Hey Sophie! Sorry I've been MIA in diaries recently - but you're still kicking butt!! I'm so glad to see it. And I'm GLAD that you enjoyed your 'eating everything" the other day. We all deserve a diet day off every now and again. Also loved the "god damned elliptical". Don't I feel that way when I'm trying to drag my butt out of bed in the morning!! Good for you for getting on though - that's the hardest part! Once I'm actually there in the gym, actually exercising isn't so bad. It's just the act of getting out of bed that's tough for me.

You're doing FABULOUSLY and congrats on the new scale numbers.

Breakfast—high-fiber cereal with skim milk and sliced strawberries
Snack—light yoghurt
Lunch—very small portion baked flounder with red pepper and artichoke tapenade, green bean salad with some vinaigrette, fresh raspberries, half an ounce cheese, cabernet caramel chocopod, two cups coffee with one tsp sugar and crappy powdered creamer
Snack—protein bar
Snack—one ounce almonds
Dinner—turkey sausage, whole-grain pasta, tomato sauce, sprinkling parmesan cheese, spinach salad with walnuts and japanese ginger dressing
Snack—coffee with three tsp sugar and fat-free half-and-half

I think I may not be eating enough during the day, especially when I take my lunch from home. I always wind up piercingly hungry both before lunch and a few hours after it. My protein bars and yoghurts even aren't enough to keep me from starving. I love my little flat lunch container, though. Not sure what to do about this.

Rach, you're so right. The excuses are rarely good excuses. Sometimes I am too tired to work out, but when that happens, I never have to argue with myself. I just know it. Just have to learn to listen to the body and what it really needs.

Heather, belated good wishes are a wonderful thing as well. Scale movement is so ridiculously exciting.

Hey Sophie!! When I don't eat enough I get the same way. You want to make sure you get enough ... I hope you figure it out...

ttylater hun
love yas
your friend
always
natalie jo

This is yesterday's record, since I just forgot to post it before I went to bed—I was very, very tired.

Breakfast—oatmeal cooked with skim milk, fresh blueberries and strawberries, one cup coffee with milk and molasses
Lunch—corned beef sandwich on sugar-free bread, light yoghurt, glass of milk
Snack—four whole-grain crackers with almond butter
Snack—one ounce chocolate-covered almonds
Dinner—salmon baked with tapenade, asparagus, baked sweet potato fries

Did forty minutes on the elliptical machine today. I wanted to do more, but even with pushing myself, I just couldn't. Still, forty minutes isn't too shabby.

Natalie Jo, I'm trying hard to get my food figured out—I think more protein may be one thing that I need, though I'm not sure.

Protien is important ... eggs give protien...cheese ... etc.

It will make you feel full too ..which is an awesome side effect of protein ..it keeps me going till lunch so I dont binge .. u know ...

so try more protien hun .. If you like eggs... its perfect!

Congrats on more great exercise.. you just keep trecking ..so cool!

love yas
your friend
natalie jo

Hey Sophie!

Forty minutes isn't too shabby at ALL! I remember when you started (and you and I started about the same time) the day when you were able to do 30 minutes! So the fact that you're consistently doing 40 and 45 is AWESOME!

Your salmon dinner sounded so good I'm so jealous. I wish I could cook fish more often! (Boy won't eat it!) Mmmmm. . . . .salmon with tapenade. . . .yummm

Soph sweetie, it's okay that you couldn't workout as much as you'd wanted. It's happened to me a few times, just on Tuesday in fact. I could only run 3.5 miles instead of my usual 5 to 6. It would seem I simply didn't eat enough cals on that day to support the energy I was expencing. But it happens. We just have to pick ourselves up, and start over again next time.

Keep physically pushing yourself, chica. The more you push your body, the more you'll gain new heights and levels in your weight loss. Of course, don't push to the point of physical strain, but just a couple more minutes certianly wouldn't hurt.

I hope you're having a good Thursday so far, hon!

Yesterday's record, since my frakking wireless wouldn't work last night:

Breakfast—three small turkey sausages, two slices sugar-free toast with a tsp of lemon curd on each, fresh raspberries, coffee with skim milk and molasses
Snack—Special K bar
Lunch—grilled chicken, half a pita, hummus, one falafel, something made of fava beans
Dinner—black bean vegetable enchiladas
Snack—hot milk and molasses

Did forty-five minutes on my ballet DVD. That's further than I've ever gone with it before. I got through the plié, the tendu, the degagé, and some vague approximation of front attitude, which is where I broke down quite entirely.

Natalie Jo, I do like eggs, but I'm usually too lazy to cook them. I don't know why. It's queer, because I like eggs all kinds of ways, though eggs baked in a ramekin with a bit of milk and butter and lightly topped with parmesan are my favorite—and perhaps not something I should have much of at present! How do you cook your eggs?

Heather, you're right of course. It was just irritating to find myself unable to do all that I wanted to. How I wish I could really run and do—oh, all kinds of things.

Rach, that's splendid advice, and I certainly mean to try and push myself today, since it feels so good when I climb off the elliptical wholly triumphant and knowing that I've really given my body a thorough workout.

Sophie!! Your doing awesome on the ballet dvd. You go girl! And your doing so well on your diet ..awesome!! I have never tried the elliptical, which don't even know what it is, but its awesome you are doing so well .. you rock!

I cook my eggs over easy and only eat eggs, sometimes I eat two eggs with a little slice of ham ... very thin
and that carries me just about until lunch .. I have strawberris as a snack and have cereal as a lunch.. I have to buy more berry burst cherrios ..the only reason they are berry burst is because they have berries in them freeze dried .. I love how the fruit tastes ..

Good going .. your doing so well!!

love yas
always
your friend
natalie jo

Breakfast—two cups of coffee with skim milk and molasses, shrimp and grits
Lunch—whole-grain pasta with non-fat blue cheese, mushroom and spinach sauce
Snack—hot milk with ginger and two tsp sugar, one slice sugar-free toast
Snack—one ounce baked snapea crisps
Dinner—baked cabbage with feta, baked buttercup squash
Snack—sugar-free jello with raspberries

Did fifty minutes on the elliptical today—I had no idea my body was capable of sweating that much, truly.

Natalie Jo, the elliptical is like a cross between a stair-master and a treadmill. It's very low-impact because your feet never leave the platforms, but it gives you a good workout—you should totally try it sometime if you get a chance.

Ok, your food intake yesterday sounds DELICIOUS! Can I have some? LOL...I worked out on the elliptical before, and it was really difficult for me, way to go! I guess everything is hard before it gets easy...I just never stick it out that long. Anyway, thank you for your wonderful post, and I am looking forward to reading your future entries!

Soph sweetie, there's nothing hotter than a woman covered in sweat, literally. I'm telling you, I've never felt sexier than when I'm blanketed in a sheen of sweat after running six miles. It's tantamount to slipping on the infamous 'Little Black Dress'. I know you feel it too, chica. Wear the sweat proudly. You deserved and earned that feeling of self-accomplishment!

I'm proud of you Chica. You're rockin' the world right now. Keep it up!

Had one slice sugar-free toast with light cream cheese and one tsp lemon curd, one cup coffee with skim milk and molasses, and one Hershey's kiss after posting last night, as I was very hungry and couldn't get to sleep.

I had a revelation this morning that had some relation to the process of weight loss, and I thought I'd share it in case anyone else found the concepts useful. You see, nearly every morning, at present, I sit down and I write out three pages. It's part of a creativity-recovery program called The Artist's Way, and while I'm not sure whether my creativity is going or coming, I've found the practice of writing in the mornings to be good in itself.

To explain what I realized this morning, I need to mention a psychoanalytic concept called the mirror stage. It's an idea that explains childhood development. The infant, who cannot yet stand on her own, looks at herself in the mirror and there sees an image of the complete, independent self. That image is internalized, and what is {I]before[/I] that stage becomes partial, incomplete. The main thing to remember is that this is a metaphor, but it's a very useful one.

One thing that really considering this, particularly as relates to the self-images that we see reflected back at us from others, revealed to me is that I still believe in the complete self and the partial past. And that's a very dangerous conception—you see, part of the process of analysis is to break through these imaginary concepts like the mirror stage and into the symbolic. If I believe that my present is complete and my past is partial, then that makes change akin to backsliding into an immature self.

Think about it, after all, all that the word mature connotes. It suggests that there was a self in the past that was incomplete, and it suggests that the mature is static and unchanging—that it is a complete self that will only yield to decay in old age.

The idea of maturity tells us that if we want to change something about ourselves, or if we succeed in changing something about ourselves, then we are still immature, still not "there" yet.

But that's not true—we construct ourselves day by day, both physically and emotionally. Those days, in the aggregate, make up our lives, our "complete" selves, but they are not homogenous.

But we're still wedded to the idea of the mature, complete self. So if we let other people see that we're still constructing ourselves—that we're working to lose weight and change our habits—that we're still a work in progress, then we're confessing to immaturity, incompleteness. We're contrasting our incomplete selves with what we imagine to be the complete, mature selves of others. That's frightening, because as children, we were often discounted for being immature. "You'll understand when you're older," we were told. "This is just a phase." With the implicit idea that we were incomplete and lacking because we didn't understand, because we were having "phases" of change. We don't want to be discounted—we want to be mature, autonomous individuals.

But we are—and by constructing our best selves, through healthy nutrition and exercise, we're taking control of our own becoming, of what our days are and of what that ultimate "complete" aggregate of days will be.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there for anyone else who, like me, may be having trouble with being ashamed of this process (even as we are proud for doing well and making good changes in our lives). These changes don't invalidate who we were, any more than reaching our goals will validate who we are. We have to allow ourselves, our eternally changing selves, to be enough, and then guide those selves in the best paths possible.

Wowser Sophie.. this was an incredible and thoughtful post. It did reach home to me. My mother still says for me to stop being so immature and I myself am thirty. I think I am very mature, getting a car next spring and in two to three years will have a finished degree, would like to move to Mass, etc. You brought a ton of good points and I loved this post ..

thanks so much for making me think
I need to read this again!

love yas
always
your friend
natalie jo

But we are—and by constructing our best selves, through healthy nutrition and exercise, we're taking control of our own becoming, of what our days are and of what that ultimate "complete" aggregate of days will be.

I really really like that. I think we are honestly made up of an aggregate of days. We never fully mature, even when we reach the latter years of our life. We are constantly learning and growing from our experiences, and I think that is what makes us who we are. There may be varying levels of maturity, but I don't know that we are ever fully "mature" and unchanging. So with that being said, hold your head up with pride in the changes you are making! It is part of that change and flow that we are able to live our lives to the fullest and adapt to change that may come.