A completely different person

Who is this girl?? Well this is who I think I am... this girl reflects who I feel I am inside. I'm so used to seeing pictures of myself and wondering in disbelief who this fat woman is, that when I see a picture of myself where you can't really see my fat, I could stare at it for hours. Can anyone relate??

We took this picture while on our beach vacation in Eilat in the south of Israel 2 weeks ago... one of those self-shots (Marius is holding the camera). These are the only pictures I like of myself these days as if I angle my head right, you can hardly tell I'm fat. Anyway, I knew when we took this one, that this would be one of THOSE pictures... one that I can look admiringly at and say 'hey, I look pretty'. Rare.

Anyway, I've been absent from blogging. Got home from my vacation and had gained 2 pounds, which really is good, considering I was hardly ever on plan while I was away (didn't track, but tried to make healthy choices)... however, for whatever reason I went into a sort of tailspin for a week.... even had a junk food binge, which I haven't done in over 4 months now. Felt horrible, but of course in tailspin mode, it led to more bad choices over the next couple of days. I'm trying to be kind to myself as it was a tough week re-adjusting back to being home... kids took a while to get over the 10 hour time difference, I felt exhausted from the 20 hour trip, and I spent 4 days doing laundry and cleaning the house and being a single mommy again. Got sort of used to having hubby and grandparents around to help with the kids!! All that and I was blessed with the arrival of TOM.... when it rains, it pours, I tell ya!!

But enough of the excuses. I'm back.... out of the tailspin and in a better frame of mind. Hope to get back into the swing of things and start tracking and exercising again.

A few pictures....

Thought I'd post a few pics of our trip so far (we're 1 week in - 2 1/2 to go!)..... let it be known that everywhere else I will be posting pictures, I doubt I will be in any of them, so this is actually quite freeing ......to just put myself out there. And surprise surprise, I actually don't think I look THAT bad :)

This is a view of beautiful Tel Aviv from the old city

The family

Exploring the winding streets of the 'old city'

(this one's for you, Becks) - just a glimpse of the yummy baked goods found on every street corner - AKA what I'm up against :) And yes, I ate one - well I ate half of one of the ones on the bottom - it was filled with ooey gooey warm cheese and meat.... heaven....

Don't have too many exciting pictures to post as both kids are still sick and so we haven't been getting out and doing anything too fun. We leave tomorrow for our all-inclusive trip down south, so hopefully the barfing will subside soon!!

More (hopefully) *before* pics!!

OK. So ONCE again inspired by a very good friend of mine (you know who you are)... I'm being brave enough to post a couple of recent pictures of myself. These are from our trip to our cottage in Ontario at the begining of the month..... keep in mind that I would NEVER EVER EVER post these anywhere else because I can hardly even look at them. After getting home and downloading them, and once again feeling complete shock over how I look, I immediately concluded that every single picture would be filed under "BEFORE PICTURES"!!! The only way I can accept that this is the way I really look is that I have the dream of being able to look back on them after I've lost weight and be able to feel proud of how FAR I've come!!









I think that this is the cutest picture ever of everyone else!!! If I could have set it up myself, I woulda sat further down on the rock and more towards my husband!!! SO ridiculous how all I can ever think about is hiding my weight!

UGH. Nothing else to say .... UGH













My wonderful, fantastic, handsome husband.... who loves me no matter what I weigh... I am so grateful to have him in my life (I have a full body shot of this, but cant bring myself to post it!).

Yet ANOTHER reason to hate being fat!

So I got my hair done today. It was the 3rd time in 5 months. Before that it had been a year since I'd gotten it cut (luckily with long curly hair you can do that - sort of)! I decided back in February that getting my hair cut was a way to start taking care of myself and treat myself to a bit of pampering (GASP - imagine!).

So I LOVE LOVE LOVE my hairdresser. She is the first person that I have gone back to in MY LIFE for a repeat cut. I LOVE my hair these days and love going in to see her. She spends almost 2 hours on me and I come out feeling all swingy and sexy. Plus, she always straightens my hair, and if you have curly hair, you know how exciting that is!

HOWEVER..... I HATE sitting in front of that mirror looking at my face. It happens every time... I get my hair washed and sit down on that hydrolic chair (more on that in a minute), look up and BAM! I'm stunned at how I look. Hair wet and slicked back, the rolls that appear because I'm sitting (I mean, how often do you look at yourself in a mirror when you're sitting? Shocking - that's all I can say) and I just FEEL HUGE. And then I see the cape.... ahhhh the lovely 'fat-hiding' cape. Once that's on, I can almost pretend that there's a thin person under there. Except that I have no neck and my face still looks fat... but still - if it wasn't for the cape, I don't know that I could sit there making small talk.

And then she starts to pump the chair to raise me up. Does anyone else ever feel fear and trepidation when that chair starts rising? I'm sitting there wondering what the weight limit is on those hydrolics and how humiliating it would be if the poor things just couldn't take it. How everyone would hear the sad hissing noise they'd make as they slowly gave up and I slowly sunk down to the floor. There are no words.

I CANT WAIT to not think these ridiculous energy-robbing thoughts anymore. I imagine that when my weight is not such a big issue, that I may be able to just sit there and enjoy the hair cut (again, GASP!).

I won't even talk about catching myself in the windows/mirrors as I bounced out of the mall. I chose to avert my eyes to my hair and capitalize on the *straight sexy hair moment*. I'm glad I did, because I stepped out into torrential downpour. Bye bye sexy straight hair - guess it's time to go back to being a pony-tailed mommy :)

PS: Hair is already starting to curl in this picture
PPS: ** Picture Taking Tip: Take picture from above.... and voila - 50 pounds lighter :) **

The Red Bull Fairy.....

.....snuck into this baby boy's room this morning at 5:15am and woke him up... that HAS to be it. Why else would a 9 month old wake up 2 hours early and decide to practice *talking*. However cute his gibberish babbling and giggling was, I was NOT ready to get up that early. He woke up Maya (grrrrrr) and to top it off, the following laws of my universe were in effect:

1) I stayed up til 1am to watch a rerun of SNL. I didn't even enjoy it, just sat there watching it. Blah.
2) My husband left on a business trip this morning, and so I am left alone with the consequences of a tired cranky baby who's off schedule and a 2 1/2 year old who lost an hour's sleep and who is currently full of beans- jumping around me singing the same line of twinkle twinkle little star over and over again VERY loudly (although she sings 'fwinkle fwinkle wittle stawrr' so it's kinda cute. Kinda).

I can only hope that this means they'll both be down for long afternoon naps!

I find that it's these types of days, when our daily schedule gets off track, that I also get sidetracked with my eating. I usually eat at specific times (breakfast when Matthew goes down for his morning nap and lunch when both of the kids are down for their afternoon naps). When these nap times are changed, I find it hard to stick to my eating plan and find myself grabbing something here and there. Oh well, I know that I still have control over what I put in my mouth, so today I WILL stick to healthy eating, and will try my hardest to be a happy mommy today and not let my crankiness show!!

On a weight-loss note, I *feel* lighter today. Do any of you know what I mean? It's like I can tell that I lost a few fat cells. I am going to resist weighing myself and wait for tomorrow morning when I do my mid-week reality check. But I'm pretty sure I lost something. I love the feeling though... hmmm I wonder what losing a HUGE chunk of weight will *feel* like?!