Day 14 of 21; I have been pretty busy lately but still am keeping on! Seven more days until my weigh in. I have officially made it two weeks with a few skipped workouts. I am proud to say that I also have not had fast food for two weeks either! Well, I did have Subway a few times but it was in moderation and calorie counted into my daily allowance. I either get ham on flat bread or a veggie on flat bread. I really don't consider that fast food since my idea of fast food includes a deep fryer but I still know that some of its processed. Right now I am just working on making better choices and trying to stay consistent with my daily routine. I have not had a cheat day and am not letting myself even think about having one to treat myself until I get over the 21 day mark. I have been eating a lot of cantaloupe, cottage cheese, shrimp, crab and snacking on grapes, carrots, those new "Even Thinner Wheat Thins" (22 pieces for 140 calories) & popcorn. I have been keeping up with my water and get at least one huge cup of green tea in a day. I have not missed a morning with my lemon water and still have been taking those apple cider vinegar tablets. The past few days I have been having my oat revolution oatmeal for breakfast (1 pack is 110 calories) - One of the toughest parts for me is eating right away in the morning; within the 1st hour after waking up. You think it'd be easy but it's one of the hardest things to get myself to do! 

​​Copyright 2016 © Marilyn Manfrom 

<-- This was my lunch the other day! An orange, broccoli, baby carrots, grapes & wheat thins. There has definitely been a huge change in my diet and my choices. I have been staying strong and keeping on. I am so proud of myself for staying dedicated. I still have been drinking my lemon water, green tea and water. It’s only been a week but I feel great already. My body is going through a good change and I’m back to being on the straight and narrow. I have had so many temptations already but have held my head up high and ignored any impulses that I may have. I have also been keeping the rule of not eating after 7PM. This by far is one of the hardest rules that I have made for myself but I have been following my regimen religiously. I can't wait to weigh in on the 7th. I know I have already lost something, I can feel it!

This morning I had an egg that I cooked with my olive oil cooking spray for breakfast. I put a little dab of water over it and put a lid on it. It isn’t one of my best looking eggs but it turned out good. I had it over a slice of plain wheat toast. I also had a cup of green tea with it. For lunch I had a cold turkey sandwich on wheat bread with yellow mustard, raw baby carrots & broccoli. For dinner I had a serving of my shrimp chili (see below). I also got more than enough water in for today. I am well at 1 ½ gallons! Yesterday morning I had my oat revolution oatmeal for breakfast (110 calories) with a banana.

I have been slacking with my past couple of workouts but this evening I got myself in gear and did a good workout in the basement. Tomorrow I plan to go for a walk. I always hated walking in the winter but then I thought of something; I had watched the show dual survival the other day and the two guys were dropped on a snowy mountain with blizzards. I remember the guy said they needed to find food because in the cold their body burns more calories trying to warm itself back up. My light bulb went off and I am going to start winter walking and see if I can burn 2x the calories! That's if I don't bundle up too tight. Our winter this year is mild so it is perfect for being out and about. It makes sense to me!

Today I decided to experiment and made a spicy shrimp chili dish. It turned out very good and is only 239 calories per serving. I made a huge batch so I will end up freezing some for my meals. I thought it would go good over rice but in the end the rice ruined it so I will eat it more like a chili. I was going to make just a vegetable chili but I thought I'd try shrimp! I didn't want to do my same old turkey chili recipe. I wasn’t sure how I would like the shrimp in the chili but I love it! I made it extra spicy but not too hot. It has just the right amount of heat. Enough to give my metabolism a good kick! It has everything from zucchini, green pepper, celery, jalapeño, onion, to crushed tomatoes. I also found these cute little saltines crackers that are 70 calories per 17 crackers.

​Copyright 2016 © Marilyn Manfrom 

My first goal is to force myself to stick to my new LIFESTYLE CHANGE for 21 days. I read online a while back that it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. This is a baby step in the right direction! After 21 days I will do another weigh in. So far I am doing very well! I have become so fed up with myself that I just power through it. 

This morning I had my lemon water before work an ate a banana for breakfast. I also had a mid morning snack of my nature valley blueberry bars (which are awesome by the way) and for lunch I had a half a cantaloupe with 1/2 cup of cottage cheese. For dinner I had 1 baked pork loin filet and baked sweet potato fries. I roasted the sweet potato with olive oil that I measured out to be exactly 1 tablespoon. It is so easy to get carried away with oil and condiments. I count every single calorie. I have also cut out salt. This is very hard for me since I salt everything! But I know my body does not do well with sodium. I am currently on my third cup of green tea and started taking my apple cider vinegar tablets yesterday. I also started back up on my water drinking and yesterday I downed a gallon and a half. Today it is looking like I will be 4 cups shy of a gallon. I have been having to pee every 10 minutes! I also did my recumbent bike for 30 straight minutes and did 30 straight minutes on the elliptical tonight after I got home from work.

On a different note I have been pretty excited working on my new conceptual photo series. I am doing a set of 5 images with 5 different models. I have my last one scheduled for this Friday a couple hours away. They all will have the same concept, I can't wait to share! I am working on this series for "No Filter" - No Filter was created by Sophie Simmons (Gene Simmons Daughter) and is a website that collaborates 25 different artists/people from around the world. Stay tuned! I have so many great things happening in my life right now, it is time to get myself in check! 

​Copyright 2016 © Marilyn Manfrom 

I have been extremely discouraged lately. I have been trying to stay on the straight and narrow but just seem to be getting curve ball after curve ball. I can't seem to get with the program. I keep trying to get ahead but every time it seems like I take 2 steps back. All I want is progress but I have been discouraging myself so much that it is blocking change. I seem to be no longer motivated by what used to keep me going. I somehow justify my actions by making myself believe I deserve them. I am just stuck in a rut!

So as I sit here, I try to figure out what is missing...and well, here I am writing about it. For me writing things down (or typing) is a great way for me to move on. There is just something about getting it all out in the open in order to get over whatever slump I’m in. If you stumble upon this...yes I am back to blogging about my journey; even though I said in my last posting it was the end. I need this. I am finally ready to do this all over again. Here is to the first day of the rest of my life.

I will start to catch you up on the past 404 days…

This morning I woke up and had my lemon water in 1 cup of warm water and made myself a blueberry smoothie for breakfast. I use 1 cup frozen blueberries, 7 tablespoons of Yoplait Original Vanilla yogurt, a shot of water and 1 banana. I had a mid-morning snack of a Nature Valley granola bar and am currently waiting for my green tea to finish steeping. For lunch I am going to have half a cantaloupe with cottage cheese and for dinner I will have a scrambled egg with wheat toast – NO BUTTER – I also am starting with my exercise routine. 30 minutes on my recumbent bike for starters. I have printed out a calorie intake sheet where I write it all down so I can stay accountable for everything. I found it online; here is the link if anyone is interested: http://www.webmd.com/diet/printable/food-fitness-journal

I have become extremely frustrated on finding pants. I have come back to the place where I once said I would never visit again. Here I am on the hunt to find clothes to cover up my body. I have gained a lot of my weight back in my legs so it has been extremely hard to find a pair that doesn’t glorify every bump and ripple. This has been my turning point. Today is the day I have decided enough is enough. For the last week I have purged my kitchen of any temptations, geared myself up emotionally and laid out a plan. Step one was a much needed and overdue weigh in. I weighed myself for the first time in almost a year and am only 19 pounds shy of what I used to be at my largest. How did this happen? How could I have let myself get so out of control? Today, January 18th, 2016, I weighed in at 319 pounds. My heaviest weight was 338 pounds. In a little over a year since I had lost 100 pounds I have managed to gain 81 pounds of it back. I stopped calorie counting, watching what I ate and quit working out. I quit caring. I stopped doing everything that I had worked so hard to accomplish. My fast food habits picked up again and slowly day by day I lost myself. No more lies, no more shame.

With the push and encouragement from my Mom I have decided to blog about my struggles again, for writing about it seems to help tremendously as well as the support from my readers.

Things really took a turn for the worst when we lost our beloved Nibbler this past November. She was our black lab and for anyone that knows us, knows that our dogs are our babies…our world. We had just celebrated her 5th Birthday a couple weeks before her passing. We started noticing signs that something might be wrong when we would come home from work and she was not jumping up on the door waiting for us to come in to the house. A few days went by where she wasn’t greeting us at the door. We thought she may just not be feeling well and gave her space to get better. Never did we suspect the severity of it because she’d go through spurts where she’d be back at her normal self; jumping on you with excitement. A few days after that she wouldn’t come downstairs to go potty before I left for work in the morning. This was highly unusual. Worried, I called my Mom from work to go check on her to see if she was still upstairs sleeping and to see if she could take her to the vet for me since both Michael and I were at work. My Mom took her in and she was treated for a gastrointestinal infection. It was odd because she wasn’t puking uncontrollably or having issues going to the bathroom until that day she had a runny bowel movement. After a few days of her being on her medication we realized she was not getting any better. She had stopped going potty and I was convinced she had a blockage because a few weeks back she had thrown up a little grass that she had eaten and it looked as if there were a few pebbles in it. I thought she must have eaten a rock & that is why she has been acting lethargic. In a panic I took her to the vet again but this time for x-rays. My worst case scenario in my mind was that she would need surgery to remove whatever blockage she had. I told the vet to do whatever test it took to figure out the cause. She was admitted that morning and was put on fluids for the entire day. I was at my Moms on my lunch break when I got the call, Nibbler did not have any blockages. As soon as I was ecstatic with that news, she hits me with the end result. After a blood test they discovered her kidneys were failing. Those next few days were the worst days of my life. We tried everything. She would get admitted to the vet for the day on fluids and would come home at night with IV fluids since they don’t have 24 hour care. Luckily my Mom was a registered nurse and she would come and administer her fluids for the night. We had our living room set up with blankets and everything that we felt would make her comfortable. We slept with her, woke up with her and even carried her outside so she could pee. She quit eating, and by this point it had been 7 days since she had gone number 2. I tried to get her to eat; I made her a rib eye steak that she wouldn’t touch. She wouldn’t take a treat; she wouldn’t even touch a plain hamburger from McDonalds. That’s when I knew she wasn’t going to recover. Nothing we were doing was helping; her kidneys were too far gone. Her levels never improved. Her last days were tough on her. If I knew then what I know now; I would have never put her through all that. We had no idea the severity of it, no idea it was kidney failure. I wanted to make sure we did everything that we could do. Within a week of her not greeting us at the door she was gone. Looking at pictures of her weeks prior I would have never imagined the road we were about to go down. She had congenital kidney failure. There are not many warning signs. The 2 signs that I can relate to Nibbler was the excessive water drinking and the bad breath but how were we supposed to know? Dogs drink water, dogs have bad breath and she’d been like that since she was a puppy. On the last day we arranged for the vet to come to the house. At this point she couldn’t get up and would have episodes every few hours. What we were doing wasn’t helping. The best decision for her was the hardest one to make. It was time. I replay it like a bad dream. I try not to think about it but sometimes I can’t help it. I try to remember her as her goofy, lovable, hyperactive self. We got her cremated (which I am so glad they have that as an option nowadays) I just couldn’t bear the thought to bury her. After she passed we were faced with another obstacle. We never thought about how our other dogs would react; Heidi, Silver & Chewie. The last couple of days they had stayed at my Moms house so Michael and I could be with Nibbler. When they came home we were slapped in the face with their reactions. They searched for her, looking everywhere. For the first few weeks, every time they came in the house they assumed she’d be there. Once they’d realize she’s gone they would each deal with it in their own way. Chewie would mope and sleep, Heidi would deal by sucking on her stuffed animal toy and Silver would get so upset to the point of nausea. Nibbler was Silvers soul sister; they were like Thelma and Louise. That was the hardest part of the grieving process for me. Watching them slowly come to the realization she’s gone. It is still so fresh, still so unbelievable. We miss her every day.

With saying all this here is to the re-start of something good, something positive.

Wish me luck…