Adina’s Cute & Perky Blog!

I went to eat Chinese food with a friend from work yesterday.  And I ate clean, don’t y’all worry!  Just a California Roll.

But anyway…as we were leaving, I noticed the cookies by the door.  Our waitress had forgotten to give us one.   And isn’t that half the fun of going to eat Chinese food?  Watching everyone open their cookie and read their fortune?

And…yeah…our group still plays the game where you add “in bed” to the end of every fortune as we read them out loud.  What can I say?  Not a lot to do in the piney woods of deep east Texas.

But anyway…there at the door was the biggest basket of fortune cookies I had EVER seen!  It was a like a laundry basket! 

So I stood over it, eyeing them all.  Yes, I was going to reach in and get my cookie!

Carefully I perused the cellophane-clad morsels.  I picked the package with just the right look.  After all, my fortune was contained therein!  Shouldn’t I be careful choosing my fortune?!

And I laughed when I read, “What’s the point of having a mind if you can’t change it?”

And y’all know how I relate everything to health and fitness…so….

Half of all that we do is mental and involves changing our minds.

I had to change my mind about overeating all the time.

I had to change my mind about being a couch potato.

I had to change my mind about who I hung out with.

And maybe some of you need to change your mind about drinking too much.

Smoking.

Being lazy.

Being committed.

Dedicating yourself to the task at hand.

Because let me tell you how the cookie crumbles….

What’s the point of having a mind if you can’t change it…in bed!!!

Sorry…had to throw that in!

For today…be a cookie. Change your mind about something and get after it!

I have received the best comments for my Blog the last few days!

And…thanks guys!  Funny that y’all mentioned The Biggest Loser.  That show totally inspires me!  So I say, YES, start the petition!!!But here’s what’s been on my mind the last few days: setting goals.

If you are starting out, and you have a lot to lose, your goal is to get five pounds off.  Do what you have to do to make that happen.  Then regroup from there.

I was listening to the radio on my way in to work Wednesday morning, when I hear two of the local DJ’s talking about weight loss.  Immediately, I turn up the volume on my radio.  I don’t care how long I’ve been on this side of the scale, success stories never cease to excite me!  I love them, because it’s always exciting when someone gets their eggs in their basket!!!

One of the DJ’s, Erin, has been working really hard to lose.  The other DJ, Robert, was congratulating her and telling everyone how hard she has been working.

So, when I got to my computer, I logged in to send them a short message.  I just wanted to congratulate Erin for the work and Robert for the support.  This is something I really enjoy doing.  I know how hard it is to lose, and I know how much it meant to me to get support when I was going through it.  So, now it’s my turn to give!

But you can imagine my surprise this morning when I tuned in to hear them read my E-mail over the air!  How much fun was that?!  I just laughed!!!  And Robert said on air that he had sent me an E-mail, so of course, I was excited to sign in and check it out!

In the E-mail I sent them, I had included the link to my appearance on the Today Show.  Robert mentioned how Erin had watched it several times.

And then I remembered being at my friend Carla’s house one time.  She pulled up my profile, because she wanted her sister to see my before and after photos.  And what her sister said surprised me.

“If I had seen those pictures in a magazine, I would have thought they were fake.  I would have been looking for the airbrush marks.  I never think those things are real.”

HMMMM…

We forget when we see these stories that those are just real people.  We forget that real people can make real changes.

When we see the super-fit people, how many times do we say, “Yes, but they are genetically gifted.”?

Genetic gifts mean nothing if they are not tapped into.  Michael Phelps would have never known he was genetically meant to swim had he not donned his first speedo.

The truth is, we are all genetically gifted.  We have these bodies capable of making great changes, but few of us ever tap into that.

If I had not decided to make changes a few years ago, I wouldn’t know that my biceps peak or that I have great calves.  Genetic gifts.

But my biggest genetic gift?  Willpower. 

I had it all along, but it was covered up. 

You have genetic potential.  We all do.  You just have to find yours. 

And here’s hint, it’s not under your sofa cushion or at the bottom of that pint of ice cream.  You have to get up and search for it till you find it.

Go on…get up…

I keep very few reminders in the house of my heavier days.  No real reason.  There’s just not much of anything around that brings back that time in my life.

But a coat hanger caught my eye the other day.  It still had the plastic tab from the store. 
Size XXL.

What a miserable size that was for me.

I remember thinking I had wasted my life away, and that I was doomed to live with regrets the rest of my life.  I actually remember that I was thinking I had waited too late to get started.

That was before I did anything about it, of course.

But now I’ve been this size for about two years.  I’m set in my exercise ways.  My eating habits are firmly in place.

And although I spent over twenty years morbidly obese, I really don’t remember being any other way then the way I am right now.

They say when you quit smoking, after a given time it’s as if you never smoked.  Your lungs heal and forgive you. 

I guess that’s where I am in my weight loss journey.  I’ve been this way long enough that I forgave myself, and it’s as if I was never anything but the way I am now.

I spent a lot of time fretting over events I let pass me by because I wasn’t at optimal size.  I tore up many a picture from special occasions for the way I looked in my “little” black dress. 

I started my diets years after I should have, out of depression for what I let get away from me. 

But here’s what I didn’t know…

When I made it to goal, a whole new world of Special events would open up to me.  I would have more reasons to wear little black dresses.  And sometimes I would wear a little black dress to the grocery store or Wal-Mart, just because I could.

Every day is a special occasion when you’re happy with your life!  WOO HOO!!!

And no matter what age you reach goal, there are more special events and reasons to get dressed up than you can imagine.

It’s never too late to get started.  You have things to do, places to go, and people to see.

Get after it.

And if you’re a guy…I have absolutely no clue what the guy equivalent of a little black dress is.  Somebody fill me in!

Sad to say, but I had fun talking about my man drama the last few days!

I haven’t put Monkey Boy in his place yet, but I will if I have to! 

I try my best not to have to use harsh words, but every once in a while…

My favorite incident happened at my twenty year reunion this summer.  A guy who I had a crush on in high school followed me around all night long.  I just wasn’t interested in him.  Yeah, part of it could have to do with the fact that he wasn’t interested in me back in the day.  And yeah, well, he had gained about 150 pounds.  And while he was a little on the thin side back in the day, he is not the necessary 7’8” that it would take to fill out this extra girth.

But that was the week after I got back from being on the Today Show and showing up at the reunion after losing 121 pounds.  I was just there to have fun!  I wanted to soak up every minute of it.  And I did!
 
But he tried everything to get my attention.  He even had the audacity to say, “You just think you’re too good for me, don’t you?”

When this didn’t work, he gave the mother of all bad pick-up lines, “I’ve tried everything.  What do I have to do?  Solicit you?”

So, clearly he had had coming when I slowly gave him a full body scan, rolled my eyes, and said with disgust, “I’m pretty sure you can’t afford it, but I KNOW you cannot survive it.”

What he failed to recognize was that I came back to that reunion a totally different person from the one he knew.

Like I’ve said before, fixing the outside comes with an added bonus…healing the inside…and finding worth in yourself.

If you haven’t made the changes yet, and you’re still letting people walk over you or say things like that to you, let me be the first to tell you: you are not a welcome mat, nor are you a door mat.

The only people you need in your life are the ones, who at the end of the day, add more than they take away.  And the more you surround yourself with the right kind of people, the closer and closer you get to your goal.

That man would have held me back.  And nobody can do that to me without my permission.

Permission not granted.

OK.  Stop what you’re doing.  If you did not read my Blog yesterday, you have to go back and read it before you read this one, because this is Part II!  Go on…  You’ve got the time! 

So, anyway, back to Monkey Boy… He did not realize in the timeliest of manner that he had offended me past the point of no return. 

I had never saved his number in my phone; so unfortunately, I answered it a few days after “the incident”.  Again, you really must go back and read yesterdays post to get this AT ALL! Now, any sane man would have picked up on the fact that I was being very short and very blunt.  But this just seemed to amuse Monkey Boy. 

A few minutes into the conversation, he says, “You know you miss these eyes.” Can’t you just taste your breakfast?!  I’m going to want those minutes back at the end of my life, y’all.  I swear. 

But we haven’t scratched the surface yet!  Keep  on reading.  He went on and on about how I had to be missing him, and how he knew I wanted to see him.  Finally, irritation set it.  And I don’t really get irritated too easily.  So I tell him, “Look.  You may think I’m missing you, but you don’t know me.  I’m a hard nut to crack, and I’m not even on the verge of missing you.” 

He starts HYSTERICALLY laughing, which of course, irritates me more.  So I reiterate, “I’m not kidding.”   He tells me, “No.  That’s not why I’m laughing.  I’m laughing because that’s what Mike said.” 

Mike being one of my gym buddies.  He goes on to tell me that Mike had told him, “You won’t ever get anything from her.  She’s a hard nut to crack.” 

The moron tells me this!  Even if I had been the slightest bit interested, I wouldn’t be now!  I would question his every intention.  Because along with telling me what Mike said, he lets me know that pretty much every guy at the gym knew he was trying to get me to go out. So at some point along the way he crossed the line into some territory I just didn’t care for.  He was no longer wanting to date me for the right reasons.  It was because he let every guy in the gym know he was trying, and he had to save face. 

So, now we have moved from MORON into COMPLETE MORON! But sometimes, we just don’t think, do we?

How many times did I grab a piece of cake without thinking of the consequences? What about skipping the gym on Monday, not thinking about the fact that I HAD to miss it on Tuesday due to a work meeting?

Or how about mindlessly grabbing candy from the jar at work? When I look back across my life, my biggest mistakes, be that in diet, exercise, or life in general, started with this phrase: “I just wasn’t thinking.” 

Because you know what?  I know Monkey Boy just wasn’t thinking when he sent that text or spoke those words, but he can’t have those moments back. And I know y’all didn’t think I was going to turn that story into anything other than a story, but I did.  And do you know why?  I THOUGHT ABOUT IF FIRST! 

Before you go off your diet or skip your workout today…think about it first. 

I have a rule I like to go by concerning dating men at my gym.  And here is that rule: Don’t do it!!! 

You see, I go to my gym come rain or come shine.  I don’t need to let anything or anyone make me dread going there.  But I had a momentary lapse in judgment last week, and let one of the guys take me to lunch.  He caught me off guard when he asked, because I didn’t know he had my number.  As luck would have it, he got it from another gym buddy.  Can’t wait to thank him! 

I knew things were off to a bad start when he told me not one, not two, not three, not even four times how good looking HE was at the table.  Not me mind you, but himself.  He really and truly sat across from the table and told me more times than I recall how attractive he was.  He even went so far as to tell me, “Take a look around this place.  They just don’t see people that look like me come in here.” 

But it was what he said to me the next day in a text message that put the nail in the coffin of our never off the ground “relationship”.  I was at my friend’s house when he asked me what I was doing via text message.  I told him I was at the pool.  To which he replied, “r u neked?”  And yes, he spelled it just like that.  Evidently he doesn’t know I like smart men. 

When I replied that I was not, here is what he said: “yur gonna git tan lines arnd ur monkey.” Huh?  What?  Hell-O!!!! 

Work with me people.  I’m going to need you to leave a comment here if you can tell me one redeeming thing about monkey boy’s reply. Losing weight made me look at relationships differently.  When I was heavy, I would have totally overlooked his comments.  Being obese made me desperate for attention of any kind, from any guy. 

In fact, I made bad choices in almost every area of my life, because I was depressed.  So when I looked down at my cute, pink little phone at THAT message, I thought to myself, “I did not work THIS hard to hear comments like that.” 

Losing weight came with an added bonus: gained confidence. Keep working on that outside of yours, because it’s impossible to fix the outside without the inside getting some work too! 

And as always…you are worth it!  And so am I, no matter what monkey boy thinks! 

My mother and I spent the day picking up debris in her yard from the storm last weekend.  She was raking while I was burning the big limbs and branches.

She wheeled over a big container of leaves and sticks for me to put on the fire.  She was assuming I would just take out handfuls at a time and add it to my already roaring blaze.

To her surprise I squatted to pick up the container that she had drug across the yard.  With a panicked look she said, “Wait.  That’s very heavy.”

To which I replied, “I’m a lifter,” as I hoisted the container and dumped the contents into the fire.

I had already helped her with the lawnmower.  She could not get the wheels adjusted.  But understanding how your body works allows you to understand how to use it to do what you need to do.  She was strong enough to do what she needed, but you had to work with the leverage of your own body to get the task done.

There were parts of trees that were down that she thought would be too big for us to handle.  I had them burnt in an hour, because I knew how to lift them without hurting myself.

I didn’t need to take breaks, because my body is used to working hard.

And when we came in, I wasn’t tired.  While it may have been longer than a session at the gym, it certainly wasn’t anything compared to one of my workouts!

Lifting adds so much to your life besides just the aesthetic. 

When other people look at tasks and wonder how it can get done, I am intensely aware of whether or not I can do it.  And most times I can. 

I did not start lifting for any other reason than to look good.  What a wonderful surprise to continually reap benefits that I didn’t even know were there.

Keep lifting.  You really don’t know when it’s going to come in handy.

My friend, Shoshana, who is the editor of FitnessRXmag.com asked me yesterday if I subscribed to FitnessRX for Women. 

It’s my favorite of the women’s fitness magazines.

It’s the one that ran my Success Story last December.

I write a Blog for the website, which I am more excited about than any of my other projects to date.

But yet, no subscription.

And we all know we pay less for our mags when we subscribe.  And I have bought if faithfully every month for years now.

Yet no subscription.

So I was thinking about that when Sho asked me if I subscribed. 

Why don’t I have one? 

And it comes down to this:

You know I’ve told you that when I was losing weight and had no dates on Friday nights, I would go to the bookstore.  Every Friday I sat on the floor and poured over the magazines.  Sometimes, I had read it through before I even got it home!  But I still bought it.  I needed the pictures for motivation. 

As I got closer to goal, I had more and more opportunities to go out.  Some were there all along.  It’s just that I had my head down and didn’t know it.

But those visits to the bookstore dwindled.  And what was once every Friday became a here and there visit.  A sort of hit and miss. 

And sometimes I had to go during my lunch break, because my life was full.  It was overflowing.

I never stopped the visits to the bookstore.  My inner nerd finds solace there!

But it’s more of a reminder.  And we should always remember where we came from.  Forgetting is what leads us back to places we don’t want to return.

When I walk in that bookstore now, I am immediately reminded of the sad, obese woman who used to haunt the rows searching for answers.  Looking for peace.  Wondering how things had gotten so out of control.

But what was once a place of refuge has become a place of remembrance.

I am reminded that I am there by choice now. 

I remember how I used to cringe if I caught site of my reflection in the window as I walked in.

I remember thinking I was the only one without Friday plans.

But when I see the magazine, I remember I only have a few minutes to get in and get out.  I have to grab it and go, because I have plans, y’all.

And I fix my hair in the reflection of the window as I exit.

And maybe it is time I let go of my issues and got a subscription…because I don’t have to go to the bookstore on Friday nights anymore. 

So a friend of mine told me yesterday that he has been thinking about my words form September 13th.  About having no regrets.

There is something he’s thinking about doing, and fears he will regret it if he doesn’t. 

And what I told him was this…put a ten year stamp on it.  Ten years from now, will he regret it if he doesn’t do what he’s thinking about?

And y’all.  I do this with every important decision I face.

On days I don’t want to go to the gym, I ask myself, “Ten years from now will I wish I had spent less time in the gym?   Will I wish I had given in more to bad days?”

When I want to eat junk, “Ten years from now, will I wish I had eaten more junk food?”

Ten years from now will you wish you had waited to get in shape?

Will you wish you had gorged more?

Will you wish you had waited to join the gym?

Will you be glad you never buckled down and got serious about your diet?

Will you be glad that ten years later you are starting yet another diet on yet another Monday?

Will you regret not donning that posing suit and giving competition a try?

You never really hear people say, “Thank goodness I never got my act together.”

Or thank goodness I never tried.

Good thing I never learned to like healthy food.

Sometimes…you have to do things that are hard.

Sometimes you have to take chances.

There is no reward without a little risk.  There is only a life more ordinary and less extraordinary. 

Ten years from now, I want to look back and be pleased with the choices I made.  And even more than that I want to say, “WOW! I was really brave.   I really went after that.”

Take a look at your life…the habits you are creating now.  The lifestyle you are living.

Put a ten year stamp on it and tell me…ten years from now, will you be happy with the choices you have made?  Will the things you are doing today get you to where you want to be?

If the answer is no, let’s get cracking!