Getting Closer To My Goal

Hey everyone. I know it's been about a week or almost a week since I blogged last and I am so sorry that I haven't. The only excuse I am going to say is that I have been EXHAUSTED. I made it to the Utah Resort on Sunday and have been here all week. It has been so fantastic to see everyone again. When I came here the end of January for my week I was not in a very happy place. It was really tough to be here and I wanted to leave and go back to Malibu so bad. I am happy to say that even though I miss everyone in Malibu and I miss California like crazy, I am so anxious to get home and see everyone and to see my babies. It seems like I have been gone for forever when it has only been a month. I can't wait to sleep in my own bed and be in my own home. I feel like so much has passed me by with my family and friends back home with me being gone. In a sense I feel disconnected and like I'm looking in a window from the outside and it saddens me. This trip has been AWESOME and I am so glad that I did it, but it's been hard being away from my family and friends this time. Something very interesting happened to me today. If you know anything about my family or me one thing you know is that we are a very close knit family and love each other so much. We have our problems and our issues but we don't let the issue or the problems come between us. We work hard to keep most of the drama out of our lives. Well, I met with the Life Coach, Jen Morton, here at the Resort this afternoon for an appointment and we were talking about my body image and "all or nothing thinking" and how it doesn't work when it comes to losing weight. I had mentioned to her that I have this image in my mind of what I want to look like when I get to my goal and she asked me what that looked like. I said that I guess in a way I compare myself to my sister and I want to look like her. I showed her a picture of my sister. Now my sister is 2 1/2 years older than me and about 5 inches taller than me and has never had a weight problem. She then asked me how long I have been comparing myself to her and how long was I going to continue to compare myself to her? Which was a great question. I never thought of it that way. I didn't realize that I was still doing that. How sad is that and how stressful is that? My sister and I have always been pretty close. But I have always felt a competition between us when it came to my weight. I know that my sister doesn't want anything more than me to be healthy and happy. It's me that is causing that competition and strife. I can almost guarantee that my sister has know Idea that I feel this way or have ever felt this way. That was a big deal for me to figure out today. Maybe I can ease up on myself and let myself be me now and stop comparing myself to others. Letting go of the expectation that I have to perform a certain way or lose a certain amount of weight to be happy or content. In reality, I don't think even when I get to my goal which is only about 10 or 15 pounds I will happy with that and satisfied with that. Reality for me is that if I continue to think the way that I have been thinking and comparing myself to my sister or to others that I won't ever be happy with my life. So I am going to work on learning to love myself in the moment and loving myself because I deserve to be loved. Jen also said that I should think about changing my goal and going down to 130-135 and then seeing how I feel from there and concentrating on lowering my body fat percentage. So this has been a fantastic day of discovery for me. I am so grateful for all that has been shown to me and will continue to be shown to me.

My Body Keeps Blowing Me Away!!!!!

It just blows my mind how my body responds to all of this exercise and low calorie food when I am here at the resort. Why can't it do that same thing when I am at home? Maybe I should just get a job where I work out 6-8 hours a day. That would be realistic huh? Well last week the resort decided to revamp their menu and their lectures and get away from focusing so much on calories. They also up'd there average daily calorie intake from 1200 to 1500 calories a day. I am having a really hard time wrapping my brain around this new concept. When I was at home I was eating on average about 1200-1400 calories a day. Now they are saying I should have about 1600-1700 calories a day but to not focus on the calories. I just am so scared that I'm going to gain this weight back. I know it's time to "get back to reality" and learn to live on life's terms, but I am just really confused with this whole new concept. I am ready to go home this time and dive into life. This has been a tough 3 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed it and am glad that I came back, but my mind and my thoughts have been at home. I was just starting to really get into a groove at home when I left to come here. Now I feel in a lot of ways like I have to start all over. Well this time I am in a much better place. I am looking forward to going home. I am looking forward to spending time with my family and friends. So when I left home to come here I made a goal that I wanted to lose at least 15 pounds while I was here. I am so excited and stoked to say that I reached that goal. I lost 15.2 pounds, 3% body fat, 2.25" in my chest, 2.25" in my waist, and 3.75" in my hips. I am so proud of myself. I have to be honest and say I didn't work my hardest every single day, but I did work hard. Well I hope everyone has a fabulous week and focuses on making your life better than last week. Focus on one thing that you want to change and go for it. Until I post again, may God bless you and keep you safe.

Radio Talk Show Debut

So this morning I was on the resorts Chiropractor's talk radio show and talked about my weight loss journey. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I was so honored to be invited to be on it. I will put the link on here so you can all listen to it. I was so nervous and all that before the show but after starting and everything it was like I have been doing it all my life. I was really proud with what I did and said. If I just touch or inspire just one person with my story I have accomplished what I have set out to do. My life has changed so much in just 1 short year. I have so much to be grateful for and so much to be thankful for. I have a family that I ADORE and adores me, I have friends that mean so much to me and that I invest my life into, and I have a Father in Heaven that loves me beyond my comprehension and blesses me every single day of my life. Even when I don't deserve it. The resort part of my journey might be over for now, but I have so much to look forward to. Yes I will miss everyone here at the resort more than they will ever know, but I feel like I can now take the tools that I have been taught and put them into practice. This has been a great 3 weeks and I am so excited to go to Utah on Sunday and see everyone there. I'm anxious to get home and meet with my trainer and to get to my goal. Here is the link to my interview. It is about an hour long but is so worth listening to. I hope you all enjoy it. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-revolution-of-health/2012/06/19/karen-williams--the-weight-loss-journey

Happy Father's Day and babbling's

Hey everyone. First of all I would like to say Happy Fathers Day to all the Fathers out there but especially to my Father, Brother, and Brother-n-law. The 3 most important men in my life. I am so blessed to be called daughter and sister. Thank you for always being there and supporting me and loving me no matter what. I love each of you with all my heart. May this day be filled with love, joy, happiness, and all your dreams come true. See you when I get home. So I just finished week 2 yesterday and onto week 3 today. It's my final week here at the resort in Malibu. I leave next Sunday to head to the resort in Utah for a week. I am actually excited to be leaving. I am ready to get home and see everyone and to see my babies. I miss them so much. I really thought that I was going to be freaking out about leaving here and going home. But I am not. I will probably be sad on Saturday because I will be leaving all my peeps behind but am looking forward to moving on. I have met some really great people here these last two weeks. Most of them have left and gone home and I miss them dearly. There is one person in particular that I am going to miss tremendously and already miss tremendously. Her name is Ivette. She has been such an amazing friend these past two weeks. She has supported me, encouraged me and pushed me. We have had a blast together. I love and miss you my friend. Thank you for being you and for being there. You Rock. I was talking to a friend on Facebook tonight that was here with me the first few weeks that I was here last year and she made the comment that I was an inspiration to so many and that I have come so far since last year and that I should be proud of all I have accomplished. She doesn't know how much that meant to me. I have really been struggling with that lately. Accepting compliments and accepting and celebrating how far I have come and how much I have accomplished. I have been working hard on that while I have been here. Starting to embrace it more. We had 38 new guest arrive today. We are full again this week. I have to say I miss the "Old days" when we weren't so full. I was talking to a friend of mine here tonight at dinner and she made the comment that there are several people here that are really skinny and don't need to be here. I pretty much lost it. I told her not to worry about their journey. That we don't know where they came from or where their journey started. I told her that it really pisses me off when people judge other people like that. I have had several people come up to me and say why are you here, you don't look like you need to be here. Really???? Do you know where I have come from????, where my journey began???? No. Why can't people just mind there own business and worry about themselves? Why can't they just concentrate on themselves? Ok I'm done being on my soap box. Well, I'm looking forward to my last week here and heading home in a couple of weeks. I hope all of you are doing fantastic and are all well. Until I get home, May God bless and keep all of you safe. Love and miss all of you.d

Where am I at?

Hey everyone. Hope everyone is doing fantastic. I am having a rough day so far. I didn't sleep very good last night so I didn't get much sleep. My legs were aching all night long so I tossed and turned trying to find a comfortable position. It's amazing how the lack of sleep can really control your moods and your emotions. All I feeling like doing right now is crawling up in my bed and crying. I don't know why I am feeling this way other than I am tired. Yesterday was such a great day. But all I can think about right now is I only have a week in a half left here and then I leave for Utah and then home and my life has to go back to reality. My passion to move here has been relit. I just feel so at home here. As much as I didn't want to come back here, I am so glad I did. My knee has held up better than I could ever expect so I should be ecstatic about that. I meet with Tonia this afternoon for our training session and usually I look forward to it but today I'm dreading it. She was out sick last week on Thursday so we didn't train. It's also amazing how writing down and journaling your feelings and your emotions puts things into perspective and makes things somewhat clearer. I just wish sometimes life was simpler and less stressful. Well hopefully I can kick myself out of this funk and make this a great day also. Thanks everyone for listening and caring.

Savoring my time

Hey everyone. How was everyones weekend? Hope fantastic. Mine was AWESOME. Yesterday I just took it easy pretty much. I did the first part of Cardio Blast and then went back to my room and took a nap. I really needed it. Then I got up and went to dinner and then just took it easy the rest of the night. This morning I got up about 7:30. Met Sunshine and Ivette at the front office so they could go up and weigh. I have to give props to Sunshine. She lost 10 pounds her first week here. Way to go my friend. I am so proud of you. Sunshine is one of the Year of You winners that won 4 weeks here at the resort. She is such a great girl and has such an amazing personality and story. She is going to try out for Season 14 of the Biggest Loser and I hope and pray she gets on. She truly deserves to. I am not going to weigh in until I leave. I will explain a little more in a minute why that decision was made. Then after Sunshine and Ivette weighed in, we went downstairs and ate breakfast. Then Rob Cohn, a friend of Sunshine and mine came and picked us up and took us to the Biggest Loser Ranch where they film the show. It was so cool and fun to see everything. Everything is pretty much closed up right now because they aren't filming right now. We took lots of pictures though. I have uploaded all of mine on my Facebook page if you want to take a look. It was really weird today. I took a picture in front of the entrance to the elimination room at the Ranch and I looked at it and boy do I look skinny in that picture. Every time I look at it, it blows me away. I am starting to embrace and accept how I look I guess. Has it finally sunk in? So the reason I am not going to way in until I leave is because I met with the Life Coach, Essara on Friday and we talked a lot about how I have been abscessing and focusing on the scale and not being happy with my progress or where I am. She is really concerned because of what we talked about that I am starting down a dangerous path and developing a new eating disorder and heading towards being anorexic or bulimic. She says I have all the signs of going that way. So she has ordered me not to weigh in until I leave. I think, if it is cleared by Micaela I will do body fat percentage instead. Not sure about that yet. So overall, my first week was really good. I am happy with it. The biggest thing is that my knee is doing really well for all of the work I am demanding out of it. I think this week I will only hike Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and take Tuesday and Thursday off to rest my knee. It has been really good being back here. This week is going to be AMAZING. Last night at graduation Sione who was on Season 7 of the Biggest Loser and is now a trainer at the Utah Resort gave an amazing talk about not stressing out about your journey and taking one day at a time. It really impacted me and got me thinking about my journey and being more patient and appreciative with it. I posted it on my Facebook page if you want to listen to it. I almost forgot to tell you. Dr. Ray who is the Chiropractor here at the resort has started his own radio talk show and has asked me to be on it. So on June 19th I will be on his show. I feel so honored. Thank you so much Dr. Ray. I hope I make you proud. I will be talking about my journey and where I am heading. He is dedicating the whole hour to me. Well I hope that you all are safe, in good health, and are living life to the fullest. I miss you all so much and look forward to coming home and seeing you all. Thank you for all you mean to me and all your love, support and prayers. I am so blessed to have each and everyone of you in my life. May God bless you and keep you until I return.

I'm Still Alive!! (Con't)

Hey everyone I said I would try to blog more tonight so here I am blogging. I want to continue to talk about accepting myself where I am and how I look. As I stated this morning Tonia and I talked about this in our training session on Tuesday. She was shocked that I was disappointed or frustrated with myself. She couldn't understand why I was disappointed. I can't really explain it. I see myself and I know that I look good compared to what I looked like 11 months ago but I still see that fat girl. I still see a girl that is not where she wants to be or where she should be and that frustrates me. Next month, July 31st to be exact will be my 1 year mark of starting my new life and my journey. I can't believe that it has already been almost a year. So much has happened and I have changed so much. So why can't I accept that and embrace it? I don't know if I can really answer that. I have to be honest and say that thoughts of going the opposite direction and becoming anorexic or bulimic have crossed my mind and that scares me. I was talking to one of my friends that I met here the other day and she asked me what keeps you motivated and what keeps you from gaining the weight back. My response was because I don't want to let my family down and I don't want to go back to the way it was. But I think it's more than that. I know that I am just one bite away from blowing it. I know that if I give up or if I take just one bite of something that is not good for me I can go back to my old life and that freaks me out so much. My body doesn't like to lose weight but it does like to gain weight so I know how easy it would be and how short it would take for me to gain all my weight back and I just don't have the energy or the motivation to start all over again. My family has told me that they are concerned that I am too conscience of my weight and are concerned about me going to far. There is a fine line but what is that fine line? Finding a balance is not an easy task. I can't let go of this image that I have and want to be. Will I ever get to there? I do have to say that I was showing a guest this afternoon a picture of me when I went to Utah in January and I guess I have to say that I do look like I have lost more weight. That's hard for me to admit. I can talk the talk and tell people to not give up and to believe in themselves and all that but when it comes to walking the walk and believing it for myself that is another story. That is what I want to work on while I am here. Really accepting myself and believing in myself. Knowing that it's going to be alright. I am obviously doing something right. If I can give up smoking and drinking 17 years ago then I can learn to give up my obsession to food. Well, it's getting late and I am exhausted so I am going to sign off for now. I hope that this inspires at least one person. Sometimes I feel like I just babble on and make no sense at all. Until next time, keep on keep'n on.

I'm still alive!!

Hey everyone. Sorry it's been a few days since I blogged but our internet has been down off and on and I have been completely exhausted. This is going to be a quick update because I have to get to the gym soon. Just wanted to check in and let you know that I am still indeed alive. Things have been great here. It sure has been nice being back with all the staff and meeting some new friends. My knee has been giving me some grief but nothing compared to when I was here before. Mondays hike was great. Had no real issues with the hike and was able to do all my afternoon classes and finish the day strong. Tuesday I had issues on the hike with my hip and knee so I wasn't able to finish the hike. I ended up only being able to do about 3 miles of the hike. I came back from the hike and ended up taking the afternoon off to let my knee rest, but before the afternoon classes I had a personal training session with Tonia. It has been so great seeing her again. Same old Tonia. I will be seeing her twice a week for personal training sessions. I took yesterday and today off from the hike and hopefully will be able to hike tomorrow. Haven't been taking as many pictures as last time because all the hikes I have been on so far I have already taken pictures. I will take some new ones though I promise. I arrived here as you know on Sunday and saw some of the staff. Everyone was blown away at how I looked. I have been struggling with that lately. Not being happy with where I am at. Yes I am proud of my progress and how much I have accomplished, but I have this image in my head of what I think I should look like by now and what I want to look like when I am at my goal and it doesn't measure up to what is reality. On Monday I was walking to my room or walking to the gym, one of the two, and Tonia was sitting outside at one of the benches talking to a guest and she looked up and saw me and said hi so I walked over to her and she just about flipped when she really got to see me. She couldn't believe how, as she put it, amazing I looked. So on Tuesday when we met she was asking me how things were going and how I was doing and I told her that I wasn't happy with my journey and how things were going. She proceeded to lecture me on and ask me questions about it and she got me to thinking. I need to be happy with where I am at. My body is only going to do what it is going to do. I want satisfaction and instant results which is not reality. I didn't put this weight on over night and it's not going to come off over night. There have been other staff that have had similar reactions as Tonia. As much as it makes me feel good and feel like I have worked hard, it also makes me uncomfortable and uneasy. It's hard for me to accept compliments. I guess that has to do with my upbringing and how I was raised. I am still working on that. Well, I need to head to the gym so I am going to cut this short. Will try to update more tonight. I love and miss all of you so much at home. Thanks again for all your love, support, concern, and prayers. It means the world to me.

Safely at the Resort

Hey all. Well it's Sunday evening and I am safely in my room at the resort in Malibu. Got in about 3:45 this afternoon and then checked in and did my assessment stuff and then went to dinner. It was sure good to see some of the staff when I got here. They were excited to see me and said that I looked amazing. Made me feel good. There is a new trainer here named Corrine. She seems really sweet. I look forward to getting to know her. It was a long 3 days drive. Glad to be done for a few weeks. It's crazy but I drove through 7 states in less than 24 hours. Crazy huh!!!! Doesn't seem possible. I am so anxious about tomorrow, but I am also looking forward to it. Excited to see Tj and Tonia and Kareen and Carmen. Well, I am totally exhausted so I am going to cut this short. I will blog more hopefully tomorrow.