Thankful For Many Things

Thank you everyone for your wonderful words of support and encouragement yesterday. At the urging of my friend Monica, I'm posting this side by side comparison so you can see how my weight has or hasn't changed. The photo on the left was taken last year in May, the photo on the right was taken this year in October. Yes I watermarked the photo because I certainly don't want to end up on some other site (you know which one I mean LOL)

Photo on the left was when I had lost weight without doing much exercise...gave up and regained and restarted this year with a new fresh attitude, blogging and not giving up. I'm also doing plenty of exercise this year. The actual weight difference between these two photos is 4.6 pounds. The inch difference?
Bust: 5 inches
Waist: 2 inches
Hips: 11.5 inches
Thighs: 3 inches each
Calves: 2 inches each

Yes apparently muscle does take up less room than fat.

So in this week before Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for many things. One of them being my wonderful new friends in blog land who have encouraged me to never give up. Thank you all very much!

Kriss over at Zookins is collecting Thanksgiving recipes and I shared this one with her so I thought I'd share this with you too.

Spiced Cranberry Apple Chutney

12 oz. Bag of Fresh Cranberries

1 ½ Cups Sugar (I used splenda, or half sugar half splenda )

½ Cup Water

½ Cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1 Granny Smith Apple, Peeled, Cored and Chopped

1 Orange, Zest Grated and Juiced

1 Lemon, Zest Grated and Juiced

¾ Cup Raisins

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

½ teaspoon Ginger

½ teaspoon Allspice

¼ teaspoon Ground Cloves

¾ Cup Chopped Pecans or Walnuts



1. Combine the Cranberries, Sugar, Water, and Vinegar in a saucepan. Over medium heat cook around 10 minutes or until the Cranberry skins pop open. You will hear the popping sound.

2. Add all the other ingredients except for the Pecans. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 15 minutes stirring often.

3. Remove from heat and stir in the Pecans.

4. Cool to room temperature.

5. Store in the refrigerator or freezer. Bring to room temperature before serving.

*EXCELLENT with Turkey, Chicken, Pork, or Ham. Great to serve along with cheese and crackers at a party too.

Place Weight Loss Blog Title Here

I didn’t post yesterday; instead I spent the day catching up on all of your blogs. I’m glad I did because I’ve found so much wisdom, inspiration and thought provoking insights.

Yesterday was also an emotional day for me. I posted on Tuesday that I had to attend a meeting and the news wasn’t so good. On Thursday and Friday I went to two additional meetings and I have to make some pretty heavy decisions. I worked for a small family owned company that just sold to a big national company. Yes, most of the time it was like rowing your own boat across the ocean and this new corporate national company comes in looking like a luxury yacht in comparison…at least on the surface. But I’ve never been one to look at the surface. It looks like champagne and caviar but the fine print shows that there is a cost attached to the champagne and caviar…a price I’m not willing to pay. I will be unemployed by the end of the year. To be honest, I’ve wanted a change for quite some time and this is the push I needed. I have no idea what I’ll do next.

I came to realize how much stress I had been attaching to this job lately. Last Friday I got the call to attend the unscheduled meeting on Tuesday and suddenly the Halloween candy started talking a bit louder….DIANA EAT US….By Sunday I had one piece and I managed to ignore it. Tuesday I resisted bagels and muffins. However at Thursday's meeting we had a catered lunch of course nothing had nutritional information on it but of course when I looked it up later, I picked the most fattening wrap from the table LOL I also managed to justify a two small cookies. Thursday night my sister took Ken and I out to dinner. This place has awesome salads so that’s what I picked. Then the waitress brings Matzo ball soup and fresh baked challah rolls because on Thursday you get free matzo ball soup, I was freezing so I went ahead and ate it. The salad was just massive so I only ate half. When she brought the boxes for our leftovers she said your dinners come with apple strudel, raspberry cheesecake or plain cheesecake. I can wrap those up to go for you too….So later that night after our walk/jog, we ate our raspberry cheesecake and then the Halloween candy started screaming loudly. Why? I certainly wasn't hungry. Every fiber of my being wanted to eat it and had Ken not been there, I might have just sat and had the whole bag. But I knew I couldn’t so I then proceeded to have a mini meltdown. I felt like I had way too much to eat and because I had been so busy, I hadn’t put anything into fitday. Ken being calm, rational and not about to sit through yet another minimeltdown begins to add up calories with me. After all of that freak out stress, I had gone over my calories for the day….by about 17 calories. I’m not worried about 17 calories. I kicked up the walk/jog a few notches because I wanted to enjoy the cheesecake. So why did I feel so out of control? I had to take a step back and look at what was going on…stress was in control, I wasn’t. Stress was telling me “you’ve pigged out today, eat some more” “you’ve already blown it for today, eat some more Stress.

While stress will always be a part of my life and a certain amount of stress is healthy. I need to work on recognizing the signs of stress. It has to start by allowing myself to guilt free eat nutritional foods but before I take a bite of something that isn’t exactly nutritional I need to look at what is behind wanting it. Yes there will be times when a cookie just sounds good with no attachment to it but more often than not, when I crave certain foods or want to eat beyond the point of hunger, there is an emotional attachment. Learning to recognize the emotion and stop it before it spirals out of control is the challenge I’ll probably face for the rest of my life.