In Which I Start My Journey to Happiness

I heard a saying on the radio today as I was driving to the store.

The three grand essentials of happiness are something to do, someone to love and something to hope for.

I think this is a pretty powerful quote. Think of the ways that it could be taken.

I could do a day:
I will be happy if I clean the bathroom, if I spend time with my best friend, and if I can hope on getting a handle on the pancreas and gallbladder lecture.

I could do a year:
I will be happy when I finish nursing school at this time next year, I will be happy being with my husband for another year, I will be happy if my hope that I can publish my book comes to fruition.

Right now I'm doing baby steps. One day at a time. Maybe I need to start an anonymous group. Though really, if you're reading this blog, you probably know me and I've already broken my anonymity. Shit.

Step 1 on the road to happiness: Attempt to schedule my life a little better so I can get the most out of my day. Perhaps if I have a calendar telling me what I need to do and when (especially when I can waste time fooling around on facebook and when I can take a crap) I will be happier.

In Which I Learn Another Valuable Lesson

When I first started losing weight, I thought that getting down to 170 pounds would solve all my problems. That I'd finally start thinking that I was beautiful, that I'd be able to wear a bikini, that I'd start being able to control myself when it comes to food.

Now two years and eighty pounds later, I realize that being skinny doesn't exactly mean that you will be happy. While it's great to be falling out of a pair of size 10 pants, I'm not necessarily any happier with myself than I was when I was in a size 20. For some reason, that self-confidence is still nonexistent and I still see the fat girl in the mirror.

I still can't wear a bikini because my stomach is all stretched out from having 2 kids and weighing 80 pounds more than I should. I can't control myself when it comes to food. especially if it's Italian food or sushi.

Now that I'm at my goal weight, I will continue to work out and attempt to make the right food choices (and stay away from Olive Garden), but I'll also start working on trying to get over my self-esteem issues. I want to see the beautiful girl that my husband tells me I am.

In Which I (Stupidly) Listen To My Best Friend

I've been in a funk recently. Between school, work, the kids, the husband, and all the studying, I'm just worn out. I've been having some problems coping with things and today when I told my best friend Dejan that I was feeling icky, he had the brilliant idea that we should go running.

Now, while I did reach my original goal of 170 lb that I had set 2 years ago when I was 250 lbs (I'm actually 166 lbs as of today), I still need to tone the flab. And I haven't worked out in a couple of weeks because of being so busy...and let's face it...I'm lazy.

However, Dejan is not. He goes to the gym almost daily (he has a schedule set up) and is way more buff than I am. He drinks his little protein shakes and eats his tuna and lentil for dinner (it smells like vomit and looks even worse) and is all into working on his fitness.

In my lapse of insanity, I agree to go with him and actually get kind of stoked about the idea of running outside. I run on a treadmill, people. In a climate controlled gym. With filtered air.

What in the hell was I thinking??

It was a beautiful day here in G-ville, temps were in the 60s, sun shining, and there was a pretty boy running in front of me with his dog that I love almost as much as my own children. I was fine...for the first 2 minutes. Then we headed up a hill.

Running outside in the hellacious Greenville allergy-inducing air killed me. I made it for about the first mile before I made my running partners slow it down, then I let Dejan talk me back into running again. He allowed me to stop so he could talk to one of the umpteen million people here in town that he knows and I tried to calm my pounding heart and soothe my aching lungs while attempting to stay in the conversation.

Then the bastard made me run again. AND he made me do stairs, insisting that the stairs would help tone my ass, which in all honesty, could use a bit of toning. And by a bit, I mean a lot. All of me needs toning.

Anywho, so we finally made it back to his house, after 3 freaking miles of running through the park, downtown, and through the historic district...and I died.


I think I look like one of those chalk drawings left behind after a hit and run.

In Which I Feel Better From Looking At Pictures

This is Fat Beckie, from March of 2008. Yuck.

This is skinny Beckie from October 2010.

WOW.

In Which I Get New Pants

These past couple of weeks have been insane with nursing school (last week was aka Hell Week), but I've maintained weight (for the most part, save for Halloween weekend, might have binged a little with my best friend being in town from Indiana), even though I haven't lost any.

I'm okay with this.

More than that, I was told by a friend (read: several friends) that my pants were getting too baggy, especially in the butt area. Now I really don't have much ass to spare and I really haven't wanted to lose it there, but whatev. Taking their words to heart, I did a thing that most women enjoy but I do not.

I went shopping.

I hate the mall. I hate shopping, unless it's for someone else or if I'm buying groceries because we all know how much I like to eat. I hate the sounds of the mall, hate the people who come up to me, wanting me to try their hand lotions or buy a cover for my craptastic cell phone. I hate dressing rooms, I hate thumbing through the plus sizes, I hate salespeople.

So with great trepidation, I walked into a store in which I will not name. I immediately walked to the plus size, then remembered that I'm not plus sized anymore before moseying over to the women's section (I swear, I only stopped at the kid's section for a little bit. My daughter needed a new shirt). So I automatically grabbed my normal size and headed to the dressing room.

They fell off.

Cheered a wee bit, I went for the next size down.

They fell off too.

Getting really excited, I tried the next size down.

They were baggy.

At this point, I was ecstatic. Dropping off the pants and tossing the shirt I'd found for the lovely one somewhere, I headed to one of those stores that has the music pounding so loud that you can't hear anything and the bags with the half-naked men on them...the one I haven't visited since having children.

When I walked in, I was half-afraid one of the teenagers working there was going to ask me what I thought I was doing there, but they just greeted me with a wave and went back to texting on their phone that's way better than mine. <--can you tell that I'm really trying to get my husband to buy me a new phone?

After grabbing a size that I haven't seen since I was eighteen, I headed to the dressing room and pulled them up, praying that I would be able to actually button them without having to suck it in too much.

OH MY GOD, they fit. I'm in a pant size that is HALF of what I was wearing 3 years ago when I started losing weight.

Happiness ensues.

In Which I Benefit From Being Sick

I have not been a good girl with my diet. Jake's birthday party was this past week and I had some of my nursing friends over for a get together. We barbecued, I made mac and cheese and potato salad...there was cake, baked beans, chips, ice cream...yeah.

And remember, Alli does not like it when Beckie takes in too many fats.

This weekend, I discovered that Beckie does not like it when Beckie takes in too many fats.

I'm not going to details, but I will say that I spent most of my Saturday sick in the bathroom.

However, I was finally able to step away from the throne and curl up in my bed to ironically read up on the digestive system and attempt not to die. I was rudely woken up this morning when my husband came home from work (he works nights) and kicked me out of bed. So I stumble into the bathroom and step on the scale like I do every morning (I'm beginning to believe that it's a compulsion) and wait to see what it tells me.

172.8 pounds.

After binging on bbq food since thursday, I had gone back up to 176.2 yesterday morning. That means that I lost 3.5 pounds in one day, thanks to my irritable bowels.

Not exactly the way that I wanted to lose it, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

In Which My Wii Fit Tells Me I'm Epic

I bought the Wii Fit awhile back...and I mean awhile. I always mean to use it, but...yeah. So since I know I've lost weight, I figured I'd go wipe the dust off the balance board and see what it told me.

Since last October, I've lost 43 pounds. This makes me happy. It also told me that I've squeaked out of the "overweight" category and am teetering on the edge of a normal BMI.



I think the game wept with happiness when it changed me from the fat Mii to the normal looking one. I did a little too.

In Which I Have Flatulence

As a nursing student, I come across some really nasty stuff. Coffee ground emesis (that's indicative of an upper GI bleed, thank you), that unique smell of someone with C. Diff, gangrenous toes (vomit), diarrhea after someone drinks CT contrast (which I had to clean up after and almost died) and weeping wounds.

I try my hardest to not gag and embarrass the patient, though I always go back and laugh about it with my fellow nursing students. Sometimes I think humor is the only way to get through nursing school.

But I digress.

After a consultation with my physician, it was suggested to me that I try Alli to get those last "20 or so pounds off", to quote the MD. Since it's FDA approved and worked for my uncle, I figured I would try it, what with being on my whole "I'm going to lose the rest of this weight or die trying" kick.

So after I drop the kiddos off at school, I head to Hell-Mart, get myself the Alli starter kit, some Slim-Fast, a pedometer, a new scale and some Crest Whitening Strips, because if I'm gonna be skinny, I want to have a beautiful white smile as well, right?

I get home, shimmy off my clothes, step on the scale and...I've only gained one pound from the last time I weighed in, so I was 178.6 this morning.

Commence happy dance.

Feeling uplifted, I drink my Slim-Fast and eat half a banana, take my Calcium supplement and the Alli pill and head to the gym. Now, being a good girl and doing what my MD said, I set the timer on the treadmill for 60 minutes, figuring that I'll do the weights for the other 30. No biggie, right?

Wrong.

So I'm happily jogging along at a fine speed of 6 mph at a 2% incline, and all of a sudden, I feel my stomach lurch. You know the feeling, don't tell me you don't. And I've got 20 minutes left on my timer for the treadmill and I'm all like, I can do this, no problem.

Then they start coming. Farts, toots, foofies, flatulence, passing gas, whatever the hell you call them. First they're the little ones that you can pass off as a squeak of your chair if you're in class, or the sound of your shoe on the floor. Then the big guns started. It was reminiscent of my grandfather after a ham and bean dinner during the holidays.

Good news is, it stopped eventually and no one was harmed in the noxious fumes.

In Which The Wagon Runs Over Me

Beckie's diet=EPIC FAIL

I don't even want to talk about it.

What I do want to talk about is that this is only a minor setback, I think. I'm going to Hell-Mart to go buy a new scale (I returned the other one, it broke...guess how THAT made me feel), buy some more Slim-Fast, fill the Halloween candy dish with apples that we picked yesterday at the orchard instead of the yummy goodness that is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (mmmmmmm) and start hitting the gym...hard.

While browsing around at Goodwill (don't judge, you know you do it too), I found 4 new pairs of workout shorts/capris (no more wardrobe malfunctions! YAY!), some tops, and the "Thighs of Steel" dvd. And a yoga one too.

Plus, I went to the doctor and he told me some bullshit about how exercising releases endorphins and so I'll both feel better physically and mentally and yadda, yadda, yadda, and then actually prescribed to me that I work out for an hour and a half five times a week, then to at least walk for a 1/2 hour those other two days.

Seriously dude???

We'll see how long this lasts. But depending on what the newest evil scale tells me tomorrow morning, I only have about 15-20 pounds left to reach my goal of 160.

If I don't reach it, it'll be time to talk to the plastic surgeon. I hear they do payment plans.

In Which I Fall Off The Wagon

Stress.

It happens to all of us, and everyone deals with it in different ways.

Me, I eat.

I do not even want to say how appalled I am over what I have gorged myself on. Let's just say that Better Cheddars, baked beans, raw cookie dough, Krispy Kremes that may or may not have been stolen by me yesterday at clinical (really, if you don't want to share them, don't leave them in the break room), Big Macs and mocha frappes somehow entered my digestive tract.

Oops.

I have vowed that I will get back on track tomorrow. Back to the land of vast amounts of water, shitty low fat cookies and to the eeeeevil elliptical.

*mad face*

In Which I Begin to Sweat...A Lot

Recently I've had some problems with hormone levels. My estrogen levels are low, my testosterone levels are high, evidenced by the ridiculous amounts of sweat, the mysterious random patches of hair in places where hair does not belong on a woman, and (I'm really sorry to any of my family reading this) an extremely increased sex drive.

These three things prove one thing: I'm turning into a man.

I of course immediately contacted my physician and was seen by the extremely attractive doctor that I have had for the past seven years. He's seen me through pap smears, well checks, UTIs, two pregnancies and now this (I think he needs a raise).

He decided that rather than put me on hormones, he wanted to try a diuretic. Those of you not familiar, a diuretic gets rid of excess fluid in the body...which I don't have, but one of the side effects is a decrease in hair growth.

How does the excess water come out?

In urine...and lots and lots of sweat.

Took first pill today and I believe I've spent more time in the bathroom today than I have spent in the past four months that we've lived here. It's like every freaking two minutes I have to pee. It's almost as bad as when I was 15 1/2 months pregnant and larger than a house with a bladder the size of a pea.

Almost.

In Which I Say Screw The Gym

It is Monday freaking morning. I hate Mondays. It means that I have to wait another week before I get to watch football again, another week until I get to spend hours with my children, and another week until I get to sleep in past five thirty.

Stupid Mondays.

I decided that I was going to skip to the gym today. There are so many reasons that I'm rationalizing in my head: I don't have any clean gym clothes, my back hurts, it's raining, my contacts aren't going in today, and I'm feeling a cold coming on. I should go to the gym because I totally binged on cookies this weekend (Keebler is the devil) but...no.

Whine, whine, whine. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

I had to get the kids to school (and of course the bus was late), and now I'm going to sit my fat ass on the couch and work before my friend comes to pick me up for class.

Someone told me I need to stop being so negative all the time. Okay, so let's try this again. I got to sleep until 5:45 this morning. I got snuggles from a baby boy. My ass is decidedly smaller, so I will sit my not-so-fat ass on the couch now. And because the bus was late, I got to see that super hot daddy putting his kid on the other bus that comes here. Om nom nom.

On that note, maybe I should go to the gym...

In Which I Do Not Die

Today was the second day of this five week period of nursing classes. For those of you who do not know me in real life, I am a first year nursing student. The school that I go to does their program in five week sections, so I have three "classes" in one semester. This means I am doing the same amount of work in one five week section as a student in a four year program does in their one semester. Doesn't exactly seem fair, eh? Oh well.

Anyway, so second day of class. Yesterday was the first, and my husband had to work, so I made the decision to wake up at 0400 to go to the gym. I was so tired when I got there that the entire workout was just half-ass. Burned about 250 calories in 45 minutes. Not bad, but not great.

Today, even though I tried, I just could not get out of the bed at 0400. So I got up at 5;30 and got the kids ready for school, then went to class myself. But class was only til noon, so I went right after class.

My treadmill was taken, but my sheer rage that came up was quickly soothed by the friendly man who was working out with me. He actually lives in the same building as I do, just on the third floor. I've seen him around, but never had the chance to really talk to him. We had a wonderful half hour of conversation while I killed myself on the e-is-for-extreme-lliptical. We discussed the weather, how much I miss New Hampshire, my kids, my school, what he did for a living before being retired, politics...it was nice to have a workout buddy. He even praised me for my workout skillz.

I love this man.

So anyway, after my new buddy finished his workout, I hit the weights (figuratively) and grunted over my now 20 reps instead of 10. I am upping the ante, as they say. 20 pounds at 20 reps for all my arm exercises, 70 pounds at 20 reps for my legs (people always comment on my fantastic calves. not exactly what I would like to be complimented on, but I'll take what I can get).

After the weights, I went to the treadmill. The treadmill and I have a love-hate relationship. I love the way I feel after I work out. I'm energized, I feel like I can take on the world, and I see the calories shedding away via that little kcal counter. However, I feel like my knees are going to fall off, that my ass might begin flapping in the wind, and when I look down I can see my thighs jiggling if I'm wearing shorts. I suppose that I just choose to look at the positive and try not to peek down at my thunder thighs.

So I get on there, and I'm doing a warm up, get bored with the 2 mph walk, bump it up to 4 mph, then get bored with that and start a jog. I don't know what mph I was running, I was too busy trying not to fall and remembering how my father taught me to breathe (in-in, out-out) that I wasn't focused on that. But I'm listening to Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart", The Veronica's Untouched, and Joan Jett's Bad Reputation and I'm running like my head is on fire and my ass is catching. Finally I look down and I see that I've done a mile...IN LESS THAN TWELVE MINUTES!!

Commence celebration. I'll wait while you do the "Beckie Happy Dance".

Granted, it was a 11:54 mile, but that's the fastest I've ever done a mile! Finally, it seems all this hard work is paying off. I did however, have a mocha frappe and a cinnamon melt with my best friend before class this morning, but I am trying to avoid the feelings of guilt I have over that.

Life is good.

In Which I Learn a Valuable Lesson

Today Dan had to work, so I went through the early morning chaos alone, which always sucks. Get the kids up, eating breakfast, get their clothes, tie their shoes, assure daughter that the reason her tummy hurts is just because she doesn't want to go to school, make sure everyone has their backpacks, clean up breakfast, fight with daughter to brush her hair, cuddle the boy who doesn't want to leave Mommy, find my keys, grab a Slim-Fast, realize that I'm naked, get dressed and throw contacts in, find sunglasses, lose keys, find iPod for workout, tie my sneakers, tear up house looking for keys, remember my phone is on the charger, then realize that the keys are in my hand all before 0645 when my daughter has to be on the bus.

An extremely organized friend of mine wants to come and organize my life because organizing makes her happy. I told her good luck.

Anyway. So after I dropped both my kids off I went to the gym. When I was hurrying to get dressed, I put on my gray yoga pants because I haven’t done laundry so all my clothes are dirty because I wanted to. In doing this, I learned some VERY VALUABLE LESSONS today during my workout.

Lesson Number 1: Girls sweat. This isn't like the movies where the skinny girls get off their treadmill and come off smelling like roses. I'm freaking drenched and no flower would ever wish to smell like I do right now.

Lesson Number 2: When you go to workout, bring a towel with you. Said sweat leaves marks on the gym equipment and then you're stuck wiping it with your shirt, hoping that no one sees you.

Lesson Number 3: Do not wear gray yoga pants to work out when you sweat like a 350 pound man because it will look like you peed your pants. Case in point...


Lesson Number 4: Even if you have been working out for over a month, this is no reason to attempt to run at an incline of 7% at 8mph. If you do, this will happen...

You will die.

Dear Mom, if you are reading this, please send some new workout shorts, maybe a tank top or two, and some clinical strength, maximum power antiperspirant. Love, your sweaty daughter.

In Which An Old Guy Tells Me I Have A Nice Ass

After yesterday's startling discovery of being less than 180 pounds, I was pumped. I figured that I had to keep it up because my goal of 165 pounds is within reaching distance. I vowed to keep on the veggie diet, to continue going to the gym and resisting the yumminess that is everything in the Publix bakery.

I was up and at 'em early, dropping the kids off at the bus stop and daycare, trying to restrain from doing the now patented 'Beckie Happy Dance' as I pulled out of my son's daycare parking lot. I went home and sucked down a Slim-Fast so as to have something to work off, fooled around on facebook, played a round of 'The Price is Right', then headed to the gym. Try as I may, I didn't make it there before 9am.

Not getting to the gym before 9am meant one thing. The office was open. One of the downsides with working out at my apartment complex gym during office hours is that the staff does periodic tours with interested residents-to-be. The other downside is that both girls who work in the office are ridiculously thin. I'd kill to have either of their bodies, though one of them has a nasty girl-stashe. Wax that crap, woman!

But I digress.

So I'm literally running my ass off on the treadmill (I'm taking a break from the elliptical) and super slender non-stashe office chick comes into the gym, giving this old guy wearing shorts and black socks pulled halfway up his calf a tour. I pull one earbud out of my ear, trying to be respectful and say hello even though Muse's Uprising is blasting out of the tiny ear piece and I'm running with a 4% incline at 6 mph. Here's what happened:

Office chick: This is our gym, which is open 24 hours a day for our residents. This is Beckie, one of our residents who is here often.

Me: Hi, how are you?

Old guy: Doing better than you, I guess. Keep it up honey, soon your thighs will be as nice as your ass.

Me: ...

Office chick: Right. So the model apartment is right this way...

Awkward much? Such is my life.

In Which I Cry In Happiness

Let's face it. I have an almost two year old son. His favorite pastimes include eating Reese's Puffs cereal ("ball cereal"--that's a whole other story that I'm going to have to clear up when he gets older. I don't want him to think it's okay to eat balls for breakfast), trashing the house, tormenting his sister and taking baths. While in the bath, his goal is to get as much water as possible out of the bathtub and onto the bathroom floor.

Alas, my digital scale was a fatality in the carnage that was leftover after one of his tsunamis.

I've been too broke to get a new one, because let's face it, it's not like I'm getting paid to do these clinicals, which really blows because I'm essentially doing the nurse's work. Let's just say that when I'm a nurse, I'll love having nursing students with me.

Anywho, so after dropping the kids off at school, I headed to Wal-Mart (aka Hell-Mart) and searched the store for a scale. Of course, my local Hell-Mart is in the middle of a remodel and the scales are no longer where they used to be. I spent fifteen minutes in the freaking store trying to find the aisle that held the bane of my existence. I finally found it in the Automotive section (WTF?!) and proceeded to be astonished by the cost of scales.

THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS FOR A FLIPPING PIECE OF CRAP SCALE?!?!?!

You've gotta be kidding me.

After pawing through the poorly marked scales, I finally found one that didn't measure my BMI and record all my weights, because let's face it, I don't really wanna know. So I get up to the register and of course, it doesn't have a scan tag on it. I waited at customer service for ten minutes so they could find another scale with a UPC on it. Grr.

So I finally get home with my scale and impulse buy of cherry chapstick, and I do the ritual of taking off all the clothes, emptying the bladder of those few precious ounces and step on the new scale of wicked. Look down and...

177.4 pounds!!!!

Oh, happy day! This means that I have lost 23 pounds (give or take) in the past seven weeks! I'm sure that I can thank the side effects of Prozac and Ativan for my weight loss (for some strange reason I got the rare weight loss compared to the more common weight gain of the meds) but I think I can give myself a pat on the back too. I mean, I've dieted, I've suffered through the SlimFast shakes in the morning, been doing the vegetarian diet for five days and not cheated once even though there is bacon in the fridge, and drank enough water to keep a camel hydrated for two years. I've fought the elliptical and treadmill every day. I think I can rejoice from this.

It's just hard not to celebrate with a Bud Light Lime and Chinese food...

In Which I Forget To Blog

Okay, so...i fail epically because i just forget that i have blogs. i go into them thinking...YES! a new thing to do, i'm so excited, let's play, blah blah blah. I had a shit load of stuff go on last week blah blah blah...but hopefully I'm back.

Well, kind of back, because I died a little today. Want to know why?



Yeah, a friend of mine sent me this picture wishing me luck on a test. Thanks to this, I promptly forgot everything I was doing...which at the time was not a good thing, seeing as how I was at the time cooking low-fat, low cal cookies. They burned because I was still sitting at my desktop drooling. I managed to save the next batch, but once I tasted them I realized that I shouldn't mourn the first batch. They were god-awful.

Sooo, my diet. It's going well. It's been five and a half weeks, and I'm down to 182 pounds, so that's 19 pounds from where I started. That's impressive. I've been pretty good about the gym, I think I might have missed one day? Two? And I'm stepping it up, both literally and psychologically. I bumped the evil-liptical to level 16 out of 25. For like...seven whole minutes. I got home an hour ago and I'm still trying to catch my breath. I thought my legs were going to fall off when I stepped off the machine. I stumbled around like a drunken monkey for a full minute, trying to get all the blood back to where it should be.

Thank God no one else was at the gym. I was able to gather my sweat while watching Grey's Anatomy in peace. I'd missed like the last season and a half of Grey's so as I'm grunting in exertion at my badass level of the elipti-satan, I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. AND...I also realized that TayLau would make an excellent Doogie Howser-like doctor on Grey's. I should have my people call his people.If I had people, they could call his, anyway.

In Which I Say "HOLY CRAP!"

Holy shitnuggets, Batman!

I started this weight loss program one month ago, and while I decided I'd do a weekly weigh-in so I wouldn't stress myself out too much, I'd kind of gone lax on it. So when I woke up today on the dreaded weigh in day, I padded into the master bathroom where the digital scale stands. Normally I cower from it. I try to not look at it, pretend it isn't there. But today, that scale was going down.

I did everything I could to make sure that I had lost weight. I did ten jumping jacks. I took off all my clothes. I made sure I didn't have to poop. Finally, I realized that I had to get on the damn scale or I was going to be late for clinical, a huge no-no in the life of a nursing student.

I stepped on the scale, eyes closed, pleading with God and any other deity that was watching that I had at least lost SOME weight. Finally, I realized that I had to look down because this scale was not going to read itself.

I lost FIFTEEN pounds! Amazing! I'm so stoked. I happy danced on the scale. It was awkward and ungraceful, and after I was done I looked around to make sure that my husband hadn't seen me, which fortunately he hadn't.

WOOT!

In Which I Don My Sweatband

For those of you who do not know, nursing school is freaking hard. I spend 25 hours a week in class or clinical, spend countless hours studying or doing care plans, and spend almost no time with my family. They tell me that it will be worth it in the end, but I think that they're lying.

Today I went to the gym after school to let off some steam, and I don't know if the gym was empty due to it being Tuesday or it was because people realized that I've been going at the same time every day and they're trying to avoid seeing my ass cheeks again. I was stoked to get fifty glorious minutes of fat-burning exercise time to myself. I didn't have to suck in my gut, hold in my grunts or stifle my gasps for breath.

It was truly liberating to don that almost forgotten sweatband I had hidden in my gym bag.

In Which I Am Thankful To Work From Home...Most Of The Time

Day ??? of my diet? The days are meshing together. Lack of food is taking over all thoughts and making me do crazy things.

You know how they always say "Don't go to the grocery store when you're hungry"? Yeah. Wanna know what is worse? Working at a grocery store for 8.5 hours scanning food items while you're dieting. I did that about this time last year. You see all this food and you're like, hmmm, chips. Ooo, sushi. OMG CAKE. By the end of the shift you're about ready to eat a roll of toilet paper and chug down some lysol just so you can have something to eat.

Now I work from home when I'm not slaving away at nursing school. While it's great because I can sit in my pajamas and work, it blows big time because it's not like I'm restricted from the refrigerator. It's right over there in my kitchen. In fact, I can see it right now. And I know that there is some french onion dip and some ruffles in that kitchen somewhere. It's taking all the willpower that I have to keep my ass firmed planted on this couch.

Taylor Lautner would be so proud of me right now.

In Which All My Muscles Explode

Anyway, so nothing really interesting happened today. I had class, and was pleased that I was able to stay awake even without chugging two mountain dews and eating a milky way. WOOT. Once I got home, it was pure insanity at the Young house until 8 pm, bedtime for the kids.

I hadn't gotten a chance to exercise, so Dan "watched" the sleeping kiddos while I went to the gym. And this time, I went sans sweatband simply because well, let's just say wearing a band that holds your sweat over your forehead doesn't exactly make you Penny Popular among the skinnies who don't sweat. Stupid whores.

So yeah, no sweatband. I'm not really sure which is better, being uncool and not having sweat in your eyes or having the sweat pour down your face and blind you. Anyway, I get on the elliptical and I'm done fooling around. I cranked that fucker up to level 12...halfway to the maximum of 25. Okay, the low side of halfway, and I had to turn it down to level 9 for about 7 minutes so I wouldn't die from a myocardial infarction, BUT...I did it for 35 minutes before turning to the other gym equipment for the first time.

My thighs are burning. My arms are groaning in protest. My abs are like, whoa...did something just happen to us? I think every one of my 656 muscles are in shock.

In Which I Have A Wardrobe Malfunction

I love my daughter. Can I just say that? She's amazing, even though she is the reason I got fat in the first place. Though I'm not really sure if I can blame an 85 pound weight gain on a 10 pound baby.

Lindsey recently came home from New Hampshire where she was visiting family, so I told her we'd have a special day for her, where she could pick what we did and what we ate. My evil daughter chose to have taco salad and Mommy's super secret special sugar cookies. Taco salad: the only kind of salad that could have 1300 calories on one plate and my cookies, which are made with two sticks of butter and smothered in buttercream frosting. FML.

So, I asked myself, WWTLD? (remember, what would Taylor Lautner do?) and I had a salad, one soft shelled taco made with ground turkey instead of beef and an apple frosted with peanut butter. WOOT.

Okay, so there is one thing I learned today. There are two words that do not belong in a gym full of people.

Wardrobe malfunction.

So, after I fed my children the cookies and effectively hyped up the two kids with ridiculous amounts of sugar, I left them bouncing off the walls under the supervision of their father and went to the gym. I had to bring clothes to change into, and I felt comfortable enough to wear shorts today. I'm not really sure if it was the 4 pounds of water weight I've taken off, or the fact that my other workout clothes were dirty and I was too lazy to wash clothes last night.

Anyway. So, I go into the bathroom and change, then hop onto the elliptical that isn't so evil anymore. We're coming to a kind of agreement, the elliptical and I. So, I've got my buds in, I'm rocking out to the Black Eyed Peas when this lady taps me on the arm. I pull out a bud and look at her, and she says quietly to me,

"Ma,am, your shorts are caught in your underpants. Your bottom is hanging out."

OMG. Instant red. I mumbled something as I adjusted myself, and after i finished my workout, I got out of there as quickly as I could.

Note to self: Never go to the gym at 1:00 ever again. I won't be able to show my face. Or my ass cheek.

In Which I Avoid The Candy

I had spent some time last night searching ‘Elliptical Machine Training for Beginners Who Are Fat’ while I noshed on my low-fat, low-calorie, low-taste organic granola bar. I was proud to show off the new skills I had learned via Goggle’s search engine to another gym rat who was also burning the calories this morning. As I attempted to discuss the merits of different levels, the bottle blond rolled her eyes at me and moved to a machine further away from me. Whatever, I thought to myself as I pushed my sweatband up my forehead and put the buds to my iPod to my ears so I could listen to ‘Mickey’ by Toni Basil. That crazy bitch just didn’t realize how cool I am. She wishes she could be as epic as me.

After the 30 minutes of torture, I stumbled into my apartment and collapsed on my couch, disregarding the fact that I was covered in a sheen of my own sweat. I pushed my falling glasses up the slope of my damp and oily nose and my eyes honed in on the smiley faced Jack O Lantern candy dish sitting on the entertainment center. Don't ask why I have a Halloween dish out in August. I can't tell you. Anyway, I quickly averted my gaze of longing and instead tried to focus on getting my breathing to a regular pace. My eyes wandered back to the candy dish. Damn that pumpkin. His smile was mocking me. I could hear the Snickers bars that I had stuffed inside three days ago calling my name.

Beckie…Beckie…

I rose from my seat, leaving a wet spot in my wake, and started to close the distance to the candy jar. I stopped myself and thought “I don’t need this. Hmm. I wonder, what would TayLau do?” So instead of eating a candy dish full of Snickers, I drank a half gallon of water, did some karate kicks, injured myself while trying to stand on my hands, and watched his New Moon preview, so I could get some hints on how to brag about my 30 pound weight difference.

In Which the Elliptical Kills Me

SlimFast has been purchased. Celery stalks have been washed and precut. Gallons of water are ready for the drinking. I went to the gym at my apartment complex and stood my tech-tarded ass there for about five minutes, overwhelmed by the machines and all their buttons. After giving myself a mental peptalk, I made myself put on my size 5 (all right, all right, my size 7) big girl panties and stepped on the “low impact” elliptical.

“Start moving for Quick Start,” it said. More like “Start moving to commence death.” About 3 minutes in I wondered why exactly I was doing this, because no sane person would put herself through this. Decided “screw this” and flipped open my cell for the Wok and Roll Chinese takeout that is my speed dial 7, wondering if I could time I just right to arrive home as the food arrived. As I flipped open the phone, I rested my eyes on a picture of a certain half-naked eighteen year old that I have as my wallpaper background. This induced fantasies involving said eighteen year old and I lost myself for a moment, causing myself to fall off the satanic elliptical.

I regained my composure, set the machine to an acceptable setting and went on. Sweat poured down my determined face, pit stains marked my shirt, but I continued on, until my thighs had created so much friction that a small fire had started in the crotch of my pants. As I put the fire out with my Life is Good water bottle and took a swig of the remaining aqua, I checked my workout summary, pleased to see I had endured 30 minutes of fat burning and heart attack inducing exercise.

Headed home to shower off, was tempted by unsupportive husband by the three evils Cs: Chinese, Chocolate and Chicken Fried Chicken. Was able to overcome temptation, so all in all, I chalked the day up to a success.

In Which I Decide To Stop Being A Fatty McFatty

Thanks to having two children, mad cooking skillz and being a nursing student with no time to cook, I may or may not have gained a lot of freaking weight since the age of eighteen. It's now seven years later and I am still carrying around this crazy nasty weight.

I make myself sick.

After looking in the mirror today while I was naked and choking back the vomit, I realized that I have got to lose some weight because this is just ridiculous. Some weight being like about 30 pounds, give or take. If I lose 2 pounds a week, I can reach my goal in time for New Year's Eve-ish. The decision was made. Join me in my journey out of stretchy pants and into some pants with writing on the butt, because I’ve always been too scared of my fat ass to wear them.