Weight Loss: Not Just a Fairy Tale? (PrincessShan's Journal)

[PrincessShan]

Hi everyone,

I'm starting this journal to keep track of my progress. I signed up for the Accountability Challenge in the Exercise Forum, so hopefully that will keep me on track.

A little bit about me ... despite my journal title and user name, I'm not really a princess. I'm just your average girl. I'm in my mid-20s and work as an editor. I'm incredibly accident prone and haven't ever met a wire I didn't want to trip over. I have a lovely family and a wonderful boyfriend, but I can't stand looking in the mirror. So I decided to do something to make myself feel better about how I look. I started the SBD WOL on 8/7 and I've lost 12 pounds so far. I already feel better about myself, too.

Check back next week, when I'll start posting menus and exercise stats. And maybe some funny stories, too. I have lots.

[PrincessShan]

This weekend, I'm off to a wedding. It's actually my ex-boyfriend's wedding. Amazing though it is, considering the length and seriousness of the former relationship, there are no hard feelings. I'm really happy for him and for his fiancee, whom I like a lot.

Lucky for them, I'm not actually in the wedding. Little Miss Accident-Prone here has definitely attracted attention to herself on other people's big days.

The best (or worst) story happened in 2002. My friend "Annemarie" was marrying her longtime boyfriend, "Caleb," and she asked me to do a reading during the ceremony. I got lost on the way to the church and totally missed the rehearsal. Annemarie was gracious about it, and I went to the dinner and had a lovely time.

My boyfriend (ironically, the one who's getting married on Sunday) and I left for the ceremony with over 2 hours to spare. We got there 5 minutes before the ceremony. The priest was pretty pissed off. But I went to sit with the other readers, and they told me where I had to go (up to the lectern -- this is important).

Unfortunately, I went first. I have horrible stage fright whenever I'm unsure of what I'm doing, and it kicked in as I mounted the steps to the lectern. I knew my dress was too low and too tight and that my super-high-heeled strappy sandals weren't effectively counterbalancing the puckering of red rose-printed fabric around my hips. This made me even more self-conscious.

As my legs shook beneath me, I completed my reading in the wobbliest voice this side of a stutter. I turned to walk down the lectern stairs. I looked down toward the congregation and thought, Oh my God, I'm going to fall on my face coming down those stairs.

Fall I did. Spectacularly. Down half the stairs and complete with leg-scraping and copious bleeding on the church's stone floor. Of course, this is where the bride was supposed to walk later in the ceremony.

As I picked myself up off the floor, the congregation was mostly silent. But a few pews back, my boyfriend was hunched over and shaking with laughter.

I hobbled back to my seat with as much dignity as I could muster (it wasn't much), and cleaned myself up with my wedding program as best I could.

Annemarie, like the sweetheart she is, laughed about it at the reception, but four years later, I have yet to live it down.

The moral of this story is: cross your fingers that I don't do something similar on Sunday!

[cjburt]

Awww, pet! I know you shouldn't laugh at other people's misfortunes, but that did make me laugh out loud!

I'll keep my fingers crossed that you stay upright on Sunday! Good luck...

[PrincessShan]

cjburt -- Even I had to laugh when I saw the wedding video (much, much later). I'm just lucky that damned dress didn't split up the butt when I fell!

Now to business ...
I've decided to do a stat page every day (or almost), to help keep me on track. It'll also help me get ready for the Sept. Accountability Challenge. I'm also going to keep posting funny anecdotes, just to keep me (and possibly you) amused. Feel free to comment, good or bad.

Wednesday, 8/30 (Project Runway day, hooray!)

B: Nothing (I was sick with a migraine all last night ... still felt nauseous)
S: Single-serving carton of skim milk, 3/4 cup fresh-picked blackberries
L: Subway Club Salad: Slice of turkey, ham, and roast beef with lettuce, tomato, hot pepper, onion, green pepper and vinegar
S: 30 pistachios
D: Will be a palm-sized filet of grilled salmon with salsa and crushed red pepper and a salad with lettuce, tomato, sugar snap peas, and onion
Sweet Treat: SF Creamsicle -- super yummy!

H2O: 64 oz (not so good ... but it was noon before I felt like I could eat or drink anything)

Exercise: 30 min elliptical, 10 min bike, 5 min rowing machine, 100 crunches, stretching (for God knows how long. I hate stretching.)

[PrincessShan]

8/31

So, I was (and will be) good today.

B: My special "raw omelet." It's not really raw -- 2 hard-boiled eggs (1 w/ yolk, 1 w/o yolk, since I don't really like hard-boiled yolks), and 2-3 cups of raw veggies, including tomatoes, green pepper, red pepper, spinach leaves, and scallions. A little crushed red pepper on the top, too. Yummy!

S: A freshly-picked Gala apple with a carton on skim milk. My first SBD apple. I missed apples so much!

L: The filling from a Quizno's Turkey Lite Sub. I had them add extra lettuce, tomato, and onion. Also a diet soda. I can't live without diet soda at lunch, though I drink caffeine-free stuff.

S: 30 pistachios and another carton on skim milk.

D: Turkey Surprise. This is truly a hodgepodge ... basically, I take lean ground turkey, dump it into the skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil and a can of diced tomatoes (no sugar added, of course). Then I take half a can of white or black beans, at least two generous handfuls each of whatever vegetables I have in the house (mushrooms, scallions, red onion, spinach, red/green/yellow peppers, etc.), and a blend of herbs and spices (changes depending on my mood, but I love chili powder and garlic powder and thyme and sage) and let it all cook together until the meat is done. And I'll have a side salad. The TS makes about 4-5 portions, so it'll be a good lunch on the plane on Saturday. My darling boyfriend will eat about half of it in one sitting and then go have a few veggie hot dogs.

Sweet: SF Creamsicle. I'm addicted!

Exercise: Not much time today, so it'll be 30 mins on the treadmill, 5 mins on the rowing machine, 100 crunches, and that darned stretching.

See below for another fun anecdote about the accident-prone life of PrincessShan!

[PrincessShan]

This story involves my younger brother, PrinceBen (not his real name, of course!), and our family dog, RoyalPooch, who's a Cockapoo and extremely cute.

One high school evening, I was taking RoyalPooch for his nightly stroll. As I was walking out the door, PrinceBen said, "PrincessShan, don't use the side door."

"Why?" I asked. The side road is the best-lit road around our house.

"Because there's a bird's nest behind the light [on the wall by our stoop] and RoyalPooch barks at them."

"Oh, okay."

So I went out the back door and RoyalPooch and I walked around the dark road behind the house. Now, I was 16 years old and fancied myself a writer. It didn't take long before my imagination got the best of me.

Convinced that there was a serial killer right behind me, I ran to the side door, knowing PrinceBen wouldn't have bothered to relock it after I opened it to go out for the walk.

But my shaking hands made it hard to turn the knob. Just then, RoyalPooch heard a rustle from behind the lamp.

"BOW-WOW-WOW-WOOF-YIP-YOWWWWWL!" went RoyalPooch. The birds made haste to get away.

It was at the apex of this scene that I got the door open. Open door = several frightened birds in the house.

PrinceBen, alerted by the barking, came to the door to nag me about using it and got some feathers in his face for his trouble. It was like something out of a Hitchcock movie.

Eventually, the two screaming humans tied up the yowling dog in the dining room and used sundry pots and pans (with lids) to transport the birds outside. A happy ending? It would have been, had RoyalPooch not marked the dining room carpet as his territory. The Queen wasn't too thrilled about that.

[mom22kids]

OK after your wedding post thread I just had to check out your journal. Needless to say I'll be back often. You are one funny princess!

[PrincessShan]

Stat Day, 9/1

Starting weight (Friday): 184 (No change. But I weighed myself on Tuesday, so how could I expect to have seen one? Maybe it was that story about Jessica Simpson losing 8 pounds in 2 weeks. Girl wears size-26 jeans. Did she even have 8 pounds to lose? And why is that worthy of the cover of US Weekly?)

Well, so begins my journey into the September Accountability Challenge, which can be found in the Exercise and Fitness Forum. And, as befits a new beginning, I have a confession to make. I had some potato chips at a party last night. About 10 in all, maybe a few more … but I was definitely pecking at them like some sort of deranged chicken.

However, I don’t feel as guilty as I should. Why not? It’s simple: My body has become the physical manifestation of my conscience, and it’s currently bitchslapping me like there’s no tomorrow. This morning, I became intimate friends with every restroom between my apartment and my office. My Maalox and my Nexium tablets have been nice bedfellows, too.

Oh well. I lost the battle, but not the war. Lesson learned: don’t sit next to the potato chips! Or else don’t go to late-night BBQ birthday parties where the twig-like birthday boy can eat til the cows come home and lose three pounds in the process.

Note: I haven’t eaten yet today, but my meals are all planned and everything up through dinner is packaged and ready to eat at work, the MVA, or at home.

B: 1 full-size tomato, 1 cup of 1% milk, 1 hard-boiled egg
S: Gala apple, carton of skim milk
L: Subway salad (probably turkey, maybe turkey & ham), red vinegar for dressing
S: Celery with olive oil and dill
D: Salad w/ rotisserie chicken at Red Rock Canyon Grill, no croutons or nuts, oil and vinegar on the side. This could change to plain salmon at Red Lobster, a salad at the Macaroni Grill, or sashimi.
Sweet: Uh, no. Bad Princesses don’t get sweets.

Exercise: Hour of cardio, 100 crunches, and my favorite: stretching.

[PrincessShan]

Today's funny story!

PrincessShan used to go to sleep-away camp. She went all summer, every summer, from the time she was 9 until the time she was 14. She went for 4 weeks when she was 7 and 8 and cried when the King and Queen wouldn’t let her stay longer.

Anyway, when she was 12 or 13, “Inspector Gadget” was a fad obsession among the girls in PrincessShan’s bunk. The bunkmates (all fellow Princesses) sang the IG theme song so frequently during chore time in their cabin that their counselors got anticipatory eye-twitches whenever it was time to clean up.

The bunk had a “chore wheel,” which rotated every day. The girls took turns sweeping, emptying the trash, dusting, and so on.

Well, one fine day, it was PrincessShan’s turn to sweep. She hated sweeping, as she found it to be beneath her royal dignity. But sweep she did.

You should know that PrincessShan has always been a bit of an attention-loving clown. True to form, she was fooling around with the broom on that fine day. She thought it would be hilarious to twirl it around her head while singing the IG theme song and kicking up her legs like a Rockette.

“Da-da-da-da-da-INSPECTOR-GADGET!” she sang, as her fellow princesses laughed. She went for a sky-high broom twirl.

“Da-da-da-da-d—AAAAAAH!” The song became a shriek of fear as one of the cabin’s gigantic fluorescent lights, complete with fixture and hanging device, crashed mere inches from her body. The broom had knocked it cleanly off its moorings. (The light shattered, but as the cabin was long and narrow, and this particular light was near the door, no one was hurt.)

The other princesses gaped in silence. The counselors turned puce. The front of the cabin was awash in a sea of glass silvers.

It was time for PrincessShan to learn the true meaning of cleaning up, and learn she did. Hours of sweeping will do that to a person.

Next time: The Wedding—Disaster or Divine?

[Satori]

I have a feeling I'm going to thoroughly enjoy reading your journal PrincessShan.

Good luck at the wedding this weekend.

[skinnypeep]

Hey Princess!

YES we will totally kick butt on the challenge.

I will be gone most of the weekend too so we'll chat again on Monday. I thought I would post the totals on the thread -unless you want to. Just let me know.

Well have fun at the wedding, and..umm.. don't break anything


Edited..... ok I was bored at work so I went ahead and posted our stuff on the thread. sooooo booooored. Almost done though

[PrincessShan]

Starting weight = 185 (damn)

Coming Monday = The Wedding Story, complete with menu!

[PrincessShan]

I know everyone’s expecting a funny story about the ex’s wedding, but I just can’t do it. I’m way too depressed to be “on” today. (Though it’s not because the groom got married, which is what everyone is thinking.)

I dated my ex for about 2 years. When we dated, I had a great relationship with his parents and was especially close to his mom. I didn’t have contact with them after the breakup, and I’m sure they hated me for hurting their son. But their son recovered beautifully (obviously), and his new wife is so wonderful that I figured it would be nice to go to the wedding and join in on everyone’s happiness.

Well, as I looked through my program before the ceremony, my heart stopped. There, among the list of those being lovingly remembered in memoriam, was my ex’s mother. She had battled illness for a long, long time.

I never even knew she died. I didn’t even know she was sick enough to die.

I know I have no right to grieve for her and that I lost any claim I had to care about her when I broke up with my ex. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m horribly sad over her passing. She was truly a wonderful person.

It was beyond hard to smile and be happy, knowing that she had died, and knowing that my ex hadn’t bothered to tell me. I didn’t cry, and I did smile, but I did end up eating way too much non-SBD food and puking in the bathroom (stress and sugar/potato sensitization, I guess).

Today I found out (through Google) that she died almost a year ago.

This is the part I’m afraid to say, and I want you all to know that I realize that I have no right to feel like this: I’m furious at my ex for not telling me. I should have been told. I’m not saying that I should have been told right away. And I know grief has different manifestations for different people, so it might have taken time. But at some point in the last year, given the extensive previous contact I had had with his mother, I should have been informed that she had passed on. I guess he figured I wouldn’t care. Or that I wasn’t worth telling. Or that maybe it had been too long since I had seen her (we broke up 3 years ago). He did tell some friends, and I seemed to be the only one in the dark.

The icing on the cake is that I called my family when I got back home, got really upset, and now they think I’m depressed because the groom got married and this is just a cover. Right. If I felt that way, it would have manifested itself before the moment I saw that program. I will admit to being jealous that I’m not as mature as they are, that I’m not ready for marriage, and that I do have a strong desire to have a ceremony in which wonderful things are said about me, but my choice of groom would not be my ex. No thanks.

I’m sure I’ll be back to my old self soon, but right now, I can’t even imagine it.

Anyway ... funny stories and menus back tomorrow. I promise.

[mom22kids]

You have every right to feel the way you do. and you have every right to mourn the loss of someone you obviously at one time were very close to. If your ex was close enough to you to invite you to his wedding, he should have mentioned his moms passing some time in the past year. And kudos to you for taking the high road and keeping your feelings to yourself through the wedding in order not to spoil his day. My condolences to you.

[PrincessShan]

Thanks, mom22kids. But I think I'm going to have to take the high road on this for the rest of my bloody life. I mean, I can't say anything about it without looking like a tool or a drama queen. At the same time, if I never say anything, that'll implode whatever's left of the frienship.

I just wonder ... why bother inviting me to the wedding at all? [/i]