Diary of a MAD * FAT * WOMAN…..

Tag: juliana wathen

  • Slow down Speedy…..

    Much to my amazement and amusement Weight Watchers DOES have police on their POINTS PLUS program. I dutifully entered my weight on Sunday after weigh in into the Weight Tracker and bells and whistle about blew my hair back. Apparently you CAN lose too much weight in a week. Who the hell ever heard of THAT? Certainly no prom girls I know.

    So the POINTS PLUS program admonished me and readjusted my POINTS allowance to slow down my progress. educational windows popped up about the risks of rapid weight loss and the dangers of losing muscle mass and not just fat. I’m thinking – Honey, there is way too much fat there for you to even worry about it hitting my muscle mass yet! But I read on……. Unless you are under a doctor’s care, you should not lose more than 1 to 2 lbs. per week. This is a safe amount of weight that will allow your body to slowly adjust to the changes and you will be more successful at keeping it off. Losing any more weight than that can lead to severe health problems. Well SHIT! I already have health problems.

    So I did a lil research. “Your heart is responsible for pumping blood and oxygen throughout your body. When you gain or lose weight, your heart must adjust to accommodate more or less body weight. Since your heart is a muscle, rapid weight loss or constantly losing and then gaining weight can place a lot of stress on your heart. As your weight changes so does your blood pressure and heart rate. You may also experience irregular heart rhythms and eventually heart failure.”

    Okay – so that makes the whole weight loss issue a little more serious in my mind since I already have Heart Failure and Irregular Heart Rhythms. Slow and steady wins the race. Reality check noted!  

    But I do love me some Speedy Gonzales! So me and Speedy will keep moving forward we just won’t be leaving a dust trail behind us!

    I love each and every one of you

    Juliana

  • Illusions…..

    Have you ever felt that “Happiness”  or a “Great Life” is somehow always OVER THERE, just out of reach. Does it seem to be on the other side of where you currently are? Is it like a mirage? The closer you get, the further away it moves as elusive as the end of a rainbow? Is this your reality?

    NO. THIS is the illusion!  That this state of happiness is for others and somehow outside ourselves and just out of reach. The old adage that you must struggle with all our might to reap the rewards of  a “Great Life”  is false. We have been taught to believe  that only thru suffering will we achieve happiness. This is an old thought. It represents an old level of consciousness that we no longer need to feed with our energy.

    The veil has been lifted and we have been shown that our best life is within & in front of us. And the simplest bridge will take us there. The simplest, positive thought of worthiness will propel us forward and we can tread upon that bridge with confidence that it will carry us across.

    Greatness already resides within us. Bring it forward. Bring it out. Surround yourself with this energy and you will be the rainbow brightening up the world.

    I love each and every one of you

    Juliana

  • I get the point….

     

     

    I have been running mach 90 with my hair on fire this week! I have worked from 8am – 2am and gotten up and done it all over again. 4 days of non-stop events and more to come over the next three days. The busiest week we have had all year and I am doing it  – cankle free!

    I have managed to take my retro Scooby Doo lunch box with me everyday. I searched for The Partridge Family, Gumby and Bobby Sherman lunch boxes because they were the ones I actually owned in the 70’s but… no luck. The only retro on the shelf at Target was Scooby. SO Scooby it is, filled with all my POINTS for the day…okay – not all my points but most! And I have been able to MAKE time to log my points on the tracker on line.

    It freaks me out at how much I have to eat a day to use up my points. I have points left each night but I have gotten better. Today I only have three points left. I just can’t eat another dang thing.

    Extra temptations surround me everywhere I go when we are so busy. I turned down a wonderful plated dinner at a gala Tuesday night for what was in my Scooby Box. I did the same last night at Tony Valone’s. Today – they delivered 13 piping hot pizzas for the crew so they could keep up the pace for lunch….ohhhh they smelled soooo good. But by eating the things I brought all day, I wasn’t hungry….but Girl, I was still tempted cause it just smelled so dang good and greasy! You feel me don’t cha?

    I always thought Weight Watchers was going to be hard. But it is easy once you get the hang of it. This has been the best I have done and most consistent I have been on watching what I eat in years.

    Oh I still get to play in the kitchen and get creative. Check out the photo of the making of a wrap above.

    Ezekiel Sprouted Grain tortilla with Olive and garlic humus, fresh spinach, 1 slice of white cheddar, 1 slice of Boar’s head turkey breast, cucumbers, tomatoes,onions, bean sprouts, carrots and topped with Wanda’s home-made pepper relish. Yummy wrap I make the night before and put in the fridge till the next day. And it’s less than 8 points.

    I get the point GOD! My best days are yet to come!

    "Julie, Julie, Julie do ya love me?"
    Bobby Sherman- Julie, Julie, Julie do ya love me…..

     

    I love each and every one of you

    Juliana

  • WTF!!!…..

    I know it sounds weird but I have never used an alarm clock. I don’t even own one. I just decide what time to get up and that’s when I wake up. Neat trick, I know.

    You may think it’s just repetition or routine but it’s not. Whether I need to wake up at 4am or 8am it’s all the same.

    Now GETTING up can be the challenge. I admit! I am not that disciplined. So telling myself to get up in time to work out and eat a descent breakfast, choke down all my meds and pack a lunch for the day including snacks and bottled water AND log it all in a Weight Watchers PointsPlus system??? okay – it’s not going to happen most days.

    So today I am headed to Target. I’m going to go buy the most obnoxious alarm clock I can find. The kind that keeps annoyingly chiming away till you GET UP and turn it off. I’m hoping I will turn my morning silence that I am so accustomed to into a swift kick in the ass to get up and do what we all know I should be doing.

    I’m finally getting the hang of the Points Plus system and I have bought some of the items at the store that have the points listed on them so I don’t have to even think about it. And since you can add in your own recipes you can create your own items which I think is kinda cool.

    But it all comes down to how your start your day. I know that when I give myself 30 more minutes to snuggle into my Egyptian Cotton sheets and Downy fresh pillow that I’m not REALLY pampering myself like I tell myself I am. I’m just succumbing to my own line of BS.

    When the day is done, the WEIGHT of it is all on my own shoulders. I have taken care of plenty of people in my life. Friends, Lovers and Bosses alike. THAT was a self imposed obstacle and distraction to taking care of myself. I made them more important. I had no problem getting up at 5:30 in the morning to make a partner breakfast or spending the money I should have saved for catching up on bills on entertaining a friend and buying her those things she mentioned she didn’t have.   Somehow it just seemed they were more important. That they deserved to have the things they wanted. Consequently, I attracted those people to be in my inner most circle for most of my life. My mistake was making all THEIR moments more important than my own.

    I get pissed sometimes that it took me 48 years to realize I had my own value. That I was worthy of being taken care of. But WTF, better now than never I say.

    I love each and every one of you and today, I’m gonna love me just a little more.

    Juliana

  • Strange Days Indeed…..

    I started my day early today and was so thrilled to get the “Coming Soon” Poster from my designer!

    I think it looks great!!! I was driving along today in the Galleria Area after dropping off a project  at a local hotel. I was thinking about the Posters for the show and post cards and web ads when another poster caught my eye. Standing in the median of Westheimer and the 610 Loop was a middle aged homeless man. He had a homemade poster made of discarded cardboard in his left hand and was giving it a shake at passing cars to get attention for a hand out. Not that unusual. These days, you’re doing good to approach any intersection in the city without seeing one or more panhandlers hoping for your stray ashtray change. But something about this guy caught my attention. It wasn’t his witty verbiage or the detailed graphics in sharpie on his sign. What I noticed was in the OTHER hand entirely. As was his attention. You see, our local panhandler was busy texting on his CELL PHONE….Yes, you read that correctly…he was busy TEXTING ON HIS CELL PHONE.

     Galleria traffic must be paying really well these days! If I hadn’t of had my jaw dropped to my feet I would have taken a picture of him with MY cell phone but I was too stunned for words.

    Hell, by next week he’ll probably be set up on the corner with a desk, a lap top and an assistant to shake his sign at the traffic for him.

    THESE are STRANGE DAYS INDEED.

    I love each and every one of you

    Juliana

  • Being a grownup sucks sometimes…..

    Today, I finally made THAT call. The one you keep putting off cause you are sure things will get better. But for Mr. Punkin I am afraid the cold hard truth is that 17 yrs of living with me is the most ANYBODY has ever been able to endure and it has taken it’s toll.

    My only wish is that when my quality of life fades that someone will load me in a horse trailer and throw a cow hide over me. Drive me to Willis, Texas to the oldest, blindest vet they can find and tell him the old milk cow  Bessy took a turn for the worse. Let him hit me with a hypodermic right then and there. It’s the humane thing to do.

    I’ve had him longer than any girlfriend or roommate. Longer than any piece of clothing I own. Longer than ….most everything.

    Punkin is old and cries when you pet him too rough. He won’t eat anything but the broth of the canned food and throws up anything else he might try to eat. He has a hard time remembering where the cat box is and some nights cries a lonesome cry that will make you jump up and check on him from a dead sleep.

    He’s been there for me. He talked to me when no one else had the time. He sat with me when I was sick and even though I could never get out of the house with black pants on without taking half his hair with me, he’s been my company and my saving grace.

    I’m gonna miss him when he is gone. His quality of life is fading fast. And I know that I will have to suck it up and make that trip to the vet . The one that says – sleep well – and I’ll see you on the other side. It sucks being a grownup some days. This will be one of them.

    I love each and every one of you.

    Juliana

  • Weight Watchers….whose watching???

    Alright, I have succumbed to the Jennifer Hudson hype and joined Weight Watchers on line for three months. That was $65.00 out of my budget that just vanished with the click of a keystroke. But there is still nobody WATCHING me…I can still eat what I like. There are no POINTS POLICE lurking behind the counter at the Local Popeye’s Chicken just waiting to bust me and take me down for a calorie violation.  Nope – not even a Meter Reader to issue me so much as a warning for parking at the Baskin Robins. What the hell did I pay for??? Dang it! There are no free rides even when you shell out cold hard electronic cash. I still have to do all the work myself. I have to plan meals and log in every POINT of substinance that passes my lips. And they tricked me – their is an ACTIVITY LOG to go with it….they even expect me to log how much I drink.

    This is like…like…..HOMEWORK! What about my tan time? What about Dancing with the STARS? What about FACEBOOK????

    Okay – I’m done bitching. I know (after finally reading my last hospital report about RESTRICTIONS) that I have to knuckle down and get on the ball. They have finally gotten really nasty about salt – it’s FORBIDDEN….and alcohol…I just don’t even want to talk about it. And after looking up points on a hotdog which remains one of my favorite foods – Well, let’s just say that after adding those points to the POINT TRACKER I wouldn’t be allowed to eat for a week.

    Ho – hum…what’s a beautiful girl to do?…..COUNT Points with Jennifer Hudson I guess. I bet she doesn’t even log in her own points. I bet she  has a personal assistant that logs everything she eats into the POINT TRACKER and sends up a warning when she gets too close to going over budget for the day. Aghhh the life of the rich and famous.

    I love each and every morsel of you

    Juliana

  • Working on my tan lines…..

    It is a commonly held myth that BROWN FAT looks better than WHITE FAT. But I’m not so sure it is a myth. I think a little color looks good on everybody. So I am doing my part to live the myth…..I’m by the pool every chance I get basting up my butterball to see if I can achieve that perfect tan. So far I have only mastered a slight burn, some chaffing and a bevy of freckles that would set Ireland aglow. If my freckles don’t find a way to merge and soon then I am afraid I might get added to the pool activities roster when someone flips me over and starts playing connect the dots with a sharpie. ON second thought…it does beat on-line dating!

    Stranger things have happened!

    I love each and every one of you

    Juliana

  • Standing on my own two feet…..

    It’s been a great weekend. And I think my batteries are all recharged to take on the week.

    I’ve peeled crawfish till my thumbs swole up. I have burned more calories laughing than I could have burned walking round and round and round the block. I have breathed in the scent of the piney woods and the fresh salty breeze of an evening ocean. I have been here and there and everywhere in between. Life has become fuller, richer and yet calmer all at the same time.

    And that, my friend, comes from standing on my own two feet. Sounds simple and you may even think you do it everyday but we often depend so much on other people that their absence or lack of attention can take our feet right out from under us.

    The quest to find someone to walk beside you and hold your hand without pulling you down or propping you up is a tough crusade. The bigger challenge is to be that same type of person to others. Some people only feel needed and loved if they are helping or fixing someone else and THEIR problems. Others only know how to take your energy as if it were their own. They feed on YOUR need to be needed. So in the vicious cycle of co-dependency neither of you move forward. One never learns to stand on their own and the other so busy holding up the other that they forget to live their own life. BALANCE is the place where you stand firmly on your own two feet. Nothing and no one can knock you off your feet if you have that balance.

    It’s a process everyday. I don’t know all the answers and even some of the answers I do have are hard to live day-to-day. Old habits die-hard. There are still things I struggle to let go of. But the thing I do know is I am heading in the right direction.

    I love each and every one of you. Happy Birthday Leslie.

    Juliana

  • Sprinkles on my ice cream…..

    Just hanging by the pool today and getting some sun and  fun work done all at the same time.

    Beautiful Girl Productions is chugging down the track like a steam locomotive. The Accountant is setting up the books cause I kinda suck at that and the graphic designer is working on the first show poster.

    I am working on the script and my mind is all a buzzzzzz.

    Preview night is MONTHS away but all the planning  is happening at the speed of light. Mark your calendars for January 4th 2012. That will be  Preview night for NAME IN LIGHTS…..Dairy of a MAD*FAT*WOMAN with official opening on January 5th. We will run for two weeks at Obsidian Art Space.

    The Foyer  of Obsidian will be tranformed into an ART GALLERY for the run of show and feature Art and Photography from Beautiful Girls from around the world. You are not going to want to miss one moment of this ride!

    I don’t think I have ever been this excited in my life. What a gift living is. I am blessed to be surrounded by so many loving people who encourage me to live my best moments day by day.

    I encourage you to do the same. Don’t wait till everything is settled, the bills are paid, the kids are grown, you lose some weight or you get that promotion. If you keep thinking “someday, my time will come” you will always project THAT day as out of reach. Grab your time TODAY.

    The moment is NOW. The people that surround you are here NOW. Living is NOW. Loving and embracing all THAT is LIVING!

    I love each and every one of you more than sprinkles on my ice cream!

    Juliana