Day 3

177.8 lbs!! -2 lbs! 

(Sorry I'm a day behind, we were up late working on wedding cake :P)

Breakfast! Country Bakery Melted Chocolate Chip Granola Cereal with Yoplait Original Yogurt, fresh raspberries and bananas! Good stuff!

Raspberry Keytone Supplement. 

This is the supplement that my mom and I have heard about from some friends that are losing weight, and this has made a huge difference for them in losing 50 lbs and more. We thought we'd have to buy it from their hair stylist an hour away, but found it walking through Sam's Club last week. We really trust these friends, and hopefully this aids us. It has 10 mcg of Chromium and 125 mg of Raspberry Ketone. You're supposed to take it 2-3 per day with meals. We've been really irregular in taking it so far, though :P

Lunch: a homemade BLT on whole wheat with a little Miracle Whip. Watermelon and cottage cheese on the side.

And of course, a tall glass of water!! (Cue the creepy short guy from Tangled?? "Somebody find me a glass, because I just found me, a TALL DRINK OF WATER." ^^) 

Kay, my dinner was pathetic. I went to play in a community band at 5:30, and we rehearsed until 7 and then had a performance at 8, so I didn't end up eating until like, 10 :P. It was so pathetic that I didn't even bother taking a picture for you guys. It was lemon pepper chicken, broccoli and carrots, and a handful of raspberries that I had on this little dessert-sized paper plate. :P Oh well, could have been worse!

Still, not a bad day!

Day 2

Aaaaaaaaaaaand we're back :) (Weighed today at 179.2 lbs. Down .6! Whoo! Hey, every bit makes a difference!)

Today was similar to yesterday (except for the unexpected visitor...) and started out with a muffin (same wonderful raspberry muffins!) and chocolate milk. My mom grew up on a dairy farm, and so in my house, milk is an every meal affair. Low-fat, milk, of course, but still milk. We probably should cut back, but... honestly, I don't see that happening, lol. 
I'm kind of weird, and I think that because I do have the extra fat, I don't feel hungry until I am really hungry, and even then, once I eat, it doesn't take much to feel satisfied. So, I'm having a difficult time, because I've heard and read that you should actually eat more better stuff, at least at the beginning, but I don't feel like I need it... So if you have advice for me, or any guidance on the subject, that would be wonderful!
So when I finally felt hungry, right before I left for my flute lesson, I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich on whole wheat. YUM! Honestly, I feel like that is one of the meals I could eat for the rest of my life if I could! I was kind of proud of myself for using fresh banana instead of our homemade raspberry jam, because I know personally just how much sugar went into that jam! I also had a glass of water again! *pat on back*.
For dinner, because we had a lot of wedding cake work to do, we had chicken that my mom had pre-cooked and pre-cubed and mixed it into a mix of mayo and miracle whip with grapes, craisins, and celery. Chicken salad on a croissant! Yes, the croissant was a splurge. We had that with watermelon and baked chips and, of course, milk. 

You know, in reflection I feel I'm not making the changes I need to. It's hard when you live at home, and even though our family does want to make the changes, it just... doesn't happen. To change our long-standing family habits is very hard, and I can't do this alone and try to make everything different  for me, it just doesn't work that way in my house. I don't know. If you have experiences to share with me how you tried to change your habits, even if your family didn't, that would be great to hear from you!

As a side note, I have warts on my hands. Several. They've been there forever, and I've tried freezing them off with over-the-counter wart remover, I've been to a P.A. to have him freeze them off, and used the Band-Aids with wart remover on them, and the latter two would remove the rough, raised exterior of the wart, but they would come back, and even spread! I don't know what else to do. If you have a cure you've used, (and yes, I've heard that you "grow out of it", but since I'm 18, and I've had them since I was 11, I think it's been long enough to show that I probably wont grow out of them in the foreseeable future.) please, share your secrets with me! I really despise them... A lot.

Thanks guys, I appreciate you!

Day 1

I'm taking this journey one step at a time. 

Letsmakeitup1's Kaylee said she was really patient with herself and took her time making changes. One small change and then build on that. The example she gave was if you drink three large sodas a day, cut back to two, and once you've gotten used to two a day, you cut it down to one per day, and so on until you no longer drink your calories in a waste of sugar and caffeine. (It should be mentioned that as a part of my personal beliefs, I decline caffeine of any kind or form. Some of my faith do drink soda that has caffeine in it, and that's okay, but I have personally chosen not to, because I believe it has little to no health benefits. So no coffee, tea, Coke, or Mountain Dew. I have a personal vendetta with Mountain Dew, but that's another story.) 

So I start my journey based on that approach, and the first thing I've chosen to change is my diet. I will choose fruits and vegetables before everything else, and use my knowledge from a short time of counting calories and paying attention to ingredients lists to make better choices. I will (or my mom will, since she's a part of this journey too ^^') home cook almost every meal, and cooking in such a way that a meal makes "meat on the side", as Nikki Dinky from Food Network Star likes to put it. I'm not going to take away all sweets at once though. Right now, it's physically impossible in my house, where we decorate wedding and birthday cakes. With all the stuff around, it's impossible to avoid, I feel. So that's where we start.

"Today" (actually yesterday) was weird. So, it started normally, I slept in (when I don't have school or a job... I don't see too much reason to get up ^^') and got up and  had a homemade muffin my mom had baked with a small serving of vanilla yogurt, granola and fresh raspberries from our garden. My mom found this White Chocolate Raspberry muffin recipe on Pinterest (see original link here: http://goo.gl/8HG9KG), and we thought it was great. It's not necessarily the healthiest option, I'm aware; but I'm sure that you could adapt the recipe by leaving out the white chocolate chips and replacing the white sugar with a sugar substitute like Stevia. Here is a link to an article about some healthier sugar substitutes from a website that supplies diabetics with support and health products: http://goo.gl/1Q5keE. 

With breakfast I drank a large glass of water, because from experience, water weight can make the difference of 5 pounds, and the more water you drink, the more water weight you can lose. Of course, this weight is bound to come back, but drinking water also assists in changing your metabolism.

"German researchers found that drinking 6 cups of cold water a day (that's 48 ounces) can raise resting metabolism by about 50 calories daily—enough to shed 5 pounds in a year" (http://goo.gl/BkOSYs).

So that's one of my goals, is to drink a ton more water, at least one tall glass at every meal, because that is something I'm not good at keeping up with. Even if it mean I have to pee every five minutes. lol. ^^ 
I continued that pattern of water intake at lunch by snacking on carrots, broccoli, and watermelon, for I'm not sure how long. I believe that you can't ever get enough fruits and veggies, so I felt fine about making it my mid-day snack.
I was tempting by the cake and chocolate around the house from cake balls we're preparing for my cousin's wedding next week, but was very stingy about sampling any, and resisted the craving. I did succumb to a half-spoonful of peanut butter though, which I feel is fine, because peanut butter has protein in it, which can make you feel full for longer, so in small doses, it actually can be beneficial.
After that... stuff got weird. A guy friend of mine, whom I dated in high school came by to drop off a game for me to play while he's gone on his two-year LDS mission. Long story short, he has a girlfriend, but we still care for each other, and we ended up talking for about eight hours. Yeah. That was crazy. So my family ate without me and I ate a small serving of peas and my mom's chicken enchiladas at about midnight. Yeah. That was unplanned. 

Anyways. That's day one. Reflecting back, there are things I could have done differently, but that's why I'm writing all this, so I can know what I have to work on and what I can do to improve! 

Thanks y'all for reading! It means a lot!

Chapter One

My name is Mary Kirkpatrick. I'm charming, talented, and compassionate. I'm a Christian of the LDS (Mormon) faith. I'm 18, 5' 3", and 179.8 lbs.

I have all my life felt... Bigger. Even though I'm the shorty who gets teased for being shorter than everybody else (even if it's only slightly), I have always felt different than other people. I still remember being around my cousins who were petite and cute and I felt... Chubby. I tried to hide behind a loud and sometimes even bratty personality in the beginning. I always wanted to grow up to be that slender, graceful, princessy, cheerleader person. I never truly felt like a princess because I felt Big. Then I found people who really cared about me as a person and that has carried me so far. I couldn't have changed but for those individuals. 

But now, as I'm turning the page into a new chapter of my life, I really want to be the person I've always wanted to be. (Not a cheerleader now, obviously, I have a general disdain for their type, excluding some glorious exceptions). I have always felt too fat to dance, to do gymnastics, to ice skate, to swim, all things I truly have loved or wanted to do. But I want to be someone new who is completely me on the inside, but reflects that in confidence on my exterior.

If you don't know, someone of my age and heighth, at a healthy weight is at MOST 140 lbs. that means I am at least 40 pounds over my healthy weight. Visibly, I don't truly appear to be my weight at first glance. I have a small waist and try to wear flattering clothes. But these only mask the fact that I am not healthy. In fact, this weight puts me at a size 14-16 and on the edge of the obese category. I am not proud. 

To become the person I want to be, it's going to take long-term lifestyle changes, otherwise, my body will never change. Kaylee at letsmakeitup1 on YouTube really inspired me with her video about how she changed her lifestyle, lost weight, but most importantly, overcame the mental-emotional challenges of her journey of fluctuating weight (link to that video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csiRsKVvDo4&feature=youtube_gdata_player). Other people, when they talk about weightloss, they talk about techniques, and although those are helpful, Kaylee really helped me to think about the person I want to be and what motivates me.

So here's my list of what motivates me to lose weight and change my lifestyle:

1.) I want to be around for a long time.

The most important adults in my life, especially in my teenage years, have tended to be overweight. There's no real reason for this, besides the common lifestyle of the area I live in, but each of these people have made an impression on me in impossible ways. I have seen the lives they have led, and how their lifestyles have had a negative impact on their bodies and very likely, their longevity. Their hips, knees, and joints ache nearly constantly from the stress of weight pressure on them. They have issues like Diabetes, Lupus, stress, fatigue, respiratory and heart complications that have threatened their lives. And their weight and lifestyle has been a huge contributing factor to all of these and more. I know that if I don't make these changes while I am young, I will follow in their footsteps, and submit myself to the same fate. It really bothers me to know that I am not at a healthy weight. I know for a fact, that if I don't take care of my body and treat it with the respect it deserves, I wont get to live in it for long. (I also have physical challenges in the next year that I have to face [AKA, an LDS mission], and I need to adapt my lifestyle to be able to meet that opportunity). 

2.) The opposite sex.

This seems like a terribly shallow motovation, but it is perfectly valid at my stage of life. We are judged on sight at first impression, and it is very hard to change a first impression sometimes. I remember once, during high school, a guy friend and I were walking and talking after class, and somehow, our conversation lent him to mention how I wasn't really the thinnest person. This was devastating to me, because I had a crush--nay, an infatuation with this particular young man, and for him to point out my biggest insecurity was withering. It took a lot of work to recover my psyche and wear the shirt I was wearing that day again. I know that in my stage of life, physical attraction is a large part of what makes a person want to date someone else. I know, on the other hand, from experience, that personality can totally change your outlook on how somebody looks. What it comes down to though, is I HATE standing next to a guy and feeling like he is skinnier than me. In so many ways, that feels wrong. If I'm attracted to someone, but can't get over the fact that I don't feel physically comfortable with him, I will never be able to show them my true confidence. I want to love somebody more than anything, and I want to change into a person equal to the person I want to marry.

3.) My mental-emotional-physical balance.

When I was 15, I experienced some dark, traumatic depression that made me feel so isolated. In recovering from that, I found balance in my mental, emotional, spiritual well-being through my Faith, Friends, and Family. There remains many confidence issues in myself, however. I doubt my words when I speak, and stumble and end up sounding like a fool. Though that is something a little more seperate, it's the tip of the ice-berg on my confidence issues. I will one day, feel super confident and about my abilities, and then they're tested, and I feel like a failure. It's an unhealthy cycle that I will have to work on in my life. But on top of that, I have confidence issues with my physical appearance. When I watch videos and look at pictures of myself, all I see is the folds and large curves that I know underneath are flabby, extra, unnecessary fat. I hate watching myself, so much of the time. My body and speech are so distracting that I can't get over it and listen to what I mean. The fact that my body is so distracting is detrimental to my psyche, and causes me extra stress that I really need to live without in my life. Even the little steps in changing my mindset and physical lifestyle has brought me joy and confidence already. I know that if I could change my physical being, it will improve my psyche and confidence and add to my overall balance in my journey to the person I know I can be eternally. 

So there you have it. I've been someone up to this point that I am extremely proud of, but in the journey to becoming who I have always been, I have to take care of my body. And that starts today. I'm going to record my jourmey here, so that maybe, someone like me can find it in themselves to change for the better.