The LBDDiaries.com Blog

Well, I guess I shouldn’t call shopping doom except sometimes when I shop, if feels doom-y and is occasionally a huge waste of money. 

I know I am going to be facing some of my former enemies.  They are NOT going to go easy on me.  They surround me and taunt me, yelling, “Buy me, buy me, buy me.  You know you can’t resist me!  Nanny nanny boo boo! We’re going to take over your shopping buggy!”  Can you see why I hate grocery shopping?

OK, maybe it isn’t QUITE that bad but sometimes it feels that way.  How else do you explain how I can get home from shopping and find things in my grocery bags that I KNOW I didn’t put in there? Take Monday, for instance.  I made the mistake of going to the grocery store without eating breakfast first.  I set myself up.

I am doing really well eating whole foods and healthy.  I have EVERYTHING out of the house that should not be eaten while I’m on this Little Black Dress Diaries journey.  There aren’t even any frozen candy bars in the freezer, hidden behind the bags of broccoli.  Really!  So – how did I get home Monday with a frozen pizza?  Seriously – I want to know!

I know I didn’t put it into my shopping buggy – I wouldn’t do that to myself because it isn’t on my list of approved foods.  Everyone knows a frozen pizza has too many empty calories and is chock full of mega-chemicals so you KNOW I wouldn’t even consider buying one.

Except *sigh* I did.  I convinced myself t was actually the better of all the evils I was faced with. My stomach became a dictator – “Feed me” it cried.  “Get me something to eat!   Something you won’t have to fix when you get home since you know you can’t wait!  Chopping healthy vegetables will take too long.”  Who knew a stomach could whine so loud?

Grocery store food delis slay me if I get within smelling distance of all that fat-filled, salted for-sure-not-healthy-for-you food bar.  And walking past frozen cookie dough on the way to frozen vegetables takes strength I am not sure I can maintain very long so I run past (no, not really).   Somewhere in the back of my mind while purchasing multi-colored peppers, jalapenos, onions, broccoli, and the like, I justified that a frozen pizza would do less damage than anything else I could eat.  I mean, I pass several fast-food joints on the way home – all of which have given me the siren-call and pulled me onto their cliffs of death.

Problem with eating healthy, and getting off processed foods and chemicals is that your taste buds change.  It gets to the point you can actually taste the chemicals in processed foods.  It forever ruins you… well, I guess that is the wrong perspective now, isn’t it!?! 

Anyway, I popped that pizza in the oven, baked it, took it out, took a warm, ooey-gooey slice, and bit into it thinking, “heaven” – and it was HORRIBLE.  It tasted downright chemically and too salty.  I finally took it all outside and threw it on the burn-pile – because I sure didn’t want it tempting me to continue eating it.  I guess the dogs got it ’cause it’s gone.

Do you have ANY idea how many times I’ve done that? Bought something food related, gotten it home and decided, “Nah, I’m not blowing my diet with this” so threw it away? I’m not going to tell you. It’s cha-ching nutz.

Oh and wait – how long do you think it took to preheat the oven then bake that pizza?  Over 30 minutes – time I could have spent chopping peppers and making a salad.  Skewed skewed thinking.

Little Black Dress Diaries journey lesson – never, ever, ever go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.  Those naughty foods will jump into your buggy every time, to go home with you to help you undermine your healthy eating!

HA! Gotcha there with that title, huh!? Well, I’m sorry if you thought you could find some reason to justify being a loser (snicker), but this is not that place. No, no! I’m not calling you a loser because you’re reading this. It was a trick title to sucker you into reading my blog, really! NO one is calling you a loser! Stop thinking of yourself as one. Really! You are NOT a loser. I’m just talking about weight loss . *Sigh* people are SO touchy.

OK, onward. I sometimes think people get so accustomed to being overweight that they forget some of the benefits of losing any excess weight they carry. So let’s review a few, shall we? (Warning: some sexual & personal content)

Benefits of losing weight:

1 – You never again have to worry if you’ll fit in that chair with the arms. Or that booth in the restaurant where you want to be comfortable without the table rubbing your tummy. Or wonder if that chair will hold you when it makes that creaking sound (hopefully, only wooden chairs do this to you, right??) Or hear your husband groan when you sit on his lap in that creaking chair.

2 – You can wear jeans or slacks without an elastic waistband. Imagine – real jeans with a button and hole, and a zipper! No elastic in sight. NO MORE PULL-UPS – whoo hoo. La la la, I’m a big girl now… well, no, not big…

3 – You can walk up stairs without breathing like a steam locomotive! You can get to the top of the stairs and begin a conversation without saying, “Hold on a minute, puff puff. I’ll be right with you, wheeze, wheeze.”

4 – You can find pretty new words to describe yourself such SVELTE which means “slender, especially gracefully slender in figure; lithe”. Doesn’t that sound so ladylike? Sure beats being a stevedore.

5 – The original meaning of the word stevedore entered the English language (via Spain or Portugal) through its use by sailors. It started as a phonetic spelling of Spanish estibador or Portuguese estivador, meaning a man who stuffs – so how about NO MORE WOMEN WHO STUFF? Of course, they meant someone who loads a ship but I got to thinking about women who load a plate at an all-you-can-eat bar, in public, overweight, while everyone looks on in judgmental disgust. In the background you hear, “Why doesn’t she control her eating?”

6 – You can have a romantic evening in that deep Jacuzzi tub without worrying about how you’re going to get out. You can sit there enjoying the bubblebath, candlelight and music without thinking of a sweet way of saying, “Honey, can you haul me out of here?” Or imagine not being afraid to sit on the ground or a low sofa? Not needing help getting up (or out)?

7 – Sorry about this one but some people deal with this. It is VERY personal. You don’t have to worry about personal hygiene ever again. You can… ummm … wipe certain places without being a contortionist. You can feel fresh and clean. There, I said it. While it isn’t really publicly talked about, it is a true problem for those those considered obese by the medical profession. Imagine the relief of never having to worry about or deal with that issue again!

8 – One of my favorite – you can bend over and paint your toenails a wild bright red or a beautiful feminine pink. You don’t need help clipping your toenails and you can easily rub scented lotion on your legs and feet without leaning sideways and breathing hard!

9 – You will no longer have a closet floor full of clothes you tried on that didn’t fit so you threw a fit and tossed them in the floor of your closet. Or even better your closet no longer resembles a clothing store with clothes separated into 10 different sizes, sandwiched between one end labeled fat clothes and the other end labeled skinny clothes. You won’t be late to work or dates because you can walk in and everything in your closet fits.

10 – And the top benefit of losing weight? You can make love to your husband without worrying about how you look naked. You can be more creative about your love life again. You can feel sexy and seductive without fear. You will believe again that all those sexy little nighties look good on you (at least HE thinks so). Best of all, there will be no more wheezy romantic little sounds like, “Get off, get off, I can’t breathe.”

Nuff said. Got any other benefits to add?

TA DA!! TIMES UP! The first ever LBD Giveaway is over. I so appreciate everyone who supported me in this endeavor. Through a very scientific method – the names in a hat trick – the winner of the free e-book download is *** Jpresley48 ***!

This is an awesome electronic book chock full of diet, exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle advice. Contact me, Miss Julie, with the email address you want me to send to Tom Venuto. He will then send you the download information so you can download this e-book to your comuter, AND you also receive a copy of his new book. How cool is that?

BUT WAIT! There’s more! Because this was my very first giveaway and I am so blessed because of the people who participated, I am sending a copy of Tom’s new book, The Body Fat Solution to each of the other participants. I just started reading this book this week. It is an amazing book with some of the supportive information from the e-book and more emphasis on the emotional aspects of eating. So if everyone will please send me their mailing address, I will get their copy of the book in the mail. And although I had some of your addresses previously, please send again to ensure accuracy! You’re gonna enjoy this book!! Send your address to: nan@nanloyd.com.

Stay tuned for future giveaways here and over at The Joy-Cafe, which will range from beauty products – gift certificates for a Little Black Dress – more health-related items – and well, who knows? They will be great!
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“The strangest secret in the world is that you become what you think about.” – Earl Nightingale

I dug out an e-book I downloaded in 2006 (for those who don’t know, an e-book is an entire book available to download to your computer and read on your computer or sometimes, print). I remember the first chapter was on goal setting and that I had learned quite a bit from it. Obviously I did NOT follow through with the information, but it is still valid nonetheless. When I was working the program, the program worked. What is best about it is that it some of those principles he teaches work in EVERY area of your life, not just the LBD Journey!

The number one reason for failure in losing body fat – and in life – is the lack of clearly defined, written goals.  One of the best quotes I’ve ever learned was this one, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably not going to end up anywhere!” Can I get a witness? An amen? I am living proof.

Most of us learned in school that our mind has two components: the conscious and the subconscious.  The conscious mind is the rational, logical, analytical, thinking part of the mind.  The conscious mind is constantly taking in information from the five senses.  It then reasons, analyzes and comes to conclusions about whether the input is true or false.

The conscious mind is a lot like the captain at the bridge of a ship.  The captain gives a command and sends it down to the engine room.  The subconscious mind is like the men down in the engine room.  No matter what orders come down from the bridge (conscious mind), the crew obeys, even if the orders are stupid ones that crash the ship into a rocky shore. 

The reason this happens is because the crew (the subconscious) can’t see where the ship is going; they are simply following orders.  Like the ship’s crew, your subconscious mind accepts every command your conscious mind gives it – its sole purpose is to obey and carry out your orders, even if you give stupid ones like “I’ll never see my abs” or “No matter what diet plan I try, none of them work for me.”

Isn’t that the greatest illustration? I am plagiarizing like heck here but I’ll tell you who from at the end. 

Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the book, Psycho Cybernetics, describes the human brain and nervous system as a “perfect goal-striving servo-mechanism.”  This mechanism helps you achieve your goals much like a self-guided torpedo or missile seeks out its target and steers its way to it.  Like the torpedo, the goal-striving mechanism of your brain can only work in your favor if you’ve specified a target.  Without a target, your mental “servo-mechanism” will simply steer you towards your dominant thoughts.

We all know that dominant thought isn’t healthy foods and exercise.  Nope.  Those dominant thoughts are what got me in the shape I am in right now!

I am actually going back to the last place I actually was doing very well in losing fat from my body.  I was going to the gym faithfully, eating right, taking the right supplements, and drinking plenty of water.  I wrote my goals down, following this plan then my mom began needing me more and more.  That became my reason for failure. It was an excuse but a pretty darn good one, right?  Right??? Hello?

Anyway, I am going to sit down this week and re-read this book and its principles. They are not “feel good” principles.  They involve writing goals, making decisions, eating right, doing the right forms of exercise, and OBEYING what the book says to do.

My Joy-Café blog tells you on what triggered this need to get more serious about my journey.  It was one of those things that make you go grrrr.

In the meantime, I highly recommend this e-book that I was quoting from by Tom Venuto, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.  You can purchase and receive it in e-book form, immediately.  He has a new paperback book out, too - The Body Fat Solution – which I received last week from Amazon and am going to sit down and study, too.

I can’t tell you how many programs I’ve bought in to – well, I could but I won’t embarrass myself like that.  It’s ridiculous.  The point is, Tom’s program is not hype.  It is not about taking magic pills.  It isn’t about losing a massive amount of weight in a month.  It teaches life-long principles and it works.  I’m going to prove it, too! It’s part of my Little Black Dress Journey now.

Tom has free newsletters and articles on his website, http://www.fitren.com/. Take the opportunity to go look around and see if you can learn anything to help you on your journey!  There is enough free information there that you can have no excuses not to have victory this year! This is OUR year ladies!  Believe it.

Now for the Healthy Giveaway!  Tom Venuto has generously offered a free copy of his e-book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.  He has also offered a free autographed copy of his new physical book, The Body Fat Solution.  Isn’t that amazingly generous!? I will use it in an upcoming giveaway so stay tuned.

You can read about his program and see amazing before and after pictures on the website, “http://www.burnthefat.com/

In order to enter the giveaway,  just answer the following question in the Comments section of this post. There is only one winner of the e-book but the new book will be given away next week to 5 lucky winners:

What is the strangest or funniest diet trick you’ve ever tried?  Was it eating a grapefruit before each meal?  Was it living on crackers and peanut butter (guilty). 

Doesn’t matter what, share it with us.  We won’t laugh.  Promise.  First I’d have to laugh at myself – !  Oh yes, deadline for this giveaway is Thursday morning. 

You’ll really enjoy all the information in this book.  It’s solid! It’s also easy to understand and written in a way that’s easy to read and actually makes you feel like you have a personal trainer sitting right there encouraging you to achieve your goals! If you’re serious about losing excess fat and toning your body so that you look and feel the best you’ve ever felt in your life, these are the programs you need! It’s not for wimps (heh heh); it is for someone who wants to live long and live strong!