So I know that my blog was down for a very long time.  It appears that Bluehost discovered malware on my account and shut down all my websites.  It was a very long and tedious process to get all the malware removed and back up and running, but I refused to pay someone else to do it.  They kept shoving sitelock in my face so I think they get a kick back, but to charge me upwards of 200.00  a month to clean and reactivate my site?  No Thank You!

I’ve been home sick the last three days and therefore had the time to finish it between the hacking and the coughing.

The good news is that I haven’t gone off the rails completely as far as weight loss is concerned.  I had a trip to Maine and a trip to Las Vegas that both centered very much around eating, but I was also walking a lot more and I actually managed to lose a pound in Maine.

I have probably gained about five pounds back as of when I was at my lowest before Maine at the beginning of October.  I have also stopped working out.  That started when I was in hard core rehearsals for Rocky and I let it stay dropped off out of pure laziness.  Same with my youtube channel.

But I’m back in it to win it.  It’s time to take the reigns back and steer this bitch in the right direction.

But for now I’m going to go lay down and cough.

As I wrote in my last blog entry, I have started working out. Of course that was just the very first day, but I was bragging on it pretty hard.
I kept it up pretty well. From last Monday I worked out every day –counting my dance rehearsal at the theater on Saturday because it kicked my butt. I gave myself Sunday off and regretted it on Monday.
One of the many benefits I’ve experienced since adding 30 minutes of cardio and a bit of strength training in is that my mind is clear and I have more energy. I do the work out when I get home from work and I still experience the benefits the next morning. My head is clearer and I just feel better overall. I get a much deeper sleep and am far less cranky and less prone to depression.
Monday I felt lethargic and kind of blah. I can only assume that was because of my lack of activity on Sunday. Lesson learned. Even if I only take the dog for a short walk, I feel better having some sort of activity every single day.
What I have to stop now is feeling like I can eat more because I am burning more calories. Exercise is not a license to eat like a pig.
I am reigning it in since yesterday. I had been getting off track in my eating for quite some time so I really can’t blame adding fitness into my mix. I got complacent.
I blamed the depression that gripped me for so long. Now I’m blaming the working out…time to face facts and put the blame where it belongs. It’s time to get back to the things that helped start my journey back in January. Making better decisions. Eating more whole foods. Portion control.
I got lazy. I didn’t want to put in the effort that it takes to be prepared in eating well. We all know that in order to lose weight and eat better we have to have a game plan and stick to it. When you are prepared and you have your meals prepped and ready, you obviously do better than just winging it.
Yes, there are always better decisions that can be made but putting yourself in an area where temptation is an issue is a slippery slope, at least for me.
I have lost almost 25 pounds since January, but I did the majority of that back at the beginning of the year. Lately I have just been losing and gaining the same few pounds back and forth. And for a while I was okay with that. It was okay to maintain. It’s not enough now. I want more.
Anyhoo, the workouts that I’m doing are pretty simple, but that is what I want since I am easing myself back into the whole fitness thing again. I’m doing the Walk Away The Pounds DVD’s. Nothing less than a two mile equivalent. Usually about a half an hour. I’ve just ordered some three, four and five mile ones for the weekends when I have more time to devote to it.
So far I’m really digging them and they’ve been giving me quite a work out. Nothing compared to the choreography we ran through on Saturday, but I feel like even though it had only been a little less than a week of working out, that I felt better conditioned than I would have with out it.
I feel like I’m using these as a base and once I get better, I will add more impact and maybe start running again.
Either way, this feels amazing and I can’t believe that I have skipped this for so long.

So I am going into another theater production.  It’s Rocky Horror this time and I have been cast as one of the Magenta’s in a rotating cast of three.  Don’t ask, it’s too long to explain.
Knowing how horribly out of shape I am and how I will have to be wearing some sort of maids outfit onstage, I got it in my head that I was going to join a gym!  I was going to finally start working out damn it!
I did a little research on nationwide gyms that would have a branch where my mom lives in Maine, since I will be going there for two weeks in October before I debut in the show.  Anytime Fitness seemed to be the winner.  I was hoping we had a Planet Fitness near where I live but we don’t.  I got really excited that Anytime Fitness was 24 hours and all over the country and the website made it sound like they had these great shower facilities and locker rooms, and there was a branch three blocks from the theater!  It seemed perfect.
So I walked my happy ass into the location Saturday before rehearsal and got a tour.  The facility itself was very nice!  Very clean and hardly anyone in there on a Saturday afternoon.  Lots of machines and weight stations.  It was looking promising.  Until he told me that they had ONE shower and no locker room.  I was still willing to join but when he told me the shortest contract term was 12 months and there was a 99 dollar penalty fee for breaking it early, my heart sank.  I was hoping for something more short term since the play would be over in November.
This, among other reasons kept me from joining.
When I got home that night I hopped on the interwebs and started researching again.  There is a gym that is native to California but has several locations here called In Shape.  The website made it look amazing!  They had everything, even a pool!
I signed up for a free 7 day trial that doesn’t start until you walk in and activate it and spoke to one of my cast mates excitedly about it the next day.  She was sad to inform me that she had also done the trial previously and found the clientele at this location to be obnoxious and snooty and the staff not very knowledgeable.  In further talking with other people over the course of the last 24 hours, that opinion was backed up multiple times.  I also checked Yelp and saw some scary reviews about the cleanliness.
I checked on other gyms in the area but I just keep hitting a brick wall.
Plus, if I were to be completely candid, I’m not sure how often I would talk myself out of going.  I know myself pretty well after 43 years and I can already hear the excuses clouding my brain of why I can’t go on certain nights.
So I thought about it a lot and I realized that I have a lot of tools at home that I could utilize to start myself in the direction of working out.  I have a crap ton of work out DVD’s that I’ve never even touched!  I have a Tony Little Gazelle that is currently serving as a clothes rack and I have a mini stair stepper in the upper house gathering dust.
What I really would want to go to the gym for would be a treadmill.
So what if I worked out at home?  And if, AND ONLY IF, I did it on a consistent basis, what if I plunked down the money I would have spend on gym dues into a savings account to purchase a treadmill??  It would take a little while to get the one I want because I have expensive taste, but isn’t that the point of the dangling carrot??
My biggest problem with working out at home is that once I get home from work and my butt hits the couch, I ain’t moving.  It’s a proven fact. So tonight I decided to try and jedi mind trick myself.  I got home from work and said hello to the dogs, before putting on my gym clothes.  I kept saying to myself: “I am not at home, I am at the gym.”  I put a work out DVD on the TV and proceeded to do a half an hour of fat burning cardio.  This is the first time I have deliberately (not choreography for a show) worked out in at least a year, possibly two.  I felt AMAZING afterwards.  Still do.

If I can keep up this mindset, I think I might be on to something.  I hope so.

I’ve been in the grips of a pretty bad depression for a while now. I have good days and bad days, but overall it’s been pretty bad for the last month or two. I’m on my way out of it now *knocks wood* and this morning actually felt kinda joyful.
I like the days when I can appreciate everything I have and the people in my life. Today is one of those days.
Having said that, I would like to take the time to be grateful. I want to put it out there so I can read it again next time the darkness comes for me again.

I truly live in paradise. I live in a very small community in a small town on a beautiful piece of property along the river. We are fairly secluded and in this day and age of noise and gadgets and all the distractions that life can bring along, there is a great amount of joy to be found just sitting on the back porch listening to the river ripple along beside you.
Of course it doesn’t come without a price. During drought season there is always danger of a fire in the heavily wooded area that is our backyard. Rainy season there is always a risk of flooding as the river is so close. In the last two years we have been in very close danger of both, thankfully everything worked out okay. *knocks wood again*

My dear sweet husband

I am married to a very supportive and patient man. I know it takes a special kind of person to put up with my crazy and he has done it for the last 18 years with minimal complaints. *knocks wood yet again* He makes me laugh on a daily basis and he calms me when I get upset. He encourages me to talk things out when I start to stuff my feelings down and was a godsend in helping me get over my bulimia.
I honestly don’t know where I would be in my life if I hadn’t met him. I don’t even want to imagine it. Marriage is never all sunshine and roses and of course we have our ups and downs like any other couple. But for this gal that said she was never getting married and never had a relationship longer than 6 months before meeting him, it has turned out pretty well.

I am a hermit. I’m putting that out there so you will know what a frustrating friend I must be. I will make plans with you from the comfort of my own house and then when it comes time to have those actual plans, I will do my best to back out on you. It’s not because I don’t want to hang out with you. Not at all. In fact, in all reality I probably miss the hell out of you and to see you would do me a world of good, but I don’t want to leave my house.
I am well aware that this is not healthy and it is getting worse over the last couple of years. I know that my friends get upset when I do this and I have certain friends that just don’t put up with it. They pull the tough love because they know in the end that getting out of the house and hanging out is what will make me feel better. They don’t let me weasel out of our dates unless of course it is an actual emergency. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the friends that ask me to do something knowing full well that I will back out and they let me. It is still nice to be asked and included even though I know, and they know that I won’t go.
The reason I preface all of this like I am is to illustrate the fact that I have the best friends in the world. A great support system even though I am not always the best friend back. I know I can call them and in a second they will drop everything and come to my aid. I often try to convince myself otherwise. It’s a defense mechanism that I have. I build walls, it’s how I am. I have severe trust issues. However, I know that in all reality, my friends love me and would do anything for me. I don’t know what I have done to deserve them in my life.

I have been blessed with the best furbabies in my life.

Romie D. Dog

Romie was an 80 lb German Shepard mix that came with the husband. He was big, goofy and lovable. He was not so sure about me since I took his place on the bed when I first moved in, but he eventually warmed up to me and soon loved me as much as I did him. He made the trek to California with us but eventually at age 16, the inevitable happened. He was a good boy that gave us many years of love.

Our Beloved Pappy

Shilo Wallace Machado

Pappy was the best dog. We adopted him in 2007 from the Salinas Animal Shelter and he won us over with his big brown eyes and his snuggles. He was a Corgi/Terrier mix and 20 lbs of pure love. He had a tendency to mark his territory so all of our rugs were ruined in a few months, but we were willing to overlook it because he truly had us in the palm of his paw. He wanted nothing more than to love and be loved…and to catch that pesky lizard in our front yard. We had him for a wonderful ten years before the cancer took him. He lasted two years longer than the vet said he would and I’m grateful to have had that extra time with him.

Shilo is a princess and a brat and I love her with all my heart. We acquired her when a friend of ours was fostering a pregnant dog. We got invited over for Thanksgiving in 2010 and left with a new baby girl. Okay, not exactly but that was pretty much how it went. She is a 14 pound chihuahua/min-pin/dachshund mix of pure energy and clinginess. She is incredibly co-dependent and wants nothing more than to be in my lap licking my face 24 hours a day. She is also amazingly adorable and such a sweet love. If Shilo isn’t getting your attention, she will demand it and it will be so cute that you have to give in.

Princess Chewbacca Fuzzlebutt

Chewie is our newest addition. We adopted her about three months ago from the SPCA. It had been several months since Pappy passed and we are really a two dog kind of family. We scouted out the SPCA website and picked out our top three choices. The first being a little white dog named Princess. We never made it passed Princess’ room, but we did not go home with her. Instead we fell madly in love with her funny looking roommate “Pop Tart”. She was quiet and loving and a little shy. We interacted her with Shilo and they were indifferent to each other so it was on to the adoption. We found out from my friend that worked at the pound that “Pop Tart” had been adopted out previously with one other dog but was returned because the other dog didn’t like her. How sad! To be rejected twice! We renamed her Chewie and while it took her a while to come out of her shell, she is now happy and thriving in our household. She still won’t play with Shilo, which drives her nuts, but they generally get along.
Being a pet owner is never easy because you know they are on a limited time frame, but the unconditional love you get through the course of their lives is so worth it. I am very lucky to have had some of the best doggies in the world to call my children.

This was all more than I intended to write.  I do have more things that I am thankful for, but I think I will save those to write about another day.  Don’t want to seem too greedy.

So much good food!!!!

Okay, so I planned today to be a cheat day for me.  GODSPELL closed last night and we as a cast were super sad and cried a lot on stage when we had to say goodbye to Jesus.  This cast is a very close knit group and the emotions were running very high.  Still are for me.  I’m very sad to see this go…probably more so than I ever have been in all the productions I have ever done.
Having said that, our cast party was today at the directors house and almost everyone showed.  It was a pot luck and everyone brought so many yummy dishes.  I had a plan to be moderately good when I got there.  Eat a tiny little portion of everything and that was it.  I’m not sure what happened.
I didn’t go hog wild or anything.  The alcohol was easy to avoid as I was driving myself home, but for some reason I decided to drink a full sugar ginger ale instead of a diet soda.  When I filled my plate I got a slice of pizza, a mound of teriyaki meatballs, a large scoop of rice pilaf, a drumstick of fried chicken and a large scoop of macaroni salad.  I ate it all.
After that I was quite full and switched to water for my beverage.  I grazed on a few more meatballs, but that was about it.
The reason I am confessing this is because I wanted to document the way I currently feel.  I got back from the cast party about two hours ago and I have felt an overall sense of ick.  Lethargic, bloated, gassy and not looking forward to eating anything at all.  Normally I would have a little something before bed, but I am just not into it.  Even though I might be hungry, my body is just done.
I have however, prepped all my food for tomorrow.  Lots of fruits and veggies for snacks and chicken, brown rice and green beans for my lunch.
Tomorrow I pass the “Stage torch” to my husband as he goes into deep rehearsals for the music on a play for the week and I am in charge of food and household chores.  I am looking forward to cooking and getting good things together.
So I have learned that while the food was yummy, I would have been perfectly happy to socialize with my friends with much less food and I would be feeling much better right now.
Every day is a lesson.

So there have been a few things that have made me feel good about myself lately above and beyond the actual weight loss, and I would like to touch on them here.

Okay, so the first thing is the fact that I am USING ALL MY FOOD!  I can safely tell you that I have never in my life bought and entire bag of grapes/snap peas/apple slices/etc and eaten the entire thing.  I have the best of intentions while shopping and often grab lots of healthy options…that then sit and rot in my fridge basically untouched, while I eat all kinds of other bad options. 
You guys!  I am actually finishing healthy food in my fridge and not throwing it out!  This is a pretty big deal for me as the throwing out of healthy produce was a weekly event in my house.  I have to say I’m really proud of this.  I have actually been able to throw away empty bags and then put that item on the shopping list to get more!

They say it takes 21 days to make or break a habit.  I am actually CRAVING food that is good for me.  I love how I feel lately!  Even though I am sleep deprived due to the show and am totally PMSing right now, I am in a much better place mentally than I have been in years.  I can only attribute that to the fact that I am eating more whole foods and less crap.  That is HUGE.   If I actually get my ass in gear and start exercising, I will be invincible! 

Speaking of that….today I actually thought about how much I’d love to start running again once the show goes up.  I obviously know that I wouldn’t start out running again, but the thought of getting outside and walking after work made me insanely happy.  Starting the Couch 2 5K again is my goal.  The thought popped into my head today and it made me feel so good.  The show goes up on the 10th and after that I get my weekdays other than Thursday and Friday back and I honestly can’t wait to get out on the track again.  Fresh air and that amazing feeling you get after a work out?  Sign me up!

I am taking responsibility for my food prep when I get home, no matter how late, before relaxing.  It might lead to me staying up a bit later, but at least my food is done when I go to bed and I don’t sit like a Zombie at midnight wondering where my time went and still have nothing to bring to work for snacks the next day.  The ultimate goal is of course to meal prep on the weekends for the rest of the week, but that ship has sailed until this Saturday as that is the first day I will have off of rehearsal and work.  So I’m still proud that even if it takes me a half an hour a night, I avoid playing on my computer or watching TV to wind down until I get my food prepped for the next day.

I’m finding ways to fix things.  Tonight I had a late play rehearsal and my husband had a late band rehearsal.  He got home about an hour before I did and felt bad that he didn’t have anything for my dinner so he made up a box of Kraft Mac N Cheese.  He heaped it into a giant bowl and left it for me.  I LOVE the blue box more than most foods.  I know it is so nasty for you.  It’s florescent orange cheese for crying out loud, but it is so yummy!  And bless his heart for cooking for me even when he was tired and didn’t want to.  But as soon as I got home I began to think of ways to fix this meal.  First it needed portion control, than it needed protein and a veggie.  Mind you, this was all after eleven o clock because it took me a half an hour to prep my oats and snacks for tomorrow.  There wasn’t much in the fridge.  Finally I settled on a boca burger that was frost bitten but still good and a small package of “sauced” vegetables from the freezer.  So I scraped the “leftovers” of my small portion of mac N Cheese into a container and stuck it into the fridge and nuked the veggie and boca patty.  Boom.  Just as satisfying with less carb hangover and calories.

I am sure there are more but it is late and I need to go to bed if I want to maintain any sort of good mind frame.  I will continue a list and write about more later.

So I know I said I would update on the flood situation, but there was really nothing to update.  Around three that afternoon my husband arrived home from work early so we could clear out his musical equipment from the basement.  We had moved a lot of his guitars last month when we were at risk for flooding but since the river was due to get higher that night, we also moved out his PA system and a bunch of amps.  In other words, the heavy stuff.
Around four we got a message on our phones that we were under a mandatory evacuation. 
We sat around and weighed the odds.  I had been checking the hydrograph all day and so we did some math and decided we were going to stick it out.  We had full view of the river and knew that if it got to a certain point we would just grab the pooch and hit the road to my husbands parents house a few towns over.
We stayed up and watched and waited.  I should note that my anxiety level is normally high on a good day, but this day it was through the roof.  The dog could sense it and she was extra nervous and needy as well.  My poor husband.
We finally decided to get some sleep and set an alarm for midnight which was when the river was predicted to crest.
Long story short, the river came VERY CLOSE to overflowing the bank.  My neighbor that lives across the street on the river side, had a couple of inches flowing over his concrete porch, but then it started to recede. 
So I wasn’t happy with all the drama it caused, but in a way I’m kind of happy that we now have a benchmark to know how high the river has to get with the hydrograph to know when we will start flooding.  It kind of takes the guess work out of it for next time. 

Anyhoo, that was that.  Onto the weight stuff.  As of yesterday I am officially down 7 Lbs in a month.  This makes me very happy.  Not just for the loss, but because I am finally starting to feel the motivation again.  For two years or maybe even longer, I was floundering.  Just gaining and gaining and not caring because I had zero desire to do anything about it.  That led to more depression which led to more not caring and eating, and it was just a vicious cycle that I couldn’t break.
I’m really getting into eating more whole foods and less processed crap, and I’m even enjoying it.  Who knew?  The key, of course, is being prepared.  I had gotten really good last week and prepping all my stuff for the week in advance.  The next two weeks are going to be harder as we are going to be going into hardcore rehearsals before the show goes up.  That means more late nights and less time to prepare.  So having said that I am into eating less processed crap, I do foresee a lot of frozen dinners in my future when I get home at ten at night or later.
Still though, I am going to try my best to stick with my daily routine of overnight oats or yogurt for breakfast, a pita sandwich for lunch and fruits and veggies for my snacks.  My new fave combo btw is red seedless grapes and colby jack cheese bites.  OMG, so yummy!
So that is about it, just a quick update.  I’m just glad to feel the motivation and willpower again.  It’s been a long time, and I’m glad to welcome them back into my life. 
Remind me of this next week when I am sleep deprived and just want to eat that doughnut.  😉

Okay, so my weigh in on Friday was a big fat zero weight loss, but no gain so I still consider that a win.  I’m still down five pounds in three weeks and that is totally acceptable to me.  I need to remember that this isn’t a race.  Every single time I have lost a significant amount of weight, I always seem to remember it as just falling off in no time.  Then I go back and look at my journals and calendars and realize that was never the case.  It has been and will always be a slow and painful journey.  I always have those “wanting to give up” moments because I have not become instantly skinny.
In other news, we will probably evacuate our house tonight and head for higher ground as all the recent rainfall has put our house at serious risk of flooding.  So much for the drought in California.  Hey, don’t get me wrong.  After last years fires, I’m more than happy to have rain and lots of it…just maybe not all at once?
Our house sits right on the river and most times of year it is a beautiful thing.  Nothing better than sipping a cup of coffee out on the back deck with the sun shining, birds chirping and a babbling brook in the background.  Seriously, it’s a little slice of heaven on earth.  Until we get too much rain, like we have this winter.
In January, we had a lot of rain and were very near evacuations.  In fact the sheriff knocked on our door at two in the morning to let us know there were voluntary evacuations happening at that time.  We were probably within a foot of the river flooding. 
Right now we are probably two or three feet away, but the bad news is that this time there isn’t really going to be any break in the rain until tomorrow night so more than likely, the water is going to continue to rise.  🙁
The husband is currently at work and I’ve got a bag packed for us and he dog, ready to go at a moments notice.  I’m not especially worried about LOSING the house, I’m guessing more than anything our basement would get the brunt of the flooding, but we live on a one way dead end street and we are at the very end of it.  Therefore, we need to keep ahead of the water as far as washing out the road, or we are stuck here for who knows how long with no access to get to work or anywhere.  That is where the sense of urgency lies.
Thankfully, we have a place to go.  My husbands parents live a couple of towns over so we won’t have to worry about having to take the dog to a hotel or anything.  It’s important to see the good things in all this chaos.
So more than likely, I will be away from my laptop for a few days.  I will have my phone and my Ipad so I will try to update as anything happens.  Of course, I just went shopping so I have a fridge full of good for me foods that might go to waste in the meantime.  Not sure how the weight in is going to be this week after a few days of eating at my in laws.  They may not have many good choices in their fridge.
That’s about it from here.  I’m going to go load up the car.
Stay dry and make better choices!  I’m going to try to.  🙂

So today was a day like any other day.  I got up later than I wanted to and had to rush around getting ready for work.
I got to work just in time and fixed myself my coffee and my water and dove right in.
A couple hours later a co-worker arrives with an Enchilada Casserole.  An hour after that my office manager comes in with donuts, cupcakes and cookies.  Also, another co-worker came around and delivered little V-Day bags of candy on everyone’s desks. 
I heard that the casserole was bomb, the cupcakes yummy, the donuts divine and the cookies okay.  I wouldn’t know, because I DIDN’T EAT ANY OF THEM!
I was quite proud of myself.  I had my greek yogurt and tablespoon of granola along with a banana for breakfast.  For lunch I had my meal that I had prepped this weekend that consisted of a brown rice and lentil mixture, a piece of fish, a half a yam and a mix of non starchy veggies.  It filled me up and I didn’t feel tempted.
I got home and found my husband was cooking up some ramen type dish with chicken and cauliflower.  Now, the chicken and cauli I can get behind, but the noodles will have to go. 
I love my husband to the moon and back, but he doesn’t share my need to be so rigid on the diet.  He is more of a wing it and what he creates in the kitchen is a pinch of this and a handful of that…which is great.  I’m lucky that he even cooks at all, but for dieting and counting calories, it’s not so good.
So, the noodles are going to be replaced with a little bit of brown rice and the rest will remain the same. 
What all this points to, is that after a year or more of having zero desire or motivation to diet, I seem to finally have it back!  I contribute this to launching the Youtube channel and this blog to hold myself accountable.  I can’t even tell you the last time I have cared about what I put into my mouth.  I mean, I CARED, but I still ate it anyway.  There was never any hesitation. 
“I shouldn’t eat th-” NOM NOM NOM!
It feels so good to finally have some power back over my own body. 
It’s going to be a long road and I am aware of that.  So many times today I wondered why I couldn’t just have one bite of one of those delicious morsels in the break room, but I didn’t do it! 
It’s the small victories that pave the way to the big ones.
Next time I plan on scolding myself on the fact that I seem to think that weekend calories just don’t count…
STAY TUNED!