Izzy Grandfather on her Mother's side as died. So as a reseult she is flying into town. He was 77 years old. She said he was a heavy smoker and this is the same with my father.. so with any luck mine will live to be nearly 80 years of age.

I have no idea if I should even try to see Izzy while she is here visiting. I think at this point I might just let her ask to see me if that's what she wants. It's not that I don't want to see her I know this visit might be a little different than most.

I am debating on sending a card or flowers to Izzy and or her family.. We shall see what I decide in the next day or so. I feel like Izzy's Mom is becoming a little more used to me exsisting in Izzy's life. I only say that cause she "likes" some of my comments.. so that's all I have to go by.

Sorry.. I haven't been blogging.. I just havent been in the mood. I been still working on counting calories and working out.

I have entered a weight loss competition so we will see how that ends in six weeks. I don't expect to win but it is motivating me to keep working out thru this horrible winter. I will post pictures soon.

Only one person wants to exchange Christmas cards?? Where is the Christmas spirit? Well, anyways, I am going to try to get a good picture of us really soon for our picture for our Christmas cards. I am starting to decorate a little even though we don't have much in the line of directions and suck at this whole holiday thing. We don't really have a lot of family traditions anymore.

One tradition is breakfast with Santa. I think we went once or twice. I forgot. I am calling it one. We go for that this coming up weekend. Something new I am going to start is a Christmas eve box with new pj's, a Christmas movie and a snack.

So anyone else want to exchange cards??

Christmas

I would like to steal an idea about an Christmas card exchange that I have participated in with the last two years. You can read about it here.

I would like to do the same. I don't get many Christmas cards and thought it would be fun to have some to display. I would like to limit this to the first 20 people who are interested. Leave me a comment if your interested with your address and an way so I can get you my address. I will put my comment moderation back on so no ones address will be seen.

Reunion and weight loss part two

My relationship with Izzy has impacted my weight loss in many ways and overall has changed my outlook on life.

I used to have really bad self esteem. It wasn't just weight related. I thought I was very ugly. I really didn't like anything about myself.
When I spotted pictures of my daughter and later met her it became hard to really think of myself as ugly since we looked so much alike.


I espeially hated getting my picture taken with my hair up cause I had an ugly face. I still rather have my hair down but now I can see my nice features and not think ill of myself. I always thought I had a horrible smile. Sometimes, I still do think that my smile sucks when posing for pictures.

I think Izzy sometimes has that same weird expression on her face and I love it.

My self worth as a person and Mother has improved quite a bit. I had taken the rejection of my letters and contact of Izzy's parents and had become to believe that I was worthless. I never believed I didn't deserve to know my daughter but it was all about me. What she could give me and not what I could give her cause I had nothing to offer since I was worthless.

Being in a relationship with Izzy at times was hard. I wanted EVERYTHING now!! I had to learn to accept what she had to offer on her timing. I threw myself into volunteering for MELD and the nusery and also Zumba.



The picture above was my first zumbathon. I was pretty new to zumba and also overcame a huge hurdle by going to the zumbathon at the school that I was attending when I was in labor and went thru the remaining of the year denying my daughter. It was the beginning of the secret and shame. Going back was huge to me and was in some ways.. saying I came out alive. The memories are there but don't haunt me anymore.

I think the biggest area of impact having Izzy in my life was getting off the day to day emotional roller coaster of not knowing about my daughter, being sad cause I don't know, being pissed cause I don't know and being angry cause no one seems to care or understand.

I slowly started being able to share my reunion story with friends and some family and didn't feel the need to eat to sooth my aching heart. I am not perfect. I still like the taste of cookies and candy too much. I still feel the urge to eat sometimes when stressed. So I still need to remember to behave myself.

I think the most important part of my weight loss has been getting a better handle on my emotional health and I started living again.



Above is a picture of me with my two sons on my birthday. I seen Izzy that day too. It was a nice birthday.



Above is a picture of my and my sons showing I still eat ice cream!! Yum!!



Above is my most recent picture of me at 80lbs down. I believe at the moment I am just aiming for ten more pounds off. If I can make it then I will have gone from 272 lbs to about 180lbs! I went from a size 20 and as of right now some 8's fit me. I would like to get most 8's to fit me so I can wear the clothes that I bought blindly cause they were on sale.

I admit that if I don't lose the next ten lbs I will probably still be happy. I have come a long way and I can't forget that. The important thing is to not go backwards and put the weight back on.

I honestly don't know if I could have just picked this lifestyle up before reunion. I used food for comfort and used lots of it.

Being in the right spot and frame of mind for weight loss... reunion and weight loss part one

I have spent the majority of my adult life overweight. I can't pinpoint a time where I was a normal weight. I would say that it was probably before Izzy was born. I know I did slim down a little bit after her birth.. but then in 1994 just three years later I had my son Alex and from then on for the majority of the time I was big.

I went thru different stages of being fat and okay with it and being fat and crying because I didn't want to be fat. I feared my husband at the time didn'nt love me the way that I was. I always imagined he loved skinny woman. I won't get into why I felt this way.

My highest non pregnancy weight I believe was 272lbs. It seemed like this is where my body was comfortable sitting. Sometimes, it's easy to fool yourself and just say well... at least I am not gaining weight. The picture above isn't from my first marriage cause I don't have too many digital forms of that. Before the 272 lbs.. my comfortable spot was probably 250lbs... at least I am not gaining... see how that works right?

I am at 80lbs lost as of right now. but this isn't my first attempt to lose weight. In the picture below I had lost 50lbs with the help of a diet place. My husband (ex now) were friends with an couple and they told me how she had lost weight using them.

I am unsure of how much I actually weighed here. So I am unsure if I am over this or under this. I just know that I was under 200lbs in this picture.

I can't really pin point when I gained the 50 plus pounds.. I believe it was after I got with my second husband. I lost my gym membership. Even with paying someone to help me lose weight.. I don't think I ever really learned the ins and out of the amound of calories in food or did I deal with my emotional eating.

I believed my weight got out of hand due to a few reasons.. One being out of hand food portions.. 2 being emotional eating when sad, mad ect... 3 being too much take out food.. sort of goes hand and hand with 1 and 2 though.

I did a lot of secret eating like eating fast food on the way to work or stopping for a soda and my friend little Debbie. I was never in the excess of like getting more food than one person could eat or like buying a whole box of my friends but in addition to all my other food it was all over and above the food that I needed to eat.

I always felt rotten after eating McDonald's on the way to work and then dinner too or eating one of my friends that we are not all that little. I never knew the calorie counts but knew it couldn't always be good. I would always tell myself tomorrow is the day that I will quit driving thru the drive thru and get buying the Little Debbies in hiding.

But tomorrow kept geting put off until tomorrow and I was feeling horrible. I wasn't happy. But at the same time.. I felt like my husband pissed me off I deserve McDonald's to make me feel better.. or I miss Izzy and he pissed me off... now I deserve burger king for my breakfast after my breakfast and don't forget my pop tarts that I get everyday before my 24 hour shift..

I am still a work in process. Work still makes me feel like I need something to treat myself for the job I do. At times.. I still want sweets cause I like them. I will finish this post up another day cause it's getting too long. I will try to focus more on how reunion has helped shaped my weight loss.

80lbs lost!!!

I did it!!! I hit 80.2lbs lost as of this morning!!! Soon will post a reunion and weight loss post combined!!

Upcoming Holidays

I been thinking about the holidays. Thanksgiving has been cancled due to work on both my husband and mines job. It sort of depressed me. Why does money have to be so important to rule? Most likely I won't work much of my 12 hours but get paid for it. So I can't plan an holiday around what can or might not happen. I have asked my son's Dad if he would like him for the holiday and said he said yes.

I did make arrangements to have Stephen with me on the Sunday my chuch does a Thanksgiving dinner so that will be our holiday.

I been thinking about wondering how the first Christmas without Alex at home will play out? Will he get some time off and want to spend some tme at home? Will I be able to have sometime off? Will he just come in for the holiday.

I have discovered a couple ideas for Christmas gifts that I am thinking of trying to do for new Christmas traditions.

One was a Christmas eve box. It had new pj's, a Christmas movie and some snacks for the movie. I love this idea but not sure if I will have Stephen home or not so the divorce sort of robs me out of some Christmas traditions. We normally do one has Christmas even and part of Christmas day ( mostly goes to the other parent pretty early in the morning) We don't really keep track of who had what part of the holiday but more so goes about who has what going on.

Today, I read about a Mom making Christmas not so bucy with commitments of parties ect. We don't normally have too big of an issue there.. but another thing they did to save from overspending was to tell the kids to give them ideas on four gifts.. what they want, what they can wear and what they can read?

I love that idea. I am not sure I would stick excactly to that but would love to tone my spending down and get close to it.

I don't know if my little sister will come home or not from school. I thought up the idea of her and I baking lots of Christmas cookies and gifting them to our family so she doesn't feel guilty about not having money for gifts. She loves to buy gifts and doesn't have a job due to going to school right now.