Day 153

Another 3 weeks have gone by since my last post. I've hit the 50 lb. mark and I'm well on my way to 60 lbs. Last Thursday was 5 months since I've started this journey to a new life. I was weighed and measured and came in at 54 lbs. and 37.75 inches lost from this body. Can you believe I've lost 3 feet of fat from my body? I can't believe it. I'm still in awe at how I've lived the last 15 years of my life just allowing myself to gain weight and not be motivated to stay healthy. I know others call it complacency, but seriously, I got a little to complacent.

So I had a goal to make it one month w/o cheating. I made it 26 days. I had a bit of a rough week this last week. First I need to go back 2 weeks and explain how things have been going in our house and how they end up impacting choices that are made. I posted last on Easter and we were supposed to try and go see Jerry's grandpa the day before Easter, but had too many other things going on so we decided to go the following Sunday. We drove to Grand Island and made plans to not only visit Grandpa Pinkman, but we were also going to eat at a place called Texas T-Bone because I had a free dinner for my birthday there. Jessica shared a meal with me and I was able to stay on plan. Then we also decided that Jessica and I had free ice cream from Coldstone Creamery for our birthdays that Jess and Jimmy would get it after we saw Grandpa.

After lunch we headed over to the assisted living facility to see Grandpa and weren't at all expecting what we saw. Chad and Jeanne had visited Grandpa the previous Saturday when we were going to visit and said that he wasn't doing well, but that he was talking with them. We got there and Grandpa was sleeping. Jerry couldn't get him to wake up. A nurse came in to check on Grandpa and Jerry asked about him not waking up. The nurse said that he hadn't slept well, and this was the best he'd been sleeping. She said he could hear everything we said, but wouldn't respond. So Jerry sat there and prayed with him, he talked to him and had the kids talk to him to let him know that we were all there. I couldn't say anything until we got ready to leave. It was too hard. Jessica after talking to Grandpa for a little bit sat on my lap in his chair and cried. It was very hard on both kids. Jimmy went and sat in another chair and just talked with us or would take Grandpa's dog Peaches out to play. She had a lot of energy.

We drove home after doing a little shopping and talked about how we felt seeing Grandpa like that. It just wasn't the same Grandpa any of us had known. The next morning Jerry got a call from his mom, Grandpa passed away the night before around 12:15 am. It's like he was waiting for us to visit and then knew it was ok to give up and be done with this life. Jerry decided that we were going to take an extra day and go help his parents with anything that needed to be done to get ready for the funeral. So I took off Thursday and Friday that week. We ended up helping clean out Grandpa's apartment, which for Jerry was just as hard as seeing him dying. We got to spend some time with his Aunt and Uncle from Aberdeen, and that was nice. Jessica even rode from Grand Island to Ord with Aunt LeAnn since Uncle Eddie rode with Jerry's dad to discuss anything that needed to be taken care of. We said it was really too bad that the only time we got to see each other was because of funerals. Thankfully, the next time we are getting together is for Danielle's wedding so that will be a happy event!! Then we found out that Jerry's cousin Brad is getting married next February so as long as the weather is nice, we'll be traveling to Aberdeen for another wedding. It's great to think that we should have all happy events now and not anymore sad ones for a long time!!

So in getting ready to go to Ord on Thursday, it seemed like we were running and constantly had things going on because Jessica's birthday was the following Saturday and after the funeral Danielle, Ross and Mackennzie were coming back with us, so my house needed to be clean and ready for company. I didn't get my meals planned, but ended up deciding to kind of wing it. So we just went to the grocery store for the food I needed and did things that way instead of me packing a cooler here. Jerry's mom rented an entire house for us to use while we were there. She didn't have room in her house for all of us. The house was very nice and then we used it for the lunch after the funeral.

On our way home from Ord we decided to go to Red Robin for supper in Lincoln because I had a coupon for a free meal for my birthday. I had gone back and forth in my mind about having their chicken tortilla soup. I knew it was off plan, but it sounded so good. We were about 20 miles out of Lincoln and I shared with Jerry and Jessica that I'd been struggling back and forth in my mind about it. Well, I decided it was worth it so I had it and then ate part of a chicken caesar wrap with Jessica. We told the waitress we were celebrating both of our birthday's and knew they would bring sundaes out. Well I told Danielle she could have mine, but when they came to sing to us and brought the ice cream, Danielle was in the bathroom changing Mackennzie so I started eating the ice cream. The next thing you knew, it was all gone. I looked at Jerry and said, it tasted really good. He said, was it worth it? I said, for now, yeah. Then he said, well I don't blame you at all for eating it. I did fine the rest of the weekend, even with Jessica having ice cream pie from Schwan's at her party.

This last week at work we were celebrating the bank being there for 100 years. We had cookies every day and then on Wednesday and Thursday we had a hot dog lunch with chips and water. On Friday we had cake to celebrate. I had done really good with staying away from the cookies Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday I gave in and ate an M&M/oatmeal cookie. It tasted good, but after I had lunch I felt sick to my stomach. I went to my weigh in and measure on Thursday night and told Robin the center manager and she laughed and said "Good, I'm glad you felt yucky!!" "That's your body's way of telling you that it's not good for you." We were laughing at how she was saying how good that was and I said I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach, and she said I kind of wish you were. LOL!! These are good things to learn and to help me get back on track and stay on track. Robin said, ok you made it this long, now get right back up there and start a new month with the goal. You will get there.

After that I have been feeling like I'm ready to be done. I don't want to be done losing weight, I'm just getting tired of eating this way and my family eats differently from me. I feel like if I wasn't so restricted in my eating that I'd be able to eat with the family and still make healthy choices. So my friend Patty said maybe to check with Robin and find out if there are any other woman who have the same goal that I've got and have made it to see how they got re-motivated part way through their weight loss. I feel like I'm really only about 1/3 of the way through this process and have way more to go to get where I want to be. I'm going to see about that on Monday or Tuesday when I weigh in.

So that's where I'm at in this journey of weight loss!! 60 lb. board here I come and hopefully 70 lb. board will be right there behind it. My goal I think for this month is that I'll be at the 70 lb. board by the end of May. I'm supposed to be at 78 1/2 lbs. by the end of the month, but I don't think that's going to happen, so I'll be content with 70, and then by the middle of June being closer to 80 lbs. Hopefully by Danielle's wedding I'll be at the 100 lb. mark. God only knows where I'll be though. Have a GREAT WEEK!!