Unlimited: Jillian Michaels

In between reading the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series... to get back to real life and non suspenseful reading.... I needed a good book to help recharge my mindset. I am about half way thru the Unlimited book by Jillian Michaels. 

I thought it would be more about her views on fitness and health but it is somewhat of a self-help book. At first, I was thinking I didn't want to read a self help book. But as I was a few chapters in and I really got into it. It is an easy read and she is funny. She writes like she talks... She cusses... gives great references... She doesn't bullshit or talk in a round about way. I think this is a good book for those of us struggling with our inner selves.

I wouldn't really say I was struggling with myself but I do think this book comes into my life at a perfect time since I feel like I keep sabotaging my goals. I want to be 'this certain' person and I see her in the distance, I just need to get to her. Giving into my inner devil and eating french fries two times this week isn't going to get me there. One of JM's main focus is being positive and mediation. Now, I am not going to go prey/meditate/yoga pose myself into a pretzel anytime soon... but she is making some valid points and is making me think about my life.

She is making a huge impact on many people's lives just by being on BL. She is a great role model and her newest book is worth the read!

Get To It!

I was so pissed about being 200+ on the scale the last few weigh ins, I hadn't weighted myself since last week. In Fear! With as crazy as I have been eating and how crazy work has been, I am back down a few pounds... aka back into Onederland. Sigh! Not sure how I got there but it must of been all the running around I did for the 3 day photo shoot I directed last week. I was so pooped at the end of each night, OT, 12 hour shifts for 3 whole days... That's huge difference than sitting in an office for 8 hours a day. I love the change.... But what it really means is that I need to be more active for the amount of calories I am eating. It just proves to me this is something I NEED to change!

I an very encouraged by this new lower number. It is amazing how a number can ruin a day or change your perspective of yourself. I have been feeling pretty down the last month. It is hard when someone asks how much weight I have lost lately and if I am even loosing anything. I already have the worst critic in my head, I don't need another one. It hurts to hear that BUT it is the TRUTH. This person sees it, just as much as I do.

With my goal tracker on my BodyMedia Fit band program, it states I should be in the 180-175 range already to meet my goal of 150 in a certain time frame. I obviously am NOT there. It is also less than 30 days until my Hawaii trip. I also wanted to be down 10 pounds before this trip.

I am saying it, but I need to DO IT!
Be active.
Eat right.
Stay under 1300-1200 calories.

Even more apparent... I got my tattoo that I had wanted. It says "only I will remain." In reference to my Blog statement about living in fear and getting past that point. (See above header.) Sometimes I can think and think about something but I have to be brave and act upon it. What would I loose, or suffer from... hunger is manageable, weight loss is needed and encouraged. Now it is permanently on me, so I have to live by it.

Goal for this week: Stop Bitching and get to it!

Weight for today: 198.5

Is It Worth It?

This week is a struggle...

It is hard to be strong everyday and every second. Sometimes I fail but others I am strong willed and determined. The last week has been 'blah' and unhealthy. I don't know why I fall back into these patterns and old habits. I thought I lost them in the dust!

I know I am stressed with life and with work. There are so many things I have to be accountable for and all I want to do is go to sleep to hide from them. I wish I had the motivation every day to loose this excess weight and mind frame. It is keepin' me in a place where I am not happy. You would think setting a goal or having a special occasion coming soon would kick me into gear. Nope!

I do feel a lot of pressure to continue to be successful with my weight loss. I made such a huge difference with 30 pounds right away. I felt like being banded was my key to success. And the only key I needed. This I have learned is not the only key I need. There is a whole custodian key ring full of damn keys I need! 

Once that first bit of weight comes off you expect it to keep falling off at that same pace and ease. Then you hit a  wall. You either keep changing and move forward or you get stuck hanging with the 2-0-0-buddy. Yep I am back up to 200.5 today. I know that it is because of how I ate this past week. I honestly didn't care so much when I was eating those unhealthy things. I just ate in that zone and focused on what I was eating. The joy I had from it, but then the guilt following it. A vicious cycle.

List of sh*ty foods I ate:

Cheeseburger

Fries

Chocolate shake

Milano cookies

Bread

Mashed Potatoes

Nachos

Pound Cake

M&M's

Dinner Roll

Bagel with Cream Cheese

Vodka/Sprite 

French Toast

Real Thick sliced Bacon

And that is only last week! Carbs, Carbs, Carbs! Not good!

Goal for this week: Everyday is a new start. Make good choices for long term not short term.

Weight for today: 200.5

LapBand in Tijuana

Just wanted to share this article in San Diego's paper today.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jun/09/family-seeks-answers-after-womans-lap-band-death/

Family seeks answers after woman's Lap-Band death

By Sandra Dibble

8:14 p.m., June 9, 2011

Cheronna Marie Williams / photo courtesy of Williams' family

TIJUANA — Cheronna Marie Williams, who worried about her weight for years, thought she had finally found a solution. Together with a friend, she headed to Tijuana for stomach-banding surgery, a procedure that normally takes less than an hour.

Williams, a 33-year-old from Chula Vista, did not survive the May 26 surgery.

This week, Williams’ family filed a complaint with the Baja CaliforniaAttorney General’s Office against Dr. Pedro Kuri, a Tijuana physician with years of experience in Lap-Bandsurgery who operates at a top private hospital. The office has launched an investigation.

“I have never been explained what really happened to my daughter and why,” her mother, Phyllis Ackerman-Gainer, said from her home in the Eastlake community. Gainer said even though Kuri has delivered the news by phone and in person in Tijuana, she still wonders about the cause of death and how it could have happened.

Williams’ death comes as Mexico is preparing a major campaign to promote medical tourism amongU.S. and Canadian patients in search of lower-cost medical care. Baja California’s tourism secretariat said medical tourism generated about $89 million in revenue for the state last year as an estimated 455,000 foreigners came for a broad range of procedures, from bariatric surgery to dental work to LASIK eye surgery.

Both the Mexican government and medical leaders have been trying to ensure a consistent, high-quality standard of care. Across Mexico, nine hospitals are now certified by Joint Commission International, a branch of the U.S. nonprofit Joint Commission that accredits and certifies medical facilities and services.

Authorities in Baja California said they also are working to bolster patient’s rights by giving more visiblity to the state’s 15-year-old Medical Arbibration Commission, which takes up the cases of dissatisfied patients and negotiates solutions with doctors.

At a Thursday conference in Tijuana, Yolanda Revetti, a 69-year-old cosmetologist from Escondido, praised the commission for fighting on her behalf after a dental procedure went awry. The commission arranged for another dentist to fix the damage.

“Thanks to them, I am smiling again,” Revetti said.

Several thousand U.S. patients — an exact number is not available — come to Baja California for stomach-banding surgery each year, according to health experts there. Kuri alone performed the Lap-Band procedure 900 times in 2010, according to state health officials.

Lap-Band and similar procedures involve placing an adjustable device around the top portion of the stomach during laparoscopic surgery.

Mexico’s death rate for stomach-banding surgery could not be obtained. The figure for the United States is about one in every 1,000 cases, according to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Alan Wittgrove, head of the Wittgrove Bariatric Center in La Jolla and director of metabolic surgery at UCSD Medical Center, said “What patients need to do is their homework, and go to a place that has the right facilities, the properly trained doctors.”

But ultimately, he added, ““Even good surgeons can have complications. There’s no question about that.”

Kuri has not responded to telephone requests for comment about Williams. The death certificate lists the causes as hypovolemic shock, critical hemorrhaging and severe lactic acidosis, suggesting that Williams’ heart stop beating after she lost a lot of blood.

“He said, ‘There was so much blood, just so much blood,” said Jennifer Wechlo, the friend who went with Williams and heard about the fatality from Kuri while recovering from her own Lap-Band procedure. “He said that as she was waking up in (the intensive-care unit), she had cardiac arrest. He seemed very distraught.”

Williams, a single mother of an 8-year-old girl, was readying to marry her boyfriend.

“He adored (Williams) the way she was,” Gainer said, but he agreed to pay for the $6,500 operation — far less than what she would have paid in the U.S.

Williams decided to have weight-loss surgery after Wechlo decided likewise. “Everybody kept saying, why would you go to Mexico?” Wechlo recalled. “I kept telling everyone that it was just fine, and then it wasn’t.”

Mexican health authorities said Kuri and the hospital where he performed the surgery had the proper licenses and followed the right protocols.

“They had all the equipment necessary for an operation. We went over the measures that the doctor took and they were all correct,” said Ricardo Zammarón, who oversees licensing of medical facilities in Baja California.

On his website, Kuri lists ample experience: board-certified surgeon in Mexico since 1976, a former chief of surgery at General Hospital in Tijuana, a member of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

He operated on Williams at Hospital Angeles, a modern facility located in Tijuana’s upscale Río Zone. Representatives for the hospital did not return phone calls asking about the case.

NSV - Skinny Jeans

This weeks the mark of a very cool Non Scale Victory... I got size 14 Skinny Jeans/Jeggings! Wholly sh*t folks and they even look flattering on my stubby legs. They make them really look thinner.

It's like Magic!

It is odd to put on a pair of jeans without a zipper or a button, But hot damn I love'em!

And here I thought that they were only for long legged people.

Take that broken ass scale!

Biggest Looser Circuit Cheat Sheets

Like I promised I would post my Cheat Sheets I created for helping me follow the BL circuits. Feel free to borrow but for more information buy the book!

Beginner Sheets

Beginner Level 1

Beginner Level 2

Beginner Level 3

Intermediate Sheets

Intermediate Level 1

Intermediate Level 2

Intermediate Level 3

Advanced Sheets

Advanced Level 1

Advanced Level 2

Advanced Level 3

Looking for my Mo-Jo

I think I need to avoid malls in general for a few months. I have been a shopping fool and I am loving it. I used to hate to shop since I could only go to a few stores. Granted I can't fit into all stores but I am widening my options.

It sucks I haven't lost any weight lately since I have been pushing myself by starting to do the Biggest Loser circuits. I love how it makes me feel. I think I can't do it - then I do it plus more! I sweat and it feels good.... but yet, my diet has not changed. In fact, I have been eating a lot of breads and sweets. It is that little devil sitting on my shoulder syndrome. I notice a huge difference in how i feel and my energy levels thru the day. If I eat too many carbs I feel sluggish and wore out by 1pm. Or I don't sleep as well and I am groggy in the morning. It makes me not want to get up. I need to snap out of this. I know what I want - I just know I have to change more and more each time to reach my goals. It irritates me I am struggling! SNAP OUT OF IT!

Back to the whole shopping dealio... sigh... I associate BCBG with skinny. Well I finally walked into the store and looked around. I didn't even feel like the biggest person in the store. You know what I mean, when you go into a store and the staff looks at you odd because they know there is NO F'ing way you would fit into anything they have there. Well I didn't feel like that at all. In fact, I picked up only 1 dress, tried it on and even the sales person told me how nice it looked. That it was meant for me.... granted he is a sales person but when I called my bf over he stated the same thing. He is very honest and would of told me it looked bad. Well I am now a proud new owner of a BCBG dress! Hot damn!

This shopping trip I also got 2 bangles and a really nice watch. I am loving making outfits instead of just getting dressed. It makes me feel like I am in costume all day. It is very fun and feels great.

I am trying to imagine how it will feel at a smaller size... so maybe that will motivate my ASS IN GEAR!

Goal for this week: Spin tonight! Try for 1 more day of cardio.

Weight for today: My scale is dead. I need batteries for it. (Or a very large bat)

Ideal Me

The perfect and ideal person I want to be....

I want to be that girl who doesn't think she is fat, to know that anything I pick up off the rack will actually fit like a glove, to be that girl in the bathing suit that her gut doesn't hang over as she sits in a beach chair, to wear a tank top and not be worrying about my flabby arms, to grow my own garden full of veggies and fruit trees, to make lemonade from the lemon trees, I want to eat everything organic as possible, to be a wife (one day) that creates a happy and fun home, to have my home feel comfortable and welcoming to anyone who walks in, to stay under 1300 - 1200 calories a day without feeling like I am suffering, to automatically feel the need to do cardio or walk everyday, to be able to sit up straight, to not walk pigeon toed, to never have a sweet tooth craving that controls every second of my day, to know portion control and exactly what a cup of something is without measuring it, to be a wife that can cook different meals thru the week, to bring up my kids (when I have some) without soda as long as possible, to be that person who always asks others how their day was before telling them about mine, to be there for my parents just as much as I am now even when I live away from them, to be able to have patience with the mother in law and show them that love is not a materialistic but unconditional, to be able to have both families over for a Sunday BBQ, to be a fun wife who makes food for the boys then lets them do their thing, to never get into a routine, to always try to be spontaneous and look for adventures, to floss every day like we are suppose to, to take my vitamins without forcing myself, to be tanner all year round, to figure out how I can do chin exercises to get rid of a double chin, to do lunges without falling over....

Milk This!

What milk are you drinking AND is it Healthy for you?


SOY - NOT SO SAFE

It lurks in your cupboards, your cereal, bread, pasta and chips. It's in your refrigerator, in your cheese, condiments, yogurt, sausages, ice cream. It's in those M&M's by the desk, probably in the latte you're drinking right now.

It's soy, and it's now in almost every single processed food we buy at supermarkets and health food stores. As America's favorite "health food," it promises to make us skinny and lower our cholesterol, prevent cancer and reduce menopausal symptoms, put us in a better mood, give us energy. It's the cheap and guilt-free source of protein for millions of vegetarians, the "heart smart" option for carnivores, the infant formula du jour for eco-minded moms. Soy has become one of the America's biggest industries.

And it may be making us sicker than we've ever been. Or so alleges Kaayla Daniel, author of "The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food," an anti-soy treatise released in 2005 by New Trends Publishing.

"People are just starting to wake up to this, to just how serious this all is," says Daniel, who earned her doctorate at the Union Institute and works as a certified nutritionist. "So far, if you look at the studies, you'll start to see that there are only possible benefits of this food, and proven dangers."

For Daniel, the problem exists in the soybean itself, a legume that by nature is chock full of antinutrients and toxins to ward off predators. If eaten in small amounts (say, a few tablespoons every couple of days) these toxins pose no real harm. The trouble occurs when we consume more than 35 grams of soy a day -- a quantity Daniel argues is easily reachable in our modern diet so crammed with soy meats, soy extenders, soy protein and soy emulsifiers, substances so full of estrogens, metals, sugars and additives, so "toxic," that they are posing considerable risks to our collective physical and mental health.

Cancer patients are being warned to avoid foods rich in soy because they can accelerate the growth of tumors.

Soy, which is present in soy beans, soy milk, tofu, tempeh and some breads, contains phyto-oestrogens that mimic the actions of hormones in the body.


ALMOND MILK - STILL NOT SAFE

Does Almond Breeze contain any soy?

Yes. Almond Breeze contains trace amounts of soy in the form of soy lecithin which is derived from soybeans. It is common in many food products and helps to emulsify the natural oils found in almonds to produce a creamy texture. A soy-free version will also be available later this year.


COCONUT MILK - BETTER

For centuries cultures around the world have revered and relied upon coconut for its nutritional powers and infinite practical uses. Native tradition attributes healing and life-giving properties to the fruit-bearing palm, which is why it is often called, ‘Tree of Life’.

In western society, the health benefits of coconuts are just beginning to be understood. The mystery appears to be in the favorable fats found in coconut.

Although coconut contains saturated fat, a closer examination shows that not all saturated fats pose a health problem. Saturated fat chains exist in a variety of lengths which impact the body differently.

Research has demonstrated that Long Chain Triglycerides (LCT) represent the most sinister saturated fat. LCTs exist primarily in foods derived from animals and have been linked to heart disease and a number of other chronic conditions. The body stores LCTs as fat. Americans consume an excess amount of animal-sourced LCT, which drives many of the health problems in this country.

Coconut represents a vegetarian-sourced saturated fat consisting of medium chain fatty acids (MCFA). Scientists have long recognized MCFAs such as lauric and capric acid for their anti-viral and anti-microbial properties. The body utilizes MCFAs as energy instead of storing them as fat.

Biggest Looser Bandwagon

I am not a huge Biggest Looser fan since I don't watch the show on a regular basis. But when I happen to catch it I am sucked in. I am always intrigued to see how they are working out and the things they do - It lead me to purchase the Biggest Looser Fitness book. I was interested in mixing up my workout since I don't like to get board and I feel I need to 'learn' more about how my body reacts. We do a lot of the same weights and machines at the gym. I am now feeling more confident to do my own thing. Hence the book. I don't want to not look like I know what I am doing.

This book has some great circuits in it. Something I don't do much of. But I need to get out of this rut... plateau.. same freakin' spot I have been in for way to long! I made myself I cheat sheet with the list of things I should do each time. I did this before reading the whole book. Therefore I did way to many workouts for each body part and no wonder why I am so sore days and days later. It did feel good though and I kicked some ass doing it. Today I am going back and re-doing my cheat sheet so it makes more sense. Derrr...

Plateau has always been an interesting word to me. I hate it but want to understand it more. Jillian Michaels of Biggest Looser states that she doesn't believe in plateaus. It is simple math. Calories in, Calories out. We have to pay attention to how much our body needs to use thru the day so we can find our calorie deficits between 800 -1000 per day. Lucky me, I have a BodyMedia Arm back which calculates this for me. We have to constantly change our work out so our body is challenged and continually keep loosing weight. I have not done this. I learned one thing and stuck with it - but just becoming more aware I need to keep up the challenge. Gotta up my game!

Today, I am reading The Biggest Looser Fitness book and Jillian Micheals' Unlimited. I hope to learn more about how I can push myself to get this scale moving. Also a  suggestion is to listen to Jillian's podcast. I don't listen to the whole conversation but only the fitness sections. She kinda rants about things that are random after the health/fitness section. 

Still looking for motivation and courage to go to Cardio Kick boxing class. Sigh...

Goal for this week: Update circuit cheat sheet and laminate them. Maybe I will post them to the blog once I have them ready.

Weight for today: 200.4 ( I think my scale is broken - boo)