2 pounds down, 48 to go

YAHOO, I lost 2 pounds last week! I exercised a total of 2 hours, dietician recommended 2.5 total per week, so I think 2 in my first week is pretty darn awesome. I ate 5 fruits and veggies 2 days last week, and 4 the other days.

This week so far, I walked for a half hour Sunday night while Mike gave Paige a bath, and then did a 35 minute aerobics video last night. Paige was sitting on Mike's lap playing computer games, but then as soon as she saw me getting ready to work out, she decided to do the video with me. It was so darn cute! She kept up with me the whole 35 minutes, even did the stretch at the end! We did a lot of grapevines at the beginning and when we weren't doing them she would say "I wanna do a grapevine mama." When it was done, she wanted to do it again, but I said we were done for the night! I think I'm taking tonight off. We have to get her flower girl dress repaired tonight for my cousin's wedding in a few weeks. She's the flower girl in that one too. We're going to the same lady we used for the alterations, I'm hoping she's a miracle worker because this dress is destroyed. In my saving money mission, I'm too cheap to buy a new one. I thought I could repair it myself, but no dice.

I may lose 10 pounds tomorrow at work. We are doing car seat appointments all day in 95 degree heat. YIPEE.

We had a very productive weekend. Again in my saving money mission, I decided we don't need to pay $30/month for a storage unit which holds our crap. So I asked my parents to come up and watch Paige Saturday AM and they did while Mike and I took the truck to our storage unit. I love that man dearly, but some days....well some days I don't like him so much. Saturday was one of those days. Earlier in the week, he gets the bright idea that we should re-list our house and therefore should keep the storage unit. Um, no. Not right now. So then we get out there and I start to make a goodwill pile, a keep pile and a going to the dump pile. I was brutal, if we didn't need it, it was going to goodwill. We kept the baby stuff and Christmas stuff. As I'm putting stuff in the goodwill pile, Mike suggests that we have a yard sale. WTF MAN?!?!?! No, I said, we have babysitters for Paige and I don't want to rent tables, price stuff, organize it, advertise a rummage sale and then sit outside while people paw through our stuff. When we are done having babies, I will have a done having babies rummage sale, but I'm not having one to sell our useless crap. Then he got slightly huffy, whatever. Then he sees his prized car stereo system that is easily 15 years old and says he's going to put that in the truck. It's one of those that takes up the whole back seat so no one can sit there. Apparently, the car seat in the truck suddenly became invisible and he forgot the fact that we do occasionally take Paige (and Duke) in the truck. UGH!!!!! Then he says he's going to sell it. So I told him he has a month to get rid of it and if it's not gone, I'm taking it to Goodwill. I'm still not sure where it ended up. It's probably hidden in our garage somewhere. So we took a truckload to the dump, a truckload to Goodwill and a truckload back to our house. We cleaned out and swept the garage, and then loaded this stuff into the corner of it. This is where having a 3 car garage really pays off. We can fit the truck, my Taurus, our boat and tons of bins in there. I'm rather disgusted that we spent $30/month for the past 2 years to store stuff we actually threw away.

Saturday night we went to a baseball game with Paige and my mom's group. There's a team in Green Bay of college boys home for the summer. Can we say yummy eye candy? We may go this Friday night with a mom and her husband from my mom's group that I've gotten to be friends with. He's a doctor, so she stays home and money is no object. But she's really nice and so is he. I'm not 100% sure I should go because our American Cancer Society Relay for Life is Friday night and I "should" work at it to get people signed up for anti-tobacco stuff. We'll see. The game would be more fun so I'm going to ask our seamstress tonight if her daughter can babysit on Friday night.

This Saturday we are getting Paige's 3 year old pictures taken at Sears. I hope they turn out. We're getting them taken a few months late...ooops.

Work is slow and boring and my boss is gone this week. This day is dragging on. I got here at 9am and haven't really done anything. At least I get to leave at 2:30pm for my therapist appointment.

OK, off to look busy.

My ya yas

really are the best. Thank you all for your words of encouragement and understanding on my last blog. They made me cry and appreciate how awesome you all are!!! YA YAS RULE!!!

So I had my dietician appointment yesterday. It went fairly well. The information she gave me wasn't really earth shattering, but it was good to hear. I am going to focus on portion sizes (measuring out food before I eat it), eating more fruits and veggies (at least 5/day) and getting 2.5 hours of exercise a week. I need to eventually get down to 1400-1600 calories a day, and she thinks I've been eating about 2200 calories/day based on my food journal. Holy crap. And I was trying to be good about what I ate because I knew I'd have to journal it and show it to her. How many calories was I eating before the food journal. I don't really want to think about it I guess. But for right now I'm just going to focus on fruits and veggies because eating those means I'll be eating less of the other not so healthy foods, which means less calories. I'm not counting calories right now. I'm going to read food labels so I'm aware of what I'm putting in my mouth, but I'm not going to obsess about it.

So being the anal detailed list kind of person I am, I whipped up a calendar for myself to help keep me on track. On the top of each day, I'm going to write in what I'm going to cook for supper. It's not necessarily going to be a super healthy one, but just a meal so I'm not scrambling around the kitchen at 5:30pm trying to defrost meat and figure out what I can cook based on the ingredients I have. Oh and keep Paige entertained. Then I have a space to write in the amount of exercise I get per day and a numbered column (1-5) for fruits and veggies. Every time I eat a serving of fruits or veggies, I check it off. I have it posted on my fridge so I see it every time I go in the kitchen. I also asked Mike to pick up more fruit at the grocery store last night and I cooked green beans from our garden with supper.

I'm meeting with the dietician in 7 weeks so I'm hoping to lose 11 pounds by then. I think I'll be able to do it. No, I WILL DO IT!!!

Therapist is this afternoon. I'll probably bawl the whole time. Should be interesting.

Off to go drink my smoothie...2 servings of fruit in there...YAHOO!!!!

Could They Make it Any more Difficult?

My god, I've spent the last hour on the phone with my insurance company, therapists, dr. office, and a hospital. All I want is to see a therapist and nutritionist to help me lose weight but my god these people all make it so difficult. First call was to insurance to check on benefits, coverage and providers for this stuff. Dieticians are covered as long as they are through a hospital or clinic that is takes our insurance. Easy enough, I'll just go through one of the hospitals in Green Bay. The guy I talked to wasn't 100% sure, but thought I'd just have to pay $30 office visit co pay. Therapy is covered as long as it is one of their therapists, again at $30 co/pay. There is one clinic in town that they cover with several therapists, so I call to make an apt. and the secretary isn't in on Wednesdays or Fridays. WTF?!?!? So I go on the internet to find a dietician at a hospital in Green Bay. One of the hospitals is Bellin and I know they take my insurance, but I call the insurance company back just to double check and this time I talk to someone who tells me that if they provide the dietetic services as an outpaitent service at the hospital, I have to pay for everything up to my deductible ($1500) then 20% for everything after that. WTF?!?!?! If it's at a clinic, then I only pay the OV $30 co/pay. UUGGGHHHH. But she says even if they (the hospital) charges $100, insurance might only allow $50 and I'd only have to pay $50. But she couldn't tell me what they allow because they are in Minnesota and I'm in Wisconsin. Again WTF!?!?!?!? So I call Patient Scheduling at Bellin and hold it together and don't break down crying while asking to see a dietician for weight loss. I mean do you have any idea how embarrassing this has all been? And the chick tells me I need a dr. referral to see a dietician for weight loss. Well Jesus F'ing Christ, now I really lose it. Just what I need. To pay $30 to see my dr. so she can tell me yes indeed you really are fat and I will refer you to a dietician, who we still don't know how much will cost you. So I hang up and break down crying. After I compose myself 10 minutes later, I call the ob/gyn's office that I just saw last week and ask them to make a referral to Bellin for weight loss. Again humiliating. But the chick I talked to was very sweet and helpful and said the dr. will do that for me. So now I wait to hear back from the therapist and Bellin to see if they will see me. I just tried calling my mom to vent, but no one is home. I put the do not disturb sign on my door and forwarded my calls to voicemail. I'm tempted to go home sick this afternoon. We'll see.

OK, the therapist office just left me a message on my cell phone. They do accept my insurance, so one step in the right direction.

In case you are wondering why I'm going through this trouble, I must tell you that my eating issues are emotional. Jenny Craig, WW, etc. just won't cut it for me. I eat for emotional reasons that I just don't want to get into. I have realized that I have a very addictive personality.

But I can't go on like this. I'm embarrassed to be out in public sometimes because of how heavy I am. I can't even hardly look at the pix from my sister's wedding because of how big I am. The photographer posed me behind Kristin for the picture of just me and her and put me in the back in the group pictures and I know why. I look like a whale standing next to her. The family picture of us is especially disgusting, my mom dad and sister are twigs and here I am the giant yellow whale.

My bloodwork came back from the ob/gyn office and everything is normal so I guess that's good. Even my lipid panel and glucose are normal and healthy which is good considering my weight and how fast I've gained. The next step we discussed was having mike's swimmers tested. I guess we'll talk about that tonight. She is also going to look at my operative report from March 2005 when my ovarian cyst was removed. Hopefully nothing serious happened from that.

AF is due anyday now so I'm just waiting to find out if I'm pregnant or not. I'm so emotional so I probably have PMS and the old bitch is on her way.

A Plan

So I met with the new ob/gyn in town yesterday and really liked her. We talked about my inability to get knocked up and she doesn't really consider me infertile yet because we've been trying for 9 months. If it's been a year, then we start talking infertility. But I decided I want to be a bit more aggressive and am having blood drawn tomorrow for testing. If my tests come back normal, Mike has to have his swimmers tested. That would be interesting. If those are normal, then I have that test where they shoot dye into your tubes. I've heard that's painful, so I'm hoping all is normal.

Well actually in a weird way I'm hoping they find something wrong with my bloodwork-well something that can be fixed with medication. What if everything is normal, but we just can't get pregnant for some reason? This month I didn't do any opks or anything, we just tried and tried and tried and tried this past weekend. It was very enjoyable!

I stayed home with Paige last week and just loved it. Her sitter was closed for the week. It is so hard being here. I actually told Mike last night that I want to be a SAHM. I would love to be home with her-I can't even believe I'm thinking that. But do I really want to throw away my career? I do like my job and am proud of the fact that I'm good at it. Money would be extremely tight, we're not even sure that it's possible. All I know is that I loved last week and that it's been a horrible adjustment being back at work this week. We tossed around having me go down to 3 days a week. I'm waiting for my boss to be in the right mood for me to approach her. We shall see.

OK off to eat lunch and then car seat apts. this afternoon.