From Cocoon to butterfly

It has been some time since being back on here. Things have beenrough with things in life but that is normal for everyone. My biggest trouble is that I am such a addict, for r3eal. With refined flour and sugar products. I eat and eat and eat and not hungry but I keep looking for things to keep eating even when it makes me sick. I gained 20 pounds in two weeks if that tells you anything. But I was miserable and finally somebody online gave me some tough love, I needed that. Nt the soft version of , it will be alright. No the hard version. I have so far done five days and feeling good. The first day was not the greatest and a day in the middle of the week but a total of five days on plan and feeling a lot better. Today’s weigh in shows me 15 pounds down so that makes me feel so much better but also so much more ashamed. Why? Because with that kind of weight loss in five days, shows just how much I was eating and out of control.

Tomorrow will be official weigh in and feeling good about it. I want to look good for my new job, when I find one because I lost my last one, they let me go *sigh*

I am so frusterated with myself! I told my husband just to lock me in a room and feed me when I have to be fed. That would be the only way. Hate this stupid weight. Yesterday , while i was walking with my youngest daughter (she is 20 months and wants to run everywhere) a man stopped me and said, you looked really beautiful before but now you are getting fat again. Gee, thanks. But not only him but there are many others who comment about my weight. Yep, this is China. But I try not to get mad or anything because it does keep me in mind about my weight but sometimes, ok guys, I do look in the mirror everyday.

My biggest trouble, curse and fault is 72kg which is about 158.4 pounds. Why ? Because anytime I get into the 150’s, my body starts to turn against me. It seems to like that spot and fights me terribly about getting below it. No, this is not the best place for my body to be because it shows badly on my frame. I am petite and small boned and this weight doesn’t look good on me. But for whatever reason, my body like sthis weight and everytime I start to get lower, I have a fit with temptations, cravings and so on. I get to feeling tired, headache and so on until I have that bad food I really want and then boom, back up again. I have been doing this for years. Even right before I got married, I got down to 154 and then stopped. I am sick of this number and want to get below it again. Just not sure how to bypass by stupid body. Hmm, do you think they would sew my mouth shut??

well, if I was a vampire, there would have been a lot of people dead. I just lost it again and gained back the weight I lost last week. What is wrong with me. I do well for a day or two and then start to obsess about food and eventually go down in flames. I am just not committed as I need to be. So, I have a plan. I am going to get up extra early which is easy for me now since it is light earlier) and do 30 min of exercise. See how I feel and steel my mind to do or die to stay with the plan. I am still having trouble with my nights so perhaps I need to add exercise to my nights also. So, that is myh plan, I will start tomoorow with the exercise but today, eating right. I have got to stop this or I will be back where I was last year and I don’t want that! I am having more trouble fitting in my clothes and I Just feel terrible. So do or die

I miss not being able to join and eat with my family. I mean, yes, I do eat and yes, I eat with them but it isn’t the same. Today, great grandmother came and two cousins, girlfriend and brother/sis in law. So, my fil cooked a huge feast of allt he good things. I don’t mind eating my own food but I finish before anyone else. How do you deal with not being able to eat like everyone else is eating? I am sitting here on the computer now while they are all still eating. I feel that I miss out so much sometimes by having to live this kind of life (weight loss) and even when at goal, I can’t really eat like they eat. How do deal? I really don’t know. When I go to a wedding here, same thing, weddings here are mainly banquets more then anything. So, I have my own food but finished way before anyone else and have to sit and see all this delicious food going by. How to deal with it?  It isn’t like they are fat people, most chinese are thin but they do love to eat and they DO eat. I know I am not chinese and don’t have the genetics(I’m cursed!) but I am living here. I can’t just order a plate of food like in the US so it somewhat feels normal. Here, the meal is served in bowls and put int he middel. YOu have your bowl of rice and everyomne just grabs a bite here and a bite there of whatever you want to eat. Pretty much cummunial meals. So, I can’t just share with them, I can’t order a plate of whatever because they have to add oil and salt so I just sometimes feel left out. PLus, I want that meat soup so bad, sigh! But it will be worth it. Just not sure how to deal with it for life though

Well, still doing well and keeping my temptations under tight control. When I lax off, that is when I fall. Today is really rough. ONe of the reasons were because it was Saturday. For whatever reason, when my routine goes off, I can’t keep on plan  as much. Home, nobody to see what I eat (kids don’t count) and so on. Then my daughter has ballet rehersal today and I was not too happy with allt he stuff that was going on. Then she wants us to do this and do that just when I thought I had all I needed and today is a miserable day with rain, cold and so on. IT all plays into wanting to go off. Thinking that eating that food will give me a warm feeling,  Make me feel better and so on. But why is it when I am caught in the throes of cravings, I don’t remember that it makes me feel horrible, stomach feels too full and I feel trrible guilt. Strange how emotions turn us to food.

But I knew that temptation would happen and very much happen today so I kept strong. I got my attention on other things and also thought about how I would lose all that I have gained (ok, strange to say that here but true) so now I am feeling stronger and better. So, day six is almost done and I will be a weekd one by tomorrow, yeah!

I have to laugh somewhat at everyone talking about the old Rachel being back but you know what, it is true. I took less then a year and lost over 100 pounds without looking back. Then due to some things, I lost control in November and put on 30 or so pounds in just a few months. I was thinking about my feelings. When I am out of control of myself, I really do feel out of control, my whole life feels like it is in pieces. I can’t even blog analogies or anything like that but once I get my life back on track, things fall back to where they should be. I can’t say it is the easiest thing to do, goodness, who says that life is easy. Even Jesus had a bad time being human. What makes us think we will not? I have to deal with temptations every day. Goodness, I can tell you about each one at this time. But I am getting better at resisting because I know if I fall one time, it will be so much harder to get back on. Even my husband is getting back his hope again. I know he was so scared that I was going to put it all back on and yes, the fear was actually grounded. But now he sees me getting myself back together and he has hope again that I can keep doing it and keep the flow going. I want to . I hate the way I feel right now. When I look at my body, I cringe at the way it looks, when I put clothes on, I don’t feel really great about them. I want that, I look good” feeling back again and I am going to get it!

I am still running with the vampires so don’t forget that one. Edward never did bite Belle, he retain his strength throughout the whole time. It really is aobut decided it and that is it, no indecision, no backing out. I use to think that when I was tempted, that was me not decided but it isn’t. Although the Cullens made the choice to not eat people, they still were tempted. I will stell be tempted but I still make the right choices.

Well, day three is done and over and now on day four. I am feeling so good. Temptations are still there but like a child throwing tamtrums, when they know they can’t move you, well, it does get easier!  My kids cookies were smelling good but I did not let that get me. I am living my life!

I am winning. slow but steady but I am doing it. Today was rough. I did well in the morning and afternoon but late afternoon, a teacher comes to the office carrying a loaf of fresh baked pastry/bread,still warm from the oven. Ok, kill me!  Well, she was insisting I take some pieces for the kids so I put it on the desk in front of me with the tissue box between me and got busy doing some heavy thinking. I had a “wow” moment. For such a long time I have beat myself up for being weak to temptation. Every time I look and crave, I make myself feel terrible about it. But today, it was a revelation to me. It is alright to be tempted. It is normal to want to eat those things and I am not a bad person because of it, it does not make me weak. Think about the Cullens, (yes, still in the book) they are vampires and have to drink blood. Every day they have to endure the temptation. Smelling it, wanting it does not make them a bad person. It is in resisting it or not that makes or breaks. They resist it although they want it so bad. They want to live life to the fullest that they can. I have to be the same way. As I looked at the bread, yes, it smelled good but I realized that it was alright to be tempted but I can’t give in, I would be giving my life away in doing so. I am feeling so much better and lighter in spirit and in thinking. I don’t want to give that away. So, deciding that and knowing I made that decision, I did not eat the bread.

Then, I come home and my in laws have made wontons, my fav! My fil had asked if I wanted to eat my food (diet) or have wonton earlier and I told him I wanted my own veggies. Wontons are great but full of salt and fatty meat. Anyway, I came home and asked where my food was. My mil was like, hmm, father did not say anything abou thtat, grr! She then tried to convince me to eat wonton because she thinks I should not lose any  more weight. But I remained strong and said, I want to eat my veggies, thank you. So, have to wait and when it comes time to eat, there were two platters of wontons on the table just staring at me. Ack! Well, I just thought, it is alright to be tempted but it is in falling to it that is the wrong thing. So, I ate my food all the while eyeing them but I did not fall. I would not kill my happiness.
And so, I won for another day!

no, I am not a vampire hehe. But I have fallen in love with one, Edward Cullen from the Twilight series. Have read the whole series several times and still reading it. Well, the first book deals iwth temptation. Edward meets Belle for the first time and she is almost irristable to him, the smell of her blood calls to him like drugs to a drug addict. He almost can not resist. Anyway, When I was reading the book, I could see a lot of things that paralle  the journey for losing weight also and the temptations we face.

I have taken some blurbs from the book and just want to think and blog about it. If you haven’t read the book, let me explain where we are. Edward is in love with Belle but has to fight the temptaion of destroying her. He spends time with her and little by little, can deal with her more. They went to the forest one afternoon and it was very rough for him. Later that night, they spend time together and he can actually get close to her. She asked him why:

“It’s not easy. This afternoon I was still undecided. YOu see, I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough. And while there was still that possibility that I might be overcome, I was succeptable. Until I made up my mind that I was strong enough that there was no possibility at all that I would.   Mind over matter”

Think about it, he was a vampire, he had to have blood. There was no getting around that. It was something that called out to him, every day, eveyr hour, eveyr minute. We are like that. We are human, we have to eat. You can’t run away from it, you can control it but that is all. We have to control our lust also and like Edward, we have temptations. Yes, he had to drink blood but he also made a concious choice to drink Animal blood.

“Just because we’ve been dealt a certain hand…it doesn’t mean we can’t choose to rise above..to conquer the boundries of a destiny that none of us wanted”

He had to make a certain choice. He could not outrun it, he could not pretend it wasn’t there but he had to choose to rise above it. We have to choose to rise above wanting to over eat, wanting to eat bad things.  Yes, there are thin people there who never have to worry about their weight but then there is our destiny, we eat any little thing and we gain weight. That is our bodies and we did not choose it but we can choose to control how we deal with our bodies and how we will control it.

Even he admited, fighting temptation is not easy. “You see, I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough. And while there was still that possiblity that I might be overcome, I was succeptable”

We have to decide outright what we are going to do. There is no riding the fence in losing weight and keeping it off. While we don’t strongly decide what we will do, there is always that possibility, always that chance, we will fall off and gain that weight. Not even a chance, if we think about it and want to, eventually we will do it. Even Jesus said, what is in the heart of man, that he is. We are what we think. Try it one day, think about something for one day or every day for a week, in that week, you will do what you did not want to do. I have dealt and did that before. What I did not want to do, I still thought about, dreamed about , and so on. What happened, I eventually did what I did not want to do even though I really did not want to do it. If Edward did not decide exactly what he wanted, he would always be overcome, he would kill her. He knew this and we know this. Until we strongly decide what we are going to do, we will fall every time. We have to lodge it so firmly in our head that we are going to eat right and there is NO chance to fall off because we can’t. Edward could have always said, I will try but he realized, as long as he wasn’t sure, he would always face that chance.  He knew this was life and death. Yes, weight isn’t alway7s life and death but I feel it is all about life.  So, how did Edward decide he could be around his worst temptation? ” Until I made up my mind that I was strong enough that there was no possibility at all that I would (kill)” Pretty much he had to decide there there was no possibility, no chance no situation. He had stress, he had all kinds of things happen but he decided that there was no possibility that he could. I have to be like that. I have to decide, ther is no possibility that I will go off, I have to determine to fight the temptation. It will always be there, I will always have to see it but as you fight it day after day, it does get easier. It doesn’t go way and sometimes it can be stronger on some days more then others but we have to determine not to do it. It is the matter of life and death to us. Is anyone happy to be overweight? No, it makes us miserable, we don’t want to go out much, we are crabbier with others and ourselves, we kill ourselves by not being happy. When we lose weight we feel better about ourselves, we dress better, we are happier, we have life!

WE have to determine we will not succomb no matter what. Sure, we think, but I had a bad day, I did not sleep much and so on. THink about Edward. If he had a bad day, took a bite out of Belle, could he just say, oh, I had a bad day or any other excuse, no. It was a matter of life and death. So now, when I want to eat bad stuff, I have to think of it, do I really want to give up my life? Think of Belle, should I kill her or me. No, So  today is a new day and today

Rachel’–1  blood suckers-0

After my last post of those darn rolls calling me, I got beaten by them, nuts. And then I ate some fried rice on top of that and my body was not happy about it. 15 min later, on the toilet going both ways, so sick. My own fault. I think I did learn something. I was fine witht he rolls in the morning but what I should have done after everyone had eaten their fill was to wrap the rolls up and get them out os sight and smell. That was what drove me crazy because every time I had to go to the kitchen, there they were. At lunch, there they were, at supper, there they were. Any time someone is exposed too much to temptation, you will succomb every time. That is why the bible says not to handle fire because you will get burned. The solution it gives, run away as fast as you can. (new testament) That was my problem, did not run away and did not get the temptation away. The next day, the last one was calling me, I tell you those rolls have a death wish! So I wrapped it up and gave it to my husband to take to work. That did it and then no problem at all.

So, I am learning from my mistakes. But back on plan for Monday. My husband was gleeful in that he got to make more money from me being off on Sunday. Grr. Said that if I stay on plan for four days, still owe him 40, nuts! I am going to do this and make mt debt go out of the red!

Thanks for all the advice about buying lowfat things but you forget where I live. If I lived in Shanghai, perhaps I could find lowfat low cal things but here, not a thing! I am just lucky to find any western thing here at all so finding substitues is not going to happen. I think the best is to find something in the fruit or veggie catogory that will do it, just thinking but not sure.  But, on track again and working my debt off! heheh.