Drinking Pop and Blood Sugar (aka NSV)

I haven't had a drink of pop (soda?) since December 31, 2011.  Even though I have been going through a rough time trying to stay healthy over the past month or so, I have not given in and still haven't had any pop.  After calculating that I eat over 30 pounds (yes, I said POUNDS) of sugar per year just in pop alone, I knew giving it up was the right decision.

I can't lie.  It really hasn't been easy.  I figured by now I wouldn't even want to drink it and, for the most part, I don't.  Sometimes, though, when I eat certain foods, it always triggers a craving for a certain sweet carbonated beverage.

I feel like I have been gaining and losing the same 20 pounds for the past year and a half, but I am starting to see some benefits to cutting out the large amount of sugar I used to get from drinking pop.  My blood sugar has gone down dramatically.

Sugar has always been my weakness.  On my path to becoming 294 pounds, I ate a lot of sugar.  About a year ago, I started worrying about my blood sugar.  I have a family history of diabetes and knew that I was eating myself into the disease.  I bought a blood sugar monitor and starting testing my blood sugar every so often.  Not surprisingly, it wasn't great.  I didn't have levels high enough to be called diabetic, but my blood sugar was definitely in the pre-diabetic range.

I haven't cut out sugar completely, but just cutting out pop has taken me from pre-diabetic to completely normal.  Not only is my blood sugar now completely normal, it's not even the high side of normal.  It's normal normal.

I know I'm making positive changes in my life and becoming healthier.  I just need to put everything together to finally lose this weight once and for all.

Being Perfect

I know, I know.  I went missing for a couple of weeks.  We all know what that means.  I've been being a bad, unhealthy person and just couldn't face my blogging buddies.

I've been scale-less for a couple of weeks, so my brain decided that that meant I could eat whatever I wanted.  If I couldn't see the number on the scale, it couldn't possibly be going up.  Right?  Well, I got a fancy new scale and the number definitely did go up.  I'm not sure if this scale just weighs me heavier or if I've really gained quite a bit of weight in the last couple of weeks.  Either way, it doesn't matter now.  I need to get back on track right away.


I start every day intending to be healthy.  I tell myself that I'm going to eat several small meals throughout the day and work out.  If anything at all happens to derail my plan, I decide that today was a bust and I can start over tomorrow.  I HAVE to stop doing this.  I don't have to be perfect every day.  I just need to do my best every day.  I know that staying consistent with healthy eating and exercise is the key.  I really struggle with finding a balance between completely giving up on myself and having to be perfect.  I've fought this battle with myself in all areas of my life since I was just a little kid.  I've always felt pressure to be perfect and have never felt good enough no matter how great my accomplishments are.  I am going to try to let go of all the pressure that I put on myself to be healthy, to be perfect, to make it look easy.  I'm going to try to relax this week and just try to keep moving forward no matter what gets thrown at me.

 
My brother decided that he wants to get healthy and lose weight, so now I am even more motivated to continue on.  We are doing a 6-week competition to see who can lose the highest percentage of weight loss.  I am determined to beat him, so I am back on track as of today.  I'm excited to see how much progress I can make in the next six weeks!

So here is the embarrassing weigh-in.  I think I was around 267 or 268 a few weeks ago.  Today I weighed in at 277.6.  Yuck!  I am ready for a much smaller number on the scale next Sunday.