I am no different than you.

As strange as it feels to be typing that right now... its true. I am just another person. Not anyone of any particular importance, yet at the same time of utmost importance because I am me and that makes me awesome. lol. But the very same can be said for you. :)

I just feel I need to say that because the more and more weight I am dropping as the months go on, it seems that slowly but surely there are more and more people thanking me for being their inspiration or their motivation or what have you. Which don't get me wrong, I am so EXTREMELY flattered. While I know that what I have accomplished is nothing short of fantastic and the me from a year ago is jumping up and down screaming HALLELUJAH WOMAN! lol, the me from right now is thinking well I'm just me and so its really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that there are actually a few random people out there who look up to me now and ask me for advice and tips. I do my best to oblige of course and I love helping anyone I can, but I almost feel unqualified. Like... I don't know how to explain it. Not that I'm not good enough, but... yeah something kind of like that.

It's obvious to me that my physical changes are far greater than my mental changes. I still often see myself as much bigger than I actually am right now. Although that does leave me pleasantly surprised from time to time when something happens that snaps me back in to the reality that I am smaller than I have been in about 10 years now. :)

Anyways... all that leads me to talk about my weekend. As I've said many times before, this blog is not only for me to share my successes, but my struggles and weaknesses, too.

Friday started out alright and I was happy to finally have reached the 6 month point. Later that afternoon my whole family left the house to go check out the new Sea Life aquarium at Grape Vine Mills mall which is a couple hours from here. This changed up my regular dinner time schedule greatly. I have been eating dinners at 5pm and trying to make sure at the latest I don't put any food in to my mouth past 7pm. Well, we left the house at 3:30 to get there by 5 and then didn't get out of there to eat somewhere until about 8:00pm. Of course, my family decides Golden Corral is the ideal choice because its a buffet and its right there next to the mall. I knew I should have stuck to the salad bar first and filled up on veggies before trying anything else but I let my eyes get the best of me yet again and got all sorts of things I knew better than to be eating. I did eventually eat a salad as well, but at that point I shouldn't have even bothered because I was consuming way too much food. I also had some of their rolls and some rice and potatoes. All foods I haven't eaten in a very long time and so my stomach just wasn't used to them anymore. By the time we left I was hurting pretty bad and felt so sick the rest of the night. Why?! Why did I let myself do that? I came up with all sorts of reasons made up at the last minute of why it would be okay. Well you know you're going to have a bad day Saturday anyways. Well you know you don't have these foods all the time so just this once will be okay. Well you know you can just have a tiny little bit of every thing that you want and it won't be so bad. Just one dumb thing after the next until my mind caved to my body's want. In reality though, these were not reasons and they were simply excuses. The only day that should matter is today. You can't worry about how bad or good you have done the day before or are going to do the next day. You can only try your best every single day at a time. Just because you don't have something all the time doesn't mean its okay to have it every time you go out either. Special occasions/events are not an excuse to eat poorly. Your body needs to stay healthy no matter what's going on otherwise. Having a tiny bit of everything still adds up to a whole lot of calories and carbs and sodium and all sorts of things when you put it all together. One plate of food should be more than enough at one meal. It eventually will be 'so bad' if you keep allowing yourself these little slips. Eating out has been challenging for me and that's why I try to avoid it as much as possible. However, eating at buffets has been the one type of place that I cannot seem to conquer, yet. Well I am on a mission to change that. I will someday be able to come right a very proud and accomplished post all about how I resisted temptation and didn't reward myself with food, but a much healthier alternative.

As for Saturday... well I had a super busy day planned and knew my food choices would be limited to whoever I was spending time with at the moment. That morning we left the house shortly after waking up and my mom stopped at Sonic for our Breakfast/Lunch. I ended up ordering a grilled chicken sandwich and had some then but saved the rest for later. We spent most of the day at Hurricane Harbor soaking up the sun and enjoying what we could of the water park. The place was packed and so the water was a tad warmer than normal, but all in all still a great time. We had a snowcone while there and some popcorn. After leaving there we headed over to Six Flags Over Texas and I grabbed a granola bar I found I had left in Jett's stroller a few days before. We ended up getting a refill on our popcorn while there and so I had a little more of that. Once we were done riding things there we headed over to my brother's apartment in North Dallas. He was having a huge party that night and I had been looking forward to it for months, literally. lol. As a single mom, I don't really spend a whole lot of time out being social these days so it was nice to have some time away from my son and seeing old friends and meeting new ones. My mom dropped me off and took an already passed out Jett home for the night. He didn't nap at all that day so I assume he slept most of the night. She had to stay awake anyways though so she could sleep all day the next day and be ready for work Sunday night. Anyways, I didn't arrive to David's place until about 9-10pm I guess and then immediately began to drink. I know I stayed up until about 5am and drank all night long and someone had some beef jerky so I had some of that. They did order a pizza from Domino's but I didn't have any of that. It smelled pretty good though. lol. Needless to say... Saturday was a horrible calorie consuming day for me and I knew it would be.

I wish I had drank more water that night though because on Sunday I had the first hangover I've had in years. I laid on the couch all day while Jett watched cartoons next to me and played inside with his trains or whatever else was nearby. I felt so dizzy and didn't want to do a damn thing. I knew I really really needed to after the previous two days though. So around 7pm I finally got my head in enough of a right place to get up and do something with myself. I felt so disgusted for laying around like a sloth all day, but decided it was time to change that. I turned on one of my old workout dvd's and got right in to it. It happened to be the Kickboxing Boot camp by 10 minute solutions. I can't recall the last time I did this workout but its been a month or two at the very least. I was a little shocked but at the same time, not at all shocked to notice that I was instantly in a better mood and feeling much better than I was from laying around all day moping about having a hangover and being dizzy. lol. The getting up and moving around got me to feeling much greater and I was happy that I didn't waste another day. What was even more pleasing though was the very large difference I noticed in my endurance and abilities during the workout. There were several moves that I didn't fully complete before or that I couldn't do for as long but was breezing through them and finishing out every last exercise. I did the entire 50 minutes and felt great afterwards. :)

Yesterday, I decided it was time to pick up the pace because I had gone up 4 lbs over the weekend and was sitting at 206. I had worked too hard to just give that all up so I knew I needed to step up my game and bust my ass all day. I did the kickboxing dvd again and sweated like crazy during it. Then me and Jett went for a nice long bike ride and then after dinner I started on week 5 of the Biggest Loser's Last Chance Workout dvd. I had great results this morning when I weighed in and saw the scale was back down to 204 lbs. :)

Today I did some shopping and actually felt pretty proud of the choices I was making overall and so I decided to take a picture.

One good thing that came out of Friday night was that I tried a brussel sprout for the first time while I was at Golden Corral and actually thought it wasn't that bad. So I bought some today. :) Got lots of other random veggies and fruits and then a couple things for Jett and my mom. The only other 'new' thing I'm trying right now is these Special K crackers/chips. James from Extreme Makeover: Weightloss Edition on ABC posted a picture of some the other day on his facebook and was talking about how good they were. They looked tasty and so I decided to give them a try. Had some earlier tonight and he was right. The sour cream and onion ones were pretty good. I got some sea salt ones I'll have to try next.