Tag: 4 months

Those cookies were how many calories?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

cookies

We all know that cookies aren’t the best things in the world to eat and that we should eat them as a treat and only in moderation, right?  My mother used to give us 2 cookies at night before we went to bed.  We always wanted more, but she insisted that 2 were enough.  Now I know why.

One of the reasons I got so fat was because I didn’t care how many calories were in my cookies.  We would buy 2 bags of Albertson’s cookies when they were on sale for 2 for $5 because that’s a pretty good deal right?  We each had our own bag and we would both finish our respective bags by the end of the day.

In the words of Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman “Big mistake, big, HUGE!”

One single cookie is 130 calories and even though 130 doesn’t sound like a lot, can you imagine eating a whole bag in a single day?  Those calories add up.  I can see eating 2 cookies for 260 calories and that should be the limit, right?  Oh no, we ate THE WHOLE BAG!  That whole bag of 18 cookies at 130 calories per cookie adds up to 2340 calories.  In ONE day!

Using the Noom app, I have learned that to lose weight you must eat a limit of 1400 calories, that is depending on if you are exercising, those days the Noom app lets me eat 1700 – 1800 calories.  But if I’m not exercising because A.) I’m too lazy or B.) my back and my still broken, but healing arm are in pain, then I should really stick to 1400 calories.  That is how I have been so successful that I have lost 50lbs in less than 4 months.

What brought this up is that we bought a bag of cookies yesterday because it was on the reduced (stale) rack for $1.99 and we figured that we haven’t had cookies in a long time so why not, right?  Well, last night I had 2 cookies and even though it was very good, I knew that 2 were my absolute limit.  I looked in the bag today and there are only 3 cookies left.  My partner is also trying to lose weight, but apparently he isn’t counting as many calories as I am lol.  I think that is okay for him because he isn’t really taking it too seriously, but I am very strict with myself, so if he wants those last 3 cookies, he can help himself because I don’t want them.

I have to practice complete self control at all times otherwise I am going to fail.  Without self control, who knows where I would be today.  I might still be 263lbs or who knows, I might be 270 by now.

Cookies are a great treat once in awhile, but I try to stay as far away from them as I can because as far as I’m concerned, they are a diet killer.

Tomorrow is my weigh in day so I am hoping for some good results.  Until then…

My Noom weight chart from the beginning

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Health, Noom, Weight4 Comments

weight chart

I have been blogging about my weight loss over the last few months, and I have been updating my Noom page every week to show my current progress, but I thought I would share the full weight chart.  I have wanted to create this chart, but it took me a long time to figure out how I was going to do it because I had to take multiple screenshots on my phone and then blend them together layer by layer.  The thought bubbles were overlapping each other, so I had to erase them and put them back in, some upside down, and then manually type in the weight with the date (minus the day of the week for space issues).  I finally did it and here it is.

As you can see, I have not gone up throughout my entire process, it’s all down.  There were some weigh-in’s where I had only gone down maybe 1lb or 1.8lbs, but I didn’t mind that because at least I didn’t go up.

I started out at 263lbs on January 5th 2013 and my last weigh-in shows 212.6lbs in less than 4 months.  That’s 50.4lbs.  My first weigh in was on a Saturday, but the first week the app asked me to weigh in on a Wednesday, then again and for some reason I got confused and started weighing in on Wednesdays.  I decided after a few weeks that I wanted to go back to weighing in on Saturdays at the end of the week instead of the middle, so that’s why there are some oddities in the chart.

They say that bragging about something is going to make it stop, and normally I would agree, but I just can’t help it because I am so proud of myself.  I know it won’t stop because I am going to continue to work as hard as I have been to get this weight off of me.

I just have 12.6lbs to go to meet my goal of 200lbs, and then I will extend this goal so that I go down to 170lbs.  Once I reach that goal, I will continue this hard work to maintain my weight.  I would hate to work this hard to lose all that weight just to end up  back where I was by going back to my old eating habits.

This is a lifestyle change which I will continue because I don’t want to end up as fat as I was, or fatter.  For me it’s a health issue because I had sleep apnea and type-2 diabetes.  I say had because I am no longer at risk for diabetes and I am hoping that the weight loss will reverse or end my sleep apnea.  I’ll admit that I haven’t been wearing my bipap mask the whole night every night like I should, but the reason is because some nights I have trouble falling asleep with it on, so I will take it off after an hour.  I can usually go 2 days without it before I start waking up with acid reflux and then a few more days before I gasp for air, but I haven’t been going through that.  I think that I might be in the safe zone where I probably don’t have sleep apnea anymore, or it’s going away, but I’m not a doctor so I can’t say that for sure.  I will probably need to get a new sleep study to find out.

The responsible adult in me should warn that if you have sleep apnea, DO NOT go a single night without your mask, even if you can’t fall asleep.  Sleep apnea could cause death from heart attack or a stroke and is a serious matter, so make sure you wear your mask.

I remain positive because that is the only way to be successful.  I couldn’t be more happy with my progress and I look forward to my next weigh in on Saturday.

My Book is Almost Ready for Publication

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, It Gets BetterLeave a comment

I started writing my life story many years ago, but really worked hard on it in 2011.  It took me 2+ months to write it and 4 months to edit it.  I have sent it off to a few people as an advanced copy and of course mistakes were found.  So it is not yet ready for publication, but it will be soon.

In case anyone is wondering what it’s about, I’ll tell you.  I was abused as a child by my stepfather; my mother and older sister also mentally abused me.  I tried to kill myself many times from the age of 13 until I was 20.  A woman attempted to molest me when I was 15 years old and I was raped multiple times when I was 20. I was homeless for 6 months at the age of 15 and for 10 months when I was 17.  I was also homeless in my early 20’s; I was living in motels, but that is technically considered being homeless.  I met my soul mate and life partner of 17 (going on 18) years and meeting him was when it got better.

I started out writing my life story (as if anyone cared because I’m a nobody) but then these gay children started killing themselves and it suddenly evolved into an “It Gets Better” book.  I want to show that I had a horrible life and I wanted to end it all, but it got better for me and it can get better for them too if they just hang on for a little bit longer.  It may seem like it’s never going to get better, and believe me, I thought for years it could only get worse, but it did get better.

My main goal is that it may help someone out there who is being bullied and wanting to end it all.  They will read my “it gets better” book and see that it got better for me and it can get better for them too.  If they don’t read it, and I don’t expect them to, then perhaps someone can read it and give them the cliffs-notes version to help them.

I am a bit nervous about publishing it because of course I don’t want the people who I wrote about to get upset with me, despite them being in the wrong.  They don’t even talk to me so I don’t know why I would care if they were upset with me anyway.

I am excited because I am finally finished and can publish it soon.  What makes me more excited is that I can finally help some charities when I get my first check from the sales of the book.  I have wanted to help these charities for a long time but couldn’t because I never had the money.

Today is Wednesday, so hopefully I will be able to publish my book within the next week.  Of course I will be advertising my little butt off here, on Twitter, on Google+ and on Facebook so stay tuned for that lol.

Thanks for reading.

My Book Is Finally Finished, but…

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, Books, eBook2 Comments

My book is finally finished being edited and is ready to be published.  It took me 2 months to write it, but then it took me another 4 months to edit it.  I have been working for at least 8 hours a day to get it right so there are no mistakes.  It is ready, but not ready because I may have made a mistake with the copyright.

I copyrighted it on November 28th 2011 and I uploaded my unfinished book and the cover, but haven’t taken any other action, besides uploading the current revision of course.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to mail it to them or not.  It still says pending so I’m not sure when it will be completed.  I don’t want to take any chances with it so I won’t publish it until the copyright has gone through.

I said I was going to publish it tomorrow, January 1st 2012, but now I have to wait until January 2nd when I can call the copyright office and talk to someone.  This really sucks but my hands are tied.

That will give me another opportunity to read the book one last time to make absolutely sure there are zero mistakes.  It sucks because I have read my book about 20 or 30 times.  I have never read a book this many times before, and since it’s my life story, I have to relive it again every time I read it.  I just want to be done with it and move on.

Anyway, I will update this on Monday when I have spoken to someone at the copyright office.  If my claim has expired because I didn’t mail a printed copy, then I will have to copyright it again and mail it to them and wait for god only knows how much longer before I can publish it.  I’m sure it won’t take that long though, I’m hoping I can upload it on Monday when I get off the phone with them.  I can’t make any promises though.

Now that I am finally finished editing, I can finally enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online again.  WOOHOO!

Bicycle

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

I woke up at 7am with the alarm clock with the intention of leaving the house at 8:30am or when Darrin left for work.  But then I realized that I might be getting a package in the mail any day now so I just decided to wait another hour for the mail.  It’s a good thing I did because she left a big package on my doorstep and didn’t even ring the bell.  She just left it there.  If I wasn’t home when she dropped it off then someone could have taken it.  It was the Big City Slider Station from Publishers Clearing House lol.  Yeah I know, I could have gotten it from Wal-Mart but I can pay for it over the next 4 months.  I don’t have the money to spend at Wal-Mart right now.

Before the mail came I thought that I would go to Albertson’s real fast and see what they have in the way of energy bars.  When I get to a certain point my stomach starts hurting because all of a sudden it’s like I’m starving or something.  I don’t know why it does that so I wanted to get some energy bars.  They aren’t too bad I guess, most of them are a bit expensive like $1.50 – $2.  But then I saw the Tiger’s Milk bars which were only .89 cents but they also had a tag that said buy 1 get 1 free.  So I bought 3 of them and got 3 for free.  I’m going to have to go back later and buy 20 more for $10 lol.

So then I went to the bike path and didn’t stop for any rest, I was going to just rest at a Yokuts park just before Beach Park but then I figured that Beach Park is right next to Yokuts park so I might as well just keep going to Beach Park.  When I got there I sat on the cement bench and grabbed my Tiger’s Milk bar and enjoyed it.  My stomach was a little tiny bit hungry but it wasn’t too hungry but this Tiger’s Milk bar filled it.  I sat there for probably 15 minutes then I went on my way back the way I came to come home.

When I got home I took the bicycle computer off and when I opened the back door the dog (toy chihuahua) was jumping up for me to pick her up and I did then I started walking in the door and went to reach for the doorknob to close it and the computer fell out of my hand.  OMG!!!  I picked it up and it was flashing numbers as if I had just taken the battery out and replaced it so it wanted me to set it up.  This means that I had lost all my information.

Luckily I had looked at the info before I got home so I kinda knew what my trip odometer was.  It was about 10 miles which was the same exact amount of miles I went on April 17th so I just wrote down the same miles.  Also I looked at my average speed and it was 12.2 so I wrote that down on my sheet (and in the bike computer stats in the Spark People page).  My time was about the same as April 17th also so I just put 52 minutes and no seconds.  I don’t know how many calories or fat calories that was but I’m not really concerned.  The reason I say that is because going 12.2mph burns more calories than going 11.8mph.  Not that much but still, the numbers wouldn’t be the same.

So that’s it.  Tomorrow I’m going to leave at the same time as Darrin since I’m not expecting anything in the mail.  Well, I did buy him some ties for Church with crosses on them but I’m sure they will be in a small enough package that they can slip it into the big box outside.

Julia Lanier

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog, Friends and FamilyLeave a comment

Our dear friend Julia Lanier passed away this morning at around 2am. She was a friend of Chips mom for years and when Opal passed away in 2004 Darrin began a friendship with Julia to help fill the void left when Opal passed (void for both of them). Darrin and Julia talked just about every day on the telephone. She would call when there was a news story that she thought he would enjoy watching on TV and vice versa.

Darrin used to take the bus over to her house and drive her to her doctors appointments with her car. Or he would just go with her and she would drive her own car. About 4 months ago when we got our car he brought a little foldable step-ladder because a ford explorer is a bit high for a woman in her late 80’s and he was going to bring her to her doctor’s appointment but ended up taking her to the emergency room instead. She was admitted into the hospital and was there for probably 2 weeks.

He visited her on a daily basis, sometimes 2 or 3 times per day, early in the morning, noon time and dinner time. The doctor released her to go into a nursing facility called Californian Care on Mt. Vernon Ave. She stayed there until she passed away this morning.

Julia didn’t want anybody to do anything special for her after she died. No obituary, no headstone, no funeral at all. She will be cremated and put in an urn in the same plot as her husband. Because there is no headstone the only way someone will be able to visit her gravesite is if they go to the office and say hey, where is she? Then of course they will have to escort you there. Anyway, she is in a much better place (as they always say, but it’s true).