My daughter

Kylie just had sinus surgery on Dec. 27th and she also had her tonsils taken out. Her recovery has been really rocky. It's 4 days post surgery now and she is still in SEVERE pain. The pain is mostly coming from the tonsilectomy and the complication of a bad case of thrush in her mouth. I figured out yesterday that it was thrush, tried to get her into the doctor in the early morning, went through voice mail hell with the docs office, found out he's not even there this week, then finally talked to a nurse. I convinced her that it was indeed thrush so we didn't have to take Kylie in, the nurse just called in a prescription for Nystatin liquid. Kylie is still in so much pain that I'm really glad that she didn't have to go anywhere in the car. I got the scrip, the thrush is better today, but she is still in severe pain. We got a third bottle of liquid hydrocodone filled this evening for her, so we are covered over the New Year's Eve and New Year's day when all doctors are closed.

I've been staying up until 2am every night with her so my bipolar is suffering pretty bad from the "off" schedule.

All of this comes after just helping my mom through thyroid surgery on Dec 4th. I've been to 26 doctor appointments since October 1st, 2008. Very few of those were for me. Most were for both mom and Kylie. I'm tired and frustrated.

I don't complain all the time, just had to get my "venting" out and here's is where I wanted to do it. So thank you gentle reader for following along this far.

Bron

New Direction

Ok I'm taking this blog in a new direction. It originally started as just a weight loss blog, but there is so much more to my life that entertwines with my ability to lose weight and live healthily. (is that a word?) I am bipolar and I just went through a med change. I am married to a great guy. I am a primary caregiver to my 77 year old mother, who I'm not fond of. I have a beautiful 18 year old daughter who has health problems and just went through surgery.

I have interests that I like to talk about but haven't hardly had a chance to even think about lately because of all the caregiving I do for others.

Just lots of things, so Cheyenne Moon Blog is now a real blog. I'm not the best writer but I am a real person in this real life that I'm living so here we go.........

Fat Free Sugar Free Pudding

This is better known on the Weight Watchers message boards as ff sf pudding.

Last night I was just dying for something sweet to eat. No.... I didn't want any more fruit. I've eaten enough ff sf yogurt with stevia and frozen blueberries to last a while and I WANTED SOMETHING SWEET!!!!

I just happened to have a box of this ff sf instant vanilla pudding stuff so I thought... what the heck, I'll give it a try. In my younger days I would have NEVER tried this. I mixed it up, it was so easy, just pour the pudding powder in a bowl, add milk, whisk by hand for two minutes and voila it's ready! I poured it into my cute little 1/2 cup plastic containers and put them in the fridge. I ate two of them last night and one this morning with breakfast.

Disclaimer........ yes I know that this instant pudding if full of scarey things that I can't pronounce, but at this point in my life, it's better to eat ff sf stuff and keep the weight off/lose more weight than to eat what I really wanted which was a Cadbury milk chocolate with roasted almonds candy bar. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Bron

I went riding today

That's me on the right. The saddle I borrowed is on Cheyenne. That's Carol on the left, a friend of my friend.

Today hubby and I took the horses over to a friends house to try out her saddle. The saddle I have now for Cheyenne, is a really cheap very uncomfortable saddle. Uncomfortable for both me and Cheyenne. We rode around in my friends saddle for about an hour. It felt great! It's a Tex Tan flex tree saddle with a gel seat. She also has a really great saddle pad.

This is Khemogeyn and hubby with the yucky old saddle I have. It hurts!!

Bron

FF Evaporated Milk

No, I can't believe that I'm touting this stuff. Who would have thought that I would be drinking fat free evaporated milk in a can? I have to say that it is pretty good in coffee. In my diet travels, I've gone from whole milk in coffee to 1%. That was during my Jenny days. Now that I'm on WW Core, the 1% is not a core food so I had to take it down another notch to fat free milk. Skim milk or fat free milk is just not the best thing in your coffee. I can't give up the coffee, or rather I don't want to give up the coffee so I had to come up with something to make it better. I drink kick butt coffee so I have to have a lot of milk in it. When Weight Watchers said fat free milk, that's what I had to do. So, I have my very strong dark flavored double espresso, fat free milk, and fat free evaporated milk. I'm not ready to give up the sugar yet, but I only use about 1/3 tsp in each mug so I figured that's not too bad. All of the above with Stevia in it instead of sugar is just more than I can handle.



The other day I read about adding non fat dry milk to the coffee to help give it a richer taste and not make it so cold with all the cold milk that you add to it. I bought a box on my last trip to Wal-Mart and sure enough, it helps make it taste richer. You can't add too much to it though because then I gets a little funky.



So... moral to the story, on Weigh Watchers I can still have coffee, and if it's using all core items, except the minute amoung of sugar... then it's ok to drink 2 or 3 mugs of it if I want!



This is just another one of those what makes me happy things.



Bron

Weight Watchers Core Plan makes me happy....

I just can't say enough good things about it. It's the only "diet" I've ever been on (ps.. it's not really a diet) that I LIKE! I feel good eating this food. It's healthy and full of fiber, it's not junk. I enjoy cooking again. I don't have to count what I eat, unless it's not a core food. I almost never eat non core foods. I don't have to weigh or measure any foods. I only have to eat what's on the core food list. I really like the foods that are on the core food list.

Today I took my mom to the doctor, she's really sick right now. I knew we would be gone for a long time so I packed a lunch. The last time I took her some where we ended up at a restaurant and I ate non core foods. It set me back a little in the weight loss department. I took air popped popcorn with butter flavored cooking spray on it, popcorn salt and garlic powder, a banana and some unsweetened decaf iced tea.

This morning I weighed in and the scales said 152.9. That is a total loss so far of 7.9 lbs. My weight is coming off at a nice clip. Not too fast, not too slow. I'm not all worried and stressed out about losing a certain amount of weight over a certain amount of time. It's not going to cost me more money to stay on this "diet" longer, because it's not a diet anyway. It's a healthy way of eating. I don't ever want to go back to eating all that junk. Nor do I want to eat food from a box again either. I just want to eat fresh, healthy food.

Thanks WW!!

Things that make me happy

Sitting, watching tv at night with my hubby and thinking..... "I want some popcorn, but I can't have any because I'm on a diet." Then.......... realizing I CAN have popcorn because I'm on Weight Watchers Core Diet.!!!!!

It's got to be air popped but hey.... I'll take it. It's still popcorn.

Bron

The Diet Highway

I've just been overweight for way too long. My doctor has told me for years to lose weight and exercise. I've been on cholesteral lowering medication for years. I never bothered to change my diet because I thought.... what the heck, I'm on the meds, they will take care of whatever I eat.

About 2 1/2 years ago my mother moved into my house with me and my family. We eventually got an add on apartment built for her so at least there is finally some separation between us all. My hubby is none too fond of her, I have to say I'm not so fond of her myself but that's another life to write about in another place.

My mother is obese. She always has been, at least as long as I've known her. She has been on many diets, lost weight and gained it all back plus some. She told me that the only really successful way that she lost weight was on Jenny Craig. One day while she was still living in our house before her apt was finished, I decided after eating way too much spaghetti and being totally miserable, that I was going to "Call Jenny". We both went over there the next day, or heck it may have been the same day. We both joined. I joined with the Rewards program which means you can pretty much be a life time member if you pay them $39 every year on your anniversary date.

I lost almost 30 lbs on Jenny Craig. I wish I had a picture of me at that weight but for some reason I don't. Maybe I'll find one someday and post it. I was at 143 lbs. I looked really good, was wearing size 10 pants and sometimes I could fit into a size 8!! That hasn't happened since something like 5th grade. My weight loss on Jenny Craig was steady and successful. I think it took about 5 months to complete that loss. Then one day I didn't have enough money to pay the bills, decided it was too much money and I quit. Another reason I quit was because my mom went with me to each Jenny Craig weigh in, the center we went to was about 30 minutes drive from my home in a car with no radio. She drove me nuts in the car. I mean WAAAYYYY too much togetherness. When you are 50 years old you really shouldn't be spending that much time with your mother. So anyway, I quit Jenny. I kept the weight off for a while, I really did learn how to count food groups and calories etc so I was doing pretty good. I was doing aerobics and belly dancing. My feet hurt but I kept doing it anyway.

Well, one day my feet hurt soooo bad that I just stopped everything and went to the podiatrist. I had a neuroma in one foot and a horrible cyst/bump/PAIN on the top of the other foot. I ended up with a cortisone shot in each foot and a pair of $75 orthotics. Then another cortisone shot in one foot two weeks later. Well, you know what happens when you take steroids. Add lots of couch time to that, being in pain with ice packs on your feet as often as possible and what do you get? Weight gain. I was already eating badly again by then so add it all together and within just a few months time I had gained 17 lbs. back. My hubby was none too happy.

Hubby encouraged me to go back to Jenny Craig, so I did. But this time the weight didn't come off very easily. About three days into each week I would lose it and just have to eat something extra. I did actually lose about 5 lbs in about 6 weeks but it cost a lot of money. I started getting really tired too. I remember being really tired the first time on Jenny Craig too. I mean I couldn't get anything done, seemed to have bad ADD. I couldn't concentrate on anything, I got nothing accomplished and just generally felt like crap.

I decided to look at Weight Watchers. I joined WW, read about the two different plans and decided to start the core plan. I realized that I could eat POPCORN!! Popcorn is my drug of choice after caffeine. I was so happy that I could eat popcorn!!! And I could eat beans and ff yogurt and lost of things that make me feel good. My energy immediately came back! I didn't have to count points either!! I just felt so good, could concentrate again and was generally back to my old self. THANK YOU WW!!

The Goal...... Weight Loss and Fitness

I've set up this blog to post some horrible before pics of me, some current not so bad pics and future HOT pics of me. I'm going to put it all out there for the world and ME to see. I'm partway through a weight loss journey, I've stumbled along the way, but I intend to get to my goal and stay there. Seeing pics really helps.

I'm also going to post some pics of my horses, one of which is Cheyenne Moon, whom this blogged is named after.