Manage My Muffin Top Monday

Not much new to report on the fight to banish my back fat. I've not lost any more weight lately, nor have I gained it. I've also not really been following any type of eating plan or fitness regime in quite a while.

I did begin eating all raw foods at the beginning of September but finances have been really tight lately and eating pretty much nothing but fruits and veggies can get really really expensive so Matthew and I are thinking maybe the best thing for us right now is to focus on a primarily vegetarian diet and incorporate as many fruits and vegetable as we can.

The main difference with this is, we'll be able to buy a box of whole grain pasta, some marinara, and veggie crumbles that will make an entire "cooked" dinner and have left overs for lunch the next day for less than $10, verses spending $20 on lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc that will only make about one meal for each of us.

I am also going to be starting work with a personal trainer soon, so hopefully that will kick start my butt back into a regular and continuous exercise routine that I'll stick with for years to come.

I know that even with Hypothyroid and PCOS, which both cause me to put on weight really easily, exercising WILL work to take the weight off. It takes time and comes off slowly but it does come off. I just have to dig deep and find the discipline to drag my ass off the couch, but I have faith that having someone else to push me will be just the kick in the tush I need.

So look forward to more exciting and productive updates to come.. along with some probable cursing and complaining about being made to work out when I'd rather sit on the sofa and watch Smallville.

Until next time...

Eat healthy and be happy!

Manage My Muffin Top Monday

Saturday Matthew and I went to MS to spend the day visiting with my nieces and get a fitting from my mom for our costumes for the Renaissance Faire in November.

We ate pizza at my sisters.

We ate McDonald's on the drive home back to Mobile.

I think you can see where this is going.

We're doing a fine balancing act between eating really healthy, and eating really un-healthy. We've not completely fallen off the wagon, but we can't seem to get back completely on it either.

Maybe this, just like everything else in my life, is something I need to try and find balance in. Being obsessive compulsive means things usually have to be all or nothing for me, but I'm finding that life rarely works that way and some times.... whether you like it or not.... you have to live in shades of grey.

Hodge Podge

I've said it once and I'm apparently in need of saying it again.

I've been a bad bad blogger.

I realized yesterday that I've not really blogged much lately, and what I have blogged has mostly been the Operation Muffin Top(ple) stuff - re my attempts and failures at losing weight.

There's been a lot going on in my life and I suppose the reason I've not blogged about it is because blogging is kind of like my journal. If I don't write it in my journal (blog about it) then it's not really an issue and I don't have to deal with it.

But you can only escape life for so long so this is going to be a mish mash of catching up on everything that's been going on.

~> Operation Muffin Top(ple)/Raw Diet update - not much to report on this end. Matthew and I totally fell off the wagon last weekend. We had Mexican Friday night, which wouldn't be terribly bad except we ate as much as we would have several weeks ago and that "full" feeling left us feeling sick. Then we had Wendy's Sat and Sunday evening. I realized that your body quickly adapts to eating healthily and quickly lets you know it doesn't like it when you convert back to eating junk, so I had granola cereal with rice milk this morning and am currently eating a lunch of grapes, strawberries, carrots and celery with peanut butter.

~> Family - Nothing terribly exciting on this front either. My mom is currenly sewing costumes for Matthew and I for the upcoming Renaissance Faire in November. It will be the first either of us have gone to and we're pretty excited. My dress is the one on the left in the picture. I'm using different color material though so it will look slightly different.

Matthew's costume is a combination of a few patterns but basically he'll look a little like Aragon in Lord of the Rings. He'll have a tunic, jerkin, wrist cuffs, trousers and boots. Maybe a cape, we'll see.

The nieces are good as always. Paisley is growing so fast and looking more beautiful each time I see her and Marley is still smart as a whip and full of more energy than any one child should have. We're going to MS Friday night to stay over and visit with the girls and check out the progress on our costumes.

~> Kitties - Back in July a stray cat wandered up on the porch of our apartment building and kind of adopted Matthew and me. Against my better judgment we ended up taking her in and she ended up being pregnant. Now we have four 5-week old kittens running amock in the apartment. They've just started eating hard food and are learning to use the litter box. Some of them are doing well with both, some prefer the floor to the box and leave us lovely little piddle puddle surprises to find.

I'm not a cat person. I've never been a cat person and I'm not likely to ever become a cat person. When I lived in Michigan I got talked into adopting two kittens from a lady I went to church with and while I loved those kitties dearly, the stress of dealing with cat hair and scattered litter ended up turning my boys into more of a stress than a joy and I re-homed them both to the same lady. They now live terribly spoiled lives in the lap of kitty luxury.

Matthew wants to keep one of the kittens. I do not. Since bringing in Scathath (the stray) I've pretty much stressed non-stop about the little she spreads everywhere, the smell her poo leaves lingering throughout the apartment (even after scooping!), how she scatters her food all over the kitchen floor when she eats, and the massive amounts of dust and cat hair that seem to be everywhere now. Not to mention the new holes she's put in my leather furniture.

When a pet brings more stress into a home than joy then it's not a good idea to have it. So, as sad as it makes him, Matthew has agreed that it's best to put the mom and all 4 kitties up for adoption. Next week they'll be 6 weeks old and we're taking them to the no-kill shelter.

~> Matthew - now we get to the crux of my blogging avoidance. Not Matthew himself, he's still as wonderful as ever. I mean the guy will go to Dollar Tree with me just so I can play.
The problem is with me. If you've read my blog for any length of time you'll recall that aside from Matthew, I've only ever been in one relationship. From the age of 25-28 I was with the man who I thought I'd spend the rest of my life with. We were engaged. Twice. In the end he didn't want to grow up and I didn't want to spend my life raising a grown man so we parted ways.

For the next 5 years I was single. And when I say single I mean SINGLE. No dating, no flirting, no casual sexual encounters. Other than family and co-workers there was absolutely zero male interaction in my life. Last year around July I decided to change that and for the very first time in my 32 years, entered the world of dating. It was a combination of being tired of being alone, and sick of hearing my family ask me when I was going to 'find a good man' that finally prodded me into signing up on a couple of online dating sites. I chatted with a few guys here and there, but none struck my interest enough to actually meet until PT. Long story short, he was young, flirted well, I fell for it, got hurt and he moved to Japan. If you want the long story long - well you can read all about it here.

While the PT debacle was going on I met Matthew. He'd messaged me on OKCupid and seemed like a nice enough guy, if not someone I'd be into dating. We met, went out here and there as friends, but as time went by I found myself wondering what it would be like to be more. Cut to today - we live together and are going to be celebrating our six month anniversary on the 22nd of this month - next Tuesday.

I really can't say enough good things about this man. He's changed my life in ways I didn't know possible. I've become a better, stronger woman as a result of his love and support and for the first time in years started believing dreams were more than just things that disturbed your sleep at night. He's kind, hellishly smart and makes me laugh at least once a day. So what's the problem?

Like I said before - the problem is me. Matthew loves me, and has recently admitted that not only does he love me, but he is falling in love with me. He's asked me my ring size and recently talked about the idea of buying a home together in the future. He treats me better than anyone I've ever known and truly loves and accepts me for who I am. And although it's not as often as I'd like we have a fairly fantastic sex life. Yet in spite of all that I find myself wondering if he's the one. I find myself alternating between feelings of romantic love for him, and the love you'd have for a best friend. I find myself wondering what it would be like to flirt back with guys who flirt with me. I find myself knowing that I love him with all my heart, but being unsure that I'll ever fall in love with him.

We've talked about all of this at length, repeatedly, and of course as with every thing else, he's been wonderful and understanding. He says they're all normal feelings and that I'm only having such a hard time with them is because the one and only other relationship I've ever been in was about as far from normal and healthy as you can get so I don't realize that what I'm feeling is what all people feel when in a new relationship.

When I was with my ex-fiance he was my world. I never had any doubt what-so-ever that I loved him, was in love with him and wanted to be with him forever. I never so much as looked at other guys, much less wondered what it would be like to go on a date with someone else. I was also young and naive, and he was incredibly manipulative. I loved the person I saw on the inside, the person I saw that he could be, were he to actually try and he knew how to take that love and use it to his advantage. He knew how to cater to my insecurities, then use them to keep me under heel. Matthew thinks I was in a word, brain washed. Not like the 'I'm going to kill myself in a mass suicide because God is coming soon' brain washed, but manipulated to the point that I didn't realize things were supposed to be a different way. I don't completely discount that theory, but even knowing how much I let him break me down part of me still would like to think I was strong enough to have known what I was doing and had done so willingly.

So this is where I am - wondering if I'm staying with Matthew because I love what we have and don't want to be alone again, or because I actually love him in the way I'm supposed to. Fearing that I'm hanging on to something I know isn't right to avoid hurting us both and possibly losing the best friend I've ever had, yet afraid to break up because part of me thinks it might just all be my over-active imagination analyzing things into the ground that need no analyzing and that as soon as I end it, I'll realize I truly am in love and then it will be too late.


There are things that I want in a relationship that we don't have, but I don't know if those things are really important. I love music and dancing. Matthew likes music and is so white Carlton from Fresh Prince could learn a thing or two from him. I LOVE sports and going to ball games. Matthew loves sports but only goes to the game because he knows I enjoy it. We have interests that are the same but there are things I'm passionate about that just really aren't his thing and vice verse. He says it's normal, that you don't have to have everything in common, and I partly agree, but the person you spend your life with should be able to understand your deepest passions because they share them too.

Have you ever gone to an event with someone who only went because you asked, then spent the entire time not having as much fun as you could have because you knew they didn't really care to be there? That's the stuff I'm talking about - to know that I'll never dance with the man I love - fluidly - or never have him sit next to me at a game and cheer along with me are things that I'm not sure I can do without. They may seem like small things, but if you're with someone who shares your passion for something, imagine how it would be if they didn't. Imagine how your joy would be tainted because you can't share something you love with the person you love most - because they love it too.

Then there's the other guys thing. Last night we went out to eat and there were two guys in a truck next to us that were trying to flirt with me, and they were cute. Matthew is sitting next to me in the car but some part of me still wished I could have flirted back. Then when we got to the restaurant our waiter was really cute and part of my brain thought 'if I were with someone else I could flirt with him'. Matthew says it's normal to still think other people are attractive - what matters is whether or not you act on it. I think if you're with the person you're supposed to be with the temptation shouldn't even be there. So it makes me wonder.. is it really normal.. or am I with someone who should really just be a friend?

I'm pretty sure I've lost the smooth subject to subject transition this post started out with, but it's just really been something that's been weighing heavily on my heart and mind for some time now and I'm honestly at a loss as to what to do. I told Matthew that I'd give us time to see how things went and I still plan on doing that, but I thought having made a decision on what to do would take away the anxiety of not knowing what to do and it hasn't.

And that he's being so incredibly patient and understanding about all of this makes me feel even worse. He knows he loves me. He knows he wants to be with me. He knows I'm the one he wants. And I'm basically taking all of that love and telling him I'm not sure it's enough. It's not fair to him and I hate it, but I don't know what else to do. So if you've ever been in a situation like this please comment. No matter how your situation turned out or what decision you made, just knowing that this really is all normal and I'm not just a freak who has no idea how to be in a relationship would be a huge relief.

Until next time...

Manage My Muffin Top Monday - Week 1 Raw Food Recap

Sunday marked one week since Matthew and I decided to try out an all (90%) raw food diet and I can honestly say I've had some seriously positive results.

We weighed and measured outselves Sunday morning and decided to re-weigh, measure every Sunday to chart our progress and in the past week I've lost 5lbs. That puts me at a total weight loss of 13 pounds since June, when I started actively trying to lose weight. I'd lost 17 pounds on the first round of Operation Muffin Top(ple) then gained 9 of those back. So with the 5 I lost last week I'm 3 pounds short of the original 17 pounds I'd lost at the start of my weight loss adventure. I've also lost half an inch on my waist in the last week!

Other positives on the raw food diet -

~> I no longer feel full or bloated after eating

~> My body tells me when it's had enough so I don't eat until I feel uncomfortable, I just eat until I feel done eating

~> I'm not starving again a few hours after I eat, which happened often with cooked foods.

~> I've been sleeping like a ROCK, which is possibly a combination of the new diet and this stress tamer tea Matthew bought, that we've started drinking a hot cup of each night before bed. Either way, it's a new improvement that I'm super happy about.

~> This one is gross, but my eliminations are softer and less frequent. For as long as I can remember I've been the poster child for regularity. 3 times a day every day, morning, noon and night. I don't know about you but I just really hate going poo, there's simply nothing enjoyable about the experience. SO being able to go less but not feel backed up is just wonderful to me.

We've been trying to figure out exactly how we want to structure our new eating lifestyle and are bouncing back and forth between all raw, with the exception of fish and brown rice, or just vegetarian with limited cooked foods and I can't speak for Matthew but I had an experience this weekend that pretty much cinched it for me.

Sunday afternoon we were out running errands and decided to go to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. I had a taco salad - beans, rice, lettuce, tomato and cheese in a crispy fried flour bowl, and Matthew had a tostada, bean burrito and cheese fajita. All vegetarian friendly except for the cheese - well depending on what kind of vegetarian you are that is - and mostly all raw except for the beans, rice and tortillas, none of which are technically *bad* for you.

The food was fantastic and we stopped eating once we started getting that full feeling, but within minutes of finishing our meal we both felt like crap. Our stomachs felt heavy and bloated and I felt almost instantly fatigued and achy all over. I honestly didn't think eating some rice, beans and a flour tortilla shell would be that bad, but it seems my body adapted really quickly to all fresh raw food and did not like detouring back into it's previous style of eating. Seafood seems to be the one exception my stomach is willing to make to the cooked rule and we had some FABULOUS pre-seasoned boiled shrimp from Winn-Dixie yesterday for lunch.

My next goal is to get a food dehydrator so I can start making some of the incredible looking raw food recipes I've found online. For those of you who are all "OMG I couldn't live without bread, or chips".. well you can make those things yourself with the dehydrator and they're not "cooked" enough to leach out the nutrients and enzymes you get from eating them raw. I found a recipe for home made corn chips and salsa that I can't wait to try!

As for expenses - eating raw really hasn't cost any more than the way we used to eat. Yea fruits and vegetables are expensive, but if that's basically all you're buying then you still have the money you would be spending on meat, bread, and other processed foods so it really kind of evens out.

All this talk about food has made me hungry and it's lunch time so I'm going to eat!

Until next week... Eat Healthy and be Happy!

Manage my Muffin Top Monday - You are not the Biggest Loser

It's been 3 weeks since I've blogged and I wish I could say the reason I've not written in so long is because life has just been so full of exciting and wonderful events that I haven't had time, but the truth of the matter is I've just been in a funk I can't seem to pull myself out of. But I've decided to put forth the effort to try and snap out of it and update you wonderful guys and gals on what's been happening in my life lately.

I finally got tired of not knowing and e-mailed one of the casting directors for The Biggest Loser to see if I could get an update and I got the following reply e-mail.

Mollie,

Thank you so much for opening up to our casting team and sharing so much of your life with us. Unfortunately, you were not selected as a finalist for season 9. As you know, in the end the network has the final say in selecting the finalists and cast members.

I encourage you to lose the weight on your own. You CAN do it!!

Thank you for the time you have spent during this process and for all your hard work. We truly appreciate it and wish you the best.

Warm Regards,
Angelic & The Biggest Loser Crew

I can honestly say that I'm not really upset about not getting picked. When I first started the audition process I was excited, anxious and a little nervous, but as time went by the thrill of possibly being on TV waned. Life took over and the idea of being away from Matthew and not seeing my nieces for possibly 4 months made the idea of being on the show less and less appealing, and four months is how long I'd be gone for filming if I made it to the end of the show.

So I'm not really bummed or upset about not being chosen. As for why I didn't get picked.. well they don't tell you that but my best guess would be because I auditioned as an individual and this season's show is for couples. They tell you to audition anyway even if you don't have a friend or family member to try out with you, so maybe they didn't come across another individual they though I'd make a good partner with. Who knows. It was an interesting experience any way.

I kind of wish I was more sad about it though... that would be preferable to this damn apathetic ditch I've somehow managed to fall into.

As for my progress on the weight loss front - I won't tell you what I do weigh but I wills say that I've managed to gain back 10 of the 17 pounds I'd lost in the first round of Operation Muffin Top(ple). I got really sick with some kind of virus on steroids a few weeks ago and just haven't felt like doing much of anything but eating comfort food. So there's been a lot of pizza and ice cream in my house the past few weeks.

All that changed this weekend though. Matthew and I were watching a show on Discovery last week and they were talking to people who were on different kind of extreme diets. There was a couple who lived on the CR Way - CR being calorie restriction. I know, extreme right? Then there was a lady who called herself a freegan, which means she dumpster dived outside of restaurants and grocery stores for all of her food. Sounds disgusting but you'd be surprised at some of the perfectly fine, unused, unopened, unexpired food she found. I don't remember what the third person's diet was but the last one was a raw foodist.

They lived and ate this way full time though so diet isn't really the right word, but one of the people they interviewed caught our eye so after talking about it and doing some research we've decided to convert to an all raw food diet.

By 'all' I mean about 95 percent, and by 'raw' well I mean exactly that - food that hasn't been cooked. Now we're not going to go all crazy and start tearing into raw slabs of beef or chicken. Fish is the only 'meat' we're keeping in our diet and we've decided that even cooked fish is something that really just can't be bad for you, although we will include sushi as well. But other than the fish, and brown rice, which is something else I like too much to give up, we're basically going to eat nothing but raw fruits and veggies. We'll also have legumes (beans) and granola as well as nuts and seeds.

It sounds extreme but the research I did makes sense to me. Cooking food alters the chemical make up and lessens the nutrients you receive from the food you eat. One of the articles I read used this analogy -

Fire kills. What has ever been increased or made 'more' by setting it to flame? If you set your house on fire does it get bigger? Better? No. It's destroyed. Heating food kills it. Period. It really is that simple. So what sense does it make to try and support and sustain a living vessel (your body) by putting dead things in it? It doesn't.

The other thing I read that stood out to me talked about the evolution of man. Animals, plants, every living organism on the planet except for humans live off of raw food in their natural habitat. Tigers don't toss their prey over an open flame before digging in. And as a human I just really can't imagine myself tearing through the woods and taking down an animal to rip it's neck out with my teeth. We're just not built that way.. and we're not built that way for a reason. We're really not meant to eat meat.

As we evolved and people got more curious (and lazy) we started putting crap in our bodies that really didn't need to be there. I say lazy because it's really easy to throw a burger on the grill. It takes work and preparation to make a great salad. And ya know what? I'm ok with that. I don't mind working for my food. I don't mind spending some time cutting lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and whatever other kind of vegetable I decide to eat to properly fuel my body. I enjoy using cool kitchen tools to make melon balls and cut my fruit into fun interesting shapes.

So Friday after I got home from work Matthew and I emptied out the kitchen. Every processed food, every item that needed to be cooked to eat, we loaded up in bags and brought to my sister in MS. When we left to go visit my family the only thing in our kitchen was a half of a head of lettuce, some pineapple, a jar of olives and a box of granola cereal. If the junk isn't in the house - You Can't Eat It.

Saturday night when we got home we went to the store and loaded up on fruits and veggies and haven't looked back. Last night for dinner we had a bowl of watermelon. And you know what? It was great! We ate until we didn't feel the need to eat anymore and we were satisfied without having that 'full' feeling we normally have after eating. This morning I had some granola cereal with rice milk and today for lunch I'll have more watermelon and an orange. Tonight I'll have a piece of lightly baked fish and a huge salad.

I have to say there really is a mind set change that has to happen before you can do something like this. And I'm not sure what triggered mine, but I just got tired of feeling weighed down. Not just by the extra weight I'm carrying but by the food I put in my body. Even eating a piece of baked chicken, which is supposedly sooo healthy, leaves me feeling heavy afterwards. Well that might be because I've basically put a lump of dead meat in my stomach. It's just not natural.

So I've decided to get back to basics and make eating a means of survival. As the saying goes "You should eat to live, not live to eat". I'll still enjoy what I eat but I won't eat because I feel like I'll just die if I don't have that piece of pizza or bowl of ice cream, I'll eat because my body needs fuel and energy and food is a means of accomplishing that.

At first I was worried about feeling deprived but I really don't think that's going to be an issue. I've found loads of recipes for all raw ice cream using mint and cocoa and almond milk. We haven't drank regular milk in months, so using rice or almond milk will be more normal to us rather than seem like a substitute. Fruit is naturally sweet and works wonders and taking care of a sweet tooth and vegetables are cool and crunchy making not only great meals, but fantastic healthy snacks as well.

The never again eating a nice hot meal thing had me worried for a minute too but something I read tamped down that concern as well. We don't really need hot food to keep us warm. Think about this before you argue with me - it's winter and you get in a nice steaming hot shower to warm up - then you get out and what happens? You freeze your ass off until you can get some clothes on. But have you ever had to take a cold shower? When you get out you feel fresh and invigorated and not. the. slightest. bit. cold.

And I'll leave you to think about that...

Until next time =)