Another Update...here we go again!

So I am beyond frustrated with Beverly Hills Physician right now. My case worker assured me that we would be able to get my surgery cleared before my insurance changed on October 1st....it didn't happen. Luckily I still have a PPO with my new insurance provider and we were able to resubmit everything immediately. Now we just have to play the waiting game....AGAIN. I got very sick of  waiting around for them and decided that I'm going to try to see what I can do on my own. I essentially want to RACE THE SURGERY!

Exercise Plan: I am committing myself to walking (eventually conditioning myself to run) Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.

Food Plan: I am going to be trying to minimize my carb portions and pre-planning my meals. This will help me portion control and hopefully help my hubby with his need to portion control too. Love you, babe!

*TRIUMPH*  I have officially gone down an entire pant size! YAY! I'm slowing getting there, but hopefully with this new plan I can get a lot more accomplished.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

   This past June Ryan and I took a trip to Chicago. As soon as we got back I uploaded our photos and quickly realized that there were MANY photos of food...and us eating food. One day I mentioned it to my mom and she told me, "Yeah. If you look at your facebook there are a ton of food pictures." So I went home and took a look: SHE WAS RIGHT! Then I proceeded to look through our scrapbooks and it was the same thing. To prove to you what I'm talking about I took pictures of our honeymoon scrapbook:

Night #1: Our suite cases still hadn't caught up with us from the airport, but nothing could get us down. We had been married for 24 hours  and were eating our first married meal together (didn't get to eat much at the wedding) at KOUZZINA, Iron Chef Cat Cora's restaurant at Disney world. There's a lamb shank, steak, 2 desserts of some sort and the hummus platter.

Night #2: Hawaii buffet/family style dinner at OHANA at the Polynesian. They had noodles, steamed veggies, pot stickers, wings, shrimp, pork, chicken and a dessert that rocked our world. Did I mention they also sat us right by the window so we had the PERFECT view of the firework show over Cinderella's Castle?!

   When we were on our honeymoon the EPCOT INTERNATIONAL FOOD AND WINE FESTIVAL was in full swing! Prepare yourself because the following pictures were only about 2/3 of the actual food we ate over the course of 2 days. I'm not even kidding!!! There were booths set up for over 30 countries and we had a pre-paid gift card that we received as a wedding gift. $200 worth of food & drink!

Cheese fondue with a mini baguette, shrimp on the barbie, & lamb

chicken gyro and fried Greek cheese (with pistachios and honey)

Shepard's pie, desserts samplers, jerked chicken and Korean BBQ short rib

escargot (one of my favorites), creme brulee & beef and mashed potatoes

baguettes and various french pastries...and my super cute hubby pretending to be French

sushi!!!

Moroccan yuminess!

Our last dinner on our honeymoon...Wolfgang Puck! Ryan got the bacon-wrapped meatloaf. I got the chicken and mashed potatoes. Dessert was creme brulee for both of us...then a ghiradeli's sundae later.

I think that I will be periodically posting some of these so everyone can see what a huge role food played in my life. Maybe it can help someone else out there stop planning their trips around food....kinda like I did!

Shopping for the "NEW ME"

   For the last couple of months my clothes have all started to feel much looser! In fact, ALL of my black work-pants are way too big for me. This made me realize that I needed to go through my closet to figure out what items are going to be easy for me to "shrink into"... something I've never had to deal with before. Never in my life have I ever GONE DOWN in sizes. So as I sifted through my closet I realized that there really isn't too much that will work for me... SHOPPING TRIP!!!

   As I roamed the aisles of Ross I realized that at some point after the surgery my mindset about shopping would change. My priority won't be "What will work with my body?" It will be "What do I like?" That made me wonder.... WHAT'S MY STYLE? I raided my favorite blog
http://disneybound.tumblr.com/ and found some fantastic ideas about what I'd like to wear post-surgery:

 

   I think that dresses are going to work for me really bell as I shrink. I figure I can always belt things as they get looser on me. All of these outfits outfits are right up my ally style-wize.

Once Upon a Time . . .

   Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved Disney princesses. She collected all of the Princess Barbies and always said "Someday I want to look like Snow White!" Unfortunately for that little girl she couldn't stay in her room and pretend to be a princess all day; she had to go deal with reality. The reality was that people around her were never happy and she couldn't control it...but she could control food. She could hide blocks of cheese under the couch for later. She could eat until SHE decided it was enough. She could have total control over food even if she couldn't control anyone around her. . . . THE END

   It took me about 10 years to realize that there was a problem. The relationship I had with food was unhealthy, but it still took me another 4 years to WANT to find the root of my problem. I know for a lot of people it may seem like a pretty simple thing to do: acknowledge you have a problem. But for the people actually living through it and experiencing it, you know it's not easy to look internally and point the finger at yourself. You can try all you want to blame someone else but at the end of the day you have to take ownership over the situation.

   My Grandma never recovered from her divorce from my Grandma...my mother was always hunting down my biological father to pay him child support.... my mom and Grandma just couldn't get along when they lived together... my mom was always stressed out trying to juggle a full time job, night school and raising a child. Life wasn't that peaceful for the people around me, but I couldn't do anything to make it better...I was just a kid. That's most likely when I began my unhealthy relationship with food. I would eat more when it was more apparent that I couldn't control things going on around me.

Disney Princesses don't eat their feelings...neither should I!

Success Story

   I believe that I've mentioned before that I am a gown stylist at a bridal shop...Camarillo Bridal. This week I had a very interesting encounter with a stunning woman. My manager was helping her find a gown for the Navy Ball and boy oh boy did they find the right gown. It was hugging her body in all the right places! I thought to myself, "Gosh I would love to be able to wear a dress like that after my surgey." Just as that thought ran through my head my manager said "She just lost a ton of weight too." When I asked her how she did it she told me she's had a weightloss surgery (gastric bypass).

   She was nice enough to show me the "before and after" pictures and it was jaw-dropping. She looked like a completely different person! The best part about meeting her was something she told me:

 "A lot of people say that surgery is THE EASY WAY to lose weight....it's really not." She made the point that you are essentially losing control of your own body and there are prices to pay for not listening to your body. That was something I'd never thought of before. I used to be one of those people who thought surgery was an easy way to lose the weight, but as I've worked with my nutritionist I've come to realize that you are forcing the portion control. You are shocking the heck out of your body and sort of giving up your control over what you put in it. For a lot of us who are overweight, we overeat because food is something we always have control over.... it's all about control!

Goal for the week... practicing SELFcontrol!

ONE MONTH TO GO

So here's the skinny ( or not so skinny in my case) about what's going on this next month:

* I just found out Saturday that my packet was barely submitted to insurance 3 weeks ago (4 weeks in 2 days), which puts us behind 2 weeks. This has been EXTREMELY irritating! I specifically asked to be notified the day it was submitted so that I could begin my 45 day count.I was NEVER notified and my consultant won't give me the date it was submitted.

Now remember... we are on a time crunch with this surgery because my insurance changes on October 1st...that means in 30 days! So if we don't get it approved ASAP this surgery might not happen!!!

I AM GETTING REALLY ANGRY AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO START OVER AGAIN.

Eggs 'N' Things

I have been trying to find ways to update this blog while I'm in INSURANCE LIMBO, so I thought that I could show you guys some of the transitional changes that I've made to my diet and share some recipes with you. For example, who doesn't love scrambled eggs? This is how I changed up your standard scrambled eggs to make them more filling and get a serving of veggies in. . .



Step 1: cut up 1 small onion (white or yellow) & 3 roma tomatos

Step 2: Saute the tomatos and onions in a tiny bit on olive oil and sea salt. Then add 4 large eggs.

In the end it was enough for both my husband and I. I usually will serve it with a slice of whole wheat toast and fruit or cottage cheese.

ENJOY!