Another weekend has come and gone. This one was even a long one and yet, not long enough.

On Saturday the family and I got up and once again headed to Tannehill to go hiking. We were flat out determined to find the elusive slave cemetery that escaped us on our last trip up there.

We went mildly better prepared this time, took more water, made the kids all carry their own stuff, etc. We even stopped by the welcome center and got a trial map. That was the most useful thing we took! LOL We ate some lunch to fuel our bodies and headed off seeking adventure.

A little over 1.5 miles and an hour later we finally found the slave cemetery. This journey was not about the cemetery really. It was about setting a goal and achieving it. Finishing something we start. DH and I are very guilty of starting things and not finishing, or saying we're going to do something and then not doing it. It was awe inspiring being in the cemetery. I love old junk and it amazes me how some of the headstones carved out of rock have survived all this time.

We had the absolute greatest sense of accomplishment. It was HOT. If you've ever been in Alabama in the summer time, you know exactly what I mean. It was hot and humid. I had a little bit harder time this time making the hike. The humidity got to me pretty bad and I had to take more breaks. The twins even had to make more stops.

After the cemetery we had to hike back down and decided to take a different route that would bring us out over at the place they were doing a civil war re-enactment, that was another mile hike. Then back to the car. We decided to take the train part of the way back to the car. We were afraid the children would revolt if we walked it.

All in all, we hiked a little over 3 miles in a little over 3 hours or so. Nobody really kept up with the time very well. We achieved our goal and found new power within ourselves. DH and I left there thinking, if we could do that in the shape we are in, what can we do next? He's busy planning our next hiking adventure....Oak Mountain and hiking up to Pevine Falls, 2 mile hike one way straight up the mountain. Should be fun.

Well the results are in.

I stepped so far out of my comfort zone last weekend and sucked up the nerve to get my picture taken. Everyone said I wouldn't regret it. But they were wrong. I do, I seriously do regret it. We picked up our CD of pictures today. We get home and there's only 140ish pictures on the DC and I know he took tons more than that. Specific poses were missing. The picture of me and DH, the pictures of me solo, severl pictures of me with the girls and some of the girls. So DH calls him and asks him where they are. Photographer said that he left them off because he went through and picked out the best pictures to put on the CD. DH asked him to email us a couple of the "bad" pictures so that we could see what he's talking about. Well the 3 that he sent were 3 of me. One of them is me kissing my DH and the only thing I see wrong with it is a tag thingy I have on my eye. It looks horrible. In each of the pictures that thing is there. It's huge and it is ugly. Nothing else really is wrong with the pictures. He didn't burn them not because they were bad quality pictures but basically because I was ugly.

God I look aweful. I'm fat, double chins, fat poofy cheeks. My cheeks are so fat you can barely see my fucking nose when I smile. My nose and lips are even fat. This did not make me feel better about myself. It made me feel worse. I want to just cry and never step in front of a fucking camera again.

DH said he's going to talk to the photographer, but it's not his fault. He took some very good pictures of the girls. He just couldn't do anything with me, you can't fix ugly. I feel myself sinking quickly into the bad place and I do not want to go there. This is completely heart wrenching for me, I'm not sure that If I go to the bad place, I can come back.

I'm about to go to bed, tomorrow I will get up and work out. I will trudge on and pretend like I'm not disappointed as fuck that I can't even get a picture of me with my girls. They come out so bad the photographer won't even do anything with them. I know I used to be pretty. Can I get there again?

Today's Exercise

I am proud of myself. I have done very well today. I have eaten well and I did 120 wall push ups as part of a challenge on sparkpeople that I created. I still need to log my calorie intake and I'm going to try to do a 2 mile walk this evening.

Got overwhelmed and now back in control.

I love when I have great amazing epiphanies. I mean, I can hear the same thing from person after person after person and say I know I know I know, and yet it doesn't sink in. Then suddenly out of no where one day, I'll be chatting with a friend and BAM it'll hit me. OMG they were right, that is what the problem is.

I have lately been overwhelmed with my weight loss journey. All the eating right, keeping up with calories, exercising, weighing, measuring, ahhhh it gets to be too much. And this is what normally makes me quit.

When I first started, I was doing strength training whenever I had a chance. Mostly throughout my work day. It worked for me. I got it done, it helped keep me awake and I was seeing results. Then I joined a team on sparkpeople that gives out weekly challenges that are, I must say, ass kicking. The purpose of the challenges is to push your limits and make you give 100%. The team also gives homework and doesn't accept excuses or bullshit for failures. There is tons of support and understanding for failures, but you have to own the failures.

I have not exercised in a week. I have not owned that failure to do so. I made excuses. I got into the mind set that I could do these challenges three days a week and not need or shouldn't be doing anything else so I quit doing the stuff at work. Then I wasn't doing the challenges for whatever reason. So I was doing NOTHING. Who does this hurt? Me, and only me.

The overwhelming part was that I felt I had to do these challenges or I was letting down the team. I had to do other workouts too because other people were posting what all they do in a day and I was no where near that. They were dropping pounds and inches and I was piddling along. I got frustrated.

I'm ok now. I realize the problem. So here I am again at step one, take 45. I resolve to doing something every day at work. Whether it's wall push ups, leg extensions, anything that will have my body moving and muscles engaged. I am only going to focus on doing the "challenge" one day a week. If I have time and motivation to do them more, I will, otherwise, I'm not going to stress over doing them.

Today I have done 80 wall push ups here in the office. Simple enough to do. Maybe some day I will be at the point of loving exercise enough to do it constantly but right now, I'm not there. I have to teach myself to like the exercising first before I can be all gung ho about doing it.

Support

Ok so. On advice of a friend, I sat my family down and asked them for support on my weight loss journey last night. I don't think I expressed myself very well. I ended up with one kid crying, another mad at me and the third, well I'm not sure she was paying attention at all. DH looked like he was just really pissed off at me and started getting like, defensive. So, I shut up.

He later asked me if I was mad at him and we had a little chit chat. He explained that he thought I was pointing my finger at him and blaming him for my poor eating habits and being fat. That is SO not what I was going for so I tried to explain farther. I'm still not sure it got through. He has a pretty thick skull. I did tell him that I didn't think it was fair to hold me responsible for whether he and the kids get something they want to eat. Often he will say, "Honey want some ice cream?" And he does it in front of the kids so of course they're all jumping up and down wanting some themselves. If I say no thanks, you guys go ahead, he has been known to say "well then, if you don't want any, we'll just pass on it tonight." So it becomes my fault that nobody else is getting something they want. I think he might have got that point.

I think my oldest DD thinks this is just some kick I'm on. I've been working on this since August 2007. I didn't give it 100% in the beginning. I am now. I'm doing better now. It's not a kick that I'm on. It's not easy and I screw up, but it's not a kick.

I'll give it a little bit and see if anything sunk in. If not, I'll try a different approach. Maybe actually seeing my blood pressure numbers will work. Who knows. I just know I have to do this, and I cannot do it alone, I need their help.

Pictures

Well yesterday my family went out to have my children's pictures taken professionally. They had such a great time and the photographer did an excellent job with them. I totally cannot wait until we get the finals back.

I started in the whole planning process for this having no intention of having my pictures taken at the same time. By yesterday morning, I had almost decided to go ahead and do it. I was still on the fence but I went ahead and fixed my hair and put on some make up and wore decent clothes. Not really with the conscious thought of having my picture taken, but just in case he got me in some of them then I wouldn't look horrible. After getting to the location and spending some time around the photographer and watching him work, I finally decided that I would like a couple of pictures of me with my girls and of me with my husband. DH and I haven't had our picture taken together in 10 years nearly. And honestly, I'm usually the person taking the pictures so I am rarely in them. Do I in 15 years want to look back and kick myself in the ass for not having pictures with my girls? Do I want my kids thinking that I was too ashamed of myself to have my pictures taken? Fuck no. My kids will never be 9 and 17 again. I will never have another chance for these times. I won't have any more kids. I'm missing out on sharing the experience with them. And they are missing out as well. And 40 years from now when I'm gone, they'll be missing out once again.

I am fat. I recognize that and I am dealing with it. But I am what I am right now and capturing moments on film is about capturing right now. This is who I am right now. I can't change that in the flick of a finger. If I'm unhappy with how I look, I shouldn't try to hide it from the world, because honestly, my ass is big, there's no hiding it. I can be comfortable and stay in my little shell and be miserable forever or I can step outside my comfort zone and own who I am and what I am and try to change what I am. One year from now, those pictures will be different, I will be different. I am undergoing many changes in myself right now and I like it. But I cannot pretend that who I am right now doesn't exist just because I do not like how I look.

The wonderful photographer sent me some sample proofs this morning. There's one of me with one of my 9 year olds. I love it. My first thought was "wow I look pretty." My DH even commented to me how pretty I looked. And I felt it was very sincere. He tells me often but sometimes it feels more like "just what you say" instead of how he truly feels.

I wonder, where My journey to a new me will take me next. What will I venture into next that changes me for the better? We'll see.

A glimpse of me.

Kelly Clarkson has a song on her newest album entitled "Sober." That song has like become the story of my life. I'm working on getting "sober." Not from alcohol, but from food.

The song says "I don't know this will break my heart or save me." I think this journey is going to and has done both, broken my heart and saving me. Sometimes you have to break open old wounds to get to the heart of it and let it heal properly. That is the hardest part. Too often we hide behind food to mask those feelings that we just don't want to or cannot deal with. The journey to a healthier life, is a journey not just into the physical body, but the emotional/spiritual as well.

"Nothing's real until you let go completely." How true. You can not get get over things and move on until you completely let go of those things holding you back and standing in your way. "So here I go with all my thoughts I've been saving, here I go with all my fears weighing on me." This goes back to hiding our feelings, saving them to be felt for another day, shoved down by that ice cream or that pudding. The fear of the unknown weighs us down and we let it hold us back.

"Picked all my weeds but kept the flowers." I'm picking out and trashing all of the bad things in me, thoughts, feelings, fears and I'm uncovering and keeping the beautiful parts of me. The things that have been hidden behind the ugly.

"I don't know, I could crash and burn but maybe, at the end of this road I might catch a glimpse of me." This part touches me the most today. On Saturday my family went for a hike. Something we haven't done in a long time because we got fat and lazy. We walked down the road pictured above, about 2 miles. At the end, I believe I saw a glimpse of me. I saw what I used to be, I felt how I used to feel. And I liked it. We encourage our kids to push harder, do more, do better, improve yourself, while we sit around and just get by with what and who we are. I don't know at what point we stopped trying to do better. Is this the turning point for me? Is this where I stop making excuses for what I have become and start doing something about it so that I can become who I know I am?

"Three months and I'm still standing here, Three months and I'm getting better here." That just about says it all. I'm still standing here. Facing those feelings hasn't killed me. I'm still traveling down the road to myself. It's a long, tiring and painful journey, but in the end it is going to be so worth it.

Exercising

Exercising is such a pain in the ass. I really hate doing it. I hate being sweaty and gross. But on the flip side of that I like the way it makes me feel after wards. I like the way my muscles feel, I can feel my muscles moving and shaping. I feel strong and beautiful. I think it's weird how working out makes me feel beautiful. I procrastinate and make excuses to not exercise and have to force myself to do it, but I like it after wards. WTF.

What to write.

I have had this blog for a couple of weeks now and haven't put anything in here yet. I've been considering what exactly do I want to write about. What do I want to put out there for the world to see. Should I basically write a story of me, should I tell antidotes of my kids, should I tell about my highs and lows? I finally decided, yes. I'm going to write about all of that. Whatever is on my mind or happening in my day right at the moment I decide to log on and post something. So there might be something of my past, my present or my future. As all of these things are important to me and should be expressed. You have been warned.

Lea