Home at last!

Well, after almost three weeks on the road (one week in Maine on campus at the college I am getting my master's from,and one week camping with my son), I am finally home again. Thank goodness. I find it much more difficult to remain on plan with healthy eating when I am on the road or away from home. One of the biggest problems is that I forget to take the phentermine pill! You have to take it either 2 hours before or after a meal. I have been taking it 2 hours after breakfast, but when in school, I was in class at that time, and just kept forgetting. Then last week while camping I only remembered about twice. It makes a huge difference. The past two days I have taken it, and have been totally back on track. Hooray!

I don't think I even mentioned that I did lose the 5 lbs I thought I had when I weighed in at the doctor's on July 5th. That put me at a total of 40 lbs lost since mid-April, and that makes me glad! I don't think I did much better this month...I will be happy with another 5 lbs if I can get it. Slowly but surely!! :)

I have also still been lax in the exercising area. I truly need to increase my walking and exercise. That will help to spur the losses, I know! I still have almost 5 weeks before I have to go back to work, so I am going to do the best I can to get in more exercise before it is back to the busy-ness of a new school year.

Overall, I am so happy to be down 40+ lbs and still losing! :)

Working on Exercise!

Today I absolutely have no excuses not to exercise. It is beautiful outside, my son is bored, and so we are off to the zoo! We will walk all over the place without stopping, and I will get in lots of exercise.

This month has been a bit of a struggle with the eating. I am a school nurse, and it is mainly the change in routine that has given me trouble. I have forgotten to take the phentermine sometimes until too late in the day. In addition, my birthday is in June, and multiple friends have wanted to go out to dinner, etc, and it is always harder to eat healthy at a restaurant, I think. Plus we have been visiting family in other states, on the road and staying w/ family. I don't like to ask them to cook differently, so have just tried to limit my portions.

Bottom line, I will be happy if I lose 5 lbs this month! :) But at least I don't think I have gained, and that is always good. Especially in a birthday month. I go to see the doctor on Monday the 5th, after a July 4th picnic at my Uncle's house. Of course there is always tons of food, but I am aiming for more swimming and less eating this year. Knowing I have to weigh in the next day will help! I'll check back in after Monday w/ my update! :)

I am not a good blogger...

I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since I posted. I am really not a good blogger....I have no desire to sit down and pour out my heart online most days. :) But the weight loss has been going pretty well!

I am down to 360 lbs now, a total loss of 35 lbs in the past 2 months. Can't be upset about that. :) Yes, I would lose faster if I consistently exercised, and if I ate perfectly, but that has not happened.

What has happened is that I have increased my activity, and decreased my overall food intake, and that is a good thing. Slowly but surely, my weight is going down, instead of up.

And that makes me happy. Vacation coming up..and stress from starting my Masters, so we shall see if that makes a difference in my progress. Hopefully I won't lose focus. I like the downward trend. :)

New Skinny Cow Ice cream in single servings!

I found something at the grocery store this week that I had to try. I like a little ice cream now and then. I don't eat a lot of it, and so buying the 1/2 gallon size doesn't make much sense...it always go bad before my son and I finish it. So I was happy to see that Skinny Cow has come out w/ little individual cups of ice cream. They are 150 calories, and the flavor I tried...Chocolate Fudge Brownie, was really good. It looks like just about one measuring cup full of ice cream.Very smooth and creamy. I would definitely buy more.

Great weigh-in this week. The scale at the new office showed I lost about 11 lbs these past two weeks. I am happy with that. But it is getting too confusing trying to figure out what I have really lost between the two scales, so I am going to go w/ my home scale. According to that scale, I weighed 365 on Monday morning. Just six weeks ago, I weighed 395 on my scale at home. So I have lost 30 lbs in the past six weeks. I am thrilled with that.

I really need to start exercising though. I think it will help to increase the weight loss, and I just need to do it to try and regain some of my endurance. I am going to start out walking on the treadmill for 15 min every day, and work my way up to 30 minutes daily. I know I can do this!! Exercise is always the harder part for me...I just hate it! It is a necessary evil though, so to the treadmill I must return. :) I can't wait for the day when I will be one of those people who love to exercise.

Rotten Weigh-In on Monday...

I was so looking forward to trying out the new office for my Monday weigh-in. The doctor I have been going to opened a new branch about 10 minutes from where I work. I can get there right after work on Mondays, instead of driving 45 minutes on Tuesday after work. Cool, right?? Not so cool. First of all, the scale at the new office weighs 6-7 lbs higher than the scale at the other office. Secondly, my doctor doesn't come to this office..someone else is there, and I felt he was too brusque, too quick, and just not interested. I knew I was going to be up on this weigh-in by one or two lbs anyway, because I had my period and was retaining water. However, when it showed that I weighed 382, I could not believe it!! My second weigh-in had showed that I lost 17 lbs. Now I am back to having lost 9. According to their scale anyway. In my heart, I know I have lost more. There is a lady who manned the front desk in the office who also works at the first place, and she confirmed that the scale is definitely 6-7 lbs heavier. She said she has weighed herself at one office, driven to the new office, weighed again, and is immediately 6-7 lbs heavier. Great. Oh well, now that I have the weight recorded there, I know I should show a drop next time I weigh there.

This past week I have noticed that I am getting hungry with the munchies at night. My first doctor had me taking the phentermine at 5:45 in the morning and then eating breakfast at 7:30 or so. (You have to take it on an empty stomach, either 2 hrs before eating, or 2 hrs after.) So yesterday, I decided to eat breakfast around 6:30, and then take the med around 8:30. It worked so much better for me! I was not that hungry for dinner, so I didn't eat that much, and then I had no desire for munchies at all later in the evening. Thankfully I was still able to get to sleep at a normal time, no problem. When I first started taking the med, I had a hard time falling asleep. But taking it later did not mess me up yesterday, whew!

Well, I have to go. We are taking an 85 year old friend out bowling today for her birthday. She is going to beat me terribly, I think. She belongs to a bowling league, and I only go about once a year! :) Have a great weekend everyone! :)

It's nice not to think about food constantly....

Today I stayed home from work. I did not feel well in the early morning hours - nauseated, and other GI issues from something I ate, I believe. I had picked up a frozen eggplant parmigan meal from Trader Joe's, and ate it last night, because it had good nutritional stats. I am not a big fan of eggplant, and while I was eating it, I thought it tasted a little funny, but blamed it on the eggplant. However, I think maybe something was "off".

Anyway, I was home today, and apparently missed a big luncheon at work put on by the PTA of our school, for the staff. I have been to these lunches before, and the PTA goes ALL out. Especially on the desserts - homemade cakes, pies, cheesecake, etc. It is a giant food fest. Ordinarily I look forward to these lunches, being a chunky girl who loves food, and so I would usually be bummed that I missed it. Amazingly, I had forgotten all about it, and my first thought when someone emailed me about it, lamenting that I had missed it, was "who cares?". Huh??! "Who cares?" WHO am I? I have never not cared about food. But the phentermine actually helps me to not think about it, crave it, plan about my next meal constantly, or really even care about it! It is wonderful. Don't worry, I still get hungry at meal times, and I am still eating....but it is like I am eating for fuel, not for fun. The way I always wished I would be.....

My nausea had disappeared by mid-morning, and I was able to eat breakfast and lunch with no problem. Tonight, I was taking my son to an arcade, and neither of us had eaten dinner yet. It was almost 6:30, and I have been trying not to eat too late at night. So I stopped and got a grilled chicken sandwich, and made myself eat it. So strange....yet so wonderful...to know that I am eating something healthy, because I am making sure my body gets the nutrition it needs. Previously I would have probably grabbed a meal from McDonalds, and finished off my son's fries in addition. I truly love not living for food while I am on this medication. It may just change my life forever. That's what I am praying for! Weigh-in next Monday. Can't wait to see it. My scale has not been working well lately, so it will be a big surprise! :)

I can say freely: "I love Phentermine"!

Yesterday was my two week check up since starting the phentermine. I stepped on the scale after work, and the doctor could not believe his eyes. I was down to 374....I had lost 17 lbs in two weeks. He kept acting like he had written it wrong my first visit, when I weighed 391. I laughed. "Surely you see other folks as big as I am who have lost that much in their first weigh-in after Phentermine..." The doctor denied it, saying usually he only sees a loss of 8-10 lbs at the most, even if it is someone my size. I was surprised. I wondered if many of those people had stopped eating, thereby slowing down their metabolism. I have been eating healthily....not really counting calories, but just eating lean protein and fruits and veggies. I eat when I am hungry, and at least eat Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, even if I am not hungry. I have even eaten a cupcake or two, and a piece of pie, but that is the exception, and not the rule.

I feel good. Though I don't feel the great push of energy I thought I might feel, I am not tired all the time either. I definitely need to start exercising too, but for right now, I am concentrating on taking a few more pounds off first, before hitting the old treadmill.

I am so happy with the weight loss. My BP was fine (some people say Phentermine raises Blood Pressure), but mine was lower than the first BP they had taken. I am sleeping well again, and do not really feel any negative side effects. I love this medicatin. I feel like it has corrected the inbalance in my brain that kept me craving things that added to my weight, instead of helping me to lose. I am so thankful that I tried it. And my prayer is that the effect continues, and I don't develop a tolerance to it, and become immune to the way it makes me feel right now. :)