So far so good!

Yesterday was the first day of "no sweets at the shop" challenge and I did great. It's going to be a stressful week, five wedding cakes, a grooms cake and three smaller ones. I have to admit I ate more raisins than I needed, and a handful of altoids, but much better than cake and frosting.
I really think that a sugar addiction is similar to other substance addictions. Something happens in my brain that makes it so hard not to dive into the frosting bowl head first.
I keep telling myself that I lost 133 pounds and made lots of cakes at the same time. I'm up eight ponds from my happy weight. I want that off, but mostly I feel so much better when I'm eating clean.
I wonder how many people that struggle with their weight have sugar addictions.

No sweets at the shop

I'm declaring November "no sweets at the shop" month. Shelley's no candy for November has inspired me. Thanks Shelley! I've been struggling with this lately and it needs to stop. One bite used to be enough, but now one bite throws me into a downward spiral that ends in a sugar coma. I'm clearly a sugar addict.
I need to stop the stress eating, it only leads to more stress.
Thanks for the inspiration Shelley. I'm hitting my reset button along with you :)

A link to a link

Roni has a wonderful interview from Sean Anderson on her site. I love his simple approach, that is exactly what I did to get myself started. I gave myself a calorie budget and I could spend it any way I wanted. I soon learned to make those calories count, but at first it was so much easier to just worry about calories and nothing else. Sean is such an inspiring guy and his website is a great way to get motivated.
http://ronisweigh.com/2010/11/wordless-wednesday-275-pounds-lost-in-two-years-two-months-and-a-day.html
http://www.losingweighteveryday.blogspot.com/

Very inspiring!

You might have seen this already, but just in case you haven't I'm posting it too. His post about the ironman he did with his father and brother is a great read http://bendoeslife.tumblr.com/page/6

I won't back down

There is a hill that is close to the end of my run. I'm almost home when I get to the bottom of it. I've been challenging myself to run, not walk, that hill for a few weeks now. It's gotten a lot easier and I've noticed some real improvement in the muscles in my legs and rear end. I love it when a great song comes on my iphone when I am approaching that hill. I put my iphone on shuffle and listen to whatever comes on, it's always a different run that way. Today a really awesome song came on right as I started running that hill. Thought I'd share, it really fits the whole weight-loss/exercise thing, I think.

Learning to eat well

When I was in junior high school (that's what we called it, now it's middle school) I took a home economics class. Actually, I took home ec all through my junior and senior high school years. Looking back it amazes me to think of what we were not taught when it comes to nutrition. I vaguely remember a food pyramid, but when we were actually cooking, we didn't take that into consideration. I remember learning how to make white sauce. I can't say that is something I've made a lot over the years.

My junior high home ec teacher was one of my favorite teachers, she was very patient and kind. She taught us how to make a food budget. I remember working really hard on it, it wasn't easy to feed two people on the limited amount we had in the budget. I ended up with a lot of boxed macaroni and cheese, hot dogs and things like that on the menu. I got a very good grade on it. When I got married we were on a very tight budget so we ate all those cheap foods that were on my budget menu from junior high. I don't remember being concerned about it. Not until a few years had passed and I had gained a lot of weight.

Were you taught good eating habits or have you had to develop them yourself?

Running App

I tried out a new running app this morning and I love it. It's called runkeeper. It's for the iphone and it's free, which is really great:) It gives me all the stats I wanted. It maps your run with gps and a google map, gives the distance, pace, speed, calories burned, and a cool graph at the bottom. I mostly wanted to know how far I was going and how fast. I'm still pretty slow because I run/walk, but I'm not trying to win any races so that doesn't matter. If you have an iphone it's definitely worth checking out.

http://runkeeper.com/home