move on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants check off the people they’d like to meet again, and dates can be arranged between pairs who select one another.

Speed dating let researchers look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.

In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.

After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.

Men’s choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women’s physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said. (Full Story from Associated Press)