Cystah On a Mission

I'm starting this post randomly in the middle of the week because...well, I felt like it.  I felt there was something that I needed to get off my chest.  It all begins with a story. So, today I was driving into work, and I was early so I began to reflect on the day and life.  Anyone who knows me know that I have self-diagnosed ADD.  So my mind was pretty much all over the place as it seems to always be.  I couldn't believe my morning, but anyone who knows me also knows that the darnedest things happen to me.  I honestly feel like there are more days in my life where the world works against me.  Usually it would involve being late to work because the drawbridge decided that at 9:09 a.m., when it's my turn to "breeze" through the tunnel, it would open.  Or, as my luck would have it, oversleeping when you need to be at the dealership at 9:00 a.m. which is how morning started.  Remember the group of ladies I wrote about in my most recent post? ...

* Guys, read the RED portion at your own risk, but it's lady talk. |MISSING IN ACTION|...So, this is officially week 29, and some of you may be wondering where I have been.  The honest answer is I don't know.  I'm still in the same place I was when I started this blog pretty much.  I stopped writing when life really started happening.  My husband and I began to look for a new home, my dad got sick, job hunting chronicles continue, and a whole heap to celebrate.  In addition to all of the holidays between May and August, birthdays and promotions (my husband) have been had and so have babies!  Yes, babies!!! Three of the four women previously mentioned in my blog have given birth to their babies.  And, GUESS WHAT???  The are ALL BOYS. Yup! Precious, sweet baby boys!!! But, I digress!  So, in the midst of all that I have been doing, a few things have changed. The first thing I want to talk about is the purpose of this blog.  My health h...

| Slow & Steady... |  I know most of you have heard of Aesop's fable of the Tortoise and the Hare.  Well, though I am not racing anyone or anything, I feel like a [weight] loss, whether slow or quick, is winning.  I haven't loss much since the last post but I haven't gained either.  This two weeks, my husband and I actually lost the same amount.  It wasn't even a whole pound, but it show that we are doing better with our cheat meals and not over indulging.  I use dessert plates at celebratory events now, and if I don't I make sure that I am able to see at least have of my plate uncovered; this goes for sauces as well.  If it exceeds half, I make it a point to choose the most unhealthy food to move to the other side of the plate.  I did this yesterday at Baby Brayden's Shower, but I did sneak a cupcake in.  We had a great time, too.  A LOT of laughs and love, the way celebrating life should be.  We haven't been great at working o...

This blog will be a quick update on what has been going on with me over the past two weeks.  For starters my food has changed up a bit.  As you may know if you do meal prep, you may begin to lose interest in some of the foods you eat on a regular basis.  For many this includes baked or grilled chicken breast, fish, broccoli and so forth (well that's what it was for me).  We have begun to experiment more with our meal prep.  I cooked mashed cauliflower, eggplant Parmesan, creamy garlic chicken thighs, low-fat creamed spinach and a few other things.  Our snacks have changed a little as well.  We added some different fruit: tangerines, plums, and a different apple.  Every now and again I crave asparagus or brussel sprouts randomly, but other than that, our food has been pretty consistent.  We find new recipes we'd like to try out make our grocery list and shop every week for what we don't have in our home already.  For anyone considering me...

This period's post may or may not be just as emotional as the last, but yesterday's weigh-in took me to a place that I don't care to be.  By no one's fault but my own, I happened to gain since my last post, but lose since my last OFFICIAL post.  I was so excited about losing what I had two weeks ago that I could only see my self moving forward to becoming a better me.  A week later, I attended a conference, and after contemplating about whether or not to bring my own lunch to the conference, I decided to just chose the healthier options from their selections.  What I didn't know was that they were doing boxed lunches and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was carb-filled.  They offered a variety of pastry and fruit options for breakfast (as well as coffee, tea, water, juices and sodas).  For lunch there were three options for boxed lunches- all sandwiches and wraps.  In addition, inside each Day One box there was risotto salad, chips, and a brownie, an...

So.  I'm going to jump right into this.  I'm fat!  I mean really fat, and that's the truth!  I have rolls, dimples, nooks and crannies galore, and honestly, they've been all I've known for pretty much my whole life.  For all my life, even today and forever, I've loved me some me.  I mean every crevice, lump, and bump because inside of all of this a kind, caring, genuine, intelligent, generous soul.  With that said, I can also be very nonchalant, selfish (rightfully so), and FRANK.  If you've been following me, you know of the most important reasons for my wanting to become a healthier me: overall better health, wanting to become a mommy, taking control of my PCOS, and preventing the weight-related illnesses that are prevalent in the African American community.  This whole time I thought I was doing this just for me, but I realized today that that's not entirely true.  I'm going to list some other reasons why I'm doing this first for me a...

So...I decided that I would post this week to give me a fresh start for my new biweekly schedule.  As you know last week was a bad week for me.  I realize that I get very discouraged when the numbers on the scale go up, but I know that it's a pretty accurate reflection of what I do during the two-week periods.  As you may have read in the last post, I get "scale happy," so we have decided to weigh every fourth Sunday of the month instead of every two weeks, but I will still post every two weeks about the good, bad, and downright ugly!  I am looking at every day like it's a new day from here on out.  If I succumb to negative temptation, I'll dust myself off and one more time to be better than the days before! VITTLES Week 2  (2/21-27/2016) Breakfasts: Fruits (Bananas and Apples) Eggs Bacon Pork Sausage Greek Yogurt *We use some of our breakfast items and snacks interchangeably Lunches & Dinners: Lasagna (Our neighbors made this to as a co...

This has been the two weeks I've been dreading.  We all know that during our journeys there are always the expected and the unexpected.  The first week of this two-week period was a breeze.  There was nothing really that I can say that threw me off.  I got a visit from my best friend/ cousin and my oldest Godchild (MyTeé and Seriyah) on the 13th and 14th which was fun.  We went to the mall and dinner.  We made chocolate (excuse me white chocolate, Seriyah doesn't like real chocolate) dipped strawberries and pineapples when we returned to my place.  I set a couple of the strawberries aside so that my hubby and I could enjoy them for dessert after our Valentine's lunch date.  The following Monday we shopped for our meal prep items to prepare on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning since we'd had leftovers from the previous week.  I roasted the drumsticks and carrots Tuesday after work, but I got a headache while it was in the oven, so I put the rest...

So... Week one is officially over, and I'd been beating myself up all week because, as I mentioned in my last post, I pigged out on my birthday weekend.  My husband and I usually pick a day to have a cheat meal, but I cheated at least two DAYS of my three day weekend. We weigh ourselves every other Sunday morning before meals or drinking anything, but I decided that I would weigh myself to see what damage I'd done from the weekend and I'd gained a whopping 4 lbs.  I thought for sure it would only be a couple, and I prepared my mind for that, but not 4.  I started thinking of everything I'd eaten from my Friday trip to Williamsburg to meet with Rachel to Sunday when my last two girls ventured home from spending my birthday weekend with me.  Friday wasn't too bad.  I had a protein drink and a trail mix bar for breakfast, one of three fish tacos with onion spears and a part of a pretzel and cheese appetizer for lunch, and one of the remaining fish tacos for dinner ...

| Fifty by Thirty |  I know it sounds like a measurement of the length times width of a room or something, but it's not.  I plan to lose 50 pounds by the time I'm thirty.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but according to my dietitian, it's spot on for healthy weight loss over a year's time of one to two pounds a week.  If you follow my other blog , you've read a little of my back ground.  My latest post was about continuing my weight loss journey, dealing with PCOS, my love/hate relationship with exercise, and wanting to become a mom.  This blog will encompass all of these issues and more. Below, I will share with you where I am with each of these individually.  This may be one of the longest posts I write for this blog, but there is much that needs to be known to follow along. I have been overweight for as long as I can remember and obese (morbidly) for all of my adult life.  I grew up in a very rural town with parents whose menu was solely ...