Countdown

Hey guys...I know you're out there! lol! Are you all laying low until 2018 is in the can? I don't blame you. It's been a rough year and I think most of us are hoping for a better 2019.

There is not much we can control in this world. Most everything happens randomly, whether we are prepared for it or not. But what is the one thing that.. technically.. we CAN control? You know what I'm leading up to. That's right. Our choices, especially when it comes to our choices about diet and exercise. No one force feeds us. No one holds us back when we want to move. We are free to make good choices for ourselves, regardless of what is going on around us. It is the one thing we can control...of should control. But, as we all know, controlling ourselves can be harder then controlling climate change or politics or the price of your cable bill!

It takes a lot to make a major life change, especially if you expect it to happen all at once. It won't. It happens one choice at a time. Baby steps. When babies are learning to walk, sometimes they fall, but have you ever seen a baby not immediately try to stand right back up? They never give up and neither should you! It doesn't matter how many times you have fallen. There is going to be a day when you are standing strong and feeling empowered and in charge of your choices. Food does not control you. Your thoughts do. Once you get your thoughts in line with your desires and goals, losing weight and getting fit will be your new obsession! I can 100% promise you that there is not one single bite of food, (or an entire buffet for that matter!)  that is worth sacrificing your quality of life.

So take these last few days of 2018 and really do some soul searching and truth seeking. Your personal truth about how you've managed yourself and your choices. How many excuses or justifications you've made. How many times you were filled with regret, promising yourself to do better and be stronger. The jabbering that goes on in our heads can feel chaotic at times, but truth is quiet, peaceful, forgiving, positive. I believe that honesty with self is more a part of succeeding at weight loss then willpower.

Enough of my ramblings. I hope you have all had a lovely holiday season and are ready to welcome in the New Year with hope and enthusiasm and determination, but most of all a desire to be truthful to yourself and the peaceful knowledge that you have everything you need to make your desires for weight loss and a healthy lifestyle a reality. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Emotional Work

Doing Cambridge has it's own set of special emotions. It challenges our food issues, our sense of self esteem, our learned behaviors, conditioning from our youth, and so many other parts of our personalities. It's a LOT! Plus, eating is enjoyable and social and comforting...usually. Sometimes, for those of us with compulsive eating disorders, it can become a weapon of self destruction and loneliness. I remember my lowest times of my eating disorder, almost feeling like I was beating myself up with food. Probably sounds overly dramatic to those with lessor or different issues then I was dealing with, but it's the best way to describe what I was doing. It was a violent act against myself.

What I realized, as I progressed through this emotional maze of weight loss, was that 99% of my  viewpoint and my internal dialog was negative. I grew up a chubby kid and weight had ALWAYS been the focal point of my life. I visualized it like a wagon wheel, obesity being the hub and all other aspects of life branched off from it. Every choice I made in life had my obesity at it's center. There were no goals or ambitions made from a desire to lead a full and rewarding life. So many lost opportunities.

It was a process that took time, my emotional recovery. It was like building myself a new house to live in, brick by brick. Eventually, momentum kicked in and the bricks started seating themselves.

I consider myself a fully recovered compulsive addictive eater. That person is so far buried in my past, I can not even comprehend that was me. I still struggle with some things. I never did reach my ultimate goal of my high school weight. Not even close! lol!. But I have managed to maintain well enough to have made up for some of all those lost opportunities. The past 17 years have been some of the best, and most heartbreaking, but my miracle is that I have been able to experience these normal life events without turning to food or any other substance to cope. I'm happy about that.

Were's My Chocolate???

If you have noticed that some of your favorite Cambridge flavors are missing from the shopping cart, it is because they are in the middle of a big move. Here is the statement that they sent out today:

"Our warehouse and production plant have been in the process of moving to a new location. We tried to prepare for the move by having plenty of extra stock, but due to unforeseen delays it has put us in a back order situation on many of our products. It could be up 2-4 weeks before some are back in stock. We extremely sorry for any inconvenience!"

In the mean time, this is a good chance to try some of the flavors you've been curious about. If you are a 330 Rich Chocolate fan (currently on back order) then you may want to try the 330 with Tonalin Chocolate Truffle. It too is thick and creamy like the Rich Chocolate.

This is certainly creating a challenge for our customers who are working hard on their weight loss, but this will soon be resolved so DON'T USE THIS AS AN EXCUSE TO QUIT! In a couple of weeks we will be back full steam and you can continue to make progress. So give sme other flavors a try. You may find a new favorite!

Day 1, Cake For Breakfast

The past few months I have made a some halfhearted attempts to lose some weight and get back on track with my health habits. Maybe more like quarterhearted. lol! Getting careless while getting older is not a good combo. My goal has always been to age gracefully while living an active healthy life. I've worked hard for many years to achieve that, including weight loss..knee replacement...skin removal...and exercise. So why drop the ball when I turn 59? Makes no sense, but said ball was dropped and dropped HARD!

Last night I put my Cambridge on the counter and everything I use to make my Cambridge Chocolate Lava cake. I didn't want to wake up with lost momentum and change my mind. I got up, poured my coffee, and 3 minutes later I had mixed and microwave baked this:

It was a perfect start to my day. It's 2:43 as I type this post to my blog and I have also enjoyed a Rich Vanilla Shake with Watkins caramel flavor. Yummy! I'm feeling good and confident that I will complete this day successfully and continue on to Day 2.

I don't know why I got so careless the past couple of months. I know the consequences and the price I pay with weight gain and poor health. Oh well...no looking back. Only forward and no more nonsense! I'm SSing to get back on track with my weight and my numbers (blood sugar, BP, etc) and if you would like to join me, please do! 

Day Nine And Feeling Fine!

Hey blog readers! I am on day 9 (and a half) and just wanted to check in and let you know I am still going strong. I haven't been weighing, but I can tell by my clothes that I am close to being back down to where I was the month before my gall bladder surgery. I had lost 8 pounds on Cambridge the week before and I am now working on getting that off again too. My husband commented today that he could really see the weight loss! Oh..and the big news is that he is on day 5 and has lost 6 pounds! He's doing great. Doing this together has been wonderful. No food shopping or cooking or cleaning up. I am enjoying the vacation.

If you are reading this because you are considering trying Cambridge, contact me and I can answer all your questions so you can make the best decision for yourself.

Cambridge is not like anything else out there. It can be challenging in the first few days, but the rapid weight loss and the amazing improvement in your health and energy more then compensate. It's exciting to see results from day 1! This is a safe, healthy, nutritionally complete, very low calorie diet that gives your body everything it needs except calories. If you have body fat, you already have all the calories (which is just another word for the energy that the food you eat produces) you need and your body will draw from that. Because of the balanced nutrition your lean tissues like muscle, bone, and organs are protected and just the fat is burned. The 8 years of clinical research behind Cambridge proved this. It's effective, safe, affordable, tastes great, and it works for everyone.

Questions? Contact me and I'll answer them for you.

Ok 2017..I'm ready for ya!

It's been a while since I posted anything to my blog. My apologies  for that. I do write quit a bit for my Support Board and my FaceBook page, so I hope you all take time to visit there. But being as how this is a blog, and they tend to be a little more personal at times, I decided to come here to share what my plan is for this new year that is rapidly approaching.

Like most everyone, I have overdone it with the holiday eating. Yes, I know better, but I also know it's not a death sentence because I have my beloved Cambridge to rescue me! My son and his lovely girlfriend have temporarily moved in with us and their eating habits are typical for most 20 something's. Lots of sugar, fried fast foods, pizza, and...well..you get the idea. My son likes to cook and bake and I've been lax in my normally strict eating habits. So..like all of you, I will be beginning my Cambridge Diet damage control come January. Well...I'm actually going to start right after Christmas. I feel sluggish and uncomfortable with the weight I've gained. I have a very small window with extra weight and I feel it right away. Not good.

Will you join me?

We Are The Champions!

With the Olympics in full swing we are all impressed with the physical and mental strength of these exceptional athletes. They can seem super human, but we are all made out of the same stuff. The only difference is in the unwavering commitment and focus on a goal. We may not be aspiring to a gold medal and representing our country, but we are aspiring to something just as great in our own life and the lives of the people who love us. Committing to putting your health as your #1 priority can seem selfish when you have other people depending on you like family and friends, but in reality the most unselfish thing you could ever do for them is to be as healthy and happy as you can be. Just like being part of an Olympic team. If one member loses their drive, the whole team suffers. Don't let your team down! Start working towards your goal like it was your job!

Changes And Challenges

If there's one thing that life teaches us.. it's that it happens while we are busy making plans.

We come to the beginning of our Cambridge journey with a common plan, to lose the weight and get healthy. We have no way of knowing what twists and turns our life may take along the way, and it can get pretty twisted at times! When you consider all that is required of us to succeed at this, it is not unlike a master juggler keeping all his objects in the air, even if the floor tilts or someone tosses in a few more items to the mix. It's no small task and requires a whole new collection of skills and practice.

Typically, when faced with challenges, we would self medicate with food and ignore a lot of the emotional and physical issues we are dealing with. "Drug of choice" and all that. Being stripped of that coping tool can cause some panic with the realization of how dependent we have become on comfort eating, or how much in denial we may be about our personal struggles. While you may have been prepared for the physical demands of being on a restricted diet, you probably were caught unprepared for the emotional ones.

As you begin, (or continue) your Cambridge experience, go in to it knowing that at times you will be required to face emotions you may want to pacify with food, or you may suddenly be faced with a health crisis that you will want to escape from temporarily by self medicating in the same way. These old habits and behaviors need to be removed from your arsenal of coping tools. Finding their replacement is part of the goal when changes and challenges come your way.

We Gain Weight One Bite At A Time

Day 16 of Sole Source (SS)

I decided back on the 15th to get back on SS to lose some weight that I had been accumulating since my vacation back in Oct. My husband and I went down south to the Florida Keys and I was in vacation mode. I pretty much ate whatever he did and while that has no effect on him, for me it was probably more then twice what I would normally consume.  With that and the holidays, I got kind of lax in my dietary habits and some weight had crept on while I was looking the other way. My pants were tight and that's my signal for getting my act together. So, along with a great group of people on my Support Board, ( http://members5.boardhost.com/pam140/ ) I jumped on the SS train and I've been going strong!

I made the decision not to weigh when I started. I didn't want a number to mess with my head and I figured it really didn't matter anyway. In fact, I have not weighed at all! Yes, 16 days and I have absolutely no idea how much I've lost or what I weigh. I'm feeling kind of free because of it! No judge and jury staring up at me from the scale every morning. No number in my head telling me how I should feel about myself and if I was going to have a good day or a bad one. I am stresslessly going about my days knowing that I am doing everything I can possibly do to allow my body to lose the weight. It's a different approach, especially for me since I tend to be a meticulous chart keeper.

About a  year and a half ago I had set a goal to get back to my high school weight by my 56th birthday. Well..I didn't get there.  Now my 57th is just 19 days away. I won't make that goal in 19 days, but I'm determined I will be on my way there!

Starting Sole Source Today

I made the decision to jump back on SS for a while to lose the extra pounds I've gained since Oct. We went on vacation and then we had the holidays...well...no explanation needed. My pants are tight and fortunately I have my beloved Cambridge to come to my rescue once again! I just had my first shake for the day, the one I call my "Favorite Blend". I take one full container of 330 Rich Chocolate and mix it in a big Tupperware bowel with a container of 330 Original Dutch Chocolate. This gives me the creamy thick texture of the Rich shake along with the deeper chocolate taste of the Dutch. I add about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder and mix it all together. Voila! Perfection! To make it even more dreamy, I keep a jar of brewed decaf coffee in the fridge and use that along with a couple of ice cubes in place of the water. Now we're talkin'!

So I figure I'm going to give it a couple of weeks and then decide if I want to start adding food back to my diet. I'm looking forward to that wonderful feeling of lightness and clarity that being in ketosis gives. This will be fun!
Cheers!

Customer Success Story!

This is my customer, Mary Gilmour, who lost 45 pounds! She submitted her story to Cambridge Diet USA and was chosen for the Jan Newsletter that is sent to all Distributors and customers on the emailing list. For her story Cambridge will pay her either $250 cash, or $300 in free product, her choice! Congratulations Mary. You look amazing!

Maintenance?

Like most, I have lost and gained the same weight so many times over my life that I could never put a number to it. The gaining part took no effort what so ever. The losing part seemed like endless sacrifice. Maintenance? Hmm...now that was an interesting concept. From childhood on I was either losing or gaining...never maintaining. My body didn't do maintenance. Dieting=weight loss. Eating=weight gain. Those were the two options. 

So needless to say, these past 15 years of figuring out how to not gain the 120+ pounds I had lost back.. has been as labor intensive as anything I did to get here. My body is so prone to weight gain that for me, maintenance requires vigilance and effort. I wish I could say that my body was "healed" from being a fat storing machine, but that wouldn't be true. If I deviate from my normal controlled eating plan for more then an occasional meal now and then, I will gain. If I take a break for a week and  eat like everyone else around me is eating, including people who are not overweight, I will gain. And it's not necessarily the calorie count that is the issue, but the food itself that will cause the weight gain. 

Grain based foods and sugar are the welcome mat in front of my fat cells. My insulin spikes and every calorie gets locked away like squirrels storing nuts for the winter.  On top of that, eating them also awakens the sleeping beast that is appetite and hunger. Uncontrolled type 2 diabetics can have a voracious appetite that is beyond anything imaginable. As far as you body is concerned, it is starving, no matter how much you consume. Obesity is the natural result.  

It is my JOB to be mindful of the food I consume and I know that each choice comes with consequence for me, good or bad. Because I am diabetic, I have a built in alarm system that fires if I go astray for more then the occasional deviation from my normal diet. I will feel like crap! I keep my blood sugar and insulin levels under control with lifestyle choices, but when I choose something different, BAM! Diabetic Pam!  

It frustrates me to accept the fact that I will never be"normal", whatever that is. I'm still not sure how "normal" people go about their lives. Do they just naturally run checks and balances in their heads constantly to keep their weight and health on track? I know that's how I live now. I generally know the caloric and nutritional value of everything I put in my mouth and I keep a running tally in my head. I see other people eating breads and sugary deserts and know that I can't have it. Let me rephrase that, I choose not to have it. Do I want it? You know I do, but if I want to stay on this planet with all my original parts and be healthy, I have to say "No". That is maintenance for me.

Life, Stress, Choices, Challenges

Dieting is hard, even under the best of circumstances, but outside stress pushes every button an emotional eater has. Without an alternative therapeutic release valve on your stress, it can turn in to an emotional battle ground which of course...creates more stress. For whatever reason, we turned to food as our coping tool. Other people turn to more positive outlets like music, exercise, hobbies, or any number of options. There are alternatives out there for each one of us. The challenge is to discover what yours is.

In a typical persons life they will be touched by all sorts of difficult things that are overwhelming and seem insurmountable, but for the most part, we get through and we go one. We may be changed, hopefully for the better, but we do go on. I have always told my kids that "You can get over pretty much anything". That probably sounds insensitive, but if it were not true, then why even try? I based this theory on my own personal experiences and heartbreaks. Deaths, divorces, addictions, poverty, homelessness, chronic illness, physical/emotional abuse..yeah..I can tick all those boxes whether in my own life or in one of my children's lives. And yet, time goes on and we do too.

We may not have the power to change other people, but we do have the power to change ourselves and the direction we choose to take. Obesity doesn't happen "to" us. It happens "because" of us. That's the good news! We are the creators of our current physical state, good or bad. We can be the designers of our new and improved physicality as well.

Never underestimate you ability to change.

Sitting Like A Lady

Back in the olden days when I was in elementary school ( mid 60's, to 1970) we were required to wear dresses. It wasn't until my last semester in 6th grade that girls were allowed to start wearing pants. I remember always being uncomfortable in a dress because I was a chubby kid with chubby thighs and sitting with my knees together was down right painful at times. All my thin friends had no problem with this of course and even had the ability to sit ladylike with their legs crossed at the knee, something I only aspired to be able to do. This actually became a lifelong measurement of my femininity, sitting comfortably and relaxed with my legs crossed. I do remember one teacher in particular who would make embarrassing comments whenever she was able to see up my skirt while sitting.

It's funny how even today, at the age of 56, I still am aware of how sitting with my legs crossed is important to me. For several decades the thighs would not cooperate and I was right back to elementary school, trying to sit without sprawling. Now, I can casually cross my legs with no resistance and feel perfectly ladylike and feminine. It's the little rewards sometimes that mean the most when you lose a lot of weight.

Staying Loyal To Our Commitments

When we are dealing with food addictions, we tend to make all kinds of commitments to change while in a heightened motivated state of mind, only to abandon those promises once the  emotions have died down and the daily grind of sticking to a diet overwhelms us. Saying what you are going to do is completely different from actually doing it. Staying loyal is the only way to get to goal. Beginning is the easy part. The true test is not how you begin or end, but the work you do in the middle when the emotional high has faded and the goal seems so far away. Successful people keep going while others are making excuses to quit.

Why Cambridge Was My Success Story (finally!)

As I have shared before, I spent most of my life, beginning in toddlerhood, on a diet. I was born chubby (9lbs, 3oz) and I was always aware of the fact that I was different from my three thin siblings. Going through life constantly mindful of every bite of food you take and labeling it "good" or "bad" can really mess up any chance of feeling normal.

Going on Weight Watchers at the age of 9 with my mother was my reality. I was the only kid there in a room full of adults. I can't count the number of times we started and stopped that diet. We would lose some weight, and then gain it back...over and over. The meetings and weigh ins were torture. I can remember how labor intensive it was to follow back then with the counting, weighing, measuring, substituting, and generally having to choke down weird tasteless food. Yuck!

Now, many of you may not be old enough to have been on WW in the early days. It was very structured and detailed. I have to give most of the credit to my mom for the amount of work involved since she did the cooking. Once I got older I took over some of the kitchen duty and it was an enormous pain. It took up the whole day, planning meals and special prep work, making sure we had our weekly meals planned including the mandatory servings of liver and fish and veal, etc. I came to the conclusion early in life that dieting makes a person even MORE obsessed with food! Not the result you are looking for when you are already giving way to much of your time and attention to it.

I was poking around on the Internet this morning and came across this article that has the old original WW plan as I remember it from the 60's/70's. Maybe you can see why Cambridge was such a miracle for me and others who were completely burned out on conventional weight loss plans. This is long, but unbelievably and intensely detailed! Not unlike most weight loss plans that have you accounting for each bite of food you take. Cambridge's simplicity is the reason I was finally able to succeed at losing my weight and keeping it off for the past 14 years.

Here is the Weight Watchers original plan. You will be even more grateful for Cambridge. Click on the link below and prepare to be amazed!

http://www.dwlz.com/WWinfo/old1972ww.html

Which Step Have You Reached Today?

Diet Fatigue

One of the things I remember about my weight loss experience with Cambridge is something I called "diet fatigue". It kicked in towards the end of the second month of my diet. I had already had a great deal of success. I had lost over 30 pounds my first month so there was plenty of reason to feel motivated! I was happy with my Cambridge products, not having any hunger, wonderful energy and all in all, I felt great...physically. Mentally was another story. This was not an issue with missing food. I know that's what it probably sounds like, but actually it was just an overwhelming impatience for the weight loss period to be over. By mid way through my 120 pound loss, I felt like it was dragging on forever! This was obviously not the case since I had dieted for many months before on other programs like Weight Watchers with only a moderate weight loss result. Here I was only 2 months in and had already lost over 40 pounds! For some reason, the rapid weight loss made me want to wave a magic wand and be at my goal. I had a taste of what was to come in my new life and I wanted it NOW!

I started getting sloppy. A nibble of this, a bite of that, some hot air popcorn at night...before I knew it, my weight loss had stalled. I was perplexed since I wasn't consciously sabotaging my diet. If someone had asked me, I would have sworn I was sticking to my plan 100%. I really was in denial. It was my daughter that pointed out  what I was doing and I realized that even though I had thought I had conquered my food issues by that time (totally unrealistic!) I was in fact still playing the same games I had always played with other diets in the past. Self sabotage is a hard thing to admit. It is easy to blame everyone and everything for our failures, but ultimately our weight problems are from the choices we make. I had to learn to pay attention to that little voice telling me that I deserved something extra, or that this little bit won't hurt. Worse was the old behavior of making impulsive decisions and seeing what I could get away with. None of these behaviors display the self control I thought I had. I also think that at some level I may have been a little scared of how my life was changing. I made no sense, but it didn't have to.

If you have experienced your own diet fatigue and feel like you may quit.. or like me.. be self sabotaging, this is your wake up call! When we say this is about "persistence, not perfection", it's really true! Losing weight is not for wimps. It challenges us on so many levels, both physically and emotionally. Getting our bodies healthy and in shape is one thing, but you have to get your mental health in line as well. One supports the other and when one is struggling, the other will follow. Starting a diet is easy. Finishing is something else. That finish line is there waiting for you. Don't let something as unimportant as boredom or frustration get in your way and keep you from what you want most.

Hey! I've lost 32 Pounds!!!

I had a doctor's appointment today and as usual, they had to weigh me. Normally I dread that, but not today! I got on and was happy to see that I was 32 pounds lighter then my last appointment! Yipee!!

I've been taking this slow. I am still working towards my ultimate goal of reaching my high school weight, but I'm in no big hurry. Now that I have a husband it is important to me that I don't deny him having a relaxing evening meal together and an enjoyable weekend and that usually includes eating out once. He works VERY hard all week and he deserves a little spoiling. I'm always careful about what I order, keeping it low carb, healthy fats, and moderate protein. I find that this compliments my Cambridge days quit well and it doesn't interfere with ketosis.

I was SS 98% of the time when I was losing the bulk of my weight 14 years ago. I had a very long way to go and time was of the essence due to my serious health issues I was dealing with. That is not the case for me now, and this proves that there is more then one way to succeed with Cambridge. Most of my customers strive for sole source,  thinking anything less then that is a failure. Not true! Many of my customers...and now me...do just fine on The Regular Program, adding one small meal a day to their 3 Cambridge servings.

I don't have much further to go and that is exciting, but I'm going to be taking my time. I have a nice balance of Cambridge and healthy food choices and it's working.

So today was a rewarding day and I hope it was also for all of you that read my blog.