Monthly Archives February 2012

Taken this morning on my 3 mile walk in West Seattle

We’ve been in one place for two whole weeks now and it feels great!  (It will be short lived though because we leave for Honolulu on Thursday).  In fact, we’re packing up as I type this….but the next  place will be for 10 days, and then after that we’ll be in Hilo, Hawaii for several months, so at least we’re done moving around for a while.

Being in one place has really helped me control what I’m eating and to start exercising regularly.  Not that it’s made a huge difference in my weight!  As you can see, I’m down just one more pound….both my husband and I are just amazed that I’m not losing more given the little I eat.

In many ways, I feel VALIDATED!!!!  For YEARS I would tell my husband, my friends, myself, that I honestly DON’T EAT THAT MUCH….and wondered if any of them believed me, including me!  But yet, I kept packing on the lbs year after year; ,mostly because I didn’t move enough and although I didn’t eat huge amounts or bags of cookies or chips or cartons of ice cream, it doesn’t take much to gain 2-3 lbs a year for 20 years.

So, since we were in one place for a while and I had more control over what went into the food I was eating, I began tracking my food and exercise intake this week.  I’m using a site called www.everydayhealth.com  It has been really helpful to me so I can see what I’m actually eating; unlike when we were traveling and eating out all the time.  This site tracks everything (calories, carbs, cholesterol, sugars, protein, fiber, vitamins, everything you need).  It’s pretty easy to use and the thing I like the best is that you can see a total summary of how you did each day in a grid and if you went over or under your target numbers.  I’ve posted one of my partial days here:

I made it to Seattle last Monday where I re-joined my husband after spending a week with my sister in California.  This is where we started our year of travel last February.  It almost seems like a dream when I think back over the last year:

We sold our home and business in Hawaii in Nov 2010, ‘semi-retired’ and put all out things in storage and decided to be ‘homeless’ for a year.  Turns out, this has been the greatest year of my life.  After being in Seattle for a few months, we drove across the US and Canada for a 6 week road trip, stayed in Boston for a month in June, then flew to Europe where we were for 6 months.  When we returned to the US in January we started our road trip back to the west coast going the southern route.  All a mix of sight seeing and seeing people in our lives.

Being in Europe was life-changing for both my husband and me.  I was having lots of hip and knee problems and feeling pretty low because I seriously felt like the shortest and fattest person in Europe!  After some long talks about my health and our relationship, we decided to do something about my weight which was getting to the point that it affected our lives.  So I had the sleeve done in the 4th month in Europe; the 9 month of our journey.  Sure didn’t plan on that when we started out!  But there is no looking back; it’s all been fantastic.

Living room of my sister’s house

I’ve been at my sister’s absolutely GORGEOUS house this past week in Brookside; an area of Stockton that is an island all its own.  Fabulous houses; golf courses and her house has to be one of the nicest.  She has such great taste and an amazing flair for decorating.  I’ve always been interested in that as well (and  in fact used to re-do condos and homes for people) but her ability is way above mine.  So interesting because we grew up in a very humble, lower middle-class environment with a mother whose talents did not run in that direction, so I have no idea where we got it from!

My sister and me – Thanksgiving 2010

My sister (6 years older) has always been petite, very pretty, and has a love of fashion.  She always looks amazing and appropriate for every situation.  She also buys expensive clothes, but she can mix them with other things and pulls it all off.  ME?  I don’t know who the designer names are since they never fit me anyway!  So I’ve always gone the cheap route for clothes and as I got heavier, I could pull NOTHING off.  Everything looked dreadful on me.  Because I had a lot of self-confidence and managed to be happy in spite of my weight, I was never jealous of her, her looks or her clothes.  I was always proud that my sister always looked so great!  There was a time or two I was mistaken for the older sister and that hurt; but I didn’t dwell on it. But you would think having a size 7 sister would have motivated me to lose weight; I would have been the best-dressed woman with just her hand-me-downs!

Seems I’m on the 1–2 pound a week weight loss plan, which is just fine with me. I’m feeling pretty good, and until I get to a place where I can have some consistency in my life in terms of eating and exercising, I think the slow weight loss is a good thing.

This week marks exactly one year since we left Hawaii on our “year of being homeless,” and it seems fitting that we ended up in San Francisco, where we lived before moving to Hawaii. It’s been a magical year, and when we left I had hoped I would lose weight over the course of the year, but I never planned on having surgery and losing almost 60 lbs!

I opted to only tell a few people. I am very happy with this decision, but there are times I feel like a bit of a fake. So many people comment on good I look – and then ask how I did it. I usually say I eat mostly protein and very few carbs (which is true), and then I also tell them I had to do something because my weight was causing so many problems with my hips, knees, and feet. (The mirror and shopping for clothes were pretty bad for my self-esteem as well!) But I have to say I feel a little twinge of guilt that I also had some major help (and support from my husband) to get me to this point.

The most interesting part about this is that I feel good at the weight I am now, even though I am still 25 lbs overweight. I can’t picture myself 25 lbs lighter. I think I will look gaunt and wrinkly, even though I am still heavier than my husband (but I’m closing in!) and heavier than many of my friends. So I’ll just take it slow and see what happens.