New motivation: Shake that thang!

Known for sending to Twitter my morning workout sessions, my Weight Watcher Weigh-In Wednesdays reports and the occasional confessional regarding eating bad stuff, I have made quite a few friends on Twitter among those serious about their battles of the bulge.

Motivated to inspire, I feed off the responses I get to my tweets regarding my workouts and the photos of my healthy food choices and creations. My early morning workouts impress many, but honestly the reason I work out when I do is because my husband works evenings and I cannot leave the house for a couple of hours leaving my 7- and 9-year-old girls on their own. So 330am wake-up times and 4am workouts it is. That’s my life.

Last week two motivated and very cool chicks on Twitter as @FabFatties and here on WordPress called a fatabulous throw down for those of us who want to shake our thangs out of the doldrums.  Shannon and Angie of
http://www.weightlosswiththefabulousfatties.wordpress.com have come public with their fat asses. That is not an insult. That is reality. If you cannot admit you have a fat ass when you do, you will always have a fat ass, I don’t care how many magic pills you take. Be realistic. If you eat half a Texas sheet cake and chase it down with some kind of acai diarrhea maker, you are not addressing core issues you have with food.

What is this void you are filling with food that lets you behave like a bottomless pit? Is food love? Is food friendship? Is food a way to connect with people? If you can say food is not love, food is not friendship, and that you don’t need food to be a friend or to have a friend, then you should be able to assess food for what it is: nutrients for your body.

So what does your body want? In Hawaii we call it eating a rainbow. Fruits and vegetables should be the stars of the meals. Whole grains, lean chicken and fish, low- to non-fat dairy products start tasting better when you treat them like the nutritional gold mines that they are. When I make a salad at work, I get out my cutting board and appreciate that I can slice farm-fresh radishes, grape tomatoes and sweet peppers. Usually I grill supper at home, and put leftover chicken or shrimp on the salad. Not only am I having something wonderful for lunch, but I’ve made it myself and kept my wallet shut.

Dieting is about the food. That’s why I love Weight Watchers. Having done another diet program that mailed food to me, I really felt disappointed in the presentation and flavors. Weight Watchers allows me to create my own meals. I love to cook. I love to prepare healthy foods for my family. I love it when my twitpics get me attagirl tweets online.

For the record, I’m down 22 pounds since October 2008. I want to get down another 18 pounds to make BMI by October 2009. For the last month I struggled with one particular pound. That bastard of a pound dogged me for weeks, gone a day back the next. Well, I’ve shaken it. And if my WW scale from Costco is accurate, I’m down nearly another two pounds from Weigh-In Wednesday.

The @FabFatties’ challenge is inspiring because it requires participants to do several things each day for two weeks. Drinking water, counting points, exercising, the usual stuff. But also we are asked to recommend other tweets worthy of following. We’re to visit participants’ blogs and comment on them. We are to try and recruit someone to participate.

I already know I’m not going to win. I don’t get on and answer questions at the FabFatties’ site. I won’t recruit anyone. But I will be a virtual cheerleader on the sidelines.

Love you gals, Angie & Shannon. And I also am crazy about another gal who is also quite a motivator to me: http://foodfoodbodybody.wordpress.com/ I’m waiting for her to tell me her first name so I can post it. I don’t think her name is Foodie McBody! She sent me this super cool charm of a knife and fork with a laptop. It’s on my WW charm key chain.

UPDATE: HER NAME IS SUSAN! And she’s been to Hawaii several times!

Love to all you struggling and to all of you who support us! Keep up the good work, get up and shake that thang! Exercise is the BEST way to begin the day!