Waiting for the woosh.....

So as mentioned last time I have had a little regain. I am not happy about it at all.  This week I have been working really hard and have cut a ton of carbs and sugar and been riding my bike a lot.  My husband has been working to drop a few pounds too.  This week while I have worked hard I have lost 2 pounds while he has lost like 10 (don’t get me wrong, he has worked too) but still!!! In the weight loss forums they always talk about how with many people they will work on losing and have little to no weight loss then it hits in a sudden woosh and drop several pounds in a week.   So here I sit mad with myself for not loosing more and waiting and hoping and praying for the woosh to come. 😒

Reality check

I realized today that it has been over two years since I have done a post. The last post I made was after I got my mom moved in with me and I had just become her caregiver.  It seems like a lifetime ago.  In the last two years I have gotten married to a wonderful man and my grown daughter moved in with my mom to help take care of her. We have lived a lot of life in the time we have been married. We have gone through him having cancer, thank GOD it was resolved with surgery and he is good and healthy now.  We have gone through the loss of family members, and many other things.  Through all we have gone through I have fallen back into a roll of putting myself last and not making my weight loss as much of a priority as it needs to be.  During the several stays at the hospital I lived on crackers and brownies.  Through the loss of a family member I found myself turning to food. I have gained weight.  More than I want to admit.  I have been fooling myself into thinking it wasn’t that bad but it is.  It is a very slippery slope falling back into weight gain and binge eating and eating when faced with emotional issues.

I went back today and reread through all my previous posts.  The posts from when I started this weight loss path.  The posts where I was so excited to see the weight falling off.  Now I feel daily like a failure.  I haven’t regained all my weight or even close to all my weight but I have regained about 30 pounds at this point.  Today I realized just how glad I am that I created this blog years ago.  Rereading my post has helped me to see where my focus needs to be once again.  I need to not just take care of those I love but I need to still make me be a priority as well.  Today was a good first day. Despite making cookies for my daughter’s birthday celebration tomorrow I didn’t eat any today.  I had fairly low carbs and focused on protein.  I went for a bike ride and went further than I have ever gone before (15.5 miles). So for today I am proud of myself. I pray for the resolve to make better choices each day to get back to where I can feel proud of myself once again.

Changes

Well the start of 2018 has been a rough one.  I grew up 550 miles from where I have lived the last 22 years and my mom was still living in the same house I grew up in all alone.  I got a call on New Years Day from my Uncle saying that they were taking my mom to the hospital.  Come to find out she had contracted the flu and was so weak she could not walk.  After spending a few days in the hospital she was transferred to an Orthopedic Rehab facility where she spent six weeks.  In that time frame I made the trip there and back 5 separate times.  During those trips it was decided that my mom would finally give in and come move into my home when she got released from the rehab center.  That day finally came last week and with much help from family, friends, and the workers at the airports I got her home.

To say this has been a hard start to the New Year is an understatement.  The excessive amount of travelling combined with the worry about my mom's well being could have been a disastrous combination for my eating habits and my weight.  In the last few years since surgery my eyes have been opened to the fact that I really was more of a stress eater then I had ever realized.  For the most part I have done well and I have not caved into the desire to just eat my weight in chocolate.  I have not been perfect through this though.  Saturday was just our 3rd day home and as with anything a new living arrangement is going to take some adjusting.  Epically when I have become the main caregiver to someone with very limited mobility issues (all while being a single mom and working full time still).  Saturday was not one of my better days.  It was a non-stop day filled with running errands, caring for my mom, trying to make sure my kids are taken care of and then last of all having a moment or two for me in there.  By the time it was almost 9 o'clock I realized that all I had eaten that day was two brownies and a bowl of popcorn.  Not the smartest move on my part but a real eye opener non-the-less.  After I realized that I had done that and it was too late to eat any real food for the day I made sure to make the conscious decision to not let that happen again. If I don't at least take the time to make sure that I have having proper nutrition then my body will eventually start to fail and I will be no good to anyone else. Through all of this I haven't let myself stress eat too much and I have thankfully maintained my weight.  I have to do my best to still be the best I can be to take care of all around me and take care of myself as well.

End of 2017

Well here we are coming up on the end of 2017. It seems like time just flies by. This year has been good though for the most part. For the first time in my life my weight has maintained steady and I can wear the same clothes that I was wearing last year without out growing them. My weight loss is still a daily choice that I have to make and I suspect it will probably be like that forever. Every day I have to make the choice to log in my food into my tracker app (I have over 800 consecutive days at this point) and to choose to limit carb intake and to exercise. If I don't make those choices it would be easy to start to regain weight and I don't want to let that happen.

2018 is around the corner and I am hopeful the new year will bring good things. I am hopeful for some advancement in my career and would like to think about the possibility of dating. I feel like a different person in so many ways from who I was a few years ago. I am a bit more outgoing and I have been reaching out more and trying to make more friends. While I still have areas that I want to improve I feel that I have gained a lot more confidence then I've ever had before. I am not as afraid to let loose a bit and be silly at times. I am slowly discovering that I am a good person that is worthy of love and respect and that I am worth the effort of maintaining health and wellbeing.

Two Years

Two years ago today I had my surgery and changed my life.  In this time I have gone from being well over 300 pounds to now being in the normal category's for everything and my weight stays between 155 & 160 pending on the day.  I have found that a 5 pound bounce range is normal for most people. My surgeons ultimate end goal for me was to hopefully reach 170lbs and so since I have surpassed that they are very happy with me and say that I am a major success story.  I have lost almost 100% of my excess weight.

The last two years have had their ups and downs, good days and bad but in the end I wouldn't change what I did.  I have been able to go from watching life on the sidelines to actively taking part in life with my kids.    I have been able to do things that I never thought I would be able to do again like when I went roller skating for the first time in 20 years.  I still have a few things that I struggle with.  I still have days where I want to eat junk and so I let myself have a little bit of something here or there.  For me I cannot live a life of total depravation or else it will catch up with me and I will lose control.  I have to live where I am good 95% of the time and have a treat once in a while.  The thing is though I have learned how to be ok with an occasional treat and let that be enough instead of eating till I feel sick just because something tastes good or sounds good to me.  My biggest struggle is still with how I see myself.  As I have mentioned before when I look at pictures I can see the difference in me but when I look down at myself I see the saggy skin that still looks like rolls of fat to me.  When I see that I still feel like I did at 300+ pounds even though part of my brain knows better.

None the less, this last two years has flown by and I will be forever grateful that God allowed me to be able to have this surgery to help me get myself in check.  The health benefits that I have experienced far outweigh the fear I had going into surgery and the bit of pain through recovery.  Without a doubt this was the best decision I have ever made for myself.

A Great Day

When I was a teenager even though I was very heavy there were still things I loved to do like bike riding and roller skating.  Roller skating epically was a favorite activity of mine and I would skate outside through the neighborhood as well as go to the skating rink with friends quite often.  I was the kid who could skate forward and backward and do some small tricks.  When I turned 18 I moved from my home in Michigan to the south by myself and so I had to go to work and I got very involved in church work down here and didn't have time to go skating anymore.  Not long after I moved I ended up married and had children and started gaining major weight.  As my weight got up into the three hundreds I never even thought anymore about going skating or doing anything sporty like that because I knew that physically I couldn't handle it.  I also felt embarrassed to even think about trying to do anything like that and honestly scared that if I tried and fell that I would seriously hurt myself.

This past weekend was the day to finally let go of that fear.  I took my son and nephews and headed off to the skating rink for the first time in about 20 years!  Going in I was so scared that I was literally shaking so hard that it took a minute to get everyone's skates laced up.  Everyone was ready to skate and as I stood up on my skates all I could do was pray that I didn't fall or get hurt.  But then as I stepped into the rink it all came back to me.  I was out there skating away and I let go of all those fears and worries and just truly enjoyed myself.  I felt like a kid again as I flew round the rink.  We skated for almost two hours and I truly feel as though I could have stayed another two hours.  By the time we were done I was a little sore from using different muscles that I have not used in a long time but the feeling of freedom that I now have in my life is amazing to me.  All the little things that I took for granted for so long when I was younger I now have back and can experience again.  Just that appreciation for the little things like getting to go skating with my kids is a gift in itself.  I am eternally grateful for getting to live life more fully once again.

600 days

So today marks 600 days in a row that I have logged every bite that goes into my mouth on my fitness tracker app.  I am not totally sure as to why but this has felt like such a milestone for me to hit 600 days in a row.  I am sure that there are many people out there who have logged for years and years without missing a day and so they have numbers in the thousands but to me this 600 mark is a big deal.  I think that part of it is because I have never committed to keeping on track and losing weight like I have this time. 

Of course the surgery is a huge factor in that but despite the surgery this process still takes a lot of commitment.  They say a lot in the online forums that when they do surgery it is on your stomach and not your head.  This statement seems like silly common sense when you look at the literal side of it but after having the surgery this statement takes on real meaning.  You come to realize that the surgery, while it helps so very much, only does limit the volume you can eat at one time not what you eat or how often you eat junk.  For many people, like myself, after a while the hunger comes back and even though you are not physically able to eat as much at one time you still have to learn to get yourself in control so that you don't graze all day long.  There are so many people out there who have had the various weight loss procedures and they end up gaining all the weight back and then some because they lose the battle with their mind.  They let the mind games win because they have lost so much weight in the beginning that they think they will never gain the weight back but then a year down the road and they are back to where they started because they justify eating candy or chips or whatever their vice is here and there all day long and so while they may not be eating a whole bag of chips in one setting they are still eating that whole bag of chips over a few hours. It is easy to justify a little here or there and then fall into that pit of eating junk all the time.

That is what is scary to me.  The idea of the possibility of falling back into that cycle of eating junk then justifying it then living with the guilt of it then falling back into those old patterns more and more and gaining back a lot of weight.  This is why I feel that my 600 day mark on my fitness tracker is such a huge deal to me.  My sister made a statement to me in our conversation the other day about how she knows that I religiously track every bite that goes into my mouth and she was saying how that is something to be proud of.  I have to agree because with tracking literally everything that goes into my mouth I am holding myself accountable so that I can identify if I start to fall back into old habits and I can see trends of how what I eat impacts my weight.  I am not perfect and I have treats here and there but I strive to eat right at least 90% of the time, but the point is that even when I have that treat I log it in and make myself acknowledge it. When dealing with food addiction it truly can be a life long battle but it is a battle I intend on being victorious through.